This was a tough week for me. It seems like the life I am trying to build isn’t happening fast enough and I started to get discouraged. I’m sorry to say that I can’t tell you a great tale of victory of how I “turned it around,” had a great spiritual awakening and went on to have the most fabulous, amazing time of my life. I actually had some moments this week where I just wanted to get drunk and forget my troubles while lamenting, “poor me… poor me… pour me a drink!”

Shakespeare said, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Sometimes, nothing changes but the way I look at it.
Thoughts are like a raging river. I can stand on the side of the river and watch them go by or I can fall in the river and get swept away. When I fall in the river and get swept away, it sometimes takes friends to pull me out.

There’s a saying that goes, “when one door closes, another one opens.” Let me tell you that waiting in the hallway really sucks. When I am in the hallway, so to speak, I need to really watch where my thoughts are trying to take me. If these thoughts aren’t going to serve me or make me feel better, I need to simply watch them go by. Simple, yes… but not easy. It takes practice.
I am happy to report that I didn’t give up completely in spite of the fact that it is hard to remember that all emotions are fleeting so therefore, there is always hope for change.

When I’m in the grip of self-pity or negative thinking, I try and use some simple tactics to reduce the inevitable pain that comes with life until it passes. In life, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. One tactic I employ is to resist the tendency to complain. I feel that when I complain, I give energy to my grievances when it’s just a better strategy to plant the seeds of success.

When the mind is obsessed with something, or is annoyed with something, it goes again and again to that annoyance and thereby reinforces the annoyance, making the present as unbearable. The more those kind of thoughts invade our minds, the more misery will take root.
Every morning when I leave my house I pass a framed picture of some artwork of mine to which I added the words “Never. Never. Never Give Up.” Spiritual awakenings take time and above all they take commitment.