Its hard not to see all the bad things happening in our world. The media is sticking to the tried and true way to make money. If it bleeds it leads. While I understand the need to make money, I also understand that too much violence, death and tragedy can make a person either turn off the news or numb to it. I found myself falling into the numb group. Very little, over the last 10 years, has shocked me. The other day I started looking for the good things in the world. While there is a lot of good things people are doing, its hard to find the stories. Most our buried under layers of tragedy.
Its pretty easy to change the way you think for a few hours, however changing the way you look at the world can take a lifetime. Some say new habits can replace old ones in 21 days. While I think that holds true, I also know that a person has to be dedicated to the change.
One small change I made was to give myself a 20 minute time out each day. Just 20 minutes of nothing to read, watch, hear, and think about. The amount of clarity I have gained from this is pretty cool.
I use praying as one way to get my mind to start and relax. Others turn to working out, Yoga etc… The point is to find something that works for you. Just because 8 out of 10 people do it one way does not mean that you must do the same. Life IMO is all about finding out who you are, and learning to love yourself. The saying, before you can love others you must first learn to love yourself, is so true. You must love and accept you for who you are. I do not mean to imply that you can’t change who you are, you can, but before you can make that change you must figure out what it is you dislike or think you can do better.
One of my favorite sayings is there are no problems in my life only solutions. When you think about it , it makes perfect sense. If there is not a solution to a problem, then how can it be a problem?
Another great saying is if you want peace prepare for war. No one is saying war is a good thing, by using that line. What they are saying is if you are prepared for war, and those that mean to do you harm know that, they are less likely to attack you. Case in point was the cold war, we trained like we were at war and by doing so avoided going to war. With the end of the cold war, the USA kind of lost sight of who and what we are. This has caused us a lot of pointless blood and money. Just because we have the strongest military does not mean we have to use it.
The first Iraq war was over so fast that we figured that no one would attack us again. What we failed to consider was by not removing a mad man from power we allowed him to tweak our noses for a long time. The world was paying attention. Since we went into a country, destroyed a lot of it and the left the people to pick up the pieces with the same leader who caused the war, we sent a signal to the rest of the world. The price for tweaking our noses was dangerous but if you knew when to fold or back off, you would remain in power.
Here at home the Right wing looks at anything the left does or tries to do as something that is the absolute worst thing for our nation. The left does the exact same thing. So we end up not talking and not getting much done. When instead we should be able to sit down and talk about the differences and find places that we can meet in the middle on. There are some things that neither side wants to budge on. Sticking to your guns is a great thing, however when it starts to look like it might be a bad idea or you might have been wrong, then the party that is wrong needs to move Heaven and earth to correct their mistake. Instead we allow our ego’s to get involved and double down on our bad ideas. It feels like a contest who can do the most screwed up thing and then double down on it. Both sides are losing the war because of this. An example is the health care law, few Americans understand it, few congressional leaders read the entire bill, and now it has come out that not only will it cost a lot more money both in tax payer dollars as well as cash out of pocket. Instead of saying lets use the stuff in the bill that will work, and junk or replace the stuff that wont, we double down on it.