“You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that. We think so often that we are helpless, but we’re not. We always have the power of our minds…Claim and consciously use your power.”― Louise L. Hay
“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?
No, thank you,’ he will think. ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.”― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
The pessimist tears down.
The optimist, who knows all that the pessimist knows, decides to respond a different way.
Rather than complaint, criticism, complacency, lament, self-pity.
The optimist builds, creates, contributes, unites, keeps going despite circumstances and odds.
Hatred and division weaken, diminish, paralyze.
Love is hard and yet proves again and again to be the only viable answer and call
Psychiatrist and neurologist, Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who lost his family in concentration camps wrote the pivotal book Man’s Search for Meaning in 9 days. (Read the book)
The apostle Paul wrote five of his thirteen letters from within a Roman jail cell.
The cloud of witnesses who came before and who are among us today showing the way.
Reminding us that in the very midst of our circumstances of blessings and losses that love, light, joy, contentment comes from within.
Life is moving swiftly and will surely take a sharp turn with an unexpected punch in the face around the corner.
It is in our response where our power lies.
Be an “naïve” optimist.
Reflect, grieve, rest then build, carry on, and love in thoughts, words, actions most of all.
Cast light.
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
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