Inspiration

My oldest son started 7th grade today. Last week I went with him to "Back to School" night. We went to all his classes, met his teachers briefly and got to see the school a bit. One of the things I remembered was from his English class (which is actually called Language Arts - why do they have to rename everything?). I'm assuming that they do some amount of journaling in class because on the wall was a large poster about it. One of the things it said is to start writing about the prompt for the day and if they run out of things to write, then write about how funny it is to not have anything to write, until another idea comes to them.

I kind of feel like that today. Isn't it funny that I don't know what to write? How crazy would it be if this entire post was just about me not knowing what I should talk about today? I bet that anyone reading this would think that I just shouldn't bother writing anything if I don't have anything good to say....

Okay, that was great because now I have something to write about!

Did your mother ever tell you "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything,"? I'm sure some adult figure in my life told me that - I'm not positive it was my mom, though. How many of us still follow that advice? From my life experience - I'd say not many of us. So much of communication is gripping, whining and complaining about one thing or another.

I'm reading this book, The Greatest Secret in the World, and a portion of it directs me to start my day reading a section from the book to remind me what I'm focusing my attention on that day. Then at the end of the day, I review my actions to see how I did for the day. Today the section that I read talked a little about this exact thing. It said something to the effect of if I want to complain - hold my tongue and instead focus on what I love (or at least like). I wonder how many conversations would not even happen if everyone did this for just one hour.

I'm actually really excited about this opportunity. I feel like I'm generally a happy person so it will be interesting for me to focus today and see how I really behave. I'll let you know tomorrow what the day looked like.

Now, back to my title today...I put that in there hoping for some inspiration. Most of the time, just getting inspiration isn't enough, we've got to act on it. And sometimes, like today, it's important to start taking action before the inspiration hits - or hits completely.

I've had partial ideas from time to time and if I just waited until I knew exactly how everything was going to work out I wouldn't have gotten anything done. And in fact, I've done that exact thing a time or two. I don't ever feel good about those experiences though. I look at those and kind of want to kick my own butt for not doing something. I don't think that's a whole lot different than complaining though. I may not be saying it out loud, but I'm sure gripping in my head! So, instead, I can use those experiences as motivators, knowing that I don't like that feeling so I better do something different.

I like the way that feels 'use it as a motivator' - so much happier and exciting! More like the life I want to live.