I haven’t won the lotto, nor did I get married to a millionaire. My life is still the same AND I only do what I like. How the heck does that work??!!
For years I watched myself getting in a foul mood for hours when the time came to clean house, especially the bathroom, I just HATED it. Having to give public speeches would make me sick to the stomach weeks in advance, and I would procrastinate for days before making phone calls to certain people. – The list of situations I hated or was scared of and uneasy with was long, very long….
I wanted a way out of this misery. So I started to look for a common denominator in all the situations, and I soon saw a pattern emerge. All of them had one fact in common: They did NOT meet my preference. I wanted them to be different.
Personal experience has shown me again and again that I can want a situation to be different until I am blue in the face. All I’ll get from wanting is frustration and fatigue.
Since the situations were unlikely to transform miraculously to meet my preferences, all I could do was LIKE the situations as they were….
Sounds crazy? That’s what I thought in the beginning. At the time I had started to study Eastern Philosophy and came across this ancient saying: Whatever you think you become.
Thinking for years that I hated to do “This” and didn’t like “That” certainly produced the promised results: I was thinking misery and producing it in abundance in many aspects of my life.
There was only one solution: learning to LIKE and enjoy cleaning the bathroom, smile at my nervousness of public speaking and do it anyway, get on the phone with difficult people and turn it into a game to see if I can make them laugh.
At first, it seemed crazy and unrealistic, challenging and all too simple at the same time. But I gave it a try – and I never looked back. It simply and completely transformed my life.
Imagine doing only what you like – always, and having the freedom to decide to do so. That’s how powerful we are, all of us.
Marie-Lou Kuhne Millerick
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2 comments:
Marie-Lou,
I loved your revelation that you can "do what you like" even if it's a mundane task like washing the dishes.
It's such as simple and powerful paradigm shift.
However, I struggle with the idea of "liking" situations that are traumatic or horrific (personal illness, tradegy in the family...). How do I deal with those issues?
Carlita
I am glad you enjoyed the article “I only do what I like”.
You are right, trying to like them is not a workable strategy for personal illness or traumatic events. With issues of that kind, help comes through developing one’s ability to accept what can’t be changed. There is a common thread in the two approaches though. In the situations we don’t like as well as in tragedy, much depends on the way we think about a situation and about ourselves in that situation. If we’re fighting what is happening, thinking it should not happen or it’s our fault, the energy of resistance that gets created will increase the difficulty and therefore add significantly to the suffering.
An example might help illustrate the point: If I get diagnosed with cancer, there will be a significant difference in my experience and what I learn from it if:
I acknowledge my fear and shock and then seek help to deal with them; inquire into how I can contribute to heal; cultivate an attitude of acceptance learn to visualize positive outcomes
as opposed to letting fear take over, becoming a victim and cultivating bitterness and resentment.
It takes work and courage to face difficulty with acceptance AND it is worth every inch of effort, for the experience of sickness itself is profoundly transformed by the attitude we chose in the face of tragedy.
Marie-Lou
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