Question: Do you value at all what some people call a 'self-fulfilling prophecy'? In other words, if someone says, "I believe that good things are coming now," is there any power of that self-fulfilling prophecy to turn the forces around and make things better?

Sri Chinmoy: When a sad thing happens in your life, there are three ways to approach it. One way is to say, "This will pass away, this will pass away. No darkest night lasts forever. This will also pass."

There is another way and that is to say, "It could have been worse, it could have been worse." If you repeat a few times, "It could have been worse" or "This will pass away," you will acquire some inner strength.

The third way is to remember a few happy, happier, happiest days in your life. Always I tell people to write down their highest experiences. Then, when you are doomed to disappointment, you can read your own experiences and remember the joy that you got on certain days. It helps to remember. Keep a diary. There you can write down that on such-and-such date something significant happened in your life and you were absolutely dancing with joy. Then, when everything is going wrong, you can find joy in remembering that experience. Joy is nothing but fragrance. You are carrying a most powerful fragrance with you.

These are the three ways. One way is just to say it will go away. Another way is to say it could have been worse. The third way is to remember your highest experiences. Just glance at the words you have written down. In three or four minutes, you will be inundated with happiness. This is not false happiness. You have every right to remember something that took place in your own life, so remember those happiest days! Then immediately they will give you tremendous joy and the fragrance-beauty of those happy days will conquer the sad experiences when nothing is going right in your life.

From:Sri Chinmoy,My heart-door I have kept wide open, Agni Press, 2011
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/hdw