Daily Gratitude: Do you just fold up and crumble when adversity comes roaring at you? Do you freeze standing on the tracks as a train comes barreling toward you? Or, perhaps, instead of crumbling, you look at what’s happened and start figuring out how you can use this obstacles to improve yourself and your situation. What are you learning from it? It may be as simple as just not reacting. I had the worst possible training walk the other day and I was so discouraged and disappointed. I was worried and started thinking that meant I wouldn’t be able to complete vol state this year. Then i stopped myself and reminded “me” that it was still the beginning of May and I had time to work it out. I also calmed down when I told myself that it was just one bad day. And that one bad day didn’t mean everything was bad. That’s a huge change for me – to get out of the all or nothing thinking. Now this realization doesn’t mean that I’ll just ignore what happened but it does mean I can put it in perspective and not waste so much time and energy worrying about it. I need to lay my foundation here, I.e. see if I can figure out all the possible reasons and then decide how to proceed to test my theories. It’s a much different way of looking at life but a much more productive one. We’ll see what happens to this foundation I’ve started to lay.

Daily Gratitude: Boy, is this appropriate for this week. Every day there has been something that, at first, could be interpreted as a mistake (whether it is or not didn’t matter to my parts. What mattered was how my system felt about it). After about 4 of these incidents I just wanted to find a home and crawl in it. But fortunately, my IFS training has taught me to look at these events as opportunities to learn and get to know the parts within me that are over reacting perhaps. IFS has also given me a chance to see that these things are just lessons, not mistakes. A year or two ago I would i would have told you that that was total BS. But now I believe it. There is much I have already gleaned from examining the events of this week and more I will learn when I delve into them deeper. In the past “mistakes” would have devastated me and stopped me from continuing to do something. Now I am savvy enough and curious enough to actually do the work to learn from them.

Daily Gratitude: When this says “don’t let them change who you are”, it means who you are deep down inside – your core values and beliefs. You need to hold on to them. However, I also believe that we should reassess those things (especially the beliefs) from time to time. The worst thing we can do is to blindly hold on to something when they’re are facts in front of us that show us that maybe it’s time to alter those beliefs. This is a somewhat silly example but it gets the point across. I’ve been around for so many years that I’ve seen the what seems like weekly change of opinion as to whether or not coffee is good for you or not. One week the researchers show that coffee will do x; the next it does y; and again in a month or so it does z. It shows facts. What we do with those facts is another story. Just because coffee does x and x is good, does that mean that coffee is good? Not necessarily. Coffee may also do a, and c which are bad. Does x outweigh the adverse effects of a, b, and c? These are things we have to look at and constantly reevaluate in our lives. Take some time and assess your biases. Do you dislike or criticize a category of people? Or even just make generalized statements about them? But then you develop a friendship with someone who objectively fits in that category. But surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), the list of detriments that you didn’t like about that category don’t apply to your friend. Why do you think that is? Perhaps it simply means that we should stop creating these categories and judging the abstract category. There are good people in “bad” categories and bad people in “good” categories. Maybe we should just get rid of the categories?? Take time to reassess your beliefs