"What We Focus On We Become" Episode Sixty-Six (video)

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The “Is It True?” Series Episode Sixty-Six

“What we focus on we become”

Why is it that whenever I feel happy, I start to feel scared…..scared that something bad is going to happen and that it’s gonna happen soon….. coming straight down from the heavens to get me. I’m guilty and that’s just goofy, isn’t it? Thinking that any day now, I’m gonna find out that I have a disease now that I’m feeling good. God forbid I have to get on an airplane. I was feeling optimistic about my life, looking forward to each day with an eager hopefulness when I got on a plane to go on vacation. I had an anxiety attack so bad I demanded they let me out of the plane before it took off. This was many years ago when I was trapped in the equation that good = bad without being aware of the pattern and recognizing the insanity of it. Good cannot equal bad and still be good. It’s just not true. I can now observe it, step outside of the lunacy and wonder…..what the heck and why is it that I think this way? This response, specific to joy, was what I began to notice. It became familiar to me…..the inability to fully experience pleasure without the underlying dialogue that warns me not to get “too comfortable”….not to get "too used to it”. Fleeting moments were ok, but not contentment, not peace, nothing I could rest into….because one never knows…..

Everything could be going along just fine and then bam, we’re blind-sided. I remember gleefully jumping on the bed with my sisters and whacking my head really hard on the ceiling. Try it, it's quite a shock. We rarely receive adequate warning and even when we do, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee escape. Our parents might tell us it isn’t a good idea to jump on the bed, but we really don’t understand why until something bad happens. Stuff happens and there is often no preparation for it. I had a Planet of the Apes face for my 6th birthday because I swung under a loose bar while running on the playground and pulled it right into my mouth. I had no idea in the morning that I would look like that in the afternoon. It really hurt and Mrs. Bowl (yes, Mrs. Bowl) was mad because I wasn’t playing in the 6th grade area like I should have been, as if that could have prevented the freak accident. I still felt like it was somehow my fault.

I have a good memory. A song can bring me back to a tender kiss, the smell of rain on fall leaves can bring me back to the first time he walked out the door. Christmas reminds me of the many times he didn’t show up and New Years Eve reminds me why. I found out the truth that day, the awful truth. Do traumatic experiences teach us that it isn’t safe out there….that one needs always be on guard…on the look out lest we be caught by surprise when the “bad” stuff happens, as if that would change anything. Fear cannot prevent anything from happening. Do we think that it can? Something simple can trigger a memory and adrenalin will run through my body like the first time….panic. Post traumatic stress is real but are we bound to it forever. Being afraid and assuming the worst won’t change anything. Life is unpredictable. It is what it is and its all good, even when it seems it never could be.

I realized a while ago that it wasn’t very fun nor was it helpful to be worried all of the time…..to be wary of what is going to happen next. Focusing on and worrying about what’s going to happen will never stop what’s going to happen from happening. Period. I found that I had begun depriving myself of enjoying the present in an effort to avoid being disappointed, to skirt around anything painful. If I didn’t have anything, I couldn’t lose anything. I wanted to stop thinking so negatively. However, my brain still wanted to go there. It was a very bad habit. I spent a while beating myself up for that too. When I saw the movie, “The Secret”, I just got mad at myself. I blamed myself for “causing” life…..the twists, the turns, the corners……the doors….opening….closing. It was counterproductive because I ended up paying even more attention to the thoughts that I didn’t want to have. The more I fought them, resisted them, the more down on myself I got. The more down on myself I got, the more these thoughts persisted and gained power over me. I was still focusing on what I didn’t want. I was living in the past or in the future.

I came to the conclusion that I could not control what happened. Try as I may, I could not control people, places, or things. There was absolutely nothing I could do about the past, and the only thing I could do about the future was to enjoy the present. Joy has momentum. It feeds on itself. I don’t know if life's challenges are made up of random accidents and mistakes that we can do nothing about or if we have more power than we think we do. I may not be able to stop bad things from happening, but focusing on them definitely affects my ability to have any comfort and joy in the present. I stopped trying so hard and beating myself up for the fatalistic thoughts that pop in my head. The thoughts come and they go. Once I relaxed a little, I could observe. I began to be able to feel my thoughts, my feelings shift from my heart up into my head. I noticed this happened when I said the words, “should, well maybe, but, what if, and so on”….when I questioned the truth inside my heart. I pay attention to these words now. They are like little flags. Pause, Breathe. Feel. Ground myself. I look for the hand of a friend, the smile of love and I Honor My Truth!

Debra Hadraba
The Honor Your Truth Community
Inspiration+Action