Tag Archives: attitude

Detach with Love

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Detach-with-love

Whenever life takes a nasty turn I try to ask myself how did I contribute toward it? Don’t get me wrong, I’m neither a victim nor am I (any longer) the over responsible person who must blame themselves for everything. I just know that in order to change the route you must be aware of the place you came off the road, onto the bumpy dirt path, that led you into the swampy ditch. Then you can drag your muddy ass up out of the hole you find yourself in and never take that road again. This doesn’t happen if you don’t take responsibility for that first (or the second) wrong turn and learn from it.

The question is what do you do when you are watching someone else heading for the ditch and you can tell the hole they will be in might just swallow them up and they have no idea where they got off the road? You might think to jump in, waving your hands and screaming, “Save yourself” or “Watch out ahead.” Maybe you even throw yourself in the ditch a few times so they can step over your back avoiding most of the mud. But then how will they ever learn to change the route?

Sometimes, as painful and dangerous as it feels, the only answer is to let go and detach with love, standing to the side while letting your heart fly from your chest, into the ditch, and hope that somehow all the love you have in it will provide the strength to that lost soul to get back on the road that leads somewhere better.

The three things I cannot change are the past, the truth and you.
Anne LaMott

Strength

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How much can one person handle? I always wonder what choices are there. Giving in, giving up, seems to yield additional troubles.
Why are we all so afraid to feel the emotions associated with heartbreak in whatever form it takes? Why is it so acceptable to medicate our feelings into submission, instead of standing up and saying I will not be defeated by them? Saying it over and over until we believe it and it becomes true.

“Fall down seven times, get up eight.” – Japanese Proverb

Attitude and the 100th Post!

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When does one problem take precedence over another? Whose sorrows or worries are more important than another’s and at what point is okay to just roll over and say you can’t take it anymore? My guess is that is never the answer. Once you roll over there is that daunting task of getting back up again. So, many of us just keep going whether we want to or not.  Quietly, or not, going about the business of life. 

It’s the priorities of the world with which I struggle. I can’t be the only person absolutely appalled by the amount of time and effort put into saving the Twinkie?  I understand that jobs hang in the balance but this is obviously a ploy by management to force a settlement that will insure large salaried corporate jobs with cuts to those that can afford it least. Another thing I’m having trouble listening to is the scandal of some repulsive looking little man and his botoxed, silicone enhanced, gaggle that give intelligent woman a bad name. All this while we all but ignore the people dying in their homes across the world from mine in the Middle East and others who are still homeless due to a hurricane in my own backyard. 

I have been unusually quiet over the last few months due to a combination of alternately mourning (friends, family, my past life…pick one) and trying to make several new ventures come together at once. It’s been one of those times where my life resembles a puzzle for which I’ve lost the box.  There is no picture to work off of and I have no idea what it’s going to look like when I’m done. I work better off the picture, but I have a feeling that life is bigger and better when you stop trying to engineer the outcome.  So instead of whining (in public, anyhow) I’ve gotten very quiet, put my head down and gotten to work. Sometimes I look up and like what I see and other times I want to hide in the corner. 

I suppose the key is to measure the good and the bad and possibly remind yourself that we have the choice to focus on what we choose to give attention and the power to make a difference, whether it is a world issue or a personal one. Of course, there are those times when the only thing we have any control over is our attitude and those are the times that we trudge on, keep our fingers crossed, and try to discern what is important and what is just taking up too much space in out world.   

Have a thoughtful and happy Thanksgiving everyone.  Focus on something positive and thank you for following, caring, and reading this, my 100th post! 

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor E. Frankl

 

 

 

The real me

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Tell me what you yearn for and I shall tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wandering.

James Hillman

Oh James Hillman, you are so wise. Who would I be if I could create the idealized version of myself?

I yearn for freedom in my day and in my life. Sometimes when the day is moving along and I’m in a meeting, I’ll gaze out the window and imagine myself making a me-shaped hole in the wall much like you have seen in a cartoon.

I yearn for a feeling at the end of the day of a job well done and of having made at least a small dent in making the world a better place.

I yearn for a place I can make an impact, be heard and respected, and interact with like-minded people.

I yearn for a version of myself that is not so stressed that 7:00 seems like a great time to go to bed. Where I don’t wake up in the middle of the night wondering about some litigation or observation that is pending. Where I don’t eat an entire lunch and look down and not remember what it was because I ate it so quickly. Where I don’t lose patience for my own family because I’ve spent all day dealing with unreasonableness.

I yearn to be calm and healthy and centered. I’d love to spend my days working towards an attainable goal, no matter how difficult. I want to have time and energy left over to write, and listen to the people I love and laugh a bit. At the end of the day I’d like to be able to say “Now that was a good day” and mean it.

I’d love to hear how others were able to take the leap of faith to become their “real self”

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

William James