tending the garden of my mind

In the end, I really only have control over my own head. I can't control what life throws at me, I can't control what other people do or choose, I can't control if my body stays healthy or gets sick, I can't control whether or not someone loves me or has the wrong impression of me, I can't control almost anything outside of my physical form and can't control most of my physical form itself.

But I can control my head, my thoughts, my brain. I like to see it as my own personal playground. If I want to fantasize about being on a tropical beach for a few minutes to escape work stress, who'd know? So therefore, no one can judge or criticize me for it, so why not?

As difficult as it may be to actually LIVE those words, that I can control my thoughts, it really is under my control. Most of my faults are all up in that head, some are too big to handle right now, yes, but others, not so much. And if I try to take on one of those faults at a time, or deal with a few small ones slowly over time, then I'm constantly getting better, and that's all I can ask of myself, right? If I'm always trying, always traveling, then I've never given up, so hopefully people won't give up on me in return. We can only ask of ourselves to be better, not perfect.

My dad told me many times that if in our lives we come further than our parents came, that alone is a success. His grandfather was illiterate (direct from Lithuania, be glad the man could speak English, let alone try to write it...), his father could read & write but never got past high school & was a violent drunk. My father amazes me in that he not only graduated college, he also stopped the generations of alcoholism that plagued his family with his life. So that my life could be without. He said, just take one step more than I took, and I will be more proud of you than any parent could be. You don't have to be perfect, but be better than those that came before.

Another amazing piece of advice I was given years ago, in my journey to continually make myself better, was to stop trying to change who I am. If there is something about myself, about my thinking, that I want changed, stop trying to force myself to stop that behavior and stop criticizing myself for the behavior every single time it occurs. Instead, try only to recognize every single time the behavior/thought/choice arises within me. To notice it every time it occurs and only notice, acknowledge, recognize it for what it is. Not try to change it, just to be aware of it.

The idea is that maybe we don't like something about how we react or what we say or do, but we're actually doing/reacting/behaving in that manner far more often than we even admit to ourselves. That if we try to force a change willfully, we will be blind to half the times we're really even doing it. But by simply putting forth the effort into NOTICING doing it, instead of wasting our efforts on the harder mission of "changing" it, we will notice ourselves doing it WAY more than we ever imagined. That we blind ourselves to our faults, not intentionally, but we just do. And by simply acknowledging just how often we REALLY are doing what we want changed, that recognition alone will help our brains wrap around the behavior & in the end, without effort, we will find ourselves making that choice or reacting in that way less and less. It's the seeing that provokes the change, not the effort of trying to force the change.

That's not only difficult to put into words right here, but also crazy difficult to actually achieve. But to me, everything is based on the phrase "GIVEN A LONG ENOUGH TIME LINE". My goal in life is to be who I want to be, who I am PROUD to be, by age 87. I have no idea why that age specifically, but on my death bed, I want to be proud of who I was. Whether after I die I will meet God, be reincarnated, disappear from existence, or something totally different, the details matter not if I lived a life I am proud to have lived, a life I loved, enjoyed, and a life that will continue on after my physical form is gone, through the memories I helped create and the lives I have touched. I don't understand why people waste energy on trying to figure out what happens when you die, when you have a whole life to live right here in front of you. Do the best you can with what you have means living your LIFE, stop fighting & killing over stuff we'll never get to know 100% for sure. Maybe that's the POINT of not knowing what comes when we die, so we can get OVER IT and MOVE ON with what's right in FRONT OF US.

So in honor of that, and in honor of my obsessive personal need to CONTROL things to feel safe, secure, and like a successful human, I just try to control my HEAD. When I start to fall asleep and I am bombarded by insecurities or fears or worry or anxiety or regret for what I did or didn't say or did or didn't do... I now try to note that I am doing something I want to change. And then I ask myself one simple "mantra" of a question (mantra, in that I hold onto this question as one of my saving graces in life, since it has helped me sooo much and allows me to sleep a lot more than I ever would without it...). I ask myself "Can you do anything about this RIGHT NOW? Right now, while you're laying here in bed, if you got up right this second, could you really do anything to fix this, or control this? What could you do about it RIGHT THIS SECOND? ANYTHING???" The answer is pretty much always NOPE. So the follow up question is this... "Then why are you worrying about it?" I can't explain to you exactly why this works for me, but I share in it the hope that maybe it'll work for someone else too. If even one person gets one extra night of sleep because I shared, then I can die happy at 87. (See what I'm doing here??)

When I get toooooo self conscious, or start replaying situations in my head after they're over, and I start criticizing myself for things I did or didn't say, or start assuming people were thinking this or that about me, or must be thinking this or that about me now, that's one of my biggest issues in life. One of my greatest battles. Granted, I admit now that I never expect to be fully free of this (I feel it's just one more piece of the human condition cuz every single person I've ever met does this too, at least sometimes. I think it's built into us so that we are then able to evolve ourselves. I don't think we were hardwired to do this just to feel like crappy people, but to then recognize what we want to change about ourselves.) BUT, if and when I can catch myself having these thoughts, about how I'm not good enough or reacted wrong or whatever, I first try to tell myself, you're probably being overly critical of yourself. Then I try to allow myself to really think about the situation (if I have the internal strength to do so at that moment, which a LOT of the time, I just don't. Again, I have to stop judging myself for THAT too!) as real and logically as I can, and really let myself consider if my behavior WAS incorrect, or if I DID say anything offensive, who was there to hear it & how they feel about me (my family & friends knowing the real me & loving me both despite of and because of my faults vs strangers who don't know or love my quirks).

I cannot be blind to when I am wrong, but I also cannot simply tell myself I'm horrible because of it. If I reevaluate a situation and do believe I was wrong for some reason, instead of just sitting on the "you're a jerk" or "you're stupid" or "they hated you" concept that I have the tendency to just keep & focus on, I then really try to ask myself, "Ok then, what would/should you do NEXT TIME?" I go through the situation again in my head, replaying it but changing it for how I WISH I had handled it, what I WISH I had done or said or not done or not said. Then I tell myself, "Ok, then that's what you'll do next time." and focus on THAT, not the "bad Hope" thoughts that my brain would rather hold onto. Because just telling myself "No, bad, wrong" isn't going to change ANYTHING. And then next time, I'll be stuck feeling like a jerk yet again. Why put my energy & effort THERE, when I can focus on what the 87 year old me would be PROUD OF on her DEATH BED in that situation.

Again, far easier to say than do, but I try. And trying is all I have. Cuz I'm stuck all by myself in this brain of mine, in these healthy or unhealthy thoughts, no one will ever fully understand exactly what my life feels like, why I make some of my choices, or who I am COMPLETELY. No one but me (at least that I am allowed to be aware of, in this life, in this moment, in this reality we all share). So if this brain is my home, and I am here alone, then it is MINE. Then it will be what I make of it. And if I sit and allow myself to let this brain be a landfill of regret and judgments, then my external life will mirror that.

But if I try to tend the garden of my mind like I care for, weed, water and till the garden in my backyard, then my life will mirror THAT. And I love the hope and life within a tended garden. Why on earth would I choose to simply let be what doesn't have to be, when I really do have a choice. Even though, that choice, is the harder one to make. Wallowing in misery is harder, though. At least to 87 year old me.