Be thankful for the bad things in life, for they opened your eyes to the good things you weren’t paying attention to before.

– Unknown

 

 

As I said recently, in our podcast episode on Letting Go, I can easily get sucked into focusing on one thing that is bad in my life, at the expense of the rest of the things that are good. One evening, I was talking to a friend before a meeting, and I was complaining about how badly my life was going. My loved one had relapsed, and I was suffering. She asked me, “Did anything good happen today?”. I paused, thought for a moment, and then said “Well, yes. I got a massage this afternoon. The sun was out and it made the white snow all sparkly and bright. And, I'm at a meeting.” That simple question shifted my focus from the one bad thing to several good things. For the rest of the evening, I was feeling good, because I had let go of my obsession on what was wrong to just see that things were also good.

A meditation for January 22, 2013