I have a number of guiding principles which I review in the mornings during my personal time. One of them is “I trust the goodness and abundance of life.”

Now I have to admit that life is not all goodness and bliss. In fact, Life is hard, perhaps harder for some than others, but nonetheless hard for a vast majority of us human beings. We’re born into an imperfect world and life seems to come at us in an unending series of challenges. Some are the result of nature taking its course (earthquakes, accidents, illness, aging) and others caused by our indifference or even inhumanity to each other. But no matter how you slice it, we all have challenges that so often result in suffering.

Perspective

But even though life is hard, I realize that I can look at it from different perspectives. For example, is this symbol           )    concave or convex? Am I a little dot on the left side of the symbol or the right? And how big is my perspective? Can I step far enough away to realize that it depends? Or, more accurately, that it is really both?

I want to suggest that this is so much like life. Life is good. Life is bad. Life is hard. Life is joyous. There is evidence to justify either point of view. I can build a case either way. The truth is that we get what we’re looking for. The origin of our experience is inside and not outside.

We live about a mile and a quarter from Columbine High School and were profoundly impacted by that event. I recall the cruelty of those two boys who killed 13 people and wounded so many more. But I also recall the tens of thousands of students, family and community members who came together to express incredible unity, love, and mutual support following the incident. I was deeply touched.

Our perspective matters so much, like tuning the dial on my radio to a station. Do I tune in to the station that broadcasts country western, rock and roll, classical, heavy metal, pop, sports talk? It’s all out there. The question is, what do I want to experience? What resonates most deeply inside me?

Scarcity vs. Abundance

Do I tune the dial inside my mind to the good or bad? Do I come from a scarcity mentality and see the bad, evil, lack, what is missing? Or do I come from an abundance mentality and see the good, love, plenty, and beauty of life?

Ultimately, we choose our perspective—what we see, experience, and get. When we become aware that we choose we can make a different choice.

So take a moment right now. Do you want to live this moment or this day from fear and scarcity or goodness and abundance? How would you talk to yourself to live from goodness and abundance?  Take a moment to build this case. Feel it. Choose it. Notice the power that comes from your ability to make this choice. And continue on with your day.