I recently came across a wonderful analogy that provided a great teaching lesson. This analogy once again came my way via Facebook and I think it do so for a reason — life is what we make of it…how we perceive it and how we react to it.
“Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.” — Mahatma Gandhi
Here is the story of the cup….
You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and accidentally bumps you and shakes your arm, making you spill coffee everywhere.
Why did you spill the coffee?
“Because someone bumped into me!”
Wrong answer.
You spilled the coffee because coffee was in the cup.
Had there been tea in your cup, you would have spilled tea.
Whatever is inside the cup, is what will spill out.
Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you, whatever is inside of you will come out. It’s easy to fake it, until you get rattled.
So each of us has to ask ourselves….. “what’s in my cup?”
When life gets bumpy, what spills over?
Joy, gratefulness, peace, and humility?
Or…anger, bitterness, harsh words, and reactions?
Life provides the cup, but you choose how to fill it.
Today, let’s work towards filling our cups with gratitude, forgiveness, joy, words of affirmation, kindness, gentleness, and love!
It’s all about choice and awareness of that choice. If we’re in a negative place and the coffee spills, we will outwardly react in a negative way, probably yelling and cursing a bit. If however, we’re aware that we’re in a negative place, such as being in a bad mood, stressed, etc., we can consciously control how we react — what good will it do to lash out…it’s just some spilled coffee.
However, if we are consciously focused on being more positive and we are acutely aware of our desire to be happier, we are forging a life on the choice to be happy and positive. Thus, if we spill the coffee, we react differently because we see the brighter side and we realize that in the overall scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter.
That for me is the lesson of this story: that each day we have a choice to be happy or at least to be striving for peace and happiness, or, we can be in a negative place…in which case, we’re allowing ourselves to be unhappy, despite knowing we had the choice to be positive and in a state of harmony.
“Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something special in them. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only the best, be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and too noble for anger.” —