Choose Your Thoughts, don't let them choose you!

Hello

Today I am writing from a friend's house nestled cosily in the hills, I am sitting near the wood burner with a gin and tonic enjoying the silence which goes with being far from main roads and other houses. Outside my partner is doing archery with our friends, snow is gently falling, deer and walking by nibbling the grass, you get the idea - yes it is bliss, nothing to achieve, nobody to feed or do laundry for......

My baby is sleeping and it feels wonderful to just BE. Time to simply Be is very important to me, and somehow I only really get it when I am away from home. One thing I have noticed about this simple being time in the past has been a tendency to allow my thoughts free reign; good or bad feeling thoughts have come up and I have simply entertained them, let them put their feet up, offered them my seat by the fire, made them a gin and tonic and let them put me through whatever ghastly nonsense they happened to think up at the time!!!

Not any more! Since setting out on my quest to enjoy the winter by choosing to think pleasant feeling thoughts I have noticed a difference in the way my idling mind works; Yes, Hooray! it is steadily progressing from being predominately miserable and anxious to effortlessly thinking good feeling thoughts, or simply thinking nothing at all. Now instead of my mind constantly babbling on, I can simply sit and enjoy my surroundings, my focus is concentrated where I am and I forget about the rest of the world.

I am really happy about this development, it has made all the attention, work and focus worthwhile, after all what's the point in spending time in beautiful places if your mind is elsewhere working over problems or dramas? Now I can truly be where I actually am, I can see the beauty of the world around me and thoroughly enjoy it.

At times it is hard work maintaining focus on good feeling thoughts, but every day it gets easier. Other times it's really easy to choose good feeling thoughts, everything flows beautifully and I wonder what was so hard when I was struggling! There seems to be very little easily detectable rhyme or reason to why sometimes good feeling thoughts are easy to think and others it seems like an uphill battle? So I'm just going to accept it as part of the amazing journey of being human.

Thoughts are just thoughts, they don't have to mean anything or lead anywhere, we can just think them, wonder why and move on. Today for example I had what some people might describe a writer's block; "What am I going to write about today?" I thought and nothing much came. Ok I thought, what to do? It was just a fact, I didn't have much to say. In the past that might have been a problem, I sat with it most of the day, and realised that it wasn't a problem, it was just a thought....
So I didn't dwell on it, I didn't let it develop into a drama, I just accepted it and chose to think about something else instead. My world didn't change just because of one negative sabotaging thought.

I'm going to keep working on my thoughts, I am committed to my own well being and that of my family who I care for. Sometimes it will be easy and sometimes it might be hard, but the beauty of the world is out there and inside and if I can focus on it I will feel wonderful......

Today I give thanks for snow flakes, each one entirely unique

I give thanks for the veins in leaves which are left when they have dried out

I give thanks for the sound of walking on fallen leaves in a beech wood

I give thanks for the feeling of lying under the trees and looking at the sky

I give thanks for all the amazing pictures of the world in my mind's eye

I give thanks for the red sand in the desert in Australia

I give thanks for icicles

I give thanks for stalactites and stalagmites

I give thanks for caves

I give thanks for the spring on Hay Bluff which led us back to our car in the thick fog

love Klara.