From Head (and sticky note) to Heart

Has this happened to you? You know some stuff. You have been around a long time; you understand how your mind and emotions work. You know the best ways to respond or to not react to certain triggers in your life. You know your family role and how that influences you; you know your Myers Briggs or Enneagram Type and how that influences you; you know the character defects you are working through and you can visualize how you’ll be different and many days you are different. You even—like me—have sticky notes—in your planner, on your desk top, on the mirror that tell you things like, “The critics do not matter, being in the game does.” or “Humility is perpetual quietness of the heart.” or my new one, “The cure for resentment is boundaries.”

And when you look at those sticky notes, or hear yourself giving similar advice to another person, you think, “My God I really am growing; I really am changing.”

And then…

And then a day like yesterday happens and it feels like I never saw the 12 steps, never heard a spiritual teacher, and never understood that detachment and forgiveness are the handrails to my emotional freedom.

Instead I felt slighted, hurt, petty, competitive, angry, and like a very young girl in a crazy family.

The only good news is that now it mostly happens inside of me, but that’s also the bad news—it happens inside of me. Serenity? Poof!

That hardest part is knowing so much and understanding so much and really meaning what I see on my little sticky notes but having the feelings of a newcomer. My prayer last night—and it was a long tossing, turning night—was to have what I write on those sticky notes make the journey from my head to my heart.