KEEP THE OLD WARM

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.” – Marcus Aurelius

Our thoughts are more or less the first domino that is tipped over. Bad thoughts lead to worse ones. Good ones, lead to better ones.

Must we always think good thoughts? No, for sometimes bad thoughts may be reasonable, even virtuous in rare circumstances. But most often, we aim for the good.

But what can we control? Perhaps not always control, but what is often within our power? How we think about something, how we proactively think, or reactivity think to things that happen. The quality of our thoughts – how we think them – are more often in our control than we realize.

It goes without saying we must try to think good thoughts if we are in normal, every day circumstances. Remember your dreams, goals, what you want to achieve with others, how you want to make them feel, how you want to feel. If nothing bad is happening, focus on that!

But if something bad happens to us, something inconvenient, irritating, loathsome….how do we respond in thought? We must look for the good, or at the least, pull ourselves away from slipping into the bad and worse, and bring ourselves back to the baseline where we can turn ourselves toward the good.

We do have power to manage the quality of our thoughts. We do hold that power, no matter how “out of control” we may believe our thoughts to be.

They are the first input to the output of our lives. Guarding against the input of bad thoughts, and inputting good, can only lead to good outcomes in action and in the world.

If you find that muscle in your heart, mind, soul, spirit, whatever you may call it, if you can feel that turn towards the positive in thought, you will see it give you strength, and good things will happen.

That is to point yourself in a good direction. To point yourselves to the good point you want to be.

The point is, to point yourself to the point you want to reach, in your very thoughts.

So point, and go.