Optimizing Eden

Optimizing Eden

Are you living in hell or in Eden? It’s all about how you look at it. I know some of you are sick of hearing me go on about how it’s your choice; the way you feel, the way you live your life. I will stop when you get it. Okay, maybe I will stop when I get it all the time.

I am continually amazed and delighted at how the world seems to shift around depending on how I look at it. Apparently, I am the prism of my own life, and I can shine in the pink or be deep in the blues. It just depends on my tilt.

I realized something the other day. I am not an optimist. I used to be a pessimist, but I’m not that now, either. What I have trained myself to is being an optimizer. I like that word better for several reasons.

Reason one. Hilariously, being an optimist has gotten a bad rap. It is often seen as lame, weak,  and saccharine. Too bad. It also taps into the phrase one of my favorite teachers used to use on me, “you play a good game.” Meaning that I convincingly pretended stuff was fine when it so was not.

Reason two. Optimism sometimes seems to deny the gravity of a situation. Everything isn’t always light and fluffy.

Reason three. Optimism often seems to me to lack the sense of action and evolution. It seems a little static to me.

So. What does being an optimizer mean to me? It means that I look at my situations and circumstances, and see what’s good and useful for improving my life, and the lives of the people around me. It means that I see what I need to do next to take the next step forward.

It means that I look at the difficult people and situations in my life and figure out how to learn from them, how to draw motivation from them, how to be inspired by them. When I think of them as my best teachers, I can feel compassion for them, as though they have chosen to be difficult (which they do) in order that they might help me learn my next lesson. What a gift, to give up being a happy, pleasant person so that I might learn something. Oh, look at that, now I am feeling grateful to my difficult people for helping me become better!

Wow! Optimization at it’s best.

Bills remind me to appreciate the abundance in my life. Intense physical sensation reminds me to be grateful for my body.

It means that I look at what I’m doing, and consider how it’s impacting the people around me. Since one of my priorities is to do what I can to make the space around me conducive to happiness for my loved ones and colleagues and community, sometimes, optimizing those circumstances means doing stuff I might rather not do, but choose to because I see the good effect it has on my environment.

And if I assume that all creation is for my well being, then I have a ton of resources, a ton of support, and I can do pretty much anything thing I decide to do. Optimally.

How have I changed from fearing my circumstances to revelling in optimizing?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 04102013