Transformation is having fun at a Mets game.

Ok, what's so unusual about having fun at a baseball game, you might ask? It is America's favorite pastime, after all. And how can having fun be Transformational? Well, consider that I have been living with a story that I didn't like baseball for um.. well longer than I care to reveal.

Now I was all set not to enjoy myself. I even packed a book and a sour expression along with my lunch. But the truth is, once I got to good old Shea stadium, I got caught up in the moment & forgot my story. Luckily for me :-) I'm sure it didn't hurt that it was a very tumultuous game complete w/ a no hitter for the NY Mets all the way to the eighth inning, plus a big fight on the field. But the key is that I was willing to give up a few things in order to enjoy myself. The two I noticed the most were giving up listening to my story & giving up my preference.

• Giving up my story

What's a story, anyway? It's a belief system you formed in the past that may or may not be relevant or accurate any longer. It could be a set of rules we put together for ourselves (musicians are cheaters) or a belief system we absorbed while growing up in a certain culture (I love you; I made you pasta). It could be a generalization we came up with after only one positive or negative experience (all dogs bite). Very often, they resulted as a way of sparing us from fear or embarrassment (avoid dogs & musicians). Our stories can be funny and innocuous. But when left unexamined, they can limit our lives by closing us off to limitless possibilities. How can we shed a story? Just by (1) looking at it without judging it & (2) asking ourselves is this really true or accurate for me in this moment of now? If it is, great! And if it's not, also great! And you will find that without "doing" anything, it will melt away. But what if it comes back? No problem, just repeat steps 1 & 2 above.

So a story I had growing up was that baseball was boring, a waste of time, and totally lacking in strategy. It's what I heard growing up around me at home & at school. I went to a French school, where soccer was the only sport that counted and baseball was considered slowww & pointless. Once I got to the stadium and surrendered to the excitement, I was willing to give up my tale that baseball was tedious, and my story disappeared.

• Giving up my preferences

What are our preferences, if we are willing to be honest? Our preferences are our bratty nature announcing to the world what we like & what we don't like. But guess what? the world, or the great creator, or whatever deity you believe in (God, Buddha, Allah, Julio Iglesias, or the curious deity worshipped by the pastafarians in The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster,) doesn't really and truly care about your preferences. Just because you would prefer it not rain on the day you wash your car or get your hair done, doesn't mean that you can actually affect barometric pressure. So you can either get caught up in your preferences, and waste your energy wishing things were different than they are, or you can get interested in the reality of what is actually going on around you. Listening to your preferences as though they really mattered, is a little bit like letting your inner 2 yr. old run your life.

I have recently made a game of watching my preferences, without judging them, and seeing how those little devils with agendas of their own try to manipulate situations. It's been amusing to see how I operate, and the neat thing is that by observing & not judging, I'm aware of the mechanism and can now choose to sidestep it. This has given me a higher degree of freedom & helped liberate me from the 2 yr. old in all of us.