Start Where You Are - A Review

Start Where You Are - a Journal for Self-Exploration by Meera Lee Patel - Amazon Link

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One of the exercises in the book that I found helpful is associated with a quote by Walt Whitman.

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.

The exercise says, think of three ideas that you disagree with, ideas that hurt your spirit and are harmful to your well-being.  Write them down on three separate pieces of paper and tear them up.

To me the while being a figurative way to address problems, the act of physically writing things down and destroying them has a powerful impact on real life situations.  We can look to the magical world for examples of this with the use of poppets or with the writing down of curses in antiquity. Some today still use slips of paper under an enemies house as a way to show power over them.

Few things bother me this deeply any longer.  I know that I have control over very few things in my life.  I have to respect the fact that others have their own feelings, goals and dreams to be concerned with.  I have to remember that not only am I not in control of what they think, they are not in control of what I think about their actions.  I take it upon myself to very physically dismiss those things that insult my soul.  I will not be abused and I will not hunt you down to be a part of my life.  

These days, people are far too sensitive and spend entirely too much time playing the victim.  Misery loves company.  We have a choice to sit in that negativity or open up our lives to all the wonder that is around us.  We can grumble about what we don't have or rejoice in what we do have.  We can share hateful, ugly messages about people from our past or we can stop, open up our minds and move forward with life.  You do not have to continue to perpetuate the ugliness.  You can take the initiative to move forward and be happy.

This was pretty helpful for me.