On the Lookout for Silver Linings

Dorothy raised a good question in her comment yesterday about how to consistently look for silver linings in the clouds that pass over our lives.

I certainly don't have the answers, but I am willing to speculate a little.

I think the only way we can consistently look for and see the good things packaged in bad circumstances is to be open-mindedly conscious of looking for the good.

It seems to me that if we practice (just as with anything we want to be good at) looking for the good, we'll see it. The more we see it, the more of it we will see (kind of like when you're thinking of buying a specific car and suddenly you being "seeing" them everywhere).

Maybe that sounds too simplistic, but I really believe it comes right back to choices. This could be yet another instance of what I wrote about earlier this week. We can choose to look for and see the good, or we can choose to be passive recipients of bad things from those clouds--just letting the bad happen to us without recognizing any of the good (lessons, small blessings, misdirection from dangerous courses of action, etc.) and extracting that silver lining.

So that's my thought for one way to consistently see the silver lining. What do you think?

Enjoy your weekend and have try to make time for some of your favorite summertime joys.

Here are a few more we love: drive-in double-feature movies on weekend nights, falling asleep in a lounge chair by the pool, sitting in a warm hot tub on a cool evening, and watching our lab launch himself off the end of the dock after a tennis ball or stick.