A lot of people believe in life after death, but I believe in life before death as well. My Great Grandma got me thinking that way. She told me “as long as you are alive, live.” Don’t die while you are still alive. You are here for a reason. Bring your life, your voice, your music into the great orchestra of life. Imagine four billion voices singing together, four billion lives in harmony, creating and merging their own unique music into this great orchestra of life.
We were not born to be in bondage to life, but to celebrate it. We can experience heaven on earth if we can come out of our shells long enough to realize it. So many people’s spirits have been worn down to a frazzle, just trying to survive, just trying to get through today. Well, okay, I guess sometimes life can be like that, just having to hang on through lots of challenges, refusing to give in to defeat. Sometimes life is a struggle, but we just can’t struggle all the time. Some days we have to sing, to openly express our joy to others. We weren’t born to just exist or serve as fodder for life’s ups and downs. Consider the size of your brain and your intellect and your feelings and your emotions and your insight… how could you have been born without a purpose? Well, you weren’t. We were born to manifest that glory of God that lives inside of us; we were born to create that orchestra of sound, of life, that is my belief. This is true no matter what your nationality, your culture, your religion, your beliefs, anything.
If you can’t understand what I am saying then we need to get you out more often. We need to broaden your life. Your life is just too narrow. I would like to share with you some of the steps that I have been working on this last year. To me, life is a journey; we never, ever finish learning. Successful people see themselves as a road always under construction. And I see myself as a stairway leading someplace. As a child of the Creator, I know that my God didn’t create a stairway leading nowhere. So that means I am going someplace, somewhere important. So I study and things come to me sometimes by magic. But it’s not really magic, it is actually attracted to me by the content and focus of my thought. The law of attraction is a real and powerful universal principle that says that you attract to you the people and circumstances, the actual events that are in harmony with your dominant thoughts. Here are some of the things that I habitually think about. They sound simple, but the difference they can make in your life is profound. These are my hopes for you in the New Year:
1: Stop associating with negative people. Stop being with complainers, whiners and especially people who gossip and tell negative jokes. Instead surround yourself with positive optimistic people who will leave you uplifted, full of hope.
2: Stop complaining yourself. What you focus on expands, and what you think about all day long becomes your reality. Why draw your attention to what is not working in your life? Focus your mind, instead, on what is working in your life. What is going right. Express an attitude of gratitude rather than an attitude of entitlement. Great Grandma taught me that lesson with dinner. She said, “You are only going to get more food when you finish what’s on your plate.” Practice gratitude and you will see results that you couldn’t otherwise imagine. It will seem like magic.
3: Turn off your television, and please don’t give your kids carte blanche to TV. Much of the stuff that is pushed at us on television news promotes fear and focuses on what is not working. Television commercials and many popular programs can do tremendous damage to your self esteem by trying to show you what is not right about yourself or what you are lacking in your life. Young people can be especially affected by this. I am not saying that there aren’t any good programs on television, but it has to be sought out, and TV has to be used judiciously. Don’t just thoughtlessly turn on the TV and leave it on to baby-sit your children. A very dangerous habit.
4: Become a life-long learner. Don’t see yourself as being finished, you are always a work of art in progress. Find out things that interest you, and read books about them. Did you know that fewer than 10% of the world are active readers, and those are the most successful 10%? A great majority of people haven’t read a book since they graduated from high school. You don’t have to believe everything you read in a book, or agree with everything you read. I certainly don’t. But by reading you become a more independent thinker. It helps you realize how much power you have, and helps you make better decisions. Read from an inspirational book everyday. You will learn to rise above what previously seemed insurmountable.
5: You know I don’t like the word negative and I really don’t like the word critical, but I’m going to give you an exception to think about. It’s important to become a critical thinker. You may have already limited your exposure to negative, harmful people and the messages from television, the media and even some of your own negative self-talk. Yet some things will seep through. Many of our beliefs are unconscious beliefs based on fear and habits that have been part of our “programming” for decades. It will take serious work to counteract this program, so we want to look at ourselves critically; we want to critique ourselves on a regular basis. We want to say, what’s next? I’m doing well, but what is next? What can I change about myself, what is my next step? Remember the road to success is always under construction, so we need to be critical of ourselves in a positive way because we are seeking positive results.
Great Grandma used one sentence to tell me how powerful I was. It took me a long time to learn this, but what she told me was this: “Mack, when you say the word ‘I’ what you are really doing is bringing together all the forces of your father in heaven and you as his son, in just one word, ‘I’.”
Imagine that power. So when you say I can do it, you are evoking the power of the heavens to bear in your life right now. You can do it. You are not alone. You never are and you never have been. So in this New Year, I hope you join the orchestra of life. Join four billion other voices and sing loudly, sing with gusto, live your life with all the passion and power you’ve got in you.
Mack Newton
Copyright Mack Newton. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without the expressed written consent of the author.
