Skip to main content

Shifting your focus

Write your hurts in the sand. Carve your blessings in stone. Jamie the Very Worst Missionary

I love the picture this brings to mind.  Sand gets wiped clean and smoothed out by the water and stone is pretty much forever.  So the idea here is to record your hurts, if you are going to do that, in sand where it can be wiped clean and smoothed out and "forgotten" and record your blessings in stone where they can stand as a reminder on the days when the hurts threaten to overwhelm.  In our lives we will have both hurts and blessings and the people who choose to let the hurts be washed away are generally more joyful, fulfilled, and pleasant to be around!  Those who choose to carve their hurts in stone, however, are miserable to be around and miserable themselves.  Why would anyone choose misery as the description for their life?  And it is a choice.  Yes, crappy things happen but we have a choice.  Will we write them in the sand so they can be washed away and smoothed out or will we hold on to them as justification for being crappy ourselves?  Ugh.  
How about you?  Have you been writing your hurts in the sand or carving them in stone?  Have you lost sight of your blessings?  I encourage you to try practicing today's quote.  Try writing your hurts in sand and carving your blessings in stone and see what changes because of the shift in focus.  I think you will be amazed.   

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment. 

More bang for your buck

This phrase was used a lot in 1953 but an earlier citation puts it at 1940 in a Metals and Plastics Publications advertisement. Read about it here . The phrase means you get more for your money.

Call it a Day

The literal use of this phrase hails from 1838 when the phrase originally was "call it half a day" to mean leaving work early. (source) The modern use of the phrase is to indicate ending something due to false sense of accomplishment.