Live Intentionally Grateful
Many of us have grown up in environment that was not great. Full of trauma, chaos, loss, abuse etc. However, that does not mean your past must create your future. We do not have to hold onto that hurt and allow it to overwhelm us.
We can allow all that has happened to define who we are today, or we can take the pain and use it to your advantage.
Ask yourself what skills you have learnt from your experiences.
Most likely you have learnt to be resilient,
You have learnt to be careful with who you associate.
You are loyal to those you trust.
You are courageous.
Even though these experiences were damaging, and I am certainly not underestimating the effect it has had on you. We must stop and look at how these events have allowed us to be the person we are today.
Here is a story that highlights what I am trying to say!
Stop being a Glass become a Lake
Once an unhappy young man came to an old wise man who was sitting by a lake and told him he had an incredibly sad life and asked for a solution.
The old man instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt into a glass of water then drink it.
The old man asked. How does it taste?
Terrible!!! spat the apprentice
The Old man laughed
The old man asked the apprentice to put a handful of salt in the lake and swirl it around. He then asked the young apprentice to drink from the lake.
As the water dripped down from the young man’s chin the master asked
How does it taste.
Good!!! remarked the apprentice.
Do you taste the salt said the old man?
. The young man said NO
The old man sat beside the troubled young man, took his hand, and said.
The pain of life is pure salt, no more no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same.
But the amount we taste the “pain “depends on the container we put it into. So, when we are in pain, the only thing that we can do is enlarge your sense of things that you are grateful for, or be overtaken and pulled down by the pain.
It is your choice.
Keep Going
Sue