I was looking through some stuff and came across this slide show and it reminded me of a concept. A concept that could be a really positive tool in recovery. Stress and other emotions can surely drive at use and make us miserable. But how much, if any of our emotional response is in our control?
The concept that we ultimately decide what our experience of life is like.
The idea that our experience in life is based of our perception of what happens. Our perception results from our thoughts, judgments, and opinions of what is happening. We control or can choose to control our thoughts, judgments, and opinions. We have little or no control of what happens in our lives, but infinite control over how we choose to perceive and thus experience what happens.
Has anyone else used this in their recovery or lives? What was anyones experiences? When I initially realized this was true, I was kinda blown away. So I decided to take a proactive approach and begin to alter the way I chose to think. I decided begin to quit judging anything as good or bad. This really had a significant impact in a relatively short time. It was not easy at first because I was so used to judging everything all the time. I kinda just seemed to do it naturally. Our society seems to promote it really. "how is your day going people can ask" then we think and judge our day and then our day becomes that way, until we decide its another way and then it becomes that way. It seems like we judge everything and in reality they become what we decide they are to a large extent. I still wonder if this holds true for everything.
When someone dies do we choose how we react to this. Do we choose between grieving them sadly or celebrating the life they had? I think the more powerful experiences are not as cut and dried as a mere judgment and with the death of a person who we shared time there are often unresolved issues, which now have now way of being resolved. These may need to be resolved with tears. (which brings to mind what is the purpose of a tear, little or nothing in life has no purpose. What if tears actually remove something unwanted or no longer necessary? )
But the little things. like getting stuck in traffic and thus being late for something. Do we totally choose our experience in this case? No matter what at that point, we are stuck in traffic and are going to be late. We could have planned differently and left earlier or taken a different way, but at this point the situation is totally out of our control. Are there diffrent ways we choose to look at this and how we choose determines our experience of the traffic jam?
Can descide to get all worked up and pisssed and give every person we see a new and unique explicative for a name, cursing their raggedy cars filled with their fat ugly braindead partners and their shamefully ugly and no doubt smelly inbred children, while cursing the god awful city we live in and vowing to hunt down and skin the governor alive for not electing to expand the highway system when she had a chance, while pounding fresh cracks into our windshield and chewing on the steering wheal.
Could we instead decide that we are very disappointed that we are going to be really late as we really wanted to be there and we know we are going to miss out and throw on some pity filled song while recalling all the times we get screwed and concluding we were put on earth to get screwed.
Could we even choose to think.. you know what I wanted to be there but this shit happens and its outa my control.. I already going to be late why would I choose to make myself miserable ass well? Throw in some good tunes and become thankful for an extra hour in relative peace?
How much of our experience can we control? Of that how much do we choose to control?
The concept that we ultimately decide what our experience of life is like.
The idea that our experience in life is based of our perception of what happens. Our perception results from our thoughts, judgments, and opinions of what is happening. We control or can choose to control our thoughts, judgments, and opinions. We have little or no control of what happens in our lives, but infinite control over how we choose to perceive and thus experience what happens.
Has anyone else used this in their recovery or lives? What was anyones experiences? When I initially realized this was true, I was kinda blown away. So I decided to take a proactive approach and begin to alter the way I chose to think. I decided begin to quit judging anything as good or bad. This really had a significant impact in a relatively short time. It was not easy at first because I was so used to judging everything all the time. I kinda just seemed to do it naturally. Our society seems to promote it really. "how is your day going people can ask" then we think and judge our day and then our day becomes that way, until we decide its another way and then it becomes that way. It seems like we judge everything and in reality they become what we decide they are to a large extent. I still wonder if this holds true for everything.
When someone dies do we choose how we react to this. Do we choose between grieving them sadly or celebrating the life they had? I think the more powerful experiences are not as cut and dried as a mere judgment and with the death of a person who we shared time there are often unresolved issues, which now have now way of being resolved. These may need to be resolved with tears. (which brings to mind what is the purpose of a tear, little or nothing in life has no purpose. What if tears actually remove something unwanted or no longer necessary? )
But the little things. like getting stuck in traffic and thus being late for something. Do we totally choose our experience in this case? No matter what at that point, we are stuck in traffic and are going to be late. We could have planned differently and left earlier or taken a different way, but at this point the situation is totally out of our control. Are there diffrent ways we choose to look at this and how we choose determines our experience of the traffic jam?
Can descide to get all worked up and pisssed and give every person we see a new and unique explicative for a name, cursing their raggedy cars filled with their fat ugly braindead partners and their shamefully ugly and no doubt smelly inbred children, while cursing the god awful city we live in and vowing to hunt down and skin the governor alive for not electing to expand the highway system when she had a chance, while pounding fresh cracks into our windshield and chewing on the steering wheal.
Could we instead decide that we are very disappointed that we are going to be really late as we really wanted to be there and we know we are going to miss out and throw on some pity filled song while recalling all the times we get screwed and concluding we were put on earth to get screwed.
Could we even choose to think.. you know what I wanted to be there but this shit happens and its outa my control.. I already going to be late why would I choose to make myself miserable ass well? Throw in some good tunes and become thankful for an extra hour in relative peace?
How much of our experience can we control? Of that how much do we choose to control?
