Fuck Affirmations.
Today I was driving between jobs. I had just finished a morning funeral and I was in a hurry to make it to a family home to pick up the next group for the afternoon. Without lunch, without sleep and without being able to stop for a piss.
I was on the highway and the thought came into my head. I did not want to drive, not for another minute. I wanted to pull over. I wanted to pull over the car and sit by it's side. I imagined what would happen if I quit, there and then. I couldn't do that to the group waiting for my ferry, never could I leave someone when they needed....someone. Not me, just someone. Some lady with wheels, in a silly outfit and $4.50 in her bank account.
I couldn't find the house. I had thirty seconds until I would be late for the pickup. The house numbers were muddled, and I hadn't been informed that there was a side lane in which a nursing home slept unassumingly. I saw a postman so I stopped the car and ran out. They understand numbers. They understand houses.
"Postman! Postman PAAAAAAAAAAAAT."
He didn't hear me. He didn't hear me through his silly outfit.
The job ended as it should. I got to the next job with ten minutes to spare.
I ate a biscuit. I turned the air conditioning in the vehicle onto arctic freeze so that my cheeks felt a sting.
I've since been ruminating over this feeling.
It's more dangerous to dig a grave for your feelings and bury them than to attend to them; to action them with all their ugly, decomposing honesty.
I want to use this. I want to accept these feelings and look at them and scrub my mind clean with them. I want to remove indecision by shaking them and poking them. These feelings are sad, but I need not be so forever.
Someone told me once that they repeated the same affirmation day after day in the car on the way to school.
"Every day in every way, life is getting better and better for me."
Affirmations feel 'culty'.
I need to be responsible for how shit I may feel as a result of the route that I'm driving. If not, maybe I have to get out of the car.
Peace.
There is nothing worse than an out fit so loud you can't even hear over it.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder your energies were so squelchy.
I would have got out of the car for 15 mins.
But I am both irresponsible and not normal. Well, self responsible.
Bahahaha! Oh lol. Actually that affirmation is culty: it is straight out of the positive psychology movement. It was bread into us. Literally every morning.
There are others that aren't, but I take them as warnings, each points to something specific. If i'm counting foot steps, or that one, I don't want to go somewhere and probably won't, in most cases.
"where is my strength" is another, more automatic thought than affirmation (actually things can be negatively affirming). Anyway, It means I'm taking a risk that hasn't been thought out. I can't remember. There are a few.
"I am powerful and beautiful" is linked to death and illness triggers. It is a great way to map using bits already in there, but affirmations alone do not work.
And they break the "talk over your self rule" anyway, when observation is of most benefit.
Clean thoughts do work, absolutely, honest thoughts. Specific thoughts. But that is not the same thing, of course. Xxx
"I need to be responsible for how shit I may feel as a result of the route that I'm driving. If not, maybe I have to get out of the car."
ReplyDeleteI think I want this as my life motto