Monday Morning
Motivation 6/20/2011
THE POSITIVE PLACE. SALES MOTIVATION AND PERSONAL GROWTH
Making miracles
“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” --Albert Einstein
“Do not be surprised by miracles -- learn to develop and rely on them.” -- Anonymous
By their “ordinary” definition, if I can use that phrase, miracles are events that seem to be out of the ordinary -- even supernatural in origin. As it turns out, though, our lives are full of miracles each day. And we can learn to look for them around us and create them in our own lives and the lives of others.
When I studied debating, I learned that a debate is usually won or lost in the definition of terms. If you can get someone to adopt your definition for something, a debater can then maneuver the debate around to prove his or her point. Smart debaters learned that early on, while not-so-smart debaters (I was usually in the second case) never quite understood it until it was too late.
So it is with the words we use. When we look around us, we soon realize that miraculous things happen to us almost each day of our lives. These blessings may or may not come from a heavenly source -- but they can still change our lives for the better, if we adopt the viewpoint that these miracles happen for our own good.
So, let’s define our terms. As I’m defining it, a miracle is an event that makes a significant difference for good in your life or the life of someone around you. You may quibble at my definition, like any good debater might -- but accept it for now. As an “event,” you know it’s something that happens to you, around you, or because of you. When we define “difference for good,” we define it as something that makes a life better, stronger, happier, more joyful, or more constructive.
Secondly, no matter why it may actually happen or when, we need to understand that miracles happen for a reason. That reason may be to affect the life of another human being, to make our own life better, or to make humanity a better place to live.
Am I quibbling with words, defining a miracle as such? I don’t think so. Miracles, whether they come from God or other people, make a significant difference, and they do it all of a sudden. Most of us who believe in a religious background soon learn that most miracles are rarely given to us by an angel from heaven -- miracles come to us from the actions of ourselves or other people around us, no matter whether they be inspired by heaven or not. Additionally, whether from heaven or not, miracles come through faith -- the faith of others or the faith of ourselves.
So you see, miracles are things that happen to us for good, and happen more often than we can ever realize -- until we start looking for them.
Look around you, if you will. You will soon see that you can be a force for miracles in the lives of the people around you. People need to be lifted up, inspired, and set on a correct path. You can work miracles in their lives.
Look at the flowers that you walk by on the way to home or work. Look closely at them. Examine each petal, each leaf. Is that flower a miracle? I don’t know any other way to put it. It’s an everyday miracle.
Look at the everyday comforts you enjoy. Electricity? Running water? Computers? Are they miracles? People in 1827 would have thought so. Many people in 1900 would have thought so.
In my pocket (currently playing John Williams/Itzhak Perman over a Bluetooth speaker) is a cell phone. I’m old enough to have lived during a time where I picked up a phone and asked “central” to get me “196” on the phone so I could speak with my dad. Is that cell phone a technological miracle? Seems like it is to me (and I work in technology for a living).
For many years after my first marriage (to a horrible woman) was over, I swore that I would never get married again. When I did, it was a miracle. A woman who took a job where I worked set me up with her aunt, and I fell in love. If that woman had never taken that job and had never made friends with me, it’s unlikely my wife and I ever would have met. Miraculous? I think so. Mere chance? I doubt it.
Here’s the thing: miracles are all around us -- but we rarely see them, rarely seize them, rarely trust to them, and rarely work to make a miraculous difference in the lives of others around us.
We could do so much -- and make such a difference -- if we would merely allow ourselves to look for miracles for our own lives, create miracles in the lives of others, and learn to attract good things to us.
What was that old quote? “Life is a banquet, and most poor fools are starving to death.” Well, it’s that way with miracles. There are miracles all around us, and miracles that we can make in the lives of others, but few of us ever try, let alone succeed.
I’m a great fan of the movie “The Princess Bride.” In the movie, Billy Crystal plays the part of “Miracle Max,” a man who does miracles. While I’m sure most of us will never become the sort of wizard who can chocolate coat something to bring back the mostly-dead, we still can become the kind of people who can find and generate miracles to bring back life to our own lives and the lives of the people around us.
Copyright, 2011, 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.