Yesterday I did this really fun, amazing thing. I’ve been wanting to sign up for an online guitar lesson program for quite a while, but conditioning always had a reason why I couldn’t do it — not enough time, a waste of money, will fail anyway, etc..

I’d been watching this, and had decided this was the month to make a stand for the heart and sign up. Next Saturday was going to be the day.

I found myself at 9pm on Saturday night — still no guitar program. I had to go to bed soon to get up for the Sunday activities, and there was the familiar story: “you’re never going to do it, see?!”

Suddenly, Super Mentor swept in, cape and all, and announced: “Stand back, conditioning!” She then turned to me – “Sweetie, you could take a half hour and just get signed up. Just check it out, get it started, and then you’ll have the ball rolling.”

Me: “But what if conditioning is right? It costs $25 a month, and I’ll probably never use it, and I’ll just waste the money…”

Super Mentor: “Honey, if you spend five minutes with it each month, that’s well worth $25/month — that’s five minutes when you’re choosing joy and choosing not to pay attention to that old voice without a body over there!  Who cares? You and I will work out ways to practice with this — fun ways — not ‘meeting standard’ ways.”

Feeling a little surge of joy returning to my body, I went to the computer, and proceeded to spend about 30 flingin-flangin-fantastic minutes of total joy getting signed up and watching the first few four-minute videos. Super Mentor was totally right — it was worth the $25 to tell conditioning to take a hike and make a stand for the heart. (Conditioning, embarrassed upon realizing it is indeed just a voice without a body, had disappeared for the moment.)

Here is where Recording and Listening came in.  Before I went to bed, Super Mentor reminded me to grab the recorder. I recorded about the whole episode — especially the part about how GREAT it felt to stand up to conditioning and see that I really could do this.

The next morning, as happens for many a human being, I woke up into conditioned stories. Something wrong, something missing, going to be a bad day … yuck! As I was attempting to find some willingness to go about the day, I remembered the recorder. When I pressed play, there it was – the whole fantastic victory scene from last night, recorded in all of its glorious detail. My energy returned, I grinned broadly.  Another big score for recording and listening. Yahoo!

 

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