Pete the Cat has woken up grumpy and nothing seems to be going his way. It was his first time to have “the blue cat blues”. On his walk he meets a friend who offers Pete “cool, blue, magic sunglasses” to help him see things in a whole new way. And true, with the sunglasses “the birds are singing. The sky is bright. The sun is shining.” As Pete strolls he meets mad squirrel, frustrated turtle, and sad alligator to whom he offered the magic sunglasses. This sunglasses made everyone happy, but one time Pete fell and broke the magic sunglasses. Pete didn’t know what to do without those magical sunglasses. Pete meets Wise Old Owl who says: “Pete, you don’t need magic sunglasses to see things in a new way.”

This children’s story by James and Kimberly Dean made me think about how sometimes we are wearing sunglasses that color everything bright, other times sunglasses that color the world dark, and rarely we find sunglasses that color the world in natural colors, without extremes. And there are times we are not even aware that we are wearing sunglasses. When shades are dark, we only see and focus on the negative and forget that the positive exists. Our emotional tones lead to mental filtering that disregards any positives.

Mental filtering reinforces our emotions, thoughts, and actions. Our actions keep reinforcing our thoughts and emotions about situation, and either bring us into deeper hole or take us out of it. The way out of the hole is our awareness, our ability to replenish and direct our vital energy into actions that will lead us out of the hole. Awareness is first step of getting us out of autopilot, it can bring clarity to our perceptions. However, it is not enough to be aware of the issue or to know your direction or to set an intention. What is also important is to be smart on how we use our life energy, on refreshing our values and priorities, on setting boundaries, on our ability to leave people and situations that are thriving on conflict.

The quality of our awareness, vital energy determines our choices and actions, thus the quality of our life.

Decision making with vikacoaching.com