Getting out of my own way.

I am finding the less I listen to my own mind the happier I am.

They say that what you focus on expands. So if my focus is on my injuries, my cellulite, my fatigue, my lack of sleep, my tired and sore feet, my loneliness.....then that's what I will get more of.

Who can love,  grow, bloom, enjoy the beauty in nature and discover life's secret to happiness  with all of that as the focus?

I know certain things about myself.

 I need to stay active. It's as simple as a body in motions stays in motion. A body at rest stays at rest. At 47 I am not ready to rest. I got a lot more years a head of me. If I start resting now, I will be immobile by the time I am ready to retire! And then what!? What kind of retirement will that be? Not the one I imagine I can have.

I need strong social bonds with people I connect with on some common plane.

I need my family. I need a weekly connections with my children and grandchildren.

I need time to connect with my husband. We do this in Arnold mostly and we're getting better about doing this at home too.

I need to make a difference in the world.  Helping people on their journeys feel safe and comfortable in the hospital as they get ready for surgery. Being their for my family and friends is another way I make a difference.

I need to feel good about myself. Amazingly enough up until this point, I've been going about this all  wrong. What I wanted and what I gave myself were 2 separate things.  I wanted to feel good about myself, but I focused on all the negative things in my life. And these things kept expanding. No wonder I was still struggling at 47.

I made a decision to stop weighing myself about 2-3 months ago. The more I focused on my weight the more I hated myself. By not getting on the scale I have discovered I am not nearly as hard on myself and this in turn stops some of the self sabotage. It went like this: I stand on the scale, I make a judgement, I hate myself, then I eat to soothe myself and then I hate myself more. Now it goes like this: I choose to be as healthy as I can at the time. I find clothes that fit in my closet. I feel better about myself. I make healthier choices. The next time I go to the closet something else fits. So little by little this is improving. This upward trend makes all the difference in the world to me.

I need to be creative: this is the newest thing I have discovered about myself. I put this aside to raise kids, get through nursing school and work. But now I have time I can focus on this again.

So my HOPE is: by focusing on what I need to do,  I will stay out of my own negative mind and get out of my own way.