Pay it forward. Pass it on. (This was previously published.) Give love away to the next person (a child especially) that you see. You make the light in my eyes shine. I see you from across the room. I smile and you come to me. It is obvious that you have made my day. How can a child live without this? Infants imitate facial expressions. Help raise a child even one you don’t know. Let them know by your facial expression that he or she has made your day just by their mere presence. Send love to a child to day. It costs nothing.
Take the whole thing a step further. Works with adults too. Smile at the next person you see. Don’t look at them suspiciously. Christians and other spiritual people have the love of God to sustain them. It is like the five loaves and three fishes, the more you give away, the more you have leftover for yourself. Get down off the shelf. Spread love and happiness around. The more you give away, the more you get.
Since I have been practicing this, strange things have been happening. I got a spontaneous hug the other day from someone I didn’t know but who said they knew me. Last night a pecan pie (oh, how I love pecan pie) appeared at the door. It was a spontaneous gift from a neighboring Mennonite family.
It doesn’t take money to pay it forward, it just takes love and a smile. You don’t necessarily have to have an agenda. Just try it and see what happens. Shy? are you lacking in self-confidence? Then just send love anonymously. Try it on the next grumpy person that you meet. Try it. Light up your soul.
If you see someone having a problem, don’t make it worse. Don’t join in with a heckling crowd. Don’t join the crowd and express your annoyance too with a misbehaving, fractious child when an agitated parent obviously has lost control of the situation. If you can’t help, don’t make it worse. Smile a look of understanding instead. Pay it forward. You don’t know when you might need that smile yourself.
Peat And Repeat. I am going to repost some of my past posts while I am recuperating. Sometimes you can do too much. Anticipating posting new material that I will be including in a class that I will be teaching on campus in the fall, Humanistic Psychology.
However, wouldn’t it be nice if you could choose your mood? and not someone
else or something else? Feelings are catching. The other day it was
Obamacare and the rising cost of insurance leading to the fear of not
being able to afford to carry medical insurance and doing without. It
was very upsetting to think about and anyway not a very constructive
thing to do. It is not that I don’t think it could happen, but why be
miserable and worry about it when it has not happened yet. Also the
politicians responsible for this potential problem are not and never
were worried about it and besides if it happened, it wouldn’t be a
problem for them as they have already made sure that they will be
covered and/or could afford the increased cost of medical insurance.
Misery loves company. When one person gets upset about something like
this, they want to share the problem with others.
Then there is
the sniper, the person who from out of no where says something to you
that cuts to the quick and goes merrily on their way while you are
bleeding to death. Consider the source, this may not be the first time
this has happened to you with this person. Are you going to let that
person ruin your day? especially when he or she will deny that he or she
had any intention of doing so.
Let go and let God. Just because
someone else is upset, do you need to get upset too? When somebody has
bad intentions and denies them, do you let them get away with it. Not
only do you wind up feeling bad, but also you can’t justify it on the
grounds that the other person says that they didn’t mean anything by
what they said.
Not only are physical illnesses catching, but also emotional ones too.
Does absence make the heart grow fonder? I hope so at least in my case. I have been out with double pneumonia and was so mentally out of it, I couldn’t get my password straight. I almost spent the last two weeks in the hospital.
Good news, the family has expanded by two, a boy and a girl, at the same time. I did get a peak but don’t want to spread “a good thing” and my own resistance is low.
Curiously enough I was writing about the need to take a break every now and then. I was doing too much and didn’t even realize it until it was too late. Too much stress can result in one mental breakdown or in one physical illness. You may not know but your body does. Every change (whether good or bad) or the addition of another commitment adds up until there is a breakdown.
Can’t say, “No?” Something like this will do it for you. Remember to say to yourself, “Take good care of yourself. You belong to me.”
The lilt in your voice, the smile in your eyes are contagious. Happiness is the most contagious with little kids. It is easy to improve their mood by doing this.
We often look without seeing, hear without listening. We miss so much precious information when we are in too much of a hurry to go somewhere or do something to spend the time to process it. It is surprising to discover that the smiles of children sparkle; their voices tinkle with a tune. Little children spread happiness and it is contagious.
Usually if we can’t accept what we are hearing or seeing, we just deny it. Psychically other people can be an open book if we are reading their expressions to get more information about them so we can understand them better and help them.
English: A Swedish box of chocolates called “Aladdin” (top layer, identical to the bottom layer). Svenska: Den svenska chokladasken “Aladdin” (övre lagret, identiskt med undre lagret). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Spread the word. Life can be a bowl or cherries or a box of chocolates if you want it to be. Ever start the day by getting out on the wrong side of the bed? That has serious repercussions. Pay attention to how you start the day and do it in a different way for your own sake.
Don’t look to tomorrow or back to yesterday for answers. The time is now. You can’t change the future today. Tomorrow is past and gone and can’t be changed now. You fill yourself with regret about the past and worry about what hasn’t happened yet.
Why waste the present by focusing on the past or the future when you are already here? Ruminating on the past doesn’t change a thing that happened yesterday. The best laid plans of mice and men do not always come to fruition tomorrow.
Focus on the now, not the how or why. So many things can be missed when you do not see what you are looking at now or hear what you are listening to now. I have seen the light go in and out of my grandson’s eyes and have seen how stressed a friend has been when I did not ignore the silent cries in their eyes.
Pay attention now. Don’t ask how. Just do it.
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