effect on our happiness except as we permit mental images of the outside to enter our consciousness happiness is wholly independent of position wealth or material possessions it is a state of mind which we ourselves have the power to control and that control lies with our thinking emerson said what is the hardest task in the world to think obviously this is so when one considers that most of us are victims of mass thinking and feed upon suggestions from others we all know that the law of cause and effect is inviolable