LESSON OF THE DAY 466

Ayahs of the Day:
And God created the cattle, wherein are warmth and advantages for you, and from which you eat. And you find beauty in them when you drive them home in the evening and when you lead them to pasture in the morning. And they carry your burdens to territory you would not have reached without troubling your selves. Your Lord is indeed Compassionate, Merciful. [16: 5,6,7]

Hadith of the Day:
It is best to give charity when you are healthy, wary of going broke, and hoping to get rich. Do not wait until your soul is ready to come up through your throat to say, 'Give so and so such and such, and so and so such and such. [Bukhari & Muslim]

Wise Quote of the Day:
Hope will incline you to servitude and worship, whereas fear will push you away from sin and inequity. [Abul Qasim Nasrabadi]

Guidance of the Day:
One of the most unavoidable life lessons is having to deal with the disapproval of others. Praise and blame are all the same in a fancy way of the old cliche that you'll never be able to please all the people all the time. The truth is, everyone has their own set of ideas with which to evaluate life, and our ideas don't always match those of other people. For some reason, however, most of us struggle against this inevitable fact. We get angry, hurt, or otherwise frustrated when people reject our ideas, tell us no, or give us some other form of disapproval.

The sooner we accept the inevitable dilemma of not being able to win the approval of everyone we meet, the easier our lives will become. When you expect to be dished out your share of disapproval instead of struggling against this fact, you'll develop a helpful perspective to assist your life journey. Rather than feeling rejected by disapproval, you can remind yourself, "here it is again. That's okay." You can learn to be pleasantly surprised, even grateful when you receive the approval you're hoping for.

Even in a landslide election victory in which a candidate secures 55 percent of vote, he or she is left with 45 percent of the population that wishes someone else were the winner. Pretty humbling, isn't it? Our approval rating from family, friends, and the people we work with isn't likely to be much higher. There are many days when we experience both praise and blame. This back and forth, good and bad, approval and disapproval is a part of everyone's life. We always prefer approval over disapproval. It feels better and it's certainly easier to deal with. The more content we become, however, the less we depend on it for our sense of well-being. [Don't Sweat The Small Stuff]

Food for Thought:
When you think positive, happy, loving thoughts, there's a different chemistry that goes into your body than when you think depressing, negative anguished thoughts. The way you decide to think has a dramatic effect on your chemistry and on your physiology.