The Power You Have Inside of You
January 14, 2008 by Anna Farmery
Filed under Affirmations of Life
Shakespeare said, “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so“. That seems an easy thing to say but not necessarily easy to do, but as people who have lost a loved one, we must think about that idea.
Life is great, life can be painful. Life is exhilarating, life is depressing. The point is life does not change it is how we think, how we feel that changes.
Loving someone can bring the most amazing happiness that you can ever imagine. Death brings an end to seeing that person, but not the love we feel. As
easy as it is – and let me tell you I struggle with this! – to resent the loss of that love, we should also realise that we are lucky to have loved, many haven’t, and also see this as the end of one chapter of our lives but the start of the next phase. That next phase will bring joy, will bring pain….because that is life, and that what makes life so incredible. That is what makes life something we should treasure.
Anna,
This post is so timely…I loved it.
I am completely smitten with the new book, The How of Happiness by Sonja Lubusinksy. It is excellent.
Why?
Well, like the quote from Shakesphere points out, thinking determines whether things are good or bad.
In The How Of Happiness, the author points out that 50 % of our happiness is genetically determined, genetic set point, 10 % decided by life circumstances, and a whole 40 % is up to US…our intentional activities what we THINK and Do determines that 40 %.
When I was first widowed (or during any transition) my life was DOMINTATED by that 10 %. That 10% became 99 %.
I remember whatever I did, wherever I went, I played the “widow card.” I really sunk into the victim mentality and my thoughts were totally ab out how “awful and unfair” my life was. (And, it was !)
It wasn’t until two years after my husband died that my daughters did a loving intervention. They essentially said, “Mom, you act like a victim. You really are playing out the role and it’s getting old.”
That brought me up short. I didn’t like it much, but there was something in the message that reached me…it was…ummmm….there are other people in the world who are struggling, there are other people who hurt, and the Cosmos isn’t just picking on me….Things started to turn around.
Thank you for this reminder, and thank you for again reminding all of us that the memories are with us forever…no one can take those away.
We get to CHOOSE how we think, how we define ourselves…the power is in that 40 %.
I don’t want to define myself by that 10 % anymore… As a good friend said to me on Saturday, “Beth you are so much more than a widow”
Thank goodness for friends and websites like this.
Smooches,
Beth
Wow the post from Beth really made me think, I guess we never really think about statistics or percentages when we loose someone. Everyone has experienced loss at one point of time or another in their life, some greater then others. And because of this it’s hard, I think, for people to not think of themselves as a victim. We focus so much on the loss that we forget about the joy that came first. Is loosing someone painful; well yes, but I would not take back the love we shared, because with no pain there would be no love. And who wants to live in a world with no love in it?
Tiffany – so true, I try and think of being grateful for what I have had rather than regretful for what I don’t have now….