| "WHAT WE GET OUT OF LIFE depends upon how we look at it. Our mental attitude determines whether we shall be happy or miserable, whether we make life music or discord.
Some people have a faculty for touching the wrong keys; from the finest instrument they extract only discord. They sound the note of pessimism everywhere. Al their songs are in a minor key. Everything is looking down. The shadows predominate in all these pictures. There is nothing bright, cheerful or beautiful about them. Their outlook is always gloomy; times are always hard and money tight. Everything in them seems to be contracting; nothing growing or expanding in their lives.
With others it is just the reverse. They cast no shadows. They radiate sunshine. Every bud they touch opens its petals and flings out its fragrance and beauty. They never approach you but to cheer; they never speak to you but to inspire. They scatter flowers wherever they go. They have that happy alchemy which turns prose into poetry, ugliness to beauty, discord to melody. They see the best in people and say pleasant and helpful things about them.
One man will put his very soul into the most unattractive calling and not only lift it to dignity, but by infusing into it the soul of an artist, make it radiant with beauty, while another will degrade the loftiest and most dignified vocation into drudgery, and make the grandest profession seem undesirable.
If the heart is right we can make the most trifling thing, the simplest act or duty beautiful, but if the heart is not right, nothing in the life will be true, or fine, or uplifting.
The one who faces life the right way, who is cheerful, hopeful, always expecting the best to come to him because he believes in God, from whom all good things come, will increase his ability tremendously. His mental attitude will call out resources which the pessimist loses, because his mental attitude closes his nature instead of opening it up.
At least half of our troubles and trials come from our gloomy outlook and negative expectations; from anticipating evil instead of good in others."
- Orison Swett Marden |