NormsMilfordBlog

Back to Jack – I’ve decided to give the three little words theme a rest and get back to the source that has been a primary inspiration for many of my past posts – the blog Jack’s Winning Words, which I get every day. I’ll revisit the three little words theme from time to time.

“Jack” is Pastor John (Jack) Freed, the retired pastor of my church. Although Jack “retired” many years ago he never really retired from doing most of the things that you might imagine a pastor does, he just shifted to a more leisurely pace and into different venues, one of which is his daily blog.

Jack starts each day’s blog with a quote, usually an inspirational one and then comments upon that quote – usually no more than a paragraph. I’ve used Jack’s quotes for years as the inspirational fodder for my more lengthy posts.

I believe that the quote I chose today is from one of Jack’s past blog posts  – “When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.” – unknown.

I’ve written in the past about the world’s greatest author – Anon. Today we have a quote by that quite prolific quotemiester – Unknown (Aka Unk.)

Life is always throwing stuff at us that makes some of us cry. A good cry can be a great way to get past the initial emotional response to something bad; however, it can also be a gateway to despair and depression, so get it over with quickly and move on. In today’s quote the advice is to fight back by reinforcing in your own mind all of the reasons that you have to be happy, to be upbeat and positive.

Every time I’m complaining about something that I don’t have or about something that went wrong, my wife tells me to think about all that we do have – a nice home, a great family with wonderful grandchildren, two loving and loyal dogs and on and on. It’s true. I know that it’s true and before long I’ve usually forgotten what I was bitching about. I have a thousand reasons to smile, to be happy and to be content in life. I just don’t have time to spend worrying about stuff that I don’t have and probably don’t need. I have a garage full of that kind of stuff already.

What are your thousand reasons to smile? Have you taken stock of them lately and paused to think about them long enough to let that smile come to your face? Why not? Sometimes we seem to spend all of our time and energy worrying about things that maybe didn’t turn out like we would have liked; or, even worse, worrying about things that haven’t happened yet and may never happen – things that live mainly in our imaginations. Why instead don’t we celebrate the things that are right in our lives; embrace the people and pets that we love and who love us back; be happy with the things that we do have instead of coveting the things that we wish we had; and bask in the things that we’ve already accomplished in life, instead of being dissatisfied with the things that we haven’t accomplished, yet. We have a thousand reasons to smile.

So, maybe print out that little saying and tape it to your mirror, so that you can start each day looking at it and remembering all of the reasons that you have to smile. What a great way to start off on the right foot for the day – with a smile on your face and a positive attitude towards the day. As they used to say on the Men’s Warehouse commercials – “You’re gonna like the way you look”, and so will those around you.