Good morning!

I am planning to post some more videos over the weekend, so watch for those, and enjoy the blog!

Keep Smiling!

Here’s a quote from Orison Swett Marden, written nearly 100 years ago.  I thought this might be some good food for thought for the weekend.
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If I were asked to name the one thing that would help the human race more than any other, I would perhaps say, “More cheerfulness,-good cheer, keeping sweet under all circumstances.”

More cheerfulness means more life, more happiness, more success, more efficiency, more character, a larger future. The cheerful man does not cramp his mind and take half views of things.

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? A habit of cheerfulness enables one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings.

More cheerfulness will help you all along the line of life. 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. There is no philosophy like cheerfulness.

No one can estimate the healthful, uplifting power of one cheerful life, one serene, balanced soul. The hopeful, cheerful nature is constructive. 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.

There is no other life habit which can give such prolific returns in happiness and satisfaction as that of being cheerful and sweet under all circumstances. The cheerful man’s thought sculptures his face into beauty and touches his manner with grace.

Why not resolve that, whatever comes or does not come to you, whether you fail in your undertaking or succeed, you will keep cheerful, hopeful, optimistic, and be grateful for the good things that are yours? In almost everything we can find some happiness if we look for it.

The trouble with us is that we generally want more to make us happy than we deserve, and we are not grateful enough for the many things that are ours to enjoy.

How many of us might learn a lesson from the poor little girl living in the slums of a great city who took a prize at a flower show. When asked how she managed to raise her beautiful plant in the dark alley where her home was, she answered that there was a little space between two tall buildings through which a bit of sunshine came in, and that by moving the plant as the sun moved she had managed to keep it in the sunshine and to produce the prize flower.

We all have at least a little sunshine in our lives, something to be thankful for, and by turning our faces to it, we could manage somehow to keep growing, but we don’t make the most of the little sun we do have, as the little girl did.
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The Bible says, “A Merry heart does good, like a medicine.”

Have a great weekend!

Mike