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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