mind set

Who’s in charge of your mindset?  You?  The people around you?  Your circumstances?

I had a wake-up call this weekend.  I looked through my blog entries and so many are negative.  Laws of Biology and physics do not apply to me.  Frustration.  Distraction and Depression…Yikes!  I have also been studying the life of Moses and for those of you who read Christopher Moore, the statement that Shylock makes is just a tad off.  When I complained about how things didn’t seem to work for me, how everything seemed to go wrong, how something was wrong with me…I was doing the exact same things the Hebrews were doing in the wilderness.  “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us?  There’s no water and no meat and we hate this stupid food!” (This was the manna that miraculously appeared every morning 6 of 7 days every week, every month, for 38 years!)  Their clothes didn’t wear out; their shoes didn’t wear out. God was moving about 2 million people around the area and protecting them from wild animals, starvation, storms, renegades…and they complained about not having cucumbers.  They weren’t rejecting Moses, they were rejecting God and his blessings.  I had to consider that every time I was complaining, I was rejecting something God had put in front of me to accomplish.  Big mistake.  <.<   >.>  <.<  (looks for poisonous snakes, lightning bolts, tremors of earthquakes…)  I must stop complaining.  It makes for good comedy, but after a while, it’s not funny any more.  It fixes nothing.  It amplifies depression.  It tends to make one less likely to get up off her ass and do something productive because it will fail anyway attitude.  What kind of example is that?

So this weekend, I traveled 8 hrs to a Women’s conference.  It was for the business, but these conferences are not like regular conferences.  Every single woman in the place started at a different spot:  married, unmarried, kids, no kids, over 40, under 40, rich, poor, good job, unemployed, 6th grade education, graduate degrees.  They were all in business for themselves and hungry to find the nuggets they needed to boost their income and their influence.  There was no single winning “type”  and there was no single formula to succeed.  They covered every aspect and every time I go to one of these things, I get to the end and think, “well, that was interesting, but doesn’t apply to me,” and then the last day, KAPOW!  Just what I needed.  I don’t know why it’s always the last day, but I suspect God is needing me to see the build up to this last day so I understand it better in light of what I’ve heard and the people I’ve met and talked to in that time.

I ate very sensibly and took the stairs about 1/2 the time when I needed to go to my room or to the conference room.  There WAS this amazing chocolate desert on Friday however… When I started listing off the excuses I had for why I was where I was, they all sounded like things I could control.  I was not the victim here, I made my choices.  I chose not to cook much at home, I chose to be less active, I chose to focus on having fun and not getting better.  I, I, I  omg!  I am acting like a millenial in the basement of his mom’s house playing his video games while his siblings make fun of him for not having a job!

I decided (and that’s 1/2 the battle) that I was going to change my mindset and quit complaining and do something that I can control.  This should be interesting.

I still find it easier to walk the tread mill than to walk outside.  Last week, I went to the zoo with my son and his girlfriend.  The GPS was weirded out on my walking ap, and I wrote about that in my last entry.  It was pretty funny.  The walking I did the next day and the day after that was very painful!  Bad enough that I went on line to see what exactly was hurting.  It was the fascia in my lower back.  Anyone know how to reduce the pain there when walking?  Suggestions welcome!