Life isn't Hard.

Let me just preface this post by saying that I am someone who fully recognizes the fact that life is hard. It can absolutely suck. Life can be going swimmingly, and suddenly it throws you 907 curveballs ALL AT ONCE. 

Life is extremely hard. But it's not.

Recently, I have really been focusing on energies, intentions, and vibes (all that yippie-hippie stuff). Despite whatever unfortunate and miserable events I am going through in my life, I cannot deny that the power of setting positive intentions and putting out hopeful energy has the power to make a world of difference in how I experience life.

We have all heard the saying claiming something to extent that 'we experience the world the way we choose to see the world.' It's true! 

Say we have two completely different men--one lives in a rural town in Kentucky, while the other lives in upstate New York. Both of these men have a wife, two children, and a dog named Steve. (Human dog names are my favorite.) 

Both of these men graduated from college, got a job as a salesman, and have been able to provide for their families. To sum it up, the two men have lived very similar lives.

Suppose for a moment that both of these men get the news that their wife has cheated on them. 

The first man grieves, but eventually regains his desire to date again and ultimately remarries a wonderful woman. His children stay with him every other week, and he decides to maintain a healthy acquaintanceship with his ex-wife for the sake of their kids. He is happy.

The second man grieves, as well, but decides to swear off women entirely because all women are lying, cheating, horribly awful people. His wife takes custody of their children because he is such a wreck emotionally and physically. He lives in solitude. No, loneliness. He spends nights binge drinking. His job disintegrates between his fingers. He is not happy.

What happened here?

The two men decided to see their world in drastically different ways. The first man realized that what happened was, indeed, terrible... but he held on to hope and fought on in pursuit of a happy life. 

The second man gave up. His world was shattered, and nothing mattered anymore. He was destined to a life of misery from the moment he decided that his life would only ever be miserable.

So, yes. Life is hard. It's so hard. But we don't need to spend our lives thinking that life is hard.

If we can make a point every single day--maybe multiple times a day--to set the intention that life is a beautiful thing...maybe it will become a beautiful thing. 

And maybe things won't immediately improve for us, and we will get thrown another curveball. But if we can sincerely hope for greatness and recognize that our lives will not be fulfilling until we let them fulfill us, then surely we have a better shot, no?

You don't need to tell yourself that life is hard, because life will show you that it is hard. Tell yourself that life is beautiful, amazing, and enriching...because life will begin to become all of those things for you.