I was much struck by a phrase in a little book I read some time ago. It described how someone, who was going to an unpleasant interview, was told:--“Go to the man, taking God with you.” A good piece of general advice is to welcome the circumstances as one would welcome either a strong opponent or a severe handicap at a game--namely, as a privilege and an occasion for bringing out (as a great player said) “one’s best game.” I think a “handicap” is an excellent description. For what true sportsman resents a handicap? Turn the Mind to Blessings, or think of your own blessings, not only in the past, but also in the present. Think of all the conveniences of civilisation. Then, if you like, contrast the hardships of primitive times--with no books, no travelling facilities, no sanitation! Think of blessings, and keep happy. Think of the blessings of others. Anything is better than giving attention to supposed injuries and hardships, and to sorrows, and resenting or bemoaning them. or to Reasoning When things seem amiss, then is _the_ time to give all your thoughts the upward direction. Keep happy. Hold on to Happiness, not like grim death but like irrepressible life. Remember that “everything serves _some_ useful purpose.” If you refuse to keep happy, at least determine to find out the useful purpose. But, as soon as you can, come back to yourself, and keep happy. Help Others Help others. This is the old and ever new way. As Maeterlinck says: “_Before we can bring happiness to others, we must first be happy ourselves. Nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others. If there be a smile upon our lips, those around us will soon smile too; and our happiness will become the truer and deeper as we see that these others are happy._” Therefore, keep happy by helping others. We can help others by our thoughts--by wishing them to be well and happy and successful, or by imagining them to be well and happy and successful. We can help them by all our expressions--our words, our looks, our acts--and by our very abstinence from non-happiness. Abstain from Thoughts against Others and against Self Merely to send out no thoughts and to harbour no thoughts against other persons or things, or against ourselves, is a step in the right direction. I once saw hornets destroyed by a man who stood over the nest and, as each hornet came out, knocked it down and killed it by a blow from a little wooden bat. So we can beat down any undesirable thought--of worry or failure or resentment, etc.--so that it ceases to live and poison us or others. But still this is negative. It is not positive and constructive. To keep happy, we must fill the glass, drop by drop, with the sparkling and fresh water of Happiness; and then the dirty water will automatically trickle away, and--who knows?--somehow become a kind of mental manure and fertiliser. “Self-Suggestion”