Living Well With PMA
When life offers you this many lessons, you listen
No matter how you slice it, I think we all need a little PMA in our lives.
1. Positive Mental Attitude
In high school, one of my favorite teachers introduced me to the idea of Positive Mental Attitude. PMA, he said, would get you through life. It would get you through the door, and into places that led to more opportunities.
Case in point. At a fancy dress gala he attended, my teacher arrived to find a long line snaking up a carpeted staircase to the entrance. Mr. Stewart didn’t want to wait. So he squared his shoulders, and strode up those stairs, looking straight ahead the whole time. Like he belonged there. Like he knew where he was and where he was going. Exuding PMA, and striding past everyone in line. Now — he was a good looking guy. Tall, fit, and dressed to the nines, he had a head start on looking like he was somebody. But regaling the story, he also pointed out a valuable life lesson — no one questioned him. Arriving at the top of the stairs, he stared straight out as he stated his name confidently. And he was ushered right in. He told me he walked straight up to the empty bar, ordered a drink, and watched as the people in line slowly made it into the ballroom.
Whether you think that jumping the cue is admirable, cheeky, or worse, there is no denying that projecting confidence was effective. Believing ‘you’ve got this’ works. I’ve found that Mr. Stewart’s reminder for Positive Mental Attitude PMA resurfaces for me at times when I am in need of bucking up. No one knows how I feel after all. Projecting confidence will do the trick for most things. Looking like I know where I am, where I’m going, and that I belong there are more than half the battle.
2. Present Moment Awareness
One of my yoga teachers encourages us to find Present Moment Awareness. This form of PMA, so starkly different from the one of my high school days, is a reminder to stop and be where you are. To notice where you are and stay there. To breathe, and let the breath take control of your awareness. After many years of both yoga and meditation, I still find this simple reminder useful.
Case in point. In hard yoga classes, you’re always focused on something — your balance, your breathing, part of the posture. Extending that awareness to include more than that single focus — to include all of it — and to find a way to stay open to that awareness takes practice.
Awareness of that which is aware.
You are not your thoughts and emotions. You are not even the consciousness that notices them. You are the awareness behind that.
Clouds in the sky are like thoughts. They come, they go, they pass. We can notice them, and realize we are separate from them. That’s a good start. With Present Moment Awareness PMA we can also learn to see that the spaciousness of the sky is present whether our thoughts are there or not.
3. Patty Malcolm Anderson
My dear friend Patty Malcolm Anderson embodied life, risk, and vitality. Coming of age in the 1960’s drug and love fest, she partied hard and lived even harder. By the time I met her, PMA had slowed down. She’d cleaned up in fact, and was a beacon of hope for living clean and sober. Oh, she was still “a brassy blonde.” She still loved her rock and roll, her ’67 muscle car, and her smoldering photos of tall, dark and handsome celebrities. But Patty had come full circle in life. The bad girl gone good, she had mended relationships with her parents and raised two strong sons. She’d made her peace with the small minds of her small town, and had become a colorful, yet solid, part of the firmament.
Case in point: From the vantage point of her teens and twenties, there were no guarantees that Patty would even get to 30. Yet there she was, a working professional, patron saint to stray animals, true friend, loving mother and besotted grandmother.
Hard living has a way of catching up with you. Patty loved her life, too short and pain-filled as it was. She found blessings in every single day. They filled her life, and she breathed them out to others. She offered me some of my first lessons in gratitude, and the joy of the small moments in life. In my darker moments, I am grateful to have the Patty Malcolm Anderson PMA lessons to lean on. Small things do make a difference, and I can chose to do them, now.
My PMAs have taught me quite a lot about living well.
Life is short. Grab hold of it and go.
