Protective Shield for Positive Thinking

by Randy Cox 7/7/09

Keeping a positive mindset is a habit. Either you have developed the habit or you haven't. It is simple to develop good habits ...or bad. All you have to do is interrupt the pattern of your old habit, then practice your new habit. The behavioral scientists tell us 18 times is all it takes to make a new habit, but I prefer 21 times. That gives us three more than the required amount. Three and twenty-one are both special numbers if you tend to the mystic. Even people with the "habit" of positive outlook have their bad days. Sometimes things just go wrong and you begin to dwell on the negative. It is so easy to do. When you find yourself doing this, there is a shield you can turn on that will take you back to your positive self. It is called gratitude. Whatever may be happening to you in the moment, there are things you can find to be honestly grateful. Find them! Stack them up and surround yourself with all the wonderful things you have to be thankful for. It is impossible to be negative and grateful at the same time. With gratitude, negativity melts away. Try it! Don't let a few bad turns spoil your day...or your life. Learn how to walk within the Protective shield of gratitude.

The Man Who Lived in a Hole!

The Man Who Lived in a Hole! By Randy Cox 2009 Back in the late 1970’s, before all the hippies grew long in the tooth, a precursor to the green movement happened in America around an underground magazine called, “Mother Earth”! Most Americans, then as now, had dug themselves into an economic “hole” with demanding jobs to pay for upside-down mortgages. One man, whose name is lost to me now, climbed out of the traditional hole into another of his own choosing. He tuned out! He found an eccentric landowner willing to experiment with alternate lifestyles on his lake property. This man found himself high ground and dug in! He made himself a nice hole and covered it with sheet metal. Without a day job to slow him down, in no time he had a nice hole with everything a “Mother Earther” could want. He even talked the landowner into allowing him to run several extension cards from his hole to the main house next door. If the mood struck him, he’d dig a little on his hole. If it didn’t, he’d just loaf. The man thrived in his new home. It was warm in winter with a small wood stove, and it was surprisingly cool in summer. He also had no utility bills. Remember we had an energy crisis in the seventies similar to what we have today. Hooked to the extension cord was a TV and a small refrigerator. Word spread, and the day came when one of those pretty local newscasters came to interview him. I just happened to catch the interview, and I have never forgotten it. The man in the hole talked freely about his proud new life of leisure, but he sensed the TV newscaster was mocking him a bit. At the end of the interview, the newscaster prepared to leave. It was late into the afternoon and Lewisville Lake was about 20 miles of bad traffic from Dallas. “I know you think I’m crazy, “ the hole man said, “but when you get stuck in that five o’clock traffic in this Texas heat, when you’re breathing those toxic fumes, I’d like you to take note of the life you’ve chosen. When your blood pressure is soaring and you’re trying hard not to respond to the obscene gestures, and occasional show of arms, think about me! I’ll be sitting back in the cool of my hole, sipping a cold one, watching my favorite TV show. You’ll be struggling! Who’s crazy now?

Glass Houses

The best way to find out what kind of house you live in, is to throw a few stones at your neighbors Randy Cox July 05, 2009