Think of Others, Keep Busy

Disclaimer: Busy-ness isn’t always a solution to real, clinical depression or other mental issues. If there are real problems, seek out help. But keeping busy and not thinking of ourselves so much can go a long way to a happier, healthier life.

We are busy mothers and wives. We could lament this fact, but instead we will rejoice in it. Idleness is the devil’s workshop. There are so many self-inflicted nervous ailments that we avoid if we learn to resign, no, like my mother would say, EMBRACE our crosses each day and glory in being the best wife and mother we can be!

And for the unmarried, do not be afraid to embrace your vocation, whatever it may be. Hesitation towards the vocation of wife and mother should be spurned. It is a sacrificial life, it is true, but one that is full of so many joys, so many opportunities to give of yourself. As the years go by, you will marvel at your growth in character because of what you have given to your family.

Father Irala from Achieving Peace of Heart:

No one who lives for himself alone lives as fully or produces as much as he who lives for others and does good for others.

When you are dominated by your unconscious mental activities, you lead a negative life which is colored by a sickly egoism.

You are always thinking of your own troubles and finding ways to lessen them. You can find no time to busy yourself with others or do any positive and progressive work. You see the enemy everywhere and are wholly taken up with fleeing from him.

Such a person lives, as Fosdick puts it, as if in a room lined with mirrors. Wherever he looks he sees himself.

But when he busies himself with others, several of these mirrors are changed into windows through which he can see other faces, other lives and other more pleasant landscapes.

You will also find great help in a noble ideal. This may be professional or religious. Let it be some unselfish dedication of your work either out of patriotism, love of your neighbor, or from some religious motive.

I knew a young doctor who was exhausted by his studies and first labors. He was crushed by insomnia, obsessions, fatigue and a sickly egoism.

Then he decided to take a trip to rest and distract himself. On his arrival at a Chinese port, a missionary invited him to visit his hospital.

He began to interest himself in the illnesses of those good people and lent them his professional service out of compassion. He ended up by remaining as the head of the establishment. He forgot his own ills and was completely cured.

Keep Busy

Employ your time well and so distribute it among different tasks that by keeping yourself busy you have no time for worry.

To enable the factor of feeling to intervene here, let your undertakings be in the possible and practical order.

Make sure they are useful and interesting. Only when the sick imagination finds the field of consciousness unoccupied will it be able to torture you with its sad and discouraging exaggerations. Idleness and the lack of an ideal produce more neurotics than work ever does.

A young bride, her mother told me, used to live tormented by fears. One fear was that she would lose her mind.

She bore a son, and still the fears continued. In the course of time she had five more children and because she was not rich she had to do all her own housework. Hardly could a worry take shape when a child’s wail would bring her flying to its side.

Or two of them would start a squabble and she would be off to calm them down. Or she had to get a meal ready, or the ironing board was calling her.

Or rain threatened to wet her laundry that was stretched on the line to dry. Some urgent household task would always be taking up her whole attention and coming just in time to kill worries at their first stirring.

The famous Jesuit scholar, Father Wassman, conquered his own depression by taking up the study of ants.

In this field he later became so preeminent that the whole world marveled at his books.

“Regularity in meals is another thing the wise housekeeper will insist upon in her abode. Regularity and punctuality, how delightful they are, and how they ease the roll of the domestic wheels! A punctual and tidy woman makes a punctual and tidy home.” -Annie S. Swan, Courtship and Marriage And the Gentle Art of Home-Making, 1894

Get the true story…

Inspire and delight your children with these lighthearted and faith-filled poems. Take a peek at Meadows of Grace here.

The book is filled with wonderful advice on how to live a happy life…

Here is a complete guide to mature, responsible, even noble behavior in our complex modern society. Written in the 1930s by a wise Jesuit priest and steeped in the wisdom of the ages, these pages teach the timeless principles that have led countless souls to true success and lasting happiness….

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