Terrie’s Tip – Remember that you are like a train. Your mind is the engineer controlling the whole process and your body is the boxcars carrying the valuable cargo (as valuable as you make it, that is)

Yesterday I trudged on trying to build my endurance for the July race – a seemingly impossible process. But it was a different experience. Previously my legs had been really hard to move – “dead legs” as they say. But thanks to great advice by Marie Boyd, my legs actually felt pretty good. It was the rest of me that didn’t seem to have any energy. It felt like drudgery to keep moving. Of course, this is creating consternation about whether or not I should even bother going to the race.

I realized that there is this disconnect which I think we experience so often in life. Our minds are the control car, the engineer, the lead car, whatever you call it. And behind it are the cars that carry everything around with us. All that cargo may be valuable or may be junk. How often do we stop and try to reassess it.

Are the cars filled with valuable and precious organs which we have taken such good care of, or have we neglected those organs and just exposed them to stress and other factors that decrease their value?

Are there hobos (people’s influences) on the cars, taking up space, talking to us and giving us messages that probably aren’t very accurate but they are their opinions and we’ve just carried them along with us?

Is there graffiti – mean things that we have experienced that we have absorbed as part of us?

What are we carrying around with us? Do the wheels and rails need greasing? Are the parts rusted? Are they telling us “no way, i don’t want to go that way, it’s too hard.”? or perhaps “Let’s just sit here and maybe someone will push us along so we don’t have to work much.”

Our mind is that control car. It has all the necessary switches and buttons. It can simply engage the cars and they will be locked in sync and move as a unit. So why doesn’t this happen all the time? Because we let the engineer in our mind go on vacation too often and there’s no one to really run the train. If the engineer is new or inexperienced it can be misled or not know how to throw the switches. or even know which switches do what. This can happen especially if the train gets upgraded with technology but the engineer doesn’t keep up.

What is the engineer in your mind doing to help you move your train, to keep it clean and shiny, to keep the cargo safe and sound? it all starts with that engineer and all we need to do is evaluate how things are going and then change our thoughts and then our actions. Start with analyzing what you’re pulling along in the cargo cars and then what you think needs to be changed. Let your mind (your thoughts) get engaged and change what’s necessary to change. Change is good and will help your keep your train (your body) running smoothly. Discard the old baggage and clean off the graffiti. You should not be controlled by them. And you don’t have to be as long as you make your engineer in charge.

Terrie’s Tip – Don’t stay chained up like an elephant. Break free and feel empowered.

Fully grown elephants weighing many tons appear docile and never try to run away when they are only held back by a relatively small chain and peg in the ground. Why?

Because they are trained like that when they are young. This happens when they are small enough that the chain will hold them. But they never realize as they grow that they definitely outweigh that same chain and could easily break away.

So many of us are stuck in a belief system and with thoughts/ideas that were engrained in us as little children. These continued to be reinforced as we became toddlers then teens and because they were things we heard over and over again, they became “the gospel” for us. Never questioned, never even thought about. We’ve grown and are out of that environment/house and are in a position where we can examine our ideas and beliefs and change them.

But if we never even think to question something, we are just as much a prisoner as the gigantic elephant. Maybe your family taught that certain people were not as good as others and as you grew it was repeated over and over again. You never even bothered to question if that was really true or not. Why not break through the chain and re-evaluate all the things you learned as a child.

I had that experience several years ago. I had been raised to believe that one political party was the “only” political party. And i really could have cared less – all i cared about when i was growing up was becoming a doctor. The rest of the world didn’t exist. But if someone asked which party I supported, i would simply parrot the one my parents told me was correct.

Then my father died and a few years later I was talking to my mother and she shocked me and told me she was supporting someone from the other party for president. I was shocked. I asked why and her reason made sense. And you know what? I finally asked questions, did research and broke my “elephant chain” and realized she was right and that what I had been taught all my life did not align with what I really believed. That was an eye opener to me but it is a perfect example of this.

Take a look at what beliefs might be chained around your leg. I find it easier to really figure things out if you know someone who exemplifies what you’re trying to take a look at. It’s easier because you actually see a human being and not just an object/concept. I know a lot of people who are homophobic until they find out who in their lives are gay. Then it doesn’t seem to matter as much because it’s what that person represents that matters, not what label is placed on him/her. Open your mind and investigate everything. This is Pride month so it’s a good time to check out the entire gender issue. There are so many different variations now that I am not even familiar with them all and am going to use this month to find out more about it.

What’s your elephant chain?

Terrie’s Tip – Instead of saying “Why is this happening TO me?” try saying “Why is this happening FOR me?” You’ll be amazed how changing just one word will rewire your brain and your attitude. It’s no longer “I’m a victim” but “Oh, the universe is giving me a gift! Maybe I should unwrap it”

Reframing is simple but again not always easy – especially when times seem tough. In all the reading I’ve done in the past 3 weeks (I’m so happy I’ve ‘consumed’ 18 books in 3 1/2 weeks – consumed means reading and listening), I learned that another way to reframe positively is to say “demands” instead of “stressful events/things”. Stress is a response to a demand. It’s not an event itself. Who cares? Because it means that you actually have control over what is going on with you. The demand is a benign thing that is not out to get you or hurt you or anything. It’s how you respond that will affect you. And you control how you respond. There are so many ways to help calm your nervous system which is what we’re really talking about here. Breathing techniques, expressive writing, awareness etc.. There are so many guides out there for you to look at.

When you reframe how you say things, that is a way of managing/controlling your response.

“Why is this happening TO me?” bemoans the events and all that is associated with it. You probably can’t really answer the question so why waste time and energy trying to find out. It will just make you feel worse.

“Why is this happening FOR me?” makes your brain excited and thinking it did actually receive a gift. It wants to know more and will investigate. Positive questions produce positive results. When you start to investigate the possible good that might come out of this “event”, you can actually get excited. I will tell you and this is one of the great benefits of age, everything really does happen for a reason and it always works out. It may not seem like it and we are such a world of instant gratification that we are not used to waiting for something to manifest. It’s a good thing we are not the universe’s gardeners. Nothing would ever bloom. You can help produce a better result by focusing on the good that could possibly come out of this. What lessons are you learning? What information are you getting from this that might help you in the future?

See how you can reframe other things in your life. Things really are happening FOR you!

Terrie