I love this poem because, in my mind, it represents the relationship between our thoughts and our experiences.

   Our experiences feed our thoughts and mind. Our thoughts and mind feed our experiences. They reflect each other.

   If we change our thoughts, we change our experiences.  If we change what we experience, we change our thoughts.

   Your relationships are great when they’re going well, but when they’re going downhill, you and everyone involved suffers to some extent. It matters not what kind of relationship (work, romance, friendship, family, neighborhood, etc.) is suffering, when people can’t get along, it creates some level of physical, emotional, and psychic to those involved.

    From experience, you know that solving relationship problems takes time, patience, understanding, and a willingness to resolve the issue. You probably also know that if one side lacks any of those four, resolving the issue grows harder. And if the other side lacks all

   I admit it. I used to be sarcastic. Sarcasm made me feel strong, witty, and brave.

   That was then.  In the early 90s when, reading  John Knowles’s A Separate Peace because I would be teaching it, these words popped out at me:     “As I said, this was my sarcastic summer. It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak.”
 
The words forced me to shut the book and ponder whether

Remember Dr. Masaru Emoto from What the Bleep's Do We Know? He's the guy who taped positive and negative thoughts on bottles of water and then, using a high-powered microscope, photographed the frozen water molecules, or snowflakes.

And do you remember what those photographs showed? (I'm still amazed by this!) The photographs showed perfect or near perfect snowflake structures when the water was influenced by a positive thought, or by beautiful music. But the photographs of water exposed to negativity  were poorly formed and dingy.  On his website he writes:

Kindness. You've probably been reading about the need for it and so you've been thinking about it on some level.

Matthew Dowd thinks it's not the same as being nice.  He said, "Being nice is really about how we want to be perceived; being kind is about who we are."

And kindness is not the same as being pleasant. Pleasant means you don't ruffle feathers or create havoc. 

No, kindness requires something of us. It asks us to behold the

Before reading on, think of things in your life you'd choose to change. Better yet, jot them down on a piece of paper.

Next, think of things in your life you'd choose to change but think you don't have the capacity to change them. This is a little harder because two things have to be true:
1.  you have to want the change, and

Are you aware when you’re happy?

It shouldn't require a big philosophical discussion to know if you’re happy or not. In fact, years ago I met the French homeopath Dr. Christian Almayrac in Lake Arrowhead. He  called himself Dr. Happiness and his basic premise was “Enjoying my happiness is the most important thing for me and for everybody else.” He’d constantly ask himself, “Am I happiest thinking ……….?” If the answer wasn’t an immediate yes, it was a no. And if the answer was

If you had a magic wand in your hand right now, what five things instantly come to your mind as things you want to create?  It doesn't matter if they're a big thing or small. They can be objects or experiences, or just plain feelings. Whatever these five things are, write them down. Yes, stop reading, and jot them down so you don’t forget.

Next, get clear about why you want these things. If your motivating desire has to do with comfort and peace and love and abundance,

I’m going to right out and say it. I believe people have a Creative System that creates their experiences. Actually I’ve been using the term for over 20 years, and I wrote about it in my 1997 book, Take a Moment and Create Your Life! And, of course, I write about it in The Happiness Path. When you understand how the system works, like all your body’s other systems, your life goes significantly smoother. And you’ll be happier. And healthier. (Imagine if you didn’t understand how your reproductive system worked!)

At its most basic, your Creative System creates your experiences