Common Denominators

I have lived long enough to have experienced a number of ups and downs and if I were to look back on that I could confidently say that there were common denominators to what made the highs end and the lows too.

What would those be you ask? When times are good we often take it for granted, we don’t appreciate what we have and we sometimes don’t take all the actions we need to take in a timely manner. When times are not so good we tend to focus on what’s bad and take what we have for granted and we tend to put off doing the things we need to do mostly because we tell ourselves a story about how we will do that tomorrow.

Simple solutions always work best; make a gratitude list, read it often and take a few minutes to feel the gratitude. If you aren’t where you want to be and especially if you are experiencing a low; stay too busy to focus on that.

I said that to a friend of mine recently and she replied; Stay busy? Really? Doing what exactly? She said because she is unemployed and broke. But she is missing the big picture. Broke or not, many of the best things in life are free. Today I saw the most beautiful rainbow-and I saw the entire rainbow not just part of it. There was actually two rainbows but I could only see part of the second one. Still, it was totally FREE. And yeah I know that rainbows don’t show up on command but there are many more things out there to keep you busy and keep your mind off of the things you don’t need to be thinking of. Clean your house or your car. Play solitaire, do a crossword or jigsaw puzzle. Take a walk. Volunteer somewhere. Do something that keeps your mind occupied. But also do something everyday that moves you forward. Do something to improve your relationships, to get a job, a promotion, just do something, anything, and everything you can think of to move forward and do that every day and before you know it while you were keeping yourself busy you ended up smack dab in the middle of a ‘high’.