364 I Choose To Make Every Moment Great | December 2017 Saturday Week 5

Synergistic Saturdays-#364  December 30 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast I Choose To Make Every Moment Great “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl Every time the new year gets closer, the noise gets louder about what a crappy year people had. They talk about how they can’t wait for this year to be over so that they can have a great next year. And the interesting thing is, I usually see the same people complaining about the same thing each year. And I agree, for once, it would be nice for them to have a good year so they could stop bitching about it not being good. But that’s the funny thing, their year is already great. They just can’t see the beautiful moment in front of them by continually wishing for their pain to be over, or wishing for their troubles to be gone. Which in turn locks them in their self-imposed prison—never understanding that they had the chance in every moment to make their year amazing. It’s like we become so caught up in seeing what’s bad that we can’t see what’s good. Take for example, a friend was complaining about how they got sick a week before their vacation…and they said, “great…what perfect timing to get sick.” And in my head, I was little confused because I thought you’d rather be sick before your vacation…than on it. Now maybe they were thinking about how they couldn’t have any sick days before their trip, or maybe that they didn’t want their sickness to last more than a week and bring it with them…but I’m pretty sure that’s it. Some people want to see what’s wrong instead of seeing what’s right. It makes me think of going to barns and seeing horses with those blinders over their eyes that don’t allow the horse to see behind or to the side of them, so they don’t get spooked. And we as people have our blinders on…except they aren’t helping us, we’re focusing on what’s wrong…we’re focusing on what annoys us or scares us…instead of seeing the great moments in front of us. And the interesting thing about my friend who talked about being sick, you saw all their pictures on what a great time they were having on the trip…and never once thought about their sickness again. Which shows me why we live in a state of perpetual frozenness. We complain, but we never learn from our complaining. And thus we repeat the pattern over and over again. A year isn’t bad, a day isn’t bad, a life isn’t bad…they are events, and we can choose how we want to experience them. And maybe I didn’t get the memo that everyone else seems to have gotten about life being fair and perfect…but it seems like people lose focus on what the message of our lives are…that we create the good times or we create the bad times. Yes, unfortunate things will happen, people die, people leave us, we get sick, we get hurt… and we can choose to make our home within misery….always wondering why our years suck, or we can get up and know we are the masters of our fates, that we are in control of making our years great, and that there’s beauty in every moment…even the harder times in our lives. The quote above by Viktor Frankl is the perfect example of a better mindset. Viktor was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp in World War II for being Jewish. His mother and brother died in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his wife died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. What Frankl had observed during his imprisonment was that the people who survived, were the people who had hope—the ones who believed they would get out, that they would see their family again, or whatever hope they needed to focus on…to keep them going. However, the people he saw who had no hope, the prisoners who couldn’t imagine a future, didn’t last long. And through all the atrocities Viktor saw in his time in the concentration camps, he was able find meaning in the midst of extreme suffering. He goes on to say in his book Man’s Search For Meaning, “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” And if you haven’t read his book, I highly recommend it. What I’m getting at, is we’ve become weak individuals by forgetting our whys. We’ve become crippled by waiting for a better moment to come to us, as we’ve forgotten that the best moments are in front of us right now. We’ve forgotten that the only one who can change a bad moment is ourselves…not a new year, or a new day, or someone else. And while I’m saying the great times are already in the moment in front of you, it still takes work to notice them. Your life is like a bucket that’s being filled, and if you don’t fill it with something you want, you’ll find something else will take its place. We’ve forgotten our whys and thus the negatives have overrun our lives as if they were in control of our lives Everything you speak, think, and do…will either weaken you…or strengthen you. So, are you going to be weak and complain about a year being bad…or are you going to be strong and see the beauty in every moment? Are you going to blame others for your position in life, or are you going to be strong and find continual hope in your life? Are you going to miss the moments in front of you letting your bucket be filled with negatives, or are you going to be the person who stops looking for their situation to change and instead begins changing yourself? The only difference between something good or bad…in a day, a year, or an event…is our fortitude to accept the negative for what it is—a chance to rise above and find meaning even through our suffering. It’s the chance to see that the moment wasn’t determining my experience, I was. The hardest times in my life, the times that ripped my heart from my chest, were the times that were asking me to open my eyes and find more hope and beauty in the moment. It may sound petty of me to tell people to stop their whining…but the weak are left whining for a better day, while the dead are still hoping for one more day…even a bad day…because in every moment there’s good or bad…it’s just whether we decide to change ourselves…or let the situation change us. And when we know our why…we can bear any ‘how.’ Today’s Personal Commitment:What are your whys? What’s your why for your job, your relationships, for your next 10 years, for the next year, and your why for the day right now? I see most of us operating on autopilot. We get up and do our daily routine not thinking about anything because we have done it for so long there is no need to analyze anything…it’s all the same mostly. But we become robots acting this way; we get stuck in the mode of operations instead of seeing the beauty in the moment or choice. So for the next month, every day before you set out to start your day…write down the whys of your day and your life. Get yourself acquainted with your purposes again, so you can become more mindful of what you’re trying to accomplish in your life. When we remember our whys, we divert our attention from the negatives…or probably more accurately…those negatives never become powerful enough to overtake our directed mindset. I Choose To Make Every Moment Great     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