Yesterday, in a therapy group, somebody talked about waking up thinking “I can’t” and turning that into “I can.”
Because I can, I suggested that people make a list of “I can’t” and “I can.”
I can show you my lists now.
I can’t be perfect, but I can correct mistakes. On my “I can’t” list, the 9th entry should read “be anybody else but myself” and on my “I can” list, the 13th entry should be “show up.”
Coincidentally, yesterday I started writing a new song, titled “I Left the House Before I Felt Ready”, which is my first original song based on my first original t-shirt …
… which was based on original blog posts (here, here, and here), which I wrote in the house.
Here are the lyrics, so far:
I Left the House Before I Felt Ready
I left the house before I felt ready,
So I’m wrinkled, distracted, and sort of bed-heady.
I don’t know where my phone is, my glove, or umbrella
And my water bottle’s probably somewhere in the cellar.
Yesterday, in my therapy groups, people talked about having too much on their plate.
I don’t have too much on my plate to share the meaning of that idiom.
Idiom –Too much on my plateor A lot onmy plateor Enough onmy plate.Meaning– To betoobusy. Tohave too manythings to deal with or a lot of things to worry about. This expression is used to signify that a personhas too manydifferent things to cope with.
Coincidentally, there were paper plates in the group room, because of a retirement party earlier in the day. I suggested that people take a plate, write and draw what was on their plate, and then, if they wished, throw the plate away. People threw away plates heaped with politicians, responsibilities, stress, fear, guilt, anxiety, shame, self-doubt, bureaucracies, traffic, abusers, unhelpful thoughts, and (on one plate) Florida.
I had too much on my plate yesterday to take pictures of the plates people created and threw away, but I can share these:
If I didn’t have too much on my plate right now (physical therapy for my shoulder, work, a presentation about my groups, and a live performance of “So You Think You Can Dance”), I’d come up with a pun about home plate.
Do you have too much on your plate to watch this video?
I object to my primary blogging tool — my laptop computer — turning into a useless object.
I hope you don’t object to my sharing a definition in a new way, by taking a screenshot on my phone:
Because I was aware of my useless laptop as an object yesterday, I took many photos of other objects. I thought the object of today’s post was going to be “Still Life” — allowing me to make this pun: “Even though my laptop is dead, there’s still life in me and in my blog.”
I hope you don’t object to my calling today’s post “Object” instead. Here were the objects of my attention yesterday:
Last night in a therapy group, nobody objected to exploring the topic “What I Say/What I Don’t Say.”
Yesterday, in a therapy group, people discussed and wrote down their thoughts and feelings about other people’s opinions.
What is your personal experience of other people’s opinions? What makes other people’s opinions more difficult for you? What helps you deal with other people’s opinions?
In yesterday’s group, I shared a personal experience of other people’s opinions, which I’ve written about previously (here). At the end of a weekend-long retreat, decades ago, I participated in an exercise where everybody got to give and receive opinions about each other. The people who were running the exercise offered this excellent opinion: When people give you their opinions about you, they are often talking about themselves. However, if you hear similar opinions from different people, you need to take those opinions seriously. At that retreat, I was surprised …
… to hear mostly positive and supportive opinions.
After group yesterday, I swapped opinions with author and friend Chris, who was my student at Boston University decades ago (and who has appeared in other blogs posts, here, here, here, and here).
I sang my first original song — “I Don’t Like You” — for Chris, and his opinion matched other people’s opinions. When I told him I was going to debut that song at an Open Mic tomorrow night and also share that performance on YouTube, his opinion was very supportive. I have very positive opinions of Chris and I’m sure other people share those opinions.
I’m wondering, here and now, about other people’s opinions of this post, including all my other photos from yesterday …
Appreciation and gratitude increase my sense of safety, so thanks to all who helped me create today’s post for safety and — of course! — thanks to you.
Yesterday, I started taking steps for a fitness challenge where I work. I’ve committed to taking at least 10,000 steps every day for the next month.
While I was taking steps yesterday, I was also taking pictures. Now I am taking steps to share those photos.
After taking more than 3,000 steps to get to my office, I took the step to indicate my mood on my new feeling chart. If you take a few blogging steps back, you’ll see here (in the post Day 1923: Accepting all feelings) that the feeling chart is something people created in a therapy group last week. On Monday morning, after taking all those steps, I was feeling hope.
After taking about 1,000 more steps at work, I took the step of completing a required online training — “Security Smart: Keeping Yourself Safe in the Workplace — which included taking steps to deescalate when people are upset.
After taking steps to help many people with many problems (while taking approximately 2,000 more steps around the hospital), I took a step at the end of the day to temporarily change my mood chart.
I believe that taking steps to express and share feelings helps to deescalate those feelings.
After my long work day, I took 3,000 more steps to walk back to my car. At about 9 PM while I was taking steps at home, I reached my daily goal of taking 10,000 steps!
As I was F-bombing my way around our home, I woke up Michael, who heard this exchange.
Me: F — all of this! I can’t stand it any more!
Oscar: Meow!
Me: F— you, Oscar!
Michael thought I had finally lost it because of my feelings about Oscar. And I do have feelings when Oscar sleeps on my injured shoulder, walks and sits on my laptop when I’m trying to blog (like now), gives me love bites (like now), and almost trips me every day when I’m going down the stairs and trying to get out of the house on time. However, I accept that Oscar does these things because he wants to be close to me, which is usually a good feeling.
After I made it to Physical Therapy on time, got help from people at work in capturing an adequate blood sample, and discovered that my INR reading was okay, it was easier to accept my feelings because they were better.
Soon after that, I facilitated a therapy group where people talked about lots of feelings. I suggested that people work on accepting all feelings by writing down their feelings and illustrating them.
I accept all feelings about my photos from yesterday.
Here’s what I found on YouTube about “accepting all feelings.”
Watching the ocean definitely helps me accept all feelings.
I hope you accept all my feelings of gratitude, here and now.
Yesterday, in a therapy group, people made lists of what’s bad for them and what’s good for them.
What would you put in your lists of what’s bad for you and what’s good for you?
Do you see anything that’s bad for you or good for you in my photos?
Here‘s a Good AND Bad Song from The Powerpuff Girls.
It would be bad for me to miss my 7:30 AM Physical Therapy appointment, so it’s good for me to end now with thanks to all who helped me create today’s post and — of course! — to YOU.
