How Was Your Day?

In her classic, "The Game Of Life And How To Play It", Florence Scovll Shinn, talks about how our thoughts and words not only effect our current life, but what we create in the future.   She tells the story of a man stuck doing work that made him miserable everyday.  Everyday he would come home from his work and while he ate dinner with his family, he would recount every miserable, negative detail of his day.  He did this everyday.  This effected his life in everyway, even the days he wasn't at work. Mrs Shinn suggested to him that he look at what he was doing to himself, with his evening recount of his day.  She challenged him to come home, enjoy his dinner with his family and not say anything about what happened at work that day.  She reports, with that simple, yet challenging step, his life was transformed.  He discovered that the work has that awful, but not the work he really wanted, and was able to create a better form of work for himself at a higher pay. Mrs. Shinn did most of her work in the 1920's and 1930s, I wonder how that advice would go over in this day and time?  We live in the "get it off your chest, don't stuff it" age.   I don't think Mrs. Shin was telling this person to just stuff his feelings, I think she was challenging him to look at his life and work in a more positive light.  I have talked about how I think words and what we talk about and how we talk about ourselves, our lives, and others, effects the present.   Mrs. Shinn wrote that it effects your future as well.  If we feel that the past is negative, the present is sure to be negative and the future will be just as negative.  Why is that?  Well, for one thing we are taking our negative selves everywhere we go.  Soon it is all we know.  What we focus on tends to be what we create in our lives.  Do we really need to give negativity a voice?  If we do, can we do it in a way that moves us or keeps us positive?  I'll be the first to say I love a good vent, yet I'll think before I vent.  If I can't move on and not get this a voice, then I'll vent and vent quickly.  Get over it and look at how I can get into a positive mind set.  Lately, I've discovered that by not venting, not giving voice to the negativity, that there really is no need, as I'm too busy in a positive present and good things coming to me in the future, turning positive thoughts into positive things.

Okay...time for a check in...Are you giving voice to negativity in your life?  Are you willing to take the "No Complain. No blame. No whining Challenge"?   Do for a week.  Note what happens in your life.

Until next week...create to feel great! 

49 projects complete! 3 to go!  Finish line is in sight! Wow!
This week's project I designed a pencil/journal case. There are pockets for pencils/crayons and a pocket to slip a sketch pad in.  Velcro closes it and I'm good to draw on the go!