The Good In Shutting My Big Mouth!

Since the mid 80s, I have been keeping a personal journal where I write about what's going on in my life or what I've got on my mind at the time. One of the greatest benefits of journaling is that I can read back and see patterns. Recently, I have been having a lot of fun putting together a little book of my blog posts and poems. I also have spent some time reading my old journals. Seeing the contrast between my journals from the past and my "Look For The Good" blog posts of today has really helped me to see how far I've come over the years. Things are so different for me now, just in the last year or so. And I think I know why. Here's what I think I've learned.

When I looked back at my journals, I was struck by the repetitiveness of what I wrote. Year after year after year I wrote about the same things over and over and over. The same PROBLEMS! I even made the comment frequently that I always seem to have the same problems. I recognized this pattern and it makes perfect sense to me now why my life was so miserable like it was.

*The more I talked or thought about my problems, the bigger they seemed.
*The bigger they seemed, the more I worried about them.
*The more I worried about them, the more mentally tense I got.
*When I was mentally tense, my body responded by tensing up.
*The more tense my body was, the tighter my muscles got.
*Tight muscles are prone to injury.
*The tighter my muscles got, the more pain I felt in my body.
*That added ANOTHER problem! Body pain.
*The more I talked about the body pain, the worse it got.

And the cycle started again!!!!  And I stayed on that cycle, sadly, for about two decades of my life. For two decades, I lived in misery both physically and mentally all because I wouldn't stop running my big stupid mouth about my perceived problems. All because I wasn't looking for the good. Now that I look for the good and try to talk about good stuff and think about good stuff and I try to laugh and giggle and be silly, guess what???? Very little body pain! Very few problems. Life is good because I shut my trap! And a good life is a good thing!  I'm gonna keep looking for the good!