By JUA NYLA HUTCHESON
Do you know any gripers? You know the kind of people I mean. They’re griping about something all the time, about what tough luck they’ve had, about how mean other people have been to them, or about something else. To hear them tell it, they’re the unluckiest people in the world. Nothing ever goes right for them. And isn’t it a pain in the neck to be around somebody like that?
Well, it’s an easy habit to fall into, this business of feeling sorry for yourself. And once you have gotten into the habit, you’re really in bad shape. Psychologists say that things really do begin to go wrong for you when you’re always looking on the dark side and expecting the worst to happen. That attitude of griping and feeling sorry for yourself breeds failure and disappointments. In the same way, looking on the bright side and expecting good in everything and everybody makes things turn out well. Isn’t that a strange fact?
This is a good time of the year to take stock of your own attitude. Are you a griper? Or do you have what some people call an “attitude of gratitude”? Why not take this suggestion for getting on the bright side: Make a list of all the things you could gripe about. List every single one. Then turn the page over and on the other side list all the things you can be grateful for. Don’t forget anything. Remember to put down your eyesight, your hearing, your country, your church. These will give you a start. Then keep right on with your list until you completely run out of things to be thankful for.
Be honest in making out those two lists and you’ll never be a griper. You will realize how lucky you are, and you’ll keep that “attitude of gratitude” forever.
Automobile manufacturers try out their new cars on the most terrible roads in the world. Because the manufacturers can’t find roads anywhere that are bad enough, they build special ones on which to drive their new cars—roads that will beat those new cars to death!
Well, you know why they do it. They are simply road testing their cars, putting them through every kind of strain in order to find their weak spots. Then they take those weak spots out of the new models. Thus cars get stronger and better every year.
Can you take the road test? Or are you like a shiny new car that never was tested? Are you cheerful and polite when the going is smooth, but a grumbler and a griper when anything crosses you? Are you like a shiny new car that falls to pieces when it gets a hard road test?
You can take the rough going if you’ll use the same system on yourself that car manufacturers use on their cars. Find your weak spots and strengthen them. Make yourself ready for the chuckholes and the hard bumps. There’ll be plenty of them along the way. And they separate the men from the boys.
Maybe someday people will say about you, “He can take it!”