Good Cheer & Prosperity

Good Cheer & Prosperity

Orison Swett Marden 

Good cheer is one of man's greatest benefactors. It has helped him from giving up to despair even when starvation has stared him in the face and all mankind seemed against him.

When a man chooses good cheer for his companion he never talks of hard times or carries a picture of poverty or want in his mind.

Have you never noticed that, as a rule, it is the cheerful, hopeful, optimistic people who succeed, and that it is the sour, morose, gloomy natures who fail or plod along in mediocrity, who never amount to anything?

More cheerfulness will help you all along the line of success. It will help you to bear your burdens; it will help you to overcome obstacles; it will increase your courage, strengthen your initiative, make you more effective, more popular, more helpful.

It will make you a happier, more successful man or woman; it will transform and beautify the humblest and homeliest surroundings.

Cheerfulness means poise, serenity, a sane, wholesome, well-balanced outlook on life. The cheerful man knows that there is much misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life.

He who has formed a habit of looking at the bright side of things has a great advantage over the chronic dyspeptic who sees no good in anything. Shakespeare says: "A merry heart goes all the day, a sad heart tires in a mile".

If we are cheerful and contented all nature smiles with us; the air is balmier, the sky clearer, the earth has a brighter green, the trees have a richer foliage, the flowers are more fragrant, the birds sing more sweetly, and the sun, moon and stars are more beautiful.

Money itself has very little to do with happiness. Some of the most wretched men and women I have ever known anything about have been very rich. They could have everything that money could buy, but their money didn't bring them happiness; it didn't bring contentment or harmony into their homes.

Epictetus, the pagan philosopher, proved in his life the truth of his own words — "A man can be happy without wealth, without family, without office or honor, without health, without anything that the world seeks after."

Rich people are no happier than poor people. With them it is largely a question of shifting anxiety and worry to other things.

The man who smiles and sees the best in everything and everybody is the man who draws the best out of others. He attracts others and wins out in life, while the gloomy, sour face repels everyone.

Cheerfulness is a medicine. It promotes health. The habit of cheerfulness lubricates the human machine and it greatly increases and sharpens every one of the mental faculties. It improves every function of the body.

Cheerfulness keeps one young; it is one of the secrets of eternal youth.

One who admits to himself and others that he is sick is indeed sick; but one who declines to make such admission, and cheerfully goes on as if he were well, conquers many an ailment, which if he had succumbed to it, might have proved serious.