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

How to Throw a Pity Party

How to Throw a Pity Party

Some days it’s really easy, light, and everything seems to flow with the shine and magic, but not the poison, of mercury. Some days it’s really challenging, heavy, and everything seems to sludge along, a little bit stinky and really slow.

Some days we find extraordinarily taxing, some days leave us feeling super-charged, and blissful.

I have taken to writing a daily set of appreciations. “Why am I grateful?”is one of my favorite questions, and I write them very first thing when I get up, so I’m not much awake. I decided it was a great way to open my eyes to a new day, appreciating the one just past.

Most days, those appreciations flow off my fingers like butter in the sun, but every so often, it’s not like that. This morning, for example.

Clunk clunk clunk. I can’t think of a darn thing I’m thankful for, even though I am surrounded by luxury, love, abundance, health, and fun. I’m serious.

When that happens, when my normal flow feels chunky, I am pretty sure to have some negative emotional or moral judgments going on about something, feeling a bit sour, or bitter, maybe. At the very least, I may be pissed off about something.

This is where being a divine and infinite being of great creativity comes in handy.

Now, as creative people, when faced with this kind of old fashioned heaviness, we can innovate. We can invent ingenious ways to lighten up, we can imagine novelties that free our spirits, we can craft Creative Questions that shift everything in an instant. Aren’t we cool?

Sometimes, just playing with a question like, “Why do I feel light? or How do I feel when I feel light?” will do it, but sometimes I have to poke around in my nether mind and look for the whats: What’s making me feel this way? What’s my negative judgment? What does that heaviness come from?

When I find my topic, mine this morning was a lot of busyness at work, I can use my creativity to address and change the negative judgments. The bottom line is this, if I don’t judge something negatively, I don’t perceive it negatively. It’s that simple, and sometimes, I know, it can be really annoying.

Sometimes, we want to feel crappy. We feel like we deserve it. Sometimes, we feel justified in our funk, or our misery, or our bitterness. Sometimes, we feel like we’ve earned the right to be angry, or nasty, well, maybe you haven’t, but I know I have. But, the same way we might binge on food or alcohol, we sometimes binge on these icky feelings.

When I am in the throes of the Ick, and I recognize it, I go for it. I wallow. I squish it up between my toes, I fill my lungs with it, I taste the bitter, or sour, or angry. I deck myself out in self-pity until I am absolutely saturated with it. Usually takes me about ten minutes before I’m sick of it, and wanna get back to my happy self.

I do appreciate a good pity party.

How have I changed from feeling stuck in my ick to finding creative solutions to lift my spirits?

(c) Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02272014

Making Body Magic

Making Body Magic

I drew the “Why am I right?” card this morning. We’ve had it come up a bunch of times lately, so I was letting the question roll around in my head, and noticed that I really feel it in my body.

How do I feel when I feel wrong? Ask it, let it sink in, notice. Where do you feel “wrong” most vividly? My middle back folds in, my shoulders droop, and my breathing gets small.

And now, shake it off!

How do I feel when I feel right? Ask it, let this sink in. notice. Where do you feel “right” most vividly? Basically, my posture and breathing improve.

How about you? In your body?

This is useful information. It works surprisingly well for a number of things.

Twelve step programs use a phrase to help in the transition from what-I-was-like to what-I’m-like-now. They say, “act as if.”

If I want more confidence, it will help me to act as if I am confident. If I want to feel right more, it will help if I know how I feel when I am right. Same with positive, same with creative. Same with healthy. When I have bad headache, or cold, sometimes it helps to change my posture. Weird.

So one thing that will help me feel better is to be in my body with more awareness. My tendency is to get up in my brain, all thinking and intellectualizing. You know, philosopher and all that. Plus, my body hurt back in the day. A lot. All the time. So hightailing it into my thinky stuff helped distract me.

I started changing that by noticing my emotions, and learning to be aware of how I was feeling in the moment. That one took me a long time, lots of practice. But, as I learned to acknowledge my emotions at the time I was having them, I also started to feel better in my body. How curious.

And I learned that, while emotions lead to feelings which can lead to body postures, muscle tension, aches and pains, changing my body postures, relaxing muscles and so forth, can also have a big impact on my feelings and emotions.

Smiling with eye-crinkles and holding it for a minute or so actually causes a nice release of serotonin. An upright posture will help us feel more uplifted, and then we can put confidence, or being right, or creative, or positive on top of that.

And when we notice that we are literally in a slump (notice that we use that word for that thing) we can help ourselves out from it by not slumping in our bodies. It’s almost magical.

If I am feeling blue, I need to get up and dressed, and at least go out for a walk. If it’s grey outside, I will feel better if I can wear some light yellow lensed glasses. If I am seeing red, it will help if I can keep my breath deep, but slow it way down, the way it is when I am deeply relaxed. And so on. Putting my body into the postures and patterns of my goal-feeling is a wonderful, quick, and easy way to get where I wanna be.

How have I changed from feeling bad to being the boss of my thoughts, emotions, and feelings?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 11272013

Creating Playtime

Creating Playtime

I love to play. I love to play pretend. I love to play puzzle games. I love to make up stories, I love to play birdie with my cats and tickle toe with my snails. I love to run about, and goof around on swings and slides.

Play.

Carefree enjoyment. Lighthearted fun. Joyful activities.

My definition of play has changed a lot as I have become a grownup. Now I can find ways to play almost everywhere; from elevators to just driving my car, cleaning the house, writing to you. There is so much fun to be had, all I have to do is grab it.

My play this morning, for example, was to have easy fun at the DMV getting my license renewed, with fast service, and charming helpers. Never mind the awful picture, at least I’m smiling in it.

Then, when my car wouldn’t start in the parking lot, I thought that I could get pissed, sitting in the rain, or play. So I played. I made up stories about all the people in the parking lot, had fun with the AAA guy who had fun, too, and even said so, and shook my hand. Nice. Why do I choose to be happy?

The car had to be towed. What should show up, early, to tow me but the brightest pink tow truck you can imagine. The fellow was a little grumpy, but it fell away when I told him how much fun I was having watching him put my car on the flat bed. What makes me enjoy myself?

My day of running a few quick errands turned into walking only two, and it reminded me how much I love my neighborhood. It smells great. Wonderful autumn smells that shifted from flowery to spicy to lovely damp earth with raindrops the color of diamonds sparkling on the grass.

Life gave me the gift of slowing everything down, and because I’m paying attention these days, I got to enjoy the heck out of it.

Somehow, it seemed like everyone I encountered was cheery. Were they cheery to start with? I hope so, but it’s easy to respond with good cheer when you are greeted with good cheer.

How have I changed from being a negative pain in the patooty to enjoying whatever I can find to enjoy?

When we look at our world as a giant playground, stuff gets easier. We lighten up, get a bounce in our step, and see the good. We don’t let tension take hold of our spirits, and so we can let our spirits soar for the simplest reasons.

Sometimes we are confronted with great grief, or fearsome events, or physical traumas. These are the big lessons. If we allow our life to unfold as it unfolds, allowing our emotions to flow, and consider whether what we are feeling supports us or beats us down, we are taking responsibility for ourselves. When we choose to respond with clean emotions, free from blame or shame, free from guilt or anger, we create a space of peace. Everything moves through, until we latch on and worry it. It’s why we practice letting our thoughts flow during activities like meditation, pulling ourselves back from thinking a thought.

When our thoughts flow, we only have emotions, not the complicated mess our feelings can become. This practice helps us respond to the big stuff when it shows up.

How have I changed from resenting the events of my life to considering how I might play?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10052013

Peaceful Choices

Peaceful Choices

One of the most shining and glorious skills I have acquired as I am growing up is being able to go to peaceful pretty much on demand.

I’ve been practicing.

In our day to day stuff, we have lots of opportunities to step away from peaceful. We get distracted by chaos in the mornings as we are getting ready, bad traffic, kooky demands at work. Or horrible images flooding our spirits from watching, or listening to, or reading the news. (Can you imagine how awful it must be to have the job of finding the worst, scariest, most horrible news items every day?)

In our day to day stuff, we have lots of opportunities to make our day nicers or worsers. It takes paying attention. What am I doing? Where am I doing it? What do I want to accomplish? Why would I choose to have a great day? What makes this enjoyable? Why am I satisfied?

Two cards popped out of the Creative Questions deck this morning. The peaceful card and the choice card. What a nice combination. And what a good reminder.

I have to say, from time to time I wake up crabby. Or weird. I have a good AM routine, so getting ready for work is usually pretty easy; clothes are laid out the night before, stuff is ready for lunch, my going out the door bagged is packed before I go to bed. Somehow, when I wake up crabby, those things may not work despite having done the same thing I always do the night before.

So now I’m crabby, and heading to work, crabby, and what the heck am I going to do?

I have to choose. It’s easy to stay crabby. The status quo is pretty easy to stick with. Just keep on the way you are going.

I confess that being crabby is fun for a little while. I enjoy it. For a little while. Then I wanna go back to feeling cheery and sunny.

Why do I choose to be happy? Why do I choose to enjoy my day? What makes me feel good? Smiling feels good. Standing up straight makes me feel good. Breathing all the way in and all the way out feels good. Thinking uplifting thoughts feels good. Dancing a little feels good. Writing to you feels good.

I’m not going to list all the stuff that feels good when I’m shifting away from a mood that doesn’t serve me into one that does, it would take a long time. The point is simply that I can choose what thoughts to think; thinking creates my emotions, thoughts and emotions create feelings, feelings run on a loop create moods, moods run on a loop create states of mind. And I have control of that.

When I choose peaceful, my physiology shifts. Lots of stuff relaxes, including my diaphragm. When I pay attention to the physical changes, my thoughts relax. Because I enjoy the sensations, because my thoughts relax, I complete the shift to peaceful with ease. As a bonus, peaceful usually brings a feeling of happiness with it, that nice, sunny little lift.

Choosing is the most powerful thing we can do in a day. What we choose can keep us feeling stuck or it can set us free.

What makes me choose?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09122103