"What if I'm not what you think"

I've been attending a bunch of meetings at a larger community level for work. Some of them include new initiatives or strategic planning. The last one I attended was sort of the strategic planning type. It was a group of shelter providers trying to figure out best to advocate what they do and how funders can get on board with that. Pretty inspiring to be in a room full of people who care.

Anyway we did this exercise around getting to these affirmative statements about what we wanted and expected. We worked in small groups and answered a series of questions about our agencies. We then tried to pull out general themes for example "We see the whole person when working with clients" was one that came up a lot. Then we took these general themes to form affirmative statements about how we want to work in our community. "It is necessary for other community partners to join with us in helping our clients achieve a safe, healthy, and sustainable future". Okay it's kind of strange examples but maybe you get the idea.

So what's the point? Well I thought I could use some affirmative statements of my own these days. I haven't quite figured out how to modify the group process to a personal one to arrive at these statements, but I was able to create a few from journaling and doing a little thinking.

I don't intend this to be a "If I think good things then good things will happen" sort or mindset. However I think it's important to make these statements of what I know is true and to remind myself because it's surprising how quickly we forget.

Often I feel my time has to be spent silencing that little negative voice. You know the one I'm talking about? So for me the affirmative statements are a little reminder to tell that voice to pipe down.

So here's a few that I worked out. They may not make total sense as they are in the context of a particular situation that I will not delve into now but just so you can get an idea

*What I feel is real
*What I feel is not wrong
*How I feel now does not negate how I felt in the past
*What or who I care about in the future does not negate what or who I care about now or what I feel.