Mindset Is EVERYTHING!

Did you ever think about just how much mindset affects you?  I mean, we hear it all the time, right?  “Mindset” is a big buzz word these days.  And it’s not that I doubted how important it is.

Yet, the other day it was abundantly clear to me just how important it is. 

Over the weekend, I had a mission to finish painting my beehives as I am preparing to receive the packages of bees in a few weeks, and I need to be ready!  (Squeee!)

I’d already put all the coats of white paint on them, and my last task was to stencil them.  I’m really excited…I got a honeycomb stencil to put on all of the boxes in a yellow/honey color.  And a bee stencil to put on top of that in certain places.  In rainbow colors of course. So cute!  

So, it was the first day of stenciling.  It was going pretty well.  There was a short learning curve for me to get really good at it, it was a beautiful sunny day, I was happily stenciling away, and feeling good about how the boxes are coming out.  I ran out of time, though, and had to continue the next day.  No big deal.

The next morning, I was literally walking onto the deck with all my painting supplies loaded up in my hands, and I got a phone call.  It was from a family member that’s been in a lot of distress lately.  Should I have answered a call from this person just then?  Hell no.  Did I answer it, though?  Oh, yes.  

It was about a 10 minute call and I had the person on speaker so I could do my painting prep and talk at the same time.  Then, call was over, and I got to work.

Suddenly the skill I seemed to have at stenciling bee boxes just yesterday seemed gone.  I was making all kinds of errors and smudges, was frustrated, and not having fun.  The whole time, my mind was going around in circles about the information I had just learned on the call.  And worrying about things. 

And it was really messing up my painting! 

Just the day before, I was perfectly placing the stencils every time, not even thinking about whether I would easily place them in just the right spot.  I was doing very little smudging.  I was feeling good about myself and the job I was doing.  I was thinking about all the love I was putting into the boxes and how these bees were going to be the luckiest, happiest bees that ever lived, having me as a Mom!

And it all turned to the complete opposite in less than 24 hours.  

I recognized what the problem was:  my mindset.  I was focusing on the past; the boxes I had just stenciled that didn’t come out so well.  And worrying that I would mess up again.  Very much like when clients come to me after having one rough sexual experience of not being able to keep an erection, or not being able to orgasm, and then they create a whole “thing” in their head by worrying about it happening again.  I was doing that with my painting.

I took a pause from the painting, closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and reminded myself of the reason I was doing all of this in the first place- for love.  I immediately felt a little better, and got back to my stenciling.

One of the many things I’d been annoyed by in the previous minutes was the amount of debris that seemed to be coming out of nowhere and sticking to my boxes.  

And then I noticed it.  Right on the side of the box I was painting was a tiny, perfectly heart-shaped piece of Goddess-knows-what on the box.  I imagined it was a piece of beeswax that had just fallen out of heaven.  I didn’t flick it off.  

People tend to think I look for hearts.  I never look for hearts.  Yet, I always see them when I most need to.  Just when I’ve nearly given up on love, I am reminded that it’s always there.  

Needless to say, my painting got better again after that, and I started having fun again….those lucky bees!