I am sitting here at my desk looking out my window and I am filled with thoughts and feelings. In fact I am so filled with these feelings that it is hard to slow down my thoughts to get them down on paper.

Do you ever feel that way?

When you get lost in your thoughts and/or feelings, take a moment, take a breath and, with a quick intention, slow them down. Ask yourself: what am I thinking? What am I feeling? Sometimes the thoughts and feelings happen so quickly they move like the frames of a movie.

In slowing them down, you also gain some control over them. There is something soothing and relaxing in slowing them down.

I am watching the sun pass under the clouds; or the clouds pass over the sun. There are so many clouds in the sky this afternoon that it is a continual kaleidoscope. As I take this in, I also take a moment to slow my thoughts and feel what is going on in my body. As the sun emerges from under the clouds I feel myself smiling and enjoying the warmth and light as it permeates through my being. My stomach is smiling. As the clouds move over the sun, and the sky turns grey, I feel a bit gloomy and edgy in my stomach and have to remind myself to breathe.

I can’t wait to go outside and feel the change in the temperature on my skin as I walk through my neighborhood.

Sometimes as I indulge myself in gloomy thinking, I purposefully slow myself down and redirect my thinking with these thoughts and actions. It feels good.

When you get stuck in gloomy thoughts and feelings, often it is a memory of a past time when you were in a sad or difficult place, and this past time still influences you today. Oftentimes, this memory stays with you and filters through you continually or when something is triggered within you, especially if you had a difficult beginning with your parents.

I think of this as I watch the play of the clouds and the light and the cool and the warm and think how wonderful it would be if we all could know that these patterns are as changeable as the weather.

There was a man I watched on the television show, Dancing with the Stars, who had survived a terrible accident during the Iraq War and forty percent if his skin was burned. He has lost an ear and had thirty three operations. Here he is dancing beautifully on the television show. He was asked how was able to do this and have such a positive attitude. He answered that his mother had a positive attitude and he was influenced by her. Those first years with our parents do color the rest of our lives. And yet, when you can truly accept the mother and father you have, warts and all, you give yourself a tremendous gift and the possibility to love yourself in a whole new way.

I look outside my window, watch the play of the sun and the clouds, and love myself just a little bit more.