I like this article and would like to use it for some self-reflection if I may.
Q - Have I reduced some complex reality to an all or none or black and white alternative?
A - No. I'm constantly seeking information.
Q - Have I blocked out my any positive aspects of this situation?
A - No. I work with meditation and positive thinking to gain more insight.
Q - Am I rejecting the positive?
A - Definitely not. Wouldn't say I'm an optimist but I do try to be an optimistic pessimist.
Q - Have I considered all the evidence or am I just looking at this event?
A - I'd say I have considered all the evidence as in looking at my parents age and situation when they had me and, with time, have come to forgive them.
Q - Am I presuming what others think or feel? Am I predicting a negative outcome when I cannot be sure of that?
A - I used to do this until I made a kind of synchronicity connection. I realised that when I expected a bad result I got a bad result so I decided to experiment. I began to expect the best result and things began to get so good that I thought I was having a run of good luck. I waited for it to end but things just got better and better. So much so that I came to realise that we do get what we expect to get. Expect the worst and you get the worst. I began to expect the very best of everything that this world had to offer - and knew that I deserved it. It wasn't a cure but it did make life much, much easier.
Q - Am I making this problem bigger than it really is? Or, am I interpreting an undesirable event as something that could happen to me?
A - No. If anything, I used to worry that I might be playing things down too much and therefore failing to get the help I often thought I needed.
Q - Do people want to deliberately frustrate me? Is this about me?
A - No one is out to frustrate me. If anything, I think they try too hard to help me as in coming around and dragging me out cause it'll do me good. It's about me to the extent that it is my problem to deal with.
Q - Am I using my feelings as proof of how things are?
A - No. My feelings are still very much up and down. Past history, apart from the struggle, the fact that I was married for twenty years and brought up three children, amazingly wonderful, loving children, now with children of their own, remind me of how far I have come. And no matter how low I feel, I just have to take a look at them and I know I did something right.
Q - Are my expectations and demands of myself and others dictating how I think?
A - I no longer have expectations and I don't make demands. I allow others to live their own life and make their own mistakes because they have lessons to learn too. Today, I alone dictate how I think.
Q - Am I summing up with the situation with a label or am I describing what happened?
A - Telling my story was a part of the healing process and it helped. Being diagnosed/labelled didn't help because they changed it a few times.
Q - Am I looking at a setback as my/someone else’s fault?
A - I used to think like that before I realised that my own thoughts create my reality. To some extent I'm creating my life. It was not so much what my parents did to me that influenced my life, it was my reaction to what they did. When I realised that, I took full responsibility for my own life. Again it's not a cure for suffering, it just makes life easier.
Q - Am I asking others to be a certain way for my sake? Will I be happy if only this person changed?
A - No. I would never ask anyone to change for me. I wouldn't want that responsibility.
Q - Am I expecting everyone to think like me?
A - No. But I do enjoy sharing my discoveries. I would like other people to realise how their thoughts and actions create their future.
Q - Do you think that you deserve to be rewarded for your actions?
A - I don't believe in rewards. I do like to strike some kind of balance though. Do for others as you would wish them to do for you - and do it first. Expressing love and appreciation and returning favours, all kinds of favours, helps to keep the balance in relationships and helps them to grow.
I just did some brainstorming here so don't take all of this as being cast in stone.
