Above all, don't feel sorry for yourself. Don't. Just don't. Smile instead. Feeling sorry for yourself is like sitting in an oil spill and not being able to get up. Better even to feel angry than to feel pity for yourself.

You can give many reasons why you feel sorry for yourself. When you view your life in a pitying way, you can have a long list. You can have a list as long as a long scarf.

Feeling sorry for yourself is like sucking your thumb. You can suck your thumb for only so long. Self-pity is something to outgrow.

The thing is that feeling sorry for yourself, when you're in that frame of mind, doesn't get you anywhere. It digs you deeper in to where you don't want to be. Stay away from self-pity like the plague. Self-pity is a plague. It is a torrential display of self-centeredness that you melt yourself into. You melt yourself into tears of a kind of gooeyness.

You are not one to be pitied nor are you to be one who pities another. No longer stew yourself in pity. Pitying, feeling sorry for yourself or another, is a form of indolence.

Of course, you can make a good case for self-pity. Self-pity sets you apart from everyone and from yourself. Self-pity says you have suffered and that you are suffering still. Self-pity may say you cannot get over feeling sorry for yourself. Self-pity may say you can cry tears forever. Self-pity may say you are the most sorrowful person in the world.

You may weep because you no longer have your parents. You may weep for your youth. You may weep for love lost. You may weep because you have not loved or loved enough. You may weep because joy has been wrested from your hand. You may weep because you are afraid of life and living of it.

How clear can you be when you look at yourself and life through tears?

You know what to do.

When you weep for love lost, be glad for the joy you had before it was lost.

When you weep that your parents are no longer on Earth, be glad you had your parents while you had them.

And if you were an orphan and had no parents of your own and lived in an orphanage, be glad you weathered it, and, now, no longer see yourself as an orphan.

For every sighting of self-pity, turn it over and allocate that which to be glad for. You can do it. You have to do it. Nobody can do it for you. Do not wait. Abandon self-pity this minute.

Come on now, if you saw two signs, one called Self-Pity and another called To Be Glad For, why would you choose self-pity? Self-pity is not a badge of honor. There is no virtue in it.

If you must feel sorry for yourself, do it for just a minute and then turn off the recording that attracts self-pity. Put on another CD. I am talking about your thoughts, beloveds. Thoughts bring on self-pity. The conditions themselves do not. Self-pity doesn't happen without a green light from your thoughts. No longer go fishing for self-pity. No matter what, you are not to indulge in feeling sorry for yourself or anyone.

You can look at emptiness in your life, or you can look at where empty spaces are filled in. You don't have to look at the holes. You do not have to underline them. You do not have to put a circle around them and an exclamation mark.

You are not here on Earth for self-pity. You are here on Earth for Me.