Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden
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of cheerfulness—the fun-loving habit—has a powerful influence over the mature man and his career.
A happy childhood is the best possible protection against ill-health, unhappiness, and failure; the best possible protection against development of handicapping peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, and even insanity. A large percentage of the people in the insane asylums did not have a happy childhood.
It is of immense importance to teach children to avoid unpleasant, disagreeable, soul-harrowing books. Keep them from reading morbid stories, morbid descriptions of crime and misery in the newspapers. Do not let these black pictures etch their hideous forms into their tender, sensitive minds.
Children should be taught the art of getting enjoyment out of the common things of life. This will prevent the development of a restless tendency, a disposition always to think that they would be happier if they were only somewhere else, under other conditions.
If you want your children to be well, strong, and happy, try to cultivate the sense of humor, the fun instinct, in them just as much as possible. Teach children to laugh at their misfortunes and to see the ludicrous side of unpleasant things which can not be avoided or ignored.
“Mirth is God’s medicine; give the children a lot of it.”
Blessed indeed are the Joy Makers.
I once knew a little girl who was so happy that she asked her mother if she could say “Good-morning” to God. She used to say “Good-morning” to her canary, and “Good-morning” to the sun, and she naturally thought, and rightly, that she ought to say “Good-morning” to her Creator.
All the members of the mental family, all our faculties, are dependent upon their harmony for their helpfulness and efficiency. If they are unhappy their efficiency is seriously impaired. Discouragement, worry, anxiety, fear, anything which makes them abnormal, practically ruins their efficiency.
On the other hand, whatever tends to encouragement, to cheerfulness and good humor, whatever brightens hope and brings good cheer, multiplies their efficiency.
There is no other one thing which so buoys up the faculties and refreshes the whole man as good, innocent fun. The enormous success of the theatrical business is based largely upon the instinctive demand in human nature for amusement.
When this demand in us is gratified, the whole man is improved, enlarged; is more healthy, more efficient, more normal; but when it is denied, as it was among many of the Puritians in our early history, there is a famine in the nature, the faculties shrivel, and the whole character deteriorates.
It is a great thing to encourage fun in the home. There is nothing like a fun-loving home. It keeps children off the street, it discourages vice and all that is morbid. The fun-loving faculties in many children are never half developed; hence the melancholy traits, the tendency to sadness, moroseness, morbidness, which we see in men and women everywhere. These are not normal. They are indications of stifled, suppressed, dwarfed natures.
Many parents have a great idea of being stern, not realizing that suppression means strangling growth, stifling aspiration, dwarfing ideals. There can be no real growth, enlargement of faculties, where there is no freedom of expression.
The child that has been trained to be happy, that has been allowed free expression to his fun-loving nature, will not have a sad or gloomy disposition. Much of the morbid mentality which we see everywhere is due to stifled childhood.
Soul sunshine keeps everything within us sweet, pure, like the material sun which destroys the miasma. It antidotes the poisons caused from worry, jealousy, and the explosive passions. It preserves us from becoming soured on life.
A pessimistic, crotchety disposition, a faultfinding, finical, disagreeable mind sours everything in life. Pessimism is darkness. Things do not thrive or ripen, become sweet or beautiful, in the dark. It requires the sun of optimism to bring out soul-beauty and to ripen and sweeten the juices of life. The tendency of pessimism is to sour, to distort one’s way of looking at things.
What makes us happiest makes us most efficient. Happiness is the great lubricator of life which keeps the wheels from creaking, which prevents the grinding, wearing effect caused by discord.
How much stronger, clearer brained, and more efficient we feel after we have had a real jolly good time! How it refreshes, renews, and restores our flagging energies!
If you carry about a gloomy face, you advertise the fact that hope has died out of you; that life has been a disappointment to you.
The habit of frequent and hearty laughter will not only save you many a doctor’s bill, but will -also save you years of life.
Laughter is a foe to pain and disease, a sure cure for the blues and melancholy. Be cheerful and you will make everybody around you happier and healthier.
Laughter and good cheer make love of life, and love of life is half of health.
Laughter keeps the heart and face young and enhances physical beauty.
Chapter XVIII.
Neglect Your Business But Not Your Boy
Every boy is going to have a confidant, some one to whom he can tell his secrets and whisper his hopes and ambitions which he would not breathe to others. We take it for granted that his mother will stand nearer to him than any other person, but every boy will have some male friend who will stand in a peculiar relation to him. This friend, this confidant, should be his father.
You can not afford to have your boy feel that you are too busy or too indifferent to tell him how to fly his kite or bait his hook or make a toy, or to play games with him.
If you begin early enough, it is comparatively easy for you to gain your boy’s confidence. From infancy, he should grow up to feel that no one else can take your place; that you stand in a peculiar relation to him, which no one else can fill.
Any business man would be horrified at the suggestion that he would ruin his boy by neglect, that his absorption in business would result in the undoing of his own son. But, it is the easiest thing in the world to forfeit a boy’s confidence. It will take only a little snubbing, a little scolding, a little indifference, a little unkind criticism, a little nagging and unreasonableness to shut off forever any intimacy between you and your boy.
One of the bitterest things in many a business man’s life has been the discovery, after he has made his money, that he has lost his hold upon his boy, and he would give a large part of his fortune to recover his loss.
I have been in homes where the relation between father and sons was so strained and formal that the latter would no more think of making a confidant of their father than they would of a perfect stranger. They have been so rebuffed, snubbed, and scolded, so unkindly treated, that they would never think of going to him for advice, or with any confidential matters.
It is a most unfortunate thing for a boy to look upon his father as a task-master instead of a companion, to dread meeting him because he always expects criticism or scolding from him.
Some fathers constantly nag, find fault, and never think of praising their sons or expressing any appreciation of their work, even when they do it well. Yet there is nothing so encouraging to a boy, especially if he finds it hard to do what is right, as real appreciation of his effort. This is a tonic to youth. Boys thrive on praise. This is why most of them think more of their mothers than their fathers—because their mothers are more considerate, more appreciative, more affectionate, and do not hesitate to praise them when they do well. They are naturally more generous with them; less exacting than their fathers.
I know a man who takes a great deal of pains to keep the confidence of his pet dog. He would not think of whipping or scolding him because he would not risk losing his affection, but he is always scolding his boy, finding fault with everything he does, criticising his conduct, his associates, and telling him that he will never amount to anything.