I wish I could say that

I dropped off my wife's car for service this morning. While there I ran into a man who asked me a very innocent question. He asked, "How are you doing?" Innocently, I answered my most frequent response, which is, "Great!" Now I don't say great so much because that is how I am actually doing at the time, although oftentimes life is great. More often it is to remind myself that I am responsible for creating my own experience through my thoughts and therefore if I am not enjoying my experience then all I need to do is allow my thoughts to change. If I do so then my experience will change also.

After responding that I was doing great, the man who asked the question responded, "I wish I could say that." He told me a tale of woe which wasn't out of the ordinary for someone who saw themselves living a hard life. He had, and told me of, his share of problems. Nothing unusual about having problems, we all have them. However, I find that at least one difference in people is how much focus or importance we put on them. Sure, people have problems with money, relationships, their work, their families, etc, etc. But people also can find blessings in those same aspects of life.

One of my children just broke up with their boyfriend recently. It wasn't a long relationship but it was very meaningful to her. Breaking up can be hard, especially if you are the one who gets broken instead of being the one doing the breaking. However, her relationship with this boy was a good one while it lasted. They shared some good times, a lot of good times actually and she learned a lot. She learned about herself and she learned about relationships. Both things that will help her in her life.

So, she has a choice as far as how she chooses to look at this breakup, She can be devastated by the loss and new found singledom or she can be grateful for the relationship she had. My hope is that she will find herself experiencing gratefulness and not just saying, "I wish I could say that."

Giving Grace

The idea of giving grace seems to be pretty deeply ingrained into our American psyche. If someone “does us wrong” we are often encouraged to “just let it go” or “give them a break.” I think that is most often good advice. Giving someone else grace distances us from the situation and provides the ability to not take any actions which are made against us so personally. If we don’t give grace, or some other synonym, then all to often we can find ourselves the victim of anger, anxiety, or unhappiness as we let our feelings get the best of us. It is easy to take a perceived slight which happens against us and allow it to ruin the whole day. For example, how many times have you been cut off in traffic. If we refuse to give that driver grace then we can act out at them, chase them through traffic and even carry our anger with us throughout the day. All of this happens as the perpetrator, in most cases, doesn’t even realize that they have cut us off. In this, and I would argue, most cases, it is better to give people grace and go about your business.

However, this type of giving grace is not what I had in mind when I imagined this post. I was thinking about how much grace we give ourselves. When we don’t live up to our, or someone else’s, expectations are we willing to give ourselves grace? How about when we do something that we KNOW we shouldn’t do, are we willing to give ourselves grace? What about when we tell ourselves, “this time will be different” as we enter a situation where we have failed in the past and we fail again, do we give ourselves grace then? Sadly, speaking from my own experience, I can say that most times I do not.

Somehow, where I find it relatively easy to give grace to others I find it very difficult to give grace to myself. Sometimes I tell myself that I am letting others down and that by giving myself grace I am giving myself permission to fail in the future. Or perhaps I tell myself that I should know better and not put myself into certain situations where in the past I have failed. Maybe these are good excuses. However, just like not giving grace to others, not giving myself grace keeps me thinking about my failures, often far after they have taken place.

I wonder if you would consider, in place of being hard on yourself or beating yourself up, giving yourself grace. I wonder if you would consider telling yourself, “I did the best I could in the situation that presented itself and if I could’ve done better then I would’ve done better.” Is it possible for you to let go of your failings, just for the moment, and instead give yourself grace. If you can give yourself grace, it may be possible for you to experience new insight into your situation. Giving yourself grace allows space in your mind for new insight to appear. Now this doesn’t mean that by giving yourself grace that you aren’t noticing what you have done or are looking for ways in which you might improve the situation if you are confronted with it again.

Just like when you get cut off in traffic, the situation may occur again and you may or may not be able to give grace to that driver. However, I feel certain that when you experience situations where you do fail, giving yourself grace will help you move along the growth path instead of stalled by the side of the road playing the blame game.

Spotlock?

The concept for spotlock came from my daughter. One day the family was watching television and couch space was at a premium. During a commercial she got up to make a trip to the kitchen and while rising from the sofa called out, "Spotlock!" The rest of the family, oblivious to the intended meaning of spotlock, moved to take over her primo space on the couch. Upon her return to the TV room she was suprised that her spot was no longer available. She cried out, "I called SPOTLOCK!" She had to explain that spotlock was a term, she had just made up, which indicated that her "spot" was locked and therefore not available to anyone else. Who were we to argue? So we went along and allowed her to return to her space. I never forgot that term and eventually created a spotlock blog which is MY spot on the web. Thanks for visiting.

The purpose of this blog is for me to have a way to express my feelings and thoughts on spiritual matters that come to my mind. I am a follower of what is called "Health Realization" which is an understanding concerning how we each create our experience. As time goes on I intend to "publish" some of my thoughts here. I also hope that my kids will post from time to time their own excellent creative writing. So, there you go. Have fun and stop back.