Category: Changing Habits

Shifting feelings to the positive

Monday, March 21, 2022

S R Janssen

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY

Sunday was a big day for me! A very big day! I decided to live a happy life right now: this very minute. There is simply not enough time to accomplish those objectives that would make me happy or grant me the right to be happy. If I want my epitaph to read “Lived Happy” today is the time to start.

I’ve decided to be happy despite of goes on around me. Step One is stop trying to fix the people (including the animals) around me. When I go to bed, I fall asleep when my head hits the pillow instead of lying awake worrying that “Person A” is not eating right, or “Person B took should have acted differently, or the cat is refuses to eat the “good food” instead of that awful dry food he has eaten his entire life.

The required action is changing the nature of my thoughts, ten thousand of which whiz through my mind life shooting stars. Of course, that many thoughts are beyond my control, but I can manage the thoughts on which I focus my mental energy. Not so long ago, much of my time was consumed dwelling on angry thoughts about a family member. I was creating a rift where I wanted a friendly relationship. Each time I caught myself with an angry thought (which had become the knee-jerk). I immediagely shifted my thinking to something more upbeat. In short order that “heated issue” that seemed so important dissolved into thin air: all sound and fury signifiying nothing.

Out of time to be continued

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KICKING THE TIRES OF SEPTEMBER 9 2020

S R Janssen

This afternoon I engaged in an event in which I missed the mark by a mile in terms of desired outcome. BUT it led me down a new path of thought that I will be testing for this week.

Since third grade, I’ve feared people disapproving me; for decades I’ve allowed fear of people’s reactions to turn me away from from goals. So, this afternoon, I was determined muscle my way to a specific result when engaging with a stranger. Instead of achieving the result I wanted, I got a lap full of disapproval. On the one hand, it was a win in that I stood my ground for once and “waded in” instead of my usual cowardly retreat from the field of battle. The disapproval slid off like water from a duck’s back. For that, I award myself a gold star.

However, I failed to achieve my objective. Keeping a blind eye on my objective, I expressed myself in forceful manner which immediately elicited resistance.  Now I am re-thinking what it means to be powerful. It could be a mistake to define power as “the greatest application of force.”

What if power results from focused imagining of the desired outcome before engaging in activity?

What if I actively imagine a desired outcome, then stand aside and allow the desired outcome to work itself out using resources of which I am unaware?

What would have happened if I had taken ten or fifteen minutes to actively imagine the desired outcome, before engaging myself in that event?

Had I not been so blindly determined to achieve my outcome would I have been smarter and taken a breath and taken time to assess the energy in the room and assess the other person’s state of mind?

Funny thing, the interaction that occurred was an exact reflection of myself.