After the long holiday wipe-out, I find it hard to get back into my work groove and up to speed once again with the life I left behind. Some good advice that I gleaned from John Assaraf’s recent Brain-a-thon is: “When you lack motivation, push on through and do it anyway.” I’ve been practicing that and it actually works! Consequently, I’m overcoming the inertia that follows the holidays, and instead of feeling guilty, I’m feeling good about myself, and consequently energized, and I’m getting things done!
One of my resolutions this New Year is to live more mindfully. I want to be mindful of my attitude that I bring to any given situation: does it contribute anything positive or does it make matters worse? I want to be mindful not to slip into the easy response of negativity when things go wrong – which translates to not the way I want them to go. It happens in little ways every day. Do I really need to bite the head off of that stranger on the other end of the phone who wasn’t listening to what I said and now I have to repeat myself all over again? A negative mindset only complicates matters and slows the flow of continuity. It’s off-turning. Ultimately it is self-defeating. I find that often when something goes wrong the “wrong” is my own rush to judgment and if I pause to take a deep breath and change my energy things do change. Try it. Between “good” and “bad” there is a large zone that is neutral. If I return to neutral instead of laying my directional judgments of good or bad on a situation, it makes space for change to occur. Gestalt guru Fritz Pearls said “Don’t push the river. It’s flowing already.”
I intend to mindfully practice this for a week, by which time I hope that a different brain pattern will establish a groove that serves me well instead of the old self-sabotaging one that — more times than not — didn’t work very well. So far I’ve navigated through two successful days!
~~Paulette Frankl
January 26, 2016
