‘Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers, or you can grow weeds.’

I’m a visual person so being able to actually picture in my mind a beautiful flower garden or a patch of weeds really puts this quote in perspective. Every single day, in fact every minute of every day, we have within us the ability to plant the seeds we choose. We can plant positive, helpful, caring seeds or we can plants seeds of negativity, divisiveness, distrust and bitterness. And the amazing thing, is that the choice is our every day. Every person breathing makes the decision every morning when they open their eyes what type of seeds they will plant that day.

Our prayer should be to ask God to help us, to check us and to hold us accountable for the work we do daily in our garden. What type garden will you plant today? Tomorrow? In the future? Again … your mind is the garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers, or you can grow weeds.

God’s blessings to you on this day and my prayer is that we all grow beautiful flowers! Have a good Tuesday and a blessed day!

‘There is a basic law that like attracts like. Negative thinking definitely attracts negative results. On the other hand, if a person habitually thinks optimistically and hopefully, their positive thinking sets in motion creative forces — and success, instead of eluding them, flows toward them.  – Norman Vincent Peale

I am a huge believer in this and the only thing left to add is protect yourself from negative results by limiting your time with negative people.

God’s blessings to you on this day! Have a great Monday and a blessed day!

‘You can’t have a good day with a bad attitude, and you can’t have a bad day with a good attitude.’

The greatest definition I’ve ever heard about attitude, I repeat parts of it on a regular basis, comes from author and minister Charles Swindoll. I have this on a sign above my desk. It reads:

‘The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, than being gifted or skilled. It will make or break a company, a church or a home. The remarkable thing is that we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past … we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we react to it. And so it is with you … you are in charge of your attitude.’

God’s blessings to you on this day! Have a great Sunday and a blessed day!

‘A negative thinker sees a difficulty in every opportunity. A positive thinker sees an opportunity in every difficulty.’

I work hard these days to avoid contact with what I call ‘the black cloud’ people. These are the folks that walk around, like the little guy in the cartoon, with a black cloud hanging over their head. Everywhere they go, it rains. Don’t you know people just like that? If you mention that it’s a beautiful day, they will promptly tell you that it’s supposed to rain and storm in a few days. If you tell them all the things going right in your life, they’ll quickly tell you all that could go wrong. If you walk on water, the haters will say its because you can’t swim. In short, anything you mention they’ll find a negative or a way to hang a dark cloud over an otherwise sunny day.

Run from negative people and go out of your way to avoid them. But, also be thankful for negative people, because they’ve shown you exactly who you do not want to be!

God’s blessings to you on this day! Have a super Saturday and a blessed day!

‘Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go, they merely determine where you start.’

This quote holds so much truth and instruction in only one sentence. Many of us, myself included, have been in difficult situations where you feel as though those circumstances are the determining factor in what your future holds. Instead, as this wonderful quote points out, those trying circumstances should be looked at as the starting point, the beginning, a genesis to a new page in your life’s story.

Every day, in fact ever minute, starts a new page in your life story. You hold the pen in your hand, you are the author of your story. Don’t let circumstances hold you back, let them be the starting point to success, achievement and happiness.

God’s blessings to you on this day! Have a great Friday and a blessed day!

‘What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters … compared to what lies within us.’ — Ralph Waldo Emerson

This one-sentence quote deals with three important things that makes up every person’s life – the past, the future and what lies within us. It’s important to point out that two-out-of-three of those don’t matter.

The past is the past and what lies behind us is exactly where it should stay — behind us. Remember, there is no way to start a new chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one. It’s OK to glance back, but that’s not the direction you’re going. As far as the future and what lies before us, that chapter has not been written yet so it does absolutely no good to worry and fret about what might happen. Worrying about the future is like carrying an umbrella with you everywhere you go on the chance that it might rain.

The beauty of this quote comes in the last six words: ‘… compared to what lies within us.’ Because what lies within us is the ability to do whatever we set our mind to do, to dream big, work hard, strive to be better every day, be a positive influence, reach for the stars and choose the exact direction we want to take our life.

God’s blessings to you on this day! Have a terrific Thursday and a blessed day!

‘Today will never come again. Be a blessing. Be a friend. Encourage someone. Take time to care. Let your words heal and not wound.’

What a great and simple set of instructions — only five short sentences — to start not only ‘today’ but every single day. And the real beauty in these instructions is that none of them are time consuming, tough tasks. Instead they are simple things we can all do in our daily lives, jobs, work, travels, etc.

Today will never come again – carry those five simple sentences with you on your way!

God’s blessings to you on this day! Have a wonderful Wednesday and a blessed day!

‘Knowledge is knowing what to say. Wisdom is knowing when to say it.’

Two short sentences, one right behind the other make up my quote for today. But my, oh my, how far those two sentences are apart. And that vast difference is created by one word in each sentence – ‘what’ and ‘when.’

Looking at that quote it seems our prayer should be for a measure of both knowledge and wisdom — the knowledge to know what to say and then combine that with the wisdom to know exactly when to say it. And certainly, gaining the knowledge to know what to say is not nearly as difficult as mastering the art of knowing when to say it. For some people, myself included, learning to bite your tongue is a great way to attain the wisdom to know when to talk and when to shut up.

God’s blessings to you on this day and my prayer is that we all gain knowledge and wisdom with our daily words. Have a great Tuesday and a blessed day!

‘No one can go back and make a brand new start but anyone can start from this day, this hour, this minute and make a brand new ending.’

One of the wisest comments I’ve ever heard came from a minister talking about people who are going through difficult times. He said most people want to flip a switch and make their life OK again and that simply is not going to happen. He said he always tells these people to set very short term goals that will lead to a long term accomplishment. For instance, if it’s Monday and you’re going through a rough spot in life, look ahead to next Monday and try to stay on course and make improvements in your life from one week to the next. Then look ahead to the next Monday and the next, and the next with the big picture goal to look ahead six months or a year and see how far you’ve progressed. A quote I’ve used often before speaks volumes about this topic: ‘You are not defined by your past, you’re prepared by your past.’

Remember opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune or temporary defeat.

God’s blessings to you on this day and prayers to you if you’re trying to forge a brand new ending! Have a marvelous Monday and a blessed day!

‘A good life is when you assume nothing, do more, need less, smile often, dream big, laugh a lot, cherish every moment and realize every day how blessed you are for what you have.’

God’s blessings to you on this day! Have a great Sunday and a blessed day!