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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Keep Happy
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
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Title: Keep Happy

Author: Eustace Miles

Release date: January 20, 2024 [eBook #72765]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company,

1920

Credits: Carla Foust, Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KEEP HAPPY ***

KEEP HAPPY
 SOME OTHER BOOKS

By EUSTACE MILES, M.A.

Economy of Energy, and How to Secure It.

How to Prepare Essays, Articles, Lectures, Speeches, Etc.
The Power of Concentration: and How to Acquire It.
Prevention and Cure.
Life after Life.
How to Remember; without and with Memory Systems.
The Uric Acid Fetish. With C. H. Collings.
Quickness.
The E.M. System of Physical Culture—with Two Charts of
Exercises.
Health and Counsel Bureau.
Curative Exercises.
Let’s Play the Game.
A Week’s Proteid Diet.
Quick and Easy Recipes.
First Recipes.
How to Begin a Change of Diet.
 KEEP HAPPY
BY

EUSTACE MILES, M.A.

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS
 Copyright, 1920, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company
 FOREWORD
On my Fiftieth Birthday (Sunday, September 22, 1918), after a good
day’s work, I start, in the afternoon, to spend the few hours before
our evening meal in writing down some ideas that may help others
(besides myself, who need them as much as anyone, since I am
beginning my second half-century), to indulge less in that habit of
fear, worry, resentment, and hurry, which must be regarded as a
form of suicide, slow indeed, but working in a vicious circle and with
self-increasing force, and poisoning and paralysing others besides
the respectable offenders themselves.
The chief remedy is—keep happy.
We have had our attention so fixed on prohibitions—the “Thou shalt
not” Commandments—that we have, as a Nation, ignored the
positive commandments of the Old and New Testaments; among
which a very frequently repeated one was “Rejoice” or “Keep Happy.”
Others, besides the Master, told us not to worry, not to be afraid, not
to be angry, not to be bitter; but to be glad and happy. The orthodox
should remember that Happiness is a virtue, however unusual, and
Non-Happiness a sin, however common and respectable.
I give one quotation alone—though the usual translation does not
convey the real force of the Greek words of Philippians iv. 4-7:—
“Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice.... The Lord is
at hand. Be careful (anxious) for nothing; but in everything by
prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made
known unto God.”
C. D. Larson’s book, “Just be Glad,” was on my table, and gave me
the thought of writing on this subject. Larson offers capital ideas on
the mental side, but he does not tell people how to be glad; and,
especially, he leaves out all the Physical Helps.
In this little Birthday offering, I shall include a few Physical as well as
Mental Helps—a few out of many, since space is limited—so that
readers may be able to keep happy easily.
The art is not new, but—like the habit of deep, full, rhythmical
breathing—is always needed.
There are millions who have scarcely begun to recognise, at least to
the extent of acting upon the facts, that, while their Happiness itself
depends largely upon their digestion, their elimination of waste
matter, their circulation, etc., these influences themselves depend
largely on (1) the choice of foods and drinks, the way of eating and
drinking, the breathing and other exercises, and so forth—and on (2)
the maintenance of Happiness itself, or at least the avoidance of
worry and resentment, etc., and the expression of Happiness, until
Happiness actually is attracted and comes into a prepared nest.
KEEP HAPPY
 KEEP HAPPY
Why Keep Happy? A Contrast
First work out the contrast. Before reading further, think what
happens when one keeps the opposite of happy, whatever be the
actual stage between the extreme homicidal or suicidal violence or
suicidal melancholia on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
ordinary fear, worry, resentment, depression, grumpiness, and so on.

Those who wish to study the effects of these states of mind more
fully, can consult Elmer Gates’ “The Mind and the Brain,” or William
S. Sadler’s “Physiology of Faith and Fear,” both quoted in my book.[A]
Professor Elmer Gates, of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington,
says:—
“My experiments show that irascible, malevolent, and depressing
emotions generate in the system injurious compounds, some of
which are extremely poisonous; also that agreeable, happy emotions
generate chemical compounds of nutritious value, which stimulate
the cells to manufacture energy....
“If an evil emotion is dominant, then during that period the
respiration contains volatile poisons, which are expelled through the
breath and are characteristic of these emotions.
“Wearisome, unpleasant memories weaken health, and do not
generate thought energy. Cure is accomplished in expelling these by
another crop of wholly pleasant memories, which put the necessary
structures of the mind in systematic order and teach the patient how
to use the mental faculties.”
Therefore, keep happy.
On page 40 of “Economy of Energy” will be found a summary of
some results of states of mind:—
“They affect:—
“The heart, and the circulation—both its rate, and its distribution of
blood; (unfavourable states of mind tend to anaemia or dysxmia, or
to congestion, etc.).
“The actual chemical condition of the blood and the lymph.
“The lungs, and the rhythm and the fulness of the breathing, and
the amount of oxygen inhaled, and of carbonic acid gas, etc.,
exhaled.
“The digestive and ‘assimilative’ organs and functions.
“The curative energies of the body; which include:—
“The excretory organs—the bowels, kidneys, skin, etc. (Thus fear
may act as a diuretic.)
“The muscular system in general (as when it is paralysed by fear—
for instance, when one feels ‘all of a tremble’).
“The appearance—the attitude, the position of the organs, the
expression of the face, etc.
“The voice—its tone and timbre, and the words used or repressed.
“The nervous system—partly influenced indirectly by the altered
breathing, and by the blood, and by the effects of the state of mind
upon the Solar Plexus.
“The energy and endurance.
“The poise, and ease of self-mastery, self-recovery, and self-
direction.
“The brain—the clearness of thought, etc.
“The influence of the person on others—especially in the immediate
neighbourhood.
“The direction and bias of the mind in the future, states of mind
tending to become habitual apart from the active will.”
Therefore, keep happy.
“Anxiety (which includes fear) saps more life in a day than work does
in a week.” Anxiety is unnecessary, unproductive, destructive work.
It is hard work. It is sinful work.
We must remember how prevalent are the states of mind in which
fear is one of the factors. For fear is a factor in worry, and usually
even in anger, and in depression. These words from M. J. M.
Hickson’s “Healer” are worth reading:—
“We have very seldom reflected upon the fact that fear runs like a
baleful thread through the whole web of our life from beginning to
end. We are born into the atmosphere of fear and dread, and the
mother who bore us had lived in the same atmosphere for weeks
and months before we were born. We are surrounded in infancy and
childhood by clouds of fear and apprehension on the part of our
parents, nurses, and friends. As we advance in life, we become
instinctively, or by experience, afraid of almost everything. We are
afraid of our parents, afraid of our teachers, afraid of our playmates,
afraid of ghosts, afraid of rules and regulations and punishments,
afraid of the doctor, the dentist, the surgeon. Our adult life is a state
of chronic anxiety, which is fear in a milder form. We are afraid of
failure in business, afraid of disappointments and mistakes, afraid of
enemies, open or concealed; afraid of poverty, afraid of public
opinion, afraid of accidents, of sickness, of death, and unhappiness
after death. Man is like a haunted animal, from the cradle to the
grave, the victim of real or imaginary fears, not only his own, but
those reflected upon him from the superstitions, self-deceptions,
sensory illusions, false beliefs, and concrete errors of the whole
human race, past and present.
“Fear not only affects the mind and the nervous and muscular
tissues, but the molecular chemical transformations of the organic
network, even to the skin, the hair, and the teeth. This might be
expected of a passion that disturbs the whole mind, which is
represented or externalised in the whole body.
“How does fear operate upon the body to produce sickness? By
paralysing the nerve centres, especially those of the vasomotor
nerves, thus producing not only muscular relaxation, but capillary
congestions of all kinds. This condition of the system invites attack,
and there is no resilience or power of resistance. The gates of the
citadel have been opened from within, and the enemy may enter at
any point.”
Therefore keep happy.
First because, once again, non-happiness is a mistake. It acts, as I
said just now, in a vicious circle, increasing itself. It poisons the
blood, and this very poisoning tends to produce more non-
happiness. It radiates itself, and is infectious. It inclines to become a
fixed and sub-conscious habit. It sinks down into the sub-conscious
self, and afterwards expresses itself in various ways which (as
Psychoanalysts show) are not usually associated with their true
mental cause. It is toxic, and produces non-health and non-
efficiency, by wasting power and force; by bringing fatigue; by
encouraging bad sleep; by injuring the whole body; by cramping the
energies; by “distracting” the body and mind, and thus hindering
concentration; by impeding the circulation, and the elimination of
waste-matters; and by upsetting the rhythm and the deepness and
thoroughness of the breathing, and all the vibrations of the physical
system. Besides, it is ugly. It militates against financial success, and
against social success—for who wants a non-happy acquaintance?—
and against intellectual success.
Consider this. Non-happiness is liable to make one’s work poor and
inferior, difficult, tiring, and wanting in foresight and in perspective.
It does not help. As Ian Maclaren said:
“What does your anxiety do? It does not empty to-morrow, brother,
of its sorrow; but ah! it empties to-day of its strength. It does not
make you escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with it if it
comes.”
Therefore, keep happy.
On the moral and ethical side, non-happiness, especially in the form
of worry, is cowardly, unbalanced, against moral consistency and
persistency, against self-control and self-mastery, and very unkind to
others.
Therefore, keep happy.
Non-happiness shortens life, and brings premature, incompetent,
burdensome old age.
It is selfish, in the worst sense of the word; for there is a selfishness
that is altruistic.
It harms posterity, as—among other proofs—we see from the
influence of a mother upon her babe before as well as after birth.
It makes us less independent and less free. Therefore, keep happy.

How Happiness Helps

Happiness, by the “expulsive power” of a positive state of mind,
drives out or neutralises or cancels non-happiness, instead of the
mind being left open to the seven other devils, as it may be when
we merely try not to be non-happy. The happy heart is too full for
non-happiness, as the light room is too light for darkness. As Mr. A.
Knight says, Happiness fills the heart with its three companions,
Health, Harmony, and Helpfulness.
Therefore, keep happy.
Happiness works in the opposite of the vicious circle. It makes for
greater happiness. It is self-increasing. Among other reasons, it
purifies and invigorates the blood, and this in itself inclines the mind
towards further and greater Happiness. It creates the habit of
Happiness, the bias towards Happiness. It stores the memory with
Happiness, for future use. Prospectively, Happiness must be valued
as a great asset.
Therefore, keep happy.
Happiness does not merely aid in removing mental and physical
Non-Health, in such forms as depression and fear, “nerves” and their
troubles, fatigue, sleeplessness or bad sleep, bad circulation,
congestion, and so on. It actually produces positive Health, Well-
being, and Fitness, as well as increased Self-Healing and
“Preventive” Power.
Therefore, keep happy.
Think of the letter E alone. Happiness tends to Health, in its various
aspects:—
Enjoyment of life and of all that life brings us;
Energy—for Health gives a tonic without reaction;
Economy—for, when we are happy, we need neither drugs nor
stimulants nor narcotics nor holidays; Happiness saves vast stores of
precious power, both physical and mental;
Endurance—what long hours we can work when we are happy;
Ease;
Efficiency;
Therefore, keep happy.
Happiness brings the right vibrations throughout the mind and body,
partly through the Solar Plexus and the Sympathetic Nervous
System. Only lately have we begun to realise the importance of the
rate and character of vibrations. Let the same elements vibrate
differently, and we have ice or water or steam. We know the full and
elastic firmness and resilience of faith, the shrunken and paralysed
trembling of fear. It is largely a difference of vibrations. Happiness
has the most desirable vibrations.
Happiness means that we inhale more life-giving and cleansing
oxygen, and exhale more carbonic acid and other waste matter.
Happiness means that we have better sleep, and can do with less
sleep.
Happiness means improved circulation. It keeps the body warm in
winter and cool in summer. It relieves the physical heart.
Therefore, keep happy.
Happiness gives better looks. It makes the eyes brighter, the
complexion clearer, the step more vigorous, the carriage more
upright.
And, generally, Happiness makes people more attractive. It has a
marked social value.
Therefore, keep happy.
Financially, Happiness pays. The happy salesman or saleswoman is
more persuasive. The happy person gets and keeps more friends,
who will like to help him, if only because his Happiness helps them.
James Coates says:
“Smile at your business, and it will smile back. Follow the light of
that smile.”
Therefore, keep happy.
Intellectually, Happiness helps us to see with surer clearness and
foresight. Happiness helps us to solve our problems rightly.
Happiness gives us more understanding and more intuition.
Happiness makes us more receptive to the best ideas. Happiness
puts us in better perspective. Happiness, once again, increases our
mental energy, endurance, ease, and effectiveness.
These quotations from C. D. Larson are excellent. He says:—
“Just be glad, and you always will be glad. You will have better
reasons to be glad. You will have more and more things to make you
glad.
“When you are tempted to feel discouraged or disappointed, be glad
instead. Just be glad, and your fate will change. Know that you can
be glad, say that you will, and stand uncompromisingly upon your
resolve. When things are not to your liking, be glad nevertheless, for
the glad heart can cause all things to be as we wish them to be.
When things do not give you pleasure, proceed instead to create
pleasure in your own heart and soul.
“It is the law that all good things will sooner or later come and be
where the greatest happiness is to be found. Therefore, be
happiness in yourself, regardless of times, seasons, or
circumstances.
“It is the man who blends rejoicing with his work who does the best
work. It is profitable in every way to learn to be glad.
“The happier you are over what has come to you, the more and the
more will come to you in the future. The glad heart and the cheerful
soul always make things better.
“Give gladness to your mind, and you give clearness to your mind;
and a clear mind can see how to evolve better plans.”
In the moral and ethical and spiritual, as in the intellectual and
financial and social spheres, Happiness is a precious and integral
factor in success and progress. We might almost say that Happiness
includes the much-praised virtues of Courage, Persistence, and
Poise, and goes far towards Self-Control and Self-Mastery.
Therefore, keep happy.
It is kind to others to keep happy. Happiness tends to Forgiveness
(not of the usual perfunctory and “I-forgive-but-I-can’t-forget” type),
Goodwill, and pleasant Warmth as of the sunshine.
Therefore, keep happy.
Happiness tends to the right sort of Youthfulness—the Youthfulness
in which we have all the merits of “little children,” together with the
wisdom of elders.
Therefore, keep happy.
Happiness makes our life longer—not like the life of an aged person
who may be a burden upon the earth, living in name only, and
almost as a vampire lives, but a life of increasingly-useful length.
Therefore, keep happy.
For Happiness is non-selfish.

But non-selfishness, after all, is a negative.

Happiness does indeed include negative merits, but it is also positive
and radiating and infectious. When we ask what we can do for
others, one answer is, we can keep happy. Here, again, Larson’s
words are to the point:—
“He who is always glad is always adding to the welfare of every
member of the race. The great soul is always in search of ways and
means for adding to the welfare of others. But no way is better,
greater, or more far reaching than this. To be glad at all times is to
be of greater service to mankind than any other thing we can do.
Consider how all things change when the glad soul arrives, and how
all work becomes lighter when the spirit of joy is abroad. And every
man has the power to dispense the spirit of joy wherever he may
work or live.
“Work in the spirit of joy, and your work will be the product of joy—a
rare product—the best of its kind.”
Therefore, keep happy.
To help all those with whom you live, and many beyond this narrow
circle, keep happy.
To help your children and posterity, whether you already are or are
going to be a father or mother, keep happy.
The relation of a parent (or of any one who has charge of children)
to children, illustrates well how our states of mind react upon
ourselves. Be happy with children, and you make them happier,
healthier, pleasanter to be with, easier to train. When they are in this
favourable condition, you yourself, in turn, have more Happiness and
health, partly because your work is more delightful and more
successful. And so your Happiness is self-increasing as well as self-
radiating.
C. D. Larson, from whose book I have already quoted, says, in
another book:—
“Make it a point to be happy, just as you make it a point to be clean,
to be presentable, to be properly dressed, to work well, to be
efficient. Make the attainment of continuous happiness and greater
happiness a permanent part of your strongest ambition.”
Real Happiness is a power within oneself, not dependent on
circumstances; at least not dependent when it has become a habit.
He who has Happiness is like a magic plant that bears beautiful and
shade-giving and health-giving leaves, beautiful and sweet-smelling
flowers, beautiful and refreshing and cleansing fruit, wherever it is,
and without the aid of special soil, air, light, warmth, and rain. For it
has, as it were, its own subtle, ethereal, and eternal soil and air and
light and warmth and rain within itself.
Therefore, keep happy.
The Gospel of Happiness—the word “Gospel” once meant “good
news,” but now has lost much of its gladdening vitality—is, when we
examine deeply and widely, “perspectively” and prospectively, sound
Philosophy and sound Religion. To the devout Hindu, God is not only
“Wisdom, Love, Might,” but also Bliss. Sat Chit Ananda meant
Lasting Reality, True Knowledge, and Blissful Happiness. A Perfect
God—and this applies whether we believe in a Personal Being or not,
for an Impersonal Being cannot easily be imagined as sad!—cannot
surely be sad; and we are told to become perfect as God is Perfect.
We are often recommended to fill the mind with healthy,
invigorating, purifying thoughts. This, again, is a New Testament
Commandment. The words in the ordinary rendering of Philippians,
iv. 8, do not bring out the vitality and force and verve of the Greek
words, but they give the general idea:—
“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, just,
pure, lovely, of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be
any praise, think of these things.”
It is a Commandment to attend to—to fill the mind by repetition with
—eternally true ideas, ideas that command respect, ideas that are
right, ideas that are clean and pure, ideas that are welcome and
sweet; ideas that have words of good omen, ideas of manliness and
womanliness, ideas of praise and appreciation.
Therefore, think of Happiness: keep happy.
In keeping happy, we obey the frequently reiterated Commandment
to “Rejoice,” and, without any special attention to the negative and
prohibitive Commandments not to worry, and not to be angry, and
not to be unkind, and not to criticise unkindly, and so forth, we, ipso
facto, obey these Commandments as well, just as the person who is
encouraged and inspired does not need to be comforted in so-called
“misfortune.”
Therefore, keep happy.
Happiness helps you. “It is profitable in every way to learn to be
glad.”
Happiness helps yourself and others, and hurts none.
“No selfish heart can really be glad.”
Happiness is the right thing to keep. Happiness is our duty, and is
“good form.”
Happiness increases itself.
“The more things you are glad for, the more things you will have to
be glad for. Gladness is a magnet. Because you were glad, even
when there was nothing to make you glad, you proved that you
deserved everything that has the power to make you glad. And that
which we truly deserve must come to remain as our own. Possess
gladness, and you will soon possess those things that produce
gladness.”
But how?

How to Keep Happy

It is so easy to say to others, or to ourselves, Keep happy. But how
keep happy?
Here are a few out of many helps.
People will ask, “What about trying circumstances? How can we
keep happy under, or in them, whether they be past or present or
future?”
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”
Self-Suggestion is a great help, if we would keep happy. We can tell
ourselves to keep happy, in the same way as Peter Latham, at a
hard and critical point in one of his Professional Championship
Matches, kept not only happy but also plucky by telling himself to
“buck up,” as this was the chance to bring out his best game!
Self-Suggestion has many forms and varieties. Henry Wood, in his
“Ideal Suggestion Through Mental Photography,” advises us to write
down inspiring “Self-Suggestions,” and to look at them often. Leland,
in his “Have You a Strong Will?” advises us to determine, the last
thing at night, that the next day we will, for example, work calmly
and easily and successfully. I myself find that now one form of Self-
Suggestion is most effective, now another. It may be Imagination or
Realisation or Assertion, or it may be a quiet order to the Servant
Mind or Manager Mind, or it may be a strongly-felt and repeated
Desire, or it may be nearer to Silence and Receptivity, together with
“the attitude of expectancy.”
Self-suggestion is feasible at all times and in all places. It is
unobtrusive. It is “without money and without price.” It is effective.
It tends to become a sub-conscious habit, and, as it were, to “do
itself” without our attention.
To keep happy, we can use happy words. Words have vast and little
appreciated power. Think how useless we should be as regards our
power of controlling ourselves and helping ourselves and helping
others, if we had no words! It would be easy to write a long book on
this aspect of the Art of Happiness, alone. But I must be content
with just one idea.
We should speak with a cheerful voice and tone, as well as with a
cheerful face; and we should prefer, to such words of ill omen as
“miserable” and “cruel,” words that end rightly, such as un-happy
and un-kind—words that leave us with the right and happy notion.
Conversely, however, when we are—or think that we are—absolutely
obliged to mention some unpleasant episode, in order to get others
to help to put it right, we must not use such vivid expressions—we
must not speak whiningly nor even keenly. This is preeminently the
occasion for such a monotonous and expressionless voice, as is
unusually put on by a Secretary when reading the minutes of any
previous meeting!
Can we not speak of pleasant things with the excitedness of the
French, if indeed we wish to be excited at all; but speak of
unpleasant things, if we feel we must speak of them, with the
apathy of the Hindu?
When you have finished any Self-Suggestion, be sure to keep happy.
To keep happy, we must use Repetitions of Self-Suggestions and of
Happy Words, and we must use them long before we seem to need
them. In place of the old adage, “In time of peace prepare for war,”
one can substitute, “In time of peace prepare for victory”—and then
there will be no real war.

Persistent Repetitions
The persistent Repetitions may be in the form of sheer repetitions;
or in the form of Synonyms—such as Happiness, Gladness,
Enjoyment, Joy, Welcome; or in the form of cognate words, words
that suggest not so much Happiness itself, as the father and mother,
the brothers and sisters, the sons and daughters, of Happiness.
Thus, to take the letter P alone, it has a decided effect upon our
feelings of Happiness to repeat, with as much attention to and
realization of the idea and the inner spirit and soul of each word, as
possible, the words Purity, Poise, Peace, Plenty, Power, Pluck,
Pleasantness.
As to the influence of Repetition, we must remember that we are
mainly what our sub-conscious mind is; and our sub-conscious mind
is largely what our conscious mind has chosen or allowed itself to
think, and what our conscious mind every moment—every now—is
choosing or allowing itself to think.
Or, instead of repeating the ideas themselves or the words that can
convey them, we can keep happy by Reason and Argumentation.
While an Assertion like Robert Browning’s,

“God’s in His Heaven,

All’s right with the world,”

will help some, a recalling of the advantages of Happiness—or of the

disadvantages of Non-Happiness—and a working out of the ways in
which the past “failures” of ourselves and others turned into
blessings, will help others. I remember how disappointed I was
when I did not get a Fellowship at Cambridge. I am now very glad
that I did not. What seemed a calamity led to my present work,
which enables me to keep happy. As a fossilised Don I should not
have kept happy!

Appreciation and Welcome

We should go far towards keeping happy, also, if we practised
Appreciation. We breathe fresh air, drink pure water, see glorious
scenery, or architecture, and so forth, without a tithe of the proper
enjoyment which would come from the proper valuation—for
instance, of the water as refreshing us, satisfying us, helping our
assimilation of nourishing food, helping our elimination of toxic
waste matter, and symbolising much besides.
It is far better to approach any persons or things or circumstances
that are ours—they would not come to us, or we to them, unless
they were ours!—in the spirit of Welcome, and in the true and
sporting Play Spirit, than in the spirit of discontent.
So keep happy by Appreciation.

Laugh
Some people have a genius for seeing the funny side of so-called
“misfortunes,” like the Chinaman who could not control his laughter,
just before his execution, because they were going to hang the
wrong man. In a little booklet called “Fifty Years not Old,” I wrote:—
“Laughing is a capital relief for unpleasant mental states, as well as
fine exercise for the stomach and liver! Democritus, the laughing
and smiling philosopher, may have carried his excellent principle to
excess; but he was a safer guide than the weeping and moaning
philosopher.
“It is worth while to collect cartoons and cuttings from the ‘Daily
Mirror,’ ‘Punch,’ and other papers, and to look through them when
the dumps try to dominate.”
Laughing and smiling can come under muscular control, no less than
walking and sitting—no less than frowning and grumbling. We can
tense or relax muscles. We can equally easily laugh or smile. And the
mere muscular action will help the mind and the feelings to be free
from non-happiness.
There are, of course, wrong kinds of laughter and smiling. I read a
book devoted almost entirely to the abuse of laughter and smiling.
But the right kinds are as valuable as they are rare.
Several people that I know have the supreme art of making troubles
almost blessings by catching at once the ludicrous aspect—going
round to the other side and seeing things from a different approach.
And sometimes, entering into the trouble by the Gate of Humour,
they find that the trouble is not a torture-chamber but a factory of
Success and Happiness.
The right laugh and smile is an expression of real Faith; and, as we
have seen, the expression, if persevered in, tends to bring the
reality.

The Power of Imagination

And keep happy by Imagination. How exhilarating it is to imagine
oneself succeeding in one’s favourite game, or in one’s business or
art or hobby. Such imagination is far better than the memory of
defeats, except in so far as the latter helps us to correct our faults.

The Power of Expression

Then there is the Art of Expression, advocated by Delsarte and
William James. The latter, in his “Talks on Psychology,” may not be
strictly accurate and scientific, but at any rate he is practically useful,
when he says:
“If we only check a cowardly impulse in time—for example, or if we
only don’t strike the blow or rip out with the complaining or insulting
word that we shall regret as long as we live—our feelings themselves
will presently be the calmer and better, with no particular guidance
from us on their own account. Action seems to follow feeling, but
really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action,
which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly
regulate the feeling, which is not.
“Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our
spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look
round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were
already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful,
nothing else on that occasion can. So, to feel brave, act as if we
were brave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very
likely replace the fit of fear. Again, in order to feel kindly toward a
person to whom we have been inimical, the only way is more or less
deliberately to smile, to make sympathetic inquiries, and to force