Welcome to day 21!
I'm so excited about this day because it takes 21 days to build a habit and I think we're building a habit!
Thanks for sticking with it.
There's more to come but we're really really doing amazing things already.
So today we're going to talk about stories.
We started talking about it a few days ago,
Little by little,
And now it's time to talk about the fact that we are making decisions about the qualities of the events that happened.
We're putting labels on them like remembering something that happened and then you think the judgy label about it.
Well that just sucked.
That just sucked is that's a label but what if that label wasn't there?
Then the event just happened.
That happened and without a label it doesn't need to hurt.
It doesn't need to cause suffering.
Once we realize that these stories that we tell ourselves,
These judgments and labels that we put on the events that happened and the way we recall them and maybe even some of the things that are happening right now,
They're unnecessary.
So we can decide to stop doing that,
To stop labeling,
Stop deciding that something is good or bad or whatever and just letting them be what they are and they lose their emotional attachments.
Therefore we are not swept into some kind of negative emotion about it and we can stay rooted in peace.
I'm sure there's going to be things that happen that you don't like.
I mean let's be real,
I don't like it when my child is angry and says something rude to me.
That's not peaceful to me but for me to be the way I react is the difference.
I hear him say something rude that I didn't,
You know,
That's not nice.
I hear him say that to me and a part of me wants to get angry and yell back and tell them stop it,
Stop it,
You know,
That's so mean you can't say that or whatever.
But all of that,
Instead I could stay calm.
I could choose peace.
I could choose to be okay,
It's not okay that he said that and there's going to be,
You know,
Some kind of repercussion but it doesn't have to come with a flood of anger.
It can come with some calm and saying okay that was not an okay thing to say and therefore this is going to happen now.
You're going to leave the room or I'm going to leave the room or I will not continue to talk to you or whatever it's going to be.
There's going to be some consequence that follows but it doesn't have to be one that hurts me and tears me up inside or causes me to have this anger that goes on.
Okay,
So that's just an example.
I'm not saying that things are going to happen to you and you should have no feeling about it at all but I'm saying remember you can make a choice and then it's so much easier to just like be done with it afterwards.
So it takes practice okay and it's not always perfect so don't hold yourself to some kind of perfection either.
Okay,
Don't do that.
Just remember this is a process and we can bring ourselves back to where we want to be at any time.
All right,
So do your prompt and try to notice when you're labeling something or rehashing a memory and calling it this or that or how you're responding to the moments in your life and then decide how important it is to hold on to that or not.
Okay,
All right talk to you soon.
