How To Practice Trust as You Go About Your Day  (Part 4 in “Learning How to Trust” Series)

In our previous post in the “Learning How to Trust” series, we covered a foundation, or a Belief System that, when present, makes practicing What Is much easier to do.

Keeping in mind our ultimate goal is Peace, we use Trust as our tool.  We shift from What If thinking to What Is thinking, we understand our Belief System (not our Think System), and now we practice.

But what do we practice on?  With?

Hold on to your seats — this is a very technical term I’ve named: Our Stuff.  You practice with your stuff.  I practice with my stuff.  We all do it, all the time!

To give you some examples, here is a small sampling of some of the stuff I’ve practiced on over the years:

• the divorce of my parents
• being raised by parents from another country, trying their hardest to have me grow up as “American” as possible
• boyfriends!! (say no more!)
• mean girl-friends!!!! (really, say no more!!)
• HIGH SCHOOL/COLLEGE/MARRIAGE (all deserving of capital letters, for different reasons)
• the birth of a child with immediate medical needs
• working through those needs, getting to a ‘stable place,’ only to discover additional medical needs….
• etc.

Take a moment to think of your stuff.  My guess is there are probably some areas where we overlap.  Parent’s divorce maybe?  Boyfriends/mean girl-friends?  At least one of these: high school, college, marriage?

Your list will also have additional stuff.  Perhaps some stuff I’ve experienced, but didn’t list, perhaps not.  But the point is, we all have our stuff.  Little, big, and everything in between.

That, my friends, is the stuff I’m talking about.   That is the stuff we practice with.  Every. Single. Day.

Let’s take something small, something that’s safe to say we all could easily put on our list: sitting in traffic.  That’s definitely part of our stuff we get through on a daily or weekly basis.  Why choose something to practice on that’s so common?  So small, that when you bump it up against your ‘real stuff’ it hardly seems to matter?

Here’s the thing.  Because it’s so common, we have ample opportunity to practice on it.  And so small?  Hmm…  If it’s really so small, then why do so many people find themselves in a rage, with eyes bulging and elevated blood pressure from merely sitting in their cars… day after day after day?

The next time you’re stuck in traffic, stop and notice What Is.

What Is:

• you’re sitting in your car
• you are surrounded by others in the same predicament
• there are all sorts of sounds and smells surrounding you
• you’re sheltered from the rain, wind, or other outside factors
• you are embracing What Is

That’s a pretty bare skeleton I provided (and all neutral I might add), but I think we’ve all been there, and all probably heard someone tell us all of the things we can do to ease our minds while in traffic.  If you haven’t mastered this traffic example, keep practicing.  No doubt you’ll have the opportunity to.

Let’s jump to a brief example of my son.  Without getting bogged down in his medical particulars, here’s What Is, as I see it.  Here is where I choose to focus each day when I wake up:

• my son is healthy today
• my son has competent, smart, caring doctors
• medical advances are made every day
• it’s my job as his mother to provide the best nourishment, sleep conditions, and doctors available… and I do one hell of a job there
• beyond that, I Trust Life Today…
• …as I embrace What Is
  

From traffic, to a loved one with unique needs, to dealing with an annoying person at work, to starting to date again — to whatever stuff you have in your life, practice on that.  Use your foundation as a concrete surface, as well as a soft place to land.

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