you got me feeling emotions

I picked up a book at the library the other day just because of the nice graphic design on the cover. It is called Life Lessons; Things I Wished I Had Known Earlier by Lesley Garner. I read it one afternoon and recognised many of my own thoughts organised and categorised. That is always encouraging!

Whenever I have a lot of time to myself I tend to read a self help book or two. This one was a collection of very short essays giving advice basically. It seemed poignant that the first story was about a woman who had an amazing life but was bored. This is a secret or not so secret fear of mine, I love my life, I am so looking forward to having a baby, but to say my career is on hold is to over estimate where my career is up to! One reason why I like to blog is to keep myself thinking and finishing of my thoughts, a way of getting my ideas and musings to a sharable state of understandability. Thank you dear reader for coming along.

This book recommends a few things that may be useful in coming months, well even useful now, pregnancy reminds me of the Mariah Carey song, ‘Emotions’. I love the line: “you got me feeling emotions". I can relate. There seems to be some extra feeling going on and not always very specific emotions to go with the feeling, a bit of churning I guess. I have noticed that with age I like change less and less and am aware that it is always good to have a strategy of what to do when overwhelmed. The author says the purpose of her book is roughly to share what she does when she is in a state! These skills are common sense but are not always at the ready when we are melting down. They take a bit of practice.

Lesley has about 5 key ideas for the average person. They are to practise meditation, gratefulness, forgiveness, letters to God and ‘taking 20 minutes’. She is not promoting any religion in particular but it has been my Christian faith that has taught me about the first four. Sometimes these things are just so common sense but they can feel so foreign if you are out of habit. It is time to practice! The 20 minutes idea is that you find a task that requires your attention for just that long, long enough to keep focused and overcome stagnation or procrastination or avoid giving up. It’s the just a little more approach and hopefully a breakthrough with whatever you are doing will be around the corner.

She also introduced me to a saying: ‘when the sea is rough, mend your sails’. I am not normally a sayings person but I like this because it is common sense. We can use periods of flux to do other things a busy life doesn’t always have time for. We can learn new things, evaluate, consolidate (possessions, thoughts), plan, dream, and cultivate friendships. So with 3 or 4 more weeks to go until this baby comes I am thinking about these things and practicing.

Thinking face.