Gratitude Monday - My Own Steam

Me and my Focus at Twin Lakes last spring.

If I need to go to a store, I can.
If I wish to go out looking for pictures, I do so.
If I want to go for a drive, then I go for a drive.
The first two can be accomplished in several different ways, but they are easiest done with a car and a driver's license.
The third one requires access to a vehicle and the aforementioned license unless I can rook someone into being a chauffeur.
It's easier to do it myself and I am grateful for the simple pleasure of driving a car that I own.

Hello Suckers!

Now that I’ve got your attention, and possibly offended you a wee bit, let me explain.
I’ve been ruthlessly experimenting on myself. Along with devoting an hour a day to writing, I’ve been trying to sort out what snackies are the best for concentrating.

Coffee has its place of course, and in the dead of the gloriously crisp Canadian winter, screaming hot tea. Earl Grey with sugar. I’m not sure what it is, but I can’t see to get tea hot enough. Oh, the water boils furiously in the kettle. I insist on a proper rolling boil and occasionally it spills over when I’m not fast enough to catch it, but it’s plus 30C now not minus 30C and hot tea is out of the question.

I need chew toys.

Something in my mouth helps me to think. I smoked for 10 years. One of the big attractions of this was having the object to suck on. It’s relaxing. It helped me focus. It was wonderful.

Toothpicks replaced cigarettes. Even though I’d stopped smoking before I got my driver’s license I found that a toothpick resting comfortably out one side of my mouth kept me sharp behind the wheel.

I used them at the office, too. Some days I had many stories to write and wanted to do them all at once. A protruding chew toy helped me to home in on one story at a time.
I know it’s not the least bit attractive, irrespective of what my more supportive friends say, but it’s me and it works and I can’t bring myself to care.

Lately during the writing hour I’ve chewed on licorice cigars, grape-flavored licorice twists, actual licorice-flavored licorice bits, walnettos (That name cracks me up to this day. Dear Dog I miss Laugh-In.) caramels, and suckers. That’s what we called ‘em here, anyway. They’re essentially a variety of lollipop.

I can pop one in my mouth and work it as I work on my manuscript. It lasts about a half-hour and the emptied stick is good for light chewing afterward.
It’s bigger than a toothpick, which I have at my desk for emergency think sessions, and they’ve got a bit of flavor to them.

As much as I liked all my chews toys, the suckers are the best. I may have to keep a bucket of them to get me through my manuscript.

Of Course I Can

Affirmations, mantras, incantations, spells, call ‘em what you will; they work.
Distilled down to their simplest form they’re a strong positive statement expressed repeatedly. When you say something over and over it gets imprinted. It becomes real. It is real.

Simple is best because it’s easy to remember and easy to use.
If you’ve got several areas to work on you might find yourself skipping about excitedly trying to change everything at once.

I know. I’ve done it.

It scatters the energy too much at a time when it ought to be focused. You’ll get some changes, but the attempt is half-hearted. That makes it easy to declare affirmations as useless.

“They’re too hard,” you might say. “I’m not going to bother. And they don’t work anyway.”

This clears the way for you to stop trying so you can get back at all that important grumbling you’ve been doing.

Do you realize your grumbling carries the same amount of energy and does the same thing as the affirmations? You’re inculcating problems when you could use the same focus and energy to rid yourself of them.
That’s your choice, of course. Do what you want.

Do you want to change? Do you want to stop wasting energy feeding your problems? Are you looking for a place to start?
Here’s a simple declaration to get you going. I recently started using this because I’ve been scattering my energy instead of focusing it.
I wanted something on the ground level to build on and I decided this declaration was the best foundation:

“Of course I can.”

Use it or discard it as you see fit.

Want more affirmations? LaUna Huffines has some good ones at Path of Light.

And you can always make your own.

Think you can't?

Of course you can.