What are You Getting Out of Life Each Day?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue XXII, 26 November 1904, Page 59

What are You Getting Out of Life Each Day?

What does each day bring you* Work, worry, and discontent? Are you dreading the dawn, and do you fret and rebel at the fate which has been imposed upon you. and do you weep and pray for better things to come* If this is your habit of thought you tire placing an impassable barrier between yourself and any possible future happiness. You are training your mind to despondent mental habits, and these hah its will pursue you no matter how con ditions may change for the better. This is not a theory. It is a scion titic fact. I have known a woman to dwell with morbid persistency upon her really unhappy life, and to shut away any sug gestion that it could change for the better with a dogged pessimism. And when. later, conditions did change (through the efforts of others), and she was given ideal surroundings, and every affectionate care and attention, she found herself unable to change her way of looking at life. From morning until night, year after year, she was despondent, discontented and complaining. She had developed the gloomy and pessimistic part of her brain and atrophied the optimistic portion by disuse. If you should tie your right arm to your side and never use it for years it would become enfeebled and in a measure paralysed. When, some day. you undertook to put this hand to work you would find it incapable of obeying your commands. If you never allowed your child to walk, but kept it in a perambulator until it was grown you could not expect it to walk some day at a sudden re quest. It is precisely so with the mind. It must practise the habit of pleasant ami hopeful thoughts before it can enjoy any blessing or event to the full. Begin to-day to give yourself a kindergarten training in happy thinking. Xo matter how miserable and burdened your life may be, look for some one bright spot, some beauty in nature, some hour of rest, some sweet little hope, and dwell upon that for a tew moments until you can feel a thrill of joy in your heart.

Look at other lives and realise the fact that you would not exchange your lot in the entire for that of any other human being you know. Then be glad you are yourself and go to work to make yourself what you wish to be.

Yon have no idea what powerful qua lilies lie in you to change the condi tions of your lot for the better. But it is useless to change them un

less you change your way of thinking about your present environment. Find something to enjoy each d.i\ and look forward to more enjoyment to morrow. Do not be discouraged it your hopes are slow in materialising, the delay is but temporary. Remember what seems evil to you in your life is only good masquerading. In the Sanskrit the word Good means that which exists, and Evil, that which has no existence. So it is plain to see how far back the Metaphysical School obtains its idea that all is good. Good is the only thing which lasts, and once you fix the thought in your mind you will find it most inspiring and helpful. Misfoi tune is only temporary. Be cheerful in that conviction and learn the habit «»t happy thinking.