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The Two Dogs

Life is a pretty sweet deal – And I am not saying that because of the story or because I am expected to while talking about an inspirational story like this. But I am talking like this because I seriously like to think that life is a pretty sweet deal :) and what you get out of it is what you give. Kinda like the concept of Karma – the good deeds you do come back to give you rewards and the not so good things may end up in outcomes we are not very happy about. We’ll consciously try to avoid falling into the philosophical trap today and try to argue about the practical aspect of the story of the two dogs – Mr. Happy and Mr.Grumpy!

When we talk about life, it seems too big for me, too hard to actually fathom in tangible ways. So, let us simply take it one day at a time. I think we have all been there – those moments where we think that life is an absolute blessing, where things seem to go the way we want. And when they don’t it really doesn’t deter us from what we want to do. The negative things around us seems absolutely insignificant and doesn’t seem to affect us at all.

On the parallel front, there are those terrible days where everything seems to be going wrong – where nothing we do seems to matter and we are a bit overly sensitive about the outcomes and kinda nothing seems to work for us. And each negative outcome seems to create a huge blow on us and keeps us down, on our knees pushing us further and there seems to be very little getting up no matter how much we try.

Let’s try and step back from these two situations for the moment – these are the events happening to the same person. On a normal day, these are just events, just outcomes. It is our emotions which associate meaning to them and make us wonder where life is headed. It is our emotional set up which decides if it is a good thing or bad. Things are just things remember – they really don’t have any meaning except the ones we provide them.

We are not going to suggest the most cliched advice and say that be positive no matter what happens. Please don’t do that, face things as they come – associate meanings to them. But don’t just stop there, identify what these meanings are and how they impact you. Are these meanings the ones which make you work towards your goals or are these distractions? Is there an alternate way of looking at them? Most importantly, is there a way to use them to your advantage. Sometimes pain can be a very powerful motivator if we are the one driving it. But if we let that take the driving seat, we all know where it can take us.

I think life is a pretty sweet deal, the more we decide to take control, the more it gives us and like everything it is the focus which decides what our everyday can mean to us. And a combination of these days is nothing but life isn’t it?

These were our thoughts for the day, the story of the two dogs – both pretty smart ones. We just need to decide which one we want to be.

Thoughts?

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