start unexpecting.

Waiting on external forces to make me happy is no way to go through life. First off, it doesn’t work.  Second, it makes no sense.  And third but not least, my emotional sobriety can’t be dependent on sentences that start with, “As soon as…”

Step 3: made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.

It’s much easier to give up than to let go.  Letting go implies acceptance, whereas giving up slides off into an alternate reality, one of depression, self-pity, and resentments.  It’s as if giving up is the ultimate form of clinging:  I’m stuck on something I can’t change and therefore, I can’t change.  I’ll start bettering myself as soon as…

But this isn’t about anyone else, or anywhere else, or anything else other than what expectations (external and internal) I put between my ears.  I can just as easily set myself up for disappointment through low self-esteem, then postpone the self-inflicted inevitable for as long as I can, slowly cranking up the crazy, notch by notch, day by day, until I’m out in no man’s land, alone in the dark, paranoid and accusatory, my brain a blind rattlesnake.

If there is to be any hope of getting out of these mental traps and snares, I need to accept that my initial thoughts are usually wrong because they usually come with preconceived reactions to unconfirmed results.  And dwelling on something doesn’t make it more right or wrong; it just makes it more distorted.

The longer I don’t step back from the forest, the higher I find myself up a tree.