SunAgape's Spot

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Felling my Fatal Flaw

Felling My Fatal Flaw

It is our first relationship, the first person we become aware of. This is the first person whose feelings we notice, whose well being matters to us. This is often the first person we doubt. It brings up one of my favorite thinkin’ questions, “Who is the I that recognizes me?”

My most fundamental relationship is the one I have with myself. It is also far and away the most complicated one I have simply because I know so much about me. I often put the most negative emotional judgments on me, the harshest critic, the cruelest words. I say the nastiest, most cutting things to myself, and often I am not even paying attention when I do. It’s more of a stream of consciousness undercurrent that is undermining, undercutting, all under my radar.

Why would I like me? How could I treat me with kindness and respect? What makes me nice to me?

Liking ourselves is effortless at our core. We totally get it there. But as we think stuff, and observe stuff, we start mislearning, and we are usually the first victim of that mislearning. That first mislearning about ourselves will color everything for us. We call it “personal doubt” and it is wrong, no matter how certain we are that it is right.

Why am I good enough? Why am I right? Why am I acceptable? Why am I a contribution?

We often think of our personal doubt as our fatal flaw, that one horrible thing about us that makes us less than, or unlovable, or undeserving.

And it’s not true. We only think it’s true. And we react to that thought either by trying to prove it wrong, or by giving up to show that it’s right. If I believe that I am not good enough, I may bend over backwards to prove that I am. Overachieving in everything I do, as though I were striving for sainthood. Or I may say “phooey” and underachieve, getting in trouble, being mean. Or I may do one here, and the other there, and it’s all based on a wrong idea that we hold in certainty.

Maybe I feel like everything I do is wrong, or even that I am wrong for existing. Maybe I feel like I have no inherent value. Maybe I feel like I always hurt people. Chances are good that if I think about it a bit, I will notice what my personal doubt is.

When I find it, I can start using my good Creative Questions to loosen it up. If I feel like I always hurt people, I can try Creative Questions like, “How am I a contribution? Why do I help? What makes me considerate? How do I show my compassion?”

And it’s not about doing more. It’s not about work hard at it. It’s not about striving to be a contribution, a helper. We are these things naturally, effortlessly. By asking good Creative Questions, we are helping ourselves to our natural balance, our natural equilibrium. Like forgiving ourselves when we screw up, it’s hitting the reset button.

Giving myself permission to like me is, for some of us, all we need. We are battered by the media with ideas that we are lacking. I should be the way I see other people. When I give myself permission to like and accept me as I am right now, I can choose to like me. I am free.

How have I changed from owning a fatal flaw to liking me as I am?

Friday, July 11, 2014

Shining Success

How would your life change if you felt successful every day? Would you carry yourself differently? Would you try new things? Would you step up for other things than you do now?

The more we relax through and through; our bodies, our feelings, our thoughts, the more successful we become. Like so many other fun, comfy, exciting, rewarding things, being successful is one of the things that just happens when we relax into our natural life.

Why am I successful? How things go my way? What makes me see the good?

It’s a funny thing. When we feel like a failure, we can often find that, underneath the feeling, we are resisting success, bogging ourselves down with bad creative questions. Why am I a failure? Why am I unlucky? Bad creative questions like these keep us stuck. We often find that we are so used to asking bad questions like these that we don’t even notice we are asking them.

When we ask questions like those, we will miss opportunities to be successful. We may sabotage our results, we may trip ourselves up, and even get ourselves in trouble.

Oops.

When we ask questions like those, we may find that we even sabotage our own success, or when we have it, we discount it. How sad is that.

It bears talking about a bit more, that tendency we have to discount the nice stuff. One of the best ways to practice enjoyment is to enjoy our moments. Savor the pleasures we encounter each day; the delicious breakfast beverage, how nice it feels to clean our teeth, the bird song, the smile from a random person on the street. Letting these little things in, taking an extra moment to enjoy them, to appreciate the little nice things that happen each day, helps us build our enjoyment muscles so that we can let in our successes, and really feel good about them.

Why do I savor? What makes me appreciative? How do I enjoy?

Practicing like this on the little stuff means that I get used to little successes, little pleasures, little enjoyments, and gradually they build until I can tolerate bliss. I know it sounds weird, but it’s true for a lot of us. I know if I had been thrown into bliss back in the dark ages, I would have just shut down. Now I can sit in bliss for ages. I love that.

Another thing that helps us in feeling more successful is relaxing around it. Sometimes we are striving so hard to achieve our idea of success that we miss it. We get ideas about what we want to accomplish, and as soon as we do, we are off planning the next campaign. We

never feel successful because we are always chasing that carrot on a stick, and assigning new values all the time. So we can have accomplished so much, and never feel it, never notice, and always feeling like we don’t quite measure up. Poor we.

The more I let myself get used to feeling successful, the easier it is to find places where that’s how I feel. I like feeling successful, and I will draw success to me, in that ol’ Law of Attraction way.

How have I changed from practicing failure to shining success?

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Looking at the Onion

I talk about unconscious material here fairly often. You know, the stuff that is buried deep in our minds. We react to it. It directs a lot of our behavior. It makes decisions for us. They are often not very good decisions because they are born from our mislearning. And then we wonder what the heck happened.

Part of coming to know ourselves is being willing to look at our unconscious stuff. Many of us try to avoid it. We are afraid that we will uncover stuff that might wreck our relationships. We are afraid that we find things we don’t like about ourselves. We are afraid that we will unearth terrible secrets. Or that we will find out that we have to make a change we think is too scary.

One way to tell what is going on in our unconscious minds is to look at our circumstances. Our situations can let us know what creative questions we are asking unconsciously.

Do my days feel effortful or effortless? Do my days feel easy or challenging? Do I feel peaceful? Do I relax?

Why am I alive? What makes me choose? How do I feel when I feel alive?

Sometimes, we have a situation that feels overwhelming. We feel like we can’t solve the problem, so we push it deep down into our unconscious and start asking bad creative questions, like, How can I avoid dealing with this problem?

Uh, oh.

We are wildly, wonderfully creative beings, and we will come up with amazing ideas for avoiding stuff. We get busy, we get pregnant, we have affairs, we get in trouble at school or work, or with the law, we have a bad accident, we get sick, and if it feels really big, we might just die.

Maybe we get obsessive about work, or housekeeping, or exercising, shopping, or glamorizing. running errands, taking on commitments, volunteering, extra jobs, well, you get the idea.

If we discover that we are doing some of these big avoidance things, we can start to look for our big topic. We may get caught up in details, the trivia of the situation. I can usually tell that I am doing this if I am feeling like there is a lot of drama going on around me, that I am all caught up in it. And this may well brings my buried situation to a head, so I have to take a look at it.

Why would I let go? How am I peaceful? What makes me notice?

When I let go of the drama, when I choose to breathe softly into the situation, I can often see what is going on under the frothy excitement. Frequently, it will have to do with my personal doubt, that first piece of mislearning I took on when I was very little. In fact, the more I deal with my stuff, the more I will need to look at this piece, to integrate the experiences that support that mislearning.

It’s like the onion analogy, where we peel away a bit, and peel away some more, and some more. It may be a process, but it is often the best way to clean up our stuff. When I choose to look at my unconscious stuff, and for me, getting help makes this much easier, I am way more efficient. I am choosing to be alive, to live as fully as I can, and enjoy my life effortlessly.

How have I changed from hiding from my own mislearnings to choosing to live fully?

Wednesday, July 09, 2014

You Ol' Sofite

You Ol’ Softie

We all have stuff, big stuff, little stuff, stuff. We have current topics, we have history. We have old, well-established patterns that are so ingrained in us we don’t even notice them. We may even think that everyone feels like we do.

One of the ways we can uncover our hidden patterns is by talking with other people.

Why am I intimate? What makes me feel close? How do I connect?

As we talk about ourselves, as we disclose our thoughts, our feelings and beliefs, our loved ones may question what we believe. They may give us opportunities to question our ideas about how the world works. They may help us find ways to think about relationships, about people, about our own histories, that make way for us to feel more comfortable, happier, and to get along better.

Sometimes the stuff that comes up as we talk is scary or painful. Integrating these memories is one of the ways that we grow. As we address these topics, we develop resiliency. Our self-esteem grows stronger as we see what we have survived. We find our sense of personal power as we are able to let the past go, break those old, destructive patterns, and replace our mislearnings with wisdom, understanding, compassion, and self-respect. I needed a lot of help to do this, and I found that each time I needed a wonderful teacher, a wonderful teacher showed up.

Why do I like me? How do I know I am strong? Why do I choose to be vulnerable?

Choosing to be vulnerable is an interesting thing. I used to say that being vulnerable was like giving someone a pointy stick and telling them where to poke you to hurt the most. When I had friends who didn’t really like me, I would open up, and they would poke. Owie. I felt justified in thinking that people were basically cruel and self-serving.

I am so glad I was wrong about that.

I have had to leave a lot of relationships over the years for a lot of reasons. I have made a lot of new friendships with lovely people, who listen carefully when I tell them where to poke, then say, “You can keep that pointy stick, I don’t want it.” They treat me kindly, compassionately, and don’t poke.

When I am vulnerable with untrustworthy people I can get zapped. There are lots of trustworthy people out there, and one of the things we get to do is find them, and trust them.

When I find my trustworthy people, I don’t have to trust all at once. I don’t have to scare myself. I can take baby steps, and trust on my own timeline. I can practice trusting. Well, that’s what I did, anyway. Making that effort is worth it.

When I trust my trustworthy people, I can choose to be vulnerable with them. I can choose to disclose, I can choose to be soft, I can choose to be comforted. I can choose to receive help, and compassion, and let their love into my heart. As I do this, learning to receive, I can also choose to feel gratitude, and appreciation. I can choose to notice how nice my life is. I like that.

How have I changed from feeling distant and shut down to opening up to intimacy?

Tuesday, July 08, 2014

Doom or Bloom?

Helpless, hopeless, doomed. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Nothing ever changes. Nothing ever goes my way. Everything happens to me. My misery is all your fault.

Huh.

Some of us feel like this. I was one of them. I couldn’t leave my rotten job for a hundred reasons. I couldn’t leave my rotten living situation for a thousand reasons. I couldn’t leave my abusive relationship for a hundred thousand reasons. Most of them were your fault. And then, when I got fired, or evicted, or dumped, well, that was clearly your fault, too.

Please accept my apologies. I had a powerful heap o’ mislearning I needed to dump.

Can’t is a crazy word. Can’t stops us cold, tenses our muscles, cramps our thoughts, constrains our behavior. When I choose can’t, I stifle myself. I curb my enthusiasm, I cage my heart, I chain my mind. When I choose can’t, I don’t grow.

Why am I capable? What makes me choose?

I drew those two cards this morning. When I throw in “Why am I competent?” and “Why am I strong?” I can unchoose victim/martyr. I can choose to accept the circumstances I find myself in. I can choose to do what I can to change them. I can choose to get some help. I can choose to leave.

I can choose to accept you as you are, and stop fighting to make you be different. I can choose to take responsibility for my well being and walk away from our relationship if I need to.

When I approach the world from a place of resourcefulness, where I believe all the support I need is there for the asking, I feel powerful. In the olden days, I believed I was powerless to impact my life, except sometimes with a tantrum. I learned that when I was very small, and it was pretty true then, but I got older, and bigger, and it became less accurate, and a deeper mislearning.

Why can I relax? What makes me peaceful? Why can I decide?

Every so often, something would happen to shake that belief, until I finally noticed that I actually did have some power of choice. I began to seek out good teachers, I began to leave “friends” who encouraged me to stay small and helpless. I started to notice my really bad habits that left me feeling awful, like abusing recreational chemicals, and got help to replace them with habits that showed me new ways to think.

I didn’t change this overnight. I did take baby steps. One little change here, one little change there. Some of them took right away, some I had to revisit again and again. Some I am still revisiting. The habit of being competent, of feeling capable, of knowing I can, has gotten stronger. The habit of taking responsibility for my own well being is stronger, and easy most of the time.

Each of us is the only one who can change our own internal experience. Each of us has all the resources we need available. We just need to learn how to ask.

How have I changed from being wedded to “can’t” to feeling the power of “I can?”

Monday, July 07, 2014

Trust Babies

Have you noticed how much more enjoyable life is when you are feeling present and relaxed? You can let things just happen, and roll with it, finding enjoyment and purpose as you go through your day.

It’s a weird thing. If I don’t have to make things work out, I can slow down inside. I can savor my moments. Time passes at a reasonable rate, and I don’t feel like it flies by. A week takes a week, a month takes a month, and it’s a nice, long wait from birthday to birthday.

If I’m not trying to make things go a certain way, I have more energy to find the fun in what I’m doing, or the satisfaction, or the contentment. I get to the end of my day, and feel gratitude and appreciation for my good day, and when I wake up, I wake up feeling like that, too. It beats the heck out of going to sleep stressed and tense, and waking up the same way. I did that for years.

If I’m not trying to seem smart, or fancy, or fascinating, or just trying to think of how I’m going to respond to what you’re saying, I start listening to you. Really listening. And amazing things happen. I learn stuff from you. I learn more about you. I remember more of what you say. I find that I feel closer to you when I listen to you than when I am all focused on me. And because I heard you, my response is better, we are really having a conversation.

Why do I trust? How do I know the Universe is for my benefit? What makes me relax?

When I stop trying so hard, to please, to fit in, to conform to my ideas of what is normal, I find me. When I stop feeling victimized, angry, scared, confronted, attacked, or beleaguered, and choose to flow with my life as it unfolds, I find that those feelings dissipate, and I am comfortable in my skin, in my thoughts, and behavior. I make choices that suit me better, and if things don’t go the way I think they should have gone, I am free to see how it actually works out for me.

When I choose to trust, I take the pressure off. I lose a lot of my wacky expectations. I love the old saw, “You don’t disappoint me, only my expectations of you disappoint me.” It’s one of the reasons I like to look for emotionally-neutral language to describe interesting circumstances.

Neutral language helps me respond to what’s actually going on rather than to my ideas, or your ideas, of what is going on. Lots of places in the world use emotionally charged language to try to manipulate us into doing stuff. The one I see the most is fear. If I scare you enough, you will buy my stuff, or take my treatment, or shop at my sponsor’s store.

So I avoid the “news” and scary healers and anyone else who seems to have an agenda that uses fear, and make sure I slow down to process and release their stuff if I get hit with it,

And I trust that I can cope.

Why am I capable? Why I am competent? What makes me strong? Why do I trust?

When I take on those Creative Questions, when I claim them for my very own, when I ask myself those questions, I set myself free. When I choose to trust the universe, I set myself free. I am free to connect, to engage, to have bliss, to feel joy, to live my natural life.

How have I changed from second-guessing and gainsaying to trusting and living free?

Sunday, July 06, 2014

Releasing the Clench

How good are you at relaxing? How do you feel about trusting? How what do you think about taking responsibility for your own well being?

Something remarkable happens when we put those three things together. The more I relax, not just my body, but my thoughts and emotions as well, the more I trust the Universe, or my higher power, or whatever I want to call it, the more I trust that what happens in my life benefits me in some way, and the more I take charge of my attitudes, my beliefs, my thoughts, the happier my life gets. From the inside out.

I like to feel happy. I think you do, too.

Why am I happy? How do I feel when I trust? What makes me choose?

Relaxing is an interesting thing. I’m not talking about lying under a tree daydreaming at clouds, although that’s nice. I am talking about paying attention to when we clench up, and consciously choosing to relax that clench. Over and over and over.

Believe me, I know what I’m talking about with this. I used to hang my shoulders off my ears, if you see what I mean. I clenched my bottom, I clenched my abs, I clenched my jaw, I even clenched my toes. Owie. Heaven knows what all that clenching did to my insides!

I had a lot of clenched thoughts, too. Wrong ideas about stuff, and totally locked in with them. Wrong ideas about me (not good enough, bad person, selfish, incapable, victim, for example.) Wrong ideas about you, and I won’t even go into those! Wrong ideas about health and wealth and joy and on and on.

All I had to do was relax those ideas a little bit, create a tiny bit of room for doubt, and then come up with a better thought, a cleaner thought, a higher-vibration thought, and let it wiggle in. And then reap the benefits of my new thought. Oh, my.

What if I am wrong about sickness? What if I am wrong about being poor? What if I am wrong about how people suck?

What if I am wrong about how much I suck?

How could I be good enough? Why would I be okay? What makes me a gift?

Why would I enjoy radiant health? How do I live in abundance? Why would I like people?

Wiggle room, relaxing, trust. My responsibility. I can’t change you. even if I am your mom. Sometimes, I can influence you, I can model good behavior for you, I can choose to let go of my negative emotional judgments and I can choose how I will respond.

Wiggle room. I can choose to relax into my natural life. I can choose to soften, to flow with my life, and all that soft, all that relaxed, makes room for joy, makes room for bliss. It makes room for my happiness to flow into my life from my core.

How have I changed from clenching tight to relaxing into happiness?

Saturday, July 05, 2014

Enjoying the Population

How interesting is our relationship with people. We all have ideas about how people are, about what people are like. Even what we think people should be like.

There was a fun exercise I first learned of many years ago. It was very simple; you can try it now.

First, think of someone you consider a hero, or an inspiration to you. Got it? Now, think of some of their qualities that you admire, shoot for five. Do you have them?

Now, notice how you have those qualities you admire. And if you think you don’t, notice what you think about them.

Ahahah! Yes, indeed. For many of us, the qualities we admire in our inspirations are qualities we are nurturing in ourselves. In fact, it is often the case that we can’t see qualities in others that we don’t share. I think that’s wild, that we can’t see what we don’t have, but I’ve seen it play out over and over. We get ideas about the word, the quality, but until we open up to the experience, it’s just a concept.

We project our thoughts about ourselves onto our concept of “people.” We have to. As we grow, we learn more, we experience more, and we conceptualize more. That makes our worlds bigger, and we see each other more clearly, more deeply.

As my concept of people expanded, as I grew up, I found that I liked people more, and I liked me more. Fancy that.

As I came to see that I filter the world for stuff, we all do, or we would go cuckoo-bananas, I realized that I filtered people. In the olden days, I would filter for sad, grim faces; faces that looked like I felt. Poor me. Now I filter for happy faces, or faces that look like they want a smile. I love how many smiles I see walking down the street now, how many of us respond in kind. That’s my kinda world.

Why do I like me? How do I like people? What makes me want to connect?

If I think people are bad, or unpleasant, or selfish, or angry, I will benefit from looking at me to see what I might want to let go of, like selfishness, anger, or general unpleasantness.

When I like me, liking people is effortless.

Sometimes, we push people away because we are afraid of what they would think of us if they got to know is. We may be wary of letting them get close because we have been hurt, and worry that we will be hurt again. We may push them away because of those ideas we have about how people are, even if they aren’t.

Sometimes, we’ve had something happen with one person that was kind of awful, and we get the idea that all people may be like that, and we withdraw. And that can lead to feeling lonely and resentful. Dang.

Coming to know ourselves, taking responsibility for our well being, integrating negative experiences, all these help us come to enjoy being around each other so much more.

How have I changed from avoiding people to enjoying my connections?

Friday, July 04, 2014

Leaving the Lack Tree Forest

One of the nicest things that has changed in my life has been moving away from lack to abundance. One of my dearest friends talks about living in the lack-tree forest, where you can’t see all the abundance for focusing on the lack. Cuz it’s really just that easy.

We have so much language that is about lack. Curiously, one of the most lacking words is enough. The nature of enough is that, in general, there never is. Enough money, enough power, enough fame, there often is a carrot hanging off a stick tantalizing us with just a little bit more, just the next conquest, the next thing, and then it will be enough.

But it never is.

Why do I enjoy plenty? How is my life abundant? What makes me appreciate the luxury?

When I start looking for luxury, I am often dazzled by how much there is. The pockets of nature filled with interesting stuff to see and smell and hear and feel. The breeze in the trees, birdies do their birdie things, plants that show up in unlikely places, a mysterious, nice smell that you can’t quite pinpoint.

And the luxury of friends and family, When we can get together and be ourselves, and feel loved anyway. The luxury of compassion, the luxury of forgiveness, the luxury of patience, the luxury of kindness.

We have the luxury of choice, to choose to make our lives better, more fun, easier, more relaxed. To choose to flow with our lives, to let them unfold, with all their attendant stuff, more luxury. The luxury of an open heart.

When I start looking for luxury, I am often astounded. The luxury of hearing a stranger’s story. The luxury of grasping a new point of view that makes things nicer. The luxury of having time to work through a challenging situation, or a complex set of feelings, and coming out the other side stronger, deeper, wiser.

The luxury of understanding that I create my reality with my thoughts and feelings and filters, and that if I don’t like this way, I can rethink it and have a new experience. Wow.

The luxury of understanding that happiness is available to me from the inside out. That my happiness is not contingent on outside stuff, but on my way of being in the world. That I can choose to look up, to connect with my perfect self, to relax into my natural life, and flow into nice.

When I gave up having problems, being poor, feeling sick, my life did a big 180. All I had to do was change the words. We never think that using a different word can make such a big difference, but there you go. We have the luxury of so much language that, simply by using a new word, will bring us to a place we feel more comfortable in, happier, less stressed.

Changing my language took some awareness, took some practice, but it has been so worth it. Simply using different words, positive phrases, upbeat concepts, I change my mood, I change my emotions, I change my thinking, I come closer to being my perfect self.

How have I changed from seeing the lack to living a life of luxury and abundance?

Thursday, July 03, 2014

Picky Picky Picky

Everyday I have the opportunity to transform my life. From the moment I wake up until I fall asleep, I have the opportunity to choose. Sometimes it is a pretty neutral choice, like whether to have coffee or tea with breakfast. It can be a choice we barely notice, like whether we greet the day with a smile or a frown.

Tiny choices all day long.

Why can I choose? What makes me decide? How do I pick my path?

When I choose to start my day on an upbeat note, I will make my tiny choices to support that. When the little snafus happen, like dropping the toothbrush, they make me laugh instead of pissing me off. I can do my routines, but with awareness, so I can change them up if they aren’t working as best they can. I can remember that I like you before I start kvetching at you.

I get to decide.

When things happen, I get to choose to flow with them. I start by practicing with little things like changed plans, dropped stuff, computer foul-ups, misunderstandings. Then, when the big stuff shows up, I automatically choose to flow with it. And life is easy, and I can have fun, and it’s all good.

Why is it so easy? Why do I enjoy myself? How do I know how to choose?

When I choose to stay sad, or blue, or depressed, I don’t have fun. People disappoint me. Stuff goes wrong, I feel misunderstood, sunshine feels mocking. I have a difficult time feeling productive, I often don’t sleep well. and the list goes on.

I also make bad decisions, choices that keep me stuck, and stuck often means that I just sink deeper.

Sometimes, I feel like that because I am keeping myself in a bad situation. And I get the idea that I can’t leave it. Can’t. That’’s what I chose for years, can’t. I can’t do that, I can’t leave him, I can’t go there, I can’t can’t can’t. It all just sucks.

Victim. Martyr. It’s all your fault, and no one else can do what I can do. Except when I can’t.

The way I get out of it, the only way, is to choose. I have to decide that I am going to make my life nicer, and do what it takes. I may need some help, I will need to change some of my favorite bad beliefs, I may need to lose some relationships. Misery buddies don’t support a nice life, they adore to rehearse the bad stuff, so I will have to break up with them. There have been times in my life, twice, when I had to leave a group of misery buddies. I got lonesome, but I felt way better.

Choosing to smile, choosing to look for the good, choosing to seek out the hidden fun, choosing to connect, choosing to engage, is all my choice. The more I choose that stuff, the easier it gets, the nicer my day goes, and the faster I remember to chose it when I can.

How have I changed from choosing the dark side to choosing the light?

Wednesday, July 02, 2014

Watch the Doughnut, Not the Hole

When I was a little kid, there was a song that I played a lot. The chorus went: Watch the doughnut, not the hole. I found it a little confusing because we bought doughnut holes more often than doughnuts, but eventually I understood that it meant to look for the good.

There were lots of songs that offered the same message; The Sunny Side of the Street, Let a Smile be Your Umbrella, Stay on the Sunny Side, and on and on. I liked the songs, learned all the words, but somehow missed the message.

For most of us, feeling crappy is easy as falling off a log. We have a thousand thousand ways to get there, a thousand thousand excuses. One of my faves is, “That’s just the way I am.” The person I knew who would say that had a whole slew of those lines. She would talk about grim being her nature, unchangeable, immutable. She would pronounce that some people just weren’t meant to be happy. She looked for, and found, the worst in everyone, in every situation, and was so sad that she had so few friends.

My “nature” is what I believe my nature to be.

I used to believe that my nature was depressed and afraid. I wanted a nicer life, but I was so unhappy that I couldn’t imagine my life ever changing.

We are meant to be happy, and one of our tasks as a human is to find out how to do that.

Why would I choose positive? How do I look up? What makes me choose?

I have come to think of my nice life as my responsibility. I am the only one who can make my life nice, but I have also acquired habits that can make that challenging.

Sometimes I get stuck in yessing. You know what I mean, saying yes to everyone who asks me to do something so I end up feeling way over-extended with no end of commitments in sight.

Sometimes I get stuck in inertia, where I just can’t seem to do anything. I may find at the end of the day that I haven’t done anything that I feel good about. I feel like I fritter my time away.

Sometimes, I get stuck in a poor me place, or an angry place, like my poor friend. I face the world with a scowl or grimace, and wonder why no one ever smiles.

Sometimes, I get stuck in achieving, striving all the time, working to “get ahead” by putting in a lot of extra time, and losing touch with my friends, and even my family, until work is all I have.

There are lots of other places I can find myself stuck in. And, as we’ve discussed over and over, the only one who can unstick me is me.

Maybe I need to learn to say no. Just because I am able to doesn’t mean I am willing to. Maybe I am feeling depressed, and a chat with a counselor or doc might help me get free of it if my own efforts aren’t working. Maybe I need to dump the anger or self-pity, and again, if I can’t help myself, I need some help. Maybe I need to check my priorities, my deep-inside priorities, and decide to choose my loved ones over my accomplishments.

How have I changed from living a life of suck to feeling good?

Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Grrratitude

Lately I seem to be talking a lot about tools, awarenesses, and insights that have made a big difference in my life, and the lives of a lot of other people, too. I like to review these things, because sometimes I forget about ‘em in all the daily day-to-day-ing.

Today, I pulled the card, “Why am I grateful?” Thinking about gratitude, appreciation, I started feeling grateful, and noticed what a relaxed, soft, open feeling it is. A deep breath feeling.

It made me think of the Sunshine Hand.

Many years ago, I was sunbathing on a cool, partly cloudy day. The sun would peek out, and fill my palm with sunny warmth. I closed my hand to try to hold it, and, of course, it was gone, but left in its place a profound life lesson. I can only feel the sunshine in my palm when my hand is open.

I can only receive the bounty of the Universe when I am open.

Gratitude and appreciation help me to open my heart.

Why am I grateful? How do I appreciate? What makes me open my heart?

Somedays, gratitude flows through me like a creek in the spring thaw, so much gratitude that I wonder how it is possible. But somedays, it’s a little less, like it can be challenging to find one thing. i found a couple things that really help me with this. One, I have chosen to make it public by posting on facebook. It keeps me on it. The second are my go-tos for when I am feeling clenchy.

The weather is always a good one for me. I decided years ago that I would stop bitching about the weather, and find things to like about it instead. This proved to be a really smart thing. We can’t do anything about the weather. I can rail against it, or I can accept it. How life-like. By learning to appreciate the weather regardless of how it is, I learn to appreciate life, however it goes. Neat.

Loved ones are another good one for me. Even if I am feeling crabby about one, or even more than one, person, there are always a lot of other people I love for whom I can feel appreciation. Sometimes I may appreciate their absence. Heh. That’s okay.

The things I consume are also a good one, from food and drink, to books, movies, TV shows, games. Sometimes I want a break from what I am doing. Or I want to make a shift in the way my day has been. Entertainment is one way I do that. I also make sure I have delicious, wholesome food and drink in my house that I really enjoy. I can appreciate a tasty bite.

The movement activities I enjoy every day. I love my qigong practice, it’s ridiculously fun and easy. I love my yoga activities, I love to walk, to dance, to just stretch. I do at least some of these pretty much every day, and always feel good for it. That makes it easy for me to appreciate them, and appreciate how they make me feel.

The contemplative activities I do each day, writing to you, meditating.

So now I have a nice list of thing to appreciate each day, and when I get one of those days where I feel stuck, or annoyed, or blue, I have a way to get started, and I know from experience that writing my list will make me feel better, it will loosen up a bad feeling so I can shift it into something else.

How have I changed from feeling entitled and clenched to soft and open gratitude?