Smile and Try To Think A Negative Thought

Have you ever tried to smile and think a negative thought?

You'll probably feel better because you smiled. Especially if you hold the smile for a while. Try it.

Try smiling even when there's no reason to smile.

Try smiling at yourself in a mirror for two minutes. It will lift your spirits and drive out negative thoughts.

Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who ended up in a concentration camp during World War II. He witnessed many atrocities and was a victim of German experimentation.

He observed that people trapped in the camp had different ways of dealing with their predicament. Some people lost the will to live, others went mad. Some men turned on their fellow inmates, while some ended their lives in suicide.

There were others, though who turned out quite differently. There were men who went from hut to hut, and gave away their last piece of bread. They encouraged the men, women, and children of the camp to keep on living. They gave them a reason to hope for a better future.

Why were these men, in the face of overwhelming despair, still able to master themselves enough to help others with their problems?

Frankl believed that man could choose how to react in any circumstances.

He practiced this in the concentration camps - his sense of future vision helped him survive. He realised he had a choice, and his choice was to live.

Whatever the circumstances - we can choose how to react.

'Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedom - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.'

Victor Frankl