Just a little reminder to enjoy life’s little pleasures and to make the most of everyday we spend on God’s green earth.
- Smile: There are lots of stuff floating around on how many muscles it takes to smile and how many to frown. Some say it takes 4 to smile and 64 to frown, others say 10 to smile and 100 to frown, and some others say 17 to smile and 43 to frown. Lots of numbers, all different, but they have one thing in common – It takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown, so why tire yourself? Turn that frown upside down…it is guaranteed to brighten the day of those around you and it is guaranteed to keep your mood positive even when the situation seems gloomy. Go ahead, turn to the person beside you and just do it, one muscle at a time. 🙂
- Love: I show love by giving gifts, you might show love by spending time with the person you care about, your sister might show love by borrowing your clothes and shoes and your brother might show love by inviting his friends to your house without your permission. Yeah, I know….the scenarios with your brother and sister don’t sound a lot like love…but I’ve come to see how they can be expressions of love (sometimes). To help you see it as such too, take a moment to close your eyes and think about your life without these things you currently see as “disturbances”. You’ll miss them…you know you will. What’s life without love? Plus, you don’t know how many more minutes you’ll have with your loved ones, so don’t hesitate to let them know how much you love them for just being themselves.
- Communicate: The subtitle deliberately doesn’t read “talk” or “listen”. It’s “COMMUNICATE” and it’s called that for a purpose; to communicate is to “transmit information, thought, or feeling so that it is satisfactorily received or understood”. This point assumes that 1) There are at least two people involved 2) Some thought has gone into it 3)You’re willing to go the extra mile to ensure that your message is understood. Most of us go about talking at people, talking down at people, talking above people’s heads…we hear them without really listening – all we want to do is get them to keep quiet so we can say what we’ve been meaning to say all along. In the very next conversation you’re going to have, practice communication and keep at it. The more you communicate, the fewer pointless arguments and quarrels you’ll have.
- Stay Calm: Being calm from time to time and staying calm are two different things, I’ve found. The real task is in staying calm – you could ask me, “How do I stay calm when everything is going wrong and all I can do is freak out?” My answer would be, I really don’t know. What I do know is how I stay calm and I’ll tell you – I close my eyes, I think about how much worse it can get, I take a deep breath and I thank God for what is and commit to Him what is to come. The End. Now, this is not to say this will work for everyone, but if you don’t currently have a failsafe method for staying calm through all the chaos that is around you day in day out, you should try this. (especially if you live and drive in Lagos. .lol!).
- Stay Positive: “The power of positive thinking” sounds cliché, doesn’t it? You must have heard that sentence about a dozen times and I’ve just said it again, so pardon me. In the animated movie, Happy Feet 2, Sven kept saying “If you want it, you must will it. If you will it, it will be yours”. Unfortunately for us, unlike the penguins, we can’t just close our eyes and hope that our positive thoughts will manifest in reality, we must take a few steps of action. The thing about staying positive even in ‘negative’ situations is, this way, you have total and absolute control over whatever happens to you – you’re literally making and selling tall, cold and delicious glasses of lemonade when life throws you lemons. In this state of mind, nothing can ever really go “wrong” because everything that happens to you, you see as a stepping stone to greater things.
At the end of a day filled with these 5 things (and some more), your world and the world of those around you is a better place!
Because you chose to smile, love, communicate, stay calm and remain positive, you are doing your part in healing our world.
#offtomakealemonadefromoneoflife’slemons 🙂 🙂
Yours Randomly,