Yesterday we established that the sequence of our mind patterns may be feeding our weakness rather than our strength.
Perhaps a mind pattern that is doing you harm came into the forefront for you to consider.
I am going to meet my expectations in ________ today without fail.
Eating, exercise, being kind to my family, letting go of that grudge history with that pivotal-in-my-life person, keeping a neat house.
The funny thing about the 24-hour cycle of life is that we get a chance to reset every morning. In fact, God says His mercies are new every morning.
Too bad ours are not. Because in that mind pattern above--the crisis of perfectionism--we ignore reality and our circumstances and move into this dream-like state that we think is attainable. We have no mercy on ourselves.
But shouldn't we eat better, exercise more, employ kindness to our family, let go of grudge history, and have some kind of order and cleanliness in our house?
Yes. The trick is to line up our expectations with a sequence of thinking and action that can be accomplished with some ease.
In my graduate school days, I learned that the trick to getting kids to read fluently is to place them in material they can read mostly with ease, with just a few roadblocks (new words) along the way. The power of fluency gives them the motivation and energy to learn how to navigate the roadblocks.
Our expectations have to work the same way. They have to be set where we can meet them with ease and success--the power of fluency--encountering only a few roadblocks along the way which we have energy to maneuver.
Tomorrow is Labor Day. Could you labor just a little by trying to reset your expectations in the one area that is crippling you--steering you into repeated failure?
Plan out how you might reverse the sequence.
Tomorrow we will feed our strength.
