My life has been a series of high peaks and extremely dark valleys. I have lived in heaven and wallowed in hell.
However, I am still here.
More to the point, my life has been a life of beautiful rainbows and extremely slippery banana peels.
I have often found myself in a field of banana peels. Now there is a difficult place to get out of. The moment you get back on your feet, WHAM! You slip into another shell and go back down. The trick is not to let the circumstances that brought you to that damned field get into the core of your being.
The bad news is that the entrance to the field disappears the moment you enter. You can’t go back. The good news is that the exit is on the other side of the field.
The key is to get above him and keep your eyes on the edge of the field because that’s the way out. On hands and knees…one step at a time…I have crawled my way out of the madness of the banana peel fields.
NO ONE is the same person when they come out. You are different. Your life is different.
So you escape the field and you’re on top of a rainbow for a while. How amazing! Your life is going smoothly, you’re in a great relationship, you have money, life is good, and then…
Wait for it…
WOW!
Go back down.
What happened?
Rainbows are slippery! It takes work to stay on top of them. Be careful because when you slide off the rainbow, banana peels instantly appear around you and you often don’t see them until you’re face up. Again.
I’ve been there and done it loads of times. Many times you’d think I’m pretty good at staying out of it.
Wrong.
Life has a way of hitting you from behind when you’re not looking, and very often it will knock you down. The trick is not to stay there. You have to get up again. Don’t let circumstances creep into your soul because, if you do, it’s very difficult to get out of the banana peel field.
If you want to stay on the rainbow, you must believe that you CAN and think positively. Constant negative thoughts like “I’ll always be fat” or “I’ll never have enough money” will keep you in the banana peel fields.
At the end of the day, we come into this world alone and leave alone, and along the way, we make decisions about how we want our lives to unfold. Some work, some don’t. Some lift us over the rainbow and others plunge us into the banana peel fields. The trick of life is to learn from your stay in the fields and try to stay in the rainbow as long as possible.
That’s life, though, isn’t it? Life is full of stunning rainbow moments and endless journeys through banana peel fields.
My biggest banana peel? Stage 3 breast cancer in 2012 at the age of fifty-one.
So how did I get over all these negative events in my life and still stay positive? It wasn’t always easy. It was often a minute-by-minute choice.
Being positive is a lifestyle choice.
It is a way of life that you choose.