Consistently Imagining the Best Possible Outcome

Friday, March 21, 2014

I don’t know that I can say recovering from PTSD is easy…even under the best possible circumstances.  You can have the best care team you can possibly assemble and taking the journey I am on will still not feel like a cakewalk.  Am I improving?  I believe I am.  Is it happening as fast as I would like it to? No.  Is this a bad thing?  I cannot tell.  Time has its wisdom and there are times when it is best to leave well enough alone and let time do what it does.  Does time heal everything?  I am not so sure about that either.  Perhaps it does…when the right circumstances are present.

So it’s Friday morning and I am sitting on the bus on my way to a job I will have no longer than next Friday.  I am trying to rouse some amount of enthusiasm for the fact that I am fortunate to have a job.  I’ll probably feel more enthusiastic in about thirty minutes when I arrive on site and am more awake than I am now.  The hues of Minnesota in late March don’t exactly feed the eyes in any dramatic way.  Grays (the sky), whites (the receding snow cover) and browns (the still barren trees and detritus from last year’s cycle of life) make for a fairly monochromatic palette to choose from.  But at least the snowing is beginning to disappear….slowly.

I have a few activities scheduled in the coming days to look forward to.  I’ll be consulting with my therapist later today about my efforts to establish a new professional direction.  I am hoping to also soon speak with my other social worker.  Tomorrow I will be speaking with Fr. John Bauer of the Basilica of St. Mary once again.  I have one primary question I want to ask him: Does Catholic Church doctrine include anything about an ethical obligation to act?  I’ll share more tomorrow about what I mean by that question.  I have been invited to some fun events this weekend as well so at least I will have some opportunities to blow off some steam.  I certainly need it.  I feel like one of the proles from George Orwell’s dystopian future 1984 in which life is simply one continuous dreary existence punctuated by the petty fights of other human beings over matters not truly worth fighting over.  I don’t feel like that all the time of course but feeling this way at all is more than enough.

One healthy way I could approach each and every day is to use my imagination to consistently imagine the best possible outcome.  Rather than expecting or fearing the worst it is a much healthier practice to imagine what the best possible outcome can be in any situation and hold my attention focused on that rather than on the worst possible scenarios.

For those of you who have read my blog previously and enjoy following it I will offer you the following golden nugget as an offering for having survived to another Friday as well.  If you truly want to tap into the power of your imagination take up reading the writings of Neville.  Just google Neville and creative visualization and you should find the man I am referencing.  I was introduced to him years ago when I lived in San Francisco.  I came across his writings while a student of the Lifeforce Education Corporation series of trainings.  Lifeforce was created by Matt Garrigan.  Google him as well to find some interesting information.

Now that I have done my public service for the day it’s time to sign off and work.

Happy Friday!