Cherokee Shaman

From my Cherokee shaman: "We cannot take for granted that any other human can have accurate perception and spell things out for us.  The miracles are not all in other heads, other hands, other methods.  There must be a burst of inner fire that sparks a miracle, that opens a door to a greater life, a greater calm."

I like this thinking.  Probably because it aligns so closely to my thinking.  There's a certain amount of truth to the idea that we all need to get off our asses and quit complaining about everything that isn't going the way we want it to go.  After all: It's not them - it's you.  Whatever you did yesterday is probably what you're going to do today so it's going to take effort, it's going to take work, if you want to change things.  It's all up to you.  I'm appreciative for the help and advice I've gotten in The Fellowship but ultimately it comes down to me doing the work.

Then there's this: "Be strong, be of good courage - so much that we worry about will never happen.  Put things in order, change what needs to be changed, but begin at once to count the blessings that must be told again so we will not forget."

I recall the years where I made a Worry List.  Every time I felt anxiety I would write down the feeling that I was feeling and then try to decide whether the fear came from my inaction on something that needed my attention or whether I had taken all the appropriate action and just needed to wait for events to unfold.  At the end of each year I would review this list and each year I would be astounded and disgusted to rediscover that almost nothing I worried about ever came true and the things that did come true were almost always outside of my sphere of influence - they were going to happen despite my best efforts to stop them.

I also mention my daily Gratitude List where I go over and over and over all of my blessings, really trying to pay attention to the words I'm saying.  I'm blessed.  And I'm not a naturally grateful guy.  I see the possible problems and focus in on them, like the trouble-shooting technical guy that I am.  I'm survived and thrived by being wary of what could go wrong.  A good survival strategy but not always conducive to peace of mind.