Start over. That’s all I gotta do . . . Say it to myself and simply “START OVER!”   

Lying in bed with one crazy, mixed up thought  after another, I told myself to “start over.” Did not know what I meant. But, I did mean it.   

The thoughts went away. I felt a pull by them, a pull to drag my mind back to a worry or concern that had trapped and held me in its web, as I traced thread after thread of nonsense. A nonsense I felt was the most important thing in the world to me. Ever get like that? Really believe your thoughts are so important that you don’t want to let ’em go, that you’ll learn the secret of life if you just stay pursuing an idea, an emotion, an alley behind an old house where you once lived or the avenue near the home you’re planning to set up your new belongings? Thoughts jump like that. Go from past to future. Just like that! And make as much sense as I did comparing an old alley with a future avenue.   

“Start over.” Ask yourself: “Who’s in charge?” You, or your thoughts? Get away from them and think in the direction you want to be right now. As if you had no past, no record behind you, no yesterday. Only today, and how you can start anew, read a book of your life afresh, beginning this very moment. “Let go” and “start over.”   

The Keys: Control, Alt., Delete

Oh, I’m still responsible for everything I’ve done, and so are you. But, who needs to dwell on them? Don’t have to “see” them in the same light, whether they’re good or bad, high or low. You got a new Bingo card. A new start. You got no where to go but up. You get a “do-over” as a kid would ask for when playing a game. A chance to “do” something over, but with the “right” intention this time. The right choice, despite what you think your “old” self, your “past practice’ might dictate for you to do.   

____________________________   

Got out of bed and took a shower. Felt water drip from my head, shoulders and back after shutting off the shower head. Think of no thing outside of this shower stall, I said to myself. Start over. Right here. Enjoy the feel of the drops. One by one. Each of them new. Fresh. Never existing until now. Thoughts of them brand new. A “starting over” awareness of what is literally right in front of me. Water. Air. Now, enjoy the cotton towel wiping my back, the arms, legs and belly. Uh oh, that tickles down there. Can’t “start over” if I linger too long in any one spot; have to open the curtain, step onto the bathroom floor, and welcome this glorious Sunday morning with full sunshine greeting me outside.   

I decide to “start over” now every time an intrusive thought comes. I get ’em often. Thoughts, that is. Most are unbidden. They just pop up. I wonder sometimes if they’re actually mine or someone else’s thoughts that fled and entered this body by mistake.   

But, now I can “start over.” Breathe deeply. Face the challenge of the mundane with new vigor, with a new attitude. Goodbye My Past. Hello You Gorgeous Present!

(For my feeling on thoughts, see self-in-all-places)