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| This is one of my favorite photos of myself and I cannot wait to get back to Hawaii! |
I was doing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen and thinking about the blog...Learning to Love Myself - This Year's Journey. Do I love myself now? I asked myself that question. The answer is - yes! A resounding yes! Not that I didn't before, but I feel I've reached a new level and I do think that this blog has been a big part of reaching this new level. Something that happened recently made me put into practice a lot of what I've been reading and writing about.
As Oprah would say, I had an "Aha" moment. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of me - it matters what I think of me. It matters what I pay attention to and what I choose to focus on. I have control over how I choose to react in any situation. I realize this isn't "ground breaking" news for anyone or that this is no new concept, but I actually practiced it and I ended up "getting over" something SO much quicker and I felt FREE. I wasn't chained to feeling bad or obsessive thinking and analyzing. I was able to ask myself, Is this true? Is there anything I could or want to change about this? What actions can I take? How do I move forward? and I did just that. I moved forward. I DID IT and I felt free! Free of the drama, the negativity, the strife...I was free to be happy.
I had a good talk with a wise friend (Fajir Amin) recently (I'm so blessed to have wise friends!) She said, "I no longer have problems, I have a process." Amen. I realized too that this is a beautiful summative statement of what I've been reading and researching all year. It's a life philosophy. It's a way of reframing the entire world and how things happen. It's about taking control in a real way that makes sense and actually works.
I remember reading about this in the Robbin's book also - the language of things matters - how you describe something, how you define it, etc. There was a man Robbins described in his book that said he was "annoyed" or "peeved" about a certain situation, in which the other people experiencing the same thing were "enraged" or "furious". It made all the difference. Chapter 9 of the Robbins book is entirely about vocabulary. Words matter. It's something I've known all my life as a writer, as a teacher, as a person in any relationship - words matter because they have power whether we want them to or not. So choose your words carefully, especially when speaking to yourself!
I also discovered this fantastic TED talk this morning - on New Years Day - and in it Tasha Eurich discusses this very thing I've been journeying through all year: Self-Awareness and how so many of us get it wrong. She talks about how we must change our questioning to What questions, rather than Why questions. This is amazing to me! I've often felt that the Why questions lead us to feel stuck because in majority of cases in life - we may never know why! I'm so excited to learn this and practice this further. I didn't know this is what I was doing in the most recent situation that I had, but it is. I asked myself questions and although the questions weren't exactly, "What" questions they were introspective questions and when I stopped asking myself the "Why" questions - I experienced freedom and happiness so much quicker!
I'm going to continue the blog and it will be evolving and ever-changing as does life. I've not given up on the Tony Robbins book (Awaken the Giant Within) because it's really proven to be a great resource and I've learned and applied several principles from it and seen results. Although, I have 250 pages more to read!! I've also started reading, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" by Dr. Richard Carlson and "Anger" by Thich Nhat Hanh. None of this is "easy reading" and I don't expect to finish anything quickly, but I do intend to soak it all up!
Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGdsOXZpyWE&feature=youtu.be
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