December 13 2024: Don’t Worry, Be Happy!
"It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness" — Charles Spurgeon
Listen to this daily meditation on audio:
An air of optimism should permeate everything we do. But that is not the reality we see around us. So many of our fellows, our friends or acquaintances are pessimistic about the road ahead. Is it that the future really does look bleak? Or are we simply over estimating what could go wrong in the weeks and months ahead? None of us has a crystal ball that can foretell our future. I have a saying that "Crossing bridges before we get to them, is very difficult and stressful." Our imaginations can come up with amazing scenarios of gloom and doom based on nothing but a feeling we have. Generally speaking, the chasm between our feelings about the future and what the future turns out to be is enormous. We have all experienced the fear of what might happen and the reality of what actually happened. If we are honest with ourselves, in the vast majority of instances, the actual scenario was far less ominous than what we had imagined. Why then is it that with this repetitive occurrence of fearing the worst, and yet not actually experiencing the worst has not taught us the valuable lesson that we don't know the future? Perhaps then we should try imagining the best that could happen, instead of the worst that could happen. I wonder if that would make a difference in our anxiety levels about what might happen in the future. It's certainly worth a try. Next time you have a pending event and the fear of what might happen invades your mind, try to imagine what the best possible outcome could be. With practice, you could be on your way to reducing your stress level and also discovering for yourself that most of what we worry about, never happens.
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