September 19th, 2016
There is a certain sweetness to life. It doesn’t mean that every day is a day at the beach but there is a certain sweetness in every day. Maybe it’s a glimpse of a white puffy cloud or maybe seeing a butterfly in the city or maybe it’s some distant laughter or the smile of a child. Sometimes it just surprises you and sometimes you have to search like a pearl diver running out of air to find it.
Imagine a tightly sealed jar of honey and imagine that you put it into a big vat of sour pickles. Wait a couple of hours and then take it out, rinse it off and open the jar and take a spoonful. Does it taste like pickles or honey? Honey of course! But why? The sweet honey was sealed in a glass jar. Nothing could get in no matter how many hours it stayed in the sour brine.
You have the ability in every moment of your life to put a non porous barrier between you and your surroundings. We do it often. Walk through any tourist area amongst the panhandlers and aggressive vendors. Get squished into a crowded elevator or subway car. You instinctively put up that barrier and you turn your thoughts inward and many times you find sweetness inside in your thoughts and memories and everything becomes bearable.
If you find yourself surrounded by sour circumstances, leave if you can but if you can’t, then put up that barrier and intentionally search for the sweetness in your thoughts and memories.
Let the sweetness come in and savor it and always make it more important than any sourness outside.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
September 12th, 2016
A fellow wrote to me this morning and told me, when I asked how he was doing, that he was doing badly because it was Monday. He said his health was fine and his family was fine but that he was miserable because it was Monday. He said that he had always felt this way.
Math is not my forte but I figured I could handle this calculation. Figuring that the Mondays between ages one day and five years probably weren’t that much of a burden and the fact that most people live to about eighty years of age, then seventy five years times fifty two weeks would give you three thousand and nine hundred Mondays to be miserable on. Divide that by three hundred and sixty five days and it would be over ten years of life to be in a state of miserableness.
Now I don’t know what your limit for being miserable is but I have a zero tolerance for being miserable. I have railed against authority most of my life and so I am certainly not going to let the calendar tell me how to feel. I don’t love more because it’s Valentines Day. I don’t get more grateful because it’s Thanksgiving. I don’t wait for New Years Eve to make new beginnings. Every day is a day to be maximally loving, maximally thankful, maximally celebratory, maximally happy.
Stop feeling bad because it’s a day to pay bills or to exercise or work or travel. It is a precious gift! It is a day, in a limited amount of days. It is twenty four hours of possibilities.
We know that any life can be adversely changed in the blink of an eye and most of us expect it sooner or later. Did you know that the opposite is also true? That any life can be positively changed in a blink of an eye with a thought, a touch, a look, a word, a sound, a scent, an idea, a desire, a prayer, a sight, a laugh and most of us don’t expect it?
Don’t look to the calendar to tell you how to feel. Don’t look to the folks around you to know how to feel. Don’t look into your past or future for guidance.
Right now say to yourself – “This is now. I am alive and capable of having better thoughts. I can and will enjoy this day because I deserve happiness and I know that I am the only one who can increase or decrease my happiness.”
If you are in charge of your happiness (and you are) than open wide those gates of happiness. Let it rush in and wash away doubt and fear and anxiety. Never let a day go by that you wouldn’t want to live over again. Yes, it can be that good. You know it can.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2016 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
September 7th, 2016
Today I started to be happy. To those thoughts that hindered my happiness I gave the eviction notice of “Go in peace, thank you”. Without an eviction notice they would become squatters and soon they would be confirmed as permanent residents.
I know now that my happiness needs to be fed, nurtured and protected. I cannot just expect to go somewhere or buy something and be happy forever.
I cannot expect some Divine entity to check on me and see if I am following some ancient rules to the letter and only if I am, grant me happiness.
I cannot expect my good works to absolve me from thinking thoughts that drag me away from happiness. I have found that it is quite possible to do good things and still think worrying thoughts.
Like hot water on a beautiful ice sculpture, I have found that my dreams disappear when I become overwhelmed with what is wrong in this world.
Today I started to be happy. I will not turn my eyes from the suffering in this world or from the pain of its inhabitants but I will strive to shine brightly regardless.
It would be a terrible excuse for a lighthouse to be only dimly lit because there was a raging storm going on. It is in the storm and in the darkness that its brightest output is required.
Today I started to be happy and to begin to let my happiness fuel the light within me. Today I know that I cannot calm all the seas but that I can make the seas around me brighter.
Today is a very good day.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2016 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life