"One of the greatest gifts that we tend to take for granted    the most is Love." NosaJ
 
​ Most of us are granted the gift of love in one form or another or at different points in our life journey but we do not always appreciate it as much as we should or sometimes even recognize true love, when it is staring us right in the eyes and or at the heart.  We have the gift of love given to us early in life and to some again and again but we keep on looking for something that we already have or have been given.

  There is love the journey and there is love the destination. The journey is actually but a stone's throw away and the destination is not far away because you are the destination. Here is the irony to love and that is that you are already at the destination but you keep on looking for the destination. The journey that is love is simply a journey to a place that you have already been or leave and return to. The journey is a means to simply finding more love for yourself, for others , for places and for things.

 Love is not a fairy tale. It is a reality but the form of its reality is shaped by our own minds, our imagination and the impressions that our minds adopt of love and fairy tales. The fairy tales actually come from escapism, our imagination or from someone else's imagination that is then impressed on the minds of many as to what love is or should be. If not the fairy tales, now the media, reality and fantasy TV shows. You have to try not to escape into the fairy tales or replicate the love of others but breathe life into love as it exists in your own reality.

  There is no fairy tale that can capture love or life in its entirety and that is because in the form of a book
it can be told in a short time and the movies only last about two hours.  There is fantasy and there is reality but if you rely more on the fantasy rather than try to embrace love in your own reality and time, then you are most likely to lose your happy ending and not live happily ever after with the one assigned
to love you or you to love them.
 
  It is a common practice or occurrence among us humans to lose love time and time again. If you are one of the fortunate or wise ones, you treasure and keep hold of love at some point in life and time. At all points and through all phases of life the one love that you must never lose is love for yourself. This is not about arrogance or a self preservation kind of love but pure unconditional love for self. You should never be in love with yourself but you must always have some love for yourself for in the absence of such love their will be a vacancy of happiness.
 
  We as a society emphasize fidelity and utilize infidelity to banish true love from our lives. We as society allow the material to put asunder what God has put together when there is no help from another man or woman. We sometimes forget that it is human to err and or to stray from love in our lifetime and also forget that it is divine to forgive.  The broken heart is always something that can be mended if you allow it to be so, but many tend to carry the pieces around with them for too long or even for the rest of their lives. With those thoughts in mind, unconditional love and forgiveness appear to be the keys to greater love and not taking love for granted.
  
  The reverse side of love is that as a gift to another it can also convey some power and love can also be abused. There is taking love for granted, there is straying from the path of love and mistaking love for something else but any form of verbal or physical abuse should not be mistaken for love. That is your cue to run.

​   Love has the great capacity to imprison or to banish misery from your life, if you allow it to but can also be used as a means to create misery. If you introduce misery to your relationships, instead of a merry heart and mind, places  such as marriage, partnership  work  or places  that you find yourself in life, then you create a field for negativity to grow in or make a bed for negativity to lie beside you, instead of love.
 
  Wake up and make some room for love. Wake up with a merry heart and some love. If you are not alone, when you wake up gaze upon the person lying next to you with some love. If love has been lost or is losing its way, make some effort to help it find its way back into your heart and mind, especially for the person lying next to you. If you have family and children, wake up gladly to the sound of their voices,
even if they are arguing already or making noise. Before you know it their life and love journey
will take them elsewhere. Stay where you know there is some love for you and give some love back.
 
  Wake up with some love and whatever lies ahead, love will light up the day for you.

` There are some things, some feelings, some places and even people that we have to let go of at some point in time in order to banish resentment & to allow personal growth." NosaJ

  While envy is low or a light weight on the negativity scale, resentment weighs much more on the same scale and exists much higher on the negativity hierarchy. Envy is a fleeting or a more temporary negative emotion, while resentment lingers for a longer period of time and does more damage to the self and to others. It darkens the mind and the heart with negative thoughts that can also lead to negative behavior or deeds.

  Resentment can arise and reside with any of us for different reasons, for self, for others for a place or about something that happened. Once it arises, it can lead to or grow into a more powerful negative force in the form of anger or transform itself into hate. Resentment thus climbs up higher on the negativity hierarchy.
 
  It takes away something from you. It takes away some of your goodness and subtracts from your positivity. It can affect who you are, whether you are a positive person or a negative person. If you are positive and allow resentment to reside within you, it occupies some of your positive space and casts a shadow upon some of your light. For the already negative person, it magnifies negativity and gives its associates more power and authority.
 
  In order for any human relationship to truly thrive there can be no resentment to the relationship.
Some relationships can survive resentment compliments of hypocrisy and or necessity, but the most productive, most creative and best relationships are usually free of resentment. There are some of our relationships to which there must be no resentment, for it affects spiritual and personal growth, evolution, harmony, peace, joy, faith in each other, hope and love.
 
  Resentment creates the cracks that leads to break ups. On a professional level  think of the employee who resents their boss or vice versa. The employee might leave at great loss to self or even the company
or the boss out of resentment facilitates the exit of the employee at great cost of conscience and to the company. Think of how many personal relationships have also broken up because of resentment. We cite irreconcilable differences but sometimes underlying these differences is resentment.
 
  To your marriage or relationship with a loved one, there should be no resentment or the relationship is already on the rocks. To friendship there must be no resentment or it is a hypocritical relationship. We are all human and we tend to make some mistakes along the way or do some wrong through the eyes of others or according to cultural and society standards. It might be called wrong or it might be a betrayal of a particular trust but does it warrant resentment? Does it require the sacrifice of the positive self or the whole that which is good?
 
  If you look around you at friends, at neighbors, at work colleagues and even into your own family history, you will always find one relationship that tends to outlast and outshine all other relationships. It is called parenthood.  This beautiful relationship between parent and child or children, does not necessarily stand the test of time out of obligation but out of love and the lack of resentment. It also stands the test of time because in spite of the many mistakes that a child makes, the parent tends to forgive them and love them anyway.
 
  The parent/child relationship changes its expression and format over a period of time but it does not go south, sour, negative or bloody unless resentment and anger replace love or there was no love to begin with. If you can take the parenthood approach and apply it to other relationships, resentment will find it difficult to touch you
 
   The remedy to resentment is called forgiveness. It is human to err and it is divine to forgive.If you resent yourself for something that you have done or failed to do, then you have to forgive yourself or else it is going to be a long battle for you and resentment. If you resent anyone for something that they did to you or did not do for you, it is time to forgive them also or  else the resentment that you have for them  will apply itself to you, to what you do, how you do it  and to other things. Time does not heal all wounds. The mind does and you do.

  Wake up and ditch resentment and say hello to a better you and better relationships.

 
` If as human beings our skins changed color according to our thoughts, feelings or emotions, many of us would be green with envy." NosaJ
 
  We go to sleep with envy, we have affairs with envy, we wake up with envy and sometimes walk through the day holding the hand of envy or with envy in mind. This gives envy power and distracts from creativity, productivity and trying to achieve real goals.
 
  Society is such that it has filled minds with wants rather than needs. Instead of much gratitude for what we do have and for our daily bread, envy exists compliments of what we want, what we do not necessarily need and in some cases what we cannot have, like something that already belongs to someone else or someone else that is already spoken for.
 
  What an advanced society we would be if the media promoted more education and spirituality than entertainment or products for the people. What wonderful minds there would be out there being creative rather than trying to be fashionable or to fit in or live like Mr. & Mrs. lovely, like prince Jack or princess Jill. What an advanced society we would all be in the absence of envy and its negative impact and probably closer to the divine rather than more attached to the material.
 
  Do you ever go to sleep or wake up with envy because of what your friend has? You should not. Do you envy a friend or colleague for the car that they drive or the house that they live in?
You should not, because you do not know the price that they are paying for it. Do you wake up and envy those who do not have to go to work? You should not because you do not know why they are not going to work or, their entitlement not to or misfortune not to.  The same applies if you envy those who wake up and have to go to work for their daily bread. Do you know how many miserable workers there are out there or the courage that it takes some to do the daily and weekly grind?
 
  Do you visit a girl friend or family and envy that friend or relative for having children or wish that your children were like theirs? Do you wish that your house was as clean or as big as theirs? You should not, for the irony of envy is that the ones that you envy for what they have may envy you for what you do not have or what they lack. Your time will also come and you can change some things and even people from the way they are to be better. If some things are indeed pre-ordained , then you may not be able to change them  but do you want to live with envy for the rest of your life or live a well spent life without envy?
 
   I would rather take the well spent life rather than envy any day. There are those whom I admire but there are none I envy. I like who I am and I know not what price others have to pay for what they have."
 
​   To each their own life and as similar as all lives may be, none are exactly the same. That which you envy might be an illusion, a fake or a misrepresentation and even if it is not, why spend so much energy on envy, when you could be utilizing the energy in a more positive direction  or towards getting not just to where you want to be but to where envy has no place.
 
   Wake up and ditch envy or say goodbye to envy. It may be okay to wake up and wish you were somewhere else. It may even be okay to wake up and wish that you were someone else but not for the sake of envy. Focus on your authentic self. Focus on what speaks to you and focus on what makes you happy.

"I have to watch my time but I do not want to watch time pass by without some testaments or fulfillment. I want time to watch me do something extraordinary or phenomenal as it passes by me." NosaJ
 
 One of our sad preoccupations with time is complaining that we do not have enough time.One of our great abuses of time is how we utilize our time or treat time. We need time and yet some of us want time to go by quickly.
 
  On any given Monday morning, a multitude of people are already wishing that it was Friday and so they wish time away. Are you one of them? You have already had your Friday and your weekend and you will have it again in due course. It is something to look forward to and not to wish away. Pay day has just arrived and maybe you are already wishing it was pay day again. It will come. It is lunch time and maybe you are looking at the clock, like so many other people, wishing it was 5:00 pm and time to go home. It will come of its own accord.
 
  Home is of course a place to look forward to but by focusing on the clock, you are wishing away time. It is like having a reliable friend that you want to get away from but Instead keeping the company of bad friends and looking to them for guidance. What you should be thinking is what can I do to make this day better before it is 5:00 pm or thereabouts and time to go home? What can I do for myself and for others before time dictates that it is the end of the work day,
 
   A simple truth is that we squander time. We need time to get a lot of things done. We need time to be more productive and efficient and yet we cannot wait for some things to be over in a hurry or for time to fly by.Time is standard. Time is constant and also one of our greatest assets. It may be one of the most reliable things that we do have in life, unless of course your time piece dies on you or of course you forget that hour when you have to turn the hand of time backwards or forwards.
 
  Life assigns us all a certain amount of time. I call this the quantity of time that we have. The amount of time that you have been assigned or the quantity of time that you have, can be diminished or extended by virtue of your own actions, free will or the actions of others.
 
  I also think of it as a currency. Time is like any currency that we have and spend well, invest it wisely or just waste it. Everyone in life wastes a certain amount of time but not everyone knows how to spend time or invest it wisely. Time spent wisely, is a life well spent.The way that you spend your time is up to you. I call this the quality of time.  The gift of free will is also yours to unfold your own time, to decide how to spend your quantity of time, where to spend time and with whom to spend time.
 
  You can spend time lying in bed all day if you want to or you can get up and go to work or do something more creative with the day. You can spend time at home with family or step out with friends. You can watch TV all night and then be too tired to go to work the next day or you can watch a reasonable amount of TV , still feel satisfaction and more to look forward to the next day. You can spend the whole day complaining about something, someone or somewhere or you can spend time trying to resolve what troubles you.
 
 You can spend time worrying and stressing about something that has or has not yet happened or you can stay calm and brace yourself for the impact or prepare yourself to address the matter.You can spend time being afraid of somewhere or something happening or you can spend some time building up your confidence and courage so that fear becomes a stranger to you.
 
 I have to say that I love and respect time. Time is fascinating, time is a mystery and time is beautiful. I am thankful for the time that I have and for the time that I have been able to spend with friends and family in person or even on the phone. I cannot say that I have managed my time perfectly in any respect but I appreciate the essence of time and I am learning more and more to use my quantity of time more carefully and wisely. I am learning more and more to spend time more wisely rather than waste my currency and quality of time.
 
  Wake up and appreciate that the time that you have. Wake up and spend your currency of time wisely or invest it in something, somewhere or someone that adds quality to your life and or to a better you.



                                                                  Jason.U@MondayMorningPositivity.com