The first one that I picked reads:
"I am not limited by past thinking. I choose my thoughts with care. I constantly have new insights and new ways of looking at the world. I am willing to change and grow."
These are big thoughts for me. Because I am limited by past thinking. I don't choose my thoughts with care. And I have been reluctant in accepting change.
But, I do embrace growth, and I constantly have new insights.
However, one without the other cannot thrive. So, I must change the way that I think about things. And then I will break the cycle.
I thought that I had begun to implement this into my life- I was spending more time working on my art, I was making more of an effort to reach out to loved ones...
So I picked the next card:
"I rejoice in what I have, and I know that fresh new experiences are always
ahead. I greet the new with open arms. I trust life to be wonderful."
This, now this is even bigger. Had I only known what live had in store, I wouldn't have selected this card. I would have let it rest in the box a bit longer because two weeks ago a rather shocking and unexpected turn of events occurred at work that turned my world upside down. Life wasn't wonderful and the only greeting that I wanted to give it was a knuckle sandwich and a kick that sent it flying face first into a pile of mud. Not wonderful. Not wonderful at all.
Since that day, I have woken up every morning feeling anxious, scared, unsure of myself and worried about the future. My energy was being pulled from me like water going down the drain and even though I was trying desperately to stop it, I was only causing myself to feel more exhausted. Where had my integrity gone? I picked these words and believed them to be true- but only when things were going my way. It's one thing to say that you believe something, but I was being called to act on it.
I know that there is hope in this situation, and in the end everyone will be better off because of it. I know that change is good for those of us that are involved, and that we were all dragging our feet. Accepting the decision felt like a blow against my believes. I struggled to accept that there was no way that I could fight back. I had no idea what to do next, how to pick up the pieces, what to do, where to go, how to go about living, and the fact that from the outside my life hadn't really changed at all only made it that much harder. Watching the news, seeing the people in Haiti, their lives had changed, who am I to complain? I should have known, should have expected it, should have been prepared. But sometimes we're not.
My life had changed. It changed very quickly and I didn't like it. And my actions screamed that. But I also didn't like acting that way. I didn't like knowing that when I walked into the room that I was going to have a negative impact on the people that I spoke to. That I was sharing stress, anxiety, fear, frustration and anger. That I had no joy and I did not want to see others acting joyfully.
Reading those simple words again and again forced me to recognize that I could live my life differently. I was the one robbing myself. I wouldn't have chosen for things to work out this way, but they have. All that I can do is decide how I respond to it. I can walk around behaving the way that I always have and get the same results that I have always gotten. Or I can greet the new with open arms. Because greeting the new doesn't mean accepting the decisions made by others that I disagree with, it means reaching out in a new direction, looking for new opportunities, looking toward the future, and allowing myself to move away from these broken events. What happened yesterday is part of the past. What happened wasn't wonderful, but without it the wonderful could not happen. To say that I trust life to be wonderful means that I must believe that life is wonderful, and to believe that life is wonderful means I must act like it.
January's Lesson: Finding balance in a world that is ever changing means learning how to accept change.
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