Read

September/October 2004 Spirituality
The Power of Thought:
The Wisdom of Groundhog Day

by Sandra Nelson

Sandra Nelson

This spring I saw an old friend in a coffee shop. Many years had passed since we last spoke. Children had grown, marriages ended, and homes relocated. We spoke for hours, finding similarities and differences as we exchanged stories. Our lives had taken similar paths with families, children, even our health. Both of us live with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.

And it is there that our stories differ. I jokingly referred to our health as fun. My friend became serious and even angry about my comment and went on a rant about how hard and unfair life is and how she had been mistreated at every turn by everyone she knew.

Obviously forgetting that I live with the same illness, she continued to educate me about her experience. Amidst all her anger, she shared a few examples that served to validate some of my own experience and helped me to understand why I do some things differently since becoming ill. She talked about the way each day must be re-invented when one has fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, and compared it to the movie "Groundhog Day." In that analogy, I saw a nugget of truth. Out of all her anger came a defining comment; "…every day is like Groundhog Day." It was true for me as well, but only for the first two years of my illness. Sitting in my back yard I had a defining moment that started me on the path to better health.

She had given me a lot to think about that day. We both have the same illness and have experienced similar struggles because of it; the same illness with one exception, the way we think about it. I don’t know from one day to the next if I will be well enough to do what I want, and I still get frustrated at my limitations, but I won’t let that stop me.

She talked about facing the same restrictions day after day, week after week. Pain, loss of physical strength, and memory loss make even the simplest daily tasks often impossible. The normal life of learning new things, going places, and meeting people is suddenly stopped, and replaced by days filled with pain, confusion, and regret.

I couldn’t get our conversation out of my head. For the week that followed, someone kept whispering "Groundhog Day" in my ear until I finally paid attention. Once I did, the rest of the message flooded in. In the movie, Bill Murray’s character, Phil, the weatherman has the uncanny experience if living the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over. Each morning he got up, talked to the same people in the Bed & Breakfast where he stayed, saw the same people on the street, and had the same conversations.

As with most of us, Phil’s normal life was filled with limiting thoughts and behaviors. It took the daily rewind of Groundhog Day to get his attention. The defining moment came when he asked someone, "Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today."

With that realization, Phil started to live each day as if it were his last. Throughout every repeated day he tried something new until he learned to change what he didn’t like and create the life of his choice. At one point his co-worker told him, "…you can’t plan a day like this," to which Phil replied, "Well, you can; it just takes an awful lot of work."

"Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself. Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are." James Allen

Phil was a rude, self-serving, grumpy man. In the movie he had a moment of clarity and decided to make some changes in his life. It’s the type of moment that is available to all of us if we honestly pay attention to our situation and the thoughts that brought us to where we are. Phil decided to take advantage of what he knew about each day and create the life he wanted.

"As you think, you travel: and as you love, you attract. You are today where your thoughts brought you. You will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. You cannot escape the results of your thoughts." James Allen

What did Phil know? He knew all of his personal patterns of thoughts and behaviors that were being played out each Groundhog Day as well as the behavior of the people he connected with as he went about each day.

Phil made a conscious decision to change his life. Instead of taking, he decided to give. When he started paying attention to those around him, he realized what was important to them and used that information to do nice things for them. People responded to his kindness, which gave validation to his new behavior and in the process he learned to love himself, which opened the door to February 3^{rd, the} day after Groundhog Day.

To those close to him, the changes in Phil’s life seemed like an over night miracle. They didn’t see the personal work he went through. What may look like a radical, overnight change to some…a miracle…may actually be the results of years, or even lifetimes of personal and spiritual work.

If you don’t like what you see, change it! So far, I have compared the movie, "Groundhog Day" to living with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. In fact, the lessons learned in this movie could be applied to living with any undesirable situation. It’s an eternal truth that thoughts create. It’s been written about and talked about for centuries but rarely personalized.

"Manifest Your Destiny" by Dr. Wayne Dyer is a small book packed with nuggets of truth written in a step-by-step format to help you create the life you desire. In it he refers to thoughts as "…architects of the foundation of your material world…" He cautions us to "never limit Spirit in any way" and to "honor your worthiness to receive."

In the movie, "What the #$Bleep*! Do We Know!?" Dr. Joe Dispenza talked about consciously creating his day. "I wake up in the morning, and I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen.

"When I create my day, and out of nowhere, little things happen that are so unexplainable, I know that they are the process or the result of my creation. And the more I do that, the more I build a neural net, in my brain, that I accept that that’s possible, gives me the power and the incentive to do it the next day."

Like Dr. Dispenza, we have the knowledge, wisdom, power, and help to create the life we choose to live. Find what works for you; pay attention to your day, and journal the experience. It doesn’t matter how you choose to create your life, it matters that you DO IT.

Sandra Nelson is the founder of Ascension Sanctuary, LLC in Vancouver, WA and can be reached at, sandra@ascension-sanctuary.com.