Skipping along

When I get into bed at night, I often think about the next day. I consider which day of the week it will be, what sort of routine things I have on my schedule and I quickly plan other things I’d like to do or feel I need to do. This all happens in a matter of few seconds without any special effort.
Lately I’ve also set forth intentions for a good night’s sleep, and a wish to wake up with ease. After having lived for many years as a very critical person, of everything, and in particular myself, I had also gathered a tremendous set of negative things to tell myself. I don’t know if you are aware of it, but we all continuously tell ourselves stories about everything. To really notice what you are telling yourself, you need to be aware of your thoughts and pay close attention to how they make you feel. During my grumpy years I used to tell myself all sorts of crappy things about everything. I’d probably not sleep well, I’d oversleep, have arguments with my family, struggle at work, have aches and pains in my body, be unfairly treated and overwhelmed, not appreciated and so on and so forth.
Since I became aware of my private little story sessions, I’ve been working on consciously choosing my new fairytales. Recently I’ve also noticed how much difference it makes to my days, whether I’ve deliberately planed my day as a good day, as I get out of bed and skip along into the day (at least now I do that some days).
So, what on earth does this have to do with the headline of this post, you might wonder. Well, the thing is that when we’ve been going through our lives on “autopilot” for years, not thinking about what we want to get out of our days, we haven’t needed to decide deliberately what we want either. The situation is sort of like if you would all of a sudden go from having all your meals served, every day, to having to figure food out all by yourself. Of course it is possible, and anyone can do it, but it takes some effort, when you’ve never done it before.
So in order to plan your day, you’ll first have to find out what you’d like your day to be like. I find it to be very helpful to pretend I’m already experiencing the next day, and instead of planning everything in details, I decide what I’d like to feel like. And once I’ve found the feeling place of it, I just stay there for a short while for the fun of it. (of course I don’t bother to plan anything else than good feeling things anymore). Having done this, I can enjoy (or not) all the events that lead up to me being happy and content with my day. After having practiced for a while doing this whenever I remember, I've found out that some bumps in the road don’t matter in the long run, as I know things always turn out just fine. Perspective is good to have, and the best way to know what you want, is figuring out what you don’t want.
So now I challenge you to try it out! You don’t have to be in your bed, or any special place to do this, and you don’t have to plan a whole day. It’s just as effective to plan the results of a meeting, the feeling of a conversation or a trip to the grocery store this way.
Oh, and one last warning: It might just work!

Choosing a root-canal

Today I had an appointment at the dentists. I’ve been postponing this appointment for a year now, because the dentist had told me that I’d have to choose between having a root-canal or pulling the tooth and I found it quite challenging to decide. By pulling the tooth I’d get out of the whole affair fairly quickly and cheap, but would lose the tooth forever. And this was my last mole in the upper left jaw. (Excuse my dental-English!) On the other hand a root-canal is very expensive and I haven’t saved up for big dental bills, being a single mom and a student.
Anywho, today was the big day, and I asked the dentist to check out the tooth and give me an estimate on what my different choices would cost. Previous to this visit I had asked them what would be “worst case scenario” as to how expensive this might become, and was told then I might have to pay 9000 Nkr (US $ 1349).
The last year, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do, and how to pay for keeping my mole, as well as trying to concentrate on seeing my tooth whole and well. As I’m not quite there yet where I manage to visualize big changes in my “bodily reality” I didn’t expect everything to be fine and dandy in there either. However, the dentist did find out that the nerve to the tooth had died, so repairing would be painless (which was good news as I dislike the needles most of all). She also gave my price on dealing with my tooth: 1000 kroner for pulling it or 3000 for a root-canal.
Wow! I thought. No question there, fix the tooth and be happy! The price was 1/3 of what I had been told was worst case scenario. In addition I’d only have to pay half of that now.
The whole hour the dentist worked in my mouth, I kept thinking how grateful I was, that she was in such a good mood, and that she was so good at her job. How wonderful it is that someone uses many, many years of their life to learn and train to be able to help me. So I just lay in the chair, breathed deeply and enjoyed the sun shining through the window warming my face, and the dentist doing her job lovingly.
When she was finished and it was my turn to pay, I also got 10% off, without any explanation. (it was 10% off the price, not the tooth!)
So of course this was a very lovely visit to the dentist, indeed.

This was today’s biggest reason to choose an attitude of gratitude.

However….. I also had my moments of frustration that evolved around my 10 year old bunching-ball of a daughter, who lost her keys to our home twice in 7 hours today. When I got home, I got her new keys and tied them to her jacket, so now she can’t lose them. (and thats final!!!)

I wonder how I can change my view of her, to help her the most (and release my frustration). I suspect there is a great lesson to be learned for me here, much more than there is for her.

In every other way, a most joyful day working with my team at school, and enjoying the winter sunshine.

New blogger

Welcome to my world, my head, my idea-and-thinking spot!
After a lot of thinking and considering I’ve finally decided to try this out.
In the last 18 months I’ve gone from thinking blogging is an egoistic and meaningless way of using up internet space, to actually think it is a good idea.
The reason I’m writing now, is to share with others, both friends and anyone who might find it interesting, what is making me and my day, any day.
As to which language to choose, I decided that English would be best for now, as most of my Icelandic and Norwegian friends read English without problems, as my English speaking friends don’t read either Norwegian or Icelandic.
I hope you all bare with me as I get comfortable in this new forum, gather information I’d like to share and figure this whole thing out.
Feel free to comment and tell me what you think and how you are experiencing my blog.
Wishing you a wonderful Sunday!