ATTITUDE AND THOUGHTS CAN CHANGE

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"Don't grieve that your roses have thorns.
Rejoice instead that your thorns have roses!"

The above quote is a favorite of a woman by the name of Penny Parker, a fellow blogger who has caught my attention, primarily because we think a lot alike and I have come to admire her wonderful ability to express herself  through her writing. 

Penny's literary efforts flow from a keyboard in her home in Denver, Colorado, where she refers to herself as a "domestic goddess".  She has three adult children and six "rowdy" grandsons (no granddaughters).

Although you would not know it from her writing, Penny has had to struggle in life, the low point being an emotionally draining divorce some years ago.  Her family remains her pride and joy and she writes passionately on the subject.  She admits to having more pets in her home and around her large property "than anyone in their right mind would have."  In her profile, she lists "the rainbow" as her favorite color -- a telling personal revelation.

But, back to the reason I am writing about her today -- her take on the aforementioned quote.

"What it means to me is that I can't change the reality that life is a mixture of beauty, joy, danger and pain, but I can change my perspective ... my attitude, and that one change in perspective can transform everything," she explains.

"The reality of our lives may result from many outside factors, none of which we can control. The only thing we can really control in this life is our own mental attitudes. We should try to remember that all we are dealing with is thoughts, and thoughts can be changed. We may not have control over our circumstances, but we do have control over our thoughts and we can choose how we will respond to the things that happen to us." 

Penny goes on to emphasize that we all have unlimited choices about what we can think. The things we think become the truth for us. Our subconscious minds will accept whatever we choose to believe. There is no person, no place and no thing that has any power over us, for "we" are the only thinkers in our mind. Things seem to turn out best for those people who can make the best out of the way things turn out. It is not the situation ... it is our reactions to the situation.

"I have learned that although pain is inevitable for all of us, we do have an option as to how we react to it. It's no fun to suffer ... in fact, it can be horrible! We are all going to have pain, but misery is optional. We all have choices. It is up to us to decide how we will react to the pain that inevitably comes to us all," she adds.

"Having joy or misery all depends on how we look at or think about it. It is in how we choose to look at the circumstances. We can look for the flowers or just see the weeds. We can see the bright side or look for the clouds. How we look at life can either bring a sparkle of joy or a handful of gloom. We can be as happy as we decide to be."

Two people living in the same world, with the same set of circumstances, can experience life so differently just by the way they think. Each day can be an exciting, joyous, hopeful experience, or it can be a sorrowful, limiting, and painful one. What you see in your mind is what you get out of life.

Nobody expresses it better than Penny Parker.  She writes from a heart that she wears on her sleeve.  She has a gift. I've never met her in person, but I know her!