The Gift of Training Your Mind

The Gift of Training Your Mind

“Train your mind to see the good in everything.  Positivity is a choice. The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.  And remember, being positive doesn’t mean ignoring the negative, it means overcoming the negative.”

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To train your mind takes practice and instruction.

A concise decision to make your way of thinking much better.

It has been said, “You are what you think.”

If that is true, what thoughts would determine who you are and what you do?

Would there be a person who is a blessing to others?

Or is there someone who is paralyzed by fear and anxiety?

In life, we cannot avoid times of distress; it goes with the territory, and life can be a mess.

In those times when you are challenged, train your mind to accept the test.

To find the silver lining, the diamond in the rough.

Train your mind to find the good, the gracious, and the kind. 

Find a way to have a renewed and aware mind. 

Have you ever met someone who is just always negative? I am sure that you have. I am sure that we have been guilty of this action. I know I have. As humans, we tend to focus on the negative aspects of a situation almost immediately rather than the positive ones. Yesterday I was scrolling through the news and a little puff piece caught my eye. It was about a certain prince who lives in this country and his wife, and how they felt they were victims. Even a prince with all the trappings of wealth, mansions, and an illustrious family focuses on the negative rather than finding a positive mindset to see what abundant blessings he has in his life. How do we put into practice overcoming our tendency to be negative? By training our minds, we can have quality thoughts. Think about training. It is an act or exercise that has to be repeated on a regular basis with some sort of routine so that improvement can be made. When my sons get ready to do a 13 mile ruck for the Army in full gear, which weighs about 70 pounds, they start training a lot before the actual day of the ruck. If they showed up to ruck up and down hills with all that gear with no training, they would fail completely and have to be recycled to take the test again. Training requires effort, sweat, and even tears, but when you can complete the ruck in record time, you will be healthier and in a much better frame of mind. To take the idea further, when my boys started to train for the ruck, they were sore in places they never thought they could be sore before. Several times, their time was not nearly what it needed to be to pass the test, but they did not give up. When we train and exercise, some days all we can do is show up, and that is ok. The same is true with our thoughts; on those days you can just “show up,” that is better than not trying at all. Keep showing up, keep trying, and keep training your mind to be in a better place. One day several years ago, my husband and I went to see my great-great aunt Eddie. She was about one hundred years old. She never had any children, she lost her husband tragically several years ago, and she had lived most of her life as a widow. My aunt Eddie lived through the Depression, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, and other calamities of life. Even as a child, I recall that she always had a smile on her face. As we sat with Aunt Eddie, she was singing hymns with the biggest smile on her face. When I asked her what kept her in such a good state of mind, she told me a Bible verse that is in the book of Philippians, where the Apostle Paul encouraged people to think on things that are true, honest, just, right, and pure. Whatever is honorable, whatever is excellent and of good repute, keep your mind on those things. Those are good words to live by. Let us train our thoughts and our approach in the direction of finding the blessings in our life situations.  

*The picture is one of my son’s unit doing their long and very hard ruck.

Source: Bible.com