I use the practice of examining suffering and irritants and errors and mishaps for associated ideas that increase their negative power. For instance, when I accidentally lose a folded $5 bill by dropping it, I could beat myself up about it, "What? You think money grows on trees?" I notice that I don't seem to make an undue number of careless mistakes so maybe I can allow myself a few now and then.
[I enjoy asking Google rather dumb questions so I searched for answers to "How many careless mistakes do most people make in a day?" If you ask me that, I would have to answer that I have no idea, but Google came up with many answers and documents. One of them said the average American worker makes 118 mistakes a year or about 1 mistake every 3.09 days. In case you are interested, I would create a Poisson distribution with a basic parameter of 3.09 to study things further...Ok, I just got distracted into using the current version of Excel to do that and it looks like a reasonable estimate using the Poisson and a mean of 3.09 days for a mistake that there is a bit less than a 5% chance that a day will go by with no error or partial error made.)
But I digress!! Badly! Nerdly in the extreme!
I don't have too much trouble remembering to scrutinize my thinking and habitual reaction when I feel like "Why me, O Lord?" or "I can't have nice things". But I do have to work at remembering my thoughts ("A bagel right now would be nice") are just wisps, floating electric impulses down this nerve line or that. Sure I can honor them or explore them or take them seriously. But, BUT, I don't have to. I can just let them float away, as I should when good sense, or following a goal I want to achieve, tells me the thought should be sent off into the atmosphere.
