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"When you talk about your troubles, your ailments, your diseases, your hurts, you give longer life to what makes you unhappy. Talking about your grievances merely adds to those grievances. Give recognition only to what you desire. Think and talk only about the good things that add to your enjoyment of your work and life. If you don't talk about your grievances, you'll be delighted to find them disappearing quickly."

The above quote has been lurking around my quote pages for some time now, but it wasn't until tonight that I actually read and thought about what it said. Its message forms the basis for this week's Monday Motivation, because what he said is very true -- the things we give weight to in our minds tend to be the areas that we dwell upon.

Most of us like to complain, at some point or another, and certainly life seems to give us the right to complain. In Communist countries, it was always said that while the citizens didn't have a lot of rights, they at least had the right to complain -- if they kept their voice down.

But in our lives, although we certainly have the right to complain about our circumstances, that doesn't really mean we should be doing it at all. Complaining only lengthens the hurt and deepens the wound. The more we complain, the more we drag out the problem, and it takes on a life of its own.

You remember the old adage about "making a mountain out of a molehill?" In that proverbial case, as in the quote above, it's coming from giving unnatural weight to something that isn't that important -- and by paying attention to it, giving it a weight that it really doesn't deserve.

So here's the key: if you worry about something, you give unnatural credence to your worries, strange or unlikely though they may be. If you dismiss those worries, they shrink to their normal size.

And along those same lines, if you spend time thinking about the good things that happen to you -- your blessings, your successes, your loved ones, your triumphs and your joys, you give weight to those things -- and they take precedence in your life.

The next time your life seems to be moving in the wrong way, remember your blessings, and think about them. Look around at the beautiful day, breathe in the clear air, think about your sweetheart (or think about the sweetheart you're looking for); think about the good things in your life, concentrate on them, and turn your life around.

We think nothing about upgrading a computer, a TV, or an automobile, in order to get better results -- but few of us do the most important upgrade -- we don't upgrade our thinking -- and that's an upgrade we can all use.

Copyright, 2010, by Daryl R. Gibson. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the non-commercial redistribution of this document as long as it remains intact with this copyright and all other lines. This license does not extend to the use of this material in a compilation, whether for profit or non-profit use. Join us at http://www.Weekdaywisdom.com.