A Formula for Creating Happiness
Theron Q. Dumont
Here is the secret of happiness and an antidote for worry poison. This is a formula that will work just as well for the young or old, rich or poor, weak or strong. It is a formula that took me many years to compound and I want you to consider it very precious and never forget it. You will find it will always help you.
It is a formula that will cure any one of worry. It is of wonderful value to all. It is:
DON’T FORGET TO LAUGH.
When you laugh the heart beats faster and sends the blood bounding through the body. There is not a tiny blood vessel throughout the whole body that does not feel the waves of motion of a good hearty laugh. Laughter increases the respiration and gives a glow to the whole system; it will brighten the eye and expand the chest; it will force the bad air from the tiny cells and will do a great deal to help you keep your health or restore it. Grief, bad news, worry, anxiety, fear, destroys your poise, while laughter restores it. Remember this. Laughter will help your digestion. That is why you enjoy eating so much better with pleasant company. Public speakers understand this, and that is why, when called on to speak at a banquet, they try to tell something funny. Laughter supplies the brain with cheerful thoughts and, as you cannot do two things at the same time, you cannot worry while you laugh.
If you are not in the habit of laughing, get the habit. Read funny stories once in a while. Try to tell them to others in a funny way. They will make others laugh, and you will find that by making others laugh you will get the spirit and laugh yourself.
Laughing is really a tonic, and for many things it is better than a doctor. The following true story will give you an idea of how valuable it is:
“A woman had a crushing sorrow; despondency, indigestion, insomnia, and other kindred ills followed. She determined to throw off the gloom which was making life so heavy a burden to her. She established the rule that she would laugh at least three times a day whether the occasion was presented or not. She trained herself to laugh heartily at the least provocation, and would go to her room and make merry all by herself.”
“This woman was soon in excellent health and grand spirits, and her home became a sunny, cheerful abode. At first her husband and children were amused at her, and, while they respected her determination because of the grief she bore, they did not enter into the spirit of the plan. But after a while the funny part of the idea struck the woman’s husband, and he began to laugh every time his wife spoke about it.”
“When the husband came home he would ask her if she had taken her regular laugh during the day, and he would laugh when he asked the question, and he laughed again when she answered. The children thought that mother’s notion was very strange, but they laughed just the same. Gradually their children told other children, and they told their parents. The husbands spoke of it to their friends, and finally the neighborhood people when meeting this woman would ask her how many laughs she had today. Naturally they all laughed when they asked the question, and that made the woman laugh, too.
“This woman had been suffering from the greatest kind of sorrow, but the simple act of laughing three times a day brought her out of it and put her into a new way of living. It relieved her of indigestion, banished the headaches, gave her poise and peace, and her whole home was a much better place for all the family. The entire neighborhood received benefit from the good suggestion.”
It became the happiest little town imaginable. Others that suffered from the same complaints that this woman did, took up the laughing habit and were benefited. The druggist’s business decreased in drugs over fifty per cent in three months.
If you will follow the suggestion of laughing three times a day you will find out how beneficial it will be.
The next time you feel yourself becoming angry, force yourself to laugh, and you will find that instantly your anger disappears. The other fellow cannot get real angry with you unless you get angry. The next time someone gets angry with you, retain your poise and smile and see how much better you are able to adjust your difference.
The Bible says:
“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules his spirit than he that taketh a city.”
“A merry heart does good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.”
Always try to keep in good humor, for anger kills happiness. Do not quarrel; remember that “a soft answer turns away wrath.” Let the other fellow lose his temper and get angry, but you keep calm and you will finish on top.
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“The Science of Laughing” is available at the websites of the Independent Lodge of Theosophists since 9 June 2024. It is also part of “The Aquarian Theosophist”, May 2024 edition, pp. 4-6. It is reproduced from the book “The Advanced Course in Personal Magnetism”, by Theron Q. Dumont, Advanced Thought Publishing Co., copyright 1914, 229 pp., see pp. 212-216.
“Theron Q. Dumont” was a pen-name used by North-American thinker William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932). “Yogi Ramacharaka” is the best-known among of the pen-names used by Atkinson.
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