The Victorious Attitude

by Orison Swett Marden

Give sympathy and kindness instead of scolding and nagging and you will work a revolution in your household. You will be delighted to find how quickly love's way will change the atmosphere in your family, how soon helpful relations will take the place of antagonistic ones. Praise, generous, whole-hearted, unstinted praise, now and then, will not hurt any one, but, on the contrary, will act like lubricating oil on dry squeaky machinery, and its reflex action on yourself will be magical.

You husbands who have been substituting money and luxury for love, who have thought that if a woman had a fine house, beautiful clothes and all her bills paid, she ought to be satisfied and happy; you who have so miserably failed of your object in this substitution will be surprised to find how much happier you can make your wife by bestowing on her a generous, unselfish love. A very little money, a very humble home with love will make every true woman happier than millions, a palatial home, with indifference.

Try love's way, you men who have been lording it over your families, bullying and brow-beating your wives and children, using slave-driving methods in your home. You know that this old brutal way has not brought you happiness or satisfaction; you have always been disappointed with it, then why not try the new philosophy, try love's way? It is the great cure-all, it is the Christ remedy which is leavening the world.

Try it you who are worn out with the discord and the hagglings, the trials and tribulations you encounter every day in your business. You men and women who have never been able to get good help, who are driven to desperation with the wicked breakage and wastage of your employees; you who have been through purgatory in your struggle with dishonesty and inefficiency, whose faces are furrowed with cruel wrinkles and prematurely aged in trying to fight evil with evil, try love's way. It will create a new spirit in your store, your factory, your office. Whatever your business, whatever your trials and difficulties, love will ease the jolts of life and smooth your way miraculously. Try love's way all you who have hitherto lived in purgatory because you did not know this better way.

You have tried the "getting square" policy, the hatred and grudge method; you have tried the revenge way, the jealousy way; you have tried the worry, the anxiety method, and these have pained and tortured you all the more. You have tried law and the courts to settle troubles and difficulties with neighbors and business associates, and perhaps you won lawsuits only to make bitter, life-long enemies. But perhaps you have never yet tried love's way, excepting in spots. If you have not yet tried it as a principle, as a life philosophy, as a great life lubricant, begin now. It will smooth out all the rough places and wonderfully ease your journey over the jolts of life.

You may be wondering why you have so few friends, why you do not attract people, why others are not more interested in you. Look into your heart and you will find the reason. If you are sending out a current of selfishness, of uncharitableness, unkindness, indifference, ingratitude, you can not get a return current of friendship, of encouragement and helpfulness. The stream that leads back to you will be just like that which goes out in your thought, in your habitual mental attitude. To have friends, to win love you must make yourself a magnet for love. You must send out the friendly thought current, the helpful current, the kindly, loving current of human fellowship. If you give out stinginess, narrowness, meanness, selfishness, you will not receive love's gifts in return. As you give, so will you receive, and the more generously you give of love and kindness and service the more generously will the current that returns bear them back to you.

The most beautiful thing on this earth, that which every human being craves most is love. It is, as Henry Ward Beecher said, "the river of life in this world. Think not that ye know it who stand at the little tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not until you have gone through the rocky gorges, and not lost the stream; not until you have gone through the meadow, and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets could ride on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and poured your treasures into its depths—not until then can you know what love is."

All through the Bible are passages which extol the height and depth, the breadth and power, the inexhaustibleness of love. The more of love we give out, the more we have. Love maintains perpetual summer in the soul and shuts out winter's chill. Love of man is love of God, and love of God prolongs life.

"With long life will I satisfy him," declares Jehovah in the words of the Psalmist, "because he hath set his love upon me." Love is harmony, and harmony prolongs life, as fear, jealousy, envy, friction, and discord shorten it. Those who are filled with the spirit of love, whose sympathies are not confined to their own family, but reach out to every member of the human family, are more exempt from the ills of mankind than the selfish and pessimistic, who lose the better part of life, the joy and the strength that come from giving themselves to others.

Some natures are so permeated with the spirit of love, of helpfulness, of unselfishness, that their very presence acts like a balm upon the wounded soul. They radiate harmony, soul sunshine. There is a personal charm about them which strengthens, reassures, and uplifts.