Our emotional health depends on our attitude.
We can choose: To accept or refuse love; grow from or surrender to challenges; enjoy or complain about our work; modify our habits or let our habits modify us; cultivate tranquility or be overwhelmed by stress; seize opportunities or cower in a corner; enjoy being alive or dread waking up.
Proper attitudes create a life worth living and make time worthwhile. Our response to life’s difficulties determines our happiness and health.
Within us resides the gift to accept responsibility for our own bliss. We can shape adversity into an advantage. We can turn tragedy into hope. We can live the life we choose.
The power to change gives us the opportunity for a blessed and balanced life.
The blind poet, Milton, wrote, The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
Thoughts of two famous people underscore Milton’s point:
Napoleon who had power, riches, and glory said, I have never known six happy days in my life.
Helen Keller, rendered blind and deaf from childhood meningitis, declared, I have found life so beautiful.
Events and acquisitions fail to give us joy. Our thoughts can.
Mind-body research, psychoneuroimmunology, proves that negative thoughts produce stress hormones. Optimistic thoughts cause the release of endorphins and other beneficial brain chemicals causing good feelings.
What we think determines how we feel.