Saturday, March 28, 2015

Saturday (3/28/2015)

Thought for the Day:

“It has been estimated that the average human being has around 50,000 thoughts per day.  That’s a lot of thoughts.  Some of these thoughts are going to be positive and productive.  Unfortunately, however, many of them are also going to be negative—angry, fearful, pessimistic, worrisome.  Indeed, the important question in terms of becoming more peaceful isn’t whether or not you’re going to have negative thoughts—you are—it’s what you choose to do with the ones that you have.”

“In a practical sense, you really have only two options when it comes to dealing with negative thoughts.  You can analyze your thoughts—ponder, think through, study, think some more—or you can learn to ignore them—dismiss, pay less attention to, not take so seriously…When you have a thought—any thought—that’s all it is, a thought!”

“You can give the thought significance in your mind, and you’ll convince yourself that you should be unhappy.  Or, you can recognize that your mind is about to create a mental snowball, and you can choose to dismiss the thought.  This doesn’t mean that your childhood wasn’t difficult—it may very well have been—but in this present moment, you have a choice of which thoughts to pay attention to.”

“You’ll find, in all cases, that if you ignore or dismiss a negative though that fills your mind, a more peaceful feeling is only a moment away.”  [Richard Carlson, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all small stuff].

I’ve found that whatever I dwell upon tends to take on greater significance in my life.  I know there are times when we have to think through things and give it our undivided attention; but far too often we are making mountains out of molehills or we are dragging up things from our past that we cannot change.  What good is spending all day thinking about that kind of stuff going to do for us?  All it will do is drag us down. It will hold us back.  It will make us an emotional wreck. 

I am not advocating ignoring the stuff that bothers you or the hurts and the pains you have suffered.  Stuffing all down into a sack, trying to forget about it is only creating a time bomb that will someday explode.  Instead, in your heart grant forgiveness to those who have hurt you, tell God what you are feeling and thinking AND THEN MOVE ON.  Let it go.  Don’t keep poking it with a stick like a kid checking out roadkill.  Walk away from it.  Drop it.  And don’t choose to go back to it mentally. 

Sure, memories might resurface and thoughts might pop into your mind unbidden.  Okay, then choose to ignore that thought and don’t start dwelling on it.  Shake it off and fill your mind with other thoughts.  Don’t waste all your time and energy on those negative, joy-sucking kind of thoughts, UNLESS you want to send yourself into angry, frustration, anxiety and depression.  If you want to have your life filled with those things, then go right ahead and think on the garbage that sometimes enters your mind.  But if you don’t…well, then do dwell on those things.

Philippians 4:8  “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

The quote, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be” is usually attributed to Abraham Lincoln.  You can choose to be happy if you choose to focus upon the right things or you can be miserable if you focus upon the wrong things.  Every one of our lives is a mixture of happy and sad, good and bad.  You can find enough evidence in your own life to support either of these conclusions: “I am blessed and have a good life” or “My life is rotten and not worth living.”  Could your life be better? Have people treated you wrong?  Are there things that you wish you could change about your past?  Certainly, I would think so.  But those things aren’t the only things that have happened to you, are they? 

So why do we focus so much upon the negative?  Instead, let’s focus upon the positive and “seize a happy day.”





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