Daily Gratitude: “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.”

I harp on this concept perhaps more than any other. Why? Because it’s a key element in upgrading our lives. You can go to life’s App Store and see that there is an upgrade available. It’s easy to download.

And you know what? It’s also easy to install. You can do your own beta testing too. Try it out. And it’s free. No damn membership fee for this upgrade. You just have to be willing to use it.

Your attitude and your thoughts are your tickets to improved life experiences. And improved life experiences lead to an overall improved life.

How do you do this? Well for one, just decide to feel the opposite way about something that’s annoying you. For instance, we’ve had several days of rain here in San Antonio – for those of you who are chuckling, that is a big thing here. Our roads and structures are not built to handle significant amounts of rain.

Anyway, the storms have interfered with my training plans for Vol State. Initially I was frustrated but then thought to myself “it’s stupid to be upset with nature. You can’t do anything to change it. Everything always works out for me.” And not surprisingly, once I made that statement I realized that this forced rest was going to be excellent for my Tailor’s bunion (on the little toe) because it’s pretty inflamed from all the walking lately. I began to accept (first step) the circumstances as just that, circumstances. And then I began to be grateful for them (second step). Gratitude led to calmness and calmness then allowed me to be happy.

What’s upsetting or annoying in your life right now? What can you do, inside your head, to change that?

Daily Gratitude: “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.”

This is key to learning to back away and get a Birds Eye view of what’s happening in your life.

While you’re in the midst of troubling times, all appears exaggerated. Your thoughts are rampant and the end of the world seems close.

What can you do about it?

Remember that “this, too, shall pass” but here’s something to try ahead of these times.

Review your life. Find some bad times where you were feeling horrible about how life was going. See if you can get back into feeling the way you did way back then. Really relive it for just a few minutes.

Then remember how you felt 6 months to a year later. How important in the grand scheme was that bad time then. I bet it was more like “oh yeah it sucked but we got through it. What are you doing for your birthday.” It’s as if you’re just reporting on a news item.

The original episode is influenced mostly by emotions. The memory of it later is influenced mostly by facts. That’s why the memory probably isn’t as charged.

Write that sequence of events, thoughts and feelings down. Concentrate on the difference and see how “yep, it really did pass”.

Create a list of these situations – the befores and the afters.

The next time something bad is happening, review your list to remind you that it’s your emotional response that’s influencing you right now and you will get through it and it won’t seem as tragic. Sometimes doing this exercise can help you have a more positive perspective on the present moment.

Daily Gratitude: How often do we get hung up on just one thing being to blame for something we don’t like. We zoom in and focus on just that circumstance.

What we forget is that there’s a whole slew of events that must intersect for that one circumstance to occur. Why not blame all the other factors?

When traffic is slow we tend to be upset with the cars that are around us – the ones we can see. But it’s most likely not their fault that everything has slowed down. It may be an event, person or broken down vehicle miles ahead. I think we don’t get mad at that because we can’t see it – you know “out of sight, out of mind”.

Instead of blaming anyone or anything, let’s just accept what’s happening and recognize that it’s simply that many factors have come together to create this “instance”. Nothing we can do will change that so why waste energy on the negative thoughts we’re harboring.