Do You Have a Theme?

I had an experience at the beginning of this new year that motivated me to decide on a personal theme for the year. Without boring you with all the details, let’s just say there was an event and as I reacted to the event, it became obvious that said event had evoked emotions and defensiveness way beyond what was to be expected. So I had to take a look at myself and see if I could figure out why I responded so strongly. (Don’t ya hate when that happens?!)

What I learned was that instead of accepting what had occurred and moving on to be present to the next moment in my life, I had created a story in my head about what the event meant, what other people were thinking, and what it all said about me. Whew! What a lot of meaning I was putting into one little event.

Luckily I realized what I was doing pretty quickly and made the choice to do something different. And in the process I understood that, while it’s human nature to create stories to give meaning to life’s events, it doesn’t always serve us well to do so.

I decided to work on letting go of creating stories. So my theme for 2010 is to accept the events that occur in my life simply as events that occurred. Sure I’ll have emotional responses to them, but I can stop there, process the feelings, and move on to the next moment in my life.