Pages

Sunday, April 21, 2013

The Weekend Philosopher: Your Thoughts Build Your World


During the month of April, I've been doing short posts that pertain to my personal philosophy of life.  We all have a personal philosophy, whether we've taken the time to think about it or not.

We cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can choose our attitude.  Our outlook.  The way we approach obstacles defines who we are.  I've known this for quite some time, though in practice, I haven't always been the best at choosing the positive outlook.  Still, the effort counts for something.

Source: The Idealist Facebook Page
Life will not always be what we want it to be, but when we think negatively about everything that happens to us, our entire world seems that much darker.  I know what it's like to have a bad time of things.  Other than the birth of my youngest son, the year 2011 was rather dark as a whole.  It was difficult to be happy when one bad thing after another kept coming along.  It felt like right as I was about to get back on my feet, something else would come along to knock me back down.

I think that's part of the reason why I started this blog in January 2012.  I wanted to do something positive, because I needed to be active in making things better.  Anyone can have a bad year, but not everyone uses that as motivation for change.  I want to be one of those people who grows stronger through the bad times.  We can't avoid everything bad in this world, and we won't succeed in all we do, but we can build good things in our lives by adopting a more positive outlook.  Instead of seeing a setback as a sign that we can't do something, we can make the choice to see it as an opportunity.

Somehow I feel one of my favorite movie quotes of all time applies here.

"Get busy living, or get busy dying."
-The Shawshank Redemption 

In your life, the choice is yours.  Which do you choose?

1 comment:

  1. You said it! Attitude is everything. We can look for and expect the worst, but that will only make us miserable. And everyone around us.

    ReplyDelete