This was the Daily Om from a few days ago:
Making Life YoursThere is some good advice in this Daily Om, but making it work is a life-long challenge for most of us. It's one thing to want to hold a positive perspective, it's a whole other thing to be able to do so in the face of challenges, disappointments, and crises.
Perception
There is no secret recipe for happiness and contentment. The individuals who move through life joyously have not necessarily been blessed with lives of abundance, love, success, and prosperity. Such people have, however, been blessed with the ability to take the circumstances they've been handed and make them into something great. Our individual realities are colored by perception--delight and despair come from within rather than without. Situations we regard as fortuitous please us while situations we judge inauspicious cause us no end of grief. Yet if we can look at all we have accomplished without dwelling on our perceived misfortune and make each new circumstance our own, the world as a whole becomes a brighter place. A simple shift in attitude can help us recognize and unearth the hidden potential for personal and outer world fulfillment in every event, every relationship, every duty, and every setback.
The universe is often an unpredictable and chaotic place, and the human tendency is to focus on the negative and assume the positive will care for itself. But life can be no more or no less than what you make of it. If you are working in a job you dislike, you can concentrate on the positive aspects of the position and approach your work with gusto. What can you do with this job that can turn it around so you do love it. When faced with the prospect of undertaking a task you fear, you can view it as an opportunity to discover what you are truly capable of doing. Similarly, unexpected events, when viewed as surprises, can add flavor to your existence. By choosing to love life no matter what crosses your path, you can create an atmosphere of jubilance that is wonderfully infectious. A change in perspective is all it takes to change your world, but you must be willing to adopt an optimistic, hopeful mind-set.
To make a conscious decision to be happy is not enough. You must learn to observe life's complexities through the eyes of a child seeing everything for the first time. You must furthermore divest yourself of preconceived notions of what is good and what is bad so that you can appreciate the rich insights concealed in each stage of your life's journey. And you must strive to discover the dual joys of wanting what you have. As you gradually shift your perspective, your existence will be imbued with happiness and contentment that will remain with you forever.
Still, the idea of facing life with the eyes of a child is a place to begin. Or maybe we might call it beginner's mind, the approach that allows us to experience life without preconceived expectations and attachments. But getting into this mindset is difficult to do for most. It requires stilling the monkey mind.
A quote on my Zen page-a-day calendar the other day ties in to this discussion:
An adult is one who has lost the grace, the freshness, the innocence of the child, who is no longer capable of feeling pure joy, who makes everything complicated, who spreads suffering everywhere, who is afraid of being happy, and who, because it is easier to bear, has gone back to sleep. The wise man is a happy child.Notice that he is not advocating a return to childlike thinking (regression), only that we rediscover the child within us who is curious and hopeful and happy to be alive.
~ Arnaud Desjardins
This is one of the central tasks in my life right now as I seek to circumvent the damage the Inner Critic has inflicted over the years. My child was banished to a dark closet in my psyche, but I have found the room and opened the door. Now it's just a matter of giving him some space in my life.
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