I set out today to show myself that I am someone that I can depend on.
This is about the lessons learned from this morning's blog 'Dependable Grace' https://steemit.com/lovelife/@kimzilla/dependable-grace
The issue I faced this morning is a particular patterned habit that I have programmed within and as myself where I act on impulse, create chaos and disorder in my life, which in turn creates rush and panic.
So today I set out to, in my living actions, show myself that I can and will discipline myself to do exactly what I set out to do. And then, in the early hours of my day, I apparently let myself down by again acting on an impulse, causing me to be late for work.
Normally I would take this situation and begin churning it over and over in my head, creating internal conversations about it in the form of internal bullying about how I am a failure, how I let myself down once again, and how I am no good at this life thing.
The interesting thing about the mind is that it feeds off of these very energetic reactions we are able to create within the relationship we have with ourselves, within ourselves. The mind uses these reactions to create energetic charges, creating stress hormones and other chemicals which we pump into our veins to get a rush... like a drug. Anger can be addictive, love can become an addiction, even blame, resent, depression and the pursuit of happiness, power and greed can turn us into the biggest detriment in our own lives.
What saved me today was my grace, my ability to embody and live grace in a moment where I would have normally turned to anger and frustration with myself.
When the incident happened, I reminded myself of my own words that I wrote in this morning's blog.
I had screwed up on 'dependable', but luckily I had chosen a complimentary word: 'Grace' to support myself with.
In that moment, instead of feeding the mind's desire to indulge in the chemicals I am able to produce with my thoughts, I turned instead to the stabilizing self-forgiveness of grace.
Another way to look at it: I lived the word Grace and forgave myself.
I forgave myself for fucking up and I breathed through the reaction. I took measures to do some damage control in the way of calling my boss and being straight up, and then making a deal that I would stay late to make up the time. This was as much as I could do to direct the consequence of my actions, so I let it go.
I walked into work calm and collected, and focused on my job, staying late as promised.
The lesson here is one that I have been learning over and over again recently and for years now: It is not what you do, but who you are within what you do.
I cannot control the world around me, and sometimes I struggle to control myself. This lack of self-control freaks me out and destabilizes me at times, but not today.
Today I realized that although I fucked up in the physical action of 'being dependable' for myself, I stood strong in being dependable on an internal level. I didn't freak out, I caught myself, I was there for me to be the directive principle within myself at a time when I normally would have lost it and created internal chaos.
This is not to say that physical actions are less important in any way. It is to say that within the learning process, when we fall, it is equally important to catch ourselves and pick ourselves back up, instead of kicking ourselves when we are already down.
So in the end, it isn't a fuckup - look at my own word of support from this morning: "The only failure is in giving up. The rest has to do with falling, getting back up, learning, forgiving, grace, and letting go."
Today I grew a little.
I also diffused and revealed the self-sabotaging mind-mechanism labelled 'poor impulse control'. I can see now that I've used 'poor impulse control' to create situations in my life that cause me to fall so that I can indulge in the chemicals I spew into my veins as a result. With this revealed and diffused it makes it less tempting for me to actually act on those impulses, because with practice I will see that in the end it's not worth it, there will be no apparent 'reward' of being able to vent my frustrations upon myself, I am taking that outlet away.
This is a learning process, and i am taking away the incentive and rewards for un-beneficial behaviour.
Slowly but surely, breath by breath.
Give a listen to this video where Sunette explains Anger and control and the relationship between the two:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku9zYtj0t9w&list=PLfXDpz6q3Oqy0xqSV-WAEzs48aoHa1jWb
Thank you.