I Choose... Self-Discipline

I Choose… Self-Discipline

Hey there everybody!

So my husband went grocery shopping yesterday… and he inadvertently gave me a GRAND opportunity to practice this work in a focused and diligent way, for the express purpose of—as I say over and over and over again throughout ALL of my material—not being at the mercy of my circumstances. Because there IS no such thing.

Yesterday, I had an in-my-face opportunity to choose how I wanted to experience a circumstance that could have potentially caused me considerable anxiety and fear if I had allowed it to.

Here’s what happened. Rick left at about 4:30 to go get some groceries. This does not usually take him very long, and it’s rare for him to be gone longer than an hour.

At 6:00 he still wasn’t home and I got my first little niggle of worry when I noticed what time it was, that he still wasn’t home, and that he had forgotten his phone.

So what, exactly, is worry? You’ve all heard me say this before… now say it with me: “Worry” is what happens when we create a problem in our imagination where only a potential problem exists. And oh boy did my mind ever try to “awfulize” the simple fact that he had been gone longer than I expected him to be! My imagination tried to place him in all sorts of awful scenarios, and the “What-if Monster” was VERY present. “What-if THIS awful, terrible thing has happened to him?!” and “If it wasn’t that, then What-if THIS awful, terrible thing has happened to him?!”

Sheesh! I am so grateful that I’ve been doing this work long enough to recognize when I am creating my own suffering in those times that my mind tries to run away with me. Last night as I was making the deliberate choice to experience that circumstance in a positive-feeling way, I found myself thinking of last Sunday’s I Choose, and I decided to “sacrifice” the story that my fear was trying to create. I sacrificed that story in favor of one that felt WAY better. I deliberately neutralized “What-if something awful has happened” with “What-if something awesome has happened?!” [Those of you who have read Successfully MidAir will recognize Tool #3 here.] I began to deliberately picture fun things that could have happened to delay him. As it got later and later and he was gone longer and longer, I had to do this more and more often. And yes, the later it got the more difficult it was. But it was not impossible!

And – of course – it worked. Why? Because it ALWAYS works!

He got home at 7:00, after really only being gone for about an hour! You see, just because he went out the door at 4:30 did not mean that he actually left at 4:30. One of the reasons that we moved back to Mesa was so Rick could help out around this property (it’s one of his favorite things to do), and when he went to leave, he stopped to help his brother and his niece with something before he left. That took quite a bit longer than he thought it would, and he ended up not leaving until just before 6:00. Meanwhile, I was working here in my office where I can’t see the front of the house, so I had no clue that he didn’t leave when I thought he did.

Which means what? It means that my imagination was completely incorrect as it tried to make me believe that something awful had happened, and if I had allowed my mind to go down that path I would have literally tortured myself for that entire hour between 6:00 and 7:00 for no reason at all.

So what the experience turned out to be was just a great reminder that I always, always, always get to choose how I want to experience my circumstances. Always.

I Choose… Self-Discipline

This week I just plain pay attention to what I’m doing with my mind, because I know that that is always what is creating my experience of my circumstances. I do the work of remembering that circumstances are completely neutral that that they do not care one bit what kind of story I animate them with. Positive or negative. Good or bad. How I experience them is always completely my choice.

Successfully MidAir people, what I did last night was a combination of Tools 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 10. And THIS is a great example of how those tools are meant to be applied… never to change our circumstances, because that is not possible, but to change our experience of them, which is always possible.

I know I repeated myself a lot in this I Choose. It was done purposely. I encourage you to read it repeatedly, too. It offers a big message.

And, as always, love to you all!

Sandi