What are you looking at?

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look atchange.
- Dr. Wayne Dwyer

While at first glance this quote may seem similar to yesterday's quote, it actually takes a different direction. They both have to do with the way we look at life around us.

However, this quote suggests that we look at different things when we change the way we look at things. That is, if we decide to look for the positive in events of our day, in our co-workers, in our family members and friends, we look at different events and behaviours than we would if we were looking for negative things.

When we want to find the positive in our lives, we tend to ignore or overlook those that are negative because they hold little importance to us. Forgiving, for example, is easy if we don't consider the mistakes of others to be important.

This conscious choice to seek positive things around us and in people relieves us of a great deal of stress. When we find ourselves relieved of stress simply by looking at different things, we must conclude that stress is something we heap on ourselves, rather than what others give to us.

We can turn ourselves into slaves to our jobs and our bosses will seldom interfere. We can turn ourselves into golf addicts and the golf pro will never complain. We can turn ourselves into shopaholics and the store owners will never tell us to stay home more.

Each of these behaviours adds to the stress of our lives because they mean we are doing things to excess, which causes us to look at different things than those that are important to us over the long term.

Change the way you look at things. If you are doing a great deal of something, consider what you will think of your participation to that extent on the last day of your life, if you are given the opportunity to look back over your life.

What really matters may not be what you are spending the most time on now. In fact, you might lose what really matters to you if you spend too much time on things that are not really important to your life over the long term.

You can't have everything. Make sure you look after what is important. That means you must look at those important things now, not after they are gone.

Don't assume that what is important to you will look after itself. It never does.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic SocialProblems,' waking us up to what is important in our lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl