I would always rather you tell me what you want, rather than what you don’t want. I believe in thinking forward with positive, for what we want and what we see are powerful indicators of where we are going.
There is the common story of a man who did not like the idea of growing up to become like his father and he reminded himself of that every day. He said, again and again, to himself, ” I don’t want to be like my father.” And in the end, he became very much like his father.
In a different way, the Harry Chapin song “Cat’s in the Cradle” tells the story of a boy who grows to become like his unavailable father. There is heartache in negative patterns that find themselves repeated.
I believe our focus should be filled with all that we do want to become. What kind of parent do I want to be? What kind of person? What do I want my kids’ childhoods to be like? When we plan a vacation, we say to ourselves what we do want. We want to go to the ocean. We want to stay somewhere nice. We want to spend time with our families and friends and we spell out the details of how that is to happen.
Let’s make life like more of a vacation. With more planning to what we want, we can put the most important parts of our lives in place. Can you imagine framing a vacation in the negative? Being mindful of all that we don’t want? We wouldn’t say to ourselves as we are planning a vacation, “Well, I don’t want to get in a car accident, I don’t want to get mugged, I don’t want to feel bloated from eating out too much, I don’t want to stay somewhere that smells.”
It is not that these things couldn’t happen. It’s not that we don’t know these things. They are in our awareness. One thing about vacations is that we generally are thinking about what we want instead of what we don’t want. We take some time off from worry and that is very peaceful.
Believe in yourself, believe in the direction you are to go. Decide for yourself what you want. Create. Build your life, like you would build a vacation. Plan, dream, be, enjoy. Don’t tell me where you’re not going. Tell me where you want to go. Tell me what you want in your relationships, in your life, in what you want to create for others around you. See it in your mind, believe in it and take another step in that direction.
Decide who you want to be,
c.s.
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