Field Of Flowers - Not Weeds

"Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power." - Shirley MacLaine

All of us have asked in conversation how someone is doing. The answer you get in return many times becomes a litany of all the troubles that particular person is experiencing. You listen intently and offer words of advice or consolation. Eventually you begin to feel a bit down yourself.

Negativity in conversation can pull you into a depressing mood.

The feeling of a great day you were having begins to fade away.

It can be eye opening to know how powerful negative thoughts have upon you and the people it surrounds. It feeds upon itself and grows stronger the more you embrace the negative. And strangely, people will believe more in the strength of negativity then in the power of being positive. Being negative is a much easier road to take.

Being positive is like watching a slow developing flower.

Life gains strength the more you nurture a positive attitude.

Negative attitudes are like quick growing weeds, taking over a field in rapid advancement. Great attitudes have to be tended to and the weeds of negativity pulled away. Eventually, you find great things in your life which outweigh any of the bad. Walking through a field of flowers and not weeds is a better life to live.

Stay inspired my friends.

Life of a Virus Part One

"It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts." - Robert H. Schuller

The common cold virus attaches to cells and helps create the miserable symptoms associated with a cold. It is efficient at spreading itself both inside your body and in using your body to spread it to other people.

It has three purposes; invade, destroy and duplicate.

This virus seeks out the human body in which it can invade, looking for our weakest entry points. Once inside it works to attach and begin its destructive process on our body. Once establishing itself, the process of duplicating and finding ways to spread within your body and to others begins. Our body becomes a 'loaded gun' which fires the virus at other humans.

The same can be said of negative thoughts and ideas. An incorrect idea becomes lodged inside of us and can have a large impact on our thinking.

Take a very simple example. I grew up being a very inquisitive boy. My sister said that I asked, to put it nicely, a lot of questions. When I was quite a bit younger, I had been asking why Art Garfunkel was no longer singing with Paul Simon (singing duo Simon & Garfunkel). Likely annoyed by my questions, she said Art Garfunkel had died.

Simple enough I thought and went about the years thinking he had died. Then in 1981, I was watching a concert from New York's Central Park. There he was, Art Garfunkel playing beside Paul Simon. Laugh all you want, I do. Here was a belief I had held for many years, completely false, but stuck in my mind like a virus. I am sure that I spread this wrong information to others during those early years.

Now the idea of Art Garfunkel being dead did not have any ill effects on me. But other types of ideas can have a devastating effect upon our life. Racism, abuse, cults, and most anything that would freeze you into believing in something wrong, hurtful or negative. Long held beliefs can be difficult to clear from our mind. If these beliefs are bad enough and destructive enough, there are professionals to help.

Negative thoughts and ideas can permeate into and through you to others.

This virus will find your weakest point and make its way inside. From there it will seek to destroy anything good within you. It will use you as a carrier to infect other people. An efficient and destructive cycle begins to take place from generation to generation if you do not stop it.

But how to stop it?

Read tomorrow's article...and stay inspired my friends.

Forward in Life

"Positive anything is better than negative nothing." -Elbert Hubbard

When I travel, it can be difficult to find the time to write these articles. but I want each of you to know that my thoughts are on you. I haven't forgotten why I write this blog. It is because each day one person is able to find one thing in my words.

One thing that helps them rediscover the strength inside that will allow them to gain a better life. One word jumps out that will help them move forward to succeed at whatever it is in life they want to accomplish.

By keeping a positive attitude about where you are currently in life means accepting your current condition. Doing so will free up your energy and resources to make a change if that is what you want. You do not have to resign your self to the life that you live. There is an ability inside of you for so much more.

Remember that the life you have is just that, your life. But if you want more from it, do not waste your time worrying and complaining about where and what you have. Take it for what it is, a current place and time in your life. It will free your mind to work out those dreams and visions circling within you.

Use forward thinking and send yourself forward in life with a positive attitude. It certainly beats wallowing in self-doubt and self-despair. Create change in your life by knowing you have the power to change your circumstance.

And above all, stay inspired my friends.

Negative Flu Bug

"Just because you're miserable doesn't mean you can't enjoy your life." ~Annette Goodheart

For the second time in a month I have come down with a flu bug. The first one occurred while visiting our new grand daughter in Los Angeles. That one was tough as it kept me from holding the little one until the final day or so. This current bug reappeared this week just before a scheduled business trip to the northwest.

My belief is that the second occurrence is just a re-emergence of the same bug. I guess in the medical sense I never fully got rid of the flu bug to begin with. It waited and festered inside until a new opportunity to emerge appeared.

So fighting the flu bug while sitting at home, it gave me reason to think about how similar it is to a bad attitude. Negative thoughts and feelings are very much like a flu bug. They weaken and destroy you little by little until you reach a point of desperation.

Then someone gives you a book, provides an encouraging word and you watch an inspiring movie. The negativity lifts and you feel better. But you know in some fashion that you have not rid your life of those feelings completely.

Those negative thoughts hide just beneath the surface, waiting, waiting. It could be a few days or a few weeks, but then you let your guard down. Maybe a small complaint, maybe a negative thought, and the negativity makes its way back to the surface. Before you realize it, the bad attitude and bad thoughts are consuming your life again.

Again you battle the thoughts and attitudes, looking for something to change their course. Its a difficult cycle to be in swinging from sickness to feeling good. It gets old in time and harder to combat as the negative attitude takes its toll on you.

So like a flu bug, we need to fight it off and destroy them to the best of our ability. We then need to see the symptoms and learn to fight them off sooner before they encompass our life.

A bad attitude can have a debilitating effect upon your life. Take a flu shot of positive affirmation just like you get the flu shot. You'll have a better journey and a greater life along the way.

Is The Sky Blue

“There must be a positive and negative in everything in the universe in order to complete a circuit or circle, without which there would be no activity, no motion.” -John McDonald

So maybe I should let that sink in a little bit or let people wonder just what a quote like that is doing on a blog like this.

This blog is a positive, motivational, self improvement website that people can get a little bit of inspiration from. It is a way of helping you find some goodness to help you get through whatever it is you might be going through.

Yet I fully understand the reality of life, that you can not always live in the happy Neverland. There will be periods of the "not-so-happy". Even I have been called (in a nice way) a cynical b@$tard. Although I much prefer the term "centered contrarian".

My view is much more positive then not, but I find that I have to keep my life centered. So when I start approaching the starry, "pie-in-the-sky"; my instinct is to ensure I step back and view the other side.

The reason why?

I can not speak to those going through bad times with out understanding what they are facing. The 'positive' means nothing to them if it isn't relevant. So my cynicism for things can peek through from time to time. But again, that cynicism can come off sounding like I don't believe in having a great attitude.

Having a great attitude and leaning to the positive is what dreams are made of. Without it, we would never move forward. We would never try anything new or even want to for that matter. My contrarian ways are in some ways left over attributes but in no way do they diminish my belief in living life in a positive fashion.

You have to choose the way you want to live your life. That is the great thing about it. We get to choose it, we get to also change it. We can pull ourselves out of misery and choose happiness. No one else, no artificial thing, no magic potion can make that change...only you.

And if you say the sky is blue and I happen to say its not; then its just the cynic in me dreaming of a great sunrise.