2021-11-23 — Sideways Progress 🙂

Good morning, my Wonderfuls! 😊

TGIT! 🥳

As a reminder to myself (and you can skip this, of course, if it’s tedious to read through every day. It’s just important for me to write every day. I actually write this as part of my meditation, writing with my eyes closed as I visualize myself as each attribute. Here we go!).

I am love, filled with desire to lift and serve and do all I can to bring others opportunities to feel peace, love, and joy, and also do all I can to bring opportunities to learn, grow, and become.

I am light, with a bright, cheerful, happy countenance. I hope that when you see me, you feel loved. You feel brighter. You feel encouraged. You feel stronger. You feel hope.

I am integrity. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. If I believe in something, live it. I don’t take shortcuts because they’re more convenient. I’m not dishonest to gain an advantage or to avoid discomfort or pain.

I am peace. I have no obstacles in my path. All that comes to me is a gift–a priceless opportunity to get what i want most. I love those gifts. I love cherish those opportunities. For it is out of those that my phoenix rises. Daily death. Daily rebirth. A new man–at peace, unflappable.

I am indomitable. Come hell, high water, thorns or boulders in the path, I will be unmoved. I will never give up. When I get bruised, I will shake it off. When I get cut, I will stitch myself up. When I fall, I will get up. When I fail, I will learn and grow and fail forward.

I am gratitude.

1. I am grateful to be centered and grounded this morning.
2. I am grateful to know who I am and what I want.
3. I am grateful to be making progress in my journey. Part of my journey is choosing to see the obstacle as the way, and to be grateful for and to look forward to the gifts of experience that give me opportunities to grow.
4. I am grateful that my tooth that was giving me so many problems has been so much less problematic lately.
5. I am grateful that I was able to get up at 3:30 today. I think I thought I had my alarm set for 3:40, but it was 3:30, I guess. I’m up and going. I love accomplishing so much in the mornings, even when most of it isn’t something that bears tangible results.
6. I’m grateful that there is so much information at my fingertips, that in the blink of an I, seemingly, I can find information about just about everything. It’s amazing!
7. I’m grateful for heaters and warm houses and soft beds.
8. I’m grateful for computers to write journals that I can read quickly and search electronically. So convenient!
9. I’m grateful that my van, though sometimes starting with a misfire in the cold, has stopped misfiring as soon as I turn it off and start it again.
10. I’m grateful that I was able to get the tensioner on my skid steer yesterday.

Today’s Priorities:

1. Love-centering — I need to make a plan to help me remember in the moment, all day every day, to focus on love for others–what I want for them, their joy, peace, prosperity, etc.
2. Desire educating — I am going to write out what my why’s are and really focus in on why I want them. I realize that most of what I struggle with in terms of growing and overcoming comes because I don’t remember what I want most (I’ve wired myself into routine and habitualization. I’m automatic in so many things. I want to work tirelessly to create new thought pathways and highways. I also realize that my long-term desires are often not strong enough to beat back my short-term ones, that I sacrifice what I want most for what I want now. Thus, the daily reminders, finding away to keep what I want most, what that looks like, and what that will take at the forefront of my mind, so that I continually choose what I want most over what I want now, and what I want most is to become love and to spread it to the world as best I can.
3. Fear facing — I will
4. Taxes — I need to get these done. I’m working on them, but they’re going slowly. Emotionally, I’ve already moved on from automotive work. But I have all these things that still have me tethered to it. But I will get them done and add two hours of my life back every morning.

The Day:

The morning went rather sideways from the get go. I got up to find my mom had set her alarm (I believe) to have my electronics out for me first thing when I woke up. That was super sweet of her. Ironically, the internet was down all morning, so I couldn’t do a lot of the things that I normally do. Fortunately, I still had access to the internet on my phone, so I could do some things.

But I was definitely off kilter yesterday morning. I decided to use some of my time to try to get some things done that were on the to-do list that haven’t been getting done. One of them was get the belt tensioner in my skid steer changed. It’s a one-bolt tensioner, but… yikes, it was a nightmare. It’s supposed to work a certain way, where you press on it in one direction, and that tensions the spring, and you then tighten the bolt with one hand in the compressed position, while you hold it compressed with the other. Well, the tensioner wouldn’t compress. I spent probably an hour and a half trying to get it to compress? Finally, I managed to do so, with a vice (as per the YouTube video recommendation), but even with the vice, it took probably 45 minutes or more to get it to compress. It was… bad. So I let out a couple of expletives over the course of the experience and just… got angry.

Whoops.

In the end, I got it on but couldn’t get it to work properly, but the belt still seemed tight enough, so…. I guess we’ll see. In the process, though, I noticed other issues. I went to start it, but… no power. Battery was toast. And with my battery charger having oddly disappeared recently, I tried using our other charger, but that one was dead and not working either.

Lovely.

So I grabbed a spare battery (grateful I had one that was at least close to the right size (speaking of which, the battery is not easy to change on that skid steer, at least not the huge size that was in there, which wasn’t the right size for the skid steer anyway).

It started, but then I realized there was no coolant in the overflow, and it looks like maybe there is a coolant leak at the radiator. And then I went to add coolant, but it says DO NOT ADD Ethylene Glycol coolant, use propylene glycol coolant. that if you mix the two, you get gel.

Lovely. There was no coolant in the reservoir, so I couldn’t see if the people who owned it before me had used the right kind of coolant or not, so I didn’t want to guess. I tried to find a place to sample the coolant, but I couldn’t easily, so that still needs to be done.

I filled up the hydraulic fluid to the proper level, so that was good, learning how to take care of that.

Anyway, more I need to do before it can go back out to rent, but I’ll get there. So many things going on that things here and there are falling through the cracks.

After all that, I went to my first job, which was a misfire issue on a 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan (I have the same year myself). Turned out to be a bad coil, and gratefully, I’d brought one with me, so after trying to clean the corrosion off the old one in the hopes that would solve their problem, I just replaced it. They also had a ruined plug wire that I did a quick temporary repair on, so it would run without misfiring until they got a new replacement.

The second (and last) car was the 1998 Tacoma from Saturday night. That job presented lots of opportunities for me to practice recognizing the obstacle as the way, as the gift that gives me the most effective opportunity to get what I want most–a heart that loves perfectly.

And guess what!?!? I did really well!!! I’m excited about that. Time and time again, my biology went to stress hormone and the beginnings of frustration. And over and over again, I reigned it in, called it back, and put mind over biology (which can be hard once the chemicals have already started flowing!)

Progress!!!

After that, it was home, dinner, no journal was weird. That’s a huge change to the routine. Then it was bed (no time for a warm shower if I was going to get to bed on time, which I just about did!

Daily Accountability

• Bed last night at 8:30: I think it was 8:40? 🥳
• Up at 3:30: 😎
• 5x5s: 😎
• Exercise: Didn’t do it. Off-kilter morning with the internet out, hip not doing well. But no excuses. I can still exercise.
• Cold shower: Totally spaced it.
• Meditation: 😎
• Breakfast: 😎
• NP Work: 😎
• Tax Work: (internet was down all morning)
• Lunch: 😎
• Work done by 6: 😎
• Dinner: 😎
• Only truly healthy foods: 😎
• No Wasted Life: 😎
• No Distracted Driving: Better today than yesterday. It’s about integrity. Do I want integrity?
• Tamed the tongue: Let two fly this morning when things went sideways with my skid steer.
• Bag of veggies: 😎
• Fear Facing Challenge: One of three.

Overall, there was really good progress today. I didn’t get the talking-to-a-stranger challenge done, at least not the purposeful one. I did talk to a stranger, but it wasn’t premeditated, and I didn’t reach out to someone I was interested in. I barely got the video done, but I did get that done! Feel free to check it out! 😊

My (growing) love to you all! 😊

Lift the World

~ stephen