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With the temperatures dropping, the days getting shorter or nights getting longer depending how you look at it I find myself wanting to stay inside more, drinking more hot tea, going to bed earlier and getting up later.  Not a recipe for success if you follow the adage: the early bird gets the worm. I follow the adage, there are plenty of worms for everybody, so thank you but I’ll just wait until the heat kicks on before I put one toe on the floor.  I cannot say that I am lazy as I’ve been practicing positive thinking to grow towards more joy and especially to stop the critical self talk. It has been an eye opener to have to think about how I treat myself compared to how I treat others, it seems it’s easier to be much kinder towards others than towards myself.  Self discovery is a full time job involving reading lots of books, writing, listening to Podcast, watching inspirational videos, eating better, it makes you mindful of everything. For example my dog was digging a hole in the ground in an area where he has no business doing it, a few months ago I would have gotten very frustrated, yelled at him because as you know there is never enough dirt around the hole to fill it back in, but with my new found mindfulness all I could tell him was: well Balto I guess you were just being a dog, it cannot be helped but please stop digging here.  I think I have changed into someone who doesn’t worry about a lot of things or maybe I just don’t care about a lot of things anymore. I am not sure when the shift happened, but I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of me. I am far from being done though, it is like the book “If you give a mouse a cookie” it can go on and on with more books about the mouse.

Christie Marie Sheldon popped up on my feed so of course I decided to watch the video.  This is what really jumped out at me: to become a better or more successful me is to make no judgement on anybody or anything or situation.  It is amazing how much we judge all day long. One of her suggestions was to carry around an index card and making a tally mark everytime a judgement is made.  When I heard her say that I thought, no problem I am not that judgemental. I am sorry to say I will need a notepad. If you don’t believe me try it, we judge and comment on everything.  It is a great exercise to stop yourself, let it go and put a positive thought in its place. Maybe it is one of the reasons I like staying home, I can think freely as there is just me, the dog and the cat.  I do love the work involved in replacing the judgement with seeing positive though, if we all did that the world would change very quickly.

So here I am stuck with this newfound philosophy that I feel is necessary for me to follow through.  That leaves me with a challenge to be kind especially to myself, to find new adjectives or ways of seeing things.  Who would have thought I would become my own student? So this week I challenge you to pay attention to the judgements you make, let them go, find out how that makes you feel about yourself or your life.  It is not easy but as they say practice makes better.