Let's learn to respond instead of react.

Hi All

Saw this quote on Twitter today it come from Oprah I think as it was from her as no one else was credited with saying it so...

"It is not what happens to you but how you respond to what happens to you. " I am a big one for reacting, I'm loud, I scream, I shout and I have been known to completely over-react to a small thing. Often leaving the situation more embarrassed by my reaction than the initial incident.

Ever feel like that?

So the one thing I often meditate on is being able to control my temper, I have to consciously make a decision not to react to a situation. The few times that I have managed to control this instinctive reaction is to think about how I would feel if I was on the other side of my mouth, listening to what's being said.

When you react to a situation it's often an immediate and personal response to the person and not the situation. Learning to respond rather than react is learning how to approach the situation from an objective perspective rather than a personal one.

Once you have had a chance to think about what is being said/ done and why it's being said and done in this manner, you can clearly formulate a response that will not leave you totally an utterly ashamed of yourself.

So if only for the sake of saving yourself loads of embarrassment (as it is for me), it's also actually very rewarding to come up with a reasonable response especially when you think the other person is being totally unreasonable.

Hey just a thought - use it, don't use it. At the end of the day it's about consciously controlling your voice in conjuction with the mind. Rather than your voice in conjuction with your foot.

In love and light
Tracey

Just one day at a time

It's 3.50 am on the 5th of May 2012, on this day 10 years ago Rob and I lost our son. We don't know why. It has been 10 years and every day we take it one day at a time. We have been blessed with 2 more children, but every mother will tell you that each one is loved with all her heart. So even though our lives are full and rewarding, there is always something missing.

When it happened, I did not want to carry on, I could very easily have joined him. However eventually the pain of a broken heart goes away and you get up out of bed, have a bath, have a cry, get dressed and start facing the world. A world that is forever changed because there is such a fundamental part of your being missing.

One day you wake up and it seems that the pain is as fresh as it was on the very day we lost him, yet it's a year later and you have survived. Hey, and life has gone on.

Then one day you wake up and it's 10 years and the pain is fresh and the tears still flow. I know that Jonathan David is experiencing a new journey, he has visited me on occasion and I have had signs that he is with my granny.

I also know that he is waiting for me and I'll tell you why.

Soon after we lost him, I had fallen asleep on the couch in our house in Kensington, I awoke to find him next to me, he was laughing and playing a game of hide and seek, my boy went behind the curtains (I remember they were green with thin yellow and red stripes). Before I could go and find him I regained full consciousness and there he is waiting behind the curtain for me to find him. You see where he is, there is no sense of time as we experience it here. so he will wait a moment for me to find him, but I unfortunately have to wait the rest of my physical life. I have always said that I imagine the transition from this life to the next as being met at the arrivals hall of an international airport, but my transition will begin with a laugh and a smile as I pull the curtain away and grab my child and hold him so close to my heart and in that instant all the pain and all the tears that have shed and will continue to shed for the rest of my life will be forgotten and I will finally be at peace.

AND THAT DEAR FRIENDS IS WHAT I'D CALL HEAVEN.

In love and light.
Tracey