Don't Stop Believing

A singular idea has been simmering in my head for the last few days.  It has allowed me the opportunity to step outside myself and take a larger view of the world.  At the same time, I keep running into Journey's "Don't Stop Believing."  So today, I decided to stop fighting against Journey and my singular idea. 

I've been playing the role of kindly curmudgeon (or more gender appropriate, kindly crone.) But the veneer on this identity is starting to crack.  Life and everything that happens, good and the bad, isn't about me.  I've been acting like it is.  I've been wrong.

Yesterday, I enjoyed a lively conversation about education with one of the teachers at work.  He opened my mind to things, I had not considered.  As our conversation drew to a close, he confessed that he chooses the best case scenario as his focus. 
" I chose to believe that most people have good intentions, whether it's true or not.  It just makes my life and my job so much easier."
I've heard that before.  I've even thought it before but I don't think it really sunk in until yesterday.

The gears of my mind were busy processing this all day.  The idea came home with me.  But, first came the test.  Within 30 seconds of entering the house, my dear husband met me and said,
"Well, I've got a hole in my exhaust today.  Suddenly just happened.  I can drive it but you can hear me coming from a mile away."

The gloomy voice inside my head really started going to town.  It immediately starts hosting a "pity party".
I groan inside and say only to myself, "God, more bad news?  Why can't it be good news for a change?
Great!   Now in addition to looking like white trash, we're going to sound like it too." 
(The negative voice inside my head is hopelessly politically incorrect and a bit of a snooty bigot.  She isn't the nice person I try to be.)

While listening to her tirade, I heard another, wiser voice grow louder.  "That is a negative way to interpret a neutral event.  How is it helping you?  From where I sit, it looks like it's hurting you more than helping."
To which I replied, "Yes, it is hurting me to indulge this line of thought.  There is another way.

At first, crone-me, tries to protest.  This new way is a threat.  It doesn't feel quite right.  The wiser me spots traps easily and helps me step around this one.  "You just need more practice.  You've actually been practicing more than you realize."  To this, I also said, "Yes, I have."

I've devised the "just flush it" and the slightly tamer, "just change the channel" for use with my children, in particular one, often gloomy, son.  When they start to engage in negative or obsessive thinking, I encourage them to "just flush it."  Of course, this comes complete with the appropriate flushing motion beside the head and accompanying sound effects.  All this gesturing and drama, add a bit of levity to an impending nose dive and often pulls us back into a safer more helpful frame of mind.

"Just change the channel conjures up a softer image but can also be quite effective.  I use this allusion when decorum dictates.

Surprisingly, these strategies have been very helpful.  I think they've been more helpful to me than to my children.  I find myself using "just flush it" all the time.  I even imagine the hand gesture and sound effects when just thinking about the use of the concept in washing my mind.  It often makes the inner me smile.  Once employed, I can focus on what needs to be done and trust that any attempt to mask real problems and issues will definitely make itself known down the road.  I won't be able to run from it but I can shelf it for a better time.  This lets me choose how and when to "respond".  I don't have to "react" or let myself get sidetracked.

Last night, I began to realize that so much of my life has been a knee-jerk reaction, not a response.  Misfortune seems to increase the likelihood of this.  There are times and circumstances that conspire to make responding very difficult but it doesn't mean it's impossible.  I do like a good challenge.  This realization did not come with negative self-talk or guilt for wasted years.  It simply was.  I knew that I had been given an insight with great potential. 

I could see with new eyes that I often nurture and encourage a negative view point.  The power to be my own agent of change was coming back to me.  I stopped reading my library book, one of many that point out what's wrong with modern society.  I thought about what I was reading.  The authors of this book and many like it have some valid points and often many rational arguments.  What they say is often true or at least part of the truth.  I had to ask, "Is reading this helping me or encouraging a negative mindset?"  I knew that this was a mindset that had suddenly gotten too expensive to maintain.

I began to think of the positive and the not-so-positive people in my life.    How were those relationships helping or hindering me?  I also thought about how my negative thinking may hinder others.  With this awareness came responsibility but also power.  I chose to believe that the knowledge that I have something big to work on-- turning around the negative thinking-- is a comforting thing.  It is not the burden I have felt from the imperfections of self and others.

While my kindly crone-like tendencies may have some comedic value at times, choosing to "just flush it" and to "not stop believing" really is in my best interests at this time.    Crone me, will never be Pollyanna.   I don't want her to be.  I feel protective of my inner crone.  Believing in myself and my abilities, to rise to the occasion, to find the good in negative situations and people these are things I wish to explore deeply.  It makes life much more pleasant especially when it's already hard enough.  I'm not going to stop believing in my ability to just flush it.