Sunday 16 June 2013

Week 25: Honey, just move on.

Last week, some friends and I sent some flowers to another of our gorgeous friends. I, for reasons still unclear, accidentally sent the "Shall we send her some flowers" message to ... her. Fail.

Let's face it, this is far from earth shattering, bury your head in a pillow kind of stuff. Still, I was annoyed at myself. I'd ruined the surprise and felt like I'd let my other friends down. Plus I felt like a complete dill.

I dwelt on it for a little while, beat myself up with it in my mind, reminded myself a couple of times that I can be so stupid sometimes ...

WHAT A WASTE OF TIME AND ENERGY!

Not only is this self-judgment harmful and inaccurate, it's a downright fantastic way to live anywhere but in the present moment. As soon as I (or anyone else) starts to lament about decisions and actions past, we're well out of the moment, living in some fantasy land of memory, conjecture and 'what if'.

Now, I'm all for learning from your mistakes. I'm not suggesting that I shouldn't learn from 'regrets' (for want of a better term), but rather that I can take whatever lessons I need to from a given scenario and then move the heck along. Neither am I suggesting that negative feelings should be buried or that we should be able to 'snap out of it'. It's one thing to be with your feelings (which I'm all for - you can read about that in Week 8), quite another to follow them into a dark tunnel of mind games.

I've given a fairly innocent example above, but the same applies in any kind of scenario that gives rise to self-flagellation, regret, worry, 'what if' ... Like after I've lost my temper, said something I wish I hadn't said, not said something I wish I had ... you know what I mean.

Week 25 - Honey, just move on. Time to catch myself in the act of 'stewing', of playing 'what if', of beating myself up for human error. No more missing the present moment because I'm fretting about things past.


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