Thoughts

Our best friend and our worst enemies are our thoughts.
A thought can do us more good than a doctor or a banker
or a faithful friend.  It can also do us more harm than a brick.
-Frank Crane


Boy, do I wish I could internalize this message more strongly and stop having all these negative, stressful thoughts!  I am much better at thinking in positive ways than I used to be, but this is a trait that I've had since childhood, and while I do my best to banish it from my life, it still hangs on, often keeping me in a very stressful state when there's really no reason to be stressing at all.

As I grow older, I do understand more the importance of thinking in positive, uplifting ways, especially having witnessed in my life so often the terrible ways that I feel when I'm thinking negatively.  It used to be that one negative incident, one setback, would get me to thinking of just how terrible life is, just how little hope there was for me to lead a happy and productive life, etc., etc., etc.

And this would go on for days sometimes, depending on the severity of the problem.

Nowadays, though, I realize that setbacks are just setbacks, and even more important, I realize that there's something positive to learn from every setback or problem that hits us in life.  I also realize that the way I react to setbacks is A) up to me, and B) one of the biggest determiners of how I feel about life and myself over the next few hours or days.  My thoughts can harm me, if I let them, but they also can lift me up and help me to transcend difficult moments and situations.

If you think you're a loser, you're going to act like one.  If you think that you're a kind, caring, compassionate human being who sometimes runs into setbacks, then guess what?  If you think that you're an unlikable person, then you're going to give other people very few reasons to like you.  If you think, though, that there's no reason at all not to like you, then others will respond to the confidence that your thoughts inspire.  Not everyone will like you, of course--there are people out there who dislike just about everyone for some reason or another, but that's okay.  You don't like everyone either, do you?

Take control of your thoughts and banish the negative ones when they show up.  Banish them by putting on a song that you love to dance to.  Banish them by reading a page or two of something positive that you love to read, or by watching a movie that lifts you up out of negative thoughts.  But keep on working on it, because this is a trait that hangs on, and that takes a lot of effort to work through.  I know, because I'm still working at it after decades of effort!