The fact is, life is often hard and brings unexpected pain our way that we never desired. But I do believe that part of our humanity is the need for hope—the need to believe that the best is yet to come.
As a Christian, I believe that the best is always yet to come. While our bodies will naturally age, our spirits can grow onward into eternity. And the world we are experiencing now is nothing to be compared with the kind of world God is preparing for his followers.
On a practical level, you will always be better off during a crisis if you were cultivating healthy, positive thinking leading into it than if you were living in a negative thinking pattern.
Practice moment-by-moment intentionality in choosing your attitude.
This takes a lifetime to perfect, but you can get started with it today.
Every time you experience something or interact with someone, you have two directions to go in your thinking. You can drive toward a positive reaction or a negative one.
Some years ago, I was on a mission trip in Russia. We took a half a day to tour parts of Red Square and the Kremlin, and we took a subway on the way there. I made a terrible rookie mistake and put my wallet, with $1,400 in cash (all I had with me on the trip), in my back pocket, making it an easy target.
Just as the doors of the train were closing, someone shoved me from behind onto the train and the doors closed. In that one second, my wallet was in someone else’s pocket on the outside of the train.
Thankfully, I had my passport in an inner pocket of my jacket, where my wallet should have been as well. But I was still cashless, and that’s a problem when you’re in a foreign country.
In that moment, I made the decision that I would be thankful for the tough learning experience and the story I’d get to tell repeatedly later instead of getting angry. The fact was, my anger wouldn’t have changed the circumstances anyway.
I smiled at my traveling companion and said, “Guess what? My wallet just got stolen.” He didn’t believe me, at first, because of the grin on my face.
We got through it. Some really good friends wired cash to a pastor in Moscow who made an ATM withdrawal to get me through the rest of the trip. I survived and still have very fond memories of the trip.
When someone is short-tempered or grumpy with you, you get to intentionally choose your next thought. When your tire goes flat or you’re involved in a fender bender—your fault or someone else’s—you get to choose your next thought.
It’s not easy because life’s not easy. But it’s doable.
Go to bed expressing both gratitude and hopefulness. Get up in the morning repeating those thoughts. And then, throughout your day, practice intentionally choosing how you will think about every interaction and unexpected circumstance.
You’ll become a more positive person…starting tonight!
This article originally appeared here.
