Trusting the Win

Trusting the Win

Today when I drew my Creative Questions card I got two! I love it when that happens. Why do I trust? Why am I a winner? Good Questions! And a dynamic combo.

Two things are really useful for making the most of these questions; a concept called reframing; and a look at our judgments.

For me, my attitude about the world did a big shift when I realized that events are neutral. I know, right? Big stuff. Events don’t shift out from neutral until we judge them. Arbitrary. My POV. We know it’s true because we have seen over and over in our lives how one person may interpret an occurrence as a horrible disaster and someone else may see the same set of events as a great blessing. True isn’t Truth unless it’s true for everyone. Like breathing.

Since my goal is to live my effortless, natural life, I am looking for the neutral, and then the blessing. I practice this daily on the little stuff, going with the flow, carving new pathways in my brain, so that this practice comes to work on the medium stuff and the big stuff.

I had to do this, start this practice, and that meant I had to change my attitude about the Universe. In the yore days, I thought that the point was struggle and suffering. I thought that the Universe sent me trials to test me. Now I think I was full of beans! Now I think that the Universe is looking to help me be my best self, to support me, to shower me with blessings.

Breaking my habit of suffering misery took some doing. I ended up reframing my experiences by asking good Creative Questions like, How could this situation support or benefit me? What makes me find the silver lining? Why would I allow and accept this? How have I changed from going to misery to choosing to find the good?

By practicing this reframing daily, it has gotten to be automatic most of the time. This means that I hardly ever get thrown for a loop, or feel flapped. Usually, when I do, it’s because I am distracted by physical stuff, but I get my sangfroid back pretty fast. And replay the event with a variety of alternative responses so I am more prepared for the next time. One of the cool things is that there is always a next time until I get that kind of interaction reframed, and then it hardly ever happens anymore. Weird.

How could I choose to trust? What makes me believe everything happens for me? Why am I successful? What makes me appreciate my efforts?

Oh, yeah, that’s a big part of this whole process. I need to notice, allow, and accept my successes when it comes to changing my behaving. I need to review them from time to time, then own them. For so many of us, this is really challenging. We get limiting ideas about how we are who we are. We can always recognize these limiting ideas by noticing where we say stuff like, “That’s just the way I am,” or, “that’s just how things are.” These beliefs are like dropping a rock in the sand. They go plunk and just sit there. That’s just the way it is.

Well, it’s not. You’re not. We are so much more than we tend to think we are. We are dynamic, shimmering beings with amazing powers of change, change that happens in our brains, in our minds, in our beliefs. When we start using good Creative Questions, everything loosens up, everything gets softer, and we have wiggle room to be happier, more content, stronger, softer, and more alive.

How have I changed from feeling like a suffering loser to knowing that I am a trusting winner?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2016 all rights reserved 01062016

Semantics: Friend or Foe

Semantics: Friend or Foe

Semantics. Attitudes. Thinking about these a lot lately. How the higher the quality of our semantics, and the better our attitudes, the better our quality of life. Judgment fits in there, too. Stuff that happens is neutral until we put our judgment on it, and then, whammy. Judgment isn’t Truth, it’s an opinion, and that means we can change our minds about it.

Semantics is, simply put, the meanings we attach to words. When we use words, we have feelings about them. In fact, some researchers say that we have an emotional response to every single thought we think, even the unconscious ones.

If I want to improve the quality of my life, I need to pay attention to my semantics. For example, as I am flowing with this chemo stuff, I do not feel like a warrior. When I am a warrior, I need an enemy, and creating an enemy gives that enemy power. My power. Ha! I wanna keep my power, thank you very much. I certainly don’t wanna give it to a disease or to symptoms.

I know a lot of people disagree with me on that one. I think they think that the word “warrior” sounds fierce and tough. For me, it’s not a positive, as long as I have to have an enemy.

Additionally, I do not feel like a survivor, even though I was hours away from death. I thrive. I thrive in my spirit, in my relationships. I thrive in my thoughts. I thrive in my choices.

I choose to use other words than “pain.” Pain has a lot of negative associations for me. It is a rich, full word that I have used to describe everything from self-harm to bad back problems to broken hearted misery to being batshit crazy. Using this word for me is very low vibrations. I like high vibrations.

Why do I choose to be happy? How do I choose to be content? What makes me feel peaceful?

As I am flowing with this chemo stuff, I have opportunities every day to choose to use high vibrational language that makes me feel strong and competent, capable and loving. I use the phrase, “This, too, shall pass.” and choose to relax into whatever is going on.

When I remember that whatever is happening isn’t inherently good or bad, but what I choose to make of it, I have power. I have choice. This is simply experience. I choose to flow with it, or resist it. Resisting takes effort, flowing takes wisdom. Uh oh, did I say that? Kinda judgmental, but I will let it stand.

Being happy generates energy. Being miserable uses energy. Using low vibrational words brings us down. Using high vibrational words raises us up. Having an attitude of positivity keeps us moving in ease. Having an attitude of negativity mires us in many ways.

There are days when I can barely get out of bed. When I am being negative, I feel lazy, worthless, and then I get depressed. When I remember I have choice, I choose to enjoy a soft day of snoozing and reading, video games, movies, dozing, cat patting, and other lovely indulgences. I feel respectful of my being. I love my company. The only difference between the two is my attitude and judgment.

When I notice language I use that brings me down, I modify it. I find words that might be completely neutral for you, but that make me feel awful. I do what I can to stop using them.

How have I changed from being my own downer to choosing to elevate my being?

© Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 10292014

Right as Rain

Right as Rain

You know, I’m right. You are, too. We are all right from our own point of view, and when we get that, boyoboy can we let go of stuff.

When we feel right, we feel good. When we feel like we have to prove we are right, we clench up. That doesn’t feel good, although, it may feel familiar.

Why am I right? What makes me choose? How do I have opinions?

Often, when we aren’t feeling confident in our opinion, or in ourselves, we get more and more shrill about being right.  We may try to pound our opinion into each other, sometimes we get so churned up we will really hurt each other in the name of our opinions. Dang.

Sometimes, these opinions, these beliefs, don’t support us living our natural lives. They can foment feelings of better than/less than, they can agitate feelings of isolation, or hate, dissatisfaction, discord, poor health, crummy jobs, and on and on.

As I choose to grow up, as I let go of my old, unsupportive beliefs, as I bring out more and more of my true self, I relax around being right. And, while I write to you everyday telling you what I think about stuff, I am only offering, and leave it up to you to take away from these thoughts the ones that you like, that feel supportive to you. As the saying goes, “take what you like, and leave the rest.”

Why do I choose my beliefs? What makes me decide?

I know that I can feel absolutely and unshakably right inside and be mistaken on the outside. That means that I take being right much more lightly that I used to. That’s because “right” is a feeling, not a fact. At the same time, as I grow up, I trust my gut way more than I used to. At the very least, it reminds me to be aware, to be mindful.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” Henry Ford said that. It really brought home for me the idea that right is relative.

I used to take that feeling of being right as an indication that I was carved-in-stone right. Now, I look at my attendant feelings; am I relaxed? Do I feel peaceful? Do I feel strong and competent? Do I feel blissful? Am I in my natural life? If the answer is yes, then hooray for me! If the answer is no, then I can look at where I am clenched, relax, and being right ceases to be important.

When I am living my natural life, I don’t think about being right or wrong. I don’t need to prove that I’m right, I don’t need to prove you wrong. When I am living my natural life, I recognize that there are many ways to accomplish something, many opinions that hold water, many contradictory beliefs that work to support us.

As I live my natural life, I lose my emotional rigidity, my belief in just one way. I understand that lots of ways will work to accomplish my goals and dreams, and so I feel a lot less pressure to do it “right.” I just need to do it. Now, my neck feels better, looser.

I still use my judgment, that’s a valuable gift, but I don’t feel like I need to batter you over the head with my ideas just because we disagree. I am better at shutting my mouth and living my example.

How have I changed from being rigidly right to allowing the way to flow?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 05112014

How do you feel when you are sure?

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Secrets, Intimacy, and Trust

Secrets, Intimacy, and Trust

What does being intimate mean to you? I was so intimidated by that word. Physical intimacy was easy, but emotional intimacy? I couldn’t get my head wrapped around the concept. I had the feeling that exposing my feelings, my thoughts, my very self, that I would end up flayed. Not very encouraging. I was so sad that I had failed at intimacy.

I chalked it up on the side of Stuff I Can’t Do, and went on with my rather lonely life. I was in a couple 12 step groups at the time, and working on step 4, I took a moral inventory of myself as fearlessly as I could, then told a chaplain what I had done, and how I felt about it. I felt a little better. I found a sponsor and told her secrets. I felt a little lighter.

I told my secrets and shared the attendant feelings. And as I uncovered more secrets, I told those. My secrets, not yours. I made some kind friends, I found a wonderful therapist (my eighth, if you were wondering) and told my therapist everything, and I had a ton of secrets in my life, and I told my dear friends a lot. Little by little I turned my poisonous secrets into something benign. Little by little I integrated the traumas I had kept hidden. Little by little, I cleaned out my emotional basement. Lonely is often a result of a crowded emotional basement, and so I found myself feeling less lonely. (I define lonely as disconnected from ourselves, and lonesome as disconnected from others.)

Why am I intimate? What makes me connect? How do I engage?

One of the answers I get for all three of those questions is, I trust.

I sure wasn’t good at it, but I had to start somewhere; I was great at trusting the wrong people. So I went to professional people who seemed like they would have being trustworthy in their job descriptions. Babysteps. We want to move forward, but we don’t want to go too far too fast. If we scare ourselves, we will often just stop.

I didn’t trust me, I didn’t trust my gut, and I sure didn’t trust my judgment. And as I told my secret stories, and felt my feelings with someone, that started to shift.

Why am I soft? How do I enjoy feeling vulnerable? What makes me drop my defences?

I will say, I am not always running around defenceless. I am not always soft and vulnerable, but I am more often way more often than I used to be. I also have a lot of trustworthy friends now. I also know that I feel easier when I am vulnerable. I trust me, I trust that I can cope, I trust the universe will provide what I need to take care of me.

I enjoy a bunch of intimate friendships. I am good at them. Intimacy is now easy and pretty much second nature. I appreciate it as part of my natural life, but also as one of the paths to my natural life.

I now have a personal rule, namely, I have no secrets of my own. The secrets others tell me aren’t mine to tell, but my secrets get told to any one of several people. Sometimes I tell all of them. It keeps crap out of my emotional basement, it keeps me feeling fresh and light.

How have I changed from feeling isolated and lonely to feeling connected and close?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 05042014

Have you found your trustworthy people to tell your secrets to?

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