Part 4

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.