it's not impossible - please meet "Prove It"

Meet Prove It, my Inner Skeptic. Hello, Prove It. How are you today? Not sure. Okay.

I love Prove It. If I didn't have Prove It, I'd be just jumping on every bandwagon and drifting after every last crazy idea.

Thank you Prove It for keeping me straight, for helping me validate, experience, gain proof. You've kept me focused and I love ya.

I've developed a pretty nice relationship with Prove It over the last few years. We get along well now that we've stopped resisting each other and understand each other's roles. See, Meredith is meant to explore and learn and grow and stretch and try on new ideas and work through them. And Prove It is meant to keep Meredith in check. We collaborate.

There's a trick I've found to settling Prove It's intensity when he gets a bit out of hand. I remind Prove It that for some things, it can be a bit hard to prove but we've got lots of interesting evidence, enough to explore more anyway, so let's go. It's hard to prove 'I love you" too, afterall.

So...Prove It can sometimes be settled (though not sated) with the words....
"It's not impossible that _________________ is true."
I can't really prove it's true. But I can't really prove it isn't true either. So no need to get stuck. It's really not impossible that it is true. Keep going.

I so recommend getting to know and work with your inner skeptic. It's fabulously liberating.

Motto as of late: "And you don't believe it!??? That's shocking."

special shout out to fellow superblogger...i'm test driving a "motto" ending. totally dig your listening and feeling clever summarizers...may i adapt/adopt??

doesn’t everyone think like that? But how could I know she has breast cancer?

“I just know she has breast cancer. She’s in chemo. I know that’s why she hasn’t called in so long. How can I think such a thing. That’s horrible of me. I wonder. Just go ahead and invite her to happy hour. Don’t be silly.” I tortured myself a bit with my thoughts as I often did. Sure enough, the email came back weeks later. “I’m in chemotherapy. Discovered a lump in my breast.” I even knew which breast. Now that’s more than perceptive. That’s more than intuitive about people’s feelings. That’s more than knowing what my students need and what others motivations are. I can’t ignore that one.

“What’s going on with me?” I wondered. And my opening began. I’d always been perceptive and described myself as intuitive. Others described me as insightful, too, and would look to me for my read on things. I always seemed to notice things others didn’t, but at the same time I figured everyone thought like that. And now I know that everyone can, but not everyone does. I often knew things that were the opposite of the outward appearance and felt such guilt, really, for having the thoughts. I had no knowledge, interest or awareness of psychic, clairvoyant or clair-anything. No voices. No visions. No spirits. No premonitions. I just knew. I just know.

Now I realize, I was just seeing the truth. I just didn’t understand what I was seeing and doubted myself. How many walk around ignoring such impressions all the time. I was determined to understand how my mind and intuition were working. And that created an opening…like a great big magnet resources came to me and my intuition cracked opened like a hole in the sky, like the whole sky. Well, perhaps not quite so dramatic, but almost…certainly expansive. We walk around in our suburban world where so much is the same, yet everyone is so unique, yet we’re all one. And we can all think like that.

I’m so glad I stepped in. It’s prettier on this side. And when I know someone has breast cancer I don’t get all freaked out, I just send lots of love. And I doubt myself a lot less often.