Mlking the Joy in Life

We all want to milk the joy out of life. Imagine your mind as a glass of milk. Every second of your life adds another drop to the glass. There are three colors of experiences and thoughts that can be added to the glass.

Neutral or white thoughts; those are the normal everyday actions that aren’t charged with negative or positive emotions. This is what makes up large chunks of our lives.
Red thoughts are wonderful, positive, cheerful or happy thoughts. If we have mostly neutral or white thoughts mixed with red ones, we will go through life with rose colored glasses.

Blue thoughts are negative, sick, angry, destructive or unhappy ones. When we experience these thoughts or actions, we feel blue. Negative or blue moments add stress and pain to our lives.

All of our glasses of milk start out as shades of white. Then each new experience and thought adds a drop of white, red or blue to the glass. White for neutral experiences, red for positive ones and blue for negative ones. It doesn’t take too many red thoughts and experiences to turn our white milk pink. That’s why most children run around with rose-colored glasses. One tiny drop of red, like an empty box to play with, colors the day pink.

We all have red and blue EXPERIENCES; those drops of life we often can’t control and do color our outlook. However, our THOUGHTS add equally to the milk and we can control those. Remember every second puts another drop into the glass. Let’s say we get cut off in traffic. That experience takes 10 seconds so it only adds a tiny bit of blue into the glass. Now let’s say you rant on and on about the jerk who cut you off. You yell and scream at them and are angry all the way home. Then tell your friend about it on the phone. It takes an hour before you forget about the traffic incident. You have taken what lasted 10 seconds or added 10 drops of blue and turned that into 360 blue drops, number of seconds in an hour. You could have had 10 drops of blue and 350 drops of white or neutral experiences. You could have had a pale blue hour that would easily be tinted by the white and red from the rest of the day to keep you in a dusty rose mood. Instead you have dark blue that is more difficult to tint rose coloed. Remember only 10 of the 360 drops in your glass were out of your control. Take control of those 350 moments and you’ll be a much happier individual.

I've been through a divorce, cancer, going back to school, single parenting, financial insecurity and many other challenges. There were tons of moments that were out of my control, but over and over I’m amazed at how much I let them cloud the parts of the day I did and do have control over. Worry, fear, reflecting back about what others did or didn’t do, these are all nonproductive and pour tons of blue into our life's glass. The more you think about any issue, focus on it, and talk about it with others, the more blue you are adding to your glass. And the more blue you add to your glass, the less rose-colored your outlook will be.

No matter what is happening in your life, pick up the red dye and squeeze it in the glass. You can add red by counting your blessings, laughing with people, focusing on happy memories, dreaming about a wonderful future, anything that makes you feel good. Think about the good things that happened today, yesterday, last week and will be happening in the future. Practice taking control of your thoughts and you can increase your joy.

Get a large glass container, milk and some red and blue dye. Spend a few days adding milk for neutral experiences and thoughts, red for positive ones and blue for negative ones. See how much more rose colored your glass is when you don't dwell on the negatives and focus on the positives.