Odd thing happened today. I have been so busy I "forgot" to write up my contract that would go from noon yesterday to noon today. So when I woke up today I thought, "No contract. I forgot to write it up yesterday! If I feel like having negative thoughts or banging my head against the wall, I can go ahead, negative thought business as usual."

So I tried it. Something rather miraculous happened! After about 5 minutes of thinking up totally pessimistic thoughts...I got bored! Same old, same old. How much my life stinks, what a loser I am, what is the point of going on?, blah, blah, blah.

I now found this kind of dark rumination absolutely unbearable! I jumped up and started doing things. While I made coffee I ran through a gratitude list in my head. I instantly felt better!

This proved something to me. We are naturally programmed to be positive!

Hey guys, did you know that thinking negatively is really hard work? First, you have to blame yourself, then you have to blame others, then you have to blame "the system" of things, and finally you have to darkly ruminate over every little and big thing not right in your life, and on and on. It's exhausting!!! No wonder I have a hard time getting out of bed when my first thoughts upon waking up are negative!

I can honestly say that changing back to my new attitude of gratitude and positive thinking was easier than negative rumination and head banging! Something switched in my brain!

When I started out doing this daily contract thing it was really, really hard to be positive, especially when confronting so many problems. But after doing this contract thing for awhile and sticking with it...I have found that it seems a smidge easier to be positive than to be negative!

We are programmed for survival.

I decided today that I am going to continue with my daily contract. When I am not feeling it I am still going to do it. If I forget to do a contract and for some reason am not able to get to my laptop, I will write out a brief contract, even if it is on the back of an envelope or a napkin!

Today was pretty darn enlightening!