Good morning,
I think I will focus on my high-alert anxiety today. I call it that because there are very few moments throughout the day that I don’t feel this palpable and relentless “stress”, anxiety, fear around what I have to do. Bill and I own our own business, have now for 25 years, and I do all the tax work in addition to any dicey issues relating to WC, our Simple IRA plan, in short, any Human Resources-related areas. My background for 30 years was in HR, worked in the corporate world at the director level for years so I am it, if you will.
Anyhow, my childhood and adolescence were what I would call dysfunctional. Dad was a loving and nurturing physician with his patients, but a “monster” at home and Mom, well, she really didn’t know how to be anything but subservient and silent. She loved us four daughters most dearly, but could not nor did she try to intervene when he unmercifully yelled at us.
OK, so today’s lesson is These thoughts do not mean anything.
Does that mean that all that I wrote above about my professional career, our business and my painful past as a child and teen is meaningless, that these thoughts I have are meaningless?
YES, a resounding yes. Oh my goodness, that’s a frightening thought for me, honestly, as my entire identity, my identity as Gayle Bartlett is being threatened and the ego in me is highly resistant to this possibility.
Doesn’t matter. I am practicing applying this lesson as much as I don’t want to….to this “911” anxiety I experience, the unloving and attack thoughts I have about our business or my upbringing. I just don’t want to, it’s easier to apply it to areas that don’t threaten my very existence.
Hey, Jesus states apply it to what you can, you and I don’t have to believe what we’re applying any lesson to, we can actively resist any and all lessons and their application, it’s all right, we just practice.
Whatever our area of interest may be, doesn’t matter, the optimum mantra is practice, practice, practice. Whether it’s the HR profession I practiced and became an expert at or music or sports or engineering, whatever, we had to practice to become efficient, proficient, highly skilled.
Think of this practice as a muscle, a spiritual muscle. Maybe ours have atrophied, muscles like our lives can be resurrected, renewed, revitalized, reworked.
We do this together, inch by inch, step by step to freedom, emancipation and joy!
Much love,
Gayle
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