Sometimes at night I drink tea to try to relax before turning in. I enjoy the Yogi brand teas as they have a decent flavor that I usually don't need to doctor up with sugar, etc. The thing I like the most about them though are the sayings on the ends of the strings of each tea-bag.
Tonight my tea had one of those sayings that could not have come at a better time. "Appreciate yourself and honor your soul." Wow! What a powerful statement...honor your soul. This made me think back to yesterday and part of today.
I have been striving for awhile to maintain a positive outlook on virtually everything, and not feed into negativity. However I still falter at this, and yesterday it seemed like nothing would go right. I said the thing that you should never say. Actually I may have shouted it along with a couple of colorful words. "I hate my life!"
Even as I said it and felt the anger swell even more, I knew that this was not going to help things. In fact, that kind of attitude usually only tends to escalate a situation from bad to worse almost like a domino effect. I even said to myself almost immediately after the fact that I don't hate my life, I just don't love everything that happens.
By this time it was pouring rain, getting harder to see, and I realized that a semi-truck was very close and almost hit me in the back on the highway going about 70 m.p.h. or so. I got this image in my mind of cars flying, my car getting smashed against the side, you name it. My mind could have been a scene out of "Final Destination" for about five seconds.
This jolted me back to reality and I started thinking about my kids and how much I love them, difficulties and all. Then I started thinking about the friends in my life who are the closest to me, and just began going down the list of things to be grateful for.
The ability to continue my education was high on the list after the basics that I have taken for granted such as eye-sight, food and warmth on a cold night.
I was talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago about the negativity that some people seem to hold on to for whatever reason. She brought up a good point and basically said that we should all think about what tomorrow would be like if we didn't have what we have today. She added that if she didn't have sheets on her bed tomorrow, she would notice. Amen to that!
Things aren't perfect by any means, but I think if I continue on my path of trying to maintain a positive outlook, they will eventually be pretty darn close. Perfection is all perception anyway right?
