CHANGING MOODS WITH GRATITUDE

"Gratitude is the memory of the heart." 

~ Jean Baptiste Massieu ~

I am grateful for my health and for small pleasures; for Nature, people, conversation, solitude, and the feeling of getting into bed at the end of a long day. I am grateful for chocolate, soft molasses cookies, and stargazer lilies. I am grateful to be married to my best friend, and for things always having a way of working out. I am grateful for the sun, for stars on a clear night, and crisp, fresh mornings.
     When I feel funky, I can start anywhere and focus on what makes me grateful, and it builds on itself, and before long, I start to feel grateful, and blessed with blessings, and just all around better from the inside out.

Being grateful makes me feel good.

BE LIKE A BABBLING BROOK

"If God had wanted to be a big secret, He would not have invented babbling brooks and whispering pines." 

~ Robert Brault ~

We live cluttered lives with cluttered minds and don't even know it, busy as we are keeping up with our daily demands and desires. Creating open space, both internally and externally can be a conduit for a sense of relaxation and ease. With distance and perspective comes a slowing of time, an increased appreciation for each moment, and a disinterest in multi-tasking to get things done.
     Life is meant to have a bit of a meandering quality to it and not be so jam-packed and pressure driven. It's a babbling brook navigating meadows rather than a blast from a fire hose, and yet, so often, that's how we experience it. Let's not. Let's learn to babble a bit, and trickle around stones and over mossy banks.

I slow down and create space in my life for meandering. 

INTO THE FUTURE

"Tomorrow is fresh." 

~ L.M. Montgomery ~

The future awaits us, and blindly, we travel towards it. We press forward, full of courage and faith that it will play out, that we will be unexpectedly blessed by angels along the way, and that we will find what we're looking for.
     Adventure is guaranteed, and life lessons. Everything else we create for ourselves as we go.

I welcome the daily mix of intention and surprise, and keep my good humor as I travel the road. 

BEING FRESH AND NEW

"Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch."

~ EB White ~

If we want to create something new in our lives, we have to let go of everything old and tired first. If we try to build on top of what's been there for years and years we will just get more of the same. A fresh start requires a clean slate and an inner emptiness, space to grow, and an open heart and mind. New is not more or better, it's new! And it takes some clearing on our part to make way for what wants to come into being in our lives.

I let go of all that has historically constrained me, and open to the new! 

THE POWER OF WILDFLOWERS

"Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. " 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Wildflowers cling to rocks and grow out of crevices at the top of windy mountains. They grow on dusty roadsides, and in the most inhospitable places available- the places where no grass can take root. They are paupers when it comes to growing spots, and yet, there they are, brightening the landscape with their color and their cheerful blooms.
     We can become so precious in the fulfillment of our needs. Let's take a lesson from wildflowers, and bloom wherever we land.

I blow in the wind and bloom brightly like wildflowers.

CHOICE AND FREEDOM

"Confront your dream and... decide, once and for all, if you want it." 

~ Joe Kita ~

We are more tangled up in our pasts than we realize. Thoughts, beliefs, images, and hurts haunt our every step, dictate our actions, and impede our progress, such that we become an accumulation of everything that's ever happened to us. We become a "happend to" instead of a happening.
     In order to re-claim our power, we have to recognize that we have added all kinds of personal significance to the historical facts, such as they are, and we can stay stuck in the way it all currently exists for us, or choose to create a new significance any time we like.
     Choice is our birthright. Choice and freedom.

I live free from the tangles of the past.

BEING CURIOUS

"A sense of curiosity is nature's original school of education."

~ Smiley Blanton ~

We make assumptions about other people based on who we are and how we are feeling. Consequently, the vast majority of our judgments are in error, based on our mood and our mindset rather than truth itself.
     Let's recognize that what we are certain we know about others may not be completely accurate, listen free from internal dialog, and be willing to clearly see and hear who is actually there.

I open to curiosity and make room in life for what I don't know I don't know.