Today is put before you as a blessing. This is to be a bless-ed day. Feel sprightly, and you will make this day sprightly as well. There is fate, yes. At the same time, you are the maker of your fate in the Presence of Today.

How do you make it so you feel sprightly? By not feeling glum or fearful. What horse do you bet on to win the race? One that is pulling a plow or one without baggage to carry, one who rushes to what is ahead or one who keeps turning around to look back to see how far he has come? One who keeps questioning or one who moves right along?

You have no question about which horse you would bet on. No question at all. Yet, when it comes to life, you hem and haw. You say, “What shall I do? Think about yesterday or move on to today? Or should I think of tomorrow and run away from today as much as I possibly can? Maybe I should just quit anyway. Life has disappointed me too often. In the long run, nothing is going to change, or all change is out of my hands.”

You are the one who has to change. When you feel forlorn, you don’t have to pretend your forlornness away. You just have to put it to one side. If you can stop feeling forlorn altogether, great! If you can’t, just put forlornness somewhere where it will not trip you up. You do not have to cling to past thoughts. You have a million thoughts. Certainly you can put some thoughts aside and put fresh thoughts in their place.

Optimism isn’t foolish. Pessimism is foolish. Pessimism is foolhardy. It keeps you where you have been. Pessimism works that way just about every time! If you go around much of the time thinking: “Nothing ever turns out the way I want,” you will have what you think much of the time. Watch your mouth! Watch your thoughts. Many many of your thoughts are man-made. You can dispense with them. What are they worth to you and your life that you feel duty-bound to hang on to them? How much clutter do you want to keep? Give old thoughts away. Better yet, toss old thoughts into the trash. Who wants your old thoughts anyway?

When all is not to your liking, make room for new ways of thinking. Life is meant to be a walk where you see new sights and think new thoughts. In life, you grow whether you want to or not. Make thinking in new ways part of your life.

You may be wonderful as you are, yet there is more wonderful for you to be.

Sooner or later, it behooves you to take a walk in a higher place where you have greater views before you, perhaps even vistas. There is plenty for you to see that you have not seen before, or, perhaps, you glossed over.

You can think of growing as picking grapes. You have picked great juicy grapes from one vine, and now you go on to another vine to pick the ripe juice grapes of a new vine. And so you keep walking down along the vines and picking the grapes. Nowhere in life can you just stay the same. Movement is part of life no matter who is living it. There is no staying the same on Earth.

Come close to Me, and let me ask you:

Do you really really want to stay the same? Is staying the same as comfortable as you like to think it is? Let the past become a stepping stone that carries you forward to new heights.