Everyday, I'm posting a message on Twitter. That message will serve as the first (in bold) sentence for short written posts I have below.
We cannot realize our dreams if we don’t learn to be grateful of what we already have. Gratitude can open a number of doors that allow us to keep progressing forward.
For those who have started on their journey, their dream usually ends when they have given up upon reaching a difficult stage in the journey. Not only has the person invested time and effort in the journey but he or she also usually get nothing in return other than bitterness and pessimism. Once one dream is given up on, convincing the person to start on another dream becomes nearly impossible.
Gratitude can change our attitude dramatically when faced with the mindset of giving up. We often don’t know how fortunate we are when we have a chance to not only dream but also pursue it. There are those in the world who are struggling for survival as they work to get their basic needs like food and water met. To them, pursuing a dream sounds like a fairy tale only afforded to the rich.
Ironically, the rich they think of are those of us who spend time online on social media. We have free time they could ill afford as time well spent meant food on their table. When we put life into perspective by thinking about their challenges, we should be ashamed of the reasons why we give up on our hopes and dreams.
Once we learn gratitude, we change our mindset to a much more positive one. We learn to appreciate what’s available to us and, when challenges come our way, we’ll overcome it instead of backing away from it. The more challenges we overcome, the more skills we obtain. The more skills we obtain, the more doors open to us and a lot more paths to our dreams become available.
_____
In life, we can be so focused on the negatives that we fail to recognize the positives in our lives. As a result, we feel like we have nothing to be grateful of despite there being plenty.
We encounter a lot of negative people in our lives. All they do is complain about the things that aren’t going their way. They find excuses for why their life isn’t better and their negativity often spread to us if we stay to listen. Sometimes, we wonder how these people can be so negative that they almost emit negativity as an aura around them wherever they go.
When we have a bad day, we do the same because we focus on the negatives. The problem with our mind is that it cannot multitask very well. If we are thinking about the embarrassment we cause ourselves by going onto a stage, we forget that it took us a lot of courage to get up there in the first place. When we see the negatives, the positives vanished as if they never existed.
Nowadays, a lot of people claim the younger generation is ungrateful. They are partly right in that respect. The younger generation should be more grateful of all the benefits and opportunities they take for granted. There are some in other parts of the world who only wish they could switch places to have a better start in life.
However, the older generation is also the teachers and mentors of the younger generation. If they only teach about how to see life through negative lens, then the younger generation naturally does so and they are too preoccupied with the negatives to see the positives they should be grateful of. In a way, the lack of gratitude is due to how negative our society is in a whole.
_____
Why is our society so negative? There are plenty of positive things we can enjoy but, instead, we are bombarded by all the negative things from the news and other media.
Whenever we watch the news or go on a news website, we are made to believe that the end of the world is near. The majority of the stories reported are usually negative like crimes and we instinctively brace ourselves for the worst. It’s understandable that these news outlets need something dramatic to get viewership but they are also hurting society as a whole.
What our society need is less negativity, not more. Too many of our youths are suffering from anxieties and depression due to the negative environment we foster at our schools and other places. We put such emphasis on the bad things in life that we seem to ignore the positive aspects of society that greatly improved our standard of living.
We need a way to show the upside of life. It’s true that not every single day will be filled with flowers and rainbows but an uneventful day isn’t a bad thing either. There’s nothing wrong with us cruising along in life without getting any surprises to make life exciting. Treat those days as a break from the fast pace of life expected in our society.
Good things in life can and will happen. However, we must realize that the best things in life take a lot of hard work and time. Unlike the bad things that seem to happen with ease, we have to work for the good things. Why must we work so hard for them? If we don’t invest so much work and time, we won’t learn how to be grateful of the best things life has to offer.
_____
As we swim through all the negativity in the world, we should keep our head up so we can always see the stars that will guide us towards our destination.
We are surrounded by a lot of negativity that tends to be quite overwhelming. It feels like we’re treading water most of the time because, the moment we stop, we’d sink down and never get out. While treading water keeps us above negativity, there are limits to how long we can remain in this position before we join the others in hopelessness and helplessness.
We must swim if we hope to find a sanctuary in the negativity we face in this world. We cannot hope to survive if we are constantly surrounded by all the negative people because they will convert us over simply by being who they are. To survive, we must find our destination and head towards it until we find the island where we can finally rest.
Here’s where positivity comes in as even small amounts of positive attitude can serve as flotation devices. We have all seen lifejackets in action where they keep the wearer afloat regardless of the situation. That’s what positivity can accomplish for us so we won’t be treading water all the time and spending all our energy to stay merely afloat.
By being positive, we give ourselves a chance to see the stars in the sky. We must still learn how to read the stars and determine where our destination is but the sight of the stars give us strength to keep going. Instead of wandering aimlessly, we’ll swim towards what we instinctively know is our solutions to our problems.
_____
After stumbling often in life, we develop a habit to always look down to avoid stumbling further. We no longer look up to see how far we can go if we put our mind to it.
We will stumble in life and there’s no way to avoid it. After all, the path we take isn’t a flat path with no obstacles. It’s filled with peaks and troughs along with numerous challenges that we cannot ignore if we wish to keep going. For too many people, they are afraid to stumble because a stumble is equated to failure and no one wants failure in life.
Once we stumbled too often in life, we start to look down all the time. We want to see where the path is uneven and prepare ourselves to either avoid them and brace for them so we won’t fall. As a result, we feel small accomplishments for each uneven surface and hole we overcome. In the meantime, we make very little progress because we are too focused on the small things.
When we were children, we looked up more than we looked down. We had big dreams and actually believed that we can accomplish them. As we become adults, we lose sight of what matters and no longer look at the sky to see the stars we wish to reach. To many of us, a stumble matters more than our dream.
Why do the stumbles matter? These cuts and scratches are small compared to the pain regret brings us but too many people want to avoid pain altogether. They are willing to lessen the small pains now only to suffer the accumulation of pain over the decades much later. As for the stars that represent our dreams, they grow dimmer and dimmer until they vanish from the sky.
_____
We once dreamed about reaching the stars but, somewhere along our journey in life, we are satisfied with staying here on Earth with almost everyone else.
When we were kids, many of us had big dreams with similar difficulty as reaching the stars. We didn’t believe in the word impossible because, at that point in our lives, we weren’t ridiculed for dreaming big. Sadly, those days never last once we enter adulthood when we are scoffed at for dreaming what others see as unrealistic goals in life.
It’s such a shame that we lost so much as we become adults. There’s no reason for us to stop dreaming big despite all the challenges we face in life. We might have to earn money to pay for our expenses and our job might not be something we love. Instead of finding a way out to a better future, we are content with what we have for the rest of our lives.
Why are we content with a life we aren’t happy with? There’s such a big world out there and numerous opportunities available to those who seek them. Logically, we should be seeking out those opportunities to create a future we used to dream about. Yet, we trap ourselves in our comfort zone where we’d rather suffer than step out into the unknown.
We must realize that there are many people just like us who are content with mediocrity. As a result, it becomes really crowded here and, with overcrowdedness, we find ourselves very vulnerable to change. If there’s a downsize at a company, we are one of the many people on the list. If things go downhill, we find ourselves forgotten because we’re just another face in the crowd.
_____
We are so busy in life and rush through it trying to get everything done. Yet, we seem to leave no time to pursue our dreams to make them a reality.
In our society, it feels like we are always rushing through life. We have places to go and people to see. We have appointments we have to keep and customers to meet. We live such a fast paced life where we have too many tasks to do and we rush to get all of them done in a reasonable amount of time. When we do complete the tasks, we feel good about ourselves.
When we look at the tasks we are rushing to complete, many of us realize that most, if not all, of them have nothing to do with our dreams. They merely come with our jobs and, to make a living, we must get them done. Failure to complete these tasks can result in our termination and cause us hardship we’d rather avoid in life.
In our rush through our lives, we seem to forget about our dreams. Some of us might have dreams that were thought up when we were kids. Others might have been inspired by what they saw on television or online but have yet to take action. Regardless of the situation, our busy lives leave little, if any, time for the dreams that can bring us more happiness.
When we spend our time and energy completing tasks for other people, we are really working to make their dreams come true. Still, that’s no reason for us to neglect our own dreams because we want to be happy too. There’s nothing wrong with a little selfishness since this will likely make the lives of our family members better.
_____
We cannot realize our dreams if we don’t learn to be grateful of what we already have. Gratitude can open a number of doors that allow us to keep progressing forward.
For those who have started on their journey, their dream usually ends when they have given up upon reaching a difficult stage in the journey. Not only has the person invested time and effort in the journey but he or she also usually get nothing in return other than bitterness and pessimism. Once one dream is given up on, convincing the person to start on another dream becomes nearly impossible.
Gratitude can change our attitude dramatically when faced with the mindset of giving up. We often don’t know how fortunate we are when we have a chance to not only dream but also pursue it. There are those in the world who are struggling for survival as they work to get their basic needs like food and water met. To them, pursuing a dream sounds like a fairy tale only afforded to the rich.
Ironically, the rich they think of are those of us who spend time online on social media. We have free time they could ill afford as time well spent meant food on their table. When we put life into perspective by thinking about their challenges, we should be ashamed of the reasons why we give up on our hopes and dreams.
Once we learn gratitude, we change our mindset to a much more positive one. We learn to appreciate what’s available to us and, when challenges come our way, we’ll overcome it instead of backing away from it. The more challenges we overcome, the more skills we obtain. The more skills we obtain, the more doors open to us and a lot more paths to our dreams become available.
_____
In life, we can be so focused on the negatives that we fail to recognize the positives in our lives. As a result, we feel like we have nothing to be grateful of despite there being plenty.
We encounter a lot of negative people in our lives. All they do is complain about the things that aren’t going their way. They find excuses for why their life isn’t better and their negativity often spread to us if we stay to listen. Sometimes, we wonder how these people can be so negative that they almost emit negativity as an aura around them wherever they go.
When we have a bad day, we do the same because we focus on the negatives. The problem with our mind is that it cannot multitask very well. If we are thinking about the embarrassment we cause ourselves by going onto a stage, we forget that it took us a lot of courage to get up there in the first place. When we see the negatives, the positives vanished as if they never existed.
Nowadays, a lot of people claim the younger generation is ungrateful. They are partly right in that respect. The younger generation should be more grateful of all the benefits and opportunities they take for granted. There are some in other parts of the world who only wish they could switch places to have a better start in life.
However, the older generation is also the teachers and mentors of the younger generation. If they only teach about how to see life through negative lens, then the younger generation naturally does so and they are too preoccupied with the negatives to see the positives they should be grateful of. In a way, the lack of gratitude is due to how negative our society is in a whole.
_____
Why is our society so negative? There are plenty of positive things we can enjoy but, instead, we are bombarded by all the negative things from the news and other media.
Whenever we watch the news or go on a news website, we are made to believe that the end of the world is near. The majority of the stories reported are usually negative like crimes and we instinctively brace ourselves for the worst. It’s understandable that these news outlets need something dramatic to get viewership but they are also hurting society as a whole.
What our society need is less negativity, not more. Too many of our youths are suffering from anxieties and depression due to the negative environment we foster at our schools and other places. We put such emphasis on the bad things in life that we seem to ignore the positive aspects of society that greatly improved our standard of living.
We need a way to show the upside of life. It’s true that not every single day will be filled with flowers and rainbows but an uneventful day isn’t a bad thing either. There’s nothing wrong with us cruising along in life without getting any surprises to make life exciting. Treat those days as a break from the fast pace of life expected in our society.
Good things in life can and will happen. However, we must realize that the best things in life take a lot of hard work and time. Unlike the bad things that seem to happen with ease, we have to work for the good things. Why must we work so hard for them? If we don’t invest so much work and time, we won’t learn how to be grateful of the best things life has to offer.
_____
As we swim through all the negativity in the world, we should keep our head up so we can always see the stars that will guide us towards our destination.
We are surrounded by a lot of negativity that tends to be quite overwhelming. It feels like we’re treading water most of the time because, the moment we stop, we’d sink down and never get out. While treading water keeps us above negativity, there are limits to how long we can remain in this position before we join the others in hopelessness and helplessness.
We must swim if we hope to find a sanctuary in the negativity we face in this world. We cannot hope to survive if we are constantly surrounded by all the negative people because they will convert us over simply by being who they are. To survive, we must find our destination and head towards it until we find the island where we can finally rest.
Here’s where positivity comes in as even small amounts of positive attitude can serve as flotation devices. We have all seen lifejackets in action where they keep the wearer afloat regardless of the situation. That’s what positivity can accomplish for us so we won’t be treading water all the time and spending all our energy to stay merely afloat.
By being positive, we give ourselves a chance to see the stars in the sky. We must still learn how to read the stars and determine where our destination is but the sight of the stars give us strength to keep going. Instead of wandering aimlessly, we’ll swim towards what we instinctively know is our solutions to our problems.
_____
After stumbling often in life, we develop a habit to always look down to avoid stumbling further. We no longer look up to see how far we can go if we put our mind to it.
We will stumble in life and there’s no way to avoid it. After all, the path we take isn’t a flat path with no obstacles. It’s filled with peaks and troughs along with numerous challenges that we cannot ignore if we wish to keep going. For too many people, they are afraid to stumble because a stumble is equated to failure and no one wants failure in life.
Once we stumbled too often in life, we start to look down all the time. We want to see where the path is uneven and prepare ourselves to either avoid them and brace for them so we won’t fall. As a result, we feel small accomplishments for each uneven surface and hole we overcome. In the meantime, we make very little progress because we are too focused on the small things.
When we were children, we looked up more than we looked down. We had big dreams and actually believed that we can accomplish them. As we become adults, we lose sight of what matters and no longer look at the sky to see the stars we wish to reach. To many of us, a stumble matters more than our dream.
Why do the stumbles matter? These cuts and scratches are small compared to the pain regret brings us but too many people want to avoid pain altogether. They are willing to lessen the small pains now only to suffer the accumulation of pain over the decades much later. As for the stars that represent our dreams, they grow dimmer and dimmer until they vanish from the sky.
_____
We once dreamed about reaching the stars but, somewhere along our journey in life, we are satisfied with staying here on Earth with almost everyone else.
When we were kids, many of us had big dreams with similar difficulty as reaching the stars. We didn’t believe in the word impossible because, at that point in our lives, we weren’t ridiculed for dreaming big. Sadly, those days never last once we enter adulthood when we are scoffed at for dreaming what others see as unrealistic goals in life.
It’s such a shame that we lost so much as we become adults. There’s no reason for us to stop dreaming big despite all the challenges we face in life. We might have to earn money to pay for our expenses and our job might not be something we love. Instead of finding a way out to a better future, we are content with what we have for the rest of our lives.
Why are we content with a life we aren’t happy with? There’s such a big world out there and numerous opportunities available to those who seek them. Logically, we should be seeking out those opportunities to create a future we used to dream about. Yet, we trap ourselves in our comfort zone where we’d rather suffer than step out into the unknown.
We must realize that there are many people just like us who are content with mediocrity. As a result, it becomes really crowded here and, with overcrowdedness, we find ourselves very vulnerable to change. If there’s a downsize at a company, we are one of the many people on the list. If things go downhill, we find ourselves forgotten because we’re just another face in the crowd.
_____
We are so busy in life and rush through it trying to get everything done. Yet, we seem to leave no time to pursue our dreams to make them a reality.
In our society, it feels like we are always rushing through life. We have places to go and people to see. We have appointments we have to keep and customers to meet. We live such a fast paced life where we have too many tasks to do and we rush to get all of them done in a reasonable amount of time. When we do complete the tasks, we feel good about ourselves.
When we look at the tasks we are rushing to complete, many of us realize that most, if not all, of them have nothing to do with our dreams. They merely come with our jobs and, to make a living, we must get them done. Failure to complete these tasks can result in our termination and cause us hardship we’d rather avoid in life.
In our rush through our lives, we seem to forget about our dreams. Some of us might have dreams that were thought up when we were kids. Others might have been inspired by what they saw on television or online but have yet to take action. Regardless of the situation, our busy lives leave little, if any, time for the dreams that can bring us more happiness.
When we spend our time and energy completing tasks for other people, we are really working to make their dreams come true. Still, that’s no reason for us to neglect our own dreams because we want to be happy too. There’s nothing wrong with a little selfishness since this will likely make the lives of our family members better.
_____