In your life expect some trouble, if you worry you’ll make it double.
Bobby McFerrin
Life is not without its struggles and challenges. The very rhythm of our heart from the very beginning points to a series of highs and lows. Trouble is inevitable and reliable but the impact of any trouble is often compounded by fear and worry, making it worse, and sometimes unbearable.
Fighting the rhythm of life is futile, but being on guard against negativity, pessimism and jumping to terrible conclusions is fully within our control. It’s by no means easy. The world seems to be in a lot of trouble, but we have a power deep inside of us to take on trouble and not let it cripple our dreams.
Our dreams need to be protected. Protected from things people say and do, and guarded against our own thoughts. Thoughts that amplify noise and static. Sometimes, shrieking, unbearable noise that leads us to give up.
You should develop habits in your life that will help you not to worry about the things you cannot change. You can’t build up those habits when you need it. You can’t use something on your journey that you didn’t bring with you. But you are very capable of walk away from the cauldron of trouble, most often trouble amplified by our own thoughts, by arming your spirit.
You can arm your spirit with good thoughts. Thoughts you can read in a book, or take in through a podcast or audio book. You can arm your spirit by holding on close to people who are positive and are making a difference in the world. People who are active, not passive. People who are offensively minded, not guarded and on the defensive. People that invest and build, rather than manipulate and destroy.
The struggles and challenges in your life need not be double. But you can’t nod, whisper yeah, and go back to being the same person you were and doing the same things you’ve always done. If you want a happier life, a more fulfilling existence than you have to heed the Bobby McFerrin warning about worry. You have to decide not to worry and choose to be happy.
Choose to be who you want to be. To one day behold what today you only dream of beholding.
Choose to be happy and discipline your days ahead and build a spiritual shelter for the negative storms which circle about your existence.
Take in the positive and the negative will not grasp so tight and let go a lot sooner. Think positively and optimistically, and some storms might just pass you by. Mean, ugly people might find someone else to pick on, knowing that their effort will be wasted on you.
Don’t not worry about a single thing in your life. Rekindle who you were when you were a child. Fearless and full of boundless energy. You rebounded quickly. You thought of good things. You believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy. You didn’t see trouble hiding around every corner, even though it was probably there.
Trouble has no hope to triumph. That hope is yours, infinitely yours. Yours to live out and arm yourself your soul with. Never look down. Always look up, and get to it, and do it on the double.
