Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursdays – Happy Valentine’s Day

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Challenges, God, Grateful, Loved, Satisfied, Thankful, Valentine's Day

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”―Seneca

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you that celebrate. Today is the day we celebrate our loved ones. It is a day of delivering cards, candies, and taking the time to express our gratitude to the one’s we love.

How opportune that Valentine’s Day aligns with my Thankful Thursday posts. I am grateful for my wife. I love her beyond words. She is the one who takes care of me when I’m sick. She laughs with me, cries with me, and shares the burden of life with me. I am grateful she chose me to live her life with. I am eternally grateful for my wife.

I am also thankful for the new followers this week. I hope my blog is meeting your expectations. If you’re new, today is the one day a week I express my gratitude publicly for the things I have. We all have something to be grateful for. I use Thursdays to express my gratitude publicly to remind you you have something to be grateful for.

I am grateful for life’s challenges. Challenges provide us with the opportunity to solve problems. Challenges keep things interesting. Challenges make us stronger and more resilient.

I am grateful for my family and friends. I am grateful for good health. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend time with my folks are in their late seventies and enjoy their senior years with them. I am grateful for the morning conversations over coffee, talking about the news of the day, family memories, or what we will do today.

I am grateful for health. I am grateful that I can go to the gym and push myself beyond my limits every day. I am grateful for the access I have to good food. I am grateful for the technology we have available to us that allows me to learn new things, read new books, listen to music, play the games I like, and to create.

I am grateful for my new followers and the conversations I have with them. I am grateful for the ability to create a blog that people enjoy.

I am grateful for this life. It is an adventure that keeps me going, provides a multitude of opportunities, and challenges me daily.

I am grateful for God’s love. A love that transcends all and provides me with a feeling I am never alone.

I am grateful.

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursdays

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Challenges, Experience, Gratitude, improvement, Learning, Opposites, Paradox, Thanks, Travis Barker

“Thank you for life, and all the little ups and downs that make it worth living.” – Travis Barker

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/travis_barker_468582?src=t_thankful

I am grateful for this life. A life filled with adventure, love, learning, and interacting with others. I am grateful for the problems, challenges, sorrows, and mistakes. I am grateful for the teachers and mentors I have benefited from. I am grateful for everything this life has provided to me. Without the challenges, life would be boring.

Think about your life for a moment. How can you be happy without the ability to be sad? How can you be healthy without the ability to be sick? How can you be bored without the ability to be engaged?

We live in a world that is composed of opposites and paradoxes. These opposites are necessary for our existence. Without the valleys there would be no mountains. Without heat there would not be cold. Without problems there would be no solutions.

I am grateful for change. Without change life would be static. There would be no growth, no learning, no experiences worth our while. The changes that come in our lives make life interesting. They keep us on our toes. They spurn learning, particularly when life tosses us an unpleasant surprise.

Think about the last time you were sick. When you get better you cherish the health that returns. Think about the last time you lost a loved one. When you find a new partner, pet, or friend you cherish that relationship more because you have felt loneliness, emptiness, and sorrow.

Think about when you learned the most. It is likely a time of stress, peril, and uncertainty. Without the opposites that are ever-present in our lives, we would have nothing to compare the good times with. They would all just be. This would cause problems because our minds could not grasp good or bad, up or down, light or dark. We need change. We need the opposites. We need the ups and downs of life.

Each year around this time, I contemplate my life. I look at past mistakes. I look at past victories. I look at my experiences. Some of these experiences have been unpleasant. Some of these experiences have been wonderful. Some of these experiences have been horrible. Some of these experiences have been healing. With each experience we go through we come out of them stronger, wiser, and more loving.

Why is the world set up this way? Why are we here? We are here to learn how to give love and receive love. We are here to become stronger spiritually. We are here to contribute to one another and participate in life. Your life is about learning, teaching, communicating, and contributing. Right now, you are the strongest and best you have ever been.

I invite you to do the same thing I am doing. Contemplate your life. Find those time periods where you had great success. Find the times your life was turned inside out. Look for patterns. You’ll be amazed when you see how each problem or challenge you faced made you stronger and put you in a situation that was better than the situation you were in previously.

Once you have completed this exercise, write down the things you have learned. Write down the things you have done. Write down the things you would like to do. Then get around to doing them. Live a life of meaning, purpose, and achievement. What else do you have to do?

I hope you are having a great time this year. I hope you have some goals you are committed to. I hope you are laying the plans for a great 2019. I wish all of you well on your journey this year.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

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Challenges, Guidelines, Paradigm Shift, Paradigms, Problems, Robert H. Schuller, Signs, Trials

Image credit: http://www.brainyquote.com

I attend a monthly book discussion. This group discusses religious books and we interact with one another for about an hour about what we gained from the readings we have completed prior to the meeting. Today, we had a conversation about the challenges and trials each of us runs into throughout our lives.

One of my colleagues spoke up and said, “I think it is our mindset that causes the trouble. Some people may think that things are happening to them, while other people think things happen for them.” By changing that one word, problems, challenges, and trials all take on a whole new meaning. What if all of our problems, trials, and challenges happened for us and not to us. Something for you to think about.

This week is filled with working out, reading, writing, and interacting. From time-to-time I find myself stuck or waffling about trying to figure out how to move forward with one of my goals. The one I always find the most difficult is weight loss. So, yet again, I am tweaking my daily schedule to find that new thing I can do to move forward.

I finished the Kris Gethin’s 4-week-2-Shred program and lost some weight but not as much as I would like to. So, it’s off to a new program called Jim Stoppani’s Shortcut to Strength. I’m looking forward to this one.

I am at a point in my life that I consider anything that happens to me as something happening for me. We are all here in this lifetime to learn—to be better than we have been before. As our proficiency improves in one area the game changes to hit us with a previously conquered challenge and introduce a new challenge we must face to attain that next step forward.

The way we look at our world can cause us to be uplifted or degraded. What way would you like to look at the world? Are your problems outside of you, caused by other things and people, or are your problems inside you, caused by you and no one else? Do things happen for you or to you? These questions can only be answered by you.

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Robert H. Schuller Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 8, 2018, from BrainyQuote.com Website: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/robert_h_schuller_107067

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Sea of Change

Tags

Challenges, change, Consistency, Determination, Persistence

“Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” – African Proverb

As we commence in the New Year, this is a particularly relevant quote. We do not get better when things are easy. It is the challenges we face, the hardships, the difficulties, the unexpected problems that truly contribute to our development. Without challenges, we stagnate and become complacent. We enjoy the lull as long as it lasts, only to be disrupted by yet another problem we did not foresee.

Embrace problems. Embrace challenges. Embrace difficulty. They are all part of the grand scheme of things and truly make life worth living. Without problems, challenges or difficulties life would be boring right? Without problems, challenges or difficulties the victories we achieve would be empty.

Writing, drawing, music are all creative endeavors. They all require practice, patience, and a methodical means of putting them together. The book begins with one sentence, the drawing with one stroke of a pen or pencil, the music with one note. The sentences, strokes, and notes come together in a unique voice only known by the creator.

Creation is difficult work. It requires patience, contemplation, and an innate ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Patience is probably the most important aspect of creation because you can’t rush creativity. Creativity visits us and gives us yet one more idea to put in place, the final result being the novel, poem, or tune.

As each of you pursues your goals this year, take time to realize that your path to a goal’s achievement will not be a straight one. It will require you to detour around obstacles, learn new things about yourself, and deal with the challenges inherent in the goal you have set for yourself.

If you’re looking to lose weight, you’ll deal with the pain of hunger, sore muscles, and temptation after temptation. If you’re looking to write a book, you’ll deal with writer’s block, the challenge of self-editing and rewriting tasks, and the self-doubt that arises whenever we create anything for others to read or listen to. Whatever goal you have set for yourself, there will be a price to pay for the goal’s achievement. We must pay for what we receive. There are no shortcuts.

As you embark on your New Year, keep these things close to your heart. Goals are achieved by those who are persistent, consistent, and willing to pay the price for the goals they have set for themselves. Goals are achieved by those who are willing to face challenges and overcome them. Goals are achieved by remaining focused on their achievement despite the numerous distractions that raise their heads.

I wish each of you a terrific New Year and hope the seas you travel this year to attain your goals are as rough as they need to be to help you make a permanent and beneficial change in your life.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote

Tags

Challenges, Difficulties, Joseph B. Wirthlin, Pragmatism, Suffering

Today’s Quote

“You can find peace amidst the storms that threaten you.” – Joseph B. Wirthlin

All of us experience difficulties from time to time. These difficulties can range from a minor nuisance to a devastating tragedy. In most cases our emotions get the better of us, complicating the situation even further.

Have you ever heard a statement that revolves around being so (whatever the emotion) that they couldn’t think? This is exactly what happens each time our emotions get the best of us.

I do not have any suggestions as to how you personally deal with these things. All I can tell you is about my personal experience. It is simple: Do the best you can with what you have and pass off your worries to God.

I’ve found that when I let go of any attachment I have to a particular outcome, along with the subsequent worry about the future when trouble comes is very calming. After trying this a few times, I also found that I suffered less. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. The only thing you control is how you react to these difficulties.

I live by two discovered truths:

1. Everything is in its rightful place in the worlds of God.
2. God will never give you more than you can handle.

Until next time…

Dave