Get Picky With Your Thoughts!

 

Last week, I had a rather nasty disagreement with a colleague. Even though it got resolved – well, sort of – I found myself going over and over it in my mind. For days. Not a productive path to mental well-being, no way, no how.

I realized, somewhere amid my internal grousing, that I was letting my thoughts run me, instead of doing the intelligent thing--choosing deliberately the thoughts I dwell on. Huh! How about that? I am pickier about the produce I select at the store than I am about the thoughts I allow free rein through my mind. Pickier about what I’m going to wear on any given day, pickier about the gas I put in my car and pickier about pretty much everything else.

Enough already! I didn’t need to rehash the disagreement. What I needed to do was get picky about how I thought about it. I couldn’t very well shut off my brain, as tempting as that would be at times. So I returned to a truth I know that has served me very well over the years: people are always doing the best they can with what they’ve got from where they are at the time. That may not be their always “best,” it may not even look like any kind of best, but it is the best that is available to them, given what they know and where they’re at emotionally, mentally or physically.

That includes me. And apparently, grousing was the best I could do for a while. It doesn’t mean I had to stay stuck there. Reminding myself that I can certainly get picky about my thoughts helped me get back to a better place with myself--a saner perspective on the situation with my colleague.

Relief! So yes, get picky. Preferably not about other people--everyone has the right to think as they choose--but about yourself! About what occupies that space between your ears all day long. After all, don’t you want to be doing the best you can with what you’ve got from where you are? And I’ll bet your best is generally better than what you think it is.

More Hope and Less Angst

My best friend and I had a vigorous discussion recently about the relative merits of process versus results. She was extolling the virtues of process and processing, and I was nattering on about “results, results, results.” Yet the obvious conclusion at the end of our conversation, was that both are necessary and valuable. Without process/processing, there is no valid result. Without a result in mind, process/processing is so much mental-meandering.

Which got me thinking in a different way about our present situation. The pandemic. Which we’d all like to see over and done with like, yesterday. A final resounding result to this seemingly unending situation. Which as is increasingly clear, will not be the case. But what if we viewed it more as process? As something we quite literally are processing (like it or not!), which according to The Free Dictionary, is “To gain an understanding or acceptance of; come to terms with.”

Take four-year-old Madison and her dad Dan Presser. At first, Dan’s idea was just to find something fun for Madison to do, to help his daughter come to terms with the long months of isolation. What was it? He re-created little videos on his iPhone of famous movie scenes, with Madison as the lead, and posted them on the Internet. So there was the “Lion King” episode, a “Mrs. Doubtfire" episode and a "Forrest Gump” episode, along with many others as our stay-at-home continues. Mom (aka Mrs. Presser) would make the costumes, and baby brother (21 months old) would occasionally grace the scene with an appearance. Madison’s friends were included via their phones as sometime supporting players.

Much to Dan’s surprise, the videos garnered a growing following. With that, Dan was inspired to use the videos’ popularity as a teaching moment for his daughter. How one could help people in need, in particular those who didn’t have food on the table regularly. To date, the father-and-daughter team’s videos have generated more than $12,000 for Feeding America, with the help of matching donations from Disney. What a creative and heart-felt way to help Madison – and others – understand and come to terms with some of what the pandemic means.

Process! If all Dan did was sit around and bemoan the situation, waiting for a good result to fall from the sky, he would never have been inspired to come up with his father-and-daughter videos. Not that we all need to become mini-movie-makers, that’s not the point. What would benefit us all, is to stop and think for a moment. What could I think or do or share that would help me – and possibly others – come to terms with the situation which exists, no matter how disliked?

You are more creative than you know, and stronger than you think. You can, given a willingness to do so, come to terms with our present situation with more hope and less angst, until such time as the much-desired result comes to pass.