Lesson 58: Facing Whats Real

Here are the questions:

How often is your view of reality----especially your financial reality----colored by the past?

And how much of it is colored by indulging in fantasies (or melancholy regrets) of how you wish it were different?

Looking more deeply, on a philosophical level do you believe that there's basically only one factual viewpoint of reality. . . or that absolutely everything is up for interpretation?

Here is what this lesson brought up in me:

Right now, I am on my couch. Pillow in lap, laptop on pillow. My cat is to my left, curled up on a blanket and leaning against my leg. My dog is further to the left, curled up on another blanket. This is my reality as it exists at this moment. There is nowhere else I need to be or appointment I need to keep at this moment. 

My mind, however, is building pressure in my body about going to the bank and the grocery store and the stack of stuff on the coffee table and how I will have to move and change out of my robe and what will I wear and I don't want to put on clothes because I've put on bloat this holiday time and and and and ......

I realize these thoughts weren't exactly melancholy regrets or the way I wish things were, but our minds take us out of reality all the fucking time. The reality in front of me is quite easy to deal with. Laptop, cat snuggles, dog, pillow, blankets. The reality in my mind overwhelms me and puts me into panic or emotion I don't know how to deal with. And, honestly, it puts me in freeze mode if I let it. Too much to deal with so then I can't deal with anything. 

And if I look at the stack on my coffee table, that really triggers my "What do I do with this shit?!" Dealing with only one item at a time is the reality. Trying to deal with everything in the stack, or my house, or my life, before even leaving the couch is too fucking much and way far out of reality.