Thought Wrangling

“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; 

for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.”

-Marcus Aurelius

Katie and I in Morocco just after riding a camel on the beach. Yes, that's right.
 I wish I saw, daily, a big smiley face with a message in French and Arabic to remind me to stay cheery.

One day a couple months ago (unlike the day in the picture) I was having a bad day. No actually that deserves some arbitrary capitalization. It was a Bad Day. The type of day when everything and everyone else is  annoying, ridiculous, and incomprehensible. Will explained the following idea to me. I wrote it down. Well, really I typed it on a virtual sticky note and there it's stayed on my laptop's desktop since. I re-read it pretty often and felt like, hey, today is as good a day as any to share it.
  
"Your thoughts are reality. Don't let the world affect you. You affect the world. YOU determine who you are. Thoughts are powerful because when you think too critically, you will judge AND THAT will drive you crazy. If you think it is bad, it is always going to be bad to you because you think that way. We have to be careful with our thoughts."


Yes, but how do we manage our thoughts? Can we wrangle them into always being positive ones. Probably not, I guess. I think living a passionate life will get me on the path to a mental chain reaction of happiness. And the quest continues.