It's a great day to be alive!

One of the first things I do after I wake up, when I remember to do it, is to simply express my gratitude for being alive. Sure, there are always little niggling details which I would prefer were arranged in some different way than they are right this minute, but that doesn't diminish my underlying joy to be here and excitement to discover whatever there is to learn today.

No, this is not on the way to being some sort of happyhappyjoyjoy post. Parts of my life right now suck. No denying it. But the mere fact of being alive means I am in a position to do something about the sucky parts, even if it is nothing more than to find the lesson in them and allow them to exist without further resistance.

Let's face it. We get to decide, each of us, what we consider to be a less-than-ideal circumstance in each of our lives. That means we can choose to dislike something, we can choose to like it, or we can choose to simply note it as being in our experience and have no consideration of it as a plus or minus.

My own style of coping is to recognize the situations in my life which I prefer, and seek to experience more of them. For those situations I would prefer not to experience, I simply seek to cut down on how much of those I have in my life. Here's the funny part: when I choose to have lots of energy in reducing the "bad" circumstances, they tend to come around more often! If, instead, I choose to withdraw all my attention and energy from those situations, they tend to dwindle and fade from my experience.

Of course, it is not the first inclination, this withdrawing of attention. We naturally tend to push against the things we don't like. The problem is, that technique, at least for me, doesn't work at all.

We're looking for what works, and for me, what works is to simply allow those things I don't prefer to be what they are, and I'll move along without bothering to push against them. Soon enough, they are out of my experience.

What have your experiences been with this idea? Have you tried it? What works for you when you are seeking to change the amount of "not preferred" circumstances in your life?

Welcome!

We at the Church of What Works are glad to see you!

Here's a little of what we are about.

Rather than having a defined and very specific creed or list of beliefs, ours are pretty fuzzy around the edges.

What we wish for you is no different than what we seek for ourselves: peace in our hearts, love in everything we do, and joy in our life's experience.

As to how you get to that point, we are open to any ideas anyone has which have worked for them. In fact, that's why we call this the Church of What Works. It's about sharing techniques which have proven helpful.

We will talk about what works for us, and we invite you to add via a comment to any post in this blog what has worked for you. The goal is to further the spread of workable ideas.

We are, beyond everything else, completely inclusive here. No matter your religion or lack of it, or your place of origin or existing belief system or lifestyle, you are welcome here. It is certainly true that, by our very inclusion, we will cause some to stay away. That's okay, too!

(photo courtesy of Matthew Rottman, on Flickr as matthew2000tx)