ARTICHOKES

PATTERNS

It has been brought to my attention that we all have PATTERNS that we use or follow every day. I have heard this before but I had forgotten to NOTICE! I started going over my day, my daily PATTERNS and realized I do have a regimen I follow quite closely. Some of the reason for this is so I won't forget anything important! 

This can be a good habit to follow as long as it doesn't produce BOREDOM or avoiding doing other important tasks. That can lead to feeling 'put upon' or irritated with the way things are! Once I recognized some of my PATTERNS, I see that I can do some things DIFFERENTLY than the usual routine. Imagine! Being creative with when I do what and feeling good about it!

We are trained from a very young age to do things a certain way and in a certain order. This is very sensible for someone just learning a new 'skill'. It helps establish habits, 'PATTERNS' and ways of accomplishing many things. After these PATTERNS are well established, it seems that we can shake things up a bit and vary our tasks to make them more enjoyable. We actually can do that for ourselves, whether they are personal or even social and intellectual.

I am 'testing' some of these PATTERNS by occasionally, deliberately not doing something I always do, like making my bed in the morning or not doing evening dishes, leaving them for morning.(This I find doesn't work well for me as I like to come into a clean kitchen each morning). Lately I have been doing my dishes after each meal and it works well.

What I'm really aiming at here, I realize is to tweak things up a bit and be FLEXIBLE. If we can't get to a task as usual, to be KIND to ourselves and not make ourselves wrong or feel' lazy' we didn't do it 'as usual'! This is the way we LEARN what does and does not work for us. I have to add this suggestion . . .that whatever we are doing or planning to do is to do it with an open heart, a FOCUS on what it is we are doing, so we can NOTICE any resistance we have while doing it. Resistance is no fun!

Life is meant to be PLEASANT as well as able to deal with the rough spots, pain, loss, moments of unhappiness and unpleasantness. WE are responsible for that! We can make some ADJUSTMENTS in our behavior that serves us very well. We just have to experiment with a few even small tasks. We can TRUST ourselves to do that!

There are PATTERNS

Everywhere we look

We can make some new ones.

BLESSINGS