The Gift of Training Your Mind

Positive Pensées                       

Kathy King

My son's unit doing a 12 mile ruck march in full gear.

The Gift of Training Your Mind

 "Train your mind to see the good in everything.  Positivity is a choice. The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.  And remember, being positive doesn’t mean ignoring the negative, it means overcoming the negative."

Unknown

 

To train your mind takes practice and instruction.

A concise decision to make your way of thinking much better.

It has been said, "You are what you think."

If that is true, what thoughts would determine who you are and what you do?

Would there be a person who is a blessing to others?

Or, is there someone who is paralyzed by fear and anxiety?

In life, we cannot avoid times of distress; it goes with the territory, and life can be a mess.

In those times when you are challenged, train your mind to accept the test.

To find the silver lining, the diamond in the rough.

Train your mind to find the good, the gracious, and the kind. 

Find a way to have a renewed and aware mind. 

 

Have you ever met someone who is just always negative? I am sure that you have. I am sure that we have been guilty of this action. I know I have. As humans, we tend to focus on the negative aspects of a situation almost immediately rather than the positive ones. Yesterday, I was scrolling through the news and a little puff piece caught my eye. It was about a certain prince who lives in this country and his interesting wife. They somehow feel they are victims. Even a prince with all the trappings of wealth, mansions, and an illustrious family focuses on the negative rather than finding a positive mindset to see what abundant blessings he has in his life. How do we put into practice overcoming our tendency to be negative? By training our minds, we can have quality thoughts. Think about training. It is an act or exercise that has to be repeated on a regular basis with some sort of routine so that improvement can be made. When my sons get ready to do a 13 mile ruck for the Army in full gear, which weighs about 70 pounds, they start training a lot before the actual day of the ruck. If they showed up to ruck up and down hills with all that gear with no training, they would fail completely and have to be recycled to take the test again. Training requires effort, sweat, and even tears, but when you can complete the ruck in record time, you will be healthier and in a much better frame of mind. To take the idea further, when my boys started to train for the ruck, they were sore in places they never thought they could be sore before. Several times, their time was not nearly what it needed to be to pass the test, but they did not give up. When we train and exercise, some days all we can do is show up, and that is okay. The same is true with our thoughts; on those days you can just "show up," that is better than not trying at all. Keep showing up, keep trying, and keep training your mind to be in a better place. One day several years ago, my husband and I went to see my great-great aunt Eddie. She was about one hundred years old. She never had any children, she lost her husband tragically several years ago, and she had lived most of her life as a widow. My aunt Eddie lived through the Depression, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, and other calamities of life. Even as a child, I recall that she always had a smile on her face. As we sat with Aunt Eddie, she was singing hymns with the biggest smile on her face. When I asked her what kept her in such a good state of mind, she told me a Bible verse that is in the book of Philippians.. The Apostle Paul encouraged people to think on things that are true, honest, just, right, and pure. Whatever is honorable, whatever is excellent and of good repute, keep your mind on those things. Those are good words to live by. Let us train our thoughts and our approach in the direction of finding the blessings in our life situations.  

*Note, this is one of my son's unit actually doing a ruck march.  They are long, hard on the body and are an act of true will. 
 

Source: Bible.com

 

The Gift of Valleys and the Majestic Mountain Top

A few years ago we had the blessing of a trip to Switzerland. The valleys and the mountains were glorious. 

Positive Pensées

Kathy King

The Gift of Valleys and the Majestic Mountain Top

 

"Mountaintops are for views and inspiration, but fruit is grown in the valleys."

Billy Graham

 

High up on the mountain, you can see very far. 

The valley, the trees, and the vegetation that spreads far and wide

But to get up that mountain, you have to climb.

Climb from the valley, where everything grows.

Without the valley, we would not have the mountaintop.

The land would be flat, and the eye could not see the glory that is seen from the top.

Realize, dear reader, that to gain that majestic view

You have to spend time in the valley to toil, to dig, and to renew.

Learn the lesson, sing the song, and grow in discipline and grace.

So that you can scale another mountain and find new inspiration to climb to a new and higher place. 

 

When our kids were little, we were pretty strapped for cash. We were young, had six children, and were just trying to make ends meet. One of the activities that we did regularly that was free was hiking. We would look for trails in our area that had a good, steep climb to wear out our quiver full. We had a few favorite places that we would frequent. Some of the kids looked forward to our hikes. They ran up the trail with delight. But one of our children, namely the youngest, despised this behavior very vocally. Words like, "You go! Leave me behind!" were uttered along with, "I can go no longer; I am too tired!" We have a picture of her being carried up by our friends because, in so much drama, she collapsed to the ground and refused to go any further. When one of our twin boys was asked to draw a picture of a family activity, he drew us hiking. Everyone was happy except our youngest. Above her head there was a thought bubble that said, "WHY?!" He wrote, "This is our family hiking." "And Miriam is, of course, complaining." This was so funny that my husband scanned it to keep in our family memories. Without fail, with her complaining and whining, when we made it to the top, she would ask to be picked up so she could see all around her. Her little eyes got very big because, with all of that weeping and gnashing of teeth, she got to see the lake below. Of course, as we hiked down the hill, she rarely complained because that was the easy part. I don't remember any hike when she was a kid where the theatrics weren't epic.On one of our hikes, she was carrying on until her dad saw a snake. My husband grew up in the woods; he can tell the good snakes from the bad snakes with ease. He saw that it was a good snake and walked over. It was a black racer. As he came closer, the snake slithered very quickly off to the lake, with my husband walking behind. This made her both scream and laugh. Fast forward several years, and those hikes helped her when she went to a military prep academy. That installment of "don’t give up until you are at the top" was with her when she was running many miles, doing push-ups, and other rugged exercises that are required by the military. This tiny girl was one of ten young people selected from across the country to attend this military prep academy via a new scholarship program for the United States Navy. Seven were boys, and three were girls. At the end of the cycle, she was the only female to make it. All because she understood that to get to the top, you have to start in the valley and climb, sometimes kicking and screaming, to the top. The hard work, the perseverance, the soreness of the muscles, the training of the mind, and the discipline make the view from the top glorious. When we attended her graduation, she truly was a strong, fierce young woman, ready to start her next phase of training in life. Through that trip, she made some lifelong friends and learned some valuable lessons, and now she is training the young folks that are about to make the journey to the prep academy. Those mountains are glorious. But those valleys are there to help us make the climb. One of our favorite movies at our house is The Sound of Music.  One of the songs is called, "Climb Every Mountain." In the song, the nun talks to Maria about climbing every mountain, searching high and low. Follow every byway, every path you know. All that climbing is to find that dream, which will need all the love you can give. Follow that mountain, keep climbing until you find your dreams.  When you reach those dreams remember the valley and what it had to teach you to climb even higher next time. 

 

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The Quacktastic Adventures of Ellie and Lord Barks a Lot

The Case of the Missing Moo-Cow Bell

The Case of the Missing Bumbly Wumbly Bee

The Case of the Missing Wellies

The Case of the Missing Honk Honk

The Case of the Missing Ornaments

Clean it Up! Wash it Up!

Coming soon!

Appalachian Allegory: A Southern Novel

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The Gift of 3/4

Many an hour as been spent playing in 3/4 in our wonderful music room.

Positive Pensées

Kathy King

The Gift of ¾

“Life’s a dance.  Some people walk through it gracefully, while others take two steps, one step forward, two steps back.”

Unknown

¾ is a time signature that is used in music.

There is 4/4, 6/8 and other time signatures.

¾ is a waltz, a dance and whimsical beat.

When you are struggling, perhaps stop and ponder this lovely beat.

One two three, one two three, start a little waltz.

Sing a little tune like Johann Strauss.

He wrote The Blue Danube Waltz to lift his Viennese compatriots spirit. 

Their country had been at war and endured quite a lot. 

He wrote this little tune to give joy to their tired hearts.

When life has you down and not in a ¾ time frame.

Do a little waltz to regain your equilibrium one beat at a time. 

Have you ever danced a waltz?  Have you seen someone waltz?  The dance is so graceful to the strains of a time signature of ¾.  To those who are not familiar with music, each piece of music has a time signature or a beat if you will.  Musicians follow this beat to allow the music to have symmetry and marked time.  It would be an addled mess if each musician just picked how they were going to count the music that they were reading.  The only time that this would be remotely easy would be if it was one musician who was not accompanying people dancing.  Just like the musicians counting, the dancers are counting as well.  If you have never heard the Blue Danube waltz it is quite beautiful.  It was written by Richard Strauss II in 1866 to bolster the spirits of the war-trodden Austrians.  They had just lost the seven week war to the Prussians, a particularly low point for the country.  Strauss based the waltz on a poem by Karl Isidor Beck, each line ending with “By the Danube, By the Beautiful Blue Danube”.  As with most artists they took some liberties with the Danube actually being blue because as we all know most rivers are not blue.  When the waltz was first unveiled the response was quite muted from the Viennese.  This was a little disappointing to Strauss.  Strauss did not give up, he took his piece to France at the World Exhibition and it was an immediate success.  The piece garnered so much praise that the printing press had to print over one million copies for the piano!  That is a lot for the year 1867.  The waltz is much like life.  The count is one, two, three.  The rise and fall of the meter can be likened to the ebb and flow of everyday life.  How can you change your life from a piece with no real time signature to a beautiful waltz?  By counting what joyful and meaningful beats are in your life.  There are many varieties of waltzes.  There are at least sixteen (if not more), the American Waltz, The Estonian Waltz, The Peruvian Waltz to just name a few.  Sure, there are some that are in odd meters such as 5/4 and 8/4 but there is still a dance that is graceful and sometimes a little weird yet melodious.  The most popular and enduring waltz is that of the Viennese, in its beautiful ¾ time.  Find your meter, find your waltz and dance the dance of life.   “The journey between who you once were, and who you are becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place.”  Barbara Delungio.  We will stumble, we may even lose the beat but lets pick ourselves up, say a little one two three and start to dance again.  

Source:classicfm.com

My books are on Amazon!

The Quacktastic Adventures of Ellie and Lord Barks a Lot

The Case of the Missing Moo-Cow Bell

The Case of the Missing Bumbly Wumbly Bee

The Case of the Missing Wellies

The Case of the Missing Honk Honk

The Case of the Missing Ornaments

Clean it Up! Wash it Up!

Coming soon!

Appalachian Allegory: A Southern Novel