Meditation

From the book “One Door Away From Heaven” by Dean Koontz

From Geneva Davis to her niece just released from prison.

“Change isn’t easy, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think. Changing the way you think means changing what you believe about life. That’s hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.” Chapter 1, page 8

If you want to change your life, you have to change how you think- if you want to change how you think, you have to change what you believe. Wow, powerful words! When I first read these words they struck me like a ton of bricks. I was working with inmates- people like everyone else, only more so. People who often haven’t learned what many learn along the way; patience, delayed gratification, self discipline, etc. It wasn’t uncommon for me to hear people talk with surprise about why they kept doing the same thing over and over again – like some women who kept asking why they kept aligning themselves with destructive men, or the guys who asked why they kept going back to the same destructive behaviors like drugs.

We have to change what we believe – what do we believe? Is it healthy? Does it deserve to be changed? “Just change your belief that your worthless, think of yourself as work-ful, and it’ll all be better!” Obviously it’s not that easy, but it’s certainly not impossible.

I’ve come back to these words over and over again through the years. Change what you believe; about life, about humanity, about religion, God… what else? Change what we believe… and our lives can change along with that. Yeah, I buy!