Daily Gratitude: Maybe you can’t do much (or anything) about your past thoughts other than to examine your life and see if you can correlate the two. But you certainly can do something about your future. Despite the chaos in the world today, you are in control of your thoughts. And it is your thoughts that will determine where you go. Sure you can say “but I can’t do anything about the political situation or all the wars” and that would be true. But you can do something about how you think about your life and your interactions with other people. Why not focus on your own microcosm – your family, friends and maybe even your community? How? By monitoring and measuring your thoughts. The most important part of that formula is to monitor them. You’d be surprised and maybe a bit overwhelmed by the number of negative thoughts that go through your head every day. even if you think you’re a positive person, I think you might notice some back and forth in your mind – a positive thought comes and then some little voice (it’s really a part) pipes up and says “oh yeah, well let me tell you how it really is. Your positive stuff is BS….etc.”. This is normal because your mind and your parts are protectors. They are meant to get you through danger and you can’t get through danger if you don’t recognize it and haven’t experienced something like it so you know what to do. this is all ok. don’t get discouraged. For a week or so, just become aware of what’s happening, aware of the conversations in your head. you don’t even need to change them for that first couple of weeks. just notice them. write them down if you can. that will help you review later rather than just relying on your memory. it’s also a way to enable you to decide what you want to change. Start with this.

Daily Gratitude: This follows the “change of self” post quite nicely. Even when things seem stagnant in your life, recognize that you’re changing as the world around you is changing. You never stay in one place even when it seems like that’s all you do. You are constantly progressing. Your poor brain would rebel if it didn’t have the opportunity to redo its thoughts and ideas. Your life may seem stagnant but you aren’t. and it behooves you to look inside and see if you still think the same way about something in your life as you did. What about your relationship with your spouse? how has that changed? how has your opinion of him/her affected that relationship? Same with your kids and friends. What if you found out that your best friend supports the opposite political party than you? Would you be appalled and want to end the friendship? Would you be curious and want to know more? would you even care? What will be different, if anything, about your interaction with that person just because you now have one additional bit of info about them? Just thinking about it shows progress. it is also representative of a change in you. how does that feel?

Daily Gratitude: You might be reading this and saying that this is dumb, that you can’t ignore your past and certainly must pay attention to the future. And you’d be right. But the keys here are the words “dwell on” and “dream of” when it comes to he past and the future. The memories and dreams come hand in hand for us humans, don’t they? Yes and no. When you dwell on the past, you sort of step into it and that will propel you back there and you can wallow in despair and the “what if” or “I should have done…” mode. Neither of these are productive. Sure you can learn from the past and you should learn from it but then you put those lessons in your armamentarium for later reference. It’s the lessons, not the event or your perception of failure or success that you focus on. You now know a way NOT to do something. Moving on to the future, you need to know where you want to go and that’s an entire process in itself. But once you know where you want to go, use the future for visualization not “i wish” this or that. When you know where you’re going and you know what has or hasn’t worked in the past, you can focus on what you need to do NOW in order to achieve that “dream”. That means you need to take action. Dwelling on the past and dreaming of the future are not action activities. It’s the actions that get you going and keep you going. Take a look at what in you are doing (what actions are you taking) right now. Are they aligned with the lessons you’ve learned about achieving your dream? You may have learned a lot of lessons but you also need to decide which ones are pertinent to achieving your dream. Discard the others if they hold no value at the present moment