People ask me quite often how I can have the outlook on life that I do. This is my attempt to answer some of these questions but by no means is it conclusive or a complete look at everything that I do to maintain my positive outlook. Though if you do have any questions or comments just drop me a line.
People have been asking me a lot lately how I can keep the outlook on life that I have. How I can look at each moment and see beauty in it. How I take what would seemingly be a bad situation by normal standards and let myself look at it in a different view and see anything good come out of that.
This will be my feeble attempt at answering some of the questions in specific form that I have gotten, and some general.
Most people think that I'm a bit nutty in the head and while I do concede some mental imbalance Just kidding I'm not nuts, well not totally.
Everything that has come into my life has gotten me to the point that I am at now. This in one way or another has helped to mold me into the man that I am today.
With that said I do my best not to look at the past. Sure we all tell stories of things in the past and there is nothing wrong with that we all talk about our days with someone and that is good too.
What I mean about not looking to the past is that when we are with ourselves or in a deep connection with our memory it seems to focus on negative items.
Now yes there are moments where we do what I described and we are remembering moments of levity. These can be good things to look at and bring yourself back to you and who you are now.
When my mind does reflect to the past I try to focus on moments that allow me to see where that memory has a place in my current life. There are things I remember that always make me smile and/or laugh and these things I can still see in my current life.
I guess what I'm saying is if you do have to look back look at things that mirror the things in you now that make you the person you like and that others including myself love.
The future. We all make plans and we all look to the future. The dangerous thing about looking too much into the future as well as the past is that we start to define ourselves by these things. When we define ourselves by things that have happened or things that have yet to happen then we forget who we are now.
It is the now that we have to live in. It is the now that makes us who we are right now. When we start to look at life right now we can start to see a beauty that we would have normally missed. Now I am not saying don't look at the future, I believe that our dreams and passions are some of out most valuable things in life. I will never give up on my dreams what I do focus on mostly though is how the things in my present moment are helping me to achieve those dreams.
Now I will concede that there are moments in everyone's life that we look at now and think that it sucks. When we lose something or someone whether it be to parting, death, separation of heart, or any of the multitude of things that cause the feeling of loss we feel it immediately. I am as guilty of this as anyone but the thing that I have learned that works for me is the perspective. I'll try to explain.
I'm moving soon and many didn't want me to go, friends and family alike. And I do feel saddened at the fact that I will not be able to have the nights with my best friend where we talk for hours, the days and nights with my other wonderful friends where we just call and hang out and have a wonderful time, the countless hours with my family which are always rewarding in one way or another. But with this sadness I have to focus on the joy that comes knowing they love me in such splendid ways that they support my choice to leave and know that they all will always be there as I will for them. Now this is just one example there are many others but this is the most current.
Losing someone that you love, now this one was a hard one for me because I grow extremely attached to people and I tend to see the beauty in most people, but this wasn't always the case. When I lost my fiancée and son I was devastated for years. And when I started the changes in my life that let me love the moments of now I had to look at some things. Was it them I was missing or who I was when I was with them and many others. The parts of them that I miss I carry with me at all times so that didn't leave and once I found me again I found that the parts of me that I missed while I was with them never left I just hid them. This isn't saying that grieving whether it is from death, divorce, a fight that ended badly and such shouldn't happen.
If you grieve and look at what it is you are grieving you can come to many realizations of what you have in you, what you deserve and what it is that you should love about yourself and others.
When life becomes overwhelming. There used to be so many times when life would seem to throw so many things at me I would feel buried. Once I realized that this is something that happens to everyone and I could deal with it I started to see that the pile I was buried under wasn't as bad as I made it out to be. At these times is when we need to reach out, this was hard for me as I was the guy that took care of everything himself. When I started sharing these things with others I realized that there was always a different way to handle it. I take these things and catalog them in my journals and what little brain I have left J But just talking to others can help immensely with this. It's not placing your burdens on others but letting you put them in perspective with the help of love.
When the world seems to become too big I take more notice in the little things. Watch the sunrise or set, listen to children's laughter, look at the way your pets love you. These things can show you the beauty that you are surrounded by everyday that we overlook and bring perspective back.
My general positivism. And yes that is a word :) This one I had to look at the things in my life that were causing me to look at things in a negative way. I had to make changes. I surround myself now by people that have such a bright force in them that they don't even realize it, that have a love for life, I listen to music that makes me happy, I read things that make me smile, laugh and cry and that is the same with movies. We all have the choice of the things that we bring into our lives and when we start to make those things positive you will find that you become a lot happier and have a different outlook on how everything is.
These are just some of the things I do. There are many more things but these seem to cover the majority of specifics that I get asked about. The main point of all of it is that if you look at each moment in your life you can find beauty and love in it. And while we will all have our moments where life gets us down we have to remember that there is always going to be an up with that down.
I hope this helps and while I don't know if I expressed things clearly here I am always here for any of you. Some of you may disagree with these statements and some won't. I won't take offense to either. I wrote this because I love you all.