Lately, I have been fighting with myself.  For many months, I tried my best to be positive.  Even when bad things happened, I tried to put a positive spin on it and told myself that it would be alright in the end.  The problem was, the more that I told myself everything would be alright, something new came along to challenge me.  The people that I looked to for inspiration were feeling down and made their down feelings very clear in their writing.  If the people that told me to stay positive weren’t why should I be positive?Oddly, just the other day, I saw a jeep with an outside tire cover that said “Life is good.”  When I first saw it, I said to myself, “ya right” with a sarcastic tone in the little voice in my head.  Today, I saw either the same jeep or a different one but with the same outside tire cover.  For the rest of my drive, I was thinking about writing this post and how I was going to complain about life not being good.  I was going to title this post, “Life is good, NOT” but then something changed my mind.

I asked myself, is life not good or that bad?  I took a look at myself at that very moment in time and realized, I have a roof over my head, I have the best family in the world, my health is okay, I have a job and at this very second in time, life is good.

Being mindful of this very moment gives us a different perspective.  Put all your problems out of your mind, just for this moment, even a second and realize that, right now, life is good.  If you do this throughout the day, this feeling of life is good will add up and hopefully life will be good.

Do you feel that you are always in a hurry?  Do things in your life make you rush to your destination just to find out that your destination is not where you really wanted to be?In my neighborhood, the police have installed a device with a radar gun and a big screen that displays how fast you are driving your car.  I am guessing that they do this to make people realize that they are going too fast and that they should slow down.  When I was pulling out of my driveway this morning, I noticed that the display showed 12 miles per hour.  Even though my car was not moving and there were no other cars on the street, it still displayed 12 miles per hour.

The idea of that display showing 12 miles per hour and nothing around it moving made me realize that the world or at least my world is moving too fast.  From the time I got in to the car to the end of the driveway my mind was racing about the upcoming day.  Things, such as, what I had to do when I get to work, the meeting that I have before noon, the emails that I have to read and reply to, when will I have time for lunch, will I have time to gas up the car on the way home, will I have time to write a post for my blog and about 50 other things that we moving through my head at speeds even greater than 12 miles per hour.

That 12 mile per hour sign told me to SLOW DOWN, take a breath, live in the moment and realize that all the things that I have to do will be done when I get to them.  Doing those tasks in the driveway or on the way to work is not going to get them done any faster or make them any easier.

Telling myself to slow down made me realize what a great morning it was with the sun shinning bright and higher than normal temperatures.  Slowing down gave me time to listen to a funny story on the radio and see the trees changing color now that fall is approaching.  If I don’t slow down now, I will waste this time like I have wasted so much other time in the past.

Next time you are speeding to get somewhere, SLOW DOWN, take a look around and enjoy that moment because there might be something that you do not want to miss right there and right now.