My 100-Day Project: Week Five
- I have an important meeting tomorrow I need to lead and have conflicting thoughts about it. I am anxious and excited all at the same time. I want it to flow and I want to give the audience the opportunity to see the world and their perceived problems in a different light. I want it to be a powerful experience, but I doubt my own abilities. This is normal, thoughts about myself and judging myself are normal. Thoughts come and they go — I get a happy one and then a judgey one. Instead of dwelling on the judgey ones, I want to let them go and dwell on openness, compassion, and generosity instead. This will help me be open to listening to my audience and asking them the questions that will most benefit them.
2. Thinking about thoughts. Thoughts are the bane of our existence but also of our potential a possibility. Our brains create thoughts all day long, yet we choose to focus on just a few. We’ll pull a thought out of our brain and hold it, charge it with meaning, create a story around it and let it pull us in one direction. The thought only holds power over us if we give it meaning and hold onto it. But if we let it go, here’s the thought, it’s only a thought, it has no power, just let it go, then we can let go of the story. Our brain will come up with another thought the next second, and the second after that, always a new thought. Why we choose to grab one thought over another is a curious matter. No thought has power over us that we don’t grant it.
3. Spending a few days in Florida and expected the weather to be nice, but it’s not. Yesterday was cool and today is rainy. But that’s how the weather is. It rains sometimes, it’s cool sometimes, it’s sunny sometimes. You can make plans, but you never know what will happen. Then when the weather is contrary to your plans, you adapt. Complaining about it doesn’t accomplish anything but ruining your day. Like Led Zeppelin sings: Good times, bad times, you know I’ve had my share. We all have sunny days and rainy days, and both are part of living life.
4. I did a lot of driving the last couple of days, but it’s made easier with the radio and with podcasts. I’ve always loved the radio. It’s like reading to me. You can’t use your eyes to see what is being described so you use your imagination a lot more. This is what I love about fiction. Engaging the imagination. What we imagine is unique to each person which is why there is always disagreement when a film version of a book is released. How I read the book, what I saw in my mind is completely different than anyone else’s yet they are all valid. Tapping into our imaginations can be relevatory, but we can also use that capacity to complicate our lives unnecessarily by imagining the worse. Let’s try to imagine the opposite, the possibility, what we can learn by any situation.
5. When I dropped my rental car at the agency yesterday, there was a lot of drama going on inside the office. One young lady was very upset and was letting the other know it in a very loud voice. The woman behind the counter, obviously used to this type of situation, kept her calm and finally the other woman left. I used to have, and still sometimes do, these types of outbursts. Over dramatizing everything. Blaming others, not taking responsibility for my own actions. There is never any need for it and it only clouds our thinking, removing any possibility for finding alternative solutions. While it may be natural for us to react, it’s not always helpful. If we can give ourselves the space, even for a tiny moment, to stop and think, we can move forward in much more helpful ways, for us and for those around us.
6. I’ve been thinking about listening this morning. I realize that I had the perfect moments for listening while I was on my long drives, but I didn’t take that opportunity. It really didn’t occur to me. It’s something I really want to focus on, but I am not making it a priority. I fell into the old habit of just automatically turning on the radio and then the podcasts. Both of those were time well spent but I wish I had had the presence of mind in the moment to allow myself some quiet listening time. I’ll just find another time in the future, perhaps right now!
7. Having come back from my trip I find myself behind in what I think I “should” have done while I was away. We all do this. Tell ourselves what we should and shouldn’t be doing. But the truth is everything is a choice. There is no should or should not. There is only what we do or don’t do. I chose to take off those few days to spend the time with my sister and my brother. Now that I am home, I am choosing to take one task at a time and work through each one that I choose to do. Laundry, bills, writing, cleaning house, emails, all the stuff. I don’t have to do any of it but I choose to do one task at a time and they will eventually get done. Remove the pressure on yourself. Make a choice and move on.
