The other day as I was jogging around the neighborhood, I began a conversation with God/Guardian Angel about my life and how I was doing. The answers in the form of questions that came back to me were not what I was expecting. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Is my life good? Am I doing everything that I came here to do? Considering all the gifts and tools I’ve been given (and earned) in my life, am I where I want to be today?

G: What ruler are you using to measure what is good? Whose voice it in your heard that is telling you how things should be? Is it positive or negative?

Me: Well that ought to keep me busy finding the answers to at least for the rest of this hour long run!

G: (smile)

I don’t know that I have any more answers than I did then but what I do know is that I’m paying closer attention to what I am telling myself or perhaps what tapes I am choosing to load up and listen to in my brain over and over again without really thinking about if they’re helpful or not. My friend, Mitch Ditkoff, wrote a blog ( http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2010/09/the_m_word.shtml ) asking the question about why “we” need to monetize everything. It’s a good blog and definitely worthy of a read.

I take that same line of questioning a bit further to help me find the answer to what ruler I’m using to measure how good my life is and ask myself if I were writing the guidelines to what I believe is a good life, how good would my life be to me? Because if I look at some of the people in my life who I love dearly, I look at them with so much love and I see a whole lot of good. And if I take that same loving look at my life, why it looks pretty darn good to me. There’s just a whole lot for me to be grateful for and happy about. It’s when I put other people’s rulers in there that I tend to make myself miserable. I just can’t measure up to the figment of another person’s ruler. In fact, I think I’m ready to toss those rulers out.

How do you feel about your life? What is the quality of your self-talk about you and your life? What is the tone of the voice(s)? Do you recognize the voice?

Pay attention to what your mind is telling you because it may be time to play a new tune….