Tuesday, June 2, 2009

So, my hair is growing in. Actually, it’s *been* growing in. I’m still not comfortable walking around without a hat (and yet, I put videos on YouTube of me without one, interesting….). Still, it reminds me that my body is recovering.

My body is recovering. How powerful a statement is that? Lately, I have gotten in the habit of wording things in the present tense. Not “My body will get better” or “I am going to heal,” but “My body IS recovering.” Right now, right this very second – with every hair cell that pushes its way out of my scalp! For all his talk about ditching minimum-wage activities and hundred-thousand dollar watches, I think what all these MLM seminar leaders are really teaching, beneath the how-to-be-a-millionaire smoke and mirrors, is that the language you use, the words you speak, are of critical importance to your success in any endeavor. Are you someone who says, “As soon as I ____, things will be better…”? What statements like this do is put your brain in a permanent state of anticipation, not a permanenet state of action. You are contstantly anticipating the day when things in your life will get better, but they never get better, because you are never taking action!

Have you ever heard the expression that in our dreams, we are the writers, directors, and actors? I have a better metaphor – our lives are courtrooms, and we are the defendant, the plaintiff, the judge, jury, and attorneys. Every moment of our lives, we are making the case for beliefs that we uphold. We look for evidence, and deem it relevant or irrelevant depending on those beliefs. Do you think marriage is an outdated, sexist institution? Then you will seek out evidence of it and IGNORE evidence to the contrary, just to uphold your belief. Even when the knife has fingerprints from the defendant and the victim’s blood all over it, you will say, “Illegal Search! This Evidence Is Inadmissible!” You will look at someone in a happy, giving, joyful marriage, and say that they are an exception, a fluke, or a lie, just to maintain your belief.

One of my favorite quotes is, “Reality is created by Validation.” We make choices every day about where that validation comes from, and we accept or reject the validation based on our evaluation of the evidence presented (which is, of course, accepted or rejected based on our beliefs). If we believe we are bad people (based on what we deem “credible” evidence, like, say, an abusive spouse’s opinion), we might also then believe that God gave us cancer to punish us. A sane person would tell us, “That’s ridiculous!” If we believed we deserved it, though, and believed it with enough fervor, we would dismiss our well-meaning friend’s opinion as uninformed. “You just don’t know how bad I am,” we would say to ourselves. “I do deserve this, and that’s why I have it.”

When bad things happen to good people, it’s easy to blame God, but it’s even easier to blame ourselves. Why? Because it gives us the illusion of control. If you got this because you’re bad, then you can get rid of it by being good. Right? So, basically, you think you can manipulate God’s will by changing your behavior? That’s kind of arrogant, isn’t it? Or is it ignorant? Maybe, shit just happens. Every day. And there’s nothing you can do but roll with the punches. That’s scary, though. It’s much more comforting to imagine we can control God by living a certain way, like happiness is some kind of combination lock we can figure out, isn’t it? That’s not the way it works, though. The sooner we accept that, the easier it gets to swerve when life throws you a curve.

Some of you might disagree, so here’s the evidence, and it’s undisputable: bad things happen to good people. All the time. You can be living a right and good and honest life and still get sick with a disease you don’t deserve. So what? How are you going to respond? Are you going to fight it? Are you going to yell at God? Get angry? Sit around and have a pity party? Good luck. I can’t think of an example where any of that’s actually worked for anyone or made their life happier.

The only thing that works is this: get busy living your life. Stop crying and feeling sorry for yourself – that’s just selfishness and it does no one any good, especially you. Believe with all your heart that you deserve all the happiness and goodness and abundance in the universe, and get out of that darkness so you can get busy living the life you DO deserve (and who says that you can’t be fighting cancer AND be happy?!) Then, look back and create a road map of your journey, so you can help others find their way out. There are a millions ways to get to a happy life. Find yours, then share it.