Even in regard to tragic conditions, and the most adverse environment, we can usually manage to be happier, if not completely happy, by not adding to the misfortune our own feelings of self-pity, resentment, and our own adverse opinions.
"How can I be happy?" the wife of an alcoholic husband asked me. "I don't know," I said, "but you can be happier by resolving not to add resentment and self-pity to your misfortune."
"How can I possibly be happy?" asked a businessman, "I have just lost $200,000 on the stock market. I am ruined and disgraced."
"You can be happier," I said, "by not adding your own opinion to the facts. It is a fact that you lost $200,000. It is your opinion that you are ruined and disgraced."
I then suggested that he memorize a saying of Epictetus, which has always been a favorite of mine—"Men are disturbed," said the sage, "not by things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen."
When I announced that I wanted to be a doctor, I was told that this could not be, because my folks had no money. It was a fact that my mother had no money. It was only an opinion that I could never be a doctor. Later, I was told I could never take post-graduate courses in Germany, and that it was impossible for a young plastic surgeon to hang out his own shingle and go into business for himself in New York. I did all these things—and one of the things that helped me was that I kept reminding myself that all these "impossibles" were opinions, not facts. I not only managed to reach my goals—but I was happy in the process—even when I had to pawn my overcoat to buy medical books, and do without lunch in order to purchase cadavers. I was in love with a beautiful girl. She married someone else. These were facts. But I kept reminding myself that it was merely my opinion that this was a "catastrophe" and that life was not worth living. I not only got over it, but it turned out that it was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me.
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