Cultivating the Weeds

Cultivating the Weeds

Some days I wake up crabby. It takes some awareness, and some effort to change my emotional channel. The most expedient way to do that is to get grateful.

When I find things about my life to appreciate, I feel lighter. As I notice how nice my life is, I can relax. As I relax, I remember to let go of worry, guilt, and pain.

I remember to choose to be where I am, and I lose my sense of fatigue. I remember to choose to like what I do, and I feel engaged.

That makes it easy to engage with the people around me, and then I feel connected, and appreciated, and loved.

Ahhh. It’s good to be back.

I am so glad that I learned to choose to feel good. I am so glad I learned that I am not a victim of my feelings, that I am the boss of me. I am so glad I learned to be grateful, to appreciate.

I am so glad I decided to evolve.

When I chose to let my emotions lead me around by the nose, I missed out on a lot of nice stuff. It was easy then to filter for how awful the world is.

That meant I missed all the lovely things we do to help each other, our neighbors, and people on the other side of the world, to help animals, and even caring about the surface of the planet. All I filtered for then was bad stuff.

That meant that I had to watch the local news to see homes burn, people shot, terrible accidents, betrayals by local public figures. That meant I had to watch the national news to hear about killing sprees, and betrayals by national figures, raging fires, landslides, droughts and toxic spills. That meant I had to watch the international news for all that misery and disaster. I had to tune into the news most of the day to stay abreast of how bad everything was.

I sought out miserable people to be friends with. We would nurture and coddle our miseries together, like cultivating nasty weeds in our gardens. Usually while consuming something that would make us feel awful later, if you catch my drift.

Boy, being miserable was exhausting, thankless work.

Being happy is way easier. And thankful, too. I never had anyone tell me how much they appreciated my hang-dog expression, my moaning and groaning about how bad I felt, or my personal misery index of all the things that were wrong with my life.

And now, I love hearing that my cheeriness is uplifting, that my sense of peace is contagious, that my relative unflappability is inspiring.

Which one are you choosing today?

How have I changed from being a victim of my crappy feelings to choosing to be happy?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 04082013