For this look at another of my personal development images, I’m going with a wonderful thought…
I took that photo in Kent, UK, at a place called the Coldrum Stones. It’s an ancient burial site, and the photo was taken at sunrise just before the summer solstice. (Going to these places on the *actual* summer solstice is disappointingly best avoided these days – the traffic is horrendous, and the places are swarming with hippies!)
If you go a day or so beforehand though, you get the full peace and quiet of the dawn and the sunrise. In a word, it’s magnificent.
You can hear the sounds around you as nature wakes up, and the air has that fresh feel to it, a feel of the ‘new.’
That’s why I chose that picture to go with the words…
“This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.”
Those words are a quote from the American writer Maya Angelou. She had a lovely poetic way with her words, and this quote is no exception.
It’s a great way of putting it, isn’t it! When you combine it with the thought of breathing in the ‘new’ air of the dawn, as the sun rises once again, and it’s well worth considering the two parts of the quote.
The first part says ‘This is a wonderful day.’ I’d add to that by saying ‘and why not!’
Why *shouldn’t* it be a wonderful day? Why can’t it be? Therefore, why won’t it be!
Now, I can hear the doubters piping up, that it’s not always as simple as that, we don’t actually live in fairy tales or nursery rhymes, and thinking that a day will be wonderful just because we say so, is a childish approach.
Hmm…
I’d respond by saying that it’s perfectly true to say that we don’t live in actual fairy tales! Life can be hard, I’m not saying it can’t be. Life can be *extremely* hard.
I’m not saying that any hardships or difficulties will disappear just because we say the day is going to be wonderful. That would clearly be nonsense, but one of the main reasons why people dismiss the entire personal development field is that they think that personal development writers, speakers or coaches *are* saying that!
Yes, life can be difficult, but if we can’t always control those difficulties, we can always control how we react to them, and that’s a key point here. If we choose, and it is a choice, if we choose to accept that difficulties will happen in life, but choose to focus on the positives and deal with the negatives, then the difficulties become easier. Now that *is* something a lot of people in the self improvement field say, and there’s some brain science to back it up!
That brain science is to do with the neural pathways and internal models in our brain. If we focus on the negatives, we build up an internal model which has the negative slant, and consequently we have that as the default setting when our brain interprets the input from the world around us.
We can change that model. It might take a while and practice, but if we decide to do it, then we make the effort to view the input from the world in a positive way, and this will gradually change our internal models to have a positive slant.
Yes, life can be hard and difficult, but it can also be glorious and wonderful, and we need to be open to seeing the joyful parts.
That’s where the philosophical concept of thinking it’s a wonderful day combines with actual brain science, and that’s when it gets exciting!
This brings me to the second part of the quote…
“I’ve never seen this one before.”
I find that beautifully put, because none of us have, have we? We all face a new day with the same 24 hours, but we’re 24 hours older, and the earth has spun – in other words, things have changed.
Other people will have changed, other circumstances will have changed. Some of the changes will have nothing to do with us, some of the changes will have been deliberately engineered by us. However, none of us have seen *this* day before.
As you read this, whenever, you read it , wherever you read it, you won’t have seen this day before. You won’t see it again either.
When you think of it like that, doesn’t it make sense to go through the days with a sense of wonder at how they will go, choosing to view things in a positive way?
The day will only be around for one day, then it’ll be gone, so I think Maya hit the spot with her wonderful words – “This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.”
Do let me know what you think – I love the feedback!
‘Til Next Time,
Health & Happiness,
Gordon
P.S. If you’d like to find out more about how to make sure you take advantage of the wonderful days, pop over and grab my free 8 step goal achievement formula
