Posted on by BWThomas

Riding the dragon, facing our challenges, and becoming better, not bitter.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Inside of every problem lies an opportunity. Robert Kiyosaki

I heard a Chinese proverb about riding the dragon, “If you ignore the dragon, it will eat you. If you try to confront the dragon, it will overpower you. If you ride the dragon, you will take advantage of its might and power.”

If we ignore our problems, they do not go away; often, they grow bigger and bigger. We might be better off learning to deal with the forces in our lives rather than fighting them. There may even be something positive in a negative that, if we overcome it, will build a better life.

If we listen to motivational speakers, they often overcame something, which is why they have a motivational message for the rest of us. We might not have a dragon in our lives that will lead us to greatness, but when we see people who have overcome challenges, obstacles, and situations, it makes us believe we, too, can face those challenges and learn to ride the dragon.

If we ignore the dragon, it will eat us. There are many ways this is true; we ignore things at our peril. My book collection has become a dragon, and one of my bookshelves broke under the weight of the books. I can buy another bookshelf, or I can edit my books. Buying more bookshelves for more and more books can become a hoarding situation. What if I limit my books to those that will fit on the four bookshelves in the den? Limiting our tendencies to excess might be one way to tame our dragon.

If we try to confront the dragon, it will overpower us. This might be about challenging powerful forces without a strategy, or being the lone voice trying to change things.

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. Confucius

Learning to ride the dragon so we have access to its might and power is a challenge, but what if it’s possible?

Poverty, and all the isms are dragons, and many people overcome obstacles in their lives to build a life no one thought they could build. How often do we see people living in easy situations, wallow in their ease, and not do much with their lives, while someone with something to overcome overcomes it and soars, as if on the wings of a dragon?

Ignoring what needs to be dealt with might be one of the worst things we do in our lives. Small problems ignored become big problems, and one of the best ways to build a good life is to look after the small things. What if not looking after the small things is what leads to a lesser life? Weeds in the garden, clutter, and overspending all seem like problems that start small but can overwhelm us.

But what of those problems that are too big or too powerful to control? AI and robotics seem like dragons we’ll need to learn to ride. There are two ways to deal with a dragon: one way, you ride it, harnessing the power; the other way, you kill it. How can we learn to ride the dragons in our lives, political dragons, economic dragons, social dragons, and personal dragons?

Maybe we thought slaying dragons would make us powerful, but what if riding dragons is where the real power lies, and the more we confront the challenges in front of us, the smaller they become?

You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory. J. Donald Walters

You’re trying to escape from your difficulties, and there never is any escape from difficulties, never. They have to be faced and fought. Enid Blyton

Confronting problems is choosing to suffer now in the hope of future gratification rather than choosing to continue present gratification in the hope that future suffering will not be necessary. M. Scott Peck

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

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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 purchase price.

Posted on by BWThomas

Waiting, waffling, and wondering aren’t how we build a good life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. Tony Robbins

In life, it isn’t just what happens, it’s when it happens. For instance, if you have a million dollars and get an eight percent return, you can’t figure out how that will play out by calculating a million dollars by eight percent per year, because you don’t know when the gains and losses will occur, which affect the actual return. The sequence of returns, when we get the ups and downs, will affect whether a million dollars at eight percent with a forty thousand per year withdrawal will have us broke in less than twenty years, or have ten million after forty years.

We have to live life, take the chances, and see where it goes. How many people, who finally decide to get married, start a business, have kids, or do something else they’ve wanted to do, wish they’d started sooner? There is only so much preparation one can do before we need to get on with the business of life.

Some of us are thinking we’ll wait one more year, but what do we think we will get for waiting? One more year of waiting to get married might mean it’s harder to have children, buy a house, or make decisions to build the best life. One more year waiting to retire might mean taking the long-awaited adventures without our partner, or not being able to take them at all. Life waits for no one; we need to seize our moments.

My husband and I found each other at age twenty-one, but we didn’t get married until we were twenty-seven. How might our lives have progressed if we’d made decisions earlier? House prices more than doubled in the time we were sitting on the fence.

I see how much energy it takes to look after grandchildren. We don’t become more patient and fun as we get older, and what if I’d become a grandma in my fifties instead of my sixties? My four-year-old grandson brings his chocolate milk and says, “Let’s do a cheer.” Then he hugs me and says, “I love you, Grandma.” He then goes to his Grandpa and repeats the process. These are precious moments, and I am blessed to have them in my life.

Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you make the decision right. Phil McGraw

Sometimes I think, what if I had waited too long, I would have missed all this. My son says he is surprised by how much we enjoy our grandchildren, and he might be surprised by how much his sister, his wife’s sister, and husbands are enjoying having kids. He’s missing out, and he knows it.

Life is a series of choices; we can’t do everything, but we need to make decisions to give us choices about the important things. Sometimes I think making a decision is the hardest thing. Deciding for one thing, one person, one house, one business, means saying no to all the other potential choices. Too much choice can cripple us, and if we wait too long to make a choice, there are no choices left to make.

I’ve waffled over choices throughout my life; looking back, I wish I’d had the courage to make a decision and stick to it. We won’t get everything right, and maybe that is where I’m making a mistake. Life is good, but looking back, some better choices would have made it even better.

The question isn’t what choices I would change if I could go back; the question is, what choices do I have to make now? Do we sometimes not recognize the choices we had until we look back? The time for action is always now; there is no other time to make a choice. Waiting, waffling, and wondering aren’t how we build a good life. We might need to correct our course, but we can only do so once we are on it.

When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier. Roy E. Disney

Life is a chess match. Every decision that you make has a consequence to it. P.K. Subben

You cannot make progress without making decisions. Jim Rohn

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.

Posted on by BWThomas

What if we kept our opinions to ourselves and still worked hard to build a better society?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Choose the positive. You have choices, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success. Bruce lee

What if I gave up my strongest political opinions or at least kept them to myself? What would that do for my relationships? What would we have to talk about if we didn’t talk about what is wrong with… How would I handle it when uncomfortable conversations come up, some people think I am on the wrong side of?

Does it seem like we don’t care if we don’t obsess about what we can’t change? But what if we don’t like the direction things are going in; shouldn’t we stand up and speak out? I don’t know, but I do know arguing about what is wrong in the world, with those we love, doesn’t work. I’m not sure what works. Being on the same side would be easier, but if we don’t see things the same way, we don’t think things mean the same thing, and we aren’t afraid of the same outcomes, how do we handle it?

How do we build a society that is as fair to everyone who is part of it? What does fair look like? It’s fair when everyone has nothing! Is that the kind of fair some want us to move toward? We’ll never have the kind of fair where everyone is rich and powerful, because those who can build something from nothing are a rare breed.

Never let a bad situation bring out the worst in you. Choose to stay positive and be the strong person that God created you to be! Unknown

Is it fair to want to hold onto what we have in Canada when parts of the world have it so much worse?  Should people wanting to tear things down have as much power as those who want to build?

Some people ask if democracy works when diverse groups want different things, and all any group needs to take control is a larger population than the groups they want to control.

With the internet, we have ideas flowing; some ideas are terrifying, others merely disturbing. What will happen as these ideas get considered by the general public?

Keeping my opinions to myself is hard, but do I need to comment on everything?

Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. Plato

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart. Johann Wolfgang

No one else can choose your attitude for you. Your perspective and choice of attitude gives you the power to be in control. Irene Dunlap

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

To subscribe, comment, 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.