Asking for a Little Encouragement

This is so unlike me to ask for help but I know that I'm going to need it!

For the first time in a very long time I woke up this morning thinking positively about my day.  Each minute I have to monitor my thought process.  My mind so easily wanders back to it's normal, negative way of thinking. 

A therapist I went to  many years ago told me that your thoughts travel a familiar path in your brain and when you find them heading down that path you have to intentionally shift them, creating a new path.  The more you do it you will train your brain so that this becomes it's default pathway.
I believe there are two reasons for my waking up this way. 

1.  I have spent the last two weeks basically living at my daughter's apt. helping her with her new baby, my first grandson.  Just being away from the house and my unhealthy routine has been good.  And, of course, seeing my new little grandson everyday helped too!

2.  Reading the following blogs.

A Design So Vast
Heartwork
Life Through a Cracked Lens
Ordinary Courage
chookooloonks
Erica Staab

So, I'm asking for anyone who feels like it to encourage me in my minute by minute quest to staying positive today.  It's an uncomfortable feeling asking for help.  I'm proud of myself!
Thank you ladies!

Blessings,
Debbie

Change, Do, Feel

I've always talked about "midlife" as an opportunity, not a crisis.  Ironically, I now find myself in a crisis.   But really, they are the same thing aren't they?  Crisis brings opportunity.

This is my opportunity to allow myself to live authentically.  True to who I know that I am but have never really fully become.  Though difficult, it is exciting.

It is, and always has been, my thoughts that keep me from living a full life.  I need to take control of my thought life.  I need to intercept the negative and replace them with the positive.  It'll take practice.

My therapist and I talked about CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) the other day.  She said that first you have to change your thoughts, then you change what you do,  and then you will feel differently. 

This is helpful to me because I always think that I need to feel better before I "do" better.  Now I know that I have to work on changing my thought process and "do" what I know I want to do and then I will feel how I want to feel.  Am I making sense here? 

Here's an example.

I wake up in the morning and my first thoughts are about how my house isn't the way I want it to be and that I'm somehow flawed because I can't keep it the way I want and that I'll never be able to do it.

I would then deliberately change these thoughts.  Shift them to the positive.

The house doesn't look the way I want it to, but that's o.k.  It doesn't say anything about who I am.  I am not flawed because there is unfolded laundry in the living room and dishes in the sink.  Today I will  take steps to get things the way I would like them.    "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."  Phil. 4:13

Then, even if I don't feel like it or don't feel capable or whatever, I begin to straighten things out.  It's after the "doing" that the "feeling" comes.