Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

The successful attainment of what the heart longs for, as a rule, improves health and happiness. Generally we not only find our treasure where our heart is, but our health also. Who has not noticed men of indifferent health, perhaps even invalids, and men who lacked energy and determination, suddenly become roused to a realization of unthought-of powers and unexpected health upon attaining some signal success? The same is sometimes true of persons in poor health who have suddenly been thrown into responsible positions by death of parents or relatives, or who, upon sudden loss of property, have been forced to do what they had thought impossible before.

An education is a health tonic. Delicate boys and girls, whom parents and friends thought entirely too slender to bear the strain, often improve in health in school and college. Other things equal, intelligent, cultured, educated people enjoy the best health. There is for the same reason a very intimate relation between health and morals. A house divided against itself can not stand. Intemperance, violation of chastity, and vice of all kinds are discordant notes in the human economy which tend to destroy the great harmony of life. The body is but a servant of the mind. A well-balanced, cultured, and well-disciplined intellect reacts very powerfully upon the physique, and tends to bring it into harmony with itself. On the other hand, a weak, vacillating, one-sided, unsteady, and ignorant mind will ultimately bring the body into sympathy with it. Every pure and uplifting thought, every noble aspiration for the good and the true, every longing of the heart for a higher and better life, every lofty purpose and unselfish endeavor, reacts upon the body, makes it stronger, more harmonious, and more beautiful.

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The body is molded and fashioned by the thought. If a young woman were to try to make herself beautiful, she would not begin by contemplating ugliness, or dwelling upon the monstrosities of vice, for their hideous images would be reproduced in her own face and manners. Nor would she try to make herself graceful by practising awkwardness. We can never gain health by contemplating disease any more than we can reach perfection by dwelling upon imperfection, or harmony through discord.

We should keep a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before the mind; and we should fight every discordant thought and every enemy of harmony as we would fight a temptation to crime. Never affirm or repeat about your health what you do not wish to be true. Do not dwell upon your ailments nor study your symptoms. Never allow yourself to think that you are not complete master of yourself. Stoutly affirm your own superiority over bodily ills, and do not acknowledge yourself the slave of an inferior power.

The mind has undoubted power to preserve and sustain physical youth and beauty, to keep the body strong and healthy, to renew life, and to preserve it from decay, many years longer than it does now. The longest lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained great mental and moral development. They have lived in the upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives.

Many nervous diseases have been cured by music, while others have been greatly retarded in their development by it. Anything which keeps the mind off our troubles tends to restore harmony throughout the body.

It is a great thing to form a habit, acquire a reputation, of always talking up and never down, of seeing good things and never bad, of encouraging and never discouraging, and of always being optimistic about everything.

"Send forth loving, stainless, and happy thoughts, and blessings will flow into your hands; send forth hateful, impure, and unhappy thoughts, and curses will rain down upon you and fear and unrest will wait upon your pillow."

There is no one principle that is abused to-day in the business world more than the law of suggestion. Everywhere in this country we see the pathetic victims of those who make a business of overpowering and controlling weaker minds. Thus is suggestion carried even to the point of hypnotism as is illustrated by unscrupulous salesmen and promoters.

If a person steals the property of another he is imprisoned, but if he hypnotizes his victim by projecting his own strong trained thought into the innocent, untrained, unsuspecting victim's mind, overcomes his objections, and induces him voluntarily to buy the thing he does not want and can not afford to buy, perhaps impoverishing himself for years so that he and his family suffer for the necessities of life, no law can stop him. It would be better and should be considered less criminal for a man to go into a home and steal articles of value than to overpower the minds of the heads of poor families and hypnotize them into signing contracts for what they have really no right and are not able to buy.