Think positively. Think progressively. Think consructively. Put wings on your thoughts!

The writer of Proverbs reminds us “For as he thinks within himself, so he is.” The measure of a man is in his thoughts. A man’s thoughts determine his strength or weakness, his courage or cowardice, his peace or confusion or his happiness or gloom. A man is what he thinks.

Your thinking affects your health. Your emotional and physical health are very closely related to your thoughts. So good thoughts are better than good medicine. The preventive is always better than the cure. However, healthful thoughts are both. Our thinking can prevent troubles; or if they have developed, our thinking can go far to correct them.

There is also power in believing. What you believe, in keeping with reality, has a way of happening. I have found that anybody who starts thinking he is strong, will find strength. Someone who believes he can bear what is placed upon him, will hold up. The person who believes that he can overcome, will triumph.

But the opposite is just as true. Think negatively and your life will be shrouded with gloom and despair. I heard a negative person recently say, “I always expect the worse and I have not been disappointed yet.”

Your thinking makes a world of difference in how you feel. Happiness, it seems, has no logic. It is not found in the facts of our lives, but rather in the thoughts we entertain relative to those facts.

I recently read a story about a prisoner of war who had been confined for several days to solitary confinement. This prisoner made his own sunshine. He knew the dangers of being locked in total darkness for a long time, and that it could drive a person out of their mind. So, he devised his own plan for making sunlight. He manufactured it in his own mind. He spent several minutes every day remembering the sunlight he had enjoyed in past years. Though it did not tan his body, it did warm his soul and bless him. In a dungeon, he found sunshine in his thoughts.

One only needs to read the epistles Paul wrote from prison to realize that he kept hope alive by focusing on Jesus, even in prison. Simple question…what are you focused on? What do you think about? What do you genuinely believe?

I like the words of Alphonse Karr…”Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns. I am thankful that thorns have roses.”

This is my story…