Today I took on Blue Friday. I realized several weeks ago that for some reason Fridays have been hard for me. I wake up with that sense of panic, of gloom and doom, of sadness or all kinds of “blue” emotions. This after I had such a mind-expanding day yesterday. Today I neither fought it or gave into it. I just sort of acknowledged it, “Oh, I’m feeling a little down today” and went about my business. And somewhere in the process of going about my business, I realized at some point that I felt better. Blue Friday was officially over.
I spent some time talking with a friend this morning. I was telling her that one of the goals I have is to move from having things be about struggle to having them be easy. She answered me in a very matter-of-fact way, “Maybe the leap from struggle to easy is too big. What’s in between?” Ding! What an excellent question. I had to be reminded that this is a process. That while I would love to step from struggle straight into ease, I need to use stepping stones that are in front of me rather than thinking that if I can get a running start I can get right from struggle to easy.
During my current transitional phase, I’ve been moving toward defining my life in more positive terms. That is, I’m no longer trying to move out of struggle but now moving toward ease. I’m slowly letting go of the word struggle as I describe what I’m going through. Continuing to talk about struggle breathes life into what I don’t want to attract more of. So I’m thinking about what I do want in my life and speaking in positive terms about that. So when I get stuck, rather than get frustrated I stop and ask myself, “How can I have this be easy?”
Another big leap both in terms of how I talk about it and how I will go about achieving it is the gap between lack and abundance. Speaking in the affirmative about what I have (and what I’m grateful for) and looking for the midpoints along the way to abundance is the direction I am taking. Right now it is really easy to focus on the lack in my life–there’s plenty of evidence, like my bank account–to support the idea of lack. While my ultimate goal is abundance out of which I can begin giving out to others, I need midpoints to get me from here to there.
So I started looking at each of these things as if they are on a continuum, with struggle on one end and ease on the other and lack on one end and abundance on the other. What are midpoints or stepping stones between these and other concepts? Because that is the direction I’m headed.
In moving from struggle to ease my goal has been all along to take some action, small steps toward my goals rather than focus on a large, potentially overwhelming objective (Get a job!) In moving from lack to abundance there’s perhaps a midpoint at “sufficient” somewhere in between–sufficient to meet the financial obligations I have for myself and my children. No frills, few extras, but sufficient to keep the roof over our heads and provide the means of getting from point A to point B.
I realize as I write this how incredibly privileged I’ve been in terms of my socioeconomic class. I can envision for myself moving from lack to abundance because I have seen abundance and experienced it in my own life. I know what it looks like to have some degrees of freedom financially. I have been comfortable, though not wealthy by most measures. I have also seen and experienced lack and know what that looks like. Because I’ve known both I know that it’s possible to find my way through the challenges of lack and struggle into the places of abundance and ease. It’ll involve patience, consistent, focused work, and faith, and even Blue Friday and all the other things that come along to test my resolve will become stepping stones to get me there.
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