339 I Change My Misfortunes By Rising Above Them December 2017 Tuesday Week 2

Tag Me Tuesdays-#339  December 5 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast I Change My Misfortunes By Rising Above Them Marcus Aurelius said, “Reject your sense of injury, and the injury disappears.” Our society has become too litigious. We want to find someone to blame for what’s wrong with our lives. If there’s an issue, we want to blame our mothers and fathers for how they raised us; we want to blame our bosses or our work environment for our sense of feeling trapped and unhappy; and we want to find someone, anyone, who’s at fault for our misfortunes in life. Now I’m not saying that our parents may not have harmed us when growing up. I’ve had the fortune of having very loving parents, where others have had hells I cannot even imagine…but what I’m trying to relay to the masses, is that there comes a time when we must grow up. There comes a time when we have the chance to stop blaming others and to take ownership of our lives to direct them towards how we’d like them to be. It’s easy to put the blame elsewhere. The reason being is we don’t have to do the hard work then. We don’t have to change. It’s easier to play the victim, to live in self-pity and misery, than to put in the effort to move forward no matter how hard it may be. And it will be hard, because you’ll be working to overturn habits that’ve been with you a long time. But it’s doable, and worth every moment of it. People will wrong you, and I want to believe that most won’t do it on purpose of hurting you. They’re hurting inside themselves, and they can’t help but hurt others because they don’t even know what they’re doing. It’s become more and more evident to me just perusing today’s social media posts. Everyone has a voice, and sometimes the loudest voices are the ones complaining all the time. And while it gets annoying hearing about the small problems that people have, while they’re missing the amazing parts already in their life, I’m reminded that they’re unaware. The ones playing the games usually are unaware of the game they play. They are unaware there is another way to live, and so they live in their misery spreading it unconsciously to everyone they come in contact with. If you met ten people today, I bet you would only meet 1 bad egg in the bunch. And that’s what we do, we focus on the one who’s wronged us…forgetting about the other 90% who are good people and brought something worthwhile into our lives, no matter how big or small. We forget the 90% of great things already happening in our lives to focus on that one small thing that’s annoying us. And it’s not that you can’t look at negative things, but people overly focus on them, and sometimes they even fabricate the hurt, and then it’s all they see. They create a filter lens for their eyes and mind to be continually finding negatives and then magnifying them. It gives them the excuse to never be the one at fault. But living that way keeps us from owning our lives. So the questions I want to ask all of us, myself included—I definitely need to be reminded of this: Do you want to darken the world by exploiting everything that has gone wrong, or do you want to see the negative and move on from it immediately? Do you want to find the beauty behind the negative and create another pathway in your life? Think of it like this: flying wasn’t invented by focusing on staying on the ground, boats weren’t invented by focusing on the law of sinking, and problems weren’t solved focusing on how things could go even more wrong—they changed by focusing on a solution. The continual focus upon our injuries keep us blinded, and as Marcus said, “when you reject your sense of injury, the injury disappears.” So let us stop blaming the world for our problems, and let us see the solutions and the visualization of the people we want to become…and let us be willing to work towards that. There’s a quote I like that gets misattributed to Socrates. Dan Millman wrote a book called The Peaceful Warrior, and in the book the main character meets a mentor and nicknames him Socrates. And that’s where the confusion comes into who really said this famous quote. So I’ll put the credit where it’s due as Dan Millman wrote that: “The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” So let us let go of the blame, the hurt, the pains that are holding us back, and the minor annoyances that are not serving us. Let us put our energy and focus on building the new. Let us put our focus on building the things that make us better. We can blame everything and everyone why we are the way we are, why the world is the way it is…or we can focus differently and change not only the way we see the world, but adjust how we move forward in the world…by changing ourselves first to change it. Today’s Personal Commitment:I challenge you to go one day without complaining. I know our mind will find a problem to complain about, but it’s not those random thoughts that pop into your mind…it’s more about if you are focusing on complaining about something. I read a book awhile back by Emett Fox, and he had the challenge of going seven days without complaining. If you focused on a complaint, you would have to start over again on day one. I did this for about three months until I finally gave up. The most days I went without focusing on a complaint was four days. It’s a hard task. So see if you can go seven days without focusing on complaining. I know it will change your life. I Change My Misfortunes By Rising Above Them     Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together, Personal Development Life Coach- Chris O'Hearn Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247     Music by: - Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. - I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide