Showing up as the person I really want to be. . .

At my 12 step meeting this morning, the topic was how to “get over ourselves” those mornings we feel like snarly cats.  Gratefully, I don’t have those mornings very often, any more, but I used to grouse at every one upon arising.  It wasn’t simply that I needed coffee, although that first cup often helped.  More than that I needed an attitude adjustment.  Fortunately I had a sponsor who kept the program simple, and she’d always say “act as if.”  I felt like an impostor at first.  I guess I was, in all honesty.  But the solution she suggested worked.

That was one of the solutions we talked about this morning.  The first person who talked said she been edgy, angry even, for days, and she hated herself for it.  No one deserved her shortness, but she couldn’t seem to snap out of it.  True to form,  each person who shared relied on her own experience to offer suggestions.  I’m not sure if Pam was helped but I think some of the rest of us got some “ah ha” moments.  It’s funny how we can forget those wonderful little shortcuts to better feelings.  For instance, the first things I toss out the window are the slogans which are time honored and fail proof.

The best solution quite possibly is sharing the state of mind we have.  It’s that state that pushes us to bad behavior or worse.  Secrets do keep us stuck in bad thinking and ultimately, the kind of bad choices, that send too many of us back to drinking or drugging or eating or any number of the isms that we suffer from.

Making a gratitude list the minute we get out of bed, or perhaps over that first cup of coffee right after reading a mediation book, is a way to remember who we really want to be.  He or she is still living in our skins.  They have only taken a time out.  It’s actually okay to let them “be at rest” for a time as long as they don’t make the lives of others miserable.  If we can feel a misery moment about to happen, grab the thought, “This too will pass.”  It will.

We are really lucky that we have ready access to people, meetings, books and myriad solutions to help us when we get into a state of mind that shames us or heaps unfair nastiness onto others.  We don’t have to be where we don’t want to be.  We don’t have to be those people we don’t want to be.  The choice to show up “as our better self” is always a quick decision away.

When you put your feet on the floor every morning, ask yourself if you need to “act as if.”  If you do, go for it.