Message 317

Gavin de Becker gives us this quote in The Gift of Fear,

“When you worry, ask yourself, ‘What am I choosing to not see right now? What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?”

Or does getting upset provide you with more options?

You may think your mind can entertain on finding solutions and worry. Remember that worry induces anxiety and anxiety like anger will shut down your frontal lobe. When that happens, the chances of finding a solution are minimal.

This is a skill that must be cultivated—freedom from disturbance—so you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems, rather than reacting to them.

This is one of the primary reasons I chose wisdom (to pause – I told you I was cheating) for my first word of the month. I think learning when to and how to pause are essential to success in anything.

If an emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, even a destructive one.

Real strength lies in the control of one’s emotions, not in pretending they don’t exist. I was always good at that pretending that my emotions didn’t exist. All that did was to provide more pressure in the pressure cooker called anger and boy was there a quick release valve work that one. Nothing slow about the release of my anger.

We defeat emotions with logic. Logic is questions and statements. Logic requires use of your frontal lobe and the emotions associated with worry and anxiety interfere with that same little but important lobe in your brain.

Always remember “The quality of the questions that you ask yourself determines the quality of your life. They direct your mental focus, and therefore determine how and what you think and feel.”

So ask yourself what you’re choosing not to see right now. You can use this query to add to your yearly review. Speaking of which I have added another task when I’m looking at mine. I’m asking what was it that made this happen or led up to it. Then once I find that I ask myself is this something I wand to continue to do or shoudl I eliminate it or maybe just tweak it in some way. This will help to remind us that things don’t happen in a vacuum.

message 316

What good are words?

I love words and only wish I had a deeper vocabulary.

Words are a reflection of your thoughts and we know that thoughts can change your life. So it only follows that words can change your life too.

How many times do you say “I’m sick and tired”? If that’s one of your phrases, think about your life and see how often you feel tired or maybe even how often you get sick.

I’ll give you an example. Since I was a salty sailor for 30 years, my language was just as salty. Every time I was upset with something I was always “p*ssed off” (PO’ed but you can substitute the words for PO). Guess what one of my major health issues is – kidney disease. Is that just a coincidence? I don’t think so even if you do.

You’ve heard Dr Gilbert talk about the way to become lucky is to believe you’re lucky.

I believe in affirmations such as “everything always works out for me” and I’ve believed that for nearly 40 years. And I can’t think of any time things haven’t worked out for me.

You hear people declare a word for the year and I think that’s an interesting idea. But I’m going to encourage you try a word of the month – and that can be in addition to the word of the year.

I’ve been doing my 2025 year in review which I will share with you soon. As a result of that inventory I’ve decided that my word for December is going to be wisdom. But I’m also going to cheat – that doesn’t set a good example I know especially on the first month but this December I want to have the wisdom to pause between my reaction and my response. We’ve talked about that several times. Because the most prominent of my parts are angry protectors, I’ve had anger issues all my life.

So this is wisdom to pause. I’ll take any other kind of wisdom too but wisdom will give me divine guidance as we say in metaphysics to know when to pause.

Why don’t I use pause as my word? It’s not powerful enough for me as I set off on this lesson. Maybe a few months down the road I can use pause but now I need the wisdom to recognize when to pause.

I’m giving you a week to figure out your word because maybe it can go with your post thanksgiving challenge with Dr Gilbert or maybe it’s something else. It’s another decision that shouldn’t be decided next Monday morning or Sunday night.

Let me know if you’re going to participate.

Of course we could all have a diamond December