As I’ve reflected on the last year and looked forward to the next, I’ve been having a hard time identifying my emotions. What am I feeling?
I finally realized that I’m feeling excited at all the possibilities that the new year brings.
I’ve experienced so many changes over the past year, but the most significant (to me) are the ones that happened internally.
Knowing that the old adage, “You gotta live it to give it” is true, I’ve been very consciously focusing on my own thoughts. Questioning them, testing them, challenging them.
As the year turns, I’m less anxious than I was a year ago. Less apt to worry about things I can’t control.
I’m more present.
I’m less defensive, more accepting, less judgmental.
Every time a thought rises in me that causes me to suffer, I question it—It’s become automatic. And it’s made my inner life so much better, which is also reflected in my outer life.
For one thing, I laugh a lot more than I used to.
Here’s an insignificant example that will hopefully illustrate how much better “every little minute” of my life is these days.
On Christmas Eve my husband and I went to bed on an air mattress in my office as we had a full house. Sometime during the night I woke up and had an itch on my hand so I was scratching it. Well, apparently, the quaking of the air mattress woke my husband because he nudged me with his elbow.
“Don’t do that!” I said, in a whining voice I would not let my 3-year-old get away with. “You know I hate when you do that.” I rolled over in a huff and then I started laughing.
“What?” My husband asked.
“What a great way to start Christmas Day,” I said, still laughing. Then he was laughing, too.
As soon as I told my husband not to do that, the thought came to me: Of course he can do that, he just did it. I immediately saw how ridiculous my response was.
When am I going to stop acting like a 3-year-old?
Every time I see myself as I truly am, warts and all.
I say “every time” because it’s going keep happening—I’m human, after all. But my hope is that I’ll remain in that childish state for shorter and shorter periods of time whenever it happens.
That’s been my experience, especially in the past few years.
So hopefully I’ll handle my husband elbowing me in the night differently than I did recently, but there’ll be another situation that brings out my inner brat.
That’s life: there are always more opportunities to see myself as I am and to decide how I’m going to think, feel, and act.
I’ll keep working on it.
You?
My daughter’s fish died the other day – from neglect. I felt terrible about it dying, and became even more annoyed when my husband suggesting feeding the dead fish to the dog. My initial thought was about how callous my family members were – after all, this was a living thing. It deserved the right to live. So I sulked. But sulking takes up too much energy and produces nothing so I began to think about why I was so upset about this fish.
I went upstairs to my office and wrote a dark yet hopeful story about loss and grief and our ability to feel compassion and bounce back from adversity. I couldn’t change the inevitable – the fish died. But I could channel my negative feelings into something positive. It’s always about turning it around and asking: “How am I going to handle the feelings this situation creates?” “Why do I feel this way?” “If I have a knee-jerk reaction what kind of a counter-reaction will I get?”
And especially, as you mention: “What are my choices?” We do tend to forget we have more than one choice and go with the knee-jerk rather than pausing to consider options.
Thanks for reminding me!