My crazy to Amazing

I grew up with many labels attached to me..."nice", "peacemaker", "gentle", "kind"... to name a few. It took years to understand that this represents only part of my personality and that by suppressing thoughts an emotions incongruous with these labels, I was muting a good part of my personality and personal expression. I became adept at denying to myself and others emotions contrary to these descriptive labels. Things like fear, excitement,  anger, sadness, were suppressed and swept beneath the surface. They weren't gone, only shoved deeply into an emotional vault.  They did escape the vault on occasion but were quickly executed or stuffed back into a emotional prison.  Working at a psychiatric facility as a health technician for many years, I learned to not react in therapeutic and non-threatening ways to verbal and physical assault, loud or soft crazy expressions of psychosis, rage, inhumane behaviors,  and blatant vulgarity. For the needs...

I am learning that it is so important to check in and listen to my thoughts.  Historically, I have ignored them, dismissed them, run from them, hidden them, and become overwhelmed by them. But in reality thoughts in and of themselves are not so scarey.  If I check into them: Listen Evaluate Acknowledge Sift, process, and toss what isn't truthful.... They become manageble. If change is needed, I can add it to my daily plan or goals for the year.  When I ignore them,  I depreciate myself and that can adversely affect my emotions, health, and relationships.  Thoughts can be friends and powerful teachers.

Sometimes it is like selecting clothing from my closet, trying it on and seeing if it fits, matches my mood, or reflects the plans I have for the day.  From Pebbles4Penguins to My crazy to Amazing, it has changed a few times over the years.  I plan to wear this one for a season.

I teach Gospel Doctrine for  Sunday School in our ward and have been asked to do up to a 20 min virtual video accessible through YouTube for each of my lessons. This has been a trial for me. For one, I do not like to talk into a video for even a minute. It is like talking to myself in a mirror. Talk about a inner self critic in overdrive! Each lesson results in a laborious song and dance with multiple rehearsals before uploading what finally evolves into a video lesson on the ward Facebook page. Oddly enough I don't mind writing into the big space for anyone who might want to read my thoughts or ramblings but a video is so very intimidating!! So, brilliant me decided to do a PowerPoint on video with a voice recording. I used You Tube to instruct me how it is done, and after much trial and error I completed the PowerPoint and saved it.  It has been a ridiculously long and unsuccessful process trying to save it to a recognizable mp4 file that can upload to You Tube. I even downl...

“Times of affliction and disappointment do not change the watchful eye of the Lord as He favorably looks upon us, blessing us.” —  Elder Gary E. Stevenson , Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

This last week reminded me of the many ways I allow external circumstances and pressures to sideline my progress in living my divine truth.  Triggers: - Unplanned and uncomfortable events - Planned events that seem overwhelming to me - Uncomfortable decisions  Choices: Default: - procrastinating and avoiding - shutting down and muting my thoughts / voice - distractions through social media or TV - eating without regard to nutritional benefits  Alternatives: - dive in - speak up - choose with intent - connect with my thoughts - write - paint - clean something that has been neglected  Succumbing to default for a moment does not mean derailed. It means, okay, get back on board. Let's go!