Optimism Thought of the Week

For Sunday, March 20, 2016

A Work of Art

By Glennel Hardy

I absolutely love visiting the art museum and wandering from gallery to gallery observing the pieces of art on the wall.  As you view certain pieces of work you imagine what the artist may have been considering when he composed the piece. As you move further through the gallery you notice that each piece of art is unique, and may represent a certain period of time.

We ourselves is truly a work of art.  We represent a time and place, a moment where our masterpiece comes to existence. Like an artist we start with a few strokes of a paint brush, and then throughout life we add color, we create images, and our life becomes vivid. Every color, every shade, and every image within our piece makes up who we are today.

We are a masterpiece. We are unique and one of a kind, and cannot be copied. We may look back at times when things were rough, but they were a part of the masterpiece.  We will persevere, as our masterpiece continues.

A true artist never puts the paint brush down.

Optimism Thought of the Week 

For Sunday, February 28, 2016 

Running on Empty 

By Glennel Hardy

We have a fear of losing everything that we have today in our lives.  In the back of our mind we could be saying that things are going pretty well, and that everything seems to be in sync. Are we ever prepared to lose everything, and hit the reset button to start over again?  I moved from Chicago to Phoenix, Arizona when things were going pretty well, and I landed a new job that had taken me out of my comfort zone.  In a little over a year, I was laid off, the retirement savings I once had was wiped out, and I lost everything in that moment.

When we lose everything the hardest move for us to make is to be prepared to hit the reset button and start over.  To lose everything is ground zero, rock bottom, and at your lowest point. When we lose everything we make room for a new beginning, we learn lessons from the past, and we start fresh. When we lose everything it leaves a vacancy, in which we get to choose how we are going to fill up the empty space.

Looking back over the years, losing everything was the best thing that ever happened to me.  My life was unbalanced, and overdue changes needed to occur in my life. It’s not the end of the chapter when we lose everything, losing everything is where the new chapter begins.

Optimism Thought of the Week

For Sunday, January 31, 2016

To Rise Once Again

By Glennel L. Hardy

Chief Creative Editor

As a child I fell off my bike several times before I eventually mastered the art of staying above ground. The first time I fell my leg was heavily scarred, and I never wanted to ride my bike again.  When you fall for the first time it hurts, and we generally find it very difficult to rise up.

The next few times I continued to fall, but each time I had fallen, I begin to take a different lesson from it and begin to progress.  I envisioned going very far and fast, and being able to make it from my house to the mailbox down the street. Once I had the vision that I was riding without falling, it gave me the courage to keep rising after each fall.

We constantly get scarred and each time we do, it hits us with a heavy blow, but its part of the growth process. Every one of us can get knocked down at any moment, but not everyone can find the strength to rise again. We have to see ourselves much bigger than the fall we experienced, we have to see ourselves rising up to the occasion.

If we don’t have the vision of rising, we will never realize the powerful lesson that the fall is attempting to teach us.

Optimism Thought of the Week

For Sunday, January 03, 2016

Recycling Tears for Joy

By Glennel Hardy

Photo Courtesy of Nick Lerma

Being optimistic can be a challenge depending on where we stand at any moment in life.  I have not always had an optimistic view on life, but through some tears and overcoming some major obstacles, it kind of grew on me.  Tears I found was the beginning of opening myself for something new.  Tears have to take place, I found it’s the only way for the body to cleanse itself, and let everything out.

As we all do I had hope on things to come, the current situation was not ideal, but I always had the ability to dream about tomorrow. My past and the moments I had to endure was a necessary ingredient of my growth for tomorrow. After the tears have left us, we seek joy to help us sustain what comes afterward.

Everything began to turn around in December 2003.  Tears were then recycled to joy, and I started to learn how to turn the most painful moments, into pivotal parts of my life. Everything in our life counts. We do not have the ability to pick and choose what comes towards us, but we do have the ability to decide how we use it in our lives.

Optimism Thought of the Week

The End Result

By Glennel Hardy

How often do we ask ourselves “is it worth it”, when we’re faced with what seems like a losing battle?

My very last semester at Arizona State University, I was left with College Algebra, and Statistics, two classes in which I dreaded the most. Since I knew that both classes would present a challenge for me, I took steps in making sure I would be successful in passing both courses. I could not allow the dreadfulness to discourage me, I had to only keep in mind what the end result would look like, walking across the stage at graduation. When you keep your eye on what the end result would look like, you begin to take notice of the steps you take, getting to the end result.

There is a chance that the first several attempts in making anything work, will result in failure. Success and failure is a complicated science, and it can’t be estimated at how many attempts it will take, to get it right. It’s practice. We should celebrate when we succeed, and never fear to hold your head high, when you fail.  Both success and failure are interdependent. We would never truly appreciate our own true strength, if our weakness was never tested.

If the vision remains with us of what the end result may look like, then we must continue to develop a strategy, until we become successful in our endeavor.

Optimism Thought of the Week

For Sunday, October 11, 2015

The Hike

By Glennel Hardy

One of my favorite activities that I love to do is hike. Although being asthmatic can sometime be an obstacle as I make my way up, I stay focused on what the view would look like from up above. Yesterday as I began the hike upwards I found it more challenging than usual, as I looked up ahead of me all I could see was steep pavements. I generally would bring my headphones with me, so that I can focus on the music and not my breathing. This particular day I left my headphones behind, so I was forced to change the way I looked at getting to the top.

Instead of being focused on the peak above, I focused more on what was directly ahead of me. It was overwhelming in the beginning to see where I needed to go, but when I stayed focus on what was right before me, I had a “can do attitude.” Along the way I would pace myself, because I was determined I would hike my way to the top. When I could sense my breathing was dense, I simply pulled to the side and continued when it was safe to do so. I finally did make it to the top, and once I arrived the view was amazing.

In our lives as we make our way upwards, the challenge of getting there would seem impossible at  first glance. If you glance at what you need to accomplish, in relation to where you stand today, it would appear to be intimidating. We have to take the first step forward, and focus on the journey and then the destination, becomes our bonus. Each step we take forward, we are one step closer to where we’re supposed to be.

When you begin your hike, pace yourself and admire your surroundings, and then move forward. Along the journey that’s when we become our very best, and where we gain the most endurance. When you do reach the top, never forget the journey as well as those who cheered for you along the way.

Optimism Thought of the Week

For Sunday, September 06, 2015

The Approach

By Glennel Hardy

This past week here in Phoenix as part of our monsoon season we had a pretty severe storm that hit us. Every year around this time we have expectations of the monsoon storms to come our way.  This year however our storms took a different pattern, they started to appear later in the season, and they took different patterns in how they approached the city.

When we take the example of the monsoon, and how the storm approached us it also teaches us in life how storms hit us pretty hard as well.  Our own personal storms generally has no specific time pattern, and can appear at any time, and when it does, it hits us pretty hard.  Even though the storm is powerful and it can be extremely intimidating, we can exercise a different approach on how we face it.

Storms come and go, like our problems that we will come across in our lifetime.  We can’t avoid storms, and likewise we can’t avoid most problems that come along the way.  The action that we can take is how to approach it head on once it heads our direction.

Storms like our problems intensify in the heat of the moment.  After the storm has passed we either gain strength from it, or we never recover.  Our main objective is always to recover, look at our storms head on, and always look for a different approach in how we face it.