Breathe!  Find the Peace!

So here’s the problem. Or, my shame, or my bother, or my need to improve – I have trouble holding onto peace, sometimes.
I understand the principles that bring it. At least to a good degree. I sometimes am successful at pushing away the worries and the stressors. But now and again – I can’t quite get there.

  • Too much pain in the body.
  • Worry over what was said, or not said.
  • Remembering that I may have said something that could possibly – maybe- somehow be offending when I taught a class or visited a neighbor, or talked over the phone with one of the kids.

It’s quietly pathetic.

Too much focus on, sometimes, what might happen if.…  Too much concern over children or grandchildren.
Yeah. You’d think when you get to be a grandmother of teenagers, you’d have these kinds of things figured out. But — no. I’m still in a learning curve.

I know better. I just don’t always DO better. And there’s the rub.

You folks can send in all the quotes, the scriptures, and the ways to help. I will read them and appreciate them. Sometimes, though, the head gets it but the heart – not quite. Does anyone know what I’m talking about?

I come from a long line or WORRIERS.  We absorbed it quite nicely, and then- at some point in the adult life- we need to let it go.

Because we are oh so good at it. We can find something to fret over in a flash – on a moment’s notice. We can take a little mound and make a mountain of concern over it. We can get together and hash it out, console each other and become passionately obsessed with the problem at hand.  Reminder to self:

HAKUNA MATATA

“Oh,” we think somewhere down the line, “Why don’t we focus on a solution instead of worrying over the problem?”
Yeah- that’s a good idea. Why didn’t we do that to begin with?  Because it’s our little monkey on the back. The weight. A silly, foolish trait that needs scrubbing with a hard brush and lots of bleach, in order to draw it out of our cells.
So – it’s a little bit embarrassing to share this. But, in the interest of Keeping It Real, it seems the most right thing to do.
Granted, I may wake up tomorrow in the middle of the night and think

What did I just do? Tossed my laundry out there to all kinds of folks! Gasp.

But then, this helps me to scrub at it. To face it and move on a little in this learning curve of mine.

Nothing external to you has any power over you

Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with these words. I’m fascinated with them. I KNOW this is how it works. I understand that with agency, I may choose my actions and my reactions. I am about disciplining myself and finding the peace inside. It is never the outward circumstances, but our reaction to them that makes us or breaks us. We just keep on working on those learning curves until we make it! We better discipline, and better tend our thoughts, words and actions until we chase away all the scary; all the confusion; all the abandonment. And reach for peace.
No more coming apart at the seams. No more What Ifs or I should Haves. It’s done. Big or small, it’s done. The harm another caused us?  It’s done!

Fun & Peace Over Problems!

Oh, the wonderful peace that replaces the pain and upset! Oh how much more fun to share laughter, positive things and build more joy together with family, friends or in our  own quiet times. Okay- maybe loud, music blaring, dancing times.

It’s all good! And goodness matters.