This is one of those things I’ve had to learn, and re-learn, over many years.  Now that I’m older, I feel I’ve passed the point where need to look outside of myself for someone else to prop me up or to give me what I think I need.

What I need, and what I desire, will come to me if I have an abundant heart.

A “friend” is suffering from a self-imposed lack of abundance.  His latest complaint is that no one has invited him for Thanksgiving dinner.  He paints a dreadful picture of himself so often that I’m sure people are starting to ignore him.  He was “forced” into a divorce that he “didn’t deserve,” he only has his kids on some holidays and not others during the year, he hates how he has to make a living now (he used to live off his wife’s income, for the most part, despite several college degrees), and complains about anxiety and sleeplessness and can’t understand why no one will “rescue” him from this horror of a life he must live (through no fault of his own, of course).

But one thing I’ve learned is that joy, beauty, abundance, and comfort don’t come to me when I’ve got a non-joyful, ugly, destitute, and uncomfortable heart.  It sounds cliche, and probably a bit over-dramatic, to say that you draw to you what you are, but that is exactly what happens.  If you walk around with your negative attitude and grumpy face, you will get negative attention.  If you walk around with your positive attitude and smiling face, you will get positive attention.  The fact is, what you put out, is what you pull in.

Everyone has things happen to them that they wish didn’t happen.  Sometimes we have control over those things, and sometimes we don’t.  But how we deal with those things, the attitude we use to deal with them, make all the difference.  Even when we have lost things, we have so many more things we have gained, and things we can make into happiness and goodness.  It is all, I believe, in our attitude.

For my friend who is lamenting that no one invited him for Thanksgiving, perhaps it is because his negative attitude, his constant “want” and “need,” are just so negative that no one wants him at their table.  Perhaps, he should try offering his full hands out, instead of his needy hands.  If we live an abundant life, in word and deed, then an abundant life will be returned to us.  There are always blessings to be had, blessings that come to us even when we don’t think they are blessings. And the best way to receive blessings is to be a blessing to begin with.

Smile.  Thank someone.  Offer help to someone.  Pay attention to the world around you and focus on everything but yourself.  It will make a world of difference.

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