Try putting the welfare of those around you first, especially when you are feeling discouraged or depressed. I would like to rewrite the old song to say, ‘Oh, what a beautiful morning! Oh, what a beautiful day! Everything’s going your way.’
Some doctors are telling us now that this kind of attitude may be a shield against illness. A recent article went so far as to say, ‘Amiability – plain old good-naturedness – seems to have a protective effect on health.’ In the same article, one of the recommended cures for chronic hostility was, ‘Try to be more forgiving.’ This is advice as old as the hills.
Most of us do not understand that when we live in a world of ill will, as millions of people do, nursing grievances so anger cannot die a natural death, we are creating an internal environment that surrounds us with a poison worse than smog twenty-four hours a day.
When we reduce our hostility, we’re cleaning up the inner air, and we will find unsuspected benefits not only for the mind but for the body as well.
