“By choosing your thoughts, and by selecting which emotional currents you will release and which you will reinforce, you determine the quality of your Light. You determine the effects that you will have upon others, and the nature of the experiences of your life.”
— Gary Zukav, author of ‘Seat of the Soul’

 

woman-field-open-arms-21260517_mlTake a moment to contrast a driver filled with road rage flying down the highway sharing her anger with everyone she thinks is getting in her way. She has put both herself and others in danger because of a driving force that has momentarily overtaken her.

Then consider the historic day that Captain Sully had to land his plane on the Hudson River on January 15, 2009, saving all 155 passengers on board.

In both of these incidences, there was a choice how each manage their high levels of emotions.

The road rager is signaling that her need is greater and more important than the safety of others, as well as the greater safety of herself. Her pain and fears are now steering her journey. It may be that she will be asking herself shortly how she got to this place in her life where she has lost sight of what is important to her. Perhaps her irrational behavior is a cry for help for something that she doesn’t understand within herself.

Her cries for help may soon become louder in hopes someone will hear her, or she may give up in silence believing that her needs don’t matter and because she doesn’t know else to do.

These two examples are vivid constrasts of someone out of control and someone who has switched to emergency management.

In Molly MacDonald’s column this issue, she invites each of us to put on our Emergency Manager’s hat and arise to the decisions before us, just as Captain Sully was prepared to do that eventful day. Captain Sully, whether he realized it or not, was teaching all of us about not letting fear (or the fears of the 155 passengers on board) take over our greater abilities to manuever our lives.

Each of us are the captain of our own vessel. We have a choice every day which energy we are going to center ourselves in… fear or something greater. As Gary Zukav says in the quote above, we make these determinations for ourselves. I am sure all occupants of Flight 1549 were grateful that Captain Sully was centered in something greater than their collective fears that day.

bcw_take5clockThe contrast is important to ponder because every day we make choices that determine the quality of our experiences for that day. How we show up on any given day is a choice, with rage or fear or unhealed justifications, or when we allow ourselves to quietly center ourselves with a higher power that provides calmness, strength, and guidance over the day.

Some of us just call this taking time to pray for ourselves and each other and visualizing and feeling a higher power over our thoughts and actions. You know this is a worthwhile investment of five minutes of your day when you see fear, impatience, anger, loneliness, awful-izing and indignation being replaced with calm, strength and guidance.

Take a moment to ponder the contrast of your days when you take five minutes to pray and to center yourself in calm, strength and a higher guidance and the days you don’t and ask, have you taken your Five to Thrive today?

 

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