A Cart Full of Choice - Mindful Moment Monday

Hello everyone and welcome to another mindful moment Monday.

There is a phrase or idiom, “Don’t upset the apple cart”. Basically, this means don’t upset or change the way things are done. Not to mess up or to ruin carefully laid plans.

We all have an apple cart.

Today is a visualization. What happens when our apple cart is tipped over? What do we do next?

Let’s settle in. Take a deep breath. Check in with your body. Become present in this moment.

What’s in your apple cart?
Did you have plans for the year, vacations, goals, events…
What precious item did you put in your cart?

What do you do when Life happens?
When all of your proverbial apples; goals, vacations, events, get upset, and the cart is tipped over.

Commons reactions may be;
Anger
Frustration
Confusion
Disappointment
Unrest
Irritation
Annoyance

But even when our cart tips over, we always have a choice in our response to the event.

Let’s practice inviting choice and allowing what is….
Let’s practice not disrupting our internal ‘apple cart’.

Take another deep breath.

Let’s envision a beautifully filled cart. Apples neatly piled high. Colors of shiny red, green, and yellow. All your favorite apples stacked.
Feeling excited, eager and expectant. All your ideas and plans for those apples… safely held in the cart.
Let’s pick up our cart and take a look at the path before us. Notice the day and how you’re feeling about the journey.
Everything seems perfect. Just as it’s meant to be.


Going along our path in Life, we hit a bump in the road.
The apples go spilling and tumbling everywhere over the ground.

Maybe we hit a rock or a hole in the road.
Whatever happens, it is what it is.
As we look at the cart being tipped over and our apples being scattered, also observe your reaction.

What do you feel in this moment?
Let the surprise be what it is.
A shock. Disruption.
Breath deeply into what you’re feeling and let it go.
There has been a change to your carefully laid plans…

Maybe you chuckle and shake your head in disbelief.
Maybe you feel sadness, irritation or annoyance.

See if you can welcome the experience for what it is.

As you see the apples laid before you, scattered everywhere, possibly damaged and dirty, what will do next?

Take another deep breath in and feel into your body.
Exhale and let go.

Here is where we can invite choice into our unexpected challenge.

Will you leave the mess and keep going?
Deciding to ignore what just happened and storm away irritated or sad?
Will you leave the scattered apples and go get more?

Will you fill the cart once again? Picking up the apples one by one?

Maybe in this process you notice that some are less than stellar and not meant for human consumption so you leave them for birds, squirrels, worms and other critters nearby.
Maybe you only pick up the biggest and best suited apples for your plans.
Maybe you see someone nearby without any apples and you share a few with them.
Maybe you sit down with your back against your cart and laugh at the situation. Shake your head in disbelief and take an apple for a snack, while you decide what to do next. Resting your body for a moment as you eat.
Maybe you leave the cart and don’t do anything with the apples and let them be what it is…give a shrug and try again.
Maybe you pick up the cart, put a few back in, share a few, and taking just what you need, continue on your way, easily moving on.


When you are disrupted and caught off guard, we still have many options.
Maybe in our external world we may not like the options that we have, and while they may not be our first choice, we DO have choice.

Pause, and take a breath.
We have a choice in how we react or how we respond.

Just because our cart gets tipped over in our external world, we still have agency of our internal world and internal apple cart.

Things may not go as we expected them to go. Life happens and we get tripped up.

As we pick up our apples, it will be a practice of patience.
Letting go of what was and accepting what is.

And most of us have experienced that things are not always as they appear…
Similar to when you were picking up your apples, and you realized some were different than you thought. And possibly not appropriate for what you originally intended. You might be surprised, pleasantly even, by the experience.

Things are not always as they appear.

You may find that as you put only a few apples back, you’ve lightened your load and saved some energy.
Maybe you are presented with an unexpected opportunity and you shift the way you look at things.

You never know why things happen the way they do in Life.
Our apple cart will get tipped over, again… again… and again.
This is the journey of Life.

So, we breathe.
We pause.
Accepting what is.

When we experience an upset, we pause and breathe into the space of allowing.
We practice patience before we choose our next step.

We keep our internal apple cart, maybe a little jostled, but still upright.

We look at our external, tipped over apple cart, and realize we can still make apple pie!! Or maybe apple sangria!
You can feed the creatures around you or nourish the soil!

So many choices…. So many options.
The point to remember is that we have a choice.
We always have a choice in our response.

There is no right or wrong decision, just choice.
Whatever we choose in this moment…. we can always choose again.

Taking a deep breath in, pausing, and choose what to do with all these apples!
Inviting a smile…
Today we’re going to let them be.

Open your eyes back into this present moment.
We choose to move on today.
Whatever it is that's challenging you in this moment, remember you always have a choice.

Wishing you well with all your apples!

Have a beautiful day, from my heart to yours! (And from Slater too!)