Meg Evans

Almost four years ago, I wrote about a dream in which my subconscious mind repeatedly gave me a very insistent message: “Avoid assumptions, leave space for improvement.”

Not long afterward, the entire world’s assumptions got knocked for a loop in 2020, which made for some uncharted territory when it came to finding space for improvement in a much-changed society. I made more friends online, and one of them kindly gave me a custom-made mug decorated with my new personal motto. I’ve been keeping squares of dark chocolate in it.

Looking back at the changes, I had more space for improvement in my life than I knew. Because labor shortages have prompted management to do more to retain long-term employees, I feel more valued in my workplace. My husband changed jobs, is better paid, and can work from home, after a lifetime of cube-dwelling purgatory. Our finances are in better order, and we have much more freedom to travel now that we both can work remotely. I’m keeping the mug on my desk in hopes it will bring more good fortune my way!

My house is generally comfortable, but one issue it always had was that the closet in the master bedroom was cold all winter. Although that closet is on top of the garage, it didn’t seem as if it should have been so chilly—there is a register in the ceiling, but it never seemed like we got much warm air from it. For lack of better ideas, we put a space heater in the closet during the winter.

When we replaced our air conditioner with a larger and more modern unit over the summer, we also had to start buying air filters in a larger size. We noticed that the air flow seemed better, but we didn’t think much about it. When the weather turned colder, we were surprised to discover that the closet in the master bedroom stayed nice and toasty. Apparently, all it needed was a better air filter to improve the flow.

There’s a useful lesson in that. Even when annoying issues seem as if they’re going to be around forever, sometimes they’ll just vanish suddenly when other things get improved.

I deliberated for a while on what sort of image I could add to this post to represent both cold and flow. I finally settled on this photo of people rowing in icy water.

That is definitely not something I would ever do, regardless of how adventurous I might otherwise get in rowing! The people in the photo look like they’re enjoying it, though, so I would say it’s good flow for them—well, as long as their boat stays right side up, that is!

Recently I’ve been practicing an affirmation that focuses on making clear the distinction between the present and the past. When I catch myself feeling gloomy about something out of the past, I tell myself, “Right now, I have a pretty good flow of positive energy when it comes to (category of issue), even if there were times when it wasn’t as good in the past.”

At first, I filled in the blank with a broad general category such as time, money, or health. Then, after I woke up on Sunday morning and felt pretty good in general, it occurred to me that I could get much more specific if I felt like it. After all, this was my own life energy I was talking about, and I was completely free to have fun improving it in whatever way struck my fancy.

I was planning to cook pot roast in the Crock-Pot for dinner; and when I went to buy groceries, I decided that it could be a positivity exercise for the day. How might the flow of a pot roast dinner be improved? Well, I could buy a bag of tiny red potatoes, saving time by reducing the ingredients in need of chopping. I also didn’t need to cut the meat into chunks, like I usually did, before putting it into the Crock-Pot. My daughter had mentioned that she thought the meat was more tender when she left it in one piece.

When we ate dinner, I didn’t really notice a difference in the tenderness of the meat, and neither did my husband—although he did mention that leaving it in one piece made dinner easier because we could quickly cut whatever amount of meat we wanted, rather than having to hunt for chunks of it among the potatoes and veggies. The tiny potatoes were pretty good too. So, I think it’s fair to say that I successfully improved my flow of life energy in the dimension of pot roast.

As positivity exercises go, this one might have been rather silly, but I would rate it as useful anyway. My husband once told me that when he played football in high school, one of the team chants was “Every day, in every way, we get better and better and better.” Small improvements, even if they don’t matter much in themselves, help to reinforce the mindset that things are getting better all the time. And every day, there really are many things that can be described, in all honesty, as getting better—even if they are as ordinary as a pot roast dinner. What’s important is to train the mind to notice them.

I planted a chrysanthemum next to my mailbox on Tuesday, with buds just starting to open. The mum replaced a wilted little zinnia that never managed to grow much because there was hot, dry weather all through the late spring and the summer.

Although I know this is nothing unusual and many people change their seasonal flowers as the days turn cooler, in past years I did my seasonal planting in the spring and just left the flowers in place until the frost got them. I generally felt that there wasn’t much to do in autumn and winter besides hunker down in a warm house and wait until spring came again.

Of course, there is no good reason to feel trapped indoors just because the temperature drops. I live in the modern world, after all, and not in a log cabin in a primitive village where anyone venturing too far might get caught in a blizzard or eaten by wolves.

So I’ve decided that whenever I look at the mum blooming by the mailbox, it will be a positive reminder that new growth and renewal can happen at any time of the year, even when the trees are dropping their leaves.

Probably because of the time change, I’ve been feeling low on creative energy this past week and haven’t been much inclined to blog. I did come across a cute graphic recently that seems well suited to the short days of late autumn, though, so I decided to share it:

Even when we’re like this poor sleepy mouse and don’t feel motivated to do much besides quietly yawning while we keep warm in winter pajamas and comfy slippers, it’s good to keep in mind that something better will come along in the future!

Often when I wake up, my husband is already awake and getting started on the day. After saying good morning, he’ll usually ask how I am, or something similar. My usual answer is “Doing well,” in a cheerful tone. Sometimes if I am the first to wake, we reverse our lines in the scripted morning exchange.

This is all very common, of course; and certainly it is better than waking up grumpy or looking out the window and complaining about the weather. A little reassurance that everything is okay helps to start the day feeling more confident. Still, I wonder if maybe there’s some interference with awareness of genuine feelings on a deeper subconscious level. What if something isn’t quite right, but we smile and act like it’s a nice walk in a rose garden anyway?

Literally, it is true that I am doing well every morning. Everything in my life seems to be going along pretty smoothly at the moment, without any problems worth mentioning. But taking the time to add just a few more details might, perhaps, make that answer start to feel more real.

“Doing well… it’s a lovely sunny day and I’m looking forward to getting outdoors.”

While that’s not always going to be the case, it is also possible to acknowledge having less pleasant feelings honestly, while still finding positive ways to frame them.

“I’m okay… didn’t sleep well and had bad dreams, but I’m going to take it easy today and expect to feel better after a while.”

That should be enough to satisfy the morning reassurance ritual, while also letting the subconscious mind know that there’s no need to pretend the big hungry dragon in the nightmare wasn’t scary. Feeling obligated to pretend can be draining; and when that happens below the level of conscious awareness, we don’t even know why our energy gets low. Making clear to the subconscious that it is allowed to have real feelings can help to ensure they don’t get suppressed and build up to cause problems.