By Charlene M Brown
Harley Storey, a Life Coach out of New Zealand says: “Somewhere in our life’s journey we choose to focus on the garbage or the gold. (Often the gold is hidden in the garbage!) If [we] dwell on the garbage we become grumpy. If we look at the gold we become grateful. Life is crap. Life is beautiful. Life is both. The question is, which will you focus on?”
This is all a very colorful way of saying do you look at your life as half empty—always wanting for things you don’t have; or do you see it as more than half full—enjoying and being grateful for the things you do have?
Life is all about perspective. And which perspective you take is entirely up to you! That’s right, it’s YOUR choice what you decide to focus on, the garbage or the gold. And it really is all in your attitude!
I used to be the most pessimistic person I knew. I was always grumpy, angry and in a bad mood. My health was poor and I was always tired—sleepy tired and tired of people and things and life! I often had a headache and got “knock me down” sick several times per year.
Then one day, I decided that being like this all the time was not doing me any good! I made a conscious decision to stop focusing on the garbage and start looking for the gold!
This decision wasn’t easy and certainly didn’t happen overnight. Sometimes I slipped back into my old ways (and got the accompanying headaches, sickness and aches and pains). It was in those times that I had to fight to get back to the Healthy!
Again, this was sometimes very challenging! But I kept at it.
Today, 8 years after making that first decision to change my outlook, I am as healthy as I have ever been, I almost never get headaches or body aches, my temperament is flowing and easy-going, and stress is almost nonexistent in my world! And I really mean that!
I share this not to brag about it, but to show you that if you choose to, you can change your outlook too!
For me, it wasn’t about taking drastic measures (and that was hard to realize—I can be a bit of an “all or nothing” type of lady sometimes), but making smaller decisions on a daily, weekly, monthly, consistent basis.
It was about letting go and stop trying to control every single little detail; it was about learning to enjoy wherever I was instead of always trying to get to the next moment; it was about being fully present wherever I happened to be; it was about trusting the process of Life rather than worrying my pretty little head about it; it was about creating new thoughts to replace my old, negative ones.
Indeed, it was about letting go of the past to let my present and future in.
I literally had to find the silver lining. I literally had to sometimes go digging through the garbage to find the gold (and all that glitters is definitely not gold!).
But I did it! One decision at a time!
And you can to.
But only if you choose to!
Do You Love Your Life Now!? I DO!! (Because I have chosen to!)