Exercising A Healthy Attitude

Positive Attitude (comics)

Charles Swindoll said, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” It’s all about attitude and what you take personally. If you don’t let things bother you, life rolls on pretty pain-free. I do not promote ignorance, however, so people with an inherent “whatever” attitude disappoint me with how disconnected they are from the people and issues around them. You need to care – often care a lot – to make a difference in this world. It takes the balance of a monk and the stamina of an olympian to put your heart everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It’s exhausting and you need to make sure you stay in good shape to keep the balance alive. My brother said it well: “If you don’t have the energy to be positive, it’s impossible to be positive – your health is your first priority.” Your reaction to life depends solely on your frame of mind. If you are mentally or physically beat to hell, it’s pretty difficult to muster a positive reaction to anything. Make a point to sleep well, eat well and take real breaks. Take care of yourself. With a healthy mind, you can meet life with a healthy attitude and virtuous reactions. Otherwise, you will foster an exponential geyser of negativity that will only drag you down and keep making life worse.

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Catch Your Breath

It’s good for you. Without intermittent periods of reflection and rest, you will never keep up with the pace of your life. Some people turn to meditation and others to daydreaming; both serve the same purpose: recharge and reorient. Perhaps more important than rest, short quiet periods in your day help you process everything. When you break from mental stimulation and general busyness, you give your brain a moment to pass your experiences and newly formed lessons to memory. Catching your breath helps you sort through the data of your life and think more clearly thereafter.

Stop, take a breath, and zone out. Right now. When you can. And never feel guilty about it.

Find Your Meditation Space

Where can you go to clear your mind? Where can you go to let your thoughts flow freely? A forest? On a jog? In the game room? Where can you go to free your mind?

With all the noise day to day, it’s difficult to pause and reflect on your own life. It’s difficult to set your emotions and stress aside. Without a moment to rest, you can lose sight of your values, stumble away from your path, or threaten your health. I understand that rest is difficult to find, but I encourage you to make something work.

The best way to do this, I’ve found, is to assign a space (or time of day, if you can commit) exclusively for resting your mind. The shower is my meditation space – it is disconnected from the rest of the world, physically relaxing, and built into my day. Find a place that works for you. Treat this space as holy. Do NOT defile it with stress or let any other part of your life in. Keep it sacred. Visit it any time you feel unhealthy, lost, or overrun.