Just yesterday;

Just yesterday, an acquaintance of ours turned a bitter attitude toward us. How can we be so peace loving and always looking toward a better tomorrow, when the world seems to be going up in flames? How can we tell everyone to focus on themselves, when their environment is demanding so much time from them? How can we continue to talk about love and peace and growth, when all around us is burning down? Don’t we know the state of the world? Don’t we know that unemployment is skyrocketing, and people aren’t going to be able to feed their families? Don’t we know that our government is out of control and will destroy us all?

Now, it would have been very easy to think of this person as a negative, someone who feeds off of their own misfortunes; someone who isn’t interested in growth at all, but is destructive to themselves and their environment. In fact, it was really tempting. But, we took some time and continued our conversation, and found they were being hit with a great deal of stress and circumstances. With a little bit of prompting, the bitterness began to turn to understanding, and the angst lessened. Positive seeks positive, negative feeds on negative.

We didn’t offer a quick solution, we didn’t take their problems away. But we did give them a better mindset to deal with their situations, and a better belief in themselves and their abilities to overcome the obstacles in their life.

Sometimes you need to rebalance and focus, so you can determine what is most important to YOU. We used to be wrapped up in what our friends had, and wanted the same or better for ourselves. But those objects never satisfied, there was always bigger and better. And bigger and better cost more and more money. So we had to work harder and harder. And there was always something just out of reach that we just had to have. The turning point for us came when the economy turned and were faced with layoffs. We had to decide what was important, and in doing so, we cut out a lot of the unnecessary expenses in our lives. We also started spending more time working on our personal relationship with each other. And the most amazing thing happened! We became happier.

When we form our own expectations in our lives, we see our goals attainable. We don’t need a new car if ours is dependable and running fine. We don’t need a brand new big screen television if our regular television still works. We don’t need to work overtime and stress ourselves out to earn enough money to take a vacation to distress and relax. We’ve left the daily grind, and take each new day as an adventure. Of course, we have our responsibilities and commitments, and maintain them. But we are more at peace with what we are and do.

Re-evaluate your goals, be happy with your level of success, don’t let others decide your happiness for you.

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