Day Seventeen: A Little Watery

            My husband went into the basement this morning to bring up our Christmas decorations.  I was doing dishes when I hear him calling me.  It sounded like he said there was water in the basement, but I was hoping I heard wrong so I went into the basement to get the real story instead of yelling back and forth.  Oh no, I heard correctly.  Thankfully I tend to pack in plastic bins so we didn’t lose a large amount of stuff, but the water heater is definitely leaking.  I have to admit that this coming on the heels of a broken fridge is probably not going to make the owner of the house happy, but there’s not much we can do about it.  I’m just grateful that we caught it before it spread too far.  Tomorrow I’ll be making a call to our landlords. Today I’m going to put up Christmas decorations.

Day Sixteen: Who's Right?

            Have you ever been in a situation when you know you’re right, but another person is convinced that they’re right?  I had that happen to me that other day.  I was in the office doing and the woman that was training me was going over how to do a deposit.  Now, I admit that I ask a lot of questions and I second guess myself a lot, but I knew I hadn’t learned how to enter the information into the computer.  She asked me if I remembered how to do it and I replied that I hadn’t learned how yet.  She was convinced that she had taught me and I was equally convinced that she hadn’t, especially after she showed me how to do it.  She reminded me of the week before when she had shown me how to do the deposit.  I remembered learning the slip but not the computer portion.  I just knew I hadn’t.  We were both convinced that we were right and we were locked in our positions.  Finally, I just let it go and learned how to do what I needed to do.  I realized it didn’t matter who was right or wrong, it just mattered that I learned how to do my job.  People tend to get caught up in the right and wrong battles.  It causes an incredible amount of stress and anxiety.  In this case, I still believe that I was correct, but I decided that it was more important to learn than to be right.  Next time you find yourself in that right and wrong battle ask yourself, is it more important that I insist that I’m right or can I be secure with myself enough to accept the situation and move on?  I’m not talking about giving away your power or being a door mat.  I’m saying find out what’s really important in the situation and go forward from that perspective.

Day Fifteen: Appreciate People as They Are

            Sometimes it’s difficult to see people as they are.  We can’t figure out why that man at work is always rude, or why the cashier has to tell us about her life story while checking out our groceries.  Often we form instant judgments about people who act outside of our perceived norm.  Even a group of people laughing can cause someone to look down on them or be rude.  Instead of making instant judgments it would be wonderful if we could all just take a deep breath and accept.  Perhaps that cashier doesn’t get to talk to anyone at home perhaps there is no one at home to talk to.  Taking a couple minutes out of your day to listen might prove beneficial to both of you.  That man at work may have suffered a loss in his family or maybe he is just a grumpy rude person.  The point is that once we accept these people as they are and stop fighting against them (and their personality quirks) life becomes much easier.

            I had a gentleman in one of my classes who was the grumpy guy.  He was an older gentleman, about sixty-five, and he had an opinion about everything.  This man was not gentle with his opinions either, he just threw them out there, not caring if it hurt someone’s feelings or not.  When it was my turn to share a story with the class, the first thing he said was that the opening paragraph was bullshit.  That was the word he used and believe me, my feelings were hurt.  The next couple of weeks were uncomfortable in class.  It was clear that I was hurt and it was clear that he didn’t care.  He would come into class and greet every person by name except me.  Then an idea hit me.  What if I just forgave him for being an ass, because that’s who he was?  He’s sixty-five and very set in his ways.  I could sit in class day after day feeling sorry for myself, but he was being rude to other people and they just moved on.  So one day I waited for him after class and told him that I appreciated his feedback.  Needless to say he looked shocked.  He said he thought he had been too harsh, but he was glad to hear that I wasn’t mad at him.  Everything cleared up after that day.  I’m not saying he turned nice, he was still a mean old guy, but I understood and accepted that was who he was.  Things got easier for me once I just accepted who he was and stopped pushing and struggling against it.  No I didn’t want him to be mean to me, and I certainly don’t condone him being cruel to people, but I do understand that there is something deeper behind it and I know from experience that once you take that deep breath and say okay I accept this is how you are life gets easier.  You’re the only one that can change the way you feel about someone.  If you feel angry because someone is mean to you, you’re only hurting yourself.  They might be able to sense that you are angry, but they either won’t care or can’t care (in some cases).  Changing your perspective helps you release that anger or whatever emotion you are struggling with.  It’s an ongoing process.  I know with the man in my English class I had to catch myself a few times and remind myself that, that is how he was and I didn’t need to react or judge it.  Accepting people as they are isn’t going to make your life perfect, but it will help release some of the tension and stress you have been struggling with and that is one step closer to relief. 

Day Fourteen: Taking Aim

           I tend to be a worrier.  I try not to be, but the trying doesn’t work very well.  I just end up worrying about worrying.  The other night I was worrying about work.  I was talking to my husband about my fears about my first day alone on the job.  There’s just so much to learn and remember and I was worried about it all.  After hearing me out for a while he told me that he had an army analogy for me to help me with my worrying.  He said, “In the military, you shoot the target that closest.  You shoot that one first and worry about the ones in the back later, because they are far away.  That gives you time to aim properly.  It doesn’t make sense to aim at the targets in the back first.  If you did that you would miss the ones up front and you probably wouldn’t hit the ones in the back either.  So do the same thing with life, aim for the target that closest.”  To me, this felt like an analogy for staying in the now.  I was so focused on worrying about the future that I was missing what was right in front of me.  Now I’m making it a daily practice to check, what am I aiming at today?  I want to hit my targets, but I have to be focused and aware of what position they are in so I can take careful aim.  I need to take my time with the ones that are far away (in the future) and aim for the ones that are up close and personal so I can actively participate in my life instead of just worrying about it all the time. 

Day Thirteen: Final Exam Day

            Today I take my last two final exams.  One is online and the other is on campus.  I haven’t done a lot of studying since I started my job, but I’m not worried about it.  I will go in, do the best I can and move on.  The truth is I’ve already moved on.  Today just makes it official for me. 

Day Twelve: Declaration and Co-Creation

            My personal beliefs are that we are co-creators of the world around us.  With that in mind I found myself seriously frustrated during the last two to three months.  My life felt stuck.  Every time I asked for something I felt like I wasn’t getting it or worse I was getting the opposite.  I thought, I’m doing my spiritual practices every day why am I not getting any results, why am I still so stuck?  When I took the time to look at what I was asking for, I realized that I had nothing specific in mind.  I was just saying show me the way or tell me what to do.  I don’t think it’s a bad thing to ask for divine guidance or to allow ourselves to be moved in a certain direction that’s definitely part of the co-creation process.  Sometimes we lead and other times we are led.  The same day that I was looking at my situation I decided that I needed to make declarations.  I needed to be specific in what I was asking for or at least be more specific. I wrote down four declarations in my journal.  The first was to get a job.  I said I wanted a job where I could learn and grow, good pay, nice people and safe.  My second declaration was that I wanted to get into a more serious practice with my writing.  I wanted to be doing it every day.  I knew once I was finished with school it would be easy to put my writing on the back burner, so I wanted to develop a good writing habit before the semester ended.  

            Less than a week later my first declaration of a job came through.  Around that same time I started working on this writing experiment.  Declaring something to the Universe doesn’t mean that your job is done, you still have action that you need to take.  You can’t just wish for a job and then sit on the couch all day.  For my part in getting the job, I declared that I would like a job and things that I would like to accompany that job.  I also talked to my friends about my declaration and the last thing that I had to do to complete the process was complete a resume.  I honestly feel the hardest part was remembering to ask for what I wanted.  I think it’s important that we keep in touch with God/Goddess/the Universe (or whatever name works for you) on a daily basis.  We need to declare what we would like to create today and ask for assistance in co-creating whatever that is in our lives.  I think when you begin to make this a daily practice you’ll be shocked at how quickly things begin to appear in your life. 

Day Eleven: Spiritual Food

            Yesterday was a pretty fabulous day as predicted, mostly because I got to spend time with my friends.  We just started trying to find a church, which was one of the things we went to do yesterday, besides eating. We used to get what we call our spiritual food from the shop that one of my friends owned.  It was a place where we could all come together and talk and share our experiences.  This shop closed down the middle of this year and we all found ourselves hungry.  Church really isn’t something that is that we reach for.  We are more spiritual than religious and church tends to fall into the religious category, however we still decided to be open minded and give it a try.  There are a couple of churches in the area that fall under a more spiritual umbrella so of course these were the ones we wanted to attend or at least give them a trail run.  The first church we went to was okay.  There were several good points and a few not so good points.  This weekend we went to the second church on the list.  On the way there I told my friends that going to the first church had opened my eyes to see that I was getting spiritual food every day through my morning practices.  I hadn’t realized that until we went to church.  Somehow my own practices didn’t feel good enough, but after we went to that one service I realized that I was feeding my soul a little bit each morning and I wasn’t feeling such an urge to go to church.  After this second service my friends were inclined to agree that maybe they needed to incorporate some or more spiritual practices in their lives.  The service was exactly what we weren’t looking for, but in a way that was okay.  It helped us see exactly what we were looking for and gave us the motivation to either continue finding our own food or to begin setting up practices that fed us.  It wasn’t the best experience, but it certainly could have been worse and we did get a good message from it.  Find your own food and you will find great satisfaction.