How dropping a thought can change your life

For years I have been irritated at my husband’s desire to watch sport on TV for hours at a time. Because he has ME, which means he is sometimes quite incapacitated and has a lot of time on his hands, watching TV for him has become something that fills in hours of time. He has always said it is a good way for him to relax. And I have always been rather scathing, considering his time better spent. In fact, I knew I was right about this. I was 100% convinced that if only he would live his life my way, then he would get better.

Gosh. It’s humbling admitting this, let alone writing it! Anyway, this summer things came to a head. Although we’ve had a good relationship for the whole 16 years we’ve been together, this summer, amongst other stresses, his illness and the TV behaviour, and our difficulty in communicating, got so bad that I was seriously considering moving out, at least for a while.

Fortunately, with the help of an excellent therapist, and just a handful of sessions, things changed round. Why? One of the main reasons was I was willing to change how I viewed the TV thing. I even remember the exact moment when I did this. I was in the hall, looking at him in the sitting room lying on the sofa, watching football on the telly.

The thought came to me: ‘Perhaps it’s true that watching TV is a form of relaxation for him; perhaps he’s right when he says it’s healing’. In that moment I dropped the bag I’d been carrying labelled ‘fury with Philip/TV/illness’, and became free. I didn’t realise it at the time, but as the days passed and I was less angry, energy was freed up and we began to communicate better; all the energy I had put into being angry (without realising it) was released for applying to other more creative things. Finances improved; I began to get clearer about business ideas; and we re-connected with what had brought us together in the first place. Our relationship now has never been better.

But what does all this have to do with business? Well nothing other than the fact that what is going on in one area of your life, is likely to affect another (especially if you work from home and are having relationship challenges). And nothing other than the fact that I made a conscious choice to think something different, and drop the feelings about the situation. I would never have believed it possible to do this in such a short time, but I have proved myself wrong. The therapist had challenged me by saying ‘Can’t you just drop the anger?’ Which is another way of saying ‘Would you rather be right or happy?’.

I do acknowledge that sometimes it isn’t always as easy as this appears; and sometimes more active things have to be done to release, let go and move on, but in this case, it was this simple.

The question to ask yourself in relation to this is: What area of your life feels stuck at the moment, and what thoughts are you thinking that are contributing to keeping you stuck? Identify those and then ask whether or not you’re willing to let go of those them. Be honest with yourself and see what happens.