Merry Monday: The Big Friendly Button
“Merry Monday” is a project for 2014-15 where my goal is to find one little thing each week that is a delight, a little fun, a little, well, merry. I post it here, and hope you will either post your own merry-ness in the comments or send a link to your own merry monday post if you have a blog. If you post, please link to here, and share a link to you so we all can share in the fun too.
This week’s Merry Monday is about Merry Monday itself. To me, it’s like Doctor Who’s “Big Friendly Button”.
I love Doctor Who. That’s a year of Merry Monday right there if you get into the details. Not long ago, was watching the “Into the Heart of the Tardis” episode. At the end, the Doctor gives himself a big friendly reset button that re-boots the Tardis and makes every all better.
Just like that office supply store with its “easy button” commercials. It was a HUGE lightbulb over my head when local author Gina Mazza told me that it is OK for things to be easy.
Yeah, I know. In literature, the Doctor’s Big Friendly Button would be deus ex machina on steroids. Fortunately it exists to some extent in real life, too. In psychology, it’s called “re-framing”. In politics it’s called “spin doctoring”. In my blog, it’s called “Merry Monday”.
This re-framing, this transformation of thought-habits, is what Merry Monday (and #PeaceTarot too) are all about. If you cultivate a meditation habit of any kind…Transcendental, Buddhist, Tai Chi, daily meditation style Tarot readings, reading newspaper comics….SOMEthing…then you are re-framing your thoughts in a better direction. After time, that positive point of view becomes more habitual. It’s easier.
I think of it as brain exercise to get a bigger happy muscle.
You might not notice a big change. You might not notice a change at all. Nothing is a magic bullet for everyone. Don’t forget…everything is relative. No one is going to turn grumpy grandpa into a flower child. No one wants you to deny, minimize or pretend bad stuff doesn’t happen or that bad feelings don’t exist. No one can control all of what happens but you can control how you respond to it. Knee jerk reflexes may happen faster than you can get a grip on it…but that is the happy part of these kinds of exercises. It nudges that knee jerk in a more positive direction. That way those knee jerk reflexes don’t come around to kick us in the backside later.
Two things work in our favor: new days and new points of view. Each day is a new beginning. Each moment is a new chance. We just have to click a slight different lens into place over the way we see the world. With practice, you can shift from seeing the proverbial glass as half empty to seeing it as half full, to seeing it as half full automatically in the beginning. Either way, it doesn’t change the reality of how many ml are in the doggone glass, but a half-full reflex might help you deal with the glass more effectively and have a happier quality of life while you do.
image via tardis wiki
