On Another Note

Remember a couple of weeks ago how I wrote about living in the moment?  So here we are 14 days ahead and what am I doing?  Thinking about the future!

      How do we stop ingrained habits?  It is extremely difficult to change physical bad habits but even harder to change mental habits. The mind is like a record that slips into the existing grooves of thought.  Some of the things I’ve done to attempt to change my mental habits has been simply reading and recognizing myself.  When I read almost anything I will find nuggets of information and these nuggets will make me think about myself and life in general.  It’s almost always a slow process of making discoveries, recognizing them in myself and then working towards undoing negative or unproductive thought habits.

      Sounds vague?  Here’s an example.  Quite a few years ago I read “The Four Agreements” and the biggest impact was the statement that when people are negative or mean it is “their poison”, not yours.  I have had occasion to recall this philosophy many times and slowly it has helped me to not take things personally.  For sure my initial reaction when someone is being mean is to take offense but I’ve noticed that each time I have thought about the poison.  Now it is almost the first thing I think about rather than brood over it until resolving it at the end of the day.  Now that is a release of negative energy!

      I thinking about mental habits today because I saw an example of how not making serious attempts at change can have dire consequences.  When we are told that we have a problem, when we are instructed to seek counselling, it behooves us to take this seriously rather than to only pay lip service to the advice.  We live and work in a professional world, whether we want to believe it or not, whether we work at Walmart or government offices, and as individuals we should behave in a professional manner. 

I notice on the train such different levels of conduct that it makes me think “it takes all kinds to make a world” and yet I can see the serious individuals who probably bring a high level of professionalism to their work because they are still professional when they get on the bus.  They move down into the centre of the train because they work as a team which means others will be affected by what they do.  Then there are those who stop at the first handle and refuse to budge and do not care that people are left standing on the platform to wait for the next train.  I look at them with my penetrating eyes, some look away but others will attempt to stare me down.  But all get the message yet still refuse to budge.

We live in a selfish world and there are many people who will never change.  Philistines!