One of the hardest things to do

We are taught to "be the best that we can be". Wow,
there is some stress for you...consistently. I am a miserable
failure at times...we all are! But to accept it when it happens,
is one of the hardest things to do...and yet,
it is the best thing you can do for yourself.

Experiment: Find a quiet place with no distractions,
no radios, no tv, no one else to disturb your peace and quiet.
I know, I know, there aren't too many places left. Trust me
in saying though, it is worth the effort to find one for yourself !

I have had several aquariums at my home, and this one thing
I read a long time ago still holds true...that as long as a fish
has a place of refuge he/she will always be confident in its life,
and secure in its surroundings, and will always be protective of it.
The fish will also remain active and healthy.
That sounds like a good recipe for us too!

Find a place that you can go to repeatedly when you need to...
This place will then be your refuge in sad or bad times. You
can go there physically, or just mentally when you can't.

Now are you in your quiet place? Good! Give yourself
about thirty minutes to forget the things that brought you there
in the first place. Tune into your surroundings.

Now think back to a time when you really messed up something,
and felt so ashamed you wanted to crawl into a hole and just hibernate...
Well guess what? you are there now...
Now make a big smile, even if you have to fake it, OKAY?
It will help for the next step.
If you did this right then you will feel some sadness
from the thing you did wrong, and at the same time
feel some gladness that it is over. This is what I call mixed
emotions, and they can run away with you, control you,
and make you a recluse if YOU let them.

Turning off the worrying, bad emotions, that seem to cripple us,
is the trick. Just thinking of past events can stir up emotions,
even the ones we had thought we had overcome. This is why
you need peace and quiet to practice this. Distractions will not let you
concentrate on the one emotion at a time. Remember I said
to smile, do it now. Do you feel more lighthearted? Good.
Facial expressions are linked to our emotions also.
Maybe you can, or can not, make things completely right again.
But we can forgive ourselves, and forgive others,too.

You now have a choice to make.
Everyone has a choice here, you either remain upset
emotionally....or you learn to accept things the way they are,
and turn off your emotions so you can move on.
Remember this past event you brought up is just that,
"from the past".

Everything that has happened to you, even the
emotions you are now feeling, are from the past.
Right? Ok, then...

These feelings were not in the present,
until you thought of them again.
Your emotions keep them alive. Can we turn the emotions off?
Yes, but it takes practice on your part ! It is not easy,
and requires discipline on your part. Do you want to control
your life again? Yeah, I thought so!

It is proven that it takes about thirty minutes of solitude to
get rid of all thoughts and emotions cleared out of our minds.
You know, like that tune stuck in your head after you turn the
radio or tv off, it just keeps playing over and over...

For example: I can be in a quiet place, and my emotions
will be so strong at times, that even just a single word heard
in a place, will trigger a song in my head with that word in it!
So give yourself some time to calm down from whatever is
stuck in your head. Observe your surroundings, let your
emotions "cool off". Give them time to fade away...

You may not get to that quiet time where you are in control of
your thoughts, the first time... DON'T GIVE UP ! We all had
to practice getting up to crawl, then we had to learn to pull
ourselves up to stand, then we had to practice stepping away
from the chair or whatever until we could walk...then we had
to practice walking until we could run...

Each new experience gave us the confidence to move on...
The past experience or confidence was our safe refuge to return
to if we needed to...we do not usually use it, but we know it
is there, if we need it. Just like the fish in my aquarium.

This is very important to remember, every new thing we
desire to do requires some practice, until we are happy with
the experience and it becomes "second nature" to us.
If you do not become happy and confident with where you are,
you will not have the confidence to move on...
You will stay in your comfortable rut called life...sad, but true !


Do I continue to stay sad, or get up from my quiet place
and smile all the way home, wanting to make things right again?
I say to myself " I am not perfect, neither are the other parties
involved in my problem". Remember to smile... ;>)
Pracitce smiling into the face of defeat... ;>)
Defeat will soon tire of your constant smiling, and will give
way to your victory...

It is the giving up and saying to myself that,
"I am not perfect" that I finally give in to admitting...
I make mistakes from time to time, that finally gives me
the signal to get up and do something...to crawl out of my rut,
and face the rest of the world...realizing that no one else
is perfect either. We all make our share of mistakes, no one gets all
things right "the first time", every time.

Every time you see someone else doing it "right the first time",
remember just one thing...just because you saw the
one time they got it right in your eyes, does not mean it was
the first attempt at what they did. This just happens to be the
first time you saw them do it. Remember to smile...it means
you have accepted things as they are, and you can say "it's ok",
and " I can move on now".

You just chose to see the one time they got it right...why?
That is what we are trained to see all of our lives. We are all
looking for perfection, that is why we are all so frustrated
all the time. Perfection is an illusion. We live in a world (planet)
perfect for us at this time. We just choose not to accept it as
ours, or that this is as perfect as it will get!

Our world seems to be in a constant state of chaos, but
in its chaotic state, there is a method. By everything being in
a constant state of change, the world as we see it stays the
same...not convinced?

Look back through history. There have always been
times of war, and times of peace. The earth itself is in
a constant state of change...
Earthquakes upsetting the land and the ocean floors.
Tidal waves cleaning off our shores.
Volcanoes making new lands.
Waves eroding our beaches.
Tornadoes destroying our cities...
Nature was here first! We can not stop it!
Why would we...the world is in a constant fight for balance.
Therein is the perfection of this planet.
After all, how long has this been going on?
How, or why, do we think we can make it any better?

OOPS, sorry for the side track there...please forgive me. ;>)

Shame or guilt keeps us from admitting we goof up
once in a while...so what! Your real friends will accept you
for it...and they will probably like you even more for it...
Failure often builds character! Who doesn't like a real
character around from time to time? ;>)
Accepting yourself now as you are, will finally open up
the door so you can improve yourself, and your life !

Besides it does us all some good when someone else
admits their failure in front of everyone else, why?
Because it was not us that messed up at that time and place,
it sort of takes the heat off of us all, for a moment.

So practice turning on and off your past emotions, and keep
realizing that all memories of anything that keep us disturbed
emotionally are in the past and we continue to keep them alive,
"by choice".

We always have a choice to change things around us. The
choice may be to let things stay the way they are, or we can
choose to make them different. So it is with our emotions also.

Practice making choices in your life...don't let life make
the choices for you !