Many years ago, I was consulting a wonderful chiropractor who eventually loaned me his copy of "Learned Optimism" by Martin P Seligman. I read it feverishly, hoping to find some way to gain this elusive thing called optimism as I had the distinct impression I was a pessimist and that seemed ghastly to me so I wanted to change, probably silently hoping that if I changed that, someone might like me. I was a mess.
As I read this book, I marvelled at how anyone could be so positive. I mean, I could not fathom at all, how it was possible to be as optimistic as the author seemed to be and I ended up more despairing than fulfilled. I was completely at a loss to understand any concept of optimism back then and it would be about a decade before I began to understand it at all.
In 2004, I began attending workshops at my local women's health centre and I recall one woman who was very optimistic, silver lining to every cloud for her. At the time, I unkindly judged her as weird and figured she must have never gone through anything difficult in her life and probably wouldn't understand 'how the other half lived'. It turned out she had been through a lot and had 'learned' optimism herself. I'm very grateful I met her as I soon found her rubbing off on me and I remember one day speaking to someone and thinking "I sound just like......, I hope I don't piss anyone off".
Over the years since then I have changed dramatically enough to now want to find blessings in everything. Last year I had many experiences that left me feeling battered, afraid and sad but I was able to try to find the blessings and it has made me feel stronger, kinder and much more grateful. I've been able to catch myself 'blaming' lots of times and instead ask myself "what would this be if there was no blame at all? What am I learning from this and can I be at least grateful for the lesson?"
I've had some personal health challenges for a while and have lately been applying myself to that in this way too. I recently started using my treadmill again and was bored after a week but I now want to love myself and my body enough to get moving and keep moving so I looked for the blessing - now I am (I feel) grateful for the chance and the choice to get moving. I feel grateful that I have a treadmill. I feel grateful that I've had another call to wake up. I feel grateful for all the times before that I started and stopped as those times have each provided me with information that is helpful to me now. I feel grateful that I can still move at all. I feel grateful that I can still walk, breathe, feel and smile. I feel grateful that I have an internal walking group. I feel grateful for all of my old, daggy 80's music that walks with me. I feel grateful that I can do it my way with help and support. So now, I am really en-joy ing it, being in the joy of it and that's just because I decided to change my perception of it.
Can you look for blessings in the things you don't like so much? I hope so.
xxjxx
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