Hi everybody, welcome to “Love Mondays”, “positive food for thought” for all of us at the beginning of the week.
On Love Mondays I’ll share and explore points of view and philosophies to combat the Mubble-fubbles.
No seriously, that’s a word, it’s just no one but Susie Dent from Dictionary Corner on Countdown has used it since the 1500s. It means a vague, Sunday-eveningish feeling of mopiness and gloom.
Everyone struggles from time to time and we feel like we need a bit of a lift. Love Mondays is intended to do some of the lifting for you.
I have a bunch of things that I use to keep myself afloat; pearls of wisdom I have learned from the people who have influenced my journey. What I’d like to do is to just share one of those with you, in the hope that it might help you. Maybe some of it will click with you, but it’s all just food for thought.
Sometimes I’ll have a guest, and I’ve really enjoyed interviewing inspirational people for the video series ‘Beautiful Monday’ that I’ve been broadcasting on my music Facebook page.
For this first episode I would like to share a piece of wisdom from Helen Keller that I heard years ago. I found it really helped me through the turbulent early years of building my business, and finding my way in the world, where I felt I could contribute on my terms, without selling out.
Helen Keller was an inspirational character for lots of reasons. She was an American author, political activist, and lecturer, and the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Her story was made famous by her autobiography ‘The Story Of My Life’, and its film and stage adaptation, called ‘The Miracle Worker’.
Now, upon googling this to make sure I had it right for you, it turns out what I’ve been saying to myself isn’t the original quote, if Google could be trusted, so I’ll tell you the proper version first.
This is a famous saying of Helen’s; she says,
“Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”
I just found that incredibly beautiful. “Keep your face to the sun and you’ll never see the shadows.” And it was a piece of advice I needed as I looked to leaving the rat race, and making my own way in the scary world of self employment.
As I mentioned, the version that I remembered was slightly different “When you face the Sun, the shadows always fall behind you.”
And that’s something that I’ve said to myself a lot. I think on reflection I probably prefer that version. What it says to me is that there’s an element of choice. When YOU face the Sun, the shadows fall behind you.
Helen obviously wasn’t just talking about the weather. Something you may have noticed, I certainly have in myself and other people, is that we can have a tendency to focus on negative things. It can be really habit forming to focus on negative things. It’s easy to do that; it’s really easy to do that, and it can weigh you down.
It can weigh you down and affect the decisions that you make, affect your choices and the way that you approach everything.
Life can be quite a turbulent time for some of us. There are ups and downs, things we can’t prepare for and it can all get overwhelming and a bit much.
So this is something that I say to myself when I am feeling overwrought. When you face the sun the shadows always fall behind you.
It’s that element of choice to me that says turn around.
Turn around and look.
Look at the sun and look at the positive things.
Count the things that you do have; do the things that you can do.
Don’t just stand in the shadows and feel cold and sad. Turn around. It might be a herculean effort, but it’s something we can try.
So, that’s just a bit of “food for thought” for you for this week. I hope that you’ll find this interesting. Perhaps there’s an area of your life, or a loved one’s life, where that is relevant from time to time.
In the future, I’ll be sharing things from as many walks of life as I can. The Arts, philosophy & religion, song lyrics, wise and influential characters like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, as well as some of the smaller things.
So this week, spare a thought for Hellen Keller.
You can find me at diellemusic.com/blog and in our facebook group ‘Love Mondays’.
I hope that helps you or someone you know. Together we build bridges.
Until next time, take care.
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