Choosing My Path

Choosing My Path

One of the features of many 12 step groups is the telling of one’s story. This telling provides value to the group in at least a couple ways. Way one, it lets new members know that horrible situations can get better. Way two, it reminds the teller of how far they’ve come.

Why am I capable? How do I know I progress? What makes me evolve?

We kind of get used to where we are because it took us a moment at a time to get here in general. Not like jumping in the deep end of the pool. No one was born competent. No one was born speaking, to the best of my knowledge. We acquire these things. I didn’t develop a drinking problem overnight, I worked on it diligently, day after day. Same with coke and pills. My abusive relationships escalated one day, one event at a time. Telling my story occasionally helps me remember how much I have accomplished.

I grow up one day at a time.

We are capable, we are born that way. Each of us is capable of growing up. We do it one day at a time, one tiny choice at a time.

Sometimes, stuff happens and we get stuck, one day at a time. We may stop growing up for a while, then, until we get choose to get unstuck. When I was choosing mood-altering chemicals, most of the time I wasn’t actively drinking or snorting or popping or smoking. I was, however, choosing that path. When I decided to stop, there was all that time in a day when I hadn’t been actively choosing that path, but then would come the moment when I had to start making tiny choices to change it. A tiny choice to put the pills and coke and dope down the toilet. A tiny choice to pull all my booze from my hidey holes and dump that. A tiny choice to try a new way, I was scared, but I was more scared to stay where I was.

Why am I competent? Why can I choose? What makes me decide?

I choose to grow up because each little step I’ve taken, things have gotten a bit better. I choose to believe what my spiritual teachers have told me, that a happy life is normal, an easy life is normal. A satisfying life is normal

I wanted normal.

Why am I skilled? How do I know I am wise? What makes me shine?

When I decide to choose to live, to choose me, to choose to make it better, I put a lot of stuff in place. Ego is going to fight me hard. Ego likes status quo no matter how much it’s killing me. Ego likes to keep the boat steady, no rocking. Becoming a grown up rocks that damn boat half onto it’s gunnels and back again. Becoming a grown up is exciting and challenging and fascinating and angrifying, and scary and thrilling. And worth it.

Why am I capable? Why do I choose calm? How do I know I am courageous?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 03112014

Vacating the Drudge-Rut

Vacating the Drudge-Rut

How do you feel when you feel alive? Light? Engaged? Aware? Rosy? Vibrant?

For many of us, feeling alive is something we remember from the past. We have gotten ourselves mired down in crud, in bad thinking, dull routines, and stuff we don’t like. We have friends we don’t like, work jobs we don’t like, activities we don’t like. We eat food that’s supposed to be good for us, drink health drinks, and still have no energy.

Makes me tired just thinking about that life.

What makes me feel alive? How am I energized? Why do I feel engaged?

Every so often, when I am feeling stuck in that drab ol’ drudge-rut, I will make a list. I like to make lists. If you like to make lists, you might like this list. And do notice that this question is very much not good Creative Questions.

The answers come from the question: What am I doing that makes my life harder?

It takes some looking sometimes to see how we make things rough on ourselves. For example, we may have a habit of getting up at the last minute, and then have to race through our morning. We end up getting side-tracked, and next thing you know, we are late. And feel rushed, and guilty or even ashamed. So now we may act out our crappy feelings on our community.

Or maybe we get up extra early, and spend that time doing for everyone else, feel taken for granted and then resentful, and then guilty or angry for feeling bad. And what makes it even more so is that it’s often not even in our awareness, so then we can also feel crazy. Oy.

Maybe we made some resolutions that we’ve been blowing off. Maybe we have some good intentions we’ve stopped tending. Maybe we have a bad habit we’ve been meaning to phase out. And we don’t do whatever, and we feel bad, and guilty, or even ashamed.

What can we do? How do we turn it around? Why do I choose to unchoose?

Oh, yeah. We can change it in an instant. How do I feel when I feel alive? Focus on that question, ask it again, maybe try shifting it a bit to, “How else do I feel when I feel alive?” Notice the shifts in your physical experience. Pay attention to how your body feels.

When I remember that my feelings, my attitudes, my moods, and my emotional states are of my making, that I have the power to make me feel like a drudge or a dream, I am taking responsibility for my well being. I empower myself, or officially give myself the power to effect change in my own life.

When I remember that I didn’t get to this ickly place overnight, but by making thousands of tiny choices, over and over, and I can start unchoosing right this very second. Ooh, I like that feeling. I can choose to slow down inside, and treat my morning like a walking meditation on the blessings in my life. I can choose to pause for a moment and make my bed, or spend 10 minutes in the evening preparing for the day ahead. Maybe I choose to walk past my favorite don’t-wanna-eat-that aisle, maybe I choose to go to bed a little earlier. Maybe I choose to refrain from harsh words. Tiny choices, I get to choose ‘em, I get to reshape my day. I get to feel vibrant and luminous and alive.

How have I changed from feeling full of gray to feeling radiant with life?

(c) Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02202014

Fanning the Desire Fire

Fanning the Desire Fire

What is the most powerful Creative Question? I bet you know. It’s sure my favorite question.

This question is the beginning of everything good, the transition from stuck to splendid, from sad to glad, from meh to yay.

This is the question that is fundamental to each moment, however brief, in our day. It directs our thoughts, our emotions and feeling, our actions. When we claim this question as our own, we have started to take responsibility for our lives, and better they will most certainly become.

Why can I choose? What makes me decide? Where do I want to go? How do I want to be? What do I want to do?

Choice. Thousands of them all day long. We are so used to making them that we mostly don’t even notice. They are often out of our awareness, and, in long strings, they become our routines, our habits. We start the instant we wake up, and chug along making them for the rest of our day. We make choices that support our well being, make us comfy, put things off. We choose to be kind, to be mean, to love, or to hate. We choose what to eat, whether we’re thirsty, if we want to pee.

We choose to believe lies, to be afraid, to worry, to ignore. We choose to create beauty, simplicity, ugliness, complexity. misery, joy.

We choose to look at our crap and own it, or not. We choose to clean it up, or not.

How do I know I am powerful? What makes me strong? Why do I choose to see the good?

I admit, there are times when I feel like I have no choice. When I notice that feeling, I like to start making up outrageous choices. Crazy things I would never, or could never, do. They help me remember that feeling like there is only one thing I can do is in itself a choice.

Why am I so creative? What makes me find solutions? What is my heart’s desire?

It is our baby nature, our immature self, that likes to focus on what we don’t want, what we don’t like; the toddler, sobbing on the floor over a broken cheese stick. I haven’t got it down pat, I have days when I feel like that baby, and want to fall on the floor kicking and screaming for something I can’t have or don’t want. But, little by little, more often than not, I am past that, with an eye out for the opportunities to move my life in the directions I want it to go.

Why do I choose to shed my fixed delusions? Why do I choose to unchoose my unsupportive beliefs? Why do I choose to dump my mislearnings?

That’s profound stuff right there. Those questions will transform our lives in ways we can’t imagine in the place we’re currently at.

It may not be comfortable. It may not feel familiar. It may feel taxing, but boy, howdy, it’s gonna shake things up in a really good way. Like, in a what’s the most wonderful thing you could ever imagine happening kind of way.

Why am I worth it?

(c) 2014 Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02072014

Committing to Choice

Committing to Choice

The commitment card came up again today. Yeah, commitment. Where do I put my energy and efforts?

I love looking at semantics, my own because of the power they have to flip me this way or that, and ours to see what burns us, and what spurs us.

I used to be into “self-help” because I felt too damaged to wanna go public with needing help. I know, it was pretty sad. Now, the phrase I like is “personal growth” and get help all over the place.

I’ve learned to look around me to see what my commitments are. I’ve learned to pay attention to my tiny choices, you know the ones that, baby step by baby step, take you away from your good intentions until you can’t figure out how you got where you are, or how to get back.

Tiny choices.

We start the moment we wake up, before we open our eyes, we often have a thought, make a choice, about how we are going to address our day. The crazy thing is, that thought is often both unconscious and a habit. I think that’s amazing, for all our love of the idea of freedom.

I will never be free while I am enslaved by my unconscious habit thoughts. As long as I have thoughts that say life is hard, or I can’t, or I’m not enough, or things don’t go my way, or whatever my favorites happen to be, I’m subject to the whims and fancies of my unconscious mind.  

When I start my morning with a Creative Question like, “Why would I have a good day?” I get my unconscious mind thinking on something new and supportive. If I continue to ask variations on that Question as I go  through my morning routine, I start looking for ways that I’m having a good day. Chances are, those things were there, but since I was focused on my bad day, I didn’t count ‘em. Maybe I didn’t even see them.

When I was first getting started, I had Creative Questions posted all over the place. I wrote them on my bathroom mirror in eyebrow pencil, I put them on sticky notes and put ‘em by the door to see when I left the house, on the dashboard of the car, on my monitor at work.

And I wrote them out. Well, I still do that. Why do I, Pam, have a good day? Why do you, Pam, have a good day? Why does she, Pam, have a good day? How do I, Pam, have a good day? And so on.

Tiny choices.

Why do I choose my commitments? Why do I choose my attitude? How do I choose my state of mind?

We like to think that our moods, our state of mind, is somehow not in our control. That it’s because we had a bad day, or we are in a challenging relationship, or something else outside of us. When I make the commitment to take responsibility for my emotional well-being, I can choose to start feeling better.

How have I changed from feeling buffeted from feeling like I am at the helm of my emotional boat?

(c) 2014 Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 01262014

Remember to share if you care. Why are you a contribution?