Cows and Cuds

Rumination is a fun word to say. Say it out loud and see how it rumbles around in your mouth as it tickles your tongue with soft vibrations and finally exists your mouth in a slow swishhhh.

The word ruminate comes from the Latin ruminari which means “to chew the cud.” In other words, a cow ruminates. Or to put it more graphically, the cow regurgitates a cud, which is food it has already swallowed that has been semi-digested into a cud, and then it chews on it—again. Sounds pretty disgusting, but before that disgusting scrunched look on your face goes away think about how much ruminating you do. Yes, YOU! People ruminate, but instead of a wad of regurgitated grass in our mouths, we ruminate with regurgitated words in our heads. This is what storytelling is all about.

Besides meaning “to chew again what has been chewed slightly and swallowed” the word ruminate also means “to go over in the mind repeatedly.” The problem with rumination is that it is usually regurgitated negative stories that we tell ourselves over and over again. “I can’t do anything right.” Or ,“My parents shouldn't have mistreated me.” Or, “I’m not a very good parent.” or "My neighbors shouldn't be so messy," or "My spouse should appreciate me more." I don’t need to list more, you get the idea.

Rumination is terrible when we tell ourselves stories based on lies like these. But the Good News! is that unlike cows, we don’t have to ruminate. When the old stories, the word cud, begins to regurgitate we can spit it out and refuse to chew on it. The best way to do that is to replace the old cud with something new. For example when the old cud, “I can’t do anything right,” comes up, you spit it out and instead chew on the idea, “I made a mistake, but I’ve learned from that and it won’t happen again.” That thought tastes a lot better, and it will lead you on to brighter and more delicious things.

Negative Storytelling only generates Unnecessary Pain and accomplishes nothing good. So spit out the story and Live in Truth.

Truth Tools at the Dentist's Office

Yesterday I had a tooth pulled. It is the second tooth since Grizelda that has shattered so that it needs to come out. It was causing a lot of pain so I’m glad it’s gone. But the good thing is how much the Truth Tools helped me yesterday. The oral surgeon offered to put me out, but I opted for a local and then used the Truth Tools to stay calm and actually found the whole process very interesting. After extracting the tooth, he put cadaver bone in the hole. After the bone heals and the bone transplant takes, there will be enough bone foundation to put in an implanted tooth. It is a strange feeling to think I have someone else’s bone in my mouth, but at the same time I’m very thankful for the scientific advances that allow for such a procedure.


I’m also grateful for the Truth Tools. Instead of coming out of the procedure groggy and in a mental fog, that takes me a good two days to shake off, I walked out feeling just fine. As he drilled and pulled and cut and scraped, I Anchored. The drills make a fascinating music and he kept explaining what he was doing so that, like I said, it was actually very interesting. The way he deftly put the stitches in was also amazing. It was obvious he'd done it thousands of times. That’s where the Storytelling Tool came in. Instead of filling myself with stories about how things could go wrong or it might hurt or any other negative story, I told myself a story about learning new things and how fascinating it was to watch someone who is so skilled at what he is doing.

Truth Tools work! Now I just need to use them to keep myself from being too self-conscious about the hole in the back of my mouth when I smile. They can’t do the tooth implant until the bone heals which will take about three months. Until then I have a missing tooth. My insurance won’t cover a temporary tooth, so I’ll be toothless. I can let it make me very uncomfortable or I can live with it. I’m opting to live with it. I’ve got Tools to help me do it!

Stop the Story

I've been rewriting my book, Living in Truth and Avoiding the Pit of Illusion. I wasn't happy with the way it was, and the revising has been a laborious yet insightful process. Today I've been working on the chapter on Storytelling and reviewing it has reminded me of how important it is to stay within the realms of truth. So often the simplest things trow us into the Pit not because of what happens but because of the story we tell ourselves about what happens.

Something like burning the beans for Thanksgiving dinner happens and instead of simply deciding whether we can fix it (make a new pot of beans) or live with it (not have beans as part of the meal) we tell ourselves a story about how stupid we are or how clumsy we are or how we are constantly making mistakes. Or we blame others. If they hadn't been so noisy we would have heard the timer. Or if they'd help out more we wouldn't be so over-burdened that we couldn't keep up with it all and so we burn things. These are all stories, and none of them is the truth.

When we tell these kinds of stories we are dealing with an illusion instead of with reality and it causes vexation which is unnecessary pain. Dealing with an illusion is like dueling with a ghost. You can shoot and shoot and shoot, but the ghost is never going to die.

But when we acknowledge the truth and decide whether to fix it or live with there is no unnecessary pain. We move forward without being vexed and all we had to do to achieve that peace was drop the story we were telling ourselves.

Tell a Good Story

This past weekend I attended the Orem Storytelling Festival. It is one of the biggest and best storytelling festivals in the nation and it did not disappoint. It was fantastic! I laughed so hard at some stories that I cried. At other stories I’d recognize my own foibles and would learn something new. Over all, I was reminded of how powerful stories are. As a matter of fact, al of us are storytellers and the stories we tell ourselves are what shape our lives. Therefore, it is interesting to stop and ask yourself what stories you tell.

When we feel self-pity or envy or any negative emotion that is directed at other people, we find ourselves telling stories to substantiate our negative feelings.We have to be constantly inventing stories to keep the negative feelings burning within us. Things like, “Ever since her husband got that new job she thinks she is too good for the rest of us” or “Every time my father opens his mouth it’s to praise himself.” It may seem like an innocent thing, and you may ask, “What does it hurt?” It hurts you. It fuels your vexation and causes more Unnecessary Pain.

How your friend acts or what your father says or what anyone else does or why they do it doesn’t mean you have to be miserable. Let them live their life and you live yours. And despite what they choose, live yours happily. When you find yourself telling negative stories, change the story. Tell yourself a good one that will make you laugh or at least make you smile. Life is too short to be wasted enduring Unneessary Pain created by negative stories!

The Art of Rumination

I’ve talked about storytelling and how it relates to Living in Truth several times on Good News! But I’ve never talked about rumination. The word ruminate comes from the Latin ruminari which means “to chew the cud.” In other words, a cow ruminates. Or to put it more graphically, the cow regurgitates a cud, which is food it has already swallowed that has been semi-digested into a cud, and then it chews on it—again. Sounds pretty disgusting, but before that disgusting scrunched look on your face goes away think about how much ruminating you do. Yes, YOU! People ruminate, but instead of a wad of regurgitated grass in our mouths, we ruminate with regurgitated words in our heads.


Besides meaning “to chew again what has been chewed slightly and swallowed” the word ruminate also means “to go over in the mind repeatedly.” The problem with rumination is that it is usually regurgitated negative stories that we tell ourselves over and over again. “I can’t do anything right.” Or ,“No one likes me.” Or, “I’m not a very good mother.” I don’t need to list more, you get the idea.

Rumination is terrible when we tell ourselves stories based on lies like these. But the Good News! is that unlike cows, we don’t have to ruminate. When the old stories, the word cud, regurgitates we can spit it out and refuse to chew on it. The best way to do that is to replace the old cud with something new. For example when the old cud, “I can’t do anything right,” comes up, you spit it out and instead chew on the idea, “I made a mistake, but I’ve learned from that and it won’t happen again.” That thought tastes a lot better, and it will lead you on to brighter and more delicious things.

Home--Again!

Wall to wall people!

Miracles still happen. After almost a week in the mountains in a tight fitting cabin all nine families have returned unharmed and still friends! The still friends part is the most miraculous. Some are still here, but tomorrow they start departing for their homes. It has been a hectic kind of fun. My children never cease to amaze me. All families had a meal to cook and all had an activity to put on either in the afternoon or the evening. To say we ate well is a supreme understatement. And the activities were so entertaining no one wanted them to end.

The event began with a surprise. Some of the girls had ordered T-shirts for all of us that said, C+S= one crazy, happy family. And after that everything was off with a bang.


We had a Minute to Win It event that had everyone cheering as the two teams did everything from eating chocolate pudding out of a diaper, to stringing penne pasta on a piece of fettuccini held in the mouth of the contestant—no hands allowed! They knocked cups over with a ball held in the foot of a pair of panty hose with the panty part worn on the head. My favorite was watching everyone try to get the Oreos placed on their foreheads into their mouths without using any hands. I couldn’t do it, but several of them managed it.

Another activity was a scavenger hunt with the older kinds following clues to find stations where they had to perform feats outside and the young kids inside. I have to say I have some very bright grandchildren who figured out the challenges very fast.



The donut garden we grew. You can't see the worms,
but they are in there!

 When it was my turn we had a chocolate pudding eating contest. The catch was that the person eating the pudding had someone else feeding them and all were blindfolded. That night I had all the grandchildren grow donuts in cups of “dirt” made out of crushed chocolate sandwich cookies. We planted Nana’s Donut Seeds (Cheerios) and magically the next morning the plain Cheerios had grown into brown cake donuts and the frosted Cheerios had grown into white cake donuts. But somehow (gummy) worms had gotten into the “soil” during the night also.

We have a tradition of holding a raffle whenever the family gets together. I buy fun prizes from the dollar store and we have tickets and everyone wins a prize. The hit this year was the blow up pillow that when sat on makes vulgar sounds. The adults didn’t much like the squeaky toy Jenna won, but she liked it a lot.

Night time was the most fun when all the kids were sleeping where ever they could find a spot and the adults stayed up half the night telling stories about their growing up years. I now understand what the old adage, “Ignorance is bliss,” means. There were a few things I’m glad I didn’t know until now.

My favorite part was watching my family interact together. Since they all live far away, I don’t get to see that often. When I was growing up the adults did their thing and the kids did theirs. I don’t remember any interaction. But my family includes everyone. One night we, adults and children, danced in a big circle and someone got called out to go into the center to perform a solo dance move. Everyone was included and that’s how it went the whole time. The adults participated with the children and included them in everything from the B-B gun shooting to the hiking to the storytelling.

In short, at Johnson Camp a wonderful time was had by all!

Capturing Sunlight

I woke up this morning to an inch of snow on the ground and big flakes of snow tumbling through the sky so the whole world was one white, wet mass. Today is when I speak at Women's Conference and at first I took it as a bad omen. I saw its chilling, dampening effect.

But then I remembered what I have been learning about storytelling and how we create our own meaning and immediately changed my story. So now I'm thinking this snow is bringing down God's blessings (straight from heaven!) upon me. Hurray, for white, pure snow! It's a much better story that has brought me peace. I still marvel at how my thoughts can be changed so easily and the power they have to make my whole body feel and respond differently. It is amazing! It's as if I captured my own sunlight!


I speak at 11:00 on what we have discussed on Good News! about necessary and unnecessary pain. I'll be thinking of all of you as I speak, and wishing you (my blog friends) were all with me.

Mirror Addendum

Wow! I just found this and couldn't wait until tomorrow to share it with you. I found a scripture that says exactly what I was talking about in the last post on storytelling and how when we pass judgment it is often because the thing we condemn the other person for is the very way we think or react. The verse I read is in Romans 2:1, "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things."

The NIV Bible says it like this: "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things."

Beware of Mirrors in the Stories We Tell

Yesterday I was looking for a book on Amazon and reading the various reviews of the book. Most of the ratings for the book were five star but one review was only a three star so I read it first. The reviewer talked about how good the book was, said the research was sound, but then said that the book was ruined because the author threw in a lot of historical research just so he could brag about the important people he had known and worked with.

The next review I read was one of the five star reviews. This reviewer said the same positive things about the book, but then added a comment about how the book slows down a little as the author explains the historical research in an effort to give credit to the scholars who have not been properly acknowledge for their contribution to the field.

Interesting example of Storytelling! Same book, but two people assigned their own meaning to the inclusion of the historical research. What Storytelling often reveals is not fact (neither reviewer can know for sure why the author included the research). Instead Storytelling reveals what our motivation would have been if we were the author. If we are the kind of person who would brag, then we think that’s what everyone else does. If we are the kind of person who would want to give proper credit to fellow workers, then that’s what we think everyone else is doing.

When we judge others we usually use our own criteria to make the judgment. So a statement of judgment can say as much about the person making the statement as it does about the person being judged. Listen to the stories you tell about what others are doing and watch to see if your own motivations to do things aren’t mirrored in the story.

I know I find myself in my stories about others all too often! So I laugh at how ridiculous I’m being and drop the story. Isn’t it wonderful we can all grow and change!


PS This is the last day to enter the book give away!

Avoiding Fiction in Real Life

We haven’t talked about Storytelling for awhile and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how the stories we tell ourselves affect our lives. We write our own stories to explain why other people are doing the things they do. For example, your neighbor isn’t as friendly as usual. That is the simple truth of the matter. But as human beings, we like meaning and so we begin spin a story about it why she is so offish. Too often those stories are negative. We think things like, “She is so arrogant. She thinks she’s so much better than other people.” Or “Oh no, I’ve offended her. What have I done?” Or “She must not want to be friends anymore. She never did like me very much.” But it is just as likely that the story could be that she isn’t feeling well today, or she’s preoccupied with thoughts of the family finances, or she’s worried about a child, or she just received bad news concerning her mother’s health. When someone is offish there could be hundreds of reasons. But when we live in Truth we don’t create a fiction, we simply deal with the Truth—today my neighbor isn’t as friendly as usual.

But there are other ways—much more insidious ways—that we create unnecessary pain for ourselves by writing stories contrary to truth. These are stories we tell about ourselves and these stories tend to define our lives. That’s why they are so dangerous. We tell ourselves that we aren’t pretty or handsome, or smart, or talented, or athletic. Usually these stories are told as a comparison with someone else. We aren’t as good as the neighbor down the street because she bakes whole wheat bread for her family. We aren’t as pretty as a friend. Our home isn’t as fashionably decorated as our cousin’s. The list goes on and on and we’ve all done this! But each of these things is simply a story. It doesn’t matter if we aren’t as pretty as a friend. The truth is we are all pretty in some way. We might not bake bread, but tell me where in the scriptures it says you have to bake bread to be good? The truth is we are good in many ways.

 Life is meant to be full of joy and goodness and to a large degree the amount of joy and goodness we experience is determined by the stories we tell ourselves. Right now tell yourself a true story about all that is right and good about you. Avoid any fiction that might come to mind. And if you say there is nothing good, you are lying.  Every son and daughter of God has a “genetic” inheritance of all that is good. So stop writing fiction stories and stick to the Truth. The Truth is you are a beautiful, talented, capable son or daughter of God. Bask in that wondrous story.

PS Remember the book giveaway. Just one more day to enter!

Storytelling

This weekend I had a delightful time at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. I listened to many of the 12 professional storytellers work their magic to transport me to Gettysburg or Half Dollar, West Virginia. Some stories made me laugh and some made me cry. Some were so funny they squeezed tears right out of my eyes and caused my sides to ache for hours afterward. I love it.

My time at the Storytelling Festival has caused me to think about the power of stories in our lives. Jesus taught in stories—we call them parables. We warn and admonish each other by relating our own experiences in the form of stories. And we read the stories of people we admire and learn from them. Stories are powerful. Stories our parents told us about their lives, shape our lives.

But the most powerful stories of all are the stories we tell ourselves. Why? Because we believe them. Whenever something happens to us we begin to shape the meaning of the event by telling ourselves a story. The emotions we experience and the attitudes we carry into the future about that event are determined by our story—a story we write. We trip and fall and we can explain it with a funny story about how clumsy we are or we can make it dire with tales of someone else’s incompetence that caused the accident or even make ourselves out to be the victim of someone’s malicious actions. The positive story allows us to move on. The negative story holds us captive in the Pit of Illusion and makes us miserable for as long as we tell the story to ourselves and others.

We are all storytellers and the stories we tell can empower us or they can exhaust us. Realizing we have a choice in this matter helps us to choose stories that will facilitate goodness in our lives instead of letting negative stories ruin our lives.

Writing Truth

I learned a lot last week while teaching my two classes, especially the Truth Shall Make You Free class. I’ve been studying these things for several years now and working hard to incorporate them into my life. But when I learn things, it is seldom in words. Feelings come to me that teach me and then I struggle to put the feelings into the right words. Teaching forces me to articulate what I have learned, but it always brings me face to face with the things I’m not articulating well or have failed to articulate at all.

With Education Week behind me, I will be going back through the book and adding what I learned by teaching, and stripping out the extraneous things that don’t need to be there, and then I’ll submit it. If you’ve had experiences with the Truth Tools, Truth Test, storytelling, necessary and/or unnecessary pain, or with moving from the Pit of Illusion to the Realm of Truth or any of the other principles we’ve talked about in the past on this blog or in my classes, now is the time to share them. I’d love more real-life experiences to use in the book. I can change names and circumstances so that no one will recognize you—if you want. But the stories of how the Truth Tools and Living in Truth work are so much more powerful than me just describing it. So if you care to share, and don’t want to go public by leaving your stories here as a comment, then email me your story: smillsjo at gmail dot com.

I hope to hear from you all soon!

Living in Peace

Each day I learn a little more about what it means to live in truth. I am grateful for that. Whenever I find myself spinning negative stories, I learn a little more about how to stop the storytelling and make my life freer. I’m discovering that it isn’t just the big situations that cause me to write negative stories. It seems to be more a habit I’ve developed over the years of writing negative stories about everything.

As I work at writing positive stories for the little situations in life I find that more and more the big things take care of themselves. For example: a telephone call takes longer that I thought and makes me late for an appointment. A little thing! But I used to spin a negative story, turn grumpy, stressed and uptight. Those feelings then “poisoned” everything else I did the rest of the day. But now I spin a positive story—“It doesn’t matter.” “I needed to make that call, and it was time well spent”—I stay calm, in a good mood, no “poison” and I’ve practiced spinning positive stories so that in the next big crisis, I’m better able to write a positive story and handle the situation without making myself upset. It is a great way to live!

Maybe this is why truth and peace are so often associated in the scriptures. As Zechariah says, “Love the truth and peace” (Zechariah 8:19). When we live in truth, we live in peace.

Forget the Pain

We’ve been talking about tools or strategies to rid our lives of unnecessary pain. So far we’ve talked about things like music and humor and affirmative thinking. But some of the most powerful tools at our disposal are gospel principles. For example, the principle of forgiveness is absolutely liberating when we learn to use it on a daily basis.

The Greek word used in the New Testament for forgive, is aphiemi which means “to send forth, yield up, to expire. “ Another definition is “To let go, let alone.” When we forgive, obviously we are yielding up thoughts of the offense or situation that we feel shouldn’t have happened, but we are also yielding up the hurt we have been holding onto because of the situation. Every time we think or tell our story of the offense we re-inflict ourselves with pain and usually the pain gets worse with every telling.

The adversary deludes us into thinking that somehow we deserve to cling to our negative story. Somehow we think vengeance will come from holding on to the unjust situation. But clinging to the injustice and refusing to forgive never hurts the other person. They don’t feel the pain. We are the only one that is in pain and we are doing it to ourselves.

The Savior counseled us, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matt 6:14-15). Forgiving is one of the best ways to free ourselves from the pain caused by negative storytelling. So forgive. Forget. And be free.

More on Music (With a Little Humor Thrown In)

This isn't an IPod commecial. It's about music. I’ve already talked about music as a powerful tool to keep us from negative storytelling. But when I talked about it before I emphasized making our own music by singing. We all know that surrounding ourselves with good music can also protect us from falling victim to negative feelings. But sometimes we forget how powerful it can be. I had an experience with this once that I recorded in my journal. I had lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen for a long time and on the way home was running an errand. Here’s how my journal records what happened next. “I parked beautifully. No car damage. No problems. Got out of the car. Locked the car. Shut the door. Noticed that the car keys were dangling from the ignition. (In that order!)

Taking three long slow breaths I asked myself, what now? I could swear (which I'm unaccustomed to doing.) I could scream. (Which I have done on occasion.) Or I could walk home and get the extra set of keys. I opted for the latter and having my new Ipod in my purse, I put on some encouraging, up beat music to dispel the mood—the Beachboys—and began marching homeward. I hadn't gotten far into "Surfin' USA" when I realized that my house key was also locked in the car. No matter. That music is very cheerful and so I hoped Josh was home to let me in. Then just into the catchy, "Be True to Your School" I realized that during the hustle and bustle of getting all the girls to airports and switching cars after Dad=s funeral, my second set of car keys had been lost. But how sad can you be when you're listening to "Shish boom bah! Rah, Rah, Rah" sung in full harmony by males who were in their prime 40 years ago?

Since we were going to the temple tonight, I was very concerned that my heart not be polluted with things like anger and self pity—so I turned the music up louder, marched faster, and made it home in record time trusting that some miracle would happen.

“I got home. Josh wasn't there, but someone had left the back door unlocked! Miracle number one—accompanied by "Fun, Fun, Fun Till Daddy took the T bird Away."

“I found a Honda key in a drawer. Prayed it was to my car. And walked out just as our neighbor was backing out of his driveway. (Miracle number 2 accompanied to AThe Girls on the Beach.”) I begged a ride, and out of politeness took the ear phones out of my ears. He took me to my car, waited while I found out the key was to Carl's Honda not mine, and then drove me back home.

“As soon as he left, I put the earphones on again. "Let Him Run Wild" was playing. Still calm and collected and surfing mentally, I called the car dealership where I bought my car and asked if they had any suggestions about getting into it. Miracle number three was accompanied by "Don't Worry Baby." It seems that they offer free roadside assistance to their customers. They would have their Knight in Shining Tow Truck there in 15 minutes to open my door.

“That gave me just enough time to walk back to the car—accompanied by the rousing tempos of "Help Me, Rhonda" and "All Summer Long." When I arrived, I discovered the Knight was late and the door wasn't yet open so what could I do but go into the nearest clothing store and shop to the music of "I Get Around." It was their clearance sale and I found a sweater, a pair of pants and a shirt all for less than fifty dollars! By the time I'd made my purchase the car door was open. I drove home, my heart pure and clean of any negative emotion thanks to the gift of portable music my family had given me.

P.S. The temple session was wonderful.”

The Stories We Tell!

We’ll talk about more strategies to help us break the spell negative feelings can cast over us later. But before we do it is important to realize that all of us are storytellers. As human beings we have a driving desire to understand things and to attach meaning to the things that happen to us. Therefore, when we go through experiences of life we interpret them. We tell ourselves stories about the things that are happening to us. These stores can generate either positive or negative feelings within us. But the important thing to remember is that we are writing the stories. We are the one making them either positive or negative.

For example: You pass a friend in the store and greet them warmly. In return they nod at you and move on. At this point you begin your storytelling. You can think, “How rude. At least she could have responded with a greeting,” and continue on writing this story. Or you can think, “She must have something weighing on her mind. She wouldn’t normally have acted like that.” And continue on writing that story.

If you tell yourself the first story, you create unnecessary pain. If you tell yourself the second story you live in peace and love--pain free! It is a choice—not a circumstance. Think about it. You really cannot know what is going on in the other person’s life. To take offense at what happens doesn’t accomplish one positive thing. It only causes you pain.

For the next few days, watch what stories you tell yourself. It is a very interesting experience to listen to your own self talk and realize what you are doing. Let me know what you discover!