We Can Close The Floodgate

All of us in the world have been dealing with some really heavy things that have let floodgates burst open allowing fear, sadness, insecurity, anger, and a whole host of other negative emotions to run through each of our lives like never before…which has only served to discourage, dismay, and detract from our focusing our attention on improving ourselves and diminished our desire to help others to do the same.

But today I was reminded of something really important – I was reminded that I am the one who controls what gets through the floodgates of my own mind, and each of you gets to control the floodgates of what gets through yours. As such, we don’t have to allow fear, sadness, insecurity, anger, or any other of those negative emotions to enter through our floodgates at all. We don’t have to turn on the 24×7 news broadcasts, and we don’t have to read all the negativity posted on social media, and we don’t have to spew out anger or unkindness toward others for thinking differently than we do. We don’t have to let anger, bitterness, or hate creep through our gate.

I was reminded that we can choose to instead walk by faith rather, not fear and worry. We can tune out the noise of the world and tune into the Spirit. We can choose not to get sucked in and distracted by all the avenues of media and use that time instead to improve ourselves mentally, physically, and spiritually so we are in better shape to be able to serve others. We can stand by our beliefs and live by our values without having to tear someone else down about theirs. We can love our enemies, bless them that curse us, do good to them that hate us, and pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us. We control our own floodgate.

My belief is that we should all stop seeing each other as some sort of label (republican or democrat, this race or that, etc) and start seeing each other as brothers and sisters of our Heavenly Parents…as FAMILY! And as family we should be trying to help each other to succeed, not celebrating or wishing each others failure. And while as siblings we may have times we disagree with each others views, not like one another’s decisions, or dislike something someone else has done, we have Heavenly Parents who love each of us equally and unconditionally and They expect us all to love one another and treat one another as the family that we all are.

I’m grateful I was reminded of this today because its helped me realize that all I needed to do to feel better about life was to close my floodgate. And it’s honestly amazing how much better that feels.

~Amy Rees Anderson (author of the book “What Awesome Looks Like: How To Excel in Business & Life” )

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