Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-07-06
WHAT ARE YOU
THINKING NOW?
Physical Condition Shows in
Mans Nervous Dis
orders
BY Beatrice Fairfax

"As man thinketh in his heart so
he rs"
Physical conditions write themselves
on the face and body, and doctor who
is clever dfagnostician can almost
read their meaning at sight. So, too,
for mental states. The physician who
has studied mental and nervous disor-
ders recognizes certain facial character
istics that are symptoms of disease.
Who would wilfully print on his face
unpleasant signs of unpleasant mental
condition? That is exactly what you
do when you permit your mind to dwell
on morbid things.
All thoughts of cruelty or unkind-
ness, of fear, of anger or of indecency
leave their traces on the human face.
This is not theory, it is fact. Tiny lit
tie marks and lines come onto the face
as a result of mental habit.
Who of us has not seen a droop-
ing, twisted mouth that told of bit
ter cynicism? Which of us has not
observed shifty, unfocused eyes that
betrayed habit of mental evasion?
These are marked conditions, but the
lesser ones are there too.
The face betrays mental states. But
1t is the mental states themselves that
are of graver Importance. Think along
certain lines long enough anu you come
almost to exist along those lines. Men
tai ha US are dangerous to form.
One Example
Take the case of suspicion. Suppose
you let yourself get into the way of
wondering what hidden meaning there
is behind what people say, what sly
intention there is behind what they
n
sincerity of motive of your friends and
acquaintances-the habit grows on you,
more and more your tendency to ques-
tion grows into one to distrust and
finally suspicion becomes part of your
nature
And once suspicion takes possession
of you, you become unable to accept
anybody simply and honestly, and faith
and trust become almost impossible for
you to know
If you think in terms of sunshine
and good cheer, you come gradually to
feel in those terms Contemplating
kindness and beauty brings them home
to you. Mental habits are fairly easy
to form and frightfully difficult to
break. All of us who are normal have
a choice of controlling our own minds
or letting them run away from us.
There is an old German saying that
suggests this idea. Just as you shout
into the forest so the echo shall come
back to you And so you get from life
fairly much what you have deposited
in its bank
Think of the world as a place which
appreciates honest endeavor and which
rewards merit with success and you
will have a CHEEKY willingness to en-
deavor and hopeful feeling that sue
cess is yours for the taking. This atti-
tude may never bring you ten thou
sand a year, but it will give you opti-
mism that cannot fail.
Morbid melancholy is the result of
nothing that sweeps on you from the
outside; it is due directly to the way
you feel within yourself.
What you think about conditions in
dicates not what you are, but what you
inevitably must be. Look on life as a
place where things depend on chance
and where fate has been cruel to you
and where everything is rather hope
less any way and where to try were
vain, and naturally, since your back
is to the sun and you have encased
yourself in black canopy of woe, you
will never see sunlight.
II Is dangerous TO get INTO the haDlC
of thinking morbid, unhappy thoughts.
And it is perfectly possible to get into
the habit of thinking cheerful, optimis-
tic, hopeful and constructive ones.'
What you think about is a matter of
choice-and a choice that ought to be
carefully and sanely made.
A fevered imagination can fancy it.
self i'll. A frightened diagnosis can
consider all hope lost. But a sane and
cheerful optimism gives courage to
fight and conquer, since it never could
imagine obstacles too high to surmount
or woe too desperate to be overcome.
The man who thinks in terms of
success cannot imagine failure. The
man who does not know when he is
beaten never is finally conquered, since
he holds in his heart an indomitable
cheer like to that of Brownings hero:
Zone who never turned his back. but
marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were
worsted,
Wrong would triumph.
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight
better
Sleep to wake"