I’ve been meaning to write for a while.  It was a few weeks ago that I did the mile in 7:42.  A 30 second improvement.  Maybe it was the shoes on this time.  It just felt good to be able to improve.  I guess that leads to filing cabinets.

 I’ve let my experiences define me.   Not all of those experiences are good and they had piled up over the years.     So the file cabinet, or my brain, became filled with those negative thoughts.   Unfortunately those led to some very poor self-perception and esteem issues.  When you don’t think highly of yourself you set yourself up for failure in all kinds of things.

I think the biggest change that I have had is that I now see some of those experiences as having nothing to do with me.  Or when experiences happen now I’m able to see them with more clarity.  Like the friend that I wrote about recently who suddently didn’t want to be friends.  They suddenly started being friendly again only to drop off again.  Clearly it is their issue and not mine.  I don’t own that.  I don’t file it away.  It goes in their filing cabinet.

So the idea is to have new experiences.  Fill the file cabinet with those.  Eventually I will need more space so I throw out the bad files. 

Things have really changed for the better.  Realizing the above has certainly given me a new outlook.   It has led to better experiences because of a different outlook.   I could have easily used some recent experiences to shut myself off to people like I have in the past.  Instead I moved past those so I could continue to allow for the fun and enjoyable things in life to happen.

The pictures are an example of me enjoying life and filling it with good memories.  Now if I could have only learned these lessons back in the 80′s:)