Sorrow - A gift

Leaning towards happiness is our very nature. But does that mean you won’t experience sorrow. In fact, sorrow is an important part of your life's journey and also a catalyst for everlasting happiness. As a matter of fact only when you experience sorrow you will appreciate and value happiness. When you live life sorrow is bound to occur. The more you live, the more you will love, and the more deeply you live and love, the greater will be the rewards, but also you will have a fair share of sorrows.

As these sorrows come they will eventually go too. An example you lose a good friend it is remarkably intense at that time, the memories will fade over the years and translate into a learning experience, one day you might even laugh about it. On the other hand if you have lost your child, it will remain a part of you for as long as you are alive. The pain cannot be reasoned in any way nor can it be masked.

However, does the sorrow mean you are not allowed to feel happiness? In fact if you embrace the sorrow and overcome it, you will feel a greater sense of joy. Not necessarily the joy of immediate laughter, but the deeper joy of gratitude. Sorrow means you were given a gift; that pain means you were given something worth rejoicing in.

In a world where there are absolutely no guarantees, you were granted something beautiful for a while. Whether it was a relationship or another being that was important to your being or something else, you were granted a gift so worthwhile that sorrow has blossomed inside you now that the something is gone. Imagine a world without such gifts. That would be a true tragedy.

And if, by the way, you feel you did not cherish the gift that is now gone enough while it was here, recognize these two keys: first, just as you forgive others for being human, more than that forgive yourself. Be rest assured that you have done something right enough to recognize the value of the gift. You don’t feel sorrow for something you don’t cherish. And it is never too late to feel such gratitude, to cherish. That is the beauty of the gift.

You may no longer be able to get what or who it’s that you hurt for the back. But the bounty of the gift remains. Your sorrow proves it. So, embrace it.
It will help you remain aware of the greater happiness that the sorrow is wrapped within. It will help you move toward all the joys you so deserve. And there are plenty of them. They too are waiting for you.

Move Forward

People become victims of their circumstances and life challenges all the time.  When life gets tough or depressing, most will adopt a negative perspective and think to themselves about how unfair life is: how they should have been born into better circumstances with more money; or how they should have been given better opportunities; or how things should have happened differently. 

Well, the truth of the matter is that life is going to happen anyways – sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.  The one thing that you will always have 100% control over is your response to these events.  When you adopt a positive attitude and always look for the good in any given circumstance – how could you not move forward…...

Remember - in order to best handle the challenges that you are facing in your life, you will need to be updated to your latest version.  What does that mean?  It means, if you never spend time on yourself growing mentally, physically, and spiritually – you will slowly start to become less and less capable of handling the challenges life presents.  It is the equivalent of trying to use an ordinary Apple-1 (the first computer released by Apple in 1976) instead of an iMac in todays crazy world.

If you genuinely want to help and influence others to the best of your ability, you need to start by helping and influencing yourself to the best of your ability first.  Otherwise, not only will you be limiting yourself in achieving and becoming all that you are capable of, but you’ll be limiting what influence and impact you are capable of having on the lives of others too.

Intentions don’t make a difference in the world – actions definitely do.  You can have the best intentions of growing the most beautiful flowers, but if you forget to water them, don’t plant them in the right soil, and keep them out of the sun – your flowers won’t stand a chance. Actions are everything when it comes to growth.  To know and not to do is the same as not to know!  Life is not a spectator sport – it’s a full contact, get your clothes dirty, and leave it all on the field – kind of sport.
Staying consistent with a lifestyle change or healthy habit over the long run can be very difficult.  How many times have you started a new workout routine that you said you would be 100% committed to no matter what – only to find yourself quitting it a few months later?
…Or jumped on the latest dieting trend and decided you were going to follow it ‘to the tee‘ so that you could get maximum results?  …Or set a new goal of reading for a half hour every day which never lasted?  Too many to count?  Yup, me too.  With simple hacks and determination you will start to understand how habits work and you’ll start to build the life you’ve always wanted.  Will it be easy?  Most certainly not.  Will it be worth it?  Absolutely so.

Regardless of what problems or challenges you are facing in life – the reason that they are there and affecting you the way they are, is because you haven’t expanded your consciousness enough to the point where they can be resolved.  No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Therefore, the mastery mindset here is, if you keep learning and growing – you’ll keep solving more and more of your problems!  Remain the same and you’ll keep facing the same issues.  All problems or challenges are solved twice – first in the mind and second in reality.  So if you get your mind right first, your life will follow.  Brace yourself..........

Life is really about cultivating happiness and creating meaning. And meaning does not come from what you get, it comes from what you give.  When we master the art of happiness and learn how to unleash the best version of ourselves every day – touching lives and changing our world becomes inevitable.

Transformation is possible

How a mix of acceptance, humility, and strength powers the transformation.  They also aren’t aware of how common this is in history, how many figures took seemingly terrible situations – a prison sentence, an exile, a bear market or depression, military conscription, even being sent to a concentration camp – and through their attitude and approach, turned those circumstances into fuel for their unique greatness.

Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that became the national anthem of the United States while trapped on a ship during a prisoner exchange in the War of 1812.  Viktor Frank - l refined his psychologies of meaning and suffering during his ordeal in three Nazi concentration camps.

Not that these opportunities always come in such serious situations.  The author Ian Fleming was on bed rest and, per doctors’ orders, forbidden from using a typewriter.  They were worried he’d exert himself by writing another Bond novel.  So he created Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by hand instead.  Walt Disney made his decision to become a cartoonist while laid up after stepping on a rusty nail.

Yes, it would feel much better in the moment to be angry, to be aggrieved, to be depressed or heartbroken.  When injustice or the capriciousness of fate are inflicted on someone, the normal reaction is to yell, to fight back, to resist.  You know the feeling: I don’t want this.  I want ______.  I want it my way.  This is short-sighted.

Think of what you have been putting off.  Issues you declined to deal with.  Systemic problems that felt too overwhelming to address.  Dead time is revived when we use it as an opportunity to do what we’ve long needed to do.
As they say, this moment is not your life.  But it is a moment in your life.  How will you use it?

A hardened criminal could have doubled down on the life that brought him to prison.  Dead time isn’t only dead because of sloth or complacency.  He could have spent those years becoming a better criminal, strengthening his contacts, or planning his next score, but it still would have been dead time.  He might have felt alive doing it, even as he was slowly killing himself.

“Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons,” as Robert Greene put it, “where we have nothing to do but think.” Yet sadly, prisons – in their literal and figurative forms – have produced far more degenerates, losers, and never-do wells.  Inmates might have had nothing to do but think; it’s just that what they chose to think about made them worse and not better.

That’s what so many of us do when we fail or get ourselves into trouble.  Lacking the ability to examine ourselves, we reinvest our energy into exactly the patterns of behaviour that caused our problems to begin with.

It comes in many forms.  Idly dreaming about the future.  Plotting our revenge.  Finding refuge in distraction.  Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character.  We’d rather do basically anything else.

But what if we said: This is an opportunity for me.  I am using it for my purposes.  I will not let this be dead time for me. The dead time was when we were controlled by ego.  Now – now we can live.

Who knows what you’re currently doing. Hopefully it’s not a prison term, even if it might feel like it. Maybe you’re sitting in a remedial high school class, maybe you’re on hold, maybe it’s a trial separation, maybe you’re making smoothies while you save up money, maybe you’re stuck waiting out a contract or a tour of duty. Maybe this situation is one totally of your own making, or perhaps it’s just bad luck.

In life, we all get stuck with dead time.  Its occurrence isn’t in our control.  Its use, on the other hand, is.

As Booker T. Washington most famously put it, “Cast down your bucket where you are.”  Make use of what’s around you.  Don’t let stuborness make a bad situation worse.

Be what you are....You are precious

If a rose smells better than cabbage, It doesn't mean the rose can make a better stew.

Don't try to compare yourself to others.  You also have your own strength, look for it and build on it. 

All animals that exist, were in Noah's ark. A snail is one of those animals. If God could wait long enough for snails to enter Noah's ark; His door of grace won't close till you reach your expected position in life. Never look down on yourself, keep looking up. 

Remember that Broken crayons still color.
 
"YOU are PRECIOUS".