What Do You Tell Yourself?

Dear Readers,
My second implant is bringing me more joy than I expected, because I can hear so much more! It has opened up my world! I am so grateful for this! The isolation of not hearing what people are saying is brutal, because when you can’t hear, you can’t respond. Being able to hear words and to communicate is a gift for me. 

I am working with a wonderful life coach, Paul Silva, who wrote the blog called, Message in a Bottle, to help me reframe some of my thinking, and to hold me accountable to making some small changes for myself.
Little things can add up to big things! 

I know myself well enough, that I need outside accountability. I show up for things when I tell people I will. I volunteer and I always show up for that. 
I was finally able to get sober by telling the people I was, so I had accountability.

However, I struggle with showing up in other places, where it’s only up to me.
One of my biggest hurdles in the way of my own happiness is my thinking.
My negative thinking, has become a habit. I talk myself out of showing up for yoga, a meeting, or even setting up coffee dates, saying, “It’s too hard. I don’t feel like it.” 
I have these fights with myself, saying I want to go, but then saying it’s too hard. 

I was getting exhausted with this fight, and losing out on some happiness because I missed being with some good people!
Now, my body does hurt. I know it’s partly age, partly some arthritis. Hot showers help. But moving and getting out, makes me feel so much better, and yet, I resist.

So with Paul’s help, I came up with a new mantra, that I have been repeating over and over again. I say it as soon as I wake up, in the shower, and even during yoga.

It is slowly helping. Saying it outloud, and reading it continuously, is the key. When my mind starts back on the old track, I instantly catch myself and go to my new mantra. I just talked with my 94 year old mother, who tells herself, “I can do it.” If she can, I can!

Because if not now, when?
I am not young anymore. I want to live the rest of my life with fun, giving, ease, adventure and love. 

Paul is helping me look at things from a different perspective. Showing up for meetings is service, giving back by showing others how happy my life is by not drinking. Even showing up for yoga is a form of service to my yoga teachers and buddies, who are ever so happy to have me in class, giving them energy and love they might need! I need those connections. 

One of my role models is Hellen Keller. She became an optimist in her teens.
Her words have strong meaning for me, as I can slip back into “poor me” thoughts, if I am not vigilant. 

“Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they could be! Lacking this gift or circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, – if in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.”

Tell yourself you are a good person.
Tell yourself you are loved.
Tell yourself you bring your gifts to others.
Tell yourself you are more than a drink or a drug.
Tell yourself you believe.
Tell yourself you are worthwhile.
Tell yourself you are loved.
Because you are, and you are all of these.

Today is lifting weights and walking with hubs day!
It’s finally warm enough we can get outside!

Yay!!

With Sub Zero Temperatures Leaving,
On Day 1611,

Wendy