My last two posts were about this course, that having gotten sick of reacting and being miserable, anxious and stressed about life stressors and issues… I got sick and tired of being triggered all the time, so much so that I decided to take this course. I just watched the first video in the course. The freedom to choose something different. What a wonderful concept! I absolutely love the idea. In the video, Ms. Chödrön talks about the three difficult practices. The first is to acknowledging you are hooked, recognize that we have been hooked by a situation, event, emotion, anything. The second difficult practice is doing something different, not having your usual reaction of ranting and raving, but doing something different, not saying “Yes, but …” or even if you say “Yes, but …” and recognize that and then go on to doing something different. The third difficult practice is you have to do this every day, for the rest of your life. It is not enough to do this once, you are not done. You have to do this with every situation, every day of your life.

Great concepts, especially for someone like me, or someone like you, or someone like anyone, a human, we do get hooked by things, situations, occurrences. But we have to recognize this and do something different instead of raving and ranting, and blaming and feeling righteously indignant. Do something different. Don’t let the situation get you hooked. Get in touch with your kind, loving, compassionate, big heart, and act out of that, not out of fear and anger.

I love it. It speaks to me, I feel like I am going to learn a lot from this course and hopefully change the way I react to life, change it from a negative, angry, fearful way to a positive, loving, kind way. I am going to watch one video a day and blog about it so all of you, my dear readers, friends, and family will take this course right along with me.