Make your home a valley of smiles instead of a vale of tears. Smile now and never mind how hard it has been for you to do so. Smile now. All the time remember to SMILE NOW, and you will SMILE ALWAYS.
Some people smile most of the time, while beneath the mask of laughter they hide a sorrow- corroded heart. Such people slowly pine away beneath the shadows of meaningless smiles. There are other people who smile once in a while, and they may also be very serious at times; yet beneath the hard, beautiful outer appearance there may be gurgling a million fountains of laughing peace.
If you enjoyed good health for fifty years and then were sick for three years, unable to get healed by any method, you would probably forget about the length of time that you enjoyed good health and laughed at the idea of sickness. Now your reaction should be exactly the opposite. Just because you may have been sick for three years is no reason for thinking that you will never be well again.
Likewise, if you were happy a long time, and you have been unhappy a comparatively short time, you are apt to lose hope of ever being happy again. This is lack of imagination. The memory of a long-continued happiness should be a forceful subconscious habit to influence your conscious mind and ward off the consciousness of your present trouble.
When wealth only is lost, nothing real is lost, for if one has health and skill one can still be happy and can make more money; but if health is lost, then most happiness is also lost, and when the principle of life is lost, all happiness is lost. After bathing yourself in the Ocean of Peace in dreamland, as you awake with happiness, say, “In sleepland I found myself free from mortal worries. I was a King of Peace. Now, as I work in the daytime and carry on my diurnal battles of duties, I will no longer be defeated by insurgent worries of the kingdom of wakefulness. I am a King of Peace in sleepland, and I shall continue to be such a King in the land of wakefulness. As I come out of my Kingdom of Peace in sleepland, I shall spread that same peace in my land of wakeful dreams.”
— November 1936