Changing the Go-To

Changing the Go-To

One of the many things I go on and on and on about is gratitude. It was one of the big things I learned about that really helped me start making significant changes in my life.

Gratitude didn’t come easily. I was so invested in suffering that, as I used to say, I had three feelings; bad, terrible, and I wish I were dead.

It’s hard to feel anything else when that’s what you’re working with.

Most people got the “I’m fine” line. My nearest and dearest got to hear about how wretched everything else was. I had a few misery buddies who would return the favor, such as it was, and a wonderful, sunny best friend who did her best to cajole me up to “okay.” That didn’t happen a lot. We spent our time watching a lot of Monty Python, and playing cards. I think it may have been defensive on her part. And I did figure out years after she passed that she loved me unconditionally.

Somewhere on my path, someone told me that we can only really feel one thing at a time. Now I don’t know if I think that’s true, but I did discover that if I am focusing on one feeling, that is the main thing I’ve got going on.

Why can I choose? How do I decide? What makes me aware?

Noticing what I was feeling, specifically, was something I had to pay attention to. I had to accept that “bad” wasn’t a feeling, and wasn’t even very descriptive. I had to figure out what the feeling was, usually some moosh between angry and scared and grief. Once I got some kind of a handle on it, I wanted to do something about it. I was already addressing my big emo-stuff, this was more about how to manage on a day to day basis.

One of my teachers liked to say, “You can change your feelings as easily as changing your socks.” And while it irritated the heck out of me, I wanted that. He suggested that I try gratitude. I don’t think I rolled my eyes out loud, but I was skeptical. He helped me get to a place of feeling grateful, really feeling it, and had me set an anchor. For this one, I pressed the web between my thumb and forefinger while I was feeling grateful.

This was way before I knew to ask, “How do I feel when I feel grateful?”

What happened when I got really grateful? I was so focused on gratitude that the bad feelings I was having, mostly old habit feelings, went away. And I started to recognize them for habit-feelings. You know about those, right? Our go-to feelings when we don’t really have anything in particular going on.

I had to give up some stuff to change that bad go-to feeling. I had to give up saying, “That’s just the way I am.” I had to take responsibility for my feelings, how I felt, how I reacted to stuff, how I responded to my circumstances. I had to notice what was good about my life. How it was perfect for me where I was in my journey. I had to decide that I prefered feeling good, with its attendant stuff to feeling bad with its attendant stuff.

Now I wake up feeling good, feeling grateful almost every day. When I wake up crabby, I own it, I look at it, I change it. Sometimes just that is enough to let it go.

How have I changed from feeling stuck in bad feelings to choosing to feel grateful?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 08022014