Ray’s Daily
November 21, 2022
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Confucius
As we start our Thanksgiving week I am planning to limit my activities to only what I must do while spending the rest of my time enjoing avoiding what I don’t have to do. I have found in the past few years that living an uncomplicated life is one of the keys to happiness.
3 Ways to Make Life Simple Again
When we were young life was easier, right? I know sometimes it seems that way. But the truth is life still is easy. It always will be. The only difference is we’re older, and the older we get, the more we complicate things for ourselves.
Over the course of time, we made our lives more and more difficult, and we started losing touch with who we really are and what we really need.
So let’s get back to the basics, shall we? Let’s make things simple again. Here are three ways to do just that:
1. Change your focus. – The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. The mind is indeed your battleground. It’s the place where the greatest conflict resides. It’s where half of the things you thought were going to happen, never did happen. But if you allow these thoughts to dwell in your mind, they will succeed in robbing you of peace, joy, and ultimately your life. You will think yourself into a nervous breakdown, into depression, and into defeat. Because, to a great extent, you are what you think. You can’t change anything if you can’t change your thinking… A beautiful day always begins with a beautiful mindset. When you wake up, take a second to think about what a privilege it is to simply be alive and healthy. Breathe onto the bathroom mirror, just to see how amazing your breath looks. The moment you start acting like life is a blessing, I assure you it will start to feel like one.
2. Fight today’s battles ONLY. – No matter what’s happening, anyone can efficiently fight the battles of just one day. It’s only when you add the battles of those two abysmal eternities, yesterday and tomorrow, that life gets overwhelmingly complicated. Also, remember to refill your bucket on a daily basis. That means catching up on sleep, making time for fun and laughter, eating healthy enough to maintain peak energy levels, and otherwise making time for recovery from the pressures of life.
3. Respectfully care less. – Today, I challenge you to make this your lifelong, daily motto: “I respectfully do not care.” Say it to anyone who passes judgment on something you strongly believe in or something that makes you who you are. People will inevitable judge you at some point anyway, and that’s OK. You affected their life; don’t let them affect yours. Remind yourself that even when it seems personal, rarely do people do things because of you, they do things because of them. You know this is true. You may not be able control all the things people say and do to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Make that decision for yourself today.
Angel Chernoff
~~~
“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
William James
~~~
She said:
I wish I were a bear.
If you’re a bear, you get to hibernate.
You do nothing but sleep for six months.
I could get used to that.
And another thing; before you hibernate, you’re supposed to eat yourself stupid.
That wouldn’t bother me either.
IF you’re a mama bear, everyone knows you mean business; you swat anyone who bothers your cubs.
If your cubs get out of line, you swat them, too.
Your husband expects you to growl when you wake up.
He expects you to have hairy legs and excess body fat.
He likes it.
I wish I were a bear.
~~~
I just read a report that stated that last year 4,153,237 people got married.
I don’t want to start any trouble, but shouldn’t that be an even number?
~~~
A foursome teed off on the long par-3 eighth hole. The green on this hole lay behind a large bunker, so any shot that made the green would disappear over the top ridge of bunker. You couldn’t tell where your ball landed until you arrived on the green. After the last player hit his shot, the first golfer to hit charged off down the fairway, without waiting for the others. He disappeared over the bunker and seconds later came running back down the fairway to the other three, yelling and screaming, “I got a hole-in-one! I don’t believe it!”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said the other golfers in the foursome. “You run ahead of us down the fairway. Then you vanish over the rise, where you know we can’t see you, and, all of a sudden, you start hootin’ and hollerin’ about a hole-in-one. Do you actually expect us to believe you? How stupid do you think we three are?”
“No, no. It’s true. I swear it,” he said crossing his heart. “Go look. I left it in the hole to prove it.”
~~~
A pessimist mourns the future.
~~~
Millions of years ago, there was no such thing as the wheel; the only way to move things was by carrying or dragging. One day, some primitive guys were watching their wives drag a dead mastodon to the food preparation area. It was exhausting work; the guys were getting tired just watching. Then they noticed some large, smooth, rounded boulders, and they had an idea: They could sit on the much more comfortable boulders and watch! This was the first in a series of breakthroughs that ultimately led to watching football on television.
~~~
There’s more to life than increasing its speed.
~~~
When entering a hotel where she and her husband were staying, Gladys, a devout Baptist, noticed a shabbily dressed man lounging idly in front of the newspaper stand in the lobby. She noticed that several men stopped to talk to him and gave him a little money. He seemed so cheered by the encounters she impulsively put ten dollars in an envelope, wrote ‘God Bless” on the outside, and handed it to him.
The nest day the man stopped her on the street. “Here’s your $250,” he said cheerily. “God Bless won 28 to 1!”
~~~
To make the world a friendly place, one must show it a friendly face.
James Whitcomb Riley
~~~
Arnold was a ventriloquist, and not a good one at that. In fact business was so bad that he was trying his luck as a medium. One day, a widow came into his office and said that she wanted to contact her dear departed husband and asked Arnold what he charged.
“If you only want to hear him speak,” said Arnold, “I charge $30. If you want to have a conversation with him, I charge $50. But I charge $100 if you want a conversation with him while I’m drinking a glass of water.”
~~~
“A simple man will have only what he needs, and he will know the difference between what he needs and what he wants. We feel that whatever we want, we desperately need. But before we possess the world, to our wide surprise we see that the world has already possessed us.”
Sri Chinmoy
~~~
Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies. The editor is somewhat senile.
Ray’s Daily has been sent for more than twenty years to people who want to start their day on an upbeat. If you have system overload because of our daily clutter, let me know and I will send you the information via mental telepathy. If you have not been getting our daily you can request to be added by e-mailing me at raykiwsp@comcast.net. Back issues are posted at http://rays-daily,com/ currently there are hundreds of readers from around the world.
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