When you feel sad, you already know you are looking at things from the downside. Now find another angle to peer from. For every discomfort, there is another side for you to see. A frown is one expression on your face, and a smile is another. But both are expressions on the same face. If you can do one, you can do the other. Which do you prefer? And which makes more sense?

Does gloom make sense to you? If you don't want it, why do you court it so? Why are you at its very beck and call? Why do you kowtow to it if you would rather not have it? Oh, if you would roll out the red carpet for serenity the way you do gloom, how happy you would be!

You have kept a watch out for despair. You have been stealthy about it, but you have been avidly on the lookout for affront or disappointment or heartache. You have been good at it. None can get past you.

Now start to wave the distaff on. Don't catch it. Don't be wary about it. Be neutral. You need not welcome it and usher it in. Let it go its course, and you go yours. Give trouble a cold shoulder. Do not be so inviting to it, so open, so receptive, so devoted and faithful to it.

Turn your heart a slight angle. Be on the lookout for what you want. You deserve what you want, or you wouldn't desire it. Desire good to come to you, and know you deserve it. Empty your heart of pain. No matter what transpires, you are the one who stuck it there and perhaps kept it there, perhaps held on to it for dear life. You put salt on your own wound. You made it a certainty. You sequestered it in your heart and kept it there. Now, throw it out.

You say you can't help it? You feel down, battered by life, by certain turns of life or by all of it. You say your heart aches, and all an aching heart can do is ache, as if you have no say in it, as if there is nothing you can do about it, as if sadness locks in, and joy can only be left out.

Contrary to what you believe, It is not harder for joy to enter your heart than sadness. It is truly your prerogative. Downbeat or upbeat are two choices you make. You say you covet joy but you harbor sadness. Make up your mind.

How do you think sadness serves you? What qualities does it have that you embrace it? Is your sense of deprivation greater than your sense of gift?

You count sorrow like great sums of money. Over and over again, you count it.

Sorrow is like taking a picture with a dark filter over the lens. It is no more. Remove the filter. Remove yourself from the scene and become neutral. Leaves fall from trees, snow falls, friends disappoint. You don't feel betrayed because trees shed their leaves, or that rain turns into snow, yet when friends fade, you make a big to-do over it. You even stab your heart with it over and over again.

Take the knife out. Others' actions don't have to do with you. You are not better nor less because of any occurrence on the face of life. Do not attribute to anyone the role of disappointer, for that makes you victim. No one has that much say over you. But you have that much say over yourself.

Your heart is hardy. Don't pamper it so. Lift it up and restore it.