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...okay, I'm back. With an announcement. This week this blog has had 24 page-views from Latvia. Welcome people of Latvia! Let's get back to it).
Anyway. Us SoCal folks have this belief that summer is over in September (probably because of the fall equinox and how connected we all are to our hippie dippie roots here on the west coast)... I know I always spent the first several weeks of school as a kid soaking my new fall clothes with sweat because I wanted to wear the ribbed tights, turtleneck sweaters, and corduroy pants despite the temperatures in the 90s and up. "Beauty is pain," I told my mother. I still tell myself that on those occasions when I accidentally apply mascara to my eyeball instead of my eyelashes. Sometimes my depth perception ain't too good.
So, we all start whining when it's still too warm after labor day to start wearing scarves and boots (we do this when it hits approximately 68 degrees farenheit, by the way)... and continue to whine all the way through the month of September and into early October. It will finally start to cool a bit in mid October, but it will always heat up one more time for good measure right around Halloween.
I don't mean to be blogging about the weather, although it does seem to be going okay, right?
Besides that it was 102 degrees in Glendale (a suburb? of Los Angeles where I was seated in a training room with 21 other people and no air conditioning all day) yesterday... my phone has also been hot enough to fry an egg on for the last couple of days. I used my lunch break today to make a quick run to the Apple store (do you hear the chorus of mocking laughter? no, it wasn't quick... I was late getting back from lunch. I should be punished.) for a consultation with a "Genius."
As google said he would, the "Genius" deemed the phone irreparable, and under warranty, and swapped it out with a brand spanking new one. As I was sitting at the Genius bar, waiting for my phone to restore from its iCloud backup so it could be activated and I could get back to work (because it was getting late! tick tock! tick tock!) I started to complain (internally... my pulse jumped a few paces higher, my neck and shoulders started to tense, my breathing got shallow) about how long it was taking when all of a sudden... WOOOOOSSSSSHHHHH! Instead of being in a complaining body, I was swimming in a wave of gratitude.
And I didn't do anything to bring it on. I didn't think to myself "self, you're really complaining about some first world problems here... how about you be grateful for this free new phone that is way more than any human actually NEEDS and get on with your day." Nope. The gratitude was automatic. My body relaxed, my breathing deepened again, I felt pleasantly sleepy (I think they call that peaceful), and I had vivid images of all the people and things I love behind my eyeballs...
you know what this means?! you know all the "triggers" and "programs" and "automatic responses" like judgment, and defensiveness, and fear that show up and cause me grief all the damn time because my sweet brain is trying to protect me from hurt and is very literal and quite simple in her approaches... well, I think what this means, ladies and gentlemen, is that gratitude is becoming a program.
Anxiety, instead of being the baseline/protective state, was the distress... and gratitude is what my brain delivered (all on its own! no prompting from me!) as the remedy.
go brain!
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| Let's have a party! |
woot!
