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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Keys to happiness: Marcus Aurelius Quote on Positive Thinking


"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking."


by Marcus Aurelius


Do you have a tendency to see a glass half empty or half full? How you see that glass determines how you percieve your world. If we look at everything from a negative perspective, most things in our lives are going to turn out negative, and we will continue to attract negative experiences into our lives. If we choose to look at our experiences as positive, we will start to attract good into our lives. Everything is essentially neutral, it's how we view things that causes an experience to be either good or bad. We can decide to put either a positive or negative spin on everything we encounter in life, and when we do, even something that is quite obviously negative can be viewed as a positive. We learn from even those things that challenge us.

It all begins with our thoughts, and remember- a thought can be changed.


SOLUTIONS FOR NEGATIVE THINKING:

Try to find the lesson in every challenging situation; you will find there is always something wonderful to learn from it.

Look for something good in every experience. There will always be something positive.


If you have a negative thought, immediately replace that thought with a positive one. It's easier than you think.

Compare yourself to someone worse off than you. That always puts things into perspective.

Give all the negativity up to God to handle, because there is nothing too hard for God to handle.

4 comments:

Z said...

Excellent post....that replacement of a positive thought for the ever present negative one especially works.
Beautiful photo! Thanks for the great advice. I tend to look for places to hang black crepe paper, but I'm getting better! You can change, you're right!

Incognito said...

Thanks Miss Z! It takes hard work, and sometimes many years, but change is possible, if one truly wants to change. I am proof positive of that. :-)

Anonymous said...

One more that I find really works: See yourself as a postivity-filled, smiling, up-beat person, and you will unconcsiously become one. All it takes is to frequently imagine it-- with clear mental pictures and EMOTION-- and it will come about, fairly rapidly. As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.

Incognito said...

ZACK: It is amazing how our thoughts can change our lives, in both a positive and negative manner. And visualizing something can create it.
There's a great little booklet by James Allen entitled "As A Man Thinketh", all about changing our thoughtforms.