Thoughts of peace...give you a future and a hope. Jer. 29:11 Life rarely is a smooth ride. The road of your life is punctuated with bumps, holes, and even craters. You also have wonderful moments in your life; sports victories, school shows, first loves, graduations, first jobs, marriages, births of children and their first days at school. However, it is those "bumps in the road" that remain most vivid in your memory. The memories of any sort of defeat-in school, in games, in love relationships, in business, in marriage-are always ready to surface.

Your mind is cluttered with thousands of thoughts, most of which are repetitive and circular. These thoughts range from wondering what "other people feel about me" to ruminating on "what life is all about." The more negative your thoughts, the more repetitive they become. Positive thoughts tend to be infrequent and fleeting. Being in good health, for instance, rarely registers as a positive thought. Similarly, you may experience generally positive thoughts briefly and move on to the negative, immediately adding some anxiety-, guilt-, or anger-producing qualifier: "Oh! She thinks well of me? Great, but why doesn't he?" "My life is wonderful. I am very happy. But how long will that last?"