Day 16

I feel really blessed. For so many reasons, but today especially because of my friends and family. They're just pretty awesome. And as I start to gain distance from the perceptions I've had of myself and others for so long, I start to see them differently. Less judgmentally, more compassionately.

Choosing to shift a behavior I've held for as long as I can remember, something I thought I could never change, seems to be shaking loose some other ways of being that appeared to be set in stone. My "Adult Voice" (you know, the rational, objective one) is pointing out new perspectives to me more frequently, and I'm reacting less quickly and less emotionally than I used to.

I'm also taking things less personally. Maybe because I'm realizing how caught up in my own story I've been, I can see people in their stories. I don't have to repeat mine, and I don't have to absorb theirs. It's so liberating--and there's so much energy released that I can now focus on things that are actually interesting and/or important!

So the shift continues. Last night, I put my clothes away. Now we're home again, and I'll tell you the truth, I just want to fall right into bed. I could SO easily dump my clothes on the chair and say I'll deal with them tomorrow. I could rationalize it in no time flat--I'm wiped out from taking three trains to get home and schlepping many more bags than we had people (I'm laughing right now because the spell-check actually corrected the way I spelled "shlepping") and I can pretend that I'll have much more time to do it tomorrow and would therefore do a better job if I left the clothes out overnight so I'm really doing myself a disservice by putting them away tonight...

Can you believe how easy it is to tell myself something I KNOW is so not true?!?

So my intention is to head downstairs and put the clothes I'm wearing away in under five minutes, and stick to my commitment and wake up in a clear room. I can unpack tomorrow; in fact, I'll commit to unpacking tomorrow as my new weekly additional challenge. I'll let you know how it goes.