Blog-a-thon Day 16

Busy busy with little space to write today. But in the spirit of staying on the blogging path, gonna squeeze some words in anyway. 

Isn't it interesting how when something doesn't go our way, we might get all "huffy" inside.  Our huffiness tends to grow as we turn the issue or perceived injustice over and over in our mind. Our psyche, for minutes, hours, or even a day can be swallowed up by it. Mental chatter gone amok. 

This was my experience this morning.  I had an interaction, the jist of which continued to poke at me like a pesky thorn in my side. After awhile I realized it was simply a symptom of a larger issue that needs action. 

I sat down to breakfast and opened Kamini Desai's Life Lessons, Love Lessons and there was the seed of an "aha" moment. 

"Nothing is a problem until you decide there's a problem. As long as I didn't decide things should be different than they were, there was no problem. I could experience contentment with more and more things even though they might not have been my first preference.

If we are sitting at a red light we have the choice to experience that red light in one of two ways- we can resist it or allow it. If we resist, we suffer, because the act of wishing it to be different causes conflict with the way it is. It is the conflict we experience as stress, not the red light itself.

If, on the other hand, we can simply allow for the fact the light is red and relax with how it is, it ceases to assault us in the same way. We might have a preference the light be green, but we can accept and relax with how it is. By changing how we are with circumstances, we change our experience of them. The formula is this: external events combined with internal reactions create the final outcome. It is how I internally choose to be with those external circumstances that determine the final outcome."  

Could I relax with my issue du jour AND also take necessary action to try to fix it? Yup.

Any thoughts? 

Blog-a-thon Day 15

Not feeling too well today, so taking penguin steps on the blog-a-thon trail.  

In Austin (to and from) this weekend, I began and finished Life Lessons, Love Lessons by Kamini Desai. What a wonderful wisdom-packed book. Yum.

Here's a taste:

"Sometimes there is no other way to get a lesson than to live it. Someone might tell us all about swimming. We might absorb it all. It might make great sense to us. We might even be able to repeat it to others and teach them about swimming. But until we actually experience swimming, it is not real. There is no real depth to the wisdom. It might be accurate, but has not been lived. It is the living that makes the difference. It is what adds depth and understanding to those very same words.

Many times we might judge ourselves for having to "learn the hard way." Why couldn't we have just heard all the right stuff and been done with it? Perhaps for some of the most crucial lessons of our lives there is no other way that the "hard way." It has to be lived. We have to know the lesson to the very core of our being, not just as a concept, but also as an experiential knowing."

Blog-a-thon Day 14

"Ability is what you are capable of doing.

Motivation determines what you do.

Attitude determines how well you do it."

"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."

~~ Herm Albright