I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK......(repeat as needed)

One day a man went to the doctor... he said, "Doc ya gotta help me, 'cause it hurts when I do this!" The Doctor said, "Don't do that!"

Such simple and wise advice. I am constantly finding myself wondering about that as I go through my days. I seem to suffer (as many do I'm sure) of an innate ability to beat myself up emotionally for no good reason. I will just be minding my own business; reading, listening to music, watching a movie, or cleaning my apartment; when I find that I am running some sort of scenario from my past through my head and slaggin' upon my poor soul about my shortfalls and misdeeds. It is counter-productive. It is wasteful.

It is unnecessary.

When I catch myself doing this (or as I like to say about it I am 'running a tape' upon myself) then I stop and get back into the moment. If I am obsessing about the past and worrying about the future, I'm not being real about the now. I'm forgetting to breathe. Then I get into trouble, then I start to be an asshole and bother people with neurotic behavior and I begin to hurt myself with addictive acts (such as eating a whole bag of Oreo Doublestuff cookies dipped in Hershey's Syrup) and then I end up unhappier with myself than before.

The trick, I'm beginning to see, is to just relax and be OK with me now, in the now. Then I won't find myself fatter than before and unhappy with what has happened to me and wondering how I ended up this way.

You will only be happy if you allow yourself to BE happy. Or even just allow yourself to BE.

Of course this is fine to write about but hard to remember as you obsess about the time you made an ass of yourself in college.