Feeling Great = Resistance - Surrender

Feeling great is something that I am always in search of and on the occasion that I find it I try to analyze and re-create the circumstance that led me to feeling this way. When I am sad or depressed I do the same thing I try to figure out what made me take the dip and how to avoid it the next time.

This is a tiresome rotation that seems natural and logical in the real world but for me I find it does more harm than good. I find myself saying to myself  "I don't want to be this person" the person that feels out of control and unlikeable mostly to myself.

As I move further into freedom from these traps of the past I can see it is this pattern of thinking that causes just about all of my pain and suffering. Not to mention the time I have spent thinking about how to feel one thing and not the other.

This week I made a mistake and some cabinets had to be reordered. When I found out about it I was crushed I didn't want to be the person that made this mistake. I didn't want to feel this way and I didn't want this idea that I have about myself, that I am good at what I do, to be tarnished either.

I squirmed around with this feeling for the whole day. I thought what will the customer think of me? Then I realized this was just in my mind and that this kind of resistance was not helping. I realized I didn't want to be where I was and I was scrambling, only in my mind, to get away.

Making a mistake touched some part of me that is convinced that I not good at anything. This is proof positive. Right? How old is this story?

It is hard to recognize the story we have about ourselves it has been there a long time. I feel freer than I ever have these days to live in the moment and not have a story at all. I see that withou my story I can surrender and all those judgements I have about myself fall away. They are just thoughts not reality.

I called my customer and she was totally okay with everything and said "these things happen" I wanted to defend myself and say this doesn't normally happen to me but I didn't. I let it go.

When I can relax into what is and not grasp onto just the good feelings and push back anything that doesn't feel good I can be free from the desperation, that all this wanting something different, makes me feel. I can move on to the next thing and enjoy the silence in my head. OK it is never completely silent.