RAINING? DANCE A LITTLE.

PAUSE A MOMENT GRATITUDE – DANCING IN THE RAIN [Broadcast on 3rd March, 2012] Once upon a time I lived and work in tropical Broome, in Western Australia. It always amused me how, after the long, hot, humid approach to the wet season, the first huge drops of tropical rain used to send the tourists scurrying for cover,  **** while the locals came out and danced in the streets! The tourists called it “going troppo” [SFX: Thunderclap] [Dancing in the Streets – Human Nature (A) 23 secs] Fade @ -2:35 American business dynamo and writer, Vivian Greene coined the quote:- Life's not about waiting for the storm to pass – it's about learning to dance in the rain. Singing and dancing in the rain? Let's Pause a Moment.... [La Raya – Eric Serra] Pause a Moment..... When you find yourself stuck under a cloud..... Take a step or two back, and try another way of looking at it.... What I'm about to suggest to you may sound too simplistic to feel important, but I've found most triggers to truths to be so astoundingly simple, it's little wonder they get overlooked. Our minds thrive on complexity and insist on difficulty and 95% of the time we leave our minds to direct the show. So if your life isn’t as simple as you think it should be, or would like it to be, you now may have some inkling about who might be to blame. Yes, your egoic, life-wasn’t-meant-to-be-easy mind. But who made that decree – life has to be hard? Malcolm Fraser? No – he was just repeating something he’d heard from someone else. And they hadn’t really checked out the truth of it either. Life is what it is. We have the choice – do it hard, or do it easy. I’m going to suggest to you tonight that, unless you insist, life does not have to be this hard. But to make the switch from Hard to Joyful, you’ll have to give up some old habits. And you may find that a bit difficult. Let’s put it to the test. Let's see if you can suspend your prejudices for a moment to consider this possibility – one word can change your attitude and thus, your life, forever. This one word can have you dancing in all weathers. And that word is “Gratitude”. What? Gratitude for what I have to put up with? OK, I hear that, and I'm not asking you to change your mind right now. But instead, for just a moment, see if you can step outside the conflict zone for long enough to sit with this question – are you ready? You've tried resisting what you have to endure.... how well has that worked for you? How much have you enjoyed the struggle, and how much have things improved for you? Hmm-mmm-mmm? Not much, huh? Here’s another possibility I invite you to make space for, just for the next few minutes. It is this …… Is it possible that your resistance to what’s going on is keeping you engaged to it? Your resistance is feeding your energy to what you don’t want, perpetuating it. I’m not asking you to believe this. But I am inviting you to put the idea into your “Maybe” tray for a few minutes while we consider some other proposals I have for you. Don’t worry, we will come back to this. [Main Theme – A River Runs Through It] Hold under....>>>> OK. let's imagine for a moment, if there was something about your life that you could be grateful for – how might gratitude feel for you? Just imagine, for a second or two, what the feeling of gratitude used to feel like. Remember gratefulness? It doesn’t matter how large or how small your memory of it, what did it feel like? If you really can’t remember that, think of something you’d like now, and imagine what it might feel like to get it. Where was that feeling in your body? Where is it now? Same place, or has it moved? Gratitude. Thankfulness. What size is it? What shape is it? What colour is it? Feel it now? Good! Enjoy that feeling for a moment...... If your mind wants to think about it, and it probably will, let that urge go and just return to enjoy the memory of the feeling. Just be with that feeling for a while. If it wants to change into something else, let it, and be with that. Gratitude. Go wherever it takes you..... When we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives, but to shift our attention to something that's present...something that we can, here and now in this moment, be a bit thankful for, we begin to experience Gratitude. We get a little taste of heaven on earth. Reading inspirational stories about the trials and tribulations of others is one thing, but finding moments of gratitude in your own struggles and suffering is quite another. You connect with something long buried, and the act of just watching it begins to infuse its power into you.

Today, I'd like to share a unique story from a book called “Learning to Dance in the Rain.” by Mac Anderson and BJ Gallagher. This is a technique you can use today to turn your life around and show you how to dance in the rain, using the power of gratitude: [Singin' In the Rain – Boston Pops Orchestra] Fade under....... Plant a Trouble Tree We all have storms come through our lives, but one thing is for sure—we have no right to make everyone else miserable with our own unhappiness. No need to rain on others' parades. A simple story illustrates my point: The carpenter I hired to help me restore an old farmhouse had just finished a rough first day on the job. A flat tyre made him lose an hour of work, his electric saw carked it, and now his ancient truck refused to start. While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence. On arriving, he invited me in to meet his family. As we walked toward the front door, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching tips of the branches with both hands. When opening the door, he underwent an amazing transformation. His tanned face was wreathed in smiles, and he hugged his two small children and gave his wife a kiss. Afterward he walked me back to my car. We passed the tree, and my curiosity got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do earlier. "Oh, that's my Trouble Tree," he replied. "I know I can't help having troubles on the job, but one thing's for sure, work troubles don't belong in the house with my wife and the children. So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home. Then in the morning I can pick them up again. "Funny thing is," he smiled, "when I come out in the morning to pick 'em up, there ain't nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before." Assigning our problems a place outside of where you live is a really good idea — it separates us from our problems, and reminds us that - I am not my problems; they are just something I have. This is me here, and those are my problems over there. Separating from them helps to de-escalate the situation and put the details where they belong, in a more realistic perspective. It prevents our difficulties from spilling over onto other people (especially our loved ones) who are not party to those problems. They can't do anything about them, nor are they supposed to. Why burden them with our baggage? There's a very healthy reason why a lot of cultures around the world ask you to take your shoes off before entering a house. It has to do with symbolically leaving some things outside. So, plant yourself a trouble tree outside your front door—or a potted trouble plant, if you live in a unit—and leave your stuff outside whenever you come home. It puts a whole new spin on the famous remark about a camel getting though the eye of the needle, doesn't it? You want to get into heaven? Leave your stuff outside! Be grateful that you have loved ones to go home to, even if your loved one is simply a dog who’s glad to see you, or a cherished cat or a prized goldfish. When I go to sleep, I leave instructions for the overnight staff (my subconscious mind) to go out there and do some sorting for me while I’m asleep. It seems to work! And when you pick up your troubles on the way out each morning, remember to notice and  be grateful if they're not as heavy as they were the night before.

*****

We all face adversity in our lives, so it's less the actual content of the troubles than how we react to them that will determine the effectiveness, joy and happiness in our lives. Going to war on our troubles will never bring peace to our world. During tough times, do we spend too much time feeling sorry for ourselves and energetically resisting what we can’t change for the moment, or can we, with gratitude, let go, let be, and ...learn how to dance in the rain? And welcome the chance to enjoy the challenge?

[Let's Dance – Chris Rea – 6:43]

You've been listening to Pause a Moment. I'm Barrie Barkla. Thank you for listening....