About the same time as I was making my decisions related to what I want to be doing with my tangible time going forward, another crisis of consciousness (or the heart) was coming to a head. It was the fact that I was not particularly happy. I have found over the last year that I have become more and more frustrated over things, even little things in life. And my level of worry has increased too, even though things are going just fine in every aspect.
So I did some deep contemplation. Despite my having done spiritual practices for close to a half a century, I felt in a lot of ways I was going through the motions. I felt dry. What did I need to do to change that? There were two things I felt would really help change my attitude. One was focusing on Gratitude. The other was becoming more Trusting. I decided the former was the one I wanted to tackle first.
I've tried this before, focusing on Gratitude, without much success. Looking back, I decided that I had made the attempts to be Gratitude focused to analytical, too much of making a list of things. But Gratitude isn't a number. It is a feeling. So how do I make myself FEEL grateful?
I started with my house. I have a beautiful house. Truly beautiful. There is so much beauty actually in my house and my surroundings. But, it is human nature I think to stop focusing on all those little things. They just become part of the background. I started to look at each little thing with appreciation. What came out out of my mind and heart was this phrase,
HOW COOL IS THIS!
For the first day or so, it was a very interesting exercise. No. It was more than that. Those simple, if somewhat trite, words captured emotion. When I looked at some lovely thing that I had ignored for a while and said "How Cool Is That" I awakened feelings of appreciation within me.
I decided to keep going with the experiment. Sometimes it seems a bit weird to use this as my focus words. And it has been less than a week. But I can feel a big change in my attitude. Today I had a number of little things go wrong that I was able to see in a different light. It seemed a bit forced to say "How cool was this" for them, but I was still in that appreciative state of mind.
Maybe it is just using the words to put the focus positive and not negative. It is too early to tell. The true test will be if I can maintain this state of mind over a longer period.
Wish me luck.
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