Blog entry for:

is not my usual exclamation when i hit a **bump** in the road of my day-today life, but it will do as a great seed for this morning. i am more well known for expressions that are far more colorful, but do not need to be repeated here today. what i am getting at, are my reactions to the setbacks that are the plague of living in the real world. i can certainly say that for the most part, when something does not go the way i desire, i am far from balanced in my spiritual and emotional reactions, or at least i was not, for the longest time. i was about to dive head first into the pool of false humility with a bit of self-deprecation, downplaying the progress i have made. the fact is, i now feel worthy of being a success and deserve to remove all the obstacles that i have power over, from achieving that goal. what that means is i change the things i can, and most of those are within me, therefore mostly within my power to change. accepting what i cannot? well, i am working on that, as well.
a couple of things popped off the stack this morning, the first was my reaction to someone who never took any interest in my life, now asking questions about it and granting me permission to perform activities that i already enjoy. what i came up with as i got up and started my day was that this was all about personal power. the power dynamic in this relationship has changed and is severely tilted in my direction after a lifetime of going the other way. more than likely it is me attempting to exert my new found power in this relationship, feeling as if i am getting push-back, that is feeding my reaction. the fact of the matter is, i simply do not like being told what to do, what to enjoy and sharing the details of my life with someone who really does not seem to care and i only making “small talk.” yes there is certainly room for much improvement in this area of my life and “RATS” certainly does fit in well, right here.
i did say a couple of things, and the second notion that occupied the space of my quiet time was how hard-wired i seem to be to accept failure as an unmitigated disaster, even though most of my “failures” in my daily living are opportunities to learn. very little of what goes wrong in my life these days can be attributed to my failings, but i seem to want to take them on and use them as evidence that i am doing no better than when i walked into the rooms, when i fact i am much closer to being the sort of person i have always wanted to be, than ever before. when things do not go according to my plans, for reasons outside of my control, well the blame-shifting starts and i attempt to take responsibility with phrases such as “i should have known better, after all …” not exactly a healthy response to any sort of failure, at least in my book.
where does that take me on this fine September morning? to a place where i can accept that i make mistakes and look to them as a learning experience. to a place where i need to beat myself up, because i stray from that ideal. to a place that i accept the power i do have, with a bit of grace and wield it gently. and finally to a place where i can accept that if i do the best i can, to do the next correct thing, i will be okay, just for today.

∞ DT ∞