Mildly Inconvenient: I love that saying for a couple of reasons: it seems like such a cheerful way to say ‘annoying’ and so it is already helping to make me less annoyed, and it is a reminder to keep things in perspective. How annoying is it? It’s probably much less of a deal than we tend to make it.

I was listening to Marisa Peer a few days ago and I love her take on training your brain to not immediately go to the negative. She speaks of the Subconscious mind being the ‘feeling mind’, that it responds to powerful words (thoughts) and only lives in the present tense.

Words are powerful and our bodies are listening to the beliefs we hold about ourselves.

Of particular attention for me was her discussion on people that speak their lives horrible or declare everything to be ‘hell.’ Some people declare everything to be just the worst or ‘brutal.’ I admit, I have done this myself (not all the time, but enough), I am sure everyone has. So in the last few years, I have become more and more aware of how I speak of things. I pause before declaring things a certain way (at least, I hope I do as much as I think I have improved at it). Like anything, it takes practice to re-frame your perspective.

She gave a few examples and said that at the most, some of these examples may be ‘mildly inconvenient.’ And also explained a suggestion of pointing out that although something might be bad or a pain, that it is fortunate that as humans, we have ‘Incredible coping skills.’

I wrote these two phrases on flash cards: Mildly Inconvenient and Incredible Coping Skills. I taped them to the window casing at my kitchen sink. My older son, who is 16, seems to think the world is quite specifically prejudiced against him and quite certainly has taken on some of my previous traits of the immediate jump to annoyance at certain things. I still need to be reminded, and it is helpful to be able to flip the script for him to be less filled with anger and more empowered. I think that’s the biggest help, is the realization or reminder that we hold the power, rather than playing victim and giving away our power to outside circumstances or events.

Sending Love,

Devon