Making Myself Miserable or Happy

My post a few days ago focused on Stinking Thinking and how it makes us miserable. The term I used to get attention was, "If Only".

That term is an obsession with the past and causes us to become anxious, sad, depressed and in a funk. And, that makes us hard to be around. People as a rule do not like to be miserable people.

Events in the world or in the past do not cause us to have bad feelings. Nope. My past failures, sins and mistakes do not make me miserable. It is the ways I think about them that makes me sad, mad or glad.

I was a school teacher for five years. I left it because I worked for a man that was unfair to the students and to me. He gave me very low marks on teaching, discipline, relationships, and so forth. I felt like a failure, a sap and a loser. I made myself feel badly because I ruminated on the bad things that happened as though God could not bring anything good out of them.

Rumination is meditation on negative things. Godly meditation is placing my faith in God and His goodness. Rumination is placing my faith on past mistakes and problems as if they are too big for God to resolve. If I have been Ruminating on negative things, Stinking Thinking, it causes my brain to develop a deep pathway of negative thinking and feelings. These pathways are hard to overcome. It takes a long time to repair those brain pathways and to develop new positive pathways. But it can be done.

Go back to yesterday's prayer and meditation exercise. Go over ti again and again. It takes at least 30 days to repair the brain once it has developed a pattern of negative thinking. That is a lot of work, but it is worth it.

Remember that teaching job that I failed? I do but it does not cause me pain. Because I did so poorly there I went back to Graduate School and studied Counseling. I also received a Doctorate and have travelled the world teaching people how to live joyful lives. Had I been stuck in "If Only Thinking" I could have missed the opportunity to get those degrees and build a life of joy, excitement, and success.

Meditate do not Ruminate!