come into our lives, is really good for us, although it may
not seem so at the time.
Life without risks and obstacles and problems
would not be worth getting out of bed for.
Happiness is not the absence of problems and
difficulties. Happiness is successfully solving problems and
effectively overcoming difficulties.
It requires just as much energy to try to escape
from a problem as it does to grapple with it and conquer
it. Try to escape, and your problem will follow you every-
where. Grapple with it and solve it, then it is gone forever.
Since new problems will always continue to
come your way with a sort of continuous regularity, it is
obvious that you must solve and dispose of them with equal
regularity-or they will accumulate and eventually over-
whelm you.
There are many broken men and women in this
world, and almost every one has been broken in spirit,
mind and body by the overwhelming burden of accumu-
lated, unsolved problems.
Most mental and emotional illnesses can be
traced in full or in part to the subjects' having become so
overwhelmed by the continuing accumulation of unsolved
problems that they were no longer able to cope with them
and tried to escape through some form of mental malad-
justment.
The same is true of much physical illness. Since
50% to 90% of all physical illness is psychosomatic (depend-
ing upon which psychiatrist's estimate you accept), most