Making Life Ours

There is no secret recipe for happiness and contentment.

Those who move through life joyfully and embrace life's slings and arrows with faith-filled bliss have not necessarily been blessed with lives of abundance, love, health, and prosperity.

Such people, however, have been blessed with the ability to take the circumstances they've been become embroiled in and understand them as an opportunity to nurture them and grow them into something great.

Our individual realities are colored by perception.

Delight and despair come from within rather than without. Situations we regard as fortuitous please us while situations we judge as inauspicious cause us unending grief.

However, if we look at all we have accomplished without dwelling on our perceived misfortune, and make each new circumstance our own, the world as a whole becomes a brighter place.

A simple shift in attitude can help us to recognize and unearth the hidden potential for personal and outer world fulfilment in every event, every relationship, and every hardship.

The universe is often an unpredictable and chaotic place, and our human tendency is to focus on the negative and trust that the positive will manifest itself.

In reality, life can be no more or no less than what we make of it.

If we are working in a job we dislike, we can concentrate on the positive aspects of the position and approach our work with renewable vigor.

We might ask what we can do with this job that can turn it around so we enjoy it.

When faced with the prospect of undertaking a task we fear, we can view it as an opportunity to discover what we are truly capable of doing, given the power and strength of faith.

Similarly, unexpected events, whether viewed as pleasant surprises or unforeseen tragedies, can season our existence.

For some situations, the word "season" will be defined as adding flavor or spice, for others it will be defined as to age into another season of life, such as a wooden table or a cast iron skillet allows life to graduate its existence.

Either way, when we choose to love life no matter what crosses our path, we create an atmosphere of jubilant celebration that is wonderfully infectious.

A change in perspective is all it takes to change our world, but we must be willing to adopt an optimistic, hopeful, and faith filled mind-set.

To make a conscious decision to be at peace in the face of adversity is not enough.

We must learn to observe life's complexities as through the eyes of a child, seeing everything for the first time.

Furthermore, we must divest ourselves of pre-conceived notions of what is good and what is bad so that we can appreciate the rich insights concealed in each stage of our life's journey.

As we strive to discover the dual joys of wanting what we have, as we gradually shift our perspective, our existence will be imbued with the happiness and contentment that God has sought to provide us and that we wish for each other in life and in death.

When we embrace this reality, not only will this Spirit remain with us forever, but it will live on through us in spiritual energy here on Earth.

With love & light,

Rob