Why not be satisfied? Why not be satisfied rather than dissatisfied? Consider that your satisfaction or dissatisfaction level is like a flag that you hang out in front of your house. This flag indicates how you feel about your life. The energy you spend by resisting and resenting what life hands you can be spent more productively. Even when you don’t outwardly complain, when you feel that life must treat you differently, you are setting up a pattern of discouragement. Wouldn’t it be better to set up a pattern of encouragement?
What is the balance here you have of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with your life? Is it 80% dissatisfaction to 20% satisfaction? I wonder if you couldn’t turn this around, turn the emphasis around and give more credit to your life and so cheer it on.
It seems that complaints are easy to come by, easier than joy. Sometimes it seems that you are a dissatisfied customer. You make a purchase in a store, and then you’re not happy with it and want to return it. In this case, the store I speak of is your life as it seems to come to you.
No one says that life hasn’t disappointed you. Just the same, you can turn your attention to the blessings life has given you. In fact, you must. You have heard, and I have said, that there is value in everything whether it is what you wanted or not. Odds are, you may be more eager to find fault than you are to appreciate. Naturally, you would like life to dance to your tune, and life doesn’t always take into account what you would like or not often enough or enough to suit you. Everything in the extant world is relative. It is a comparison. It is up or down etc.
Remember the nursery rhyme of the old woman who lived in a shoe who had so many children she didn’t know what to do? She could have turned her attention to the blessings of having so many children. She could have. She could be tired and overworked and could have counted her blessings as well. It seems obvious, doesn’t it?
And, yet, as wise as you are, you may grind thoughts within you of how intolerable your boss is or your husband or your mother or your living conditions or anything at all. Of course, your problems are real. They are very real until you dismiss them. Sooner or later you will. Another difficulty will come up to take its place, so why not start off on the right foot, beloveds, why not?
There is also light. Your whole life is as you think about it. Your life doesn’t exist separate from you. You are the main character in your life. You set its tone. Yes, life does happen to you, and, yet, you are the one to set the tone for your life. You are the harbinger of your life. Even in the worst moments of your life, when you think with despair that this is what your life has come to, you can also think of the shining moments and what could happen next.
Cinderella had a good attitude, wouldn’t you say? The Cinderella story is about much more than her shoe size.
You can be like the Seven Dwarfs in Snow White who whistled while they worked.
You may be a Sleeping Beauty unaware of all the goodness that life does give to you. Now, the good thing about being a Sleeping Beauty is that you can wake up and see the blessings that are yours. It’s an old refrain that I sing again and again, suggesting that you total up your blessings and honor them. See how they will multiply simply because you change the way you look at life.
While you are at it, why not sing a happy tune?