As I embarked on this year of living generously, I knew that the first place I wanted to start was my thoughts. I made a riff off of the scripture in Matthew "for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matthew 6:21). I wanted me thoughts and the feelings of my heart to be congruent. I wanted "for where my thoughts are,there will my heart be also".
This took a bit of work. I tried hard to follow the advice from Camilla Kimball, but first I had to allow generous thoughts to bubble up to the surface. As I've shared, my typical reaction is a glass half-empty response. Overcoming that first, natural reaction was (and is) a challenge. But I was determined to learn to be generous in my thinking.
One tactic I employed was to state 4 positives for every negative thought/reaction, a 4:1 ratio. I originally started with a 10:1 ratio, but that was a bit too aggressive for me so I backed off because I was getting frustrated and down on myself with the whole thing. What I learned, though, was that as I began to state positives first, the more positives I saw. Yay!
Another lesson learned...in angry confrontations, when I try to be generous in my thinking, I can often see past the angry words. This has allowed me to have deeper conversations with better resolutions to problems. And as a result, often the relationship is strengthened because I have tried to be generous.
This year is going to be great!
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