Posted on by BWThomas

Getting what we want is easy; knowing what we want is hard.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. Dale Carnegie

Getting what we want is easy; knowing what we want is hard. I heard this on a podcast, not sure who said it. I watch our fifteen-month-old granddaughter ask for what she wants by pointing and making a sound. Sometimes the sound is close to what she wants, like whawha for water, but other times we look in the general direction to see what she’s pointing at and try to figure out what she wants.

Are we still pointing at what we want, do we give up wanting, or give up clarifying what we want because of general dissatisfaction about everything? Getting what we want might take a bit of work, determination, and time, but what does not knowing what we want cost us?

This morning, an article on the computer is titled, “I waited until the kids grew up to get a divorce and wasted my life.” I don’t know if it is a man or a woman saying this, but it sounds sad. It could be they skipped another divorce, it could be they are estranged from their children anyway, and wonder why they sacrificed those years for kids who don’t appreciate the sacrifice. It could be that no matter what choice they made, they wouldn’t be happy, because they haven’t figured out what makes them happy. Chasing happiness seems futile; it’s an inside job. Depending on someone else for our happiness doesn’t seem like a good way to live.

Does developing a grateful attitude help us build a better life? Perhaps the article should have been titled, “I waited for the kids to grow up, now divorced, and I’m looking forward to this next chapter in my life.” It sounds better to me; it sounds like someone who knew what they wanted, to raise their kids, before they moved on.

True power arises in knowing what you want. Knowing what you don’t want, expressing it clearly and lovingly without attachment to the outcome. Leonard Jacobson

How often do we think, if I were ten or twenty years younger, I’d…? But in ten or twenty years, we might be saying the same thing. At some point, we need to go after the thing we want, or we have to admit we don’t really want it. Maybe it’s something that would be nice to have, or it was someone else’s goal for us, and maybe we’ve embellished the goal, but if we peel back the layers, we can still go after the essence of the goal.

Sometimes we want what we think reaching that goal would give us. We wanted accolades, fame, respect, an elevated life, something more than what is… and that might be what we can’t put our finger on. What is ‘the more’, we are always seeking? When will more be enough, or will more never be enough?

If we have a hole in our life, what is it that’s missing? Can we find a way to bring something into our lives to make it fuller, rounder, and more impactful? Is there someone we can help? Can we join a group of like-minded people? If we make a difference in someone else’s life, will it make a difference in our own?

Parenting is a sacrificial investment, and children might not appreciate the sacrifices parents made, but if we’ve prepared them to make sacrifices for their own children, and look at our investment as a worthy one, even if we aren’t as happy as we’d like to be, we might feel a glow of contentment. We might think selfish choices give us more happiness in the short term, but in the long term, the unselfish choices might be what build a good life. Steadfastness and seeing something through to the end might be how to build a life we are proud of.

At a funeral, everyone commented on the deceased’s devotion to his wife of not quite fifty years. They were a devoted couple, which doesn’t mean they didn’t have their ups and downs, I’m sure, like all couples they did, but they loved each other throughout their lives together, and it was apparent to all. God was the centre of their lives, is that the hole many are looking to fill?

Choices we make will impact our lives; being grateful for what we have and choosing well might be what makes a great life. What do we want, what are we willing to say out loud, and what desires do we keep hidden? If we don’t acknowledge what we want, how will we ever get it?

The hardest thing about getting what you want is knowing what to do with it. Patrick Hennessey

When you know what you want, and you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it. Jim Rohn

If you don’t know what you want, you’ll probably never get it. Unknown

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more, and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale.

Posted on by BWThomas

Choose love over significance and purpose over happiness to build the life of your dreams.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Life is the flower for which love is the honey. Victor Hugo

Love or significance, happiness or purpose, don’t we want it all, and isn’t that what we were brought up to believe? Trying to find happiness without purpose might be no better than trying to find significance without love.

I watched a movie where the heroine had the best job in the world, she’s a travel writer, and some days she wants to commit suicide. She has holidaying down pat, but she doesn’t have the life people usually take a vacation from.

Love, we all want it, but we can fall into a trap thinking getting married and having children isn’t exciting, isn’t using all of our potential, isn’t a big enough life. What if turning our nose up at love, marriage, and children is turning our nose up at the best life has to offer?  What if this is where real love, purpose, passion, and significance exist?

One of the things we don’t do, or maybe some do, is try to think about the person we’ll be down the road, and what they might have wanted us to do. If, when we were in our twenties, we thought about what our choices would mean when we were in our thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and older, we might make choices to benefit our future self.

Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It’s the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It’s worthy of all the hullabaloo. Cheryl Strayed

What choices can we make to benefit our future self, and are we making them? How do we build a life that works for us, our families, and our society? How do we make the choices that build a good life, and how do we correct if we’ve taken a wrong path?

I watch my daughter come home from work, her daughter’s face lights up as she walks in the door. If she takes too long or goes to the bathroom without first coming to get her daughter, her daughter’s face crumples in tears. Being a mother and father of young children is incredibly demanding, but it is also the most rewarding.

This morning, my grandson was up at four am, he gets to come to the airport and pick up his great-aunt today. We dropped her off at six am ten days ago, but we said it was too early for him to come with us. Do we still get joy from little things? Baking cookies is an adventure when you’re three, making snow angels in the snow, and so many small and mundane things we take for granted.

It takes so little to put a smile on a child’s face. When did we get so jaded? Enjoying the small moments in life is part of living a good life. If we can smile at the little things, make an effort to reach out to someone, move our bodies and feed them well, think good thoughts, and read or listen to good books or podcasts, we can make the most of the life we have. Can we live with passion, purpose, spreading love, and finding significance in how we impact others?

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. Buddha

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. Lao Tsu

The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all laws. Reinhold Niebuhr

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more, and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

Tos subscribe, comment, and see categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Anxiety and worry don’t build a good life; habits, action, and gratitude do.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Our anxiety doesn’t come from thinking about the future but from wanting to control it. Kahlil Gibran

How does fear play out in our lives? I couldn’t get up this morning because I wrestled with thoughts about a future that hasn’t unfolded yet. Worrying about diverse groups not getting along and fracturing life as I’ve known it, worrying about the leadership of another country and what it might do to mine, and worrying about aging relatives. All of these worries are out of my control, and what I can do something about, I was too tired to do, because I spent all night worrying about what I can’t control.

What can we control? What we eat, what we think, exercise, how we interact with others, our gratitude for what we have, and how we spend the resources we possess. Do we worry as much about the things we can control as about the things we can’t?

We worry about who moves in across the street, even if we never spoke to the occupants who used to live there. What would life look like if we all looked after the little things that become big things? What if we quit envying what others have and worked hard to build a good life for ourselves? If we think it is too late to do something, we might watch someone else and wonder how they did it.

Sometimes I think we know too much about what won’t work, and so it doesn’t work, but watch people who didn’t know they couldn’t change things do exactly that. We don’t try to do things we know we can’t do, but where did this knowledge come from? Learned helplessness is a big deal; we have to watch we don’t let things we think we know work against us.

One of the reasons I love being a member of Toastmasters is that everyone who joins wants to improve something, and watching them improve makes us know we can improve too. It isn’t only speaking; once we start improving in one area of our life, we can see other areas we can make an effort in.

Never mistake the power of influence. Jim Rohn

It’s a bit like decluttering; we can be overwhelmed by how things have piled up, but if we pick a corner and clear it out, we can look at another corner and know it will look better too, and bit by bit we can take back our space. Everything in life can be improved, and sometimes what most needs improvement is our attitude.

What if every situation in our lives can teach us something? What if controlling ourselves, instead of trying to control others or events outside our sphere of influence, is where our power lies?

Is this the year we take control of things inside our sphere of influence and make them better? Does making an effort to talk to people create a better and friendlier society? Decluttering our space, exercising, and eating better make us healthier. Will focusing on gratitude for what we have, instead of on what we lack, build a better life and help us see opportunities in front of us?

What can we do to make our lives and those around us better? If someone sees us taking control, will they realize they can take control, too? Is there a fine line between help and control? We can help others to help themselves, but can too much help be crippling? How do we figure out whether we are helping or hindering others, especially those we love the most?

Are we listening to people tell us how to think instead of thinking for ourselves? Are we fact-checking what we hear at least a little bit instead of letting fear-mongers make us quake and feel powerless? What can we do to fix some of the little things, which will fix some of the big things?

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well. John Marshall

Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff. S. E. Hinton

Choose your habits well. Habit is probably the most powerful tool in your brain’s toolbox. Ray Dalio

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more, and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books. Special thanks to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Does our life call out for small or big changes?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Change your thoughts and you change your world. Norman Vincent Peale

Yesterday, my Grandson said my face is cracked. When we reach the point in life, our grandson says we have a cracked face. What can we do about it?

Have I been relaxing a bit too much, not getting ready for the day, and skipping makeup? Aging is a natural part of life, and we need to embrace it because it’s inevitable. Moms and Grandmas will have their flaws pointed out by those they love the most. Mom’s two oldest daughters told her she was old when she was about twenty-eight.

There are things we can’t fix, but there might be changes we can make. I’ve spent my life tweaking things, and I think tweaking things helps, but there might be times when big changes are needed.  

Ramit Sethi tells us that too often we spin our wheels trying to fix the system, when what we might need to do is overhaul the system.

How do we know if we can tweak something, or if a big change is what we need? Do we sometimes go for the big overhaul when we didn’t need to be that drastic, or try to tweak when our life calls out for big change?

I’m thinking of this as I watch videos of people discussing grey divorce, which seems drastic, and unless one has huge financial reserves, could be a significant mistake. Am I wrong in thinking that if you could live with someone for thirty years, why jump ship now? Take this job or marriage and shove it might not be the best decision. They are big gestures, but blowing up our lives because we need some change doesn’t mean we should dump everything and start over.

Is “I’m not happy” a reason to end a marriage? Happiness is fleeting, an inside job, and our spouse doesn’t make us happy. If we feel we need more in our lives, what do we need? It probably isn’t a new spouse, even though the excitement might feel good for a while. Wouldn’t a new spouse become an old spouse pretty quickly?

Can we fall in love with our old spouse again? Can we see what we saw in them so many years ago, before the mortgage, kids, bills, and responsibilities piled up? Who were we when we met, when a look across a room held so much promise? Has discontent with ourselves spilled over into discontent with them? What can we do to improve our lives without blowing it up? How can we make ourselves happy, what used to make our hearts sing? Where did we like to go, what did we like to experience, and can we bring it back into our lives?

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. William Shakespeare

One of the joys in life is sitting at the table, holding our grandchildren, and sharing a laugh over their antics. It’s a small thing, but a lot of small things lead to a good life. We might long for grand gestures, but maybe they are overrated, and maybe the small things that any couple can share are underrated. How often have we been touched by a commercial that captures small moments? Tim Horton’s commercials come to mind.

There are also big moments; a friend and her husband celebrate the arrival of a long-awaited grandchild. If there weren’t tears in their eyes, I’d be shocked. There are tears in mine, as I think about it.

We have cataclysmic shifts in our lives; a friend lost her husband before Christmas. She’s ninety-four and doesn’t know how she’ll go on without him. Sometimes we have to deal with what happens, and sometimes we get to choose what happens.

As we take stock of where we are and what is possible, do we need to choose wisely? Can we always make something better or worse, even if all we can change is our attitude?

The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude. Oprah Winfrey

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Maya Angelou

When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves. Viktor Frankl

Thank you for reading this post. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.