MUSINGS OF 2012

It's January 2nd and the holidays are over and my tree is still up.  I even plugged the lights in today. Neighbors are probably saying, "Poor thing. Doesn't she know?"

I'm always a little spacey this time of year because sometime back I fell into a habit  of using the New Year's holiday to assess past accomplishments and mistakes and to design the future year.  In other words, New Year's resolutions.  

What I noticed a couple years back was that the resolutions I thought were goals, were actually items on a to-do list.  What I aIso noticed was they all seemed connected to a larger outcome I wasn't aware of until then. 

This year I started with the outcome, which became the theme for my resolutions and allowed me to focus my efforts on the right to-do's.  My personal  blog covers my process in detail so I won't repeat it here, but one of the best results to come out of my newly-minted theme method was I became very careful about what I associated my "I'm" to. 

Your I'M,  you may say. What is that?

Well, it's a contraction for I AM, which seems pretty obvious, but the affects of those two letters is probably not so clear.  The scary but wonderful truth is that those two letter, whenever they're thought or spoken, become a declaration of what you think you are, and/or what think you will become.  Anything you attach I am to becomes your new mental goal.  So if you say I am going to take the Christmas decorations down, my mind puts that on my to-do list.  I may or may not take down the decorations that day, but until I do, the task will float around in my mind, taking up space.   

This is true for everyone, whether you're saying "I need to, I must, I can't, I won't, I shouldn't, I wouldn't, I will." In other words, any form of the verb  "to be."  You get locked in because you declared yourself to be or to become that way. 

If, instead, you'd simply said that the Christmas decorations needed to come down . . . well, this sounds really silly, but essentially you don't get personally involved when you say it that way.  You're free to get the task done any number of ways (like, maybe your husband will do it, can you believe that?)

This works all the way through your life.  When you use I am combined with words like happy, wonderful, excited, energetic, engaged, loving --- I could could go on forever, but you're getting my drift.  These declarations also stick in your mind, too, but as enriching energy rather than as gnatty little thoughts that clutter your mind and sap your will to go on.

So, I was actually going to write about the re-launch of, SHADOW ON THE MOON, my debut paranormal werewolf book, but since I'm scheduled for a Much Cheaper Than Therapy interview on January 13, I'll save it for then. Which left me free to ramble, thank you very much.

But let me leave you now by wishing that your I am declarations create a planet full of happiness for you and yours in 2012 and on.  

Until next time,

Connie Flynn,