Posts Tagged ‘positive thinking’
Precious Affirmation
On Wednesday, after Cyndie arrived home from a challenging day of work, she stepped in the door and thanked me for sending love to her while she was on the job.
“What love?” I responded.
I was asking because I hadn’t told her I was going to send love, hadn’t sent a text indicating I had done so, nor offered any other form of communication beyond the love, itself. But I very purposely did send her love during the day. Thankfully, she was perceptive enough to sense my transmission.
Either that is an example of how in tune we can be with each other sometimes, or it is a testament to the power of projecting love out into the universe with purposeful intent. Maybe it is both.
It helps that we practice listening to our intuition and paying attention to our gut sense and our heart messages. Of course, those are skills we are honing in on when we are with our horses. It is in the metaphysical realm that horses pick up much of their information. They are quick to pick up on the love we send their way.
While driving through the countryside on Tuesday, I happened to pass a property that had a lot of horses. A LOT of horses. Maybe 30 or more. They were crowded into a couple of paddocks between the busy highway and a barn. The primary thing I noticed about them was their defeated appearance.
Is it possible they were all napping? I doubt it. They all looked like their spirit had been broken. It instantly caused me to feel a renewed appreciation for the facility and environment we are able to offer our 4 horses.
The place I was driving past was obviously a horse business of some kind. Probably offered trail rides and boarding. I wondered how that many horses could get along with each other in such limited space. Actually, it looked like the horses just didn’t care enough to fuss with each other.
In a moment of being all too human, I began to think poorly of the people who put the horses in that situation. The truth is, I don’t know anything about them or their operation. I caught myself and chose a different response.
I sent the horses and the owners love.
I wonder if they felt it. My gut tells me the horses did.
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Reclaiming Routine
We are mostly back to our Wintervale routine again. The horses are grazing hay from the slow feeder boxes as if that is the way they have always done it. I’ve noticed that Dezirea and Legacy have no problem sharing a box and eating together, while Cayenne eats alone and Hunter appears the odd horse out. I don’t know whether she is forcing the situation or he is choosing this on his own. He eventually takes a turn, but waits for his opening.
For the time being, we are electing to let their herd behavior play out. Cyndie mentioned yesterday that she wants to get back out there as soon as her strength dictates to work on refining their manners. The horses have probably had a bit too much autonomy while she has been out of the game.
Yesterday we drove back to the cities (again) for her 6-week follow-up appointment with the surgeon who performed her hip replacement. I have a suspicion that he tells many of his patients this, but we are happy nonetheless that he said he wishes all his hip surgeries looked as “tight” as this one. He also seemed extremely pleased with the appearance of the healing incision.
Cyndie reported that she experienced the biggest boost from simply reading the physical therapy order written by the doctor’s assistant, which said, “Prognosis for full recovery: Excellent.“
The surgeon wants Cyndie to remain cautious for another 6 weeks to give her body every opportunity to grow around the artificial joint with a goal of avoiding any dislocations for a good 30 years on. She is cleared to drive and hopes to return to work on Monday. We spent time waiting at the Minnesota DMV to pick up the disability parking tag authorized by her doctor, only to learn we needed to get it from Wisconsin.
Then we were able to spend a bit more time waiting at the Wisconsin DMV office. They told her it was the craziest day with the most people they had ever served, and were short staff due to it being the day after a holiday. Luckily, and contrary to the all too frequently faced reality, Cyndie was greeted by an exceptionally pleasant and helpful clerk who shared these details while taking time to phone Cyndie’s doctor for information that was missing from the form.
Seriously! He didn’t send her off to fill out the form properly and come back at a later time. And at the end of a day that was their busiest ever.
Could this be the kind of benefit one experiences when they have sent love to those around them? We like to think so.
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Glimpse Success
On Saturday we enjoyed a day of sunshine with temperatures above freezing right from the start. What little snow cover we had acquired just a day prior was no match for the warm rays. I was very happy to be able to get the deck shoveled clean first thing in the morning, to take advantage of the solar drying mechanism.
When it got above 40°F, I talked Cyndie into taking her walker for a little stroll on the nicely dried deck to soak up some of that direct sunlight. It helped to lift her spirits a bit while getting in some exercise for that new hip joint. As far as we can tell, the new joint is doing fine. The residual pain of the surgery is still commanding her attention, and that certainly limits her abilities for the time being.
While making my rounds down to the barn I was happy to discover a glimpse of success for a portion of the drain tile we had buried in the fall. They ran a tube right off the barn gutter downspout down into the ground and buried it in a trench that runs down beyond the paddock fence.
The water was flowing audibly down into that tube on Saturday, so I walked across the paddock to the outlet in the newly carved drainage swale to see what it looked like.
It was working brilliantly! There was a perfect trickle of water flowing out of the pea-gravel, turning the snow in the swale a telltale gray with saturation. It is but one part of three drainage solutions which we had installed, but it gives me hope that we will see similar success in the other areas when spring ultimately rolls around.
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Days Filled
Natural processes never pause. We had a very spring-like day yesterday, starting the morning with a classic thunder shower. By the end of the day, I couldn’t see any snow left on the ground as I walked the southern fence line to repair areas where Legacy practiced his penchant for dismantling things with his teeth. The frost hasn’t gone out of the ground yet, but already there are green sprouts emerging from the dirt.
A trek around the property is an overwhelming experience of discovering all the things that deserve attention. The trick is picking the best time for each task. The terrain is too wet for many activities, but the high ground is getting close to dry enough for equipment to drive over it without leaving giant ruts. Mornings can still offer frozen ground, which invites the possibility of driving over areas that will be too muddy later in the day. Any day could bring rain, or even snow, which will quickly cause a setback in the progress of drying out the land.
We need more gravel brought in, and will want to find fill dirt to bolster areas that were excavated last year and experienced some dramatic settling in the time since. With the ground as soft as it is, we cause more damage than we want if we ask for deliveries of sand, gravel, or dirt during this time of year. Instead, I’ve resorted to using some of the broken down winter manure and mud scraped up in the paddocks to fill one spot that settled. If it works out, there’s plenty more where that came from.
With nature forging ahead every minute without pause, it becomes imperative that we fill our days with activities to keep pace. There is no shortage of work to do to occupy our time. I find myself mentally battling dread that I am neglecting things here when I have a low energy day, finding myself short of motivation to take on the next task. It gets compounded when I consider that I also want to take personal time for getting miles on the bike and playing the guitar; two hobbies of several that I used to do when I had spare time for such exploits.
There is consolation in the fact that I enjoy the projects we have underway, and receive deep satisfaction from the improvements we achieve. It may be a false impression, but I think there should be less demands on our time in the long run, after we accomplish all the projects of shaping the land, installing fencing, and constructing rooms and sheds. In fact, we have more behind us than remains in front of us, with regard to those issues.
We are close enough to reaching a point of only needing to manage day-to-day operations such that I’m feeling hope it is within reach. It may be another year or two, but that’s not all that long in the span of a lifetime. In addition, it’s not something that just happens in an instant, so the work that fills our days now will subtly transition over time, becoming more routine and efficient, and thus, less all-encompassing.
Or, so I can try to convince myself.
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No Foolin’
I think we just might have gotten past the messiest part of the spring snow melt season yesterday. At least, that’s what the optimist in me is hanging his hopes on. It is hard to shake the memory of that 18 inch snowfall that buried us last May and significantly prolonged the drying out of our property last year, but something is telling me that won’t be our plight this year.
A remarkable amount of ground made its first appearance of 2014 during yesterday’s dose of warmth and wind. We were blessed with two separate periods of relatively light rainfall which is always a big help in melting the snow pack. I was able to make my way along a good portion of our southern property line and was thrilled to find that the new culvert we installed, along with the preliminary improvements to open up the drainage ditch, are functioning brilliantly. It is easy to see where we should continue, and I have renewed inspiration and confidence about what I want to do next to maximize the benefits possible in helping our land drain in a controlled way.
The channel I made on Sunday is still in place at the edge of the southern ditch. Looking back up toward where all the water is coming from, you can see how much it wants to spread out now. One of my goals this summer will be to dig out a more defined creek bed across this field with our tractor, and then soften the edges to a gentle slope, and seed it with grass. Most of the year it will simply be a dry depression, only filling with water during the snow melt or a significant rainfall.
Our water-loving dog, Delilah, is mad about helping me get the water to flow. She runs up and down the channels and tries to bite the water wherever it ripples or gurgles. I like it when she helps down here because the ground isn’t muddy and the water is clean, so she just gets wet. The running back and forth does wonders to burn off her otherwise endless energy. When we came in, I toweled her off as she lay on her back, and then she curled up with the towel and took a nap.
On my way back to the house, I plodded past the labyrinth and discovered an interesting phenomenon. The melting snow is creating an inverse image as compared to the way it looked when I was shoveling the route in winter. It takes longer for packed snow to melt, so the path that I repeatedly trekked with snow shoes is now taller than the border areas of stones. They appear as depressions between the paths now.
It’s true. I’m not just saying that because it’s April 1st. Seriously.
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Visualizing Success
While our landscape is still locked beneath a thick blanket of snow and the daytime temperatures rise above the freezing point, I reacted upon an urge to give the lawn tractor some long-neglected maintenance attention. The poor thing was caked with dirty, dusty grime and grass clippings.
Opening up the email inbox this morning revealed the timely message from my Stihl dealer detailing how to get those power tools ready for the first use of spring. It’s definitely that time of year. My cycling season can’t be far off!
I opened up the double door between the shop and garage and pushed the old Craftsman tractor, on one mostly flat tire, into the warmer workspace to begin the operation. I’m finally getting around to utilizing that space for the purposes it is so smartly designed to facilitate. The seller of our property kindly provided his stock of spare parts for the machine when we purchased it, so I am set with new air and oil filters, and belts if needed. Too bad that leaves me short a fuel filter, a spark plug, and a replacement bulb for the headlight that has been blown since we bought it.
We may even look into replacing the cracked vinyl seat that was once nicely patched with what looks like electrical tape, because said tape has long since given up its adhesive. Don’t tell anyone, but I will also finally defeat the interlock on the seat so the engine will be able to keep running without interruption when Cyndie bounces up off it when trying to rock the tractor every time it gets stuck.
In all fairness to Cyndie, I have experienced that situation myself a couple of times, as well as wanting to get up off the seat to ride the fender in attempt to better balance the tractor on the one steep part of the ditch by the township road.
Here’s hoping I’ll have the machine running sweetly in advance of actually needing it, without introducing any problems that didn’t exist before I dismantled so many of the vital components. This is a great situation for me to practice the art of visualizing success!
Very early in my life, while hanging around as an extra hand for my dad while he was engaged in any number of similar mechanical repair projects, I came to recognize one common aspect that troubled me. Every job seemed to include, as if by obligation, a moment where some problem arose that would completely impede further progress. One common example was the situation of a nut not coming off a bolt due to corrosion or thread problems.
Such moments are either a wonderful opportunity to rise to the occasion –finding the right tool for a solution, gliding through the uninvited obstacle with minimal disruption– or a disaster of careening down a path of increasing destruction and frustration. Success can be a function of having the right experience and/or keen instincts, and a good inventory of the right tool for the job with the intelligence of knowing how to use them.
I’m pretty sure I developed an aversion to these anticipated obstacles, which leads to the catch-22 of my avoiding them, which creates a deficit of learning how to successfully respond. Since I am now faced with increasing opportunities to delve into mechanical projects that offer potential for just these kinds of lessons, I hope to bring the wisdom I have gained in developing healthy mental perspectives and my ever-expanding awareness of things unseen –recognizing, listening to, and trusting my heart and my gut– as tools to assist me in my learning.
One of the first tools I intend to wield is, visualizing success.
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Healthy Perspective
It would be so great if we could get it all done. There are dead trees to be cut down, logs to be split, a trail to be improved, the round pen needs to be graded/raked, there is rusty barbed wire to be removed and new fencing to be installed in its place, waterways need to be cleared, motors need maintenance, paddocks need to be cleaned, horses need attention, our web site stalled at the “under construction” page… It goes on and on.
The challenge is to maintain a state of mind that is at peace with the reality of right now. 
There will always be more to do than we are able to get done. Each moment deserves our best selves to be present, regardless any number of unfinished projects awaiting our attention. There is an art to maintaining a healthy perspective about what matters most, and being able to radiate a positive peacefulness to people and animals around us.
It is not an art that I have strong skills at practicing, but I am motivated by a desire to not be the guy who short changes himself and others by devaluing the present moment by excessively fretting over all the things that haven’t happened yet.
Just Know
This deserves to be a blog post. The question posed was about how to stay positive despite the scary amount of negativity in the world. Far be it from me to come up with a concise reply.
I knew how to answer it for myself, but I had to think a moment, about how to communicate my process to another person. It was a wandering explanation, as each insight I explored seemed to spawn another that deserved mention.
What came to me right at the start was that having a positive disposition isn’t something that I do, it has become something that I know. The rest of my rambling response was an attempt to provide enough background to give the words more weight than just a routine platitude. It doesn’t seem logical to me to offer advice along the lines of just needing to “know” that things are not as bad as they appear to be. On the other hand, does it suffice for me to proclaim that they simply need to live through enough experiences to gather the insights I have acquired?
I don’t think I can reclaim everything I came up with at the time, but the simplified version of why I know things are not as bad as it seems is this:
I have overcome a history of depression. I have mended a dysfunctional relationship with my wife. I have almost completely eliminated my exposure to commercial broadcast media. That alone, probably makes the biggest difference on the amount of unwelcome news and energy that was previously bombarding me.
I have become aware of energy that we emanate and absorb. This one isn’t as ‘out there’ as may appear to some people. Science has proven that emotions are contagious. It is easy to notice that a depressed person in the room can bring people down, an angry person will spread bad feelings, and a happy and pleasant individual can lift the spirits of those with whom they interact. I have witnessed the impressive distance our electromagnetic heart field energy radiates, during my time working with horses in Arizona when I joined Cyndie for the conclusion of her apprenticeship training.
Our energy is a powerful force. We should arm it with something positive and profound. I have always felt in my core that love was the vital component of all human interaction. We know to “love thy neighbor” and many of us believe we should love our enemies. I believe love is the way to heal, to bring peace, to raise healthy individuals, and, radiated in advance, to engender best possible interactions with others. Let love be the primary vibe riding on your projected energy field and you shower all in your vicinity with good will.
All of these things combined, provide a sense of knowing, despite all that seems wrong in the world –and think about it, people have been predicting that the ills of the world indicate ‘the end is near’ for eons– we hold unbelievable power for good with our love that can blossom if we alter our focus from all that is wrong, dwell on all that is right, and develop our skills to radiate healthy love in every direction. It magnifies. Love begets more love.
Try it. You can’t help but have a positive disposition when you put your attention to it!
Choose
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freedom
to choose health
in the face of other options
takes effort
that is rewarded
incrementally
sometimes infinitesimally
over time
do the math
not the science
that it takes
making rockets fly
simple addition
day after day
for months at a time
healthy emerges
for goodness sakes
like green on the grass
running in a river
rounding the rocks
headed toward forever
where life is esteemed
and success of good health
the spectacular garnish
that feeds on itself
in magical ways
running and jumping
with joyous persuasion
returning investments
of health options chosen
turn off that tv
go do something else
break down that routine
be someone else
that unlikely person
you never felt could
emerge from your shell
stuck there for good
just a choice
to be made
inside the mind
there’s reward to be nabbed
free for the choosing
life filled with promise
of better than good
outside the lines
of everyday drab
just beyond reach
of those who don’t try
it’s easy to grasp
for the bold few who do
exercise free choice
to choose better health
not just for a day
but from now on
days-months-years at a time
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Relative Something 