Life Always Looks Better From Across the Street


Life is all about your state of mind. If you look at everything in a positive state of mind then you are going to notice all the positive things in life. If you think of negative things you are going to notice all the negative things in life. It's a constant struggle with me.

The life I lived when I was younger taught me to assume the worst was going to happen so that I was always ready for it. I didn't hang out with a good crowd. They definitely couldn't be trusted. They were no one you would want to bring in your house. I couldn't count on them to be out for my best interests.

In a lot of ways that mindset did protect me because I was around the worst of the worst at times and they would have tried to take advantage of me however they could. When you grow up around that kind of environment, always expecting something bad to happen almost becomes second nature. You learn to stay guarded because letting your guard down feels dangerous.

The problem is that mindset followed me into adulthood.

As an adult it's hard to let people into my life because I still judge people from my younger days. I still expect people to disappoint me or have bad intentions even when they probably don't. Sometimes I wonder how many good people I kept at a distance because I assumed they would eventually hurt me somehow.

I never really tried to do anything because I always assumed I wouldn't get picked for whatever it was or whatever it was wouldn't work out for me. Looking back now, I realize I missed out on a lot of blessings in my life because I had already convinced myself things would fail before they even started.

I always made things out to be way worse than they were because I would build things up in my head like everyone does. The truth is, nothing ever goes exactly as planned in life, but life is also never as bad as it seems when you're worrying about it beforehand.

I think a lot of people spend their lives watching happiness from a distance. Life always seems better from watching it from across the street. Other people's lives always look easier, happier, more meaningful, or more put together when you're standing on the outside looking in.

But maybe everybody feels that way sometimes.

Maybe everybody is fighting battles nobody else can see while also thinking everyone around them has life figured out better than they do.

The older I get, the more I realize life isn't really about avoiding every bad thing that could happen. If you spend your whole life expecting the worst, eventually you stop noticing the good things happening right in front of you.

And sometimes the blessings you miss aren't because life denied them to you. Sometimes it's because fear convinced you not to reach for them in the first place.


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