Self Improvement

I've been working harder to manage my stress lately.  I really enjoyed reading The Little Book of Contentment by Leo Babauta.  I'm ready to start soon on his book The One Skill: How Mastering the Art of Letting Go Will Change Your Life.  But before I can start reading that one I have to finish reading one for work called The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace by Cy Wakeman.  I think these books will ultimately help me to deal with my stress, but they're also causing me a bit of stress.  They're making me realize that if I'm unhappy with something, it's my responsibility to make things better.  So I can't blame someone or something else for my discontent and stress.  Of course that's good because it means I have the ability to make things better without actually changing my job, but that also means that I have to do the work.

This is sort of similar to the way I thought maybe I had hypothyroidism and that I wouldn't have to work hard to lose weight, that there would be a simple solution.  But all the tests came back normal and there's not a simple solution.  If I want to lose weight I have to work at it and make the right choices.  Just like I have to make the right, and often difficult, choices if I want to manage my stress.  It's so much easier to whine and complain and blame someone else for all my problems.  Easier, but less satisfying.

I have been managing to keep my emotions on a more even keel at work and while driving, both situations which have been exceedingly difficult for me in the past.  The book by Leo Babauta gave the advice to stop thinking that everyone was doing things because of me, because I'm not the center of anyone else's world.  He gave an example of being in a boat and getting bumped into by another boat.  He said that if the boat were empty we'd just move it aside and go on, we wouldn't be mad at it.  But if someone was in the boat we would take it personally and get angry with them; but really there's no reason to react any differently if the boat has an operator.  So I'm working on it, but I think it's going to take some time, both to react properly to external stimuli, and to lose weight!

This morning on my jog I got a grainy picture of the eastern sky as it was starting to lighten, with a planet shining.  The cell phone camera definitely can't hang with the low-light pictures very well.  But you can still sort of tell what a beautiful morning we had.