Remember this old song “this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine”.

Everybody has a light in them. It might be bright, dim, or turned off, but the great news is – it’s still present, don’t worry, the triggers in everyday life spark our light to expand or to fade away. It’s a healthy step in the right direction to understand the fullness and potential of how bright that light can actually shine. Ultimately, it is measured by our outward actions and attitudes towards life and other people.

There are practices we can move toward to begin illuminating ourselves to positively affect others who are around us daily. We can intentionally  place ourselves in uplifting environments by being proactive and more sensitive to how we feel during the day. in the moment.

Here are some ideas to try which might offer some thought to seriously consider.

Are the people in your life adding to your peace or eating it up? Make a list of each person on paper and decide if the relationships are healthy, necessary, and productive to your life in some way. Realize who are your friends and what defines the friendship. Many friendships are often one-sided, one person is contributing to the relationship resulting in the other friend to experience nothing valuable or satisfying from the relationship. There are seasons in healthy friendships where this will be a natural pattern as people experience life changing events and occurrences.

Is there a place in your life to explore and experience the creative side of yourself? It has now been scientifically proven by multiple studies of various groups of senior citizens, who are cognitively functionally strong as compared to other similar groups, who are not mentally or physically healthy, that finds the dramatic brain differences in the two different groups. The significant difference between the two groups is interesting. The group of older people who were artists, musicians, writers, painters all of whom worked in the creative field were much more cognitive than the group studied who experienced small amounts of time applied to creativity in their lives. The group who spent their life working in the field they enjoyed, utilizing the creative side of their brain, actually displayed healthier brain cortex on the MRI, while the other groups MRI displayed a much less healthy cortex brain.

This is perhaps a motivating reason to wake up the exploratory side of the brain to a world that imagines, wonders, and deviates from what has always been normal or routine to ordinary life. 

Experiencing a big life evolves around big love, big thoughts, and increased sensitivity to the little things occurring in your daily life. It may seem illogical to open your life and expose your heart to people who are different from you. It will probably seem boring and worthless, but give it a chance to develop a rhythm. Usually, when we discover happiness, we were not in pursuit of it at the time, it just happens through our natural journey, but what if we could embrace more of these happy encounters. Be open to all kinds of people, look for a common ground and build from there.

Focus your mind on positive outcomes and remove negative thoughts that come out of nowhere in your head. Capture the thought, think over it with something good and watch it leave. It gets easier to do this with practice and it does work! Try it the next time you feel uncomfortable in a situation.

A huge part of this process is to be sensitive to what is present in your environment and what your head is attempting to tell you. Look beyond the things in front of you. Why are they there and how did it come about? Start to practice asking yourself about the purpose and the timing of everything going on in your life. All big things start with something small that often evolves into something bigger.

In a perfect world, most of us would prefer day over night, light over dark, good over bad and life over death. We all have the desire to be liked and have friends and influence with others. The good news is, we all have the ability inside of us to make it happen, it was placed there in our design. Our job is to navigate our journey well by fueling  it with the right ingredients, select friends, jobs, churches that will bring out the best in us and inspire healthy goals to meet.

What you say you are you possibly can become; just as what you say you aren’t, you will never be. Who you were yesterday does not determine who you can become in the future.

Be a light for someone everyday. The world is bursting with negative all arounds us and your light is needed now. Someone out there needs you to stand out and believe in them. Have hope in humanity, extend a hand, an ear, or simply just show up. Bright lights resonate for long distances and many others can see the ray, some never forget the glow they experienced from them and others are taught how to ignite their own.

Shine on!

This little light of mine (Photo credit: W.D. Vanlue)