Hello, dear readers and welcome to a new year! Made any resolutions yet? I have. Or, perhaps I should say, I’ve been creating a list of mottos to live by. To help me live in the moment, accept life’s turbulence and changes, free myself of petty resentment, and understand, once and for all, that this one beautiful life I have will never be perfect. And that’s OK.
Before I go any further, I’d like to note that it’s taken me 50+ years to become receptive to the mottos below (AKA affirmations and slogans) and feel their truth, power, and beauty. So don’t be hard on yourself if you can’t use them right now. Sometimes you just have to grow into things!
I was inspired to offer these mottos to live by when I revisited a quote by a remarkable young woman, the late Jane Kristen Marczewski. Known to the world as Nightbirde, she became famous when she performed an original song on America’s Got Talent, having revealed her battle with cancer.
In responding to a judge’s observation about how positive she was given the seriousness of her illness, Nightbirde said this:
Motto #1: You Can’t Wait Until Life Isn’t Hard Anymore to Decide to Be Happy
Motto #2: Put Painful Memories to Rest
When you’re in intensive talk therapy, a central part of the process is thinking about and then sharing your past with a professional who can support you through these often quite painful disclosures.
If you have mental health challenges, the past can be baked into who you are – part of your emotional DNA. It’s difficult to tell reality from perception. It can become easy to hang on to the traumatic experiences that drove you to therapy in the first place.
That’s what I’ve done. But I’ve decided that, rather than carry all this stuff around with me for a moment longer, I’m giving myself a New Year’s gift. I’m putting my painful memories to rest. I am ready. Nighty night, old ghosts. I’m not gonna be coming around anymore.
Motto #3: Weed Out Resentment
I often joke that I can hold a grudge longer than anyone I know. And the truth is that I have held grudges for many years. Actually, my record is 21. Oddly, this motto to live by is the easiest for me to embrace.
My story? I’ve nurtured resentment for perceived and actual insults to my sense of self as a way of being in the world. I’ve even plotted petty revenge strategies, letting my hurt stand between me and happiness, loving connections, and peace of mind.
{Note to readers: I never enacted my petty plots although I did write a story about one. Just click the blue link in this paragraph}
Okay, so yeah, It’s taken a lifetime of therapy, ongoing self-reflection, and feeling just plain rotten, but I’ve finally realized that these resentments have been chewing me up inside. That the only person I was hurting was myself.
I’ve decided to weed out these nasty, love-killing grudges and relocate to the state of acceptance and forgiveness. (It’s next to Hawaii.) The air here is clean and pure and I feel as if I’ve lost 10 pounds!
Motto #4: I Am the Boss of My Thoughts & Feelings
For most of my life, I’ve been driven by intense emotions, ranging from anxiety and panic to blissed-out excitement and frantic energy. Often, if something unexpected happened, such as a sudden change in a work schedule, I would become dysregulated, dreaming up catastrophic scenarios that made the change appear worse than it was.
Oddly, dear readers, I rarely panicked when a loved one was in trouble because the trouble wasn’t happening to me. I just jumped in to help in whatever way was needed, such as when my mother developed Alzheimer’s.
Being at the effect of my thoughts and feelings took a huge toll on my poor neurons, frequently bombarded by huge, memory-depleting infusions of cortisol as if they were tiny electric boats tossed to and fro in a violent hurricane of toxic chemicals.
And now, finally, I’m learning that I am the boss of my thoughts and emotions. I run them; they do not run me. This understanding took forever, but, hey, better late than never, right kids?
Motto #5: Live One Day At a Time
Man, oh, man, friends! This is the hardest motto for me to live by, but I’m beginning to see the possibility of staying in today without fever dreams about the past and the future. In all honesty, I’ve spent a lot of time living anywhere but here and now.
For example, when I lived in New York, I’d often walk from the gym to my apartment or from my apartment to the grocery store with absolutely no memory of how I’d arrived at my destination.
What I do remember is that my mind was deeply embedded in fantastic fantasies of the future or mired in painful thoughts about the past. It’s actually a miracle that, during these unconscious journeys, I was never hit by a car. I guess it was the combined benefits of muscle memory and automatic pilot. Also, people weren’t texting while driving.
Now I’m understanding that I can live in the present and effectively plan for the future. But I will not live there. No! No! No! The benefits of living one day at a time are that I am better able to enjoy what I have – and I have so much – and more likely to be grateful for life’s many gifts.
My Donnee. Fluffypuss and Peekaboo. A loving big brother. My nephews and their wives and kids. A beautiful home in a lovely neighborhood. Friends and neighbors who care about me as much as I care about them.
And, of course, my therapist, my social worker, and my psychiatrist.
Motto #6: Just For Today I Will Have a Positive Attitude
Do you see the glass as half full or half empty? At this point, you may not be surprised to learn that I’ve often chosen the latter. Despite my many exciting careers, terrific friends, and a pretty jazzy New York life, I’ve lived with negative thinking for years.
“If I’m happy, I’ll be punished.” “If I’m ambitious, I’ll be put in my place.” “If I speak my mind, no one will like me or love me.”
But now, after many years of working on myself, I am finally embracing positive thinking without a superstitious fear of dire consequences rendered unto me by the all-powerful universe, AKA fate, bad luck, and other people. This isn’t easy for me, but it helps to remember to have a positive attitude “one day at a time.”
Or, in my case, “one minute at a time.”
Motto #7: Stay Engaged With Others
Many of us cope with our tough feelings by quietly shutting down. Seeking invisibility, we stand off to one side, allowing these feelings to disconnect us from others, including those who love us.
My thing is to go deep inside my mind, put myself on automatic pilot, and interact with others wearing a social mask and pretending to be someone other than I am in that moment. When this happens, wholehearted engagement feels impossible.
But now I’m pushing myself to engage even if I’m feeling bad about myself or life, what I don’t have, what I want to have, life’s unfairness, my weight gain, the wrinkles in my forehead (I can’t afford Botox), being bad at social media. Blah…Blah…Blah…
And the thing is that, when I do engage with others, most of this mucky awful stuff disappears. The connection with another person takes me out of myself and puts me into a far better head space. A place where just by interacting with someone, I can feel happy, positive, and alive and well in the present moment.
Motto #8: For Five Minutes At a Time, I Won’t Be Afraid
Yes, your adventurous Amy spends way too much time feeling anxious. This feeling is not based in any immediate event or situation and it’s been hard to fight it. Especially when I let my anxiety run roughshod through my mind. {See Motto # 4}
So it occurred to me that, instead of trying to be brave for a whole day or a few hours, I could try being so in small segments.
My always supportive Donnee offered me his favorite timer, but its relentless ticking gave me the heebie-jeebies. So, now, when I’m scaring myself silly over dire imaginings or the unknown that is the future, I set my phone timer for three minutes.
Then I breathe slowly and listen to Peekaboo meowing; Fluffypuss squeaking; my Donnee tapping out emails; the birds fighting for a front-row seat at the bird feeder; the boiler turning on or off.
It’s like an auditory documentary about the world outside my brain and I find myself calming. In fact, I’m looking forward to trying this for five minutes sometime down the road!
Dear ones, I know this stuff takes practice and discipline. Letting go of fear is, I believe, the ultimate blessing we can give ourselves.
In closing, I’d like to say that, when these mottos to live by seem like too much to handle, it is okay to take a break from the hard work of being mindful and self-aware.
Instead, watch a “Peanuts” video, the Muppets, or funny fails on YouTube. Why? Because above all, laffter is the best medicine. I promise you that when you’re finished laffing, you will be more available to the wisdom tucked inside these eight mottos to live by.
And remember: you can develop personal mottos of your own!
Now…here’s Snoopy!
These are amazing words to live by. Life can be difficult at times, while other times simply unbearable. I love the mottos you highlighted and the poignant way you explain how each can be applied, and how you demonstrate the importance of implementing these when our minds go into the Stinkin’ Thinkin’ mode.
I deeply appreciate your comments, especially about using the mottos to head off sinking into Stinkin’ Thinkin’.
Well said. We often have to get older to recognize the wisdom. “Expectations are just premeditated resentments.”
I’m beginning to think that the older I get the smarter I get! And you’re so right about expectations!
Great words to live by. I wish we could have recognized these wise words when we were younger.
In my case, it took 70+ years for all this wisdom to sink in. LOL…Hey, better late than ever is my motto!
I love this piece. The fact that you allow yourself to be so vulnerable is a lesson for me. Great stuff!
I’m so glad this story had meaning for you. I’m trying to be vulnerable, matter of fact, and useful.
All good. Wish I could practice them all especially those times when most needed!
I have the mottos posted in my office where I can easily see them.
Thank you Amy, What a wonderful idea posting these mottos to remind ourselves to live moment by moment by creating a gap within our sorrows.
“Creating a gap within our sorrows…” Beautifully said! Thank you for reading and commenting.
Thanks for the mental reminders….we “know” these things but it’s so easy to forget and these help us stay in the moment. Great mottos….love them.
I boiled everything I’ve learned down to manageable size: just eight little mottos!