Suspending, mid-flight

Silver linings:
1. Walked the mile to the commuter rail station for my daily commute. Revelled in how strong and alive my legs felt. I might be hosting  too many extra pounds and too little muscle tone but I have life left in me yet. Lots.
2. Thoroughly enjoyed listening to foot tapping numbers by ‘Bhoomi’ on my new mp3 player on the walk back home. I had forgotten about the restorative powers of a thought-erasing beat. (Thanks hubby)
3. The tarka daal for dinner tasted like real tarka so maybe I’ve finally nailed this fav recipe. (Thanks Indrani.)
4. Signed up for beginners tennis lessons. Have’nt learnt a new skill in a long time so this will be fun, no matter what my aptitude for the sport turns out to be.

Lessons learnt:
Negative thoughts can be suspended in mid-flight:
When my suggestion about a project was turned down in a coversation, I found myself immediately bristling and started finding derogatory reasons why the other person was shooting down my hard work and reasoning. I managed to suspend all thought on the matter at this moment of awareness and distracted myself with other things. When I revisited the issue the following morning in a calmer, clearer frame of mind, I was able to consider that he might have had other reasons other than a blinding bias against me and that my knee-jerk reaction was purely based on history, not any evidence from that day in particular. This is what happens when I let the past color instead of inform the present. Giving him the benefit of doubt felt far better than assuming the worst too.

Mistaken conclusion and negative memory averted.

Begin mindful of this entire thought/reaction process might be key in claiming  happiness. I need to ensure that I’m being fully reasonable and fair before demanding that from others.  Others need to be as mindful of me as I am of them, but the cycle needs to start with me. There's also the faint hope that if I am in better control of my own thoughts and reactions, it will come to matter less how others treat me. .

So my lesson learnt.....I may not be self aware enough to prevent negative thoughts and judgements from materialising altogether (yet) but can still stop them before they do much damage. That's almost a better power to have than averting negative thought altogether. If I can master this, I'm golden.