I don’t have to tell you that, ‘life is tough’ these days. I watch the percentage ticker on Yahoo during the day that shows the loss or gain of the Dow Jones Industrials. Sometimes I wonder, how much can it lose in a day? It is staggering. I’ve never seen anything like this in my half century on the planet.
There have only a few times in my life that fear has gripped my heart due to breaking events in the news. I was a 5 year old boy when President John F. Kennedy was brutally assassinated just 60 miles from our home in Northeast Texas.
I’ve blocked a lot of my childhood out of my mind but I do remember that day.
I had been at the local park just three houses down from where we lived on east Rosedale Street. I had rushed home in our little 900 square foot home that 5 of us lived in. (My dad told me that the monthly mortgage payment was $71).
I raced through the front door and was on a mission to retrieve something out of my bedroom. As I ran in the house, my mother was standing there ironing. The black and white Motorola was on across the room. My mom was crying.
I had the presence of mind to stop and ask mom what was wrong. She said, ‘Honey, the president has just been killed in downtown Dallas.’ To this day, I can only remember a few toys and few other vague events that took place in my childhood. However, that moment will be etched upon my heart forever.
Those of you that are at, near or older than the age I am, 50, will likely remember where you were when the first space shuttle blew up moments as it streaked into the Florida sky. That was back in the mid 80s. I was working as a young executive in a construction company in Dallas. I’d recently graduated from college and happened to be going into eat with the owner of our company when the news came.
Of course many of us know exactly where we were when when the planes hit the towers in New York and so many thousands lost their lives.
In those times, you feel hopeless and definitely helpless. You don’t know what to do.
As an ordained minister, I’ve been called upon a few hundred times to speak at funeral or memorial services. There is a little story that I tell that always helps others to know what to do and especially, how to feel when someone has left us for the life hereafter.
The story is one of a little girl who is late coming home from school one day. After waiting for an hour past the time she should have been home, the mother is clueless as to what to do. Within about 5 more minutes, the little girl opens the front door and comes in. Her mother is frantic and asks her where she has been.
The little girl innocently looks up at her mom and begins explaining. She says, “Mommy, I was walking home from school and I saw Susie sitting on the curb crying. I had to stop and help.”
Her mom says, “Sweetie, that is so kind of you even though I’ve been worried sick when you didn’t show up on time. Were you able to talk to her and encourage her?” The sweet little girl looked up at her mom and said, “No mommy. I just sat down with her and helped her cry.”
My heart goes out today to the thousands of people who are feeling the devastating effects of what is happening in our world. Not just here but around the globe.
If you find yourself in a place of not knowing what to do, I’m going to give you some sage advice that my grandmother gave me hundreds of times in my life. Ready? It is profound. Don’t be fooled by its simplicity.
O.k. Here it is: “Do what you KNOW to do”.
Here’s what I KNOW to do in hard times.
1. Keep believing in your own dreams
2. Get your dream, goal or whatever it is you want, in your imagination and simply do what the great Les Brown has instructed thousands around the world to do. While holding it in your imagination, say, “It’s possbile!”
3. Consciously confront negative thoughts and kick them out of your brain like you were fighting off an instruder who had just broken into your home and was about to attack one of your children (or grandchild). As the biblical command says, “Take every thought captive.” Make an arrest on self defeating and negative thoughts. Your mind is going to be tempted again and again to picture negative outcomes. Arrest them. Cuff them. Throw them in jail.
4. Replace those thoughts by welcoming thoughts and images of what you DO WANT in your life. Force yourself to focus on the positive. You might need to get out your journal or dream board. I created a ‘mind movie’ for myself and uploaded it to YouTube (go see mine at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6ER16vuK-I
5. Get a book that you know is going to make you feel better and read some or all of it. If you don’t have a book like that handy, go read some of the transcripts of Neville Goddard (go here
http://www.realneville.com/text_archive_pdf.htm
6. Watch a great movie. Go get the movie, The Legend of Bagger Vance or Patch Adams or any other movie you know will lift you up and make you feel better. It is important that you not only ‘think positive’ but that you ‘feel positive’ as well.
You know what to do to keep yourself or get yourself back into a positive, hopeful frame of mind. We all just need some direction and encouragement.
Even as an author, speaker and entreprenuer of personal empowerment products and services, I can find myself bewildered from time to time, not knowing what to do. The temptation to get down on yourself, become cynical or critical knocks on my door frequentyly. You want to blame someone for your pain. “If only they would help me”, “if only they hadn’t treated me so bad”. These are thoughts that all of us are tempted to think. Even if you brood on them for extended periods, still take the action to interrupt these patterns with something constructive and positive.
It takes work to stay positive in the day that we live in. However, do the work. It will be more than worth it in the end.
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Posted by michaelmurphy 
Posted by michaelmurphy 
Posted by michaelmurphy 
