Week 8 – It Is A Really Good Sign

“People often find that the starting of this diet seems to stir up all sorts of difficulties.  It seems as though everything begins to go wrong at once.  This may be disconcerting, but it really is a good sign.  It means that things are moving; and is not that the very object we have in view?  If my whole world seems to rock on its foundations, I hold on steadily, I let it rock and when the rocking is over, the picture will have reassembled itself into something much nearer to my heart’s desire.”        ~Emmet Fox, pg. 17

I am trusting that.  I am counting on it.

I have learned a lot this week.  By working on ‘no opinions’ and ‘no negative thoughts’, I have come to realize that I have been striving hard most of my life for. . .what. . .? . . .  Something. . . .  I can’t quite put my finger on it.  Striving to persuade people?  Trying to. . . ?   What was I trying to do by being so opinionated? Was I saying, “Look at me!  I’m here!  Don’t turn away!  I have something to say!”  I think that gets close to it, because saying that stirs up a lot of emotion.

What about the 7-Day Mental Diet?   What in the world was I accomplishing by being so freakin’ negative all the time?    I think in part of my life it was to bond and ally with others, by joining in the fray  . . . 

The two things that bond people together – common goals and common enemies.  And I think the rest of it just spilled out from there into other parts of my life.  I lost sight of gratefulness.  Sure, I thought I was a positive person, and always put positive things on facebook – I always see the glass half full, and I do thank God for His blessings, but man, oh, man!   Until this exercise, I think my positivity was more hope-based – (and as Mark J. says, “Hope is not a strategy!”) than an actual through-and-through way of life.  Sort of like an iceberg.  The positive (hope) on the top, but the negative way of thinking below. . .

Beautiful, but treacherous!   I don’t want that to be me.  As difficult as a lot of this has been, and as unexpectedly painful as some of it has been, I trust Mark and Davene, I trust this process, and I say, “bring it on!”  I want to live a life of constant and never-ending improvement, and MKMMA is showing me the way.   Thanks!