Part of my training – lighten up and have fun. Tough for a precrastinator!

That’s someone who plans ahead for procrastination 🤣.

I am now setting aside time for humor in my life! A sort of to do list on how to have fun 🤣.

This intention or declaration to have fun, has started to come more naturally. This is possible by giving intention to the practice of choosing to witness, but not react to my anxiety, when things seem to go sideways according to MY plan.

At my age, it’s become even more important for me to remain neuroflexible and nimble.

Ever meet those aging people so fixed in their ways, and thinking, it’s like dealing with an ironclad resistant wall of inflexibility? Enjoy their company much?

Giving intention to being easier to be around as I age; more flexible, less serious, more childlike, and to enjoy life.

These past seven years have been full of heavy outside pressure including our daughter having a 50/50 chance of living. She survived.

Since then I have given intention to understanding if I can learn to be joyful at this heaviest part of my life (legal issues, financial hardship, possible loss of a child, personal hospitalization and major health issues; including 4 major surgeries in a 5 year span) then the life would be more enjoyable.

So when life has been the hardest for me, I’ve dug in deep to learn the pratcial application of joyful living.

We all say we want joy and the minute things seem like they may not go our way, what is the first thing we give up?

I’m learning that’s ok too! I don’t judge my emotions. I just notice them. I just acknowledge them. I don’t need to pray them away, try to make them go away, feel bad for feeling this way, or wallow in them.

I just register them, feel them, and turn my intention towards things that bring me joy.

Like our daughter lived. Why not play this memory over and over and talk it about over and over? This thought pattern brings forth gratitude and warm fuzzies! Do we use our thinking mind to relive the juicy stuff or the shitty stuff?

I register, my thinking mind is a resource. I can misuse it to spend days on that one jerk who did such and such and gloss right over the wonder of all that has gone well in our lives!

Or I can laugh at this foolish insanity without judgment. It is the human condition. I don’t have to feel shame or guilt over being human anymore!

“FREEDOM from the bondage of self”!

Instead of using my time complaining to my friends, I make an effort to spend most of time, thanking them for their awesomeness. Sometimes with words, but usually with actions of service.

Inversely, when my emotions run hot, I share them frankly. No glossy positive or fake spin (like this funny meme).

Just an honest and quick burp of emotions, and then a decision and personal choice to shift intentions.

Not because I think I should. Simply because I decide I want to.

Sometimes I decide to run hot and I own it. I say “I’m annoyed and I want to be. I can choose to shift my thoughts and end my suffering. I am not ready to. I’m mad as hell and I’m hanging onto it…. for now!” I own me; all of me. “The messy stuff is part of my worth too” as Pema Chodron would say.

My heart is one of service – to my own health and state of mind first! This is not selfish, as my thinking mind used to torment me with. For me this is self-care.

I show compassion for me. As a result, these things can now spring forward toward others.

This is all a choice. I keep choosing the way of love over and over. As a result, I have never felt more love in my life then I do now.

Although, there are a few people who believe I should be punished, I don’t hate them or react to them. I feel sad when they attempt to threaten our family. Then I go back to being present for our family.

Our children want a present mom and dad; not distracted parents. Although, I have more justification now then ever to defend being distracted, I’ve chosen the opposite course.

How can I stay even more present in the face of this potential loss?

These are my personal intentions. I hope for all of you that you can set your own personal intentions, grounded in love, because the joy and lack of suffering I now experience are amazing and wonderfull.

All but a flash pan moment are gone the days of depression, anxiety, anger, repression, emotional numbness and intense internal criticism.

They are all there, for little short bursts only. Instead of “I can’t believe I reacted this way again or feel this way again” I say “wow I remember this feeling, how cool it’s been so long since it’s visited and wow isn’t that wonderful. I’m depressed. I must need rest. I must need to support myself more today; what does that look like for me?”

Life is hard. I’m learning suffering over those hardships is a choice.

In reality, life is but a dream.

Each moment is no longer reality, it’s gone as though it never really existed except for the meaning I choose for it to live on within my thinking mind.