Continuing from a previous post by Joseph L. Bishop Peace be Unto Thy Soul IV: “Other Trigger Points”
I continued on, rehearsing in my mind everything that had happened during those difficult days. But this time I was in control of my thoughts instead of them being in control of me. I excitedly traced every thought back to every response Carolyn had made when the doctor had told her she was dying. “That doesn’t surprise me,” she had said. “I had thought for some time that I was dying.” Her accepting what was had to be a big clue as to why she did not end up wallowing in her self-imposed grief.
The next thing was the doctor telling Carolyn, “If there are some things you want to do, now is the time to do them.” And she immediately began to think of things she wanted to accomplish in preparation for the next step in her journey. That had to be another clue. She had avoided useless thoughts of altering the past as well as many unrealistic thoughts of the future while I foolishly spent my time in the past finding fault with the doctor. With a brief smile she had simply replied, “I want to see my son and be around for my family reunion,”
I rehearsed my reactions to all the events that had occurred, I found that the results were always the same. When I selected uplifting, positive thoughts based upon solid facts, I ended up with uplifting, positive feelings. The opposite was also true. When I selected negative thoughts from my anger-triggered judgment of the doctors, replaying those painful thoughts over and over in my mind, I ended up in an unhappy and painful state of mind. In every instance, I could now easily see that if I’d been more selective in my thinking, the results would have been different.
My biggest revelation was that I was indeed guilty of causing my own suffering. That understanding quickly became one of the most important “aha” moments of my life, as I hope it will be for you too. I could suddenly see very plainly that my life was a mirror image of those case studies I had painstakingly researched. This breakthrough created another large crack in my prison wall, almost big enough to squeeze through, making the time of my escape that much closer.
From the case studies and from my own experiences, I had brought to light many of the things we mortals do that cause grief. With that exposure, perhaps we can learn how to avoid the terrible trigger points that always lead to grief. ~Joseph L. Bishop PhD, Peace Be Unto Thy Soul (American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, 2012) p.10 (For the first post of this series, go to Peace be Unto Thy Soul.)
