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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 11, 1925)
The Chemawa American Printed at Chemawa, Oregon, and Devoted to the ----- Vol. XXVII 4 MAY a ntejrests of Indian Education COPY ■ 1%6 Wednesday, November 11, 1925 GET IN STEP Many of us make our daily living miserable by con tinual grumbling about our environment or surround ings, our work, our lessons, our associates, our con dition generally. Now, the trouble is not with our sur roundings, our work or lessons, our associates, nor with conditions generally. It lies in the fact that we do not hold the right mental attitude toward these things. The trouble lies right within each one of us. Many people are always in discord with their en vironment and waste an immense amount of time and energy in frothing and useless resisting which could be used in bettering their condition. If you area fretter, a worrier, always looking on the dark side, you will finally bring much unhappiness and dissatisfaction on yourself. Your associates will naturally dislike you and will show their resentment in all sorts of disa greeable ways. If you are cheerful, hopeful, and look on the bright side in spite of seemingly hard and inhospitable condi tions, success will come to you, your associates will be drawn to you and your character and general view of life will be broadened, stabilized and strengthened. And what a lot of misery would be avoided also! No matter in what environment we are compelled to be we should try to get into harmony with it sufficient ly to enable us to work smoothly, without friction, which exhausts and tears down. Friction in the hu man system is like sand in a piece of machinery which grinds and wears out bearings. No-one can be happy or do good work, while holding an antagonistic mental attitude. The antagonistic people are nearly always knockers; and knockers are destroyers, not builders. The person who always looks on the bright side of things is the builder, the one who holds the right spirit, the mental attitude that improves conditions and attracts sympathy and helpfulness from others. If your work and surroundings are distasteful begin at once to change by fitting yourself for a better posi tion or a higher sphere. Antagonizing, worrying, fault finding, will make matters worse and may be the means of getting you into a poorer and more uncongenial en vironment. To go through school fretting, knocking your environment, your associates, your work or school duties, is to drive away the very things you de No. 8 sire to attract. The way to change conditions is to make friends of them. The non-resistance idea helps you to economize on your energies. It helps you to do the things you want to do. “I am singing my song” This little quotation expresses, it seems to us, all the difference between those who have soured on their en vironment, who are always complaining of their lot, and look upon their school duties as hateful drudgery, and those who whatever happens, sing their song and look upon school life with a cheerful eye and find joy in their work here. What you get out of your life at school depends very largely on how you look at it. Your mental attitude determines whether you will be happy or miserable— whether you make it music or discord. Some students with whom we have come in contact have the faculty of always touching the wrong key: from a musical in strument they extract only discord. With them every thing has an unpleasant appearance. All their songs are in a minor key. There seems to be nothing bright or cheerful or beautiful about them. Their outlook is gloomy, everything about them indicates contraction— nothing growing or expanding in their lives. With others it is just the reverse. They cast no shadows. They radiate sunshine; they never approach you but in cheer; they never speak to you but to in spire. They see the best in people and say pleasant and helpful things about them, and apparently put their very souls into their school work, school activities generally, and make any job attractive and lift it to dignity. Students, if the heart is right we can make the most trifling thing, the simplest act or duty beau tiful; but if the heart is not right nothing in life will be true or fine or uplifting. The one who faces life in the right way, who is cheerful, hopeful, always expecting the best to be theirs, will increase their ability tremendously. Such mental attitude will bring to us resources which the calamity-howler, the one who looks on the dark side, loses because his mental attitude closes his ability to receive instead of opening it up. If every one here at Chemawa would pesistently (Continued on pag-« 4)
