Decide to Be Happy

There is scarcely an idea more infectious or potent than the love of money. It is a yellow fever, decimating its votaries and ruining more families in the land, than all the plagues or diseases put together. Instances of its malevolent power can happen to each and every one of us.

How many rich dwellings there are, crowded with every appointment of luxury, that are only glittering caverns of selfishness and discontent! "Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."

"No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger," says Beecher. "It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has."

If our thoughts are great and noble, no mean surroundings can make us miserable. It is the mind that makes the body rich.

A man may make millions and be a failure still. Money-making is not the highest success. (Just ask Bernie Madoff.)

"What is the best thing to possess?" asked an ancient philosopher of his pupils. One answered, "Nothing is better than a good eye,"—a figurative expression for a liberal and contented disposition. Another said, "A good companion is the best thing in the world;" a third chose a good neighbor; and a fourth, a wise friend. But Eleazar said: "A good heart is better than them all." "True," said the master; "thou hast comprehended in two words all that the rest have said, for he that hath a good heart will be contented, a good companion, a good neighbor, and will easily see what is fit to be done by him."

Some people are born happy. No matter what their circumstances are they are joyous, content and satisfied with everything. They carry a perpetual holiday in their eye and see joy and beauty everywhere. When we meet them they impress us as just having met with some good luck, or that they have some good news to tell you. Like the bees that extract honey from every flower, they have a happy disposition which changes even gloom into sunshine. In the sick room they are better than the physician and more potent than drugs. All doors open to these people. They are welcome everywhere.

Whatever journey you choose - Decide to be Happy. You can save your money, invest wisely and build great riches and wealth. Why not enjoy the journey!

Be a Little Hard on Yourself

There once was a farmer who desired a piece of ground next to his. However, the owner of that piece of ground refused to sell; yet with much persuasion he was contented to let it. The abbot hired it and covenanted only to farm it for one crop. He had his bargain, and sowed it with acorns—a crop that lasted three hundred years.

So Satan asks to get possession of our souls by asking us to permit some small sin to enter, some one wrong that seems of no great account. But when once he has entered and planted the seeds and beginnings of evil, he holds his ground.

"Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable," says Walter Scott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer."

Thomas A. Edison was once asked why he was a total abstainer. He said, "I thought I had a better use for my head."

Byron could write poetry easily, for it was merely indulging his natural propensity; but to curb his temper, soothe his discontent, and control his animal appetites was a very different thing. At all events, it seemed so great to him that he never seriously attempted self-conquest. Let every youth who would not be shipwrecked on life's voyage cultivate this one great virtue, "self-control." There is nothing so important to a youth starting out in life as a thoroughly trained and cultivated will; everything depends upon it. If he has it, he will succeed; if he does not have it, he will fail.

"The first and best of victories," says Plato, "is for a man to conquer himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile."

"Silence," says Zimmerman, "is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy."

"He is a fool who cannot be angry," says English, "but he is a wise man who will not."

Seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "we should every night call ourselves to account. What infirmity have I mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift." If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.

It does no good to get angry. Some sins have a seeming compensation or apology, a present gratification of some sort, but anger has none. A man feels no better for it. It is really a torment, and when the storm of passion has cleared away, it leaves one to see that he has been a fool. And he has made himself a fool in the eyes of others too.

Be a Man

"The body of an athlete and the soul of a sage," wrote Voltaire to Helvetius; "these are what we require to be happy."

Although millions are out of employment in the United States, how difficult it is to find a thorough, reliable, self-dependent, industrious man or woman, young or old, for any position.

As Nature tries every way to induce us to obey her laws by rewarding their observance with health, pleasure and happiness, and punishes their violation by pain and disease, so she resorts to every means to induce us to expand and develop the great possibilities she has implanted within us. She nerves us to the struggle, beneath which all great blessings are buried, and beguiles the tedious marches by holding up before us glittering prizes, which we may almost touch, but never quite possess. She covers up her ends of discipline by trial, of character building through suffering by throwing a splendor and glamour over the future; lest the hard, dry facts of the present dishearten us, and she fail in her great purpose.

How else could Nature call the youth away from all the charms that hang around young life, but by presenting to his imagination pictures of future bliss and greatness which will haunt his dreams until he resolves to make them real. As a mother teaches her babe to walk, by holding up a toy at a distance, not that the child may reach the toy, but that it may develop its muscles and strength, compared with which the toys are mere baubles; so Nature goes before us through life, tempting us with higher and higher toys, but ever with one object in view—the development of the man.

In every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure which stands out boldly beyond everything else. Every other idea or figure on the canvas is subordinate to this idea or figure, and finds its real significance not in itself, but, pointing to the central idea, finds its true expression there. So in the vast universe of God, every object of creation is but a guide-board with an index finger pointing to the central figure of the created universe - Man. Nature writes this thought upon every leaf; she thunders it in every creation; it exhales from every flower; it twinkles in every star.

Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide,
And let in manhood—let in happiness;
Admit the boundless theatre of thought
From nothing up to God ... which makes a man!
—Young.

Keep Learning

"To know wisdom and instruction; To discern the words of understanding;

To receive instruction in wise dealing, In righteousness and justice and equity;

To give prudence to the simple, To the young man knowledge and discretion:

That the wise man may hear, and increase in learning" Proverbs 1: 2-5

No young man on the verge of life ought to be in the least discouraged by the fact that he is not stamped with the hall mark of Yale, Harvard or Oxford.

Reading, indeed, is the real source both of education and of style. Read what you like, not what somebody else tells you that you ought to like. That reading alone is valuable which becomes part of the reader's own mind and nature, and this can never be the case if the matter is not the result of your choosing.

The lonely island of Nantucket might not be considered a very favorable place to win success and fame. But Maria Mitchell, on seventy-five dollars a year, as librarian of the Nantucket Athenaeum, found time and opportunity to become a celebrated astronomer

When all is said and done, the real education is the market-place of the street. There the study of character enables the boy of judgment to develop an uncanny proficiency in estimating the value of the currency of the realm.

Experiences teaches us time and again that no man ought to be downcast in setting out on the adventure of life by a lack of formal knowledge.

If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. You will find that millions have the same wants. The safest business is always connected with man's prime necessities. He must have clothing and a dwelling; he must eat. He wants comforts, facilities of all kinds for pleasure, luxuries, education, and culture. Any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any methods which men use, supply any demand of comfort, or contribute in any way to their well-being, can earn great riches.

"One or another
In money or guns may surpass his brother.
But whoever shall know,
As the long days go.
That to live is happy, has found his heaven."

"The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes." - DISRAELI.

Education and Learning

Although not the same kind, there is as much difference between education and learning, as there is between character and reputation.

Learning may be regarded as mental capital, in the way of accumulated facts. Education is the drawing out and development of the best that is in the heart, the head, and the hand.

The civilized world has a score of very learned men, to the one who may be said to be thoroughly educated. The learned man may be familiar with many languages, and sciences, and have all the facts of history and literature at his fingers' tip, and yet be as helpless as an infant and as impractical as a fool. An educated man, a man with his powers developed by training, may know no language but his mother tongue, may be ignorant as to literature and art, and yet be well—yes, even superbly educated.

The learned man's mind may be likened to a store house, or magazine, in which there are a thousand wonderful things, some of which he can make of use in the battle of life. He resembles the miser who fills his coffers with gold and keeps it out of circulation. Beyond the selfish joy of possession, his wealth is worthless, and its acquisition has unfitted him for the struggle. The educated man, to continue the illustration, may not be rich, but he knows how to use every cent he owns, and he places it where, under his energy, it will grow into dollars.

Far be it from us to underestimate the value of learning. Many of the world's greatest men have been learned, but without exception such men have also been educated. They have been trained to make their knowledge available for the benefit of themselves and their fellow men.

The athlete who develops his muscles to their greatest capacity of strength and flexibility, and this can only be done by observing strictly the laws of health, is physically an educated man. Every mechanic whose hands and brain have been trained to the expertness required by the master workman, is well-educated in his particular calling. The man who is an expert accountant, or a trained civil engineer, may know nothing of the higher mathematical principles, but he is better educated than the scholar who has only a theoretical knowledge of all the mathematics that have ever been published.

The educated man is the man who can do something, and the quality of his work marks the degree of his education. One might be learned in law in a phenomenal way, and yet, unless he was educated, trained to the practice, he would be beaten in the preparation of a case by a lawyer's clerk.

There are men who can write and talk learnedly on political economy and the laws of trade, and quote from memory all the statistics of the census library, and yet be immeasurably surpassed in practical business, by a young man whose college was the store, and whose university was the counting room.

It should not be inferred from this that learning is not of the greatest value, or that the facts obtained from the proper books are to be ignored. The best investment a young man can make is in good books, the study of which broadens the mind, and the facts of which equip him the better for his life calling.

To the young man, "thirsting for learning and hungering for education," there are no books more helpful than the biographies of those whom it is well to imitate. Longfellow wisely says:

"Lives of great men all remind us,
   We can make our lives sublime,
 And departing leave behind us,
   Footprints on the sands of time—

 Footprints which perhaps another,
   Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
 A forlorn and ship-wrecked brother,
   Seeing, may take heart again."

Build Wealth

Mere money is no indication of prosperity. A man's nature may remain the same. It may even grow more stunted and deformed, while he is doubling his expenditure, or adding cent, per cent, to his hoards yearly. It is the same with the masses. The increase of their gains may merely furnish them with increased means for gratifying animal indulgences, unless their moral character keeps pace with their physical advancement. Double the gains of an uneducated, overworked man, in a time of prosperity, and what is the result? Simply that you have furnished him with the means of eating and drinking more! Thus, not even the material well-being of the population is secured by that condition of things which is defined by political economists as "National Prosperity." And so long as the moral elements of the question are ignored, this kind of "prosperity" is, we believe, calculated to produce far more mischievous results than good.

It is knowledge and virtue alone that can confer dignity on a man's life; and the growth of such qualities in a nation are the only true marks of its real prosperity; not the infinite manufacture and sale of cotton prints, toys, hardware, and crockery.

The Bishop of Manchester, when preaching at a harvest thanksgiving near Preston, referred to a letter which he had received from a clergyman in the south of England, who, after expressing his pleasure at the fact that the agricultural labourers were receiving higher wages, lamented "that at present the only result he could discover from their higher wages was that a great deal more beer was consumed. If this was the use we were making of this prosperity, we could hardly call it a blessing for which we had a right or ground to thank God.

The true prosperity of the nation consisted not so much in the fact that the nation was growing in wealth though wealth was a necessary attribute of prosperity but that it was growing in virtue; and that there was a more equable distribution of comfort, contentment, and the things of this lower world."

Those who say that "It can't be done," are probably not aware that many of the working classes are in the receipt of incomes considerably larger than those of professional men.

This is not, by any means, a secret.

The words "Waste not, want not," carved in stone over Sir Walter Scott's kitchen fireplace at Abbotsford, expresses in a few words the secret of Order in the midst of abundance. Order is most useful in the management of everything,—of a household, of a business, of a manufactory, of an army. Its maxim is—A place for everything, and everything in its place. Order is wealth; for, whoever properly regulates the use of his income, almost doubles his resources. Disorderly persons are rarely rich; and orderly persons are rarely poor.

Order is the best manager of time; for unless work is properly arranged, Time is lost; and, once lost, it is gone for ever. Order illustrates many important subjects. Thus, obedience to the moral and natural law, is order. Respect for ourselves and our neighbours, is order. Regard for the rights and obligations of all, is order. Virtue is order. The world began with order. Chaos prevailed, before the establishment of order.

Thrift is the spirit of order in human life. It is the prime agent in private economy. It preserves the happiness of many a household. And as it is usually woman who regulates the order of the household, it is mainly upon her that the well-doing of society depends. It is therefore all the more necessary that she should early be educated in the habit and the virtue of orderliness.

The peer, the merchant, the clerk, the artisan, and the laborer, are all of the same nature, born with the same propensities and subject to similar influences. They are, it is true, born in different positions, but it rests with themselves whether they shall live their lives nobly or vilely. They may not have their choice of riches or poverty; but they have their choice of being good or evil, of being worthy or worthless.

Start saving your money. Invest wisely. Be patient and wary of promises for quick riches. You can build wealth and great riches - if you work hard and invest your savings regularly.

Giving Back

The Businessman is one who supplies something great and good to the world, and collects from the world for the goods. George Peabody was the consummate businessman.
He made millions and gave it away to better the lives of generations to follow. George Peabody was a noted American merchant and banker.

Unlike many of wealth and position, Peabody never assumed unusual importance nor demanded favors. In London, where he lived for thirty years, he resided in simple apartments, with no use for a valet nor the genus flunkey. He was grateful to servants, courteous to porters, thankful to everybody, always patient, never complaining of inattention. He grew to be a favorite among the bus men who came to know him and sought to do him honor. The poor of London blessed him as he walked by—with reasons, probably, not wholly disinterested.

He used no tobacco, never touched spirituous liquors, and at banquets usually partook of but a single plate.

Peabody then gave three million dollars, just what he had given to London, for the cause of education in the Southern States. This money was used to establish schoolhouses. Wherever a town raised five hundred dollars for a school Peabody would give a like sum. A million dollars of the Peabody fund was finally used for a Normal School at Nashville. The investment has proved a wise and beneficent one. He next gave a million and a half dollars to found the Peabody Institute of Baltimore. That this gift fired the heart of Peter Cooper to do a similar work

At his Funeral a noted clergyman remarked: "George Peabody waged a war against want and woe. He created homes; he never desolated one."

"He sided with the friendless and the houseless, and his life was guided by a law of love which none could ever wish to repeal. His was the task of cementing the hearts of Briton and American, pointing both to their duty to God and to humankind."

What the World Wants

An excerpt from an old work by Elbert Hubbard:

"The world bestows its big prizes, both in money and honors, for but one thing. And that is Initiative. What is Initiative? I'll tell you: It is doing the right thing without being told. But next to doing the right thing without being told is to do it when you are told once.

There are those who never do a thing until they are told twice: such get no honors and small pay. Next, there are those who do the right thing only when necessity kicks them from behind, and these get indifference instead of honors, and a pittance for pay. This kind spends most of its time polishing a bench with a hard-luck story. Then, still lower down in the scale than this, we find the fellow who will not do the right thing even when some one goes along to show him how, and stays to see that he does it; he is always out of a job, and receives the contempt he deserves, unless he has a rich Pa, in which case Destiny awaits near by with a stuffed club.

The man who studies mankind, and finds out what men really want, and then supplies them this, whether it be an Idea or a Thing, is the man who is crowned with the laurel wreath of honor and clothed with riches."

Habits for Success

Habit is the basis of character. Habit is the persistent repetition of acts physical, mental, and moral. No matter how much thought and ability a young man may have, failure is sure to follow bad habits. While correct habits depend largely on self- discipline, and often on self-denial, bad habits, like pernicious weeds, spring up unaided and untrained to choke out the plants of virtue. It is easy to destroy the seed at the beginning, but its growth is so rapid, that its evil effects may not be perceptible till the roots have sapped every desirable plant about it.

No sane youth ever started out with the resolve to be a thief, a tramp, or a drunkard. Yet it is the slightest deviation from honesty that makes the first. It is the first neglect of a duty that makes the second. And it is the first intoxicating glass that makes the third. It is so easy not to begin, but the habit once formed and the man is a slave, bound with galling, cankering chains, and the strength of will having been destroyed, only God's mercy can cast them off.

Next to the moral habits that are the cornerstone of every worthy character, the habit of industry should be ranked. In "this day and generation," there is a wild desire on the part of young men to leap into fortune at a bound, to reach the top of the ladder of success without carefully climbing the rounds, but no permanent prosperity was ever gained in this way.

There have been men, who through chance, or that form of speculation, that is legalized gambling, have made sudden fortunes; but as a rule these fortunes have been lost in the effort to double them by the quick and speculative process.

Betters and gamblers usually die poor. But even where young men have made a lucky stroke, the result is too often a misfortune. They neglect the necessary, persistent effort. The habit of industry is ignored. Work becomes distasteful, and the life is wrecked, looking for chances that never come.

There have been exceptional cases, where men of immoral habits, but with mental force and unusual opportunities have won fortunes. Some of these will come to the reader's mind at once, but he will be forced to confess that he would not give up his manhood and comparative poverty, in exchange for such material success.

The best equipment a young man can have for the battle of life is a conscience void of offense, sound common sense, and good health. Too much importance cannot be attached to health and fitness. It is a blessing we do not prize till it is gone. Some are naturally delicate and some are naturally strong, but by habit the health of the vigorous may be ruined, and by opposite habits the delicate may be made healthful and strong. If you find yourself in less than what you consider to be your ideal fitness level - start getting in shape fast.

Visualize Your Success

The great modern-day motivator - Zig Ziglar - has a saying that really holds true. Ole Zig used to suggest that we get rid of "stinkin thinkin" and instead focus on more positive thoughts and energy.

Banish worry, discouragement, depression, and every such enemy to peace and power.

"The New Dawn"
"Fear-Thought and Fear-Feeling"
"The Soul of the Cell"
"A Regime"
"Fear Not Thyself
"Fear Not For Others"
"Fear Not Dumb Things"
"The Massing of a Hundred Faces"

"Fear Not Thy Fellows"
"Life's Relations"
"The Raw Material"
"Youth is Courage"
"Fear Not Events"
"The Rock of Courage"

There is in your mind an UPPER LEVEL; LIVE IN THAT. When worry and the like appear, you will find them occupying the lower level and absorbing your attention. You should instantly force consciousness to the higher ground, expelling these enemies and holding up to the better mood. This is the one secret of victory over the king's foes.

A positive thinker - and doer - sets a definite goal, either life-long or short term and sets out to achieve their goal(s) with the tenacity of a bulldog.
And he, therefore, wastes no values, but economizes all.

THINK OF EVERY GOAL AS ALREADY REACHED, OF EVERY UNDERTAKING AS ALREADY ACHIEVED.

TREAT YOURSELF AS A LIVE AND A SURELY SUCCESSFUL PROPOSITION.

I affirm truth to be my desire and possession.
I affirm health to be my rightful claim.
I affirm fearlessness of that which I have feared
I affirm cause and reason only for courage.
I affirm that reason is independent of fear.

I affirm that life is my perfect university.
I affirm that I am success.

I affirm that a part of the world's plenty is for me.

I affirm my real self impregnable to hurt.
I affirm the Infinite Life to be my Friend.
I affirm that spirituality is true freedom.

I affirm myself the friend of the Infinite.
I affirm that mine is the WHITE-LIFE.
I affirm my independence of narrow creeds.
I affirm buoyant happiness as my present possession.
I am power!
I shall live and unfold forever.

If better health and fitness are one of your goals this year - take action, think positive and Visualize getting in shape fast!