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Daily Gratitude

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Daily Gratitude: All too often we become complacent and don’t do anything new. I think that in order to keep young, we have to continually learn and do new things. It keeps our mind active instead of letting those vibrations move up and down the same neural pathways over and over and over, never even stepping out into another path. Why? Why do we stop moving (and learning and discovering)? We need to ask ourselves this question. And we need to answer it honestly. Are you happy with where you are? Will you be happy to be in this same place a year from now? Sure we all need breaks but maybe we need to put a timer on those breaks – the point at which you say “ok that’s enough hanging out doing nothing. Time to get my butt in gear and go out and learn/do something different”.

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Daily Gratitude

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Daily Gratitude: All too often we get lost in the past- in our memories…but also in our interpretation of our memories. For, that’s all it is – an interpretation. My brother and I would remember event from our childhood in such completely different ways that you’d wonder if we really did grow up in the same household. And I’m sure my parents would have remembered these events in other ways too. It’s so easy to get lost in the past and “reminisce” about things. Did you know, though, that after each “remembering”, the memory changes. It now has added and deleted substance depending on our mood and other thoughts going on in our head at the time we’re doing that remembering. We are creating new memories on top of the old memories. Weird, huh? The good part of this is that you can restructure memories you don’t like (perhaps of some trauma) AND you can change how you respond to them (your emotions). The most important thing to hold on to, however, is the recognition that you are in the present and all the bad things that happened “back then” aren’t occurring right now. Think of it as if you’re watching a movie. You can change the channel or even turn it all off and return to the “now”. It’s your choice. Remember that you have control of your thoughts and you can do something about it – even when it seems you’re being held hostage to one (or more) memories. You can leave the area. Never forget that.

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Daily Gratitude

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Daily Gratitude: Have you ever noticed this? It’s as if you can get on the “good train” and each station you stop at allows more and more good to board the train. The bad stuff is on the other platform waiting to board someone else’s train (and there are plenty of riders on that one). Of course, a lot of this is perspective, too. You must “declare it good” no matter what you encounter. When we do the race across Tennessee every year some people judge us by how we look and that’s not very good. But there are so many others that can see beneath our grungy exterior and see the good within. They aren’t swayed by appearances. That’s how we should look at everything that happens in our lives. Don’t just determine “good-bad” based on how it looks. Make up your mind that everything either is good already or will lead to something good no matter what it looks like right now. Bless it, praise it, caress it; marinate it and let it rise if you’re into cooking and baking; let the seed grow its root system and then pop up a bud if you want a nature example. It will be good. We just have to care for it as if it already is good. Just as a 2 year old child is good deep within despite the antics of the terrible twos. Do we hate the child because it had one temper tantrum? Find a way to look at things in your life and practice that with the easy things. Then it becomes a habit and it won’t take any effort to declare everything good!