Tune Out the Noise

My exercise hour this morning was cut in half by being exposed to way too much noise. As I entered the gym to begin walking I witnessed a terrible banging coming from a young man who was shooting baskets by himself. My reaction was, oh crap! I decided to walk anyway, hoping the noise of his bouncing the ball as forcefully as humanly possible would cease when he saw he had an audience.

Dream on Barbara. The brutal attack on the basketball got worse. I wondered who was causing him to be so angry. Maybe that was just the way he always lived his life. I put up with the negative distraction for awhile and then began to notice that it was causing my body to tighten up instead of relaxing. It was then I decided to stop walking and go into the fitness room to use the upper body machines.

It made me feel happy that I refused to expose myself to negative energy coming from another person. I would not always have done that. Instead, I would have stuck it out, causing me to feel anger because someone chose an inappropriate way to deal with their problem.

Because of a friend, who has learned this same lesson from her life experiences, I am now more alert to sucking up energy that does not belong to me. She saw that I have actually done it all my life and casually mentioned it to me. I realized she was right on with her analysis. It helped me to see that I was never a negative daughter, wife or mother; I was simply consumed with energy that did not belong to me. When I finally shed it I saw my "naked self", just the way I was born to be.

From now on, thanks to my friend Maria, I intend to consciously stop absorbing the negative noise that is not me.