In the midst of our stress-filled, busy days we often find ourselves focusing on all the ways we failed to live up to our own expectations – the tasks that didn’t get completed or that were completed imperfectly, the people we failed to persuade or influence, the situations that didn’t turn out quite the way we had planned.
We spend precious minutes of every day focusing on the negative things in our lives – what we want and don’t have, what we don’t want yet have, the people who dislike us or are discourteous to us, the situations that we can’t control yet would somehow change . . . all of life’s little, and big, frustrations.
How much of what we spend our days worrying about really matters?
Choose joy, instead.
Choosing joy means:
- Mindful Living – living with conscious, and constant, awareness of our thoughts, emotions, behaviors - and the choices we make throughout the day;
- Focusing on the positive rather than the negative;
- Recognizing those things that are within our control and giving up trying to control those that are not;
- Doing something nice for someone else. It’s quite amazing to learn that when you bring a little joy into someone else’s life, it spills over into your own.
Choosing joy means not only accepting your own limitations and those of others but also recognizing that, in these troubling times we live, every moment counts. So make every moment count positively – choose joy.
