It's Your Choice~

In my older than dirt years, I have learned a lot of things. One thing I learned is that it is up to us to make our own happiness. It is up to us how our day goes.

image from notsalmon.com

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And quess what they have planned for you? Not much.”

Jim Rohn

Son and I started off our morning sort of rough. For me, I had been up most of the night with high pain but did manage to get a few hours sleep. For son, it was struggling with a bad back and learning how to deal with chronic pain. He is like so many who begin to have lots of pain and he reverts to anger and grumpiness and wanting everyone around him to feel as bad as he does.  I said this to him in a calm soothing voice.

“My pain is off the hook today and yet I am doing, I am smiling and I am enjoying Jack and the morning coffee. That is my choice. You are hurting bad and you are angry, grumpy and snarling. That is your choice. The thing to remember is that we all have a choice…and make sure and pick the choice that does NOT increase your pain. Attitude with pain is everything. If you have a bad attitude, you only make your pain worse. If you have a good attitude and look for something to make you smile, the natural endorphins in our body help us with the pain. But, it is all about CHOICE son. Always try to choose for the positive. Your choice so far this morning is making your pain worse and making me wish I was in another room.”

My son looked at me, and stood there a minute and I could tell he was thinking. Suddenly, my son gets up, pets the dog and starts helping me finish cleaning up in the kitchen and then started vacuuming. We turned music on and the more he moved, the more he started smiling. It is a choice and it is our choice.

All of life is choices and most of them are OUR choice. It is our choice of how we feel about ourselves each day.  Yes, some of us deal with pain and loss, but what we do with that pain and loss is up to us. Life gives us only so much time and so in making choices about how we feel and about life, we have to make sure and choose things that will make our lives happier and more full.

image from girlfromthehills.wordpress.com

Choosing to be more positive, to get up and move even when we don’t want to, to smile and laugh, to say no when we don’t want to do something, to not feel guilty just because someone tries to make us feel that way, to realize that we have to put ourselves on the top of the list…all of these things lead to a happier life. My friend Sherry often says “put on your own oxygen first and then you can help others.”

It is a choice to look in the mirror and know who we are. We must never ever view ourselves by what others view us. Their view may be distorted. And if we don’t treat ourselves right or set standards of what we will accept others do to us, then how will they know what we will accept?

“It is up to us, how people treat us… we must treat ourselves well and this in turn teaches others how to treat us as well.”

~DRSES~

It is our choice to know that we have a right to an opinion and it is ok for others to disagree. It does not make me wrong and them right or them wrong and me right. It just makes us have different opinions.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

And it is our choice to decide that we can do. Often we choose to sit back and tell ourselves that we can’t do this or that when in reality…we can. Son was in one of those moods where he felt like he could not do anything and didn’t want to try. After we talked, he amazed even himself with the things he got accomplished today and even more with how cheerful he felt.

image from jym.hubpages.com

The doctor on the other side of the mountain did not give me portable oxygen because he said I could not walk on these crutches, with a leg brace and wear the back pack. And I believed him. That was my fault and my choice. And you know what…I CAN walk with these forearm crutches, wearing a leg brace AND wear the oxygen back pack. And that is my choice now.

People are like stained-glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. 

~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Find that happy place inside and let it shine out and light up the world. For what you shine, shines on someone else and helps them to shine.

Choose to:

image from content.unity.org

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