Dr. Thomas Maples

Inspirational Quote

A Father’s Guide to Wisdom

Love is an adventure. Choose wisely, for it will shape the entirety of your life moving forward.

As a young boy, my mother gave me priceless advice, a bit of age-old wisdom that serves me to this day. She would say, “you must first love yourself, and then you will find someone that loves you.” As an adolescent, those words fell on deaf ears. I believed the source of all my problems would be solved through an outside source. If only I could find that one person to love me, all of life’s problems would be solved. Does this story sound familiar? I think it might just be a collective story we all undertake in our initial experiences with love.

But in all reality, as we age, we begin to understand the genuinely shifting capacity that love creates in our personal development. Love shapes us. But to receive, you must have ample to give. Here the theory of abundance takes center stage. It would help if you created excess in your life; to be charitable, one must have a degree of excess to share with others willingly. But in all reality, many seek to fill their awaiting vessels from without, instead of going within. Who do you love?

While the question may be rhetorical, its answer should first and foremost turn you within. If you can’t love yourself, no other person on earth can fill the emptiness present in a soul that lacks the honor of its host. It’s like being invited to a party of people that despise you; no matter what the facade of pleasantries present, one must cut through the air has to get to the reality of the situation perceived. Instead, go within, and find the very things for which you are grateful.

Practice this in prayer. In the morning, give thanks for the things you are genuinely grateful. Show gratitude for your spouse, your children, your parents, your job, your home, etc. By showing appreciation, you will shift the energy to a source of hope, which ultimately creates how you will attract more to be grateful for in your life. In the evening, say a prayer of gratitude for what has been. What did the day bring you that you have found solace in, as you learn to traverse the journey of what you are becoming? With time, each day will pass, and you will find a shift not only in what you are grateful for but also in what you have become.

Namaste, my friends, May prayers and blessings find you along your journey to believe, achieve, and advance confidently in the direction of your dreams.

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