Be the thing that moves you forward

“As scarce as the truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.”  How true. How very true.

This is a quote penned by Josh Billings, an American humorist who lived during the 1800’s. His real name was Henry Wheeler Shaw and in the day he was the second most famous humorist in the U.S., next to Mark Twain.

I’d never heard about Billings until last week, when a friend sent me an email with the above quote in it. I’ve thought a lot about Josh Billings since then and I’ve spent some time reading more about this man, who had a wonderful quirky sense of optimism and a wise stroke of words in his penmanship.

Right about now, as snowflakes continue to drib drab the mood of the collective, I’m up for just about any positive vibes I can get my hands on or my head wrapped around, as a warring mechanism against the doldrums of the lingering winter weather.

I was feeling so gunned down by the cold that I turned the corner and vowed with myself to spread sunshine instead of rain.

It all started when I saw a Facebook status Monday morning that read, “Allowing people to drain your energy with their chronic complaints is not kindness, it’s complicity.” How true.

If you are doing the “Spock” eyebrow thing about the word “complicity,” look it up.

Or better yet, look at controlling the things you can do something about and move away from worry about the things you have no affect over. 

I have a truckload of personal experience with co-dependency, a dysfunction I admit to in myself and recognize in others. I continue to teach myself in the language of letting go of it in my life.

Among the lessons? All the alarms go off when I find myself standing within ear shot of a chronic complainer and realize for the umpteenth time that I am a supporter of the negative “Nellys and Neds” of the world if I stick around as their audience. I want to be done with that.

Mike Dooley, a mentor for anyone seeking a positive lifestyle, believes that our thoughts become things and that we should think good ones. I’m a big fan. His daily email is the first good thought I read and absorb every day before I even get out of bed.

Dee Caffari, a British sailor, sailed by herself non-stop around the world in 2006 and 2009, and into the history books as the first woman to do that and to do it in both easterly and westerly directions.

In a radio interview Caffari talked about the greatest lessons she learned while out there, often at “Point Nemo.” (Spock eyebrow again? Look it up.)

Caffari admitted that her default setting was “to say what I don’t want to happen and what I don’t want to do.”

Sound familiar? 

She had to make a conscious effort to change to be a positive person to focus on moving away from what she didn’t want to happen and more toward what she did want to happen.

Repeat after me, girlfriend.  “There is no stronger woman than me, like a train coming down the horizon.”