[You can follow me on Twitter @creatorvilla.] Today I want to share an image circulating on social media that I thought was thought provoking. It contains observations about the all-important intangibles of faith, trust, hope, confidence, and love, using simple and relatable examples. I don’t know where the image originated—if you do, let me know and I’ll give proper credit. Until then, let’s chalk this one up to “Wisdom of the Internet.” Complete transcript below in case you have issues with the image.

Six Little Stories With Lots of Meaning

1. Once all villagers decided to pray for rain. On the day of prayer, all the people gathered, but only one boy came with an umbrella. That is faith.

2. When you throw babies in the air, they laugh because they know you will catch them. That is trust.

3. Every night we go to bed without any assurance of being alive the next morning, but still we set the alarms to wake up. That is hope.

4. We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future. That is confidence.

5. We see the world suffering, but still, we get married and have children. That is love.

6. On an old man’s shirt was written a sentence, “I am not 80 years old; I am sweet 16 with 64 years of experience.” That is attitude.

Have a happy day and live your life like these six stories. Remember–Good friends are the rare jewels of life, difficult to find and impossible to replace!!

We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.

There is nothing more attractive than a positive attitude.

Executive business coach Marshall Goldsmith understands the power of a near-death experience. His life flashed before his eyes on his way to Santa Barbara when his pilot announced that the landing gear wasn’t working. You can imagine how he felt when he heard the pilot say, “We have a minor problem. The landing gear isn’t working. We are going to circle the airport until we run out of fuel so we can land more safely with the wheels up.” Landing with the wheels up is cold consolation when the airplane isn’t working. The plane ultimately did land safely, and the first thing Goldsmith did when he got to the hotel was write 50 thank-you notes to the people who had helped him in his life.

Have you ever been so close to death you could hear it breath? I haven’t, but the people who have all seem to have one thing in common: they come away from their near-death experience different than before. They didn’t suddenly age, they didn’t change jobs, they didn’t magically have new friends and family. The power of their transformation is the power of perspective. And what if we could tap that power using only the imaginative faculties of our minds?

Research has demonstrated that when we visualize the same part of our brain gets activated as when we experience something in the material world. The goal of the exercise that follows is to obtain the psychological benefits of a near-death experience minus the trauma. It is structured as a prompt followed by a series of 10 reflective questions. For more on the power of perspective, see the Top 5 Regrets of People on Their Deathbed.

A Near-Death Experience (Thought Experiment)

Imagine you are on that plane headed for Santa Barbara suspended 35,000 feet in the air. Now imagine it it is the engine that malfunctions instead of the landing gear. The pilot says he will do everything in his power to cushion the blow, but that an unnatural landing will take place within 20 minutes. The plane begins its slow decline, the clock starts ticking, and your life flashes before your eyes.

1. What do you love most about the life you’ve lived?

2. What people and experiences are you most grateful for?

3. What do you love least about it?

4. What are your top 3 regrets?

5. When your plane landed safely, what is the first thing you would do when you arrived at the hotel?

6. How is your life now different?

7. Did the experience change how you treat people?

8. Did the experience make you a more grateful person?

9. If you answered yes to at least one of the last two questions, why do you think it took a near-death experience to produce this change?

10. How can any of your answers to the above questions inspire you to live your life to the fullest today?

During the last two years, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with cold showers. I love them because of the myriad benefits I’ve experienced. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t experience the temptation every morning to turn the nozzle a few degrees more counter-clockwise. Cold showers are something I tolerate because I know they make me better. And I have no intention of going back to my old regimen.

There’s one benefit of cold showers that I have yet to address–and it surprisingly has to do with meditation. A few months ago, I published an article on the three important life skills of meditation—concentration, clarity, and equanimity (emotional stability). Nothing will make you concentrate and think clearly faster than a cold shower. And, when you take them regularly, you learn to be less reactive to physical and emotional pain and discomfort. It follows that cold showers are meditation in the same way that exercise is meditation.

Recently I was feeling distracted as my mind wandered from this responsibility, to that chore, to the other commitment. Being my own doctor, I knew that a solid cold shower was just the prescription I needed. The longest cold shower I had ever taken was on January 2, 2019. It lasted 20 minutes–a lot longer than the usual 2-3 minutes. I had just completed a workout that day and the water didn’t even feel that cold. I learned a long time ago that no two cold showers are alike. There’s the subject’s body temperature prior to entering the water (did you just hop out of bed or did you just finish working out or sunbathing?) And then there’s the temperature of the water itself (is it cold, frigid, or downright icy?). I would place my typical cold shower somewhere between cold and frigid (I’ll get back to you when I invest in a water thermometer). I have found that the colder the shower, the easier it is to be mindful — and the more caution and common sense you should exercise.

Back to the cold shower itself. I knew I wanted it to be on the longer side to see what I was capable of and to experience maximum therapeutic effect. I started with the nozzle in the cold range and slowly turned it clockwise. As always, the first few minutes were the most uncomfortable. But in the midst of that discomfort there was a fascinating side effect: supercharged mindfulness. Within seconds of my skin touching the water, I wasn’t thinking about the assignment I had to complete for university. I wasn’t thinking about my car that needed fixed. I wasn’t thinking about the research I’ve been working on. I wasn’t thinking about relationship problems. I wasn’t thinking about what’s for dessert. In fact, I wasn’t thinking about anything–except being there in that shower under that cold water. And it was powerful in the most down-to-earth, die-hard fashion.

Fast-forward several minutes and I felt like I had got what I came there to get. I could have stayed in the water longer and pushed the envelope on my previous record, but at that point it would have been more about ego than therapy and I wasn’t feeling particularly ego-driven that day. The mindfulness effect of my cold shower carried over into the rest of my evening. My brain knew that I had accomplished something and generously rewarded me with endorphines. And the experience sharpened my conviction just a little bit more that mindfulness was possible in every moment.

Stress has more to do with perspective than it does circumstances. The human mind has the power to make a mountain out of a molehill and a molehill out of a mountain–and it does it all the time. Sometimes life experiences empower us to see this crystal-clear. People who have near-death experiences commonly come away with a whole new outlook on life. Suddenly the worries that consumed their mind don’t mean as much in the conscious light that death is imminent. Cold showers similarly minimize the important ascribed to the petty disturbances of life. But the most beautiful thing is the fact that anyone can change their perspective right where they are with no outside help.

If a single cold shower can contain so much insight, imagine taking one every day for an entire year.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.

If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.

It is often said that everything happens for a reason, but you must embrace the perspective that it’s never a reason that is predetermined or out of your control. It is always your responsibility to choose the most empowering reasons for the occurrences of your life.