er sick child puts impatience or
despair out of the question.

Do not think that I believe one can be positive all at once. We must
work hard and insist over and over again before we can attain the
positive attitude and having attained it, we have to lose it and gain
it again, lose it and gain it again, many times before we get the habit
of making all difficulties of mind and body negative, and our healthy
attitude toward conquering them positive.

I said "difficulties of mind and body." I might better have said
"difficulties of body, mind and character," or even character alone,
for, after all, when you come to sift things down, it is the character
that is at the root of all human life.

I know a woman who is constantly complaining. Every morning she has a
series of pains to tell of, and her complaints spout out of her in a
half-irritated, whining tone as naturally as she breathes. Over and
over you think when you listen to her how useful all those pains of
hers would be if she took them as a reminder to yield and in yielding
to do her work better. But if one should venture to suggest such a
possibility, it would only increase the complaints by one more--that of
having unsympathetic friends and being misunderstood. "Nobody
understands me--nobody understands me." How often we hear that
complaint. How often in hearing it we make the mental question, "Do you
understand yourself?"

You see the greatest impediment to our understanding ourselves is our
unwillingness to see what is not good in ourselves. It is easy enough
in a self-righteous attitude of what we believe to be humility to find
fault with ourselves, but quite another thing when others find fault
with us. When we are giving our attention to discomforts and pains in a
way to give them positive power, and some one suggests that we might
change our aim, then the resistance and resentment that are roused in
us are very indicative of just where we are in our character.

Another strong indication of allowing our weaknesses and faults to be
positive and our effort against them negative is the destructive habit
of giving excuses. If fault is found with us and there is justice in
it, it does not make the slightest difference how many things we have
done that are good, or how much better we do than some one else
does--the positive way is to say "thank you" in spirit and in words,
and to aim directly toward freeing ourselves from the fault. How
ridiculous it would see