One of the great paradoxes of life is that the young are always wishing they were just a little older and the old are usually wishing they were a whole lot younger.
The great secret of life is to be happy where you are in the process doing the best you can with what you have. It is common to think that the grass is always greener on the other side. Your job is to face whatever challenges that may be in front of you right now (today) and do whatever you can to make them right. If you are facing a challenge today what makes you think that it will be easier to overcome or deal with tomorrow? Don’t fret about the past or be to consumed with the future, but live now. I recently read a story about a minister who was having a difficult time going to sleep because he was so worried about the future and the condition of the world. God said to him, “Go to sleep bishop. I will stay up and watch over things.” If you do your best today trust that things will work out. Everything is going to be okay when all the dust settles. Face the truth, be responsible, smile and keep moving forward.
Consider the following: “Rock of Ages,” one of the most popular Christian hymns, was composed under unusual circumstance. In 1775, Augustus Toplady took shelter from a storm in a cleft of a large rock at Barrington Coombe in Somerset, England, and while waiting for the rain to stop, wrote this famous song on the only piece of paper he could find – a playing card. Just doing the best you can where you are at with what you’ve got may make more of a difference in the world than you think.
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Thoughts III
“Our destiny is not mapped out for us by some exterior power; we map it out for ourselves. What we think and do in the present determines what shall happen to us in the future. There is nothing in your life that you cannot modify, change, or improve when you learn to regulate your thought.” – Christian Larson (1874-1954)
What you think about and do today, affects tomorrow. What has been your thoughts today? Is this who you want to be tomorrow and in the future?
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It seems that there are two types of pain to experience as we make our way through the world. There is the pain of regret that is felt after doing something that you know you shouldn’t. Then there is the pain of self-discipline which is felt as you try to do what you should even though you may not want to. We each get to choose which type of pain we will feel. Having spent thousands of hours with clients struggling with addiction issues I have come to believe that the pain of regret is much harder to carry than the pain of self-discipline. Exercising self-discipline is refining and purifying while the other is not.
”Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not, It is the first lesson that ought to be learned.” -Thomas Huxley
Although it may be challenging to face temptation it is the very thing that allows you to exercise and strengthen your self-discipline. The power is in you to make of yourself whatever you will! Meeting difficulties with courage and overcoming handicaps make character. It is not the difficulties, but the power gained by rising above them, that builds goodness.
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