Visualize Scissors and Snip

Our world is in a bit of dire straits right now. Everyone is justifiably concerned about the economy. Many people are losing their jobs. This may be affecting you directly, or perhaps it is not your turn yet. If you are losing the things around you, it might very well be the end of the world as you know it. The trick is: don’t lose your mind too. You must keep yourself together because nobody else will, or can for that matter. It is up to you to take care of yourself. Like when you’re on a plane and hear the instructions to place the oxygen mask over your face first, then help others.

Bad things happen in the due course of life. You can’t stop it. All you can do is to learn to look at the situation in a different way. Look for a silver lining, even if it’s a bit on the tarnished side. Break the emotional bond that you have to the situation. Sometimes the best you can do is to not follow the emotional corkscrew down to the bottom where despair lurks. Stay above it, neutral if you can’t quite get back to a positive attitude.

The Thursday before Thanksgiving, my best friend and companion died in my arms. It made the holidays a little difficult. Hard to be thankful when you feel like your heart has been ripped a hole a tractor-trailer could drive through. What possible silver lining can there be in his death? There was something he loved to do and had he lived, he would not have been able to do it anymore. It would have been very hard for him, which would have made it very hard for me knowing how he felt. Slim sliver lining, at best, and sometimes that’s the best you can do.

In the midst of crisis and afterward, it is difficult to stop connecting to the emotional negativity generated by thoughts and feelings. Generally you’re going along, doing fine, and then it starts. One thought sneaks in about the issue. That thought leads to another, and another, and so on. Until you find yourself in a downward spiral, building up more and more emotion, sliding into a wealth of negativity. And you can’t stop it. Memories crowd in and soon you realize this is a very bad path and you need to get out. But it just keeps coming and building. What can you do to stop this destructive thought pattern? Visualize a pair of scissors. A Giant Pair. Cartoon style. As big as you want, any color you want.

See your thoughts like a string of words and images linked together, each connecting to the next, a very long string floating out from your mind in the air around you. When you can’t stop the thought flow, then you’ve got to cut the process. So now visualize those giant scissors in front of you, float them over to the string of memories, and cut the linkage! One definitive snip of the blades and the string is broken. The thought process flowing out is broken, stopped. If you do this and believe it, it will stop you cold. Try it.

Then you can gain back control of your feelings and thoughts, head back to the positive, and change your attitude in the process. Life is a series of happenings. Some things happen to others and have no affect on you. Other instances are up close and personal because they are your lessons to learn. You can seldom stop something from happening to you, but you can always change your attitude towards it. It is always you who determines just how long you will hurt…because you allow it.

At a time when things are more precarious than usual, you have more to put up with. It’s easy to start losing it. This is the time when you must remember that there is not a thing wrong with you. It’s the world outside of you, that you have no control over, that is having the problem. No matter what happens, you are fine. Give nothing control over you. Let nothing keep you down. Some things will get you down no matter how hard you try not to succumb; just don’t stay down. Take back your power. Only you have the ability to give your power away.