Your mental attitude is of vast importance. Happiness is as contagious as disease. The “blues” can be easily induced by a vivid imagination, regardless of your physical condition. No matter what troubles may have harassed you during the day, when the time for retiring arrives, put them aside. FORGET THEM! Try to induce a satisfactory mental attitude! Think of pleasant things! If you have been irritated, do your best to dispel all remembrance of it. Of course, this will be very difficult at times, but remember that many of our troubles are largely imaginary. We “make mountains of mole-hills.” To prove the truth of this, recall many of the worries of your past life. How you will smile at the great importance that you attached to certain events that once, as you thought., seriously marred your happiness, but now seem trivial in the extreme.
A satisfactory mental attitude at bedtime is most desirable in order to rest thoroughly and thus secure all the benefit that sleep brings. Remember also that worrying over minor troubles is often a habit. Some men are sour, and cross and cranky all through life. They never know what it is to feel emotions of a pleasant kind, yet rarely are they suffering from a disease. They need some one to shake them out of their pitiful condition. You can grow old and cross and crabbed in your twenties, if you are inclined to develop characteristics of this kind. A great many murky minded individuals will pass the most beautiful sunset unnoticed, or else they will see in it predictions of unpleasant weather on the morrow.
“Some people, like the bee, seem to find honey in every flower, while others, like the spider, carry only poison away. One finds happiness everywhere and on every occasion, while another seems to be continually returning from a funeral.”
DON’T BE A CHRONIC GRUMBLER! Cultivate the happy faculty of getting as much out of life as you can. Remember that your life after all is of your own making. Your conditions financially or otherwise, will have but little to do with the result. You, yourself, make happiness or misery according to your mental attitude toward yourself and people in general. Of course, I realize that some appear to be, and have some cause for complaint on the score of bad luck, but those who struggle on with undefiled ideals and unswerving principles will in every case reach a. satisfactory goal in the end. Happiness must and will be yours if you determine to secure it. It is simply a matter of time, and requires nothing but Continuous resolute effort to bring it within your grasp.
If, in spite of all your attempts, your thoughts are gloomy at bedtime, recall the various happy incidents of your life, think of all the brightness that the future has in store for you. Say over and over to your-self that you have every cause to be happy. Coin-pare your condition to that of others who are in circumstances far worse than your own. All this will, or should, help to bring you a feeling of satisfaction. You may have some cause for worry, but a little consideration will convince you that there are thousands of others who have far more reason for unhappiness than yourself.
After you have done your best to bring into being the proper mental attitude, you may consider the more material features essential to your physical and likewise your mental health.