Pulling Teeth

I am grateful for opportunities to re-assess my expectations. It's like pulling teeth, saying this.

I'm in the midst of unpleasant situations at work that have me wondering about the crappiness of people's motivations. This is in a professional realm that purports to be about doing good, and still greed and egos are everywhere. I want to take everyone's inventory. And then I want to mail it to them with the best parts highlighted in yellow.

To deal with this without making myself feel like a tar-filled balloon, I have to return to two things I've drifted away from. Prayer and meditation. These are hard things; I think in Al-Anon I have a tendency to believe that thinking about prayer, or saying you are going to pray is as good as actually doing it. When I again reach the realization that this is not the case, I weigh myself down with guilt and "shoulds" which allows me to avoid prayer and meditation even more.

Somewhere along the way, I've started to think of contact with my higher power as an act of "plugging in." I can feel it when it's happening. Cultivating it without guilt may be the way to let go of some of my panicked feeling in the face of challenges. That and gratitude, which is a chore when I try to practice it without this feeling of being connected to a force of good.

See here we are:

I am grateful for the supportive people at work.

I am grateful for my boyfriend: my partner.

I am grateful for our cat and our dog and their attitudes.

I am grateful for reminders to return to the love of my higher power, though these reminders often feel destabilizing.