How to Make It Better
By the end of the first hour at the office, I was feeling overwhelmed and didn’t like it very much. Not that anything was particularly any weightier than usual. It was just the annoying little time and energy consumers that plague most work days and add unnecessary stress. Most of them are chores that have to be taken care of and only I can take care of them. No choices there.
So how could I make it better or was I just damned to a miserable day? You know what? I didn’t want a miserable day. There had to be some way of making it better—besides berating myself for not using enough positive thinking.
That’s when I began to catalog things that could make the day better. Many of them were things I didn’t have any control over, though I listed those, too, because you never know what might show up or bring things into your control unexpectedly. The surprising thing was how much of my day I actually did have control over and could “make better” without the syrupy nature of so many people who espouse positive thinking. The terminology of “what would make it better” broke through the mandate of a disingenuous “if you want a good day, you must think happy thoughts.” Read the rest of this entry »
Dancing in the Rain
Most of the time, we get “caught” in the rain. In a suit, without an umbrella, with an armload of precious papers. We end up drenched and with runny ink and thinking of the rain as a bad thing.
I watched the clouds get closer and knew what I would do. I was hoping for rain, not just to water my flower gardens, but because I missed a good frollic on my own terms. I didn’t have to worry about getting wet. It was a Saturday afternoon with no particular plans, no need to dress up, and no urgency to run from the thunder. It was a perfect time for kicking off my shoes and standing in the rain as it started from a light mist and deepened into a hard drizzle.
I stayed in the rain long enough to cool off but not to drip when I walked back inside. I stood with my mouth open and tasted raindrops and lifted my arms to the wind.
How refreshing not to get caught in the rain but to be the one catching the rain!
The “To-Be-Experienced” List
Years before I heard anything about the Law of Attraction, I met a clairvoyant at a writers’ conference in Ft. Lauderdale and she told me that I had a way of moving heaven and earth to bring amazing things tome but at the same time denying them to myself. Could I simply learn to accept what I worked so hard for?
She was right. I began to notice how often I would work to make things happen and then, once it was right there for the taking, I came up with reasons not to accept it. I pushed those experiences and results away, supposedly because I didn’t have the time or the money or someone else needed it more than I did or…you name it. Always a reason NOT to indulge myself.
So I decided to make a list of the things I wanted to experience and if the occasion should ever arise to experience anything on my list, I “had” to do it. Otherwise, if I didn’t tell myself I had to take advantage of what came to me, then I would always find some excuse not to enjoy it.
My initial list had 10 items on it, and as I one-by-one encountered those items, Read the rest of this entry »