Taking Back Control

I admit it - there is no excuse for what I've done today. I know perfectly well the thing to do is keep my mind on good things, things I want to happen, things that energize me and empower me, and I take a lot of pleasure out of helping other people do the same... and what have I been doing all day?

Well, pretty nearly nothing. Nothing that's gone right, at any rate. The only thing I've done successfully from morning until night is make a mess of everything I've touched - and if that sounds uncharacteristically negative, that's just the point.

I dropped my guard and let myself be swamped by negative thoughts and feelings, and I've been reaping the rewards in terms of damaged concentration, mistakes, annoyance and wasted effort without once stopping to take the most important step of all - a step backwards to put things into perspective.

The story actually starts a couple of days ago, when I worked ridiculously late to finish something I was doing as a favor to a friend. Being overtired yesterday wasn't a good start... then the friend took the favor totally for granted, and I admit I wasn't pleased.

It shouldn't have mattered. I'd put a lot of effort into what I'd done, and I was pleased with the outcome. It's the fact that I'd completed the task successfully and with enjoyment that should have counted - but I'd expected to be complimented on it, or at least be thanked, or something.

I should have remembered that other people's appreciation (or the lack of it!) isn't what's important. If you rely on other people to make you feel good about yourself, even for a moment, the one thing you can almost always guarantee is disappointment.

What I should have done, of course, was to be honest with myself about the real reason for my annoyance (hurt pride, I'm sorry to admit!), then let it go, refocus on the things I'm aiming to achieve, and take the next step forward.

What I did was let my anger fester. I slept badly, and got up even more tired this morning... and the inevitable happened. Hard as I might try, I couldn't do a single thing and get it right.

My e-mails took what seemed like twice forever to download. I tried another e-mail program, and it was even slower. I'd meant to do a blog post, but I couldn't get the page to open. I tried to access Google, and I couldn't. The computer seemed to have no power, and was running ridiculously slowly. I ran a spyware check, and it took three times longer than it should have done.

By this time I was getting paranoid. What was it that I'd read about a sudden drastic falling-off in computer performance meaning it had been hijacked as a net-bot, and was sending tons of spam without my knowledge?

Fortunately at this point I began to realize that maybe it wasn't the computer that was running amok so much as my own thoughts and feelings. I took a deep breath, and went and made myself a cup of coffee.

When I came back and sat down again at the computer, I idly clicked on a piece of work I do (or rather, the computer does) for a University science project. It's one of those things where people volunteer a bit of their computer's spare capacity to help to process scientific data. It runs in the background, and doesn't affect whatever work you're doing.

On second thoughts, make that "it doesn't usually affect whatever work you're doing" - because with that one mouse-click the whole problem was resolved. The project was collecting its next batch of work, which usually takes only a few minutes... but this particular batch of work was enormous, and the download was taking several hours.

Not surprisingly, everything else that I'd been trying to do online was not responding as I'd thought it would - but all I had to do was wait till it had finished, and the computer would start working normally again.

It was an exact parallel with what had been going on in my own mind. Just as I'd been doing with my friend, I'd expected the computer to behave in ways that I'd mapped out for it, and was completely wrong-footed when it didn't.

Well, at least it's been a useful lesson. Even when you know the power your thoughts and feelings have to replicate themselves in what happens in your outside world, and you're determined to keep them positive and energizing, there's always a temptation to let yourself be swept away by a powerful emotion that gets out of your control.

Don't beat yourself up over it - just let your annoyance, worry, fear, anxiety or whatever else is knocking you off-balance, go.

Once you reach a calmer frame of mind, ask yourself what, is anything, is real about that emotion (in my friend's case, for example, absolutely nothing - in the computer's, a performance problem that needed to be identified and dealt with).

If there's something that you need to do to put any genuine difficulty right, go do it - if there's not, just take a break for a few minutes so you can refocus. Clear your mind completely, and let it stay blank for a few moments while you take several deep breaths.

Now go back to whatever you were doing, and see how much easier it is!

If you find it hard to keep your thoughts and feelings under your control, or you've never realized that it's even possible, you might like to check out Free Your Life From Stress, or fill your mind with the empowering and energizing track called "Above The Pairs Of Opposites", which is part of the Supreme Success system.

Your mind is under your control - but, as I've proved today, you have to reassert your authority over it from time to time!