Okay, so of course we all go through times when life really is hard. We all know it can be. As the Buddha said, “Life is suffering.”
But he didn’t leave it with that! The Noble Truths go on to basically say that if you can control your body and mind in a way that helps others instead of harming them, generating wisdom in your own mind, you can end your suffering and problems.
And as M. Scott Peck begins his Road Less Traveled, “Life is difficult.” He, too, counsels that once you accept that, it becomes a lot easier.
But I’m not really talking about collective consciousness here, but rather, my own! LOL. Because one thing I know for true, if I believe something is going to be hard, it is.
I’ve just gone through a really tough week, at the tail end of 6 weeks of fighting a problem with one of my girls. They are the heart of me, so when something goes wrong there, it cuts to the core. You know what that’s like. Sometimes stuff just happens. But we got through it, me and my girls, with a far happier and more positive result than I could have ever hoped for. Did I believe all was lost at one point? Yep. But I didn’t allow myself to stay there.
And here I’m thinking more in terms of tasks. If you’re living, truly living, one of the main goals is expansion. You know, to jump out of your comfort zone and tackle something entirely new. We know doing so keeps our minds sharp as we age. No study needed to cite for this point! Gazillions have been done to show that. Undertaking a physical endeavor, no matter when, helps keep the undertaker at bay. Yep, we know this too.
But every bit as important is it motivates us onward, gives us new zest for life. Puts that spring back in our steps. Flooding us with feel-good hormones, so that emotional health skyrockets. All good things!
Even knowing this into my bones, when I take on a new big project, my first reaction is: This is going to be hard. I wasn’t a born optimist! LOL. It was a learned trait J And one with which I still have to be mindful. Because my first instinct is the sentence above.
I learn through trial and error. Although I watch and listen as others go through trials, and I can learn, in theory, the lessons, I tend not to actually learn them that way. In other words, I seem to need to experience them for myself to get the understanding. Note to self: Maybe this is a good lesson to tackle next!
But I digress.
What I have learned (thank you, Universe!) is that once I proclaim the new task difficult, and realize I’ve just done so, I can change that thought. And behold and lo—that works for me! I say, “There you go again, seeing a mountain here. Do you really know it’s going to be a mountain? Of course not! You cannot know that for sure. So, let’s focus on the other possibility.”
And what always happens next? The difficulty fades away.
I can only laugh about this issue as it played out. A long haul. Which built to the point of all truly being lost, and a drastic solution proposed by my vet. That’s when I went, NOT SO FAST. And instead of buying into the disaster, I pulled out the big guns and called the top of the food chain—the leading repro vet in the country.
And you know what his very words were?
“Y’all’ve made a mountain out of a molehill.”
No joke. He was right—we had. But he provided the positive path forward, to get us out of the mess we’d made.
Of course that might not have been the case. This might not have ended well. But the point being, it was my very refusal to believe all was lost that caused me to seek a different road.
Hm. Maybe I can do that more quickly next time! LOL. But for now I proclaim: “Life is Bliss!”
How do you turn your thoughts around?
