Daily Gratitude: I saw this on TV when a psychiatrist said it to one of his patients. It hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s something simple yet so important in figuring out our emotions and our responses. If I could just stop long enough to ask myself this question, I’d stay out of a lot of trouble. The other day I was on the “appointment schedule” for my AC unit. When I had called she told me it would be at 9 am. Then as the day got closer I got the automated message that says your appointment is between 8 and noon. WTH? So i got myself together enough to be ready of they came at 0800. No show. The things I had to do involved moving around and being in one room or the other, not tied to my phone (I keep the ringer off all the time). So I could do nothing productive. 1115 comes around and I get a message saying I’m on the list but they are late. Well what does that mean? Will they be here by noon (which makes the appointment time later than noon since they would need time to do their thing)? I had been working for an hour trying to calm myself down and not be angry at this. It would do no good and I knew it was just a “part” that was feeling this as an injustice (when it’s really just inefficiency and lack of caring on the company’s part). But this latest inanimate and impersonal message was the last straw. I called and just canceled the darn thing. At least I had made an effort more than I would have in the past. I didn’t default to the “they just are discriminating against me because it’s just to change the filters so they can stick me at the end”. I was able to realize that’s giving myself too much credit. But had I been able to employ the “is it fact or feeling?” question, I might have been able to keep myself in a much better space and gotten the darn thing taken care of. I’m going to paste this on various surfaces around my house to remind me to slow down and ask this question. Try it and let us know if it works for you.

Daily Gratitude: How many of you remember this day 23 years ago? I don’t know about you but I can’t believe it was that long ago. It seems as if it all happened yesterday. What lessons can we take from that awful day? One might be regarding decisions. We all seem to get anxious and worried whenever we have some decision to make. What if we were to put our need to make a decision in perspective? Think about those people on the upper floors of the towers and the decision they had to make. “Do I stay here and die from smoke inhalation or burns. Or do I jump to my death?” How horrible does your personal dilemma seem now? You may say this is dramatic but that’s one of the most prominent thing I remember watching the events evolve – and the vocal cries from the men I was with as they shouted “oh no” or “oh my God” as they watched the TV. It was one of the most visceral parts of the day and there were certainly plenty of them. Next time you think things are getting rough, think back to that day. Take some time today to remember all those affected that day.

Daily Gratitude: It always amazes me when there’s a series of these quotes/sayings that fall into my lap and they are around the same topic. Believe me, I don’t seek them out. It’s for that reason that I just “go with the flow” when they do show up. I posted a quote in late July about not judging people based on just what you see since you have no clue what their “story” is. You must decide who you are and who you want to be. This requires examining deep inside to discover what your core beliefs are. And then to question whether they are really yours or just things you absorbed because people told them to you over and over as you were growing up. I know I was “taught” that i wasn’t worth anything and wasn’t good enough etc. it took me nearly 70 years to get in deep enough (and thank goodness I had help and had learned about IFS- Internal Family Systems) to discover that these were just things I’d been told. After all that is what a belief is – a thought you keep thinking over and over again. I had to ferret out each one and then look for evidence- evidence proving it was true or evidence proving it was false. It’s hard but we have to keep doing it. Things change and so do we. But it’s our responsibility to know ourselves, not to just accept what others say or think. Start by examining your core beliefs. Write them down. Then try to find the proof. This will take some time but it’s worth it.