• Author: Unknown
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 5
• Page Number:
• Date: 6 21 1916
• Tags:
• advice

MAKE AN EFFORT NOW It is a pernicious habit to be constantly looking back and thinking what "you might have done." It is not only a waste of thought energy, but it depresses the mind and causes a host of other ills to follow as well. Thought forces follow the lead of the mind and mind may be likened to the leader of an army; until he gives directions the army remins passive. It is very easy to say, ‘Fifteen or twenty years ago I might have done so and so, but now I am too old." But that way of thinking and talking is all "bunk;" you are deceiving yourself. Besides it will certainly prevent you from accomplishing anything worth while, and will keep you just where you are at any age. Let us consider that Gladstone was Premier of England at eighty-three, and Tennyson wrote one of his greatest poems at the same age; that Cato, the famous Roman statesman, became proficient in Greek after he was eighty and that Plutarch studied Latin and Socrates music in advance old age. History also records many other similar instances too numerous to mention. It was not by sitting down and vainly wishing that they had acted differently at some time in the past that they accomplished results, They wone by acting on their initiative of the present, by directing their thought forces so as to accomplish what was possible in the now. The same is possible of most of us. If we use our physical and mental forces in building in the present —the now, it is certain that we will attain our wishes. and keep the mind young and vigorous. So let us apply ourselves in either work or play, and of all things do not allow the mind to fall into the evil habit of idle aimless wishing, and to fill with regret and envy; but straighten up and do something. Do it now.