Daily Meditation-April 22, 2021-Quiet Your Mind
Today’s quotation:
As you take a few minutes each day to quiet your mind, you will discover a nice benefit: your every day, “ordinary” life will begin to seem far more extraordinary. Little things that previously went unnoticed will begin to please you. You’ll be more easily satisfied, and happier all around. Rather than focusing on what’s wrong with your life, you’ll find yourself thinking about and more fully enjoying what’s right with your life. The world won’t change, but your perception of it will. You’ll start to notice the little acts of kindness and caring from other people rather than the negativity and anger. –Jack Canfield
Today’s Meditation:
Who ever defined “ordinary” in the first place? And how did that word come to have such a negative connotation in our lives? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the ordinary, with the things that we see and experience each day. If there are problems with it, then they come from our perception of the ordinary things rather than from the ordinary itself.
Life is in itself extraordinary. We have been blessed with a lifetime of experiences and people and things, yet we always seem to be waiting for something “better” to happen. But really, who cares what’s going to happen tomorrow–the important thing is what’s happening right now. We may have grand plans for tomorrow, but there’s no guarantee that they’re actually going to happen. But this moment, right here and right now, is happening.
Quiet your mind. Relax. Think peaceful thoughts for three or four minutes. See the beauty in the things that surround you, see the wonder in the simple things. When you truly are able to do that, your life will change. Many of the cares that have dogged you for years will simply become something much less bothersome, and they won’t affect your peace of mind any longer.
It truly is all up to you, and how you choose to see the world, the people in it, and the wonderful gifts that we’ve all been given.
Questions to consider:
- Do you take time each day to relax and quiet your mind?
What are the potential benefits of doing so? - How often do you focus on what’s right with your life? On things that are wrong with it?
- Are you good at noticing the acts of kindness of others? How often do people surprise you with such acts? Why do they surprise you?
For further thought:
Of course, there’s a prerequisite to awareness–we have to slow down. We have to realize that life is going to go on whether or not we rush around in order to get everything possible done today and that our own mental, emotional, and physical well-being is at stake. We have a beautiful world that surrounds us, that offers us unlimited opportunities for peace, serenity, learning, helping, getting, feeling, hoping, love–you name it, it’s there in abundant quantities, more than any one of us will never need. But we have to see it, to acknowledge it’s there, to let it become a part of us by making ourselves a part of it. -Tom Walsh
