"I hang bright pictures in my mind"--Bright pictures encourage one;
gloomy ones depress--Get rid of your old gloomy mental pictures--Make
a bonfire of them--Get rid of the particularly miserable one, first of
all--Then put bright ones in their places.
"I now hang bright pictures in my mind," said a friend to me,
recently. Her remark explained to me without the necessity of further
words, the cause of her bright, cheerful and happy disposition, so
greatly in contrast with that of the despondent, fretful woman I had
known a few months ago. The change seemed so remarkable that one would
have almost expected her to have claimed some startling occurrence as
the cause of the wondrous transformation, instead of giving so
commonplace an explanation.
But just think how much there is in this thought: "I hang bright
pictures in my mind." Stop a moment, and let the thought sink deep
into your inner consciousness. "Bright pictures in the mind," why not,
indeed? If we wish to make a chamber, or office, bright and cheery, we
see that nothing but pictures representing bright, cheerful subjects
are hung there. They may be the choicest engravings or paintings, or
they may be some little inexpensive things, but just so they are
bright and cheery the purpose is accomplished, and the room somehow
seems a happier, more joyous place than before.
If we were preparing a new room for the occupancy of some dear one,
would we place there any but the brightest picture? Would we hang
there pictures of pain and misery, hate and murder, jealousy and
revenge, sickness, suffering and death, failure and discouragement?
Would we do this thing I ask you? Would _you_ do it? And if not,
why not, pray? Simply because you instinctively feel that the gloomy,
hateful subjects would react upon the loved one. And you know, is the
same way that the bright, cheerful, inspiring subjects are likely to
uplift, stimulate, encourage and make better the occupant of the
chamber.
Have you ever noticed that some rooms always seem to exert a
beneficial effect upon you, while others seem to depress you?
Certainly you have. Well, the next time you go into these rooms, look
around a little and see if the explanation of your moods is not to be
found in the character of the pictures on the walls. You may not have
specially noticed them before, but your sub-conscious mental faculties
have taken up the impression, and the reflex action has affected you.
Who can resist the "fetching" qualities of a bright, baby face,
smiling from a little picture on the mantel, or on the wall? Not I,
for one. And who can help feeling the sense of comradeship for the
kindly St. Bernard whose great, affectionate eyes look down upon you
from the engraving on the other side of the room. And on the other
hand, who could--but, now I'm not going to describe the other kind of
pictures in this article.
But now to get back to the "pictures in the mind." If the gloomy
pictures on the wall affect people, what do you suppose will be the
effect of carrying around gloomy, fearful, hateful, jealous, envious,
despondent mental pictures? Can any good come of lugging this trash
around with you? Come, now, be honest. Why don't you bundle up these
horrible chromos of the mind, and then make a bonfire of the lot. Now
is the time for a mental house-cleaning--get to work and clean out
these miserable daubs, and replace them with nice bright, cheerful,
happy, sunny, mental works of art. Do it to-day. You can't afford to
put it off until to-morrow--indeed you can't.
Oh, yes, I know that you have grown attached to some of these old
mental pictures--you've had 'em around so long that you hate to part
with them. There's that particular miserable one at which you're so
fond of looking--you know which one I mean. You see, I know all about
it. You've been in the habit of standing before it with folded hands,
and gazing, and gazing, and gazing at it. And the more you gazed, the
more miserable you grew, until at last you felt that you would like to
lie down and die, only that there was some work to do around the
house, and you couldn't spare the time. Yes, _that's_ the picture
I mean. Take it down and put it on top of the bonfire pile, and touch
off the whole lot. Then go back into the house and hang up all the new
ones to be found, and the brightest one of the lot must hang in the
place of that dear old miserable one that you threw out last--that one
which was so hard to part with (the meanest one in the lot, always).
And after you have done these things, how good you will feel. See how
bright and cheerful the sun is shining; how pure and fresh the air
seems--take a good long draught of it; look out the window and see the
fleecy white clouds floating across the sky; the sky itself--how blue
it is; and just listen to the bluebirds down by the old gate--Spring
must be coming. Ah, how good it is to be alive!