Put Your Life on Cruise Control

I was driving home from Taos last week and realized how grateful I was to have cruise control on my car. Driving is so much easier when I don’t have to control the gas pedal on long rides – I just let the car do that for me.
And then I got to wondering about the mystery of life and how unexpected difficulties happen.

Unexpectedly fabulous things happen too, but we handle them just fine with a smile on our face and thrill in our heart. What if we could approach all the events of our life with that joy?

Imagine sailing along on Cruise Control, being present and doing what needs to be done – but not worrying about anything – trusting the Universe (you can substitute the word God or Life for the Universe) to handle the whole shebang while we cruise along enjoying the fun and adventure of living.

Sounds like a good idea, but is it realistic? It might work for a day or maybe only a few hours, or minutes, but then something out of the blue hits us and we get mired in the muck and ditch the Cruise Control. Yep, we get to thinking that we can do a better job when we control the gas and brakes, and we end up jerking along through rough roads.

I’ve been doing that recently, even though I know that stress is the number one aging factor. So, to start turning over some of that control and stay consistently aware of my current state of being, I created some affirmations and put them on sticky notes around the house. When I see the affirmations I remember to move my focus to

Cruise Control and I watch for signs that it’s happening. A couple of the sticky notes say:
• I am on Cruise Control. I let the Universe drive and I enjoy the ride.
• I watch thoughts go by and I listen for promptings from the Universe.

But how do I keep myself motivated to accomplish these goals? I decided I needed a reward if I did them for the week and a penalty if I didn’t. I’m almost embarrassed to tell you my reward/penalty because it involves ice cream and political-junky TV so let’s just say I’m very diligent about keeping up my checklist.

For the first two weeks I did have to endure the penalty because my meditations didn’t happen five days those weeks. So, I decided to go easier on myself and changed it to meditating at least four days a week. The funny thing is, since I changed it to four days, I’ve been meditating seven days a week. And since “entertainment politics” no longer amuses me, I curtailed political TV. But promptings are coming to me now so I’m writing them down. Amazing how it all works! If you’d like to put yourself on Cruise Control, try this method and feel the freedom.

Ellen Wood of Questa is an award-winning author as well as an artist using the name, Maruška. Her website is
www.howwtogrowyounger.com. Contact Ellen at ellen@howtogrowyounger.com.