Author: Sarah Tauber

We’ve touched on this subject once before but it is really important to your ultimate well being.  I woke up this morning dreading what I had to do today. I was concerned about relationships, being uncomfortable, feeling left out, you name it, I felt it. I really didn’t want to feel it, i.e., negative. So I told myself, “This is going to be a good day today and everything you are concerned about will work itself out. You will feel happy . Stop stressing over it!” I didn’t have to think long and hard about it. I didn’t have to go into a deep meditation (although it might have been helpful), I didn’t have to repeat it over and over again. I said it once, believed it and left the house, open to whatever was going to happen.  I flipped the switch!

I had a perfectly good day because I decided to have one. It was as simple as that. Things worked out and everything was fine. No stress, no drama, BECAUSE I SAID SO! This is such an important yet simple concept that I cannot emphasize it enough. Decide that no matter what happens in a given day, you will rise to the occasion, deal with it effectively and ultimately enjoy the hours that were given to you. It works! Does this mean that when you do that, nothing will go wrong? Does it mean that your day will be filled with perfection? No! What it does mean is that your attitude will take you through the day’s events either smoothly or with much drama and misery. Life happens. We don’t always get what we want. Things don’t always turn out the way we expect them to. And yet, sometimes, when you start your day with a “This will be a great day!” attitude, things will actually go your way. The question mark answers will be “Yes” rather than “No”.  People you interact with will be friendly and kind. You will get to have it your way, not always, but more often than not, depending on what you told yourself at the beginning of the day.

Do you remember the book years ago called “The power of positive thinking?” What I am saying is very similar. Can you always do it? Can you always turn your thoughts to positive ones? Of course not. We are human and can’t make ourselves positive 24/7. But with a little effort, on the days that you are neutral, or worried, or stressed, try approaching your day from the positive side and see what happens. It may surprise you.

I play this “game” with myself often. It starts with the thoughts, the positive ones. Then the conviction comes that I will not retreat back to negative thoughts for the duration of the day. Then the belief that it will make things right. The trust that all is well in my world. Do I have issues I cannot control that are ongoing, make me sad, frustrated or even angry? Yes, but I hold out and trust that eventually they will work themselves out and I will feel good about them again. And, if they don’t, I will survive and be happy anyway.  Be happy anyway. Your choice, right? Why would we want to choose otherwise?

Experiment. Try my game. When you get up in the morning, call it a good or even a great day. Hold that thought and see what happens. Then share your story with me. I would love to hear. Flip the switch!

I don’t know about you but I don’t wake up with a full brain every day. Especially if I have not had a good night’s sleep, my brain does not want to cooperate with me. And lately, for some reason, I am not having many consecutive good nights of sleep. Like last night. And today, of course, I planned to write my blog which I could not write yesterday as I was out all day. (Good excuse, right?) So here I am, at my computer, squeezing the words out, painfully.  Why don’t I just postpone my blog until tomorrow, you ask? Well, I am too disciplined for that, I’m afraid. And besides, what if I don’t sleep well tonight either? This could go on for days!

Using the word “brilliant” with tongue in cheek, do you have days when your brain is elsewhere, on a virtual vacation, perhaps and nothing brilliant is coming out of it? I’m sure your answer was “yes”. We all do. It seems age has a sneaky way of influencing your brain. The older you get, the harder I think it is to kick start your serious thinking. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe I have fallen prey to what the “experts” tell us.

Okay, so my excuse shall not be age, it shall be lack of sleep. There are days when I can sit down at my computer and spew out brilliant words that please and even surprise me.  As you may have guessed, that isn’t happening today.  And so I must live with it, believing that it is a temporary affliction.

Why am I blathering on about something so trivial, you ask? The lesson here is that we are not the same person every day. Obvious things aside, some days we feel more brilliant, more alive, more confident. Then there are days when the strong, capable person is nowhere to be found. Do not dismay. Go with it. Accept that it is an “off” day for you and be kind to yourself. Fighting it will only make you feel worse.  So today I am going to fulfill my obligation which is to buy food for my horse, deliver it to the barn and walk and groom her. Then I am going to come home and vegetate in front of the TV and forgive myself for being “lazy” today. It is the only way to keep one’s sanity. If you are exhausted, if your brain is not cooperating with you, give it a break! Give yourself a break! There are plenty of days for you to find a cure for cancer, end world hunger or solve our environmental issues. But if today is not a good day for that, then so be it. Do the minimum required of you and then give yourself a pass. You might even do something indulgent like go to a movie where you will sit and eat popcorn with butter (yes, I said butter!) and lose yourself in someone else’s story. Or take a bubble bath, or plain bath, soak in the tub and tell your brain it has the day off. It will reward you for it later!

We are sometimes caught up in old messages we received as children that we have to be productive every day, no matter what. Being lazy or giving in once in a while to your fatigue and/or lack of brain power is tantamount to being worthless. NO!! You can’t be brilliant every day and that’s ok.  You can solve the world’s problems tomorrow. As Vivian Leigh said in “Gone with the Wind”, ” After all, tomorrow is another day.”  :))     Go California Chrome!!!!!

When I was a child and either frightened or sad, my mother would cradle me in her arms and say, “Mummy knows, mummy knows.” At the deepest level possible for me at the time, I knew she meant that she understood and that everything was going to be all right. It was the most comforting feeling I ever had, ever. Since she passed away more than twelve years ago, whenever I am in need of comfort and no one is around, I can go to that place inside and call upon the memory and the feeling it gave me.

Our mother is the first connection we have to life. It is how we judge the world when we are very young. Is it a friendly, warm and loving place or is it a cold and frightening one? Not everyone is blessed with a nurturing, loving mother as my sister and I were. There are many kinds of mothers. It cannot be said that they are either warm and loving or cold and cruel. There are mothers all across the spectrum.

Your mother may be your fist connection to the world but she is certainly not the only source of comfort or nourishment. In the case of adoption, your birth mother is not someone you stay with, rather an adoptive mother. Whether you were adopted or not, let’s say that your mother was not a warm or nurturing person. Unless these children form bonds with another human being or beings, they will not have the experiences that a loving parent might have given to them. That being the case, what do they do as children or later as adults when they are troubled or hurting?

Some find comfort in drugs or alcohol, food or the intimacy of sex. Some look for it in every person they meet, and they spend their lives going from one person to the next until they find it. Some find it in God or Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha or.. Some of these people marry someone who provides that missing ingredient in their lives. There are many ways we can eventually get the comforting feelings we might have missed as children. Some are obviously healthier than others.

When I was single, which was for many years, I dated several men who did not have loving relationships with their mothers. Their mothers were either emotionally unavailable, abusive or gone. I wondered if part of the attraction they had for me was the fact that I was a warm and loving, nurturing woman. I believe so.

If you no longer have a mother, like me, then you each have your own way of finding the comfort and solace that you need as a flawed human. The “mother” qualities of nurturing, caring, loving, patient and empathetic can be found in other places, in other humans, and perhaps most importantly, within ourselves. If you did not grow up with a first hand knowledge of these attributes, then you may need to learn them in order to become your own source.

Mother Earth, Mother Nature, the genesis of life. Look inside yourself to find yours. And on Sunday, celebrate with gratitude, the mother within.

We all have them. We decide, on an individual basis, if the voice is our conscious or unconscious mind, the “devil”, “God”, “ego” or some random fictional character of our own creation. We decide who it is based on our initial reaction to what “they” are saying to us.

I refer to mine as “negative Sarah” and “positive Sarah”. As an example of how it works in my life, the other morning I woke up tired and lethargic which usually brings out the negative in me. “This will be a crappy day, difficult to get through and depressing, no matter what I do.” I have heard this voice before, many times. Sometimes I listen to it, accepting what it says as TRUTH. Other times, when I am strong enough, I reject its message and replace it with another, more positive one.

So, on this particular morning, when I heard “negative Sarah” talking, my shoulders drooped (if not literally, then certainly they drooped in a figurative sense), my heart sunk and I tried to prepare myself for the gloomy day ahead. Maybe I should just go back to bed, I though despondently.

Oh please!! The “positive Sarah” was awake and alert to what was going on inside my head. “You know you have a choice,” she said quietly, but with conviction. “I know that!” I replied. “Well? You could make this a good, or even great day, if you chose to!” Knowing she was right, I envisioned myself pushing through the negative messages and creating a good day for myself. It felt challenging, but certainly worth a try. And so I did. I didn’t try, I did it. I pushed through the kind of day my negative self had in store and created one that was positively delightful.

Hmmm. What does this tell us? Every hour of every day we have a choice between something positive and something negative. A choice between happiness or sadness. The power lies within. You do not have to listen to the negative messages being fed to you by (insert your preferred name here). You can, instead, “push through” them to get to the good stuff.

Have you known people, or even been friends with people who are always seeing the grey of life? No matter how good things seem to you, they see darkness and misery. If you hang around people like that long enough it begins to rub off on you. If you are sensitive to that kind of thing you can actually feel the negativity rubbing against your skin, trying to get inside. Stay away from those people! Or at the very least, limit your contact.

Most of us want to be happy and live joyful lives. It doesn’t “happen” to you, it is created by you. Yes, we are each responsible for our own happiness. Sound daunting? It doesn’t have to be. Make the choice, every day, to see good in everything. This is most challenging when things around you do not appear to be good. That happens to all of us. The trick here is not to put too much stock in appearances. They are not real. They are ever changing. That is a huge subject for another blog, or two blogs.

Suffice it say that when you hear the negative voices in your head, know that you have a choice, to either listen to them and follow their lead, or to tell them “Thanks for sharing but I am not interested today.” Choose rather the positive voice. Push through and create a wonderful day, a beautiful experience, a lovely memory. YOU HAVE THE POWER. Use it!