Spring greening at 'the portal' lifts my spirits.
Optimism infuses your life with an aura of dignity and invites in harmony. Gregge Tiffen (Open Secrets: An Air of Optimism - May, 2011)
Taking a quick look beyond myself to the world I see only glimpses of dignity and harmony. Those don’t sell, so their appearance in the media is rare. But my heart, my community and my social media connections tell me something different. There’s evidence and experience that can throw us into negativity and pessimism, if we live with the beliefs that our source is the world, its systems and other people and that life happens to us.
I’m learning that rather than happening to me, experiences in my life are products of my own creation. Events reflect the Law of Cause and Effect and they show up for my benefit, my learning, my growth. That learning is one of three elements in the foundation in which my optimism is grounded and from which it grows. The other elements are curiosity and my deepening understanding that the Universe is my source.
Rather than ‘oh, no!’ or ‘I don’t know’, I aim to wonder: ‘what the heck is this about?’; ‘how can I see it anew?’; ‘what can I learn?’ Rather than feeling and feeding fear and lack, I aim to consistently remember that the Universe is infinite, abundant and the source of all.
When I meet life’s events from here and experience the results my confidence grows. And, I’m discovering that confidence nourishes my optimism. I’m learning to use these elements in the seemingly insignificant events of daily life and in framing my views about the world and how I choose to participate in it. I’m curious how to live what the Bible tells us that Jesus said:
“I am in this world, but I am not of this world.”
As I’ve shared before daily life is ripe with opportunity to be creative, experiment and learn. Viewing life’s events (even, perhaps especially, what a coaching client dubbed ‘the darn dailies’ – those things that we do each and every day to sustain life) with faith and wonder keeps me out of being the victim and feeds my optimism as well.
We need more optimism in our world today to counter the negativity and fear that seem to run rampant. The Universe magnifies everything we do. And, while that’s a topic for expansion in a future post, this day (and the next, and beyond) let’s do our part to give the Universe our very best to magnify. After all, we are creating our world.
Luke enjoys the scenery from our hike to the Ziggurat while he contemplates the state of our world