Daily Gratitude: “…hope is a choice…Being a decent human being is a choice.”

Both of these are things we must remember each and every day. One applies to our own personal and internal existence and the other applies to our treatment of other human beings.

When we give up hope, we lose any reason to live. It’s hard to hold onto a goal without hope. It’s hard to continue to push forward for your family without hope. In reality, it’s hard to do anything without hope.

You can choose hope. Your belief system can be based around hope. Sometimes you have to convince yourself that you have hope but if you practice telling yourself you have it when things are ok, then you’re more likely to keep saying it when they aren’t so great. Why not choose hope…over no hope? Answer that question before you make your choice.

Every day we should also choose to be at least a decent human being and preferably a good one. That is an even easier choice than choosing hope. How much effort does it take to be a decent human being? Why would you choose not to be? I’d like to know why someone would choose to be a mean person.

What choices are you willing to make?

Daily Gratitude: “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you.”

It behooves us to remember this – every single day. Until it’s embedded in our minds, it might do well to print it out and hang it in the bathroom so it’s one of the first things we see in the morning.

We have an impact no matter whether we know it or recognize it or not. I think most of the time we don’t even realize that something we’ve done has impacted someone else.

This can be a positive or a negative impact. A snide comment or look; an angry gesture; a smile; a wave. Any of these, especially when done without thought, can influence someone else’s day. Maybe you give that disapproving look and comment under your breath when someone bumps into you at the grocery store. You think nothing of it. After all, that woman deserved it for not paying attention to YOUR actions. What you don’t realize is that the woman has a 4 year old little girl in the grocery cart with her. The young girl is all eyes. She’s looking at you and her mom and has no clue what’s going on. But you can bet the little girl knows something’s up and she’s probably scared – at least a bit.

Later her mom is grumpy and short with her and she begins to think she’s done something wrong. All kids think that the world revolves around them so they interpret adults’ reactions as being caused by them. This is no different.

You’ve already forgotten the incident but the little girl hasn’t. You’ve had an impact that you’re not even aware of. Is this how you’d like others to remember you?

Think about your actions, your gestures, your words. Let’s say it’s been a less than ideal day at work. Now you’re going to the gym and you know it’s very busy at this time. Usually people at the gym do things to annoy you. Knowing this, sit in your car for a while and take some deep breaths. Make an intention that you will make a positive impact or at least remain neutral. Remind yourself that uou don’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives and that there could be many reasons they do the things that annoy you. Decide to just do your workout and be happy you’re there.

Be intentional in all your activities. Make a positive impact all day long.

Daily Gratitude: “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

What is defeat anyway?

One definition we don’t often see is “to be frustrated or thwarted”. Yes it can also mean to fail but I think fail is so concrete. Do we ever really fail? I don’t think so. I think we learn lots from what are perceived as failures. Therefore, how can we fail if we learn? But we certainly can be frustrated.

I also believe we mess ourselves up by thinking of winning and losing, failing or succeeding. Nothing is ever that black or white. We, ourselves, have imposed the idea of what winning is. I have never been first to cross the finish line in any race, especially the one that means the most to me, Vol State. But I have only “failed” once and that was the first year when I didn’t meet the cutoff times and got pulled. So, just because I didn’t cross the finish line first, does that mean I was defeated? No, it just means I didn’t cross the finish line first.

I think that’s what this quote is trying to tell us. It’s all a matter of interpretation and perspective. Technically I’ve encountered defeat in all of my races, every single one. But I’ve never been defeated because I didn’t use the defeat as either a measure of my success or as a determination of my worth. I just accepted the defeats and decided what I wanted to and needed to do for the next time.

I don’t like the phrase “don’t give up” either because there are always circumstances where it is important to give up. So we need to get away from all the allegedly motivational words and find full sentences that mean something to us individually. We’re way too quick to just hop on the bandwagon of someone else’s creation. I prefer personalization. And I prefer to personalize my defeats so that I don’t feel defeated!

Keep learning and applying what you learned. You may apply it to some other endeavor but knowledge doesn’t do a lot of good if you don’t use it somewhere.