Posts Tagged ‘positive thinking’
Proud Parents
Let’s see if you can properly parse this: I love the areas of view on the way home that don’t have any billboards. Know what I’m sayin’?
I just gotta say that as parents, Cyndie and I try to contain ourselves with a modicum of restraint, but every so often let it all go and gush over our children’s accomplishments. I don’t know what others will think of Julian’s latest musical endeavor, I hope to let it speak for itself, but we are enjoying it maybe a little bit too much. Therefore, it is getting shared with others, maybe sometimes for no other reason than so we get to see it again. I hope you will have a moment to watch and listen to the video he and friend, Dave Marshall, have produced across the distance between Chicago and Stockholm, “fhmseotu” which you can find at this link: http://www.youtube.com/EpicerMusic (4:53 in length). Well done, I say.
At the same time that Cyndie and I were doing a few chores at the lake and then power lounging in the bright spring sunshine, daughter Elysa was home doing a little construction and then hauling dirt to create a wood-framed raised bed for a vegetable garden at our home. A great demonstration of getting into a project and making good progress on her own. I can think of enough obstacles to reaching the level of completion that she has, that I would likely have not been able to accomplish what she did. Maybe she hasn’t taken on all of my more difficult personality traits. I can tell you that it sure felt pleasant to arrive home from the weekend away and find things all tidied up from the work she did. Bravo!
After spending the weekend with a gaggle of nieces and nephews, plus all the many young children of the families of our lodge club, I’m left with plenty of hope for the future because these kids sure all seem to be strong, good looking, and above average! And as we grow toward optimal health, mind-body-soul, they will, too, and then go on to raise even healthier children of their own. The dysfunctions of the world are bound to decline when we focus on the healthy and the good and wrap it all with unconditional love, as opposed to the opposite. Know what I’m sayin’?
The Stuff of Goals
Sometimes it feels easier to try to change those around us than change ourselves. I think the route to affecting change in the ones we love is through changing our own thoughts and behaviors. It can upset the balance of an ingrained, often times dysfunctional pattern, when we do finally change our behaviors, and that new imbalance can be disorienting at first. Difficult, even. But long term success is a reward for those who follow through. We become healthier, and over time, our improving health influences those around us in a positive way. Good things are worth waiting for.
- Of value to someone, or trash?
Since I’ve returned from my trek in Nepal, I’m feeling even more motivated than before to follow through on a goal that I’ve been struggling with for quite a while. I want to distribute possessions that I’ve accumulated but no longer use. Aha! This reminds me of another of those messages that I heard once and it stuck with me ever since. I think it was a friend, Soma, that I met through the Twin Cities FreeNet, who told me she was distributing books from her collection to release the ‘energy’ of them back into the world. I love that thought and have considered it ever since. I like to think about the original author, obviously, composing the information with visions of a future audience receiving value from it, but also of the editors who worked on it, and the printer and binders who handled it. Even the people who cut trees or produced the paper. They all put their energy into creating that book. If it gets read once and then stored on the shelf, that energy becomes stagnant; trapped.
For some reason, I find myself thinking about returning the energy of stuff gathering dust in my house and garage, back into the world, an awful lot more than I find myself doing anything about it. I can consider my writing about it here another small step beyond just thinking about it; my first actual action toward doing something. Well, maybe that’s not entirely accurate. Last fall we signed on with a pest control service and were required to pull all the crap out of the garage to clean and assess the related pest issues. I put my hands on a lot of once perfectly useful stuff that now hasn’t been used in many years. It was a pretty good motivator. I cleaned up old stuff. I took pictures of stuff. I talked about listing it on eBay or Craigslist. Most impressively, I successfully placed what was more accurately identified as ‘trash’ into the proper receptacle; the one that gets dumped into a big truck each week.
Surely of value to someone. Now if I could only remember where I put it.
For a week or two after that, I even made good on a goal of finding something each week that was just taking up space here and deserved a ride in the big truck that comes through our neighborhood every Thursday. But that didn’t provide the feel-good result that is the reward of returning the energy force of those who produce products, back into the world. I want to decide if freecycle.org is a group for me and finish what I started toward posting ads on craigslist.org. I want to possess less stuff and I want to release the stagnant energy back into the world. I want to move from thinking and writing about it, to doing it. A worthy and deserving goal. Am I up to it? Sure. I’ve seen one of my sisters successfully disperse the majority of her accumulated possessions. Although, she had the added incentive of having sold their house to spend retirement living in a 5th-wheel trailer. I know it is possible. I’m just not clear yet on what time table I will finally make it happen for me.
Feel Free to Change
One day, a long time ago, my son –I think it was my son– told me I should drive a different route to work that morning, just for the change. I’ve heard similar suggestions, for a variety of purposes over the years, but for some reason, the suggestion that day is one that stuck with me. I don’t know why some basic messages resonate with me for a lifetime like this, or whether the same kind of thing happens for others. My high school football coach said, “If you can touch it, you can catch it.” –referring to either a defensive or offensive pass catching opportunity. I hear it in my mind as clear as the first time he said it. Other memorable messages that come to mind are of a bit more personal nature. Maybe remembering those kinds of messages is easier to understand. But this is really beside the point regarding change.
Try testing yourself with a variety of simple changes. Fold your arms with the opposite arm from your usual, placed on top. How does that feel? Clap your hands with the opposite hand from your normal habit, in the more superior orientation. Clasp your hands with your fingers intertwined as if you are begging or pleading for something, but slide the position one finger away from your regular grip. That is how easy it is to change. Sure it feels weird, uncomfortable even. But how hard was it to do, all things considered?
It is that easy to change many things in our lives. It is somewhat amazing how quickly we are able to adjust to the point of things not feeling so weird with a little repetition, too. And it is impressive how some basic changes of similar scope, can apply to our mental processes, as well. It all starts with recognition. When we pay attention to how we move and position our body, that awareness can lead to choices to do things differently. The same exercise applies to our thought patterns. When we make an effort to become aware of how we think, about situations, ourselves, or other people, then we have done the most important work toward allowing for opportunity to change. But first, we have to recognize our thinking, and that just may be the hardest part. I believe we are all incredible masters of deluding ourselves. And if we are slightly aware of the fact that we are doing this, we tend to become masters of justifying what we are up to.
We don’t have to continue to think about things in the same way we have for years before. I am doing ongoing work to recognize my negative self-talk and my pessimistic slant on potential situation outcomes. It’s powerful stuff. Another thing I have begun to practice a bit more of late is smiling for no apparent reason. I notice when people around me wear a grim look on their face, and that is not how I wish to appear. I have written here before about putting a smile before happiness and then happiness soon follows. I am all for it, and then when I appear less glum, I can look forward to soon feeling more happy. I’ve faced worse challenges.
Choosing to change, and to change for the better, is worthwhile exercise. One that supports my journey to optimal health, mind, body, and soul. It’s a message that deserves to get stuck in our heads, don’t you think?
How I Process
Here’s a thought about how I process things. It’s probably not that uncommon. I mentally work through items on a list and then get distracted by the basketball game being broadcast and –wait, that wasn’t it… I go through the list of things to pack and identify the items I don’t have to worry about and then focus on the troublesome items. I spend plenty of mental energy on those problem items and then find I’ve gone and forgotten the items that I didn’t have to worry about! They fall right off the radar. Sure, I don’t need to worry about them, but I still need to actually do something about them and completely forgetting is problematic. So now I am working on addressing every detail as I come across it. If I can’t physically pack it right now, it gets noted on the to-do list. Everything else gets bagged and packed. I’m in reach of having this whole packing task at a level I’ll call “being managed” (smirk).
A precious friend reminded me of something I have heard before about how the brain processes what we see. Think about this. The brain receives electrochemical input. The transmissions created by visualizations we imagine, will be the same as the transmissions our brain receives from sight. We believe what we see and therefore it follows that we would believe what we imagine. If we live our life based on what we believe to be true, then those images and messages we’ve got going around in our heads have a lot of potential, don’t they?
My sister reminded me this week of lessons from The Secret (Rhonda Byrne), and how “like attracts like,” so if you want joy, be joyful to receive more joy! That fits with a testimony I heard one day from someone who described the cause for her being happy all the time was because she chose to smile. Smile first, and happiness arrives. I don’t know that I can describe how useless that sounds to a person suffering depression.
What fascinates me about this line of thinking, is how simple and obvious it can be to those who are ready and willing to receive the concepts, yet at the same time how silly and unbelievable it sounds to someone whose mind is not open to such possibility. I am lucky lately to rarely feel a need to fight against things I don’t understand, and generally am able to discount them as not making any sense to me. I have no need to claim that something is not possible, just because it doesn’t make sense to me. In fact, I have come to embrace the mystery. The more I come to know, the more I realize how much there is that I don’t know. I think this is a nice change from the period in which I thought I knew it all.
In my own best interest it behooves me to quit waffling about how I feel. I shall visualize my optimal health and summon the joy this trip promises to offer, to let mysteries I don’t yet understand, do what they do. I’ll be smiling all the while. Feel free to join me.
Relative Something 