My word for last year was "begin." My goal was to give myself permission to start things even if I wasn't sure of what the result would be or where I would wind up. It worked. Many things are still in process; that's okay because I got started.
In October I challenged myself to begin to seriously look back at regrets, disappointments, mistakes, and goals not met. My goal was to change my thinking. For longer than I care to admit I have looked back to review what I did that brought me to where I am, sometimes at what worked and more often what didn't. Honestly, I was tired of that routine. It was time to change what I had always done.
I was pushed to dig deep because my mom would have been 88 years old last October. She was 20 when I was born, and I was dreading my next birthday: I didn't want to be caught in a decades-old pattern of looking back with regret at things I couldn't change. I did what I did and each decision led me to where I wound up. I love my kids and grandkids and wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. I want to feel differently about myself. I want to go forward in a different way.
Every time a thought about the past came up, I examined it until I was tired of thinking about it. I looked at what I did, why, what had led to the decision, what the result was, and what came after. I exhausted all the should-have's, could-have's, what-if's, and why-didn't-I's. I didn't deny any thought; when anything came up, I followed the chain of what happened before and what came after. Every single time.
Eventually thoughts would occur to me and pass through quickly. I had already looked at every angle and accepted that what happened...happened.
I didn't know how long the process would take but was determined to stay with the challenge until I could move on. It was getting easier.
Then on January 31 I read the following in Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening:
"Dropping all we carry - all our preconceptions, our interior lists of the ways we've failed and the ways we've been wronged, all the secret burdens we work at maintaining - dropping all regret and expectation lets our mentality die. Dropping all we have constructed as imperative allows us to be born again into the simplicity of spirit that arises from unencumbered being."
Begin. Things will change. It is worth the effort.
The journey continues....
