Perspective

There is this section of the couch that is known as the sleepy corner and last night I was sitting there with the laptop in relative quiet with only the pellet stove and the sound of the auger dropping pellets, roar of the flames and blowing heat. I was looking at all the posts I started and saved but never finished, 40 of them. Some have just a few words or sentences and some are pages long and I used my "better" judgement to let them sit on the cyber sidelines. I started writing a post saying I wonder how long I am going to last sitting in this position and wondering if I'll make it  through a post, I didn't  In this part of the couch you really have to lean into the cushion to get comfortable and then shift your position to get your feet off the ground and then if the heat isn't pumping out enough from the stove or there is a draft then you need a fleece throw. Then it is the count down to see how long it takes before my head touches one of the cushions and then I am done for.  First comes the yawn and then a while longer I awake to discover it is time for bed. I am not the only one in the family seduced by the sleepy corner but it is often my evening spot after a long day so the outcome is predictable.

Well I didn't make it long last night which is why now I am at the opposite end of the house, sitting up right in a room where the heat kept low and has to be pushed up manually and the wind is hitting the house from both sides and the draft coming through.  I am not yawning yet but have gone off looking for a throw.  

Cold seems to have come early to the Berkshires, down to the low teens is cold enough but the wind just pushes it to down right bitter and it seems to find its way through any little crack.  I was in the store earlier today and of course someone was complaining about the cold and then I overhead someone in line  complaining about something someone didn't do and it reminded me of one of those posts I had started but never finished and it was all about hearing people complain.

I know that complaining is a way of life and sometimes it becomes a game of oneupsmanship to see who can top another in the reason to complain category. My evolving opinion is there are a lot of people complaining about a lot of things and going on and some of them are real and serious but some of them are just inconveniences and I sometimes want to walk up to them and say get real or get over yourself. With all the tough stuff that so many have to deal with day in and day out it seems just easier to just heap on the complaints than appreciate that what is also good and keeping what isn't so good at the moment in some  perspective.

For the past several months I have been having a really tough time at work and because of the magnitude of the issues and the potential outcome I was facing each day with a bit of dread and leaving at the end carrying that dread back home. There is a limited amount of impact I can have in changing what is going on and I know it up to me to not only make the necessary changes I can bit also try and shield it from impacting my health and keep it from taking over my world.

I was doing some reading  on the law of attraction and the belief behind this is that the type energy you project is what you are going to get back. Put out huge amount of negative energy and it attracts attracts more of the same and you have to neutralize this with good energy if you want to make a shift in outcome. Very basically I can see that going into a situation with a negative perspective or attitude already  starts to bias the potential outcome.

At first I started reading this and thinking what kind of shit is this. My issues are major and there didn't seem to be much positive that I could think of. Life wa looking pretty gloomy.  But thinking about this for a while I realized how really ignorant or should I say clueless that statement was.

I started a morning practice of coming up with 20 good things in my life that I am thankful for and listing them as I commuted to work and on my way home I need 10 more. There are so many absolute basic things that I can easily get half the list pretty quickly and then I take my time to dig a little deeper. A few weeks back I told someone recently about his and his attitude was interesting. He questioned that if I was trying to work through and balance off bad stuff going on, why would I put pressure on myself to come up with 20 as that seemed like a lot. He said, "what if you can only get to 19, have you failed?" . I had already thought that one out and if I really was having such a tough time at it then # 20 would be that I was grateful to be alive today and if my family were all well then there was another 4 to add to the list and my commute was uneventful, wasn't that something to be grateful for? . He didn't respond.

I have always been an optimistic person but sometimes the weight of negative crap burdens us down so much that we can't pivot enough to see positive things that are in front of our face. Knowing people that have recently lost children to illness or accidents, knowing people who are homeless or are fighting cancer or some physical or mental ailment or having kids or family that want anything to do with them or not having an option of helping their kids pay for college or not having good health insurance. These few things give me a helluva lot of things to be grateful for.  So you can see my list making isn't such a chore as it is a change in outlook.

Well I am on day 40 of my morning lists. Some days are tougher than others and some days I give myself a break, especially on the way home and am grateful for the option..  Has it changed my outlook or attracted more positive things?  On the major work issues it has changed my perspective even if it hasn't changed the situations and I definitely know that it has changed the way I seek to look for the positive and perhaps respond to a complaining person  by pointing out something positive.  Perhaps it will guide something positive on the bigger issues. If it does then I hope to be in a positive perspective to be able to recognize it and go with it.