“Think about what you have been thinking about. There you might find the source of your discontent.” -Joyce Meyer

“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. “(Proverbs 4:23 NLT)

One thing that I can’t deny is the power of a positive attitude. Making up my mind has changed my life. It sounds corny, but it is truly what made me roll up my sleeves and get serious about living my life to the fullest instead of lumping each day into a pile of waste.

I realized that sitting around thinking constantly about how fat I am, how miserable… was actually in a weird way perpetuating more and more of it. Obsessing that the pain I was in would likely never go away…surrendering to the constant, nagging voice in my head telling me that I would NEVER lose this weight. Accepting that I would just be fat and that’s it. This is my life. Allowing myself to sit and marinate.
It’s no wonder I was in a dark and depressed place. I was inviting the negativity in daily to share breakfast and it would linger, like an unwanted houseguest all day. I repeated this for months and months. It crept in like a tiny pebble in my shoe and eventually turned into a disabling cancer.
When my life then became so out of control and unmanageable due to my attempts at numbing that pain I was feeling, I finally reached a breaking point where a decision had to be made to either continue and die, or make a change.

In my recovery class this week we were discussing the topics of guilt and shame. ( Heavy duty!) The topic evolved into the difference between real guilt and false guilt. The way we think, the way we talk to ourselves and about ourselves. The power in it and behind it. One lady shared something so amazing, I still don’t think I’ve finished digesting it…

” Be careful when you hear the words: woulda, coulda, shoulda, always, never and forever in your thoughts, most times they are not your friend.”

Wow.

Right?

The way we allow ourselves to think is very important. Most people don’t even think about how they think. I know I didn’t!

No matter how you look at it, the way we feel, is a choice we make. Circumstances can be grim at times, and being positive in those times can be near impossible. We can’t get it right 100% of the time, but for the majority of the driving to and fro running errands, taking kids here and there, meeting after meeting , paying bills, work and family relationships, laundry and more laundry kinds of days…we have a choice. We can embrace and find silver linings or we can be miserable.

I have made a choice to believe what God says about me, His child. That I am loved and have been created with reason and purpose and value. That I have been given talents and abilities that will be a blessing to myself and others.

Accepting a life of misery and negativity is no longer acceptable.

These things are ALL true about you too.

Sometimes we gotta fake it till we make it…seriously. Some days I’m not bought all the way in, but I keep pressing in and moving forward.


“If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh