“I would love to be an optimist, but I don’t think it’s going to work out.” — Anonymous

As Sarah Ban Breathnach reminds us in Simple Abundance, “Optimism, like the happiness habit, can be learned.” Well, that is good news for everyone. All we have to do is to let go of our thoughts of lack, our thoughts of suffering, our thoughts of failure. We must also realize that it may not all happen over night.

We must allow ourselves the grace to make these Real Life Changes day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. They may seem like baby steps at first, but even a baby learns how to run if you give it the freedom try and to make mistakes along the way and learn from those very mistakes.

Begin the change to optimism today by smiling at those that cross your path. Believe in yourself no matter what task you plan to accomplish. If there are clouds in the sky, realize that they too will pass and the sun will shine again. It always does. And love will shine in your soul if you give yourself a friendly nudge in the right direction.

“Love fulfilled sees where we could have gone the way of love before, if we’d known how, and how insecurities limited many of our choices. Love fulfilled perceives new meaning and higher reasons behind many of the mysteries of why things happened as they did.”
— Doc Childre

Have you ever questioned why you have chosen to have certain people in your life — and more specifically in your romantic life? We all have very good reasons for making our love choices, even if we are not consciously aware of them. We may choose a relationship that will improve our life in some way, teach us something important that couldn’t be learned in any other way, or challenge us to become better people.

Today, take a closer look at the relationships you have chosen for yourself. What is the mirror in front of you trying to tell you, trying to teach you? Our relationships can be more than just a source of happiness (or pain) if we look at them from a different point of view. Why did you choose to be with this person? What are you getting out of this relationship that makes it so valuable to your life path?

Taking this moment to look deeper into the meaning of your partnering choices, you may be surprised at the deeper hidden messages that you have been sending to yourself over the years through your significant other. Give yourself the gift of self-awareness and accelerate your learning by opening up your mind to the possibilities of growth that your relationships give to you.

“My mind is a garden. My thoughts are the seeds. My harvest will be either flowers or weeds.”
— Mel Weldon

What are the seeds you are planting in your garden every day? Are they thoughts based on fear, lack, or anger? These types of thoughts planted on a daily basis will most likely result in a garden of weeds. Thoughts based on acceptance, abundance, and love tend to grow a beautiful garden of flowers. More likely, we get a mixture of the two.

I am an avid gardener and when I look out on my garden, I can usually spot at least a weed or two doing its best to sneak in between a bunch of flowers. If I want to maintain my garden with all its blooms, I have to remove the weed quickly, while it is still small, and before it has a chance to spread throughout. Weeds are a tougher species, too. They don’t require you to water and care for them and yet they will still grow and spread. In fact, during the droughts they tend to be the only things to remain in your garden.

Our thoughts are the same. It is normal to have a negative thought now and then attempt to plant itself in our brain. If we are not careful and diligent to remove the negative thought, it will grow bigger and stronger and even start to spread to the rest of our thoughts.

Be the expert gardener of your thoughts and you can ensure a beautiful garden full of flowers and free of weeds. It’s your choice.

“The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.”
—Henry L. Stimson (1867 - 1950)

The power of your thoughts can influence trusting another person. As Henry Stimson points out, the more you believe and treat someone as trustworthy, the more trustworthy they become to you. Conversely, if you put all your energy into not trusting someone, they will turn out to be untrustworthy. You create your own reality with your thoughts and beliefs.

But I would also encourage you to discover what is the true nature of your distrust. Is it based on present facts or future fears or past traumas? From personal experience, I have found that trusting someone has more to do with allowing yourself to open up to possible vulnerabilities. And therefore it has not so much to do with the other’s actions or behavior, but more to do with your own fear of being hurt.

In order to trust someone else, it is vital that you begin to trust yourself. You must trust that you are a strong enough person to handle whatever comes your way. You must trust that you are able to open your heart up and allow others in. In doing so you face your fear of getting hurt. And as Shakti Gawain reminds us, “When I’m trusting and being myself… everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously.”

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”
—W.M. Lewis

How many of us spend our days talking about the life we could have, or will have soon, or should have. Unfortunately, talking about it won’t actually make it happen. Each day you have to consciously decide on the actions to take that will keep you moving forward and avoid the decisions and actions that keep you stuck in the past. Having a desire for change but not taking the necessary actions to accomplish change will leave you at a standstill and probably also leave you feeling disheartened and dissatisfied.

Debbie Ford reminds us in The Best Year of Your Life that now is the time to set clear, concise, structured goals to keep you moving forward. Take the time to set your goals on paper with specific deadlines attached for each major milestone that you need to accomplish. Recognize the action steps that you need to take and do them. With each new action you take you will be one step closer to fulfilling your goals and your desires.

“The next level then, is the awareness that now is all there is. Today is the only day of your life. You do not have to be imprisoned or restricted by your personal history.”
— Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Your Sacred Self

Memories. We all have them: How we grew up, the friends we have made, the jobs we have done, the relationships we have created. These memories make us who we are, correct? Most of us would say, yes. However, by allowing our memories of the past to define who we are in the present, we are allowing ourselves to be imprisoned by labels and past events that may not be appropriate or accurate for your present state of being.

Today, free yourself from your past. Let go of all the limiting beliefs, roles, and expectations that you and others have placed on yourself. They may have served a purpose up to this moment, but you can now open up to all the other possibilities for your life. Rely on the way things are, the way you feel, the way your act, right now in this very moment. A New Day. A New You.

“I think I let go of the need for approval. It certainly feels good when you get it, but I used to be more desperate for it. Once I felt better inside about myself…I could do everything based on how I want to do things.”
— Ellen DeGeneres

Praise, appreciation, compliments. I was an approval junkie for many years. And like any other “addiction” I found myself needing it so much, I no longer knew how I felt about myself, unless someone told me how to feel. That meant that if someone thought I was great, I felt great. And when someone thought I was terrible, I felt terrible.

My inner guidance and self-esteem shut down and I was at the mercy of everyone else’s opinion. And with the amount of people I had to deal with everyday, my emotions and feelings about myself were in a state of constant yo-yo.

Thankfully, I have given myself a couple of well-needed gifts since those days. I have given myself the gift of forgiveness and I have given myself the much-needed gift of self-love.

I now allow myself to be my own guide to feeling good by doing good things. I still enjoy hearing positive feedback from others, but I don’t need it as I used to. Also, the good part is that when the occasional critique comes my way, I am less likely to take it personally. I have found the balance between outside opinions and my own internal guidance system.

“When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inward and examine ourselves.”
— Confucius

Every now and then we have moments where we come across people that we don’t agree with or their life situation seems so obviously easy to change or correct in our eyes. However, the reality is that we will never have enough information about people to judge them accurately. Judgment leads nowhere helpful as it blinds the person making the judgment.

It is not very easy to refrain from making quick judgments about others, especially when everybody else is doing it. But only you are responsible for your own growth and change, not others. The next time you are about to cast a quick judgment, ask yourself the following questions: Is it true? Is it useful? Is it necessary? Do I truly know that person’s life or their life journey?

Then the final step is to turn inward and ask yourself: What is it in that person or that situation that reflects my own life, or my own attitudes? Often we will surprise ourselves with the discovery that we are judging in others what we should be addressing in ourselves.

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”
— Robert Frost

Improvement and change occur when you do things repeatedly and consistently. Stopping and starting all the time will kill any of the momentum you need to succeed. Find ways to keep yourself on track and motivated. It is easy to create reasons not to stick to your goals. We get sick, we get tired, we have to travel, we get discouraged, we are stressed.

Here are some tricks to staying motivated and keeping change consistent in your life: Be reasonable with your goals by not taking on too much too quickly. Write your goals down in your calendar and make them as big a priority as every other appointment you have. Find support near by — a friend, a spouse, even a virtual computer buddy to keep you on track. Keep things fun — when it’s fun, it’s that much easier to do. Keep a journal so you can see your progress.

Now that the lightening and thunderstorms have passed and we have our internet connection back up — here’s the daily inspiration again!

“Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself.”
— Alan Alda

Don’t take yourself or all of life’s ups and downs too seriously. Lighten up. We were designed to live by our senses, not by our brains. Be bold and trust your inner guidance without hesitation.

Always follow your instincts, your intuition, your gut. And when things don’t go the way you thought it would, laugh at your mistakes. Being able to laugh at yourself is the key to self-actualization.

None of us is in control as much as we would like to think we are. Go with the flow. Forgive yourself. And move forward.