Daily Inspiration 3-23-10

"You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights."

-- Maya Angelou

"If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire,

then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience."

-- Robert Fulghum

"How can something bother you if you won't let it?"

-- Terri Guillemets

We all deal with inconveniences daily. Some people react to them and get upset, even to the point of frustration and anger. It is as if the event was a trigger and they were the gun being fired. When I was really young, my father was like that whenever we were in the car driving somewhere. He would get visibly upset and curse at a lot of drivers in other cars. Like that helped anything. . .

Other people respond. There is such a great difference, like night and day, between the responses of reacting or responding. To respond means to consider prior to showing a response, such as, 'is this really a big deal?' Tangled Christmas lights is one of those less than exciting things, but getting upset could never help them become untangled. If lost luggage is lost, how would anger be of any use whatsoever? And, rainy days can be glorious!

If you want to be upset over something, at least make it something important like your house being on fire, or having nothing to eat, or breaking your neck. At least wait for the really bad things to feel crappy about and get angry over. That way you can be justified in knowing that no one would disallow you of your scorn in such circumstances as these. There are plenty who will even sympathize with you. Pity loves a party.

Nonetheless, it still doesn't help, does it? It is impossible for the anger to change the circumstance for it is merely a reaction to it. However, it does have a tendency to encourage more situations to be angry about. The Law of Attraction is in force all the time. Anger will attract more anger, patience more patience, love more love, joy more joy. That is worth paying attention to more closely.

You have seen it for yourself. You know a few really angry people and you also know that they find plenty to be angry about and as time goes on, it seems that they find more to be angry about, don't they? They really are attracting more of it to them and they associate with people who act similarly and sympathize with them.

You may have also seen the opposite. A few people who are always happy and they find more things to be happy about and consequently more things come to them for them to be happy about. Good things keep coming and the other kind of things don't faze them. They respond rather than react.

We all get to choose. Respond? React? Respond? React?

There is a world of difference and the difference is everything.

I Choose My Responses. I Am In Charge, Not The Events Or Other People Around Me. What Joy!

Spread Some Joy Today--Pay attention to how you respond or react today. Is that what you want? You get to choose.