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When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make a lemonade.
instead of being, as Shaw put it, “a self-centered, little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world would not devote itself to making him happy.”
Dr. Adler’s splendid book, What Life Should Mean to You.
prophet Mohammed, “is one that brings a smile of joy to the face of another.”
Because trying to please others will cause us to stop thinking of ourselves: the very thing that produces worry, fear and melancholia.
“About one-third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.”
Zoroaster said, “Doing good to others is not a duty. It is a joy, for it increases your own health and happiness.” And Benjamin Franklin summed it up very simply—”When you are good to others,” said Franklin, “you are best to yourself.”
What people want,” continued Professor Phelps, “is a little attention as human beings. When I meet a man on the street with a beautiful dog, I always comment on the dog’s beauty. As I walk on and glance back over my shoulder, I frequently see the man petting and admiring the dog. My appreciation has renewed his appreciation.
a man who contemplated suicide; and yet he felt that the man who thought only of himself wouldn’t get much out of life. He would be miserable. But the man who forgot himself in service to others would find the joy of living.
Forget yourself by becoming interested in others. Do every day do a good deed that will put a smile of joy on someone’s face.
“Man is not made to understand life, but to live it.”
It gives me faith, hope, and courage. It banishes tensions, anxieties, fears, and worries. It gives purpose to my life—and direction. It vastly improves my happiness. It gives me abounding health. It helps me to
create for myself “an oasis of peace amidst the whirling sands of life.”
Because psychiatrists realize that prayer and a strong religious faith will banish the worries, the anxieties, the strains and fears that cause more than half of all our ills.
“No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe that everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about?”
read The Return to Religion, by Dr. Henry C. Link.
Dr. Carl Jung says in his book, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, “During the past thirty years, people from
I implored the Almighty to give me light and understanding and guidance through the dark, dense wilderness of despair that had closed in about me. I asked God to help me get orders for my books and to give me money to feed my wife and children.
I had suddenly become aware of my relationship with God. A mere man alone can easily be defeated, but a man alive with the power of God within him is invincible. I know. I saw it work in my own life.
I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer.... Prayer like radium is a source of luminous, self-generating energy.... In prayer, human beings seek to augment their Finite energy by addressing themselves to the Infinite source of all energy. When we pray, we link ourselves with the inexhaustible motive power that spins the universe.
So when you are kicked and criticized, remember that it is often done because it gives the kicker a feeling of importance.
Remember that unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.
Bother me? Huh! When I hear somebody cussing me now, I never turn my head to see who is talking.”
I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They are thinking about themselves—before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until ten minutes past midnight. They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine.
One of His twelve most intimate friends turned traitor for a bribe that would amount, in our modern money, to about nineteen dollars.
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized, anyway. You’ll be ‘damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.’” That is her advice.
‘If you get your head above the crowd, you’re going to be criticized. So get used to the idea.’
psychiatrist will tell you that fatigue also lowers your resistance to the emotions of fear and worry. So preventing fatigue tends to prevent worry.
He declares that any nervous or emotional state “fails to exist in the presence of complete relaxation.”
Rest often. Rest before you get tired.
He prevented it. Because he rested frequently, he was able to work on, fresh and fit, until long past midnight.
Another reason was his habit of taking a half-hour nap in his office every noon.
Why Be Tired, Daniel W. Josselyn observed: “Rest is not a matter of doing absolutely nothing. Rest is repair.”
“I often relax in a big easy chair and get two or three ten- minute naps a day. They buck me up tremendously.”
But if you live in a small city and go home for lunch, you may be able to take a ten-minute nap after lunch.
do what the Army does-take frequent rests. Do what your heart does—rest before you get tired, and you will add one hour a day to your waking life.
Psychiatrists declare that most of our fatigue derives from our mental and emotional attitudes.
J. A. Hadfield, says in his book The Psychology of Power: “the greater part of the fatigue from which we suffer is of mental origin; in fact exhaustion of purely physical origin is rare.”
What is the answer to this nervous fatigue? Relax! Relax! Relax! Learn to relax while you are doing your work!
How do you relax? Do you start with your mind, or do you start with your nerves? You don’t start with either. You always begin to relax with your muscles!
if you can completely relax the muscles of the eyes, you can forget all your troubles! The reason the eyes are so important in relieving nervous tension is that they burn up one fourth of all the nervous energies consumed by the body.
Clear Your Desk of All Papers Except Those Relating to the Immediate Problem at Hand.
2: Do Things in the Order of Their Importance.
“As far back as I can remember, I have gotten up at five o’clock in the morning because I can think better then any other time—I can think better then and plan my day, plan to do things in the order of their importance.”
His plan called for writing five pages each day. That plan inspired him to go right on writing five pages a day for nine heartbreaking years, even though he made a
Good Working Habit No. 3: When You Face a Problem, Solve It Then and There, if You Have the Facts Necessary to Make a Decision, Don’t Keep Putting off Decisions.
Good Working Habit No. 4: Learn to Organize, Deputize, and Supervise.
It is a well-known fact that your emotional attitude usually has far more to do with producing fatigue than has physical exertion.
Just this: our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration, and resentment.
“Yes, go to bat with yourself every morning. We talk a lot about the importance of physical exercise to wake us up out of the half-sleep in which so many of us walk around. But we need, even more, some spiritual and mental exercises every morning to stir us into action. Give yourself a pep talk every day.”
