Daily Gratitude: So many of us fall into this trap. We think that “making a living” is our life. It can be but all too often it becomes a “work around”. We’re too busy making that “living” to actually enjoy or even know what life is all about.

I know I spent decades just making a living. I didn’t know what life was supposed to be or entail. It wasn’t until I was stationed here in San Antonio in the 80s that I found out there was more to life than medicine and the military. The time was perfect and I was ripe for a change.

Have you experienced that? Look back over your life and see if you’ve had the “awakening”. Have you reorganized your priorities so you could enjoy what you’re doing all day every day.

That’s what “making a living” should be – just an extension of the activities you love. It really doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re happy doing it. If you’re not happy, make it a top goal to change that situation.

You may not be able to change your job right now but can you change the way you look at it or the people you work with so that you’re not spending 10 or more hours of your life miserable. Take this one goal and see if you can brainstorm it to make yourself happier.

Daily Gratitude: How true this is. Have you ever tried something new that you weren’t very excited about but felt that you should do it? How much progress did you make and how fast? Now think of something you started doing because you loved the idea. How did that progress? Probably a lot faster and more successful than the first. Why? Because your head was in it. It was something you wanted to do. It was a mental change.

I can’t believe how “good” and well behaved I’ve been for the past 6 weeks in a sling. Sure the first couple of weeks were because of the pain but after about week 3, I remained extremely conscientious about not doing things I wasn’t supposed to do. Why? Because I didn’t want my clavicle to take any longer than necessary to heal because i have things to do with my right arm .

I set it in my mind that although this was inconvenient, it was just something I had to accept and deal with, staying away from the pity party or the “how can I get around this” type of attitude.

I had mentally accepted this and the steps towards recovery. It was a change of mind from the kicking and screaming and the “why me. This is the pits” type thinking. And guess what?

I made a lot of progress. You can too by examining your thoughts and feelings about something you “have to do”. How can you make it exciting so your mind can embrace it enthusiastically? Spend some time pondering that question.

Daily Gratitude: At first this seems both counterintuitive and impossible, to say nothing of being improbable. On closer examination though, it’s an important concept.

The reality of this is something I’ve learned recently (from a book titled “Don’t Believe Everything You Think”. At first I was not onboard with its concepts, thinking it made no sense and that it simply meant you shouldn’t pay attention to what’s happening in the world.

However, I have come to understand it better in the last couple of weeks. Here’s my interpretation: thoughts come to you from the universe. Thinking, though, is something we do, we create and therefore can lead us down paths we don’t really want to travel. We can change our thinking if we want and to me that means it’s generated from within and doesn’t come from the universe.

Here’s an example. I developed nerve pain in my arm which apparently was the result of being in the sling. Ok, fine. The thought was “this is pain, nerve pain. It’s bothersome.” What happened next, though, was of my own making. My mind started to go down the wrong road of “oh no. What if this is like the pain after shingles? It feels the same. Will it ruin my life again? I can’t handle that?’ What will I do?” Etc. This is thinking. And it’s not doing any good. It’s destructive, in fact.

So being wiser from having read the book, this is what I did: i recognized the “thought” (I have this pain) and then I was able to separate the second part (the destructive thinking) and I told myself “yes you have pain BUT you don’t know anything about what is going to happen with it. You’re just thinking and essentially creating these bad ideas that haven’t even happened yet”

This interruption allowed me to recognize what I was doing and stop it cold in its tracks. This kept me from going down that long and lonely road of “everything is ruined”. The interruption enabled me to stop and move on to something else. Thus, my brain wasn’t able to keep doing “zoomies” up and down one particular neural circuit in an activity that would possibly have led to chronic pain and suffering.

This is also the essence of the two arrow concept of pain and suffering.

Practice stopping yourself after you have a thought. Instead of “it’s raining so my weekend is totally ruined. Why does this always happen to me?” Go with “it’s raining. The other stuff trying to take over my mind is just my thinking and it’s not necessarily true so just stick to the fact that it’s raining and move on” then actually do the moving on. We’re masters of distraction nowadays so why not use it to our advantage. You will feel much better if you just stop with the thought (it’s raining). Try this for awhile. At first it may not be easy but it will be worthwhile.