Finish the day and move on...

 “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I saw that saying by Emerson on the wall of someone’s cubical recently and it struck a chord with me. While it would be a mistake not to learn from yesterday’s blunders and absurdities; it would be a bigger mistake to waste one’s time dwelling on the past, rather than moving on in life with a fresh and positive outlook. So much of the pressure and worry and fear that we experience in life is self-inflicted, conjured up in our imaginations and not really based upon facts or what is really happening around us. Much of that negative energy comes from dwelling on the past.

So let us resolve to start each day at peace with ourselves and those around us; carrying no baggage from yesterday; but, rather, focused upon the wonder and hope that each new day brings. Start out happy. Start out positive. Start out open and friendly to new ideas and new people in your life. With a start like that, you’ll go far. And when you finish today, be done with it and look forward to another fresh start tomorrow.

Change the way you see things...

“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.”  (Wayne Dyer)-  from my daily read at the Jack’s Winning Words blog.

What an easy saying to do a blog post about.  Taking a positive attitude about how you look at things will make things look positive. I suppose the opposite is true, too; which is why pessimists see so much to be unhappy about in life. This is the classic cup half-full or half-empty conundrum.

If one doesn’t look at a challenging situation and see negatives and problems; but, rather opportunities and solutions; then things don’t look so bad. I guess that also applies to looking at people. If one looks for faults or ugliness, you will probably find things that will drive you away. If

you look beyond a few faults and find the good and beautiful that is somewhere within everyone, you may just find a friend.

So, how do you look at things when you start each day? Does the day look long, dreary and unappealing to you as you start out or does it appear to hold opportunities to meet fascinating people and achieve great success? The fact that you woke up with another opportunity to live a day, should serve as a positive start to the day, if you think about it. Days are like blank slates and what ends up written on that slate at the end of the day is up to you.

If you should encounter someone who is angry or maybe down, you can look at that encounter as something to be avoided or as an opportunity to help. There is something behind the anger or depression that you are seeing and sometimes what the person is really trying to do is to find someone else to share that something with, so that they can start on the road to healing. You can be their emotional first-responder, a human aspirin (as the lady on the HAP commercial on TV says), so to speak. You may be amazed how much better that other person will feel (and look to you) after spending a few moments talking with them. You’ll also be amazed how much better you may feel for having taken the time to help.

So try to change the way you see things – see opportunities rather than roadblocks, see the beauty in people rather than just the faces that they initially present, see the wonder of the world around you and not the day-to-day ugliness; and, by doing so, you will change the things that you see.