What Are You Working On?

"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."

-- Carlos Castenada

I'm continually amazed at how much work people put into maintaining their misery! You have to keep thinking miserable thoughts, creating miserable emotions, doing miserable things, over and over and over again to keep "enjoying" a truly miserable life. Whew -- I'm exhausted just thinking about it!

With exactly the same amount of energy, or even less, you can choose instead to focus on your strengths, think positive thoughts, do empowering things, and create a life built on happiness, abundance and grace.

Coming from strength allows you to be a true force for good in the world. Coming out of misery disempowers you, and merely allows you to spread more misery. You become contagious, like Typhoid Annie, and anytime you meet someone with a compromised psychological immune system, you infect them with misery, too. Your own little gift to the world.

As humans, we are energy conversion devices. We take in energy in the form of food, ideas, psychological impressions, perceptions, etc., and, through work, we convert those raw materials into both tangible (physical) and intangible (psychological, emotional, spiritual) results. Rally's says, "You gotta eat." They're focused on the input. Castaneda says, "You gotta work." He's focused on the output.

The really important question is: What do you want the results of your work to be? Because its not so much the amount of work you do, but the focus of your work, that determines both the quality of your results and the quality of your life.

So, today, quit making yourself miserable! Quit spreading misery like the plague and, instead, work from your strengths. Invest your energy in thoughts and actions that make you feel good and simultaneously make the world a better place. Remember: Fun is the universal antidote to misery. Good clean (or dirty) fun. You choose. Either way, forgo misery, choose fun!