The best way to wake up with a smile on your face is to go to bed with one already there. – Richard C. Miller
Smiling is the second best thing you can do with your mouth. – Bumper sticker
If you’re trying to be miserable, don’t smile. Some people are smiling on the inside, but they forget to tell their face. A clever bumper sticker says, “Put a smile on your kisser, and someone may put a kiss on your smiler.” (I think I’ll put that on the bathroom mirror and see if my wife gets the hint.) I read in the paper that it’s a psychological fact that smiling on the outside makes you feel better on the inside (if it’s in the paper, it must be true). People who are happy walk with their shoulders back and their heads up. If you want to be miserable, slump your shoulders, look at the ground, go to your unhappy place, and whatever you do, don’t smile.
A friend is someone who makes it easier for you to reach your fullest potential. Happy people build, lift, encourage, and motivate, and being in their company always make you want to be better too. People who are trying to be miserable try to find friends who weigh them down with gloom and doubt. Misery loves this kind of company. Bad company will try to take you to places you shouldn’t be and tempt you to do things you shouldn’t do. Then, after you’ve followed their plan of misery, you feel empty inside, and you wonder why you’re miserable! Well, perhaps bad feelings accompany bad company.
The happiest people pray early and often, while the miserable often postpone prayer to be used only as a last resort. Happy people keep in touch; miserable people keep their distance until the crisis is on. A teenage girl once said, “Prayer is so easy to stop and so hard to start again – but operators are standing by.” In prayer we are never alone, because God plus one other person is a majority, and “if God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31, New Testament). Sometimes just knowing the Lord is there and watching over us is a great remedy for misery. Happy people stand tallest when they’re on their knees, but the miserable haven’t got a prayer. 
Happy people love to learn. Miserable people think learning is just too much work. Happy people love getting up in the morning knowing that in the day ahead, they will learn many new things they didn’t know when they got up. Happy people are interested, inspiring, and inquisitive. They’re also intelligent, because when you ask a lot of questions of others, you’re bound to learn something yourself. Miserable people would rather lounge than learn. They use their drive time to tune in to trash, while the happy turn their cars into classrooms. The miserable read only what they have to for the test, and they’d rather take naps than take notes. 
Our mantle is cluttered...we still need to have an entertainment center built.
These are the curtains we put over the tub a while back. The window is frosted cubes that look great, but the light shines in the mirror and right into my face while sleeping.
Some people are fun to be around. When they enter the room, they’re like the proverbial “breath of fresh air.” Whatever the weather, they’re always happy. If the skies aren’t blue, they see clouds with silver linings. The miserable, on the other hand, choose to look at every bad thing as if it’s happening personally to them. They can always find a way to make things worse. They seem to delight in “throwing a wrench in the works” and “putting a damper on things.” No job is fulfilling, no dance has the right music, and no class is sufficiently entertaining. You wish they’d just keep their mouths closed, because all that comes out is stale air (and they’re all out of Tic Tacs). 
The miserable think that what they have is never enough. Like the Little Mermaid, who owned no fewer than twenty thingamabobs, they say, “But who cares, no big deal, I want more.” (How could you be miserable with twenty thingamabobs?) The miserable say, “If only I had one of those, I’d be happy.” Actually, the more you have, the more you have to worry about – in other words, the more stuff you have, the more the stuff has you! Even Hollywood stars who appear to “have it all” have nothing if they haven’t learned how to be content. The only things we can take with us when we die are our character, our intelligence, and our relationships. Everything else falls apart. Clothes attract moths, cars get rusty, and stuff gets stolen. That’s why Jesus said, “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal” (Matthew 6:20, New Testament). 
Miserable people look for some outside event to make them happy. “As soon as I graduate, I’ll be happy.” After they graduate, they say, “Well, as soon as I get a job, I’ll be happy.” After they get a job, they say, “Okay, as soon as I get married, I’ll be happy.” Miserable people never seem to learn that happiness is a decision, not a destination. It’s an attitude, not an event! If you’re determined to be miserable, then think of life as a waiting room, and happiness as your doctor. You know you’ll be waiting in there forever, so enjoy the magazines. (And when you finally get to see Dr. Happiness, he’ll just tell you to schedule another appointment – and then you’ll be happy.) 
Miserable people are suspicious. If someone’s nice to them, miserable people say, “Hmmmm, I wonder why they did that.” They look sideways at service and think that angels have an angle. Happy people receive the gift and return gratitude, while the miserable are gracious up front, but wonder what’s behind it. Everyone’s a suspect, and favors are fishy. They don’t realize that the good Samaritans of the world aren’t performing acts of kindness because they think they’re on camera – they might actually be good! But if you’re trying to be miserable, be critical of kindness done to you, and believe that everyone has a hidden agenda. 
Some people are miserable because, well, maybe they enjoy it. Perhaps it’s easier to be mad at everyone and everything than to look inside and realize that you don’t have to be miserable – or more important, you don’t have to stay miserable. The fact is, when you get sick and tired of being sick and tired, you’ll change. You’ll find that it takes work and effort to stay miserable when there’s so much to be optimistic about in the world. Ignore all that. Forget that you have friends who care about you and that if you were gone, you would be missed. Forget that you have the potential at any moment to make someone else’s day by a smile, a kind word, or a secret act of service. Forget the last time you laughed so hard that milk came out of your nose….
This was a weird Phoenix thing across the field. I think it was to promote a bank?
