Attitude Is Everything

“Your mental attitude determines what you make of it, either a stepping stone or stumbling block.” Bruce Lee

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It was my youngest son’s birthday, and was lucky enough to be in Washington D.C. celebrating with him. It’s always wonderful to see him; it makes my heart soar. We went to the National Museum of Health, had some delicious pizza, played games and socialized. But it’s 105 degrees here! Every

time I walked outside, I felt like an egg frying on the sidewalk. It would be easy to look negatively at the situation, assume I’m going to die from the heat and ignore all the joy that is before me, thereby wasting time with my amazing son. Hot weather aggravates my pain, gives me migraines and makes it more difficult to do things. It would have been easy to have a defeatist attitude that could ruin my trip and jeopardize my visit. That wasn’t my attitude though. I went there knowing it was going to be hot and difficult for me to do much, but my attitude was that I was going to have a great time, in spite of the heat. And you know what? I did!

Change The Way You React When Afraid

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do." --Eleanor Roosevelt

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I'm listening to a wonderful book on tape, Take Control of Your Life, by Mel Robbins. The premise of the book is that we are unable to identify a positive perspective when facing adversity, which comes from a place of fear. She postulates that our bodies have a learned flight or fight response that we are not even aware of, and before we can even process that we might be afraid or upset we can feel our body reacting to the fear. For me it might be an increase in pain, for others a headache or stomach ache or even an urge to eat or just sit and binge watch TV. If we feel the reaction and stop and ask, what am I afraid of?" we can slow down the body's response and minimize our suffering.

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I decided, I'm already in pain, what do I have to lose? So, the next time my pain began to flare I thought about what I was afraid of. Sometimes I was afraid of the pain itself. Once I was afraid of writing this blog. Sometimes I was afraid because I thought I wasn't good enough. Each time, once I identified the fear I was able to change my mindset. This helped me understand and control my fear, and it actually helped me cope with the pain.

Savoring the Joy

"Find Joy In The Journey"

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One of my sons got wonderful, joyous news today, and I was one of the lucky people he shared it with. I felt so grateful to be able to share this joyous moment with him, to be a part of it, to feel his joy. My heart wanted to soar, my feet wanted to dance. I was in a coffee shop and had errands to do, and I felt like people were looking at me strangely what with all the joy emanating from my pores, but I didn’t care.

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Great news, great joy doesn’t come around very often, so I’m going to savor the heck out of it. According to Merriam-Webster, savor means to relish, to delight in. Doesn’t that mean, when applied to an experience, we should stop and notice the joy, to make it last, to appreciate it as much as possible? I’m going to store this experience in my resiliency toolkit so that next time things are hard I can pull it out and relish it again, but first I’ll stop and

dance.