As we walk through life the road ahead of us can become a desolate barren desert land of nothing but sand and stones of different shapes and sizes. As we stumble along, we collect the stones and pebbles on our journey, each day adding to the load we carry as we navigate the path ahead of us.

With each new stone we pick up, the weight we carry increases, slowly weighing us down to the point that instead of moving freely we are dragging along exhausted and without energy.

One day that bag of stones becomes so heavy it brings us to our knees. Our bodies just can’t keep carrying the load no matter how much we try, we just can’t continue. Spent and lying on the ground two choices come to us.

A) We can continue lying on that barren desert floor and use our dying breath wishing our lives were different; or

B) We can give in to the building frustration that starts to rise up. A frustration that finds us using our last bit of energy to kick the closest stone.

If you choose option B the force of your kick makes the stone clatter against the others that you had been lugging around. As you sit there spent looking at the kicked stone you notice that as it hit the other stones a part of it broke off and staring back at you is a sparkle of the most beautiful crystal.

With renewed energy, you crawl over to the pile of stones and start knocking them all against each other trying to crack them open. Inside each one, you find a beautiful iridescent rainbow of crystals. The whole time you’d been carrying those stones, seeing only dirt and feeling only their weight, you had not realized that buried inside each one was a whole world of color just waiting to be exposed.

In this life it is far too easy to be attracted to the negatives – your day, your month, your vacation, your life, all the things that go wrong… we carry the stones of negativity around with the comfort in knowing that everything is just bad. Over time that desert land of negatives becomes our comfort zones, the only thing we know.

You stop living and just start trying to survive as yet another stone gets put on your shoulders. 

But hidden amongst all those negatives are nuggets of pure joy, moments that can lift your soul, change perspective and give your world, your life, the most beautiful color… if we allow them to. 

Collect enough of those moments and soon you’ll find that the scales start tipping. Instead of a bad day having a faint impression of a nugget of joy, your great day starts to have just a glimmer of negative. You’ll find that the joy starts to outway the bad and the negatives just don’t mean as much as before.

Unearthing the joy within the negativity takes work. Much like breaking those stones apart in the desert, we too must break them in real life, with each one we break the next becomes easier. Soon it will become natural to break the stone open before even considering its dirty bland exterior.

Seeking out the positive can be daunting. The fear of not being able to find the beautiful crystal of joy within the stones of negativity can be scary to the point of life ending, but trust me, they are there.

It could be the smile from a stranger, someone helping you pick something up that you dropped.

It could be the parking space that opened up for you, someone letting you in ahead of them, a cuddle from a puppy, a walk along the beach or a hike up a mountain.

It could be as simple as enjoying an ice-cream, savoring the sweet goodness as it drips down your chin.

Joy can be found in every day we live if we are willing to look.

I challenge you to look at the stones you are carrying, to kick a few and see what shines through.

I challenge you to start living in a world of color and to shake off that negative dirt that cloaks your spirit.

I challenge you to start living in the moments of happiness, write them down, keep track of them and to live a life fully.

I challenge you to help others see the joy in their days, help others unearth the hidden rainbows hidden within their stones of negativity.

Do you accept?