Air Conditioners

The Law of Attraction states that positive thoughts and words bring about positive results, and negative thoughts and words bring about negative results. I am not entirely convinced of this Law, in that I don’t believe that I can cause a plane to crash by imagining it in a fiery ball falling out of the sky. Still, I have noticed that when I focus my own attitude on positive outcomes and what I want to achieve instead of negative outcomes and what I fear might happen, I have better results.  

Case in point… My air conditioner was not keeping up last week. In the 100 degree Tennessee heat, my apartment would not cool below 80, and the air conditioner was running 24/7. Unaware that it is, apparently, unreasonable to expect an AC unit to cool inside air more than 20 degrees below outside temperature, I was convinced my AC was broken. My maintenance man assured me the unit was fine, which only served to frustrate me.

“I might as well go home and roast,” I would say. “My air conditioner is broken.” Sure enough, I was too hot, and my air conditioner seemed to not work. Even in the early morning hours, when the outside temperature was cooler, I would get up and look at my thermostat thinking, “I don’t care what my maintenance man says. This thing is broken.” And my thermostat would say the house was 78, instead of the 74 I was trying to achieve. I was so negative, and irritated, and frustrated, that I couldn’t even be nice to my maintenance man, though he had been quick to check my AC for anything he could fix.

Want to know what happened, next? My water heater broke.  

It made me laugh. “Of course my water heater broke,” I thought. “I’ve been doing nothing but complaining about how things around here don’t work. My focus on the negative couldn’t help but bring more negativity.”

I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t found my sense of humor. Maybe they wouldn’t have been able to fix the water heater the very next day, or maybe the temperature outside wouldn’t have cooled enough to allow my AC to work, again, or maybe I would have gone out to find that my car wouldn’t start, because “when it rains, it pours.” Or, maybe everything would have been fixed the next day, just like it was. What I do know is that finding my sense of humor allowed me to sleep more peacefully than when I was aggravated, and that I felt better the next day chuckling at the irony of a hot house and a cold shower than I had felt the day before, grumbling at the ineptitude of my AC condenser.

Whether thinking positively actually has an effect on the world around me, or just on my own perspective, I can definitely say that thinking positively brings about more positive results for me than being negative. If that’s the essence of the Law of Attraction at work, then I believe it. And just in case it also works to “bring about what we talk about,” the way the metaphysicists say it does, I’m going to quit complaining about looking old and getting fat.   

     

Tell Me I'm Right

I have a friend who says that people would rather be right than happy.

Think about that. It’s a big assertion. What does it mean?

I remember talking to some of the girls that work with me. I asked, “Why is it that people always anticipate the worst possible outcome, instead of focusing on the best that could happen?”

Answer: “Because people don’t want to be disappointed. If they anticipate the worst, and get the worst, they aren’t let down. But if they anticipate the best, and get the worst, they look stupid.” So, anticipating the worst doesn’t feel good (i.e. makes you unhappy), but it’s better than being wrong.

Honestly! What is so important about being right? Are our egos so fragile that we think being wrong will crush us? Would we rather make a list of cons before we make a list of pros, just to protect ourselves? From what, exactly?

It seems to me that, if we live expecting the best, we are in joy as we anticipate the coming of that best.  Whereas, if we live expecting the worst, we are in dread as we anticipate the coming of the worst. Of the two mindsets, regardless of the actual outcome, I think I’d rather live happily anticipating the best. Then, if the worst happens and I am surprised by it, at least I have had a period of time prior to that wherein I was joyful.    

I am reminded, also, of some of the irrelevant spats I used to have with my ex. We would fight about some of the least important details, until one of us would prove the other wrong. Oh, perfect. So the relationship takes a beating for the sake of “I told you so?” Again, right, but not happy.

I am going to start looking for this. I wonder how often I fight to be right at the expense of my own joy or the joy of those around me. I think that’s why they say, “Ignorance is bliss.” I think not having the burden to be right all the time could truly be the road to happiness.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Blank Pages

“Blank stares at blank pages…” is one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite songs. Sara Bareilles captures perfectly, in my estimation, that feeling I have all too often in my self-chosen writer’s world. Yes, I have chosen to write… blogs, books, seminars… but I would think, as it is something I’ve chosen to do, something I love, something I want to do, that it should come easy for me. It doesn’t always. In fact, more often than not, it’s a struggle. There are days in a row that I sit in front of my computer, trying and trying. I write a paragraph, or half a page, and delete it all. I start again, but it’s still not really what I want to say. Delete. Then, hours go by. Maybe I’ve searched quotes, or called my friends, or checked my email account for the 100^th time. Maybe I take a walk. Maybe I do my dishes or scrub my bathroom. Still, the page remains blank.  

I remember when I used to try to write songs with a co-writer. It was the same thing. I would show up with an idea or two, and before we even finished with the chorus, the critic in me would say, “Nope. That’s stupid. Start over.” Until one day, my co-writer said, “Shelly, I don’t know why we think it has to be a number one song. Let’s just finish one. No matter how silly, or stupid, or bad it turns out, let’s just write something.”

That was brilliant. It is a statement I come back to, again and again.

I don’t think this only applies to writers, though. I think we are, very often, completely paralyzed by the demand we place on ourselves to do something perfectly. “Where do you want to eat?” is met with, “I don’t know,” and what both people are really saying is, “I don’t want to choose, because if the meal is not exactly what you want, or the service is not entirely exceptional, I don’t want to have failed.”

We look for friendships to be perfect and jump out of them if they don’t bring out only our best qualities. We don’t go back to school, because we don’t have time (to get straight A’s). We don’t invest in a house, because we might not make money on it, or worse, we might lose money. We don’t have children, because we might not be model parents…

Some of these things may only be specific to my own neuroses, but looking around, I don’t really think so. And I’m not advocating that we become lackadaisical about results, because trying to do the best we can do is really the only respectable way to tackle any problem, as far as I’m concerned. But when did we determine that we had to be absolutely perfect, or better than perfect… life altering? And failing that, we might as well not bother to make any effort at all?

You know, my blogs probably aren’t brilliant. They will probably never change anyone’s life, or solve even one of the world’s problems. I need to be ok with that. I like to think out loud, on paper, and that has to be enough. And if I can remember my own advice, that life is for experiencing it, and that it can be a perfect life for me, even if it is a jumbled, incoherent mess, then I can give myself permission to fill my world with ideas, and thoughts, and plans, even if those ideas and thoughts and plans go horribly awry and turn into ridiculous mistakes.

That will be much more fun than blank pages, won’t it?   

Reminders

Reminders

I was working on my book, “7 Things You Should Know,” awhile back. I had been suffering with writer’s block, somewhere between the first draft edit and wherever it is I imagined a “real writer” would begin. I wasn’t happy with the first draft, and I kept thinking, “This stuff is so talked-to-death. Who wants to hear this? I’m not good enough to do this. Will some kind of magical inspiration ever hit and give me something worth saying?” The self-recrimination was so deafening that I thought I might scrap the entire project. I had, however, already made a commitment to finish the book, and the book was driving my blogs and my seminar work, which people seemed to appreciate. I felt like I had to finish what I had started, but I was suffering. So, I did what I always do when I’m stuck and feeling less than joyful. I complained to a friend.

“The book is dull,” I said. “And redundant. And I don’t know what to do about it.”

 My friend told me to make an outline for the book. An outline! I was insulted.

“I know about outlines,” I thought. “I can write an outline. Everyone knows I need an outline. That’s stupid. Why are you giving me this simple advice? What makes you think I don’t already have an outline? What do you know about it? I am an adult, not some sixth grader trying to learn to write!”

Then I thought, more humbly, “Oh. Yeah. I guess an outline might help. Maybe I’ll try that,” because although I really do know about outlines, how helpful they are, how to write them, the truth is that I hadn’t written one. Not really. And I needed to be reminded of that strategy.

Do you know what that taught me? Sometimes reminders of what may seem to be the most basic information are exactly what we need. So, I’ve finished the book. Because even if it is the most basic of information, even if it is just strategies that everyone already knows, maybe someone needs a reminder.

Oh, and by the way, if you have any thoughts on the subject, please send me, from time to time, some reminders of the things you do to keep yourself feeling joyful. You never know what I might have forgotten.

Living In Joy Challenge: Try to keep things simple for the week. Ask simple questions, listen for simple answers. Refer to simple strategies and basic information. Not everything has to be a long, drawn-out discussion. Not everything has to be a debate. Appreciate the basics…eating  fresh fruits and vegetables, walking after dinner, choosing water instead of soda, for example. And by all means, if someone offers you the simplest of advice, take it, even if, no… especially if it sounds too simple to really work. I’d love to hear if it makes a difference for you. J      

Happy Independence Day

Most of us are familiar with the battle for independence that our country waged in the 1700’s. We wanted the right to speak our minds. We wanted our interests to be represented, without it costing us everything we owned. We wanted to be able to defend ourselves, without fear of recrimination…

I sometimes think about how difficult it must have been to make the decision to travel across an entire ocean, to a piece of land that was unsettled, unfamiliar, and foreign, and make a new life. The new world was wide-open, in every sense. New land, new laws, new challenges, new habits, …new everything! As exciting and full of potential as it was, it must have also been frightening, because independence has a price. And not just for the colonists. In fact, one of the greatest challenges of independence, whether you are a new country trying to set-up a legal system, a young adult heading off to college, or any person just recognizing a personal right to choose how to live your dreams, lies in determining what to do when anything can be done.

Marianne Williamson, author of “A Return to Love,” said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

 As much as we want independence, the freedom to do, have or be anything at all, we also know that our limitlessness comes with a responsibility to achieve greatness. And that responsibility scares us. If we are, indeed, powerful beyond measure, then we are powerful enough to live our own dreams. We are powerful enough to have the families, the jobs, and the homes that we want. And if we are powerful enough to, but are not living out our dreams, then why aren’t we?

Our countries independence came with a price: the abandonment of the familiarity of one way of life, the leaving of the safety (however precarious) of the homeland, the trade of what was “known,” for the “unknown.” This is the same cost we endure when we exercise our independence in our lives, today. Because of this, we become afraid to exercise our independence, to choose what we want, to speak of our dreams, to share our thoughts and ideas, to excel. We are afraid of the cost.

What if we weren’t? What would each of our lives look like if we exercised our independence and just had faith that our richest lives could be ours and that the cost would be worth it? What if we recognized that we really do have the power to make our own choices, that we are not victims, and that we are free to chase our dreams? We are not subjects to any king… not our jobs, not our spouses, not our children, not our financial circumstances... We choose. We are independent to guide our own lives across deep waters and enter into a new world.

I hope for you this holiday that you are able to celebrate your own independence and your freedom to choose to live the life of your dreams. Happy Independence Day!