I get these emails from Ralph S. Marston, Jr. every day called “The Daily Motivator (see email and credits below).

I’m often amazed that the writer can think of another interesting and new thing to say after 365 days!  Today’s message is a particularly good one so when you’re done with my blog, see the message below.

I read a book once…It was about the power of positive thinking and this little story was in it:

A couple had neighbors who had a patio light on in the back yard that shone into their bedroom window and kept them up all night.  It was a huge source of frustration & stress for them both.  To make things worse they had been fighting with the neighbors over it for years and asked them time and time again to turn it off at night, but with no luck.  As a result they spent a lot of time cursing out their neighbors and complaining about how horrible it was to live next to them.

Fortunately one of them read a book about how what we think and say can influence our lives.  So the couple decided to try something different; they changed their methods.  The first night they started praying (or thinking positively) about their neighbors…sending feelings of love their way and wishing the best for them (instead of griping about them under their breath). Of course it was hard to turn off the part of their minds that thought how much they disliked these people….but they thought “well what have we got to lose?  Let’s at least TRY to think positively about them.” So, they said their little prayer and went to bed….the VERY NEXT NIGHT the patio light went off and never came on again.

Whether you believe in the power of positive thinking or not….sometimes we just keep banging our heads up against the same problems over and over again when what we really need is a new approach and a new perspective.  If you find yourself with the same problems you had last week or even last year perhaps it’s time to try something new.  I don’t think you’d disagree that it wouldn’t hurt to TRY it at least, just to see what would happen.

Einstein said:

Insanity: is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.   Albert Einstein. 

And isn’t that the truth!

My father, Andy Andros, was a brilliant man with a good heart as big as a house.  He used to say this no matter how many problems he had and no matter how gloomy or grey the day was:  “This is the happiest day of my life” and truly IT IS.  That ability to put things into perspective and find JOY in the good things, every day of your lives ,is really one of the most important discoveries you can make.

Here is the email I was referring to earlier in my message:

THE DAILY MOTIVATOR

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Send love

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Instead of sending anger, send love. Instead of filling your mind with worry or frustration, fill your thoughts with love.

Send genuine love to those who support you. Send genuine love to those who disagree with you.

Let go of the need to get the last word, or to get even or to prove yourself. Send love, and you’ll find yourself living with unassailable strength and effectiveness.

Send love, and feel your anxiety melt away. Send love, and experience life at its highest level.

When you’re not sure what to do, do what is authentic, honest and caring. Move forward with love, for yourself, for life, and for others, and you’ll be moving toward good and valuable things.

Live a life that is real, and rich, and full. Send love, and live the best there is.

Ralph Marston

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The above message entitled “Send love” is the Daily Motivator email edition written by Ralph S. Marston, Jr. and he deserves all the credit for it!  Why don’t you consider signing up for his daily message by clicking on the link below.

Copyright (C) 2013 Ralph S. Marston, Jr. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Motivator web site at http://greatday.com for an archive of more than 5,000 daily messages, inspirational photos and more.

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Do you have family or friends that don’t believe in God who are scientifically minded & who consider talk about God a waste of time? I have a short story about how an idea about a bubble can help you to talk to your relatives about the existence of God. Keep in mind that it’s not necessarily our job as Christians to fully convince the people we witness to that God exists. It’s our job to introduce the subject to them; to simply open a door and then the Holy Spirit will do the rest of the work.

Let me explain….if you think about it, we live in a sort of bubble. We experience the world via our senses. Our eyes, ears and other senses are magnificent in structure & design and help us to understand the universe and its intricacies. Our ears can hear so many things – a lover’s whisper, a bird’s song, a screaming baby and a symphony. However, as incredible as our senses are, we can’t hear even half of what a dog can hear. A dog’s sense of hearing is 100 times more sensitive than ours and they can hear all sorts of frequencies and tones that we can only confirm exist by using sophisticated electrical equipment. That equipment shows us that just because we can’t hear those things doesn’t mean they don’t exist. We can’t hear those frequencies, but they are there just the same. In the same way we have to admit that there might be other things out there in the world that exist that just cannot be sensed by our limited senses. Just because we can’t hear the things the dog hears, doesn’t mean they don’t exist and just because we can’t see heaven or God doesn’t mean they don’t exist either.

For my argument to be just and honorable, I have to admit that it doesn’t prove there is a God. But what it does do is that it opens the possibility of a God. It opens a crack in a door that lets in the POSSIBILITY THAT SOMETHING ELSE EXISTS. That opening is then the crack through which the Holy Spirit will enter and do his work and sometimes a crack in a door is all it takes.

I could talk all day on the subject of pain and fear – because unfortunately I’ve become intimately aware of the former and often found myself fighting against the latter.  Fear and Hate and Anger and the resulting pain is very pervasive in the world we live in.  If you turn on the TV, you are inundated by negative stories that could put even Gandhi in a bad mood.  Despite all that negativity, I DO see beauty wherever I look.  Even when a terrible thing happens, I still see love in it’s wake. I thank GOD for that perspective.  After the Boston Marathon Bomb – passers by were the first to help & comfort the hurt and dying.   EMT’s rushed in to stabilize victims and hospital personnel practically killed themselves working non-stop shifts just to save people’s lives.  Often when something bad happens, people come together to help one another displaying incredible selflessness. And even in humanity’s darkest moments….there is still GOOD in the world.

Fear & negativity don’t get you anywhere, by the way.  I admit that there are many negative things in life that can induce fear – the ideas of death, destitution, hunger,anger, rejection, unrequited love, failure, loss, separation, pain and illness are enough to turn anyone into a Scrooge.  Yes life can deliver some awful things – and most of those things are scary as hell.  For that reason I want to focus on the things that heal and mend and lift us up a little bit each day.

A few years ago I was working on the “V-Chip”project and was contacted by the office of the Vice President (which at the time was Al Gore).  They wanted me and my father (an incredible entrepreneur & inventor named Andrew Andros) to demonstrate a product we had been working on that would give parents the ability to control the amount of violent and perverse TV shows that their children had access to  (something we take for granted now, but there actually was a time when this wasn’t an option).  My father later testified about Violence in the Media before the Senate Commerce Committee.  At that time people were starting to wonder if children were being influenced by violent images in the media.  To bring our product to market (the “TV Guardian”) I did a great deal of research on the subject and found that the images we see DO influence our bodies in very much the same way as the food we ingest.  Think of it this way….if you wake in the morning and eat a bag of salty corn chips….and did the same for lunch and then for dinner…..How do you think you’d feel?  How healthy would you be?  The things we eat  influence how healthy we are.  BUT do the things we SEE influence how we feel and think?  Unless you’re a sociopath I’m sure the last scary movie you saw scared the hell out of you.  When the body senses fear a whole series of chemicals are released in the body to prepare us for fight or flight.  OF COURSE if you consistently ingest negative images (scenes of hurt and anger and fear and greed)you are going to influence your own body chemistry in the same way.  There’s a great deal of research out there that talks about how stress affects the human body.  There are also studies that support the idea that what we THINK influences what we are and how we feel.  If you don’t believe me, read my blog posting called “Messages from water & beyond“. With that in mind try to take some extra time each day to look for the beauty and joy in life…..heal your heart by stopping to smell a flower or snuggling with and loving your children or pets.  Think about the people out there that volunteer to help the homeless or people who sacrifice their lives caring for the sick and helpless.  Love and hope and joy ARE out there.  Surround yourself with beautiful art, music, laughter, joyous people and all the things in life that heal us.

I want to remind your heart….your inner child…about something.  I think we all had a sort of wisdom about truth when we were younger and as life goes on that truth gets fainter and fainter each day.  We forget where we came from and as the world loads us up with all the reasons to be afraid, we have to make a point to reach up….to look up and seek the hand of God and rediscover that we’re not alone.  We have to remember that the glue that holds the whole big universe together is love; and nothing is more important than love.

I don’t understand any more than anyone why bad things happen to good people, but I do believe with all my heart that there IS a creative designer and that He sent us here to live these human lives to learn something – to seek and rediscover love in all its different forms.  God does exist and there’s more to life than the years between our physical birth and death.  Jesus promised us this and science is discovering proof of this more and more each day.  Knowing that death is not the end helps us to trudge through the muck. Knowing that we will some day be reunited with those we’ve loved and lost and knowing that we’ll reunite with the one central love of GOD, puts all the pain in perspective.  Think about it – if you KNEW for sure that there was life after death and that “death” wasn’t really the end…..but rather some incredible, beautiful, enlightened and brilliant new beginning…a gateway into the divine…..then that would help us to put death into a different light.  It doesn’t do a whole lot for the suffering part, but the death part really becomes way more tolerable.  That’s why I thank God for the perspective He gave me…..it’s a great gift just to be able to see the beauty (but that doesn’t mean you can’t develop that skill, either).  I realize this is a stretch but it does remind me of all the highly over publicized court cases that are beaten to a pulp in the media.  People are frequently bitching because “so and so wasn’t convicted of that crime.” And then the media finally releases one last little tid bit of information that makes sense out of everything…..and we all collectively say “OH well why didn’t they just tell us that?”

For some reason GOD has veiled our minds and hearts from the truth about death.  Yes, He’s thrown us a bone here and there, but He’s essentially mandated that we live our lives in a sort of amnesia.  He’s set things up so that we live our lives blinded from the truth for the most part, in a sort of “life long test” to see if “unaided” we can find love & truth.  I still believe (with all my heart) that someday the veil will be lifted and we’ll all collectively say “OH, well why didn’t You just tell us that?” (but by then we’ll be so thrilled that we’re enveloped in the love of God that we’ll most likely be speechless and in awe of God and completely unable and unwilling to bitch about anything at all).

Meanwhile…..we live and laugh and cry….and we seek and love and listen and we do what we can to uncover the truth from the heap of “life” that truth is hidden under.  I hope that just thinking about….and knowing that the good is out there helps you to find it in your own life.   I may not know you but I know you’re out there…..and I’m sending love your way.

If you find anything of interest here, won’t you please feel free to talk to me about it?  I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than talk to YOU about what you think.