Positive Thoughts

Stores closing but retail sales up; on-line traffic soaring.

Cars smaller, more expensive; but safer by design, crush-zones, more electronic sensors.

Auto deaths climbing; cars safer; electronic gadgets in use while driving seems cause.

Global warming melting ice caps; seas rising; coastal areas see rise in flooding; colder

climates have mild winter; less snow

Work force shrinking; manufacturing plants dwindling; robots and automated processes

grow.

Americans have more time on their hands; depression rates rise; new careers possible.

Intellectual careers growing; creative ideas mushrooming; new businesses forming.

Change is uncomfortable. It forces us to make our livings differently. Change also forces us to drop old habits and find new ones. Sometimes change eliminates jobs and causes poverty, bankruptcies and other forms of suffering. But change can be forecast. People can prepare for change. They can even find new areas of interest and prepare to work on them before losing the old job. The more we think of these things the more flexible we become. Adaptability becomes a strength rather than the lack of it being a weakness.

What do you like to do? What makes you happy some of the time? All of the time? Rarely euphoric, but predictably capable of such happiness? Identify these things. Focus on them. Learn where to find them and how to make them more frequent in your life routines.

We deliberately avoid happy things that are destructive – drinking to excess, overspending, drug addictions and the like. These destructive lifestyles end in early death and lots of suffering. We are not talking about finding happy at all costs; no, we are looking for that which is not obvious and will continue to make you unique. And happy.

Like starting your own business, what makes your service or product unique in the marketplace? Are you sure it is unique? Will it be so temporarily until someone else invents a better widget to replace yours? Is it only a matter of time, or do you have this uniqueness tied up in a neat little bundle just for you to take advantage of?

How often do you think about these things? Do you have the freedom to do so? Do you get a kick from doing this type of thinking? Do you discipline your routines so you have the time to think freely?

This life style is at the heart of creativity. It teaches us to think outside the box, and to free-associate with ideas that otherwise are quite common. From such simplicity comes complexity. From complexity comes new simplicity. Who would have thought that?

You did. I did. A lot of us did, and do. And it is the future of our culture and our nation.

Don’t avoid this activity. It will free us up to discover the new in life that will propel us past so many other problems that are obvious to so many. So obvious they pay too much attention to them. They get glum and wallow in the negative. The negative controls them and they begin to complain and whine. They keep themselves busy doing this. And their complaints keep us busy combating them!

In no time they have no time; and they have no happiness either. They manage to find blame elsewhere but where the blame actually resides. They could find the elsewhere in any mirror they take the time to peer into. Ignoring the need to find the positive is the first slip on the down slope to unhappy endings.

All they need to do – needed to do – is flip their situation upside down and rethink it. The answers are already there. We know what to do; it just needs doing.

When do you suppose they will awaken? Meanwhile, what are you waiting for?

The sun shines somewhere on the planet each and every day. Know that and rethink your life.

April 12, 2017