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8 November 2022
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Simple and Profound
Thoughts
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I believe the
art of living consists not so much in complicating
simple things as in
simplifying things that are not.
François Hertel
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I've
never sought success in order
to get fame and money;
it's the talent
and the passion that count in success.
Ingrid
Bergman
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The mediocre
teacher tells. The good teacher
explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
William Arthur Ward
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If
there were nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for
us to do.
George Bernard Shaw |
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Seven Ways to Indirectly Influence Your Emotional State (an excerpt)
Dan Millman
Although you cannot directly control or change your
emotional state by intention alone, you can influence your
emotions through breathing, posture, relaxation, changing
your environment, distraction and humor, and taking
appropriate action.
If you feel depressed, you may tend to sit alone, slouched
over, perhaps staring at the floor or into space; your
breathing is shallow as you reflect on the ways you've
messed up your life. A good way to get out of
depression is to stand straight and tall, breathing fully
and deeply, as you walk through a beautiful meadow or a
stimulating and brightly lit shopping mall, and reflect on
what you've done right in your life. Do this whether
you feel like it or not. I don't guarantee that it
will lift your spirits, but it's a good start.
Let's overview some of the things you can do to influence
your emotional state:
Rebalance your breathing. When you feel anger,
sorrow, or fear, your breathing becomes inhibited or
thrown out of balance. By consciously breathing
evenly and deeply into your belly, you won't make the
feelings go away, but you will rebalance your body and
psyche so that you can speak or act more effectively.
Attend to your posture. Body, mind, and emotions
interpenetrate and influence one another. Since you
have more direct control over your body, start
there.
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Since emotions influence your posture, your
posture can also influence your emotions. To
increase the likelihood that you will feel more expansive,
sit and stand straight and tall. Hold your arms out
to your side with your palms up toward the sky. You
can also use the muscles of your face to lift the corners
of your mouth upward while relaxing your mouth and letting
your teeth show. (It's called a smile.)
Remember to relax. Try this simple experiment:
Relax your body now, as deeply as you can in a few
breaths, breathing in the belly, releasing tension you may
have been holding in your chest, shoulders, neck, or
abdomen. When you feel fully relaxed and at ease,
imagine how difficult it would be to feel angry or fearful
in this state. When you relax, you can do much to
release the tension associated with fear or anger.
Relaxation short-circuits the harmful effects of emotional
tension, allowing the flow of energy to remain
unobstructed so that you continue to act and move
effectively.
Change your environment. The moment you change your
environment, you change who you are, in both subtle and
dramatic ways. Put me in my office and I feel one
way; put me on a beach in Hawaii and I can almost
guarantee I'll feel differently. Your boundaries
aren't nearly as solid as you imagine; in a sense, you
become part of your environment and it becomes part of
you. But the change doesn't even have to be a major
one. Notice how your feelings change from one room
of a house to another or when you step outdoors. To
change habits or emotions, a change of environment--even
if it's getting out of the house and going for a walk--can
do wonders. A change of scene opens you up to
different facets of yourself.
Distract yourself. In Tame Your Mind, you
learned how you had some control over where you direct
your attention. Although you can't make your
feelings go away, you can distract yourself by shifting
your attention to something constructive.
Distraction differs from denial because you clearly know
what you are feeling but consciously direct your attention
elsewhere. Let's say that you are terribly afraid of
riding in elevators and experience all the unpleasant
symptoms of that phobia. Nevertheless you have a
very important business presentation to make on the
fifty-second story. You step inside the elevator,
feeling terrible, but manage to distract yourself from
your feelings by mentally going over all the key points in
your presentation, completing them just as the elevator
door opens at your floor.
The police often use distraction when responding to
domestic disputes. An officer may show up in plain
clothes and a delivery hat, carrying a pizza.
Instead of asking, "What's the problem?" he
says, "Here's the pizza you ordered." This
gambit interrupts the emotional pattern of the domestic
scene. In everyday life, distraction can be
something as simple as changing the subject. Or
ordering pizza.
Apply humor. Lightening up lends perspective to any
situation. The following story, sent to me on the
Internet, provides a good example of humor diffusing a
tense situation:
An irate crowd of air travelers stood in a long line at a
ticket counter after their flight had been canceled, when
an angry man walked to the front of the line, threw his
ticket on the counter, and yelled, "I want a
first-class ticket on the next flight out, now!"
The harried ticket agent, brushing back a lock of hair,
replied, "I'll be glad to help you, sir, as soon as I
take care of the people in line."
You want me to wait in line?" he yelled even
louder. "Do you know who I am?"
The ticket agent hesitated only a moment before
picking up the microphone, turning up the PA system, and
announcing to the waiting area, "Ladies and
gentlemen, there is a man at gate seventeen who does
not know who he is. If anyone can help him find
his identity--"
"Screw you, lady!" the man yelled, storming off.
In a parting shot she added, "Sir, I'm afraid you'll
have to wait in line for that, too."
Her humor didn't help improve his emotions, but it helped
hers. And the previously irate people waiting in
line were now smiling or laughing. No one else
complained.
Take appropriate action. The most constructive way
to influence your emotions is to do
something. For example, if I'm filled with
self-doubt and overwhelmed with worry about an upcoming
exam, hitting the books is the most effective way I can
influence my emotions. Even if the worry and
self-doubt remain, I will have studied for the exam.
In the same way, mountain climbers focus on climbing the
mountain ahead instead of getting rid of the fear of
falling.
A man I'll call George told me how he hated feeling guilty
because he didn't visit his elderly mother more
often. He wanted to know how to reduce his
guilt. "Go visit your mother," I
suggested.
There are many constructive ways to indirectly influence
your emotional state. As you learn to accept your
emotions fully, however, without allowing them to drive or
limit your behavior, you'll find it less necessary to
change or fix them.
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Be Flexible with Changes in Your Plans (an
excerpt)
Richard Carlson
Once I get something in my mind (a plan), it can be tricky to let
go of it and go with the flow. I was taught, and to some
degree it's certainly true, that success, or successfully
completing a project, requires perseverance. At the same
time, however, inflexibility creates an enormous amount of inner
stress and is often irritating and insensitive to other people.
I like to do the majority of my writing in the wee hours of the
morning. I might have the goal, in this book for example, to
complete one or two strategies before anyone else in the house
wakes up. But what happens if my four-year-old wakes up
early and walks upstairs to see me? My plans have certainly
been altered, but how do I react? Or, I might have the goal
to go out for a run before going to the office. What happens
if I get an emergency call from the office and have to skip my
run?
There are countless potential examples for all of us--times when
our plans suddenly change, something we thought was going to take
place doesn't, someone doesn't do what they said they would do,
you make less money than you thought you would, someone changes
your plans without your consent, you have less time than
previously planned, something unexpected comes up--and on and on
it goes. The question to ask yourself is, What's really
important?
We often use the excuse that it's natural to be frustrated when
our plans change. That depends, however, on what your
priorities are. Is it more important to stick to some rigid
writing schedule or to be available to my four-year-old? Is
missing a thirty-minute run worth getting upset over? The
more general question is, "What's more important, getting
what I want and keeping my plans, or learning to go with the
flow?" Clearly, to become a more peaceful person, you
must prioritize being flexible over rigidity most of the time
(obviously there will be exceptions). I've also found it
helpful to expect that a certain percentage of plans will
change. If I make allowances in my mind for this
inevitability, then when it happens I can say, "Here is one
of those inevitabilities."
You'll find that if you create the goal to become more flexible,
some wonderful things will begin to happen: You'll feel more
relaxed, yet you won't sacrifice any productivity. You may
even become more productive because you won't need to
expend so much energy being upset and worried. I've learned
to trust that I will keep my deadlines, achieve most of my goals,
and honor my responsibilities despite the fact that I may have to
alter my plans slightly (or even completely). Finally, the
people around you will be more relaxed too. They won't feel
like they have to walk around on eggshells if, by some chance,
your plans have to change.
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I've gone
through more pain in the last four years than I
ever
thought possible:
my son died, my family became
shattered.
I had to begin again, one more
time, and
I wasn't sure I wanted
to. But I've also learned
more about life and
my soul and heart
than I
ever dreamed
possible. In doing so, I've discovered
the
most
ancient
message of all: even when people tell you
there
isn't any
hope, there is. There is always
hope,
purpose, and a new magical lesson.
Melody
Beattie
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What Can I Do?
I really enjoy thinking about language and the different ways that
we express ourselves. I like to look at different ways that
we can experience the exact same words, depending on which words
we stress and how we stress them. The four words in the
title here mean a lot to me, and they're words that I use very
often in many different situations, because I don't ever want to
see myself as helpless or unable to affect my own life and all
that happens in it. And for those of us who want to make the
most of our lives by contributing to the world around us and the
people with whom we come in contact, this is possibly the most
important question that we can ask ourselves regularly, in several
different ways.
First of all when we face a situation that perplexes us and that
makes us unsure of what we should do, we need to ask ourselves
"What can I do?" Does a person I know need
help? Then there must be something that I can do to provide
some sort of help. If a friend is having relationship
difficulties, perhaps I can spend some time with him, just
listening. Or if someone I know is having problems in
school, maybe I can help him or her with their studying--or if the
topic is one of which I know nothing, I may be able to find a
source of help other than myself.
Of course, the answer may be that the best thing for me to do is
nothing, that the person needs to take care of his or her issues
on their own. And the answer isn't always going to be an
answer that we're fond of--if a friend is facing a foreclosure on
their house, I won't be able to do anything about that, but I may
be able to find other things to do to provide support and a bit of
caring.
What can I do? A subtle shift in emphasis changes
this question to one that addresses my own abilities. If our
community is having problems with crime, I can't go out there and
deal with the criminals and stop the crime myself. But I can
talk to other people, I can look at what other communities have
done, I can join a group that's trying to address the
problem. There are many things that I can do in any given
situation, depending on my resources and capabilities, and there
are also many things that I can't do. I really need to know
the difference between the two, and act accordingly.
But I also need to keep in mind that just because I can't do
something today, that doesn't mean that I won't be able to do it
in two months. If a young person I know failed algebra this
year and has to retake it next year, then what's stopping me from
learning algebra to help him or her? If an organization I'm
involved in needs
someone to take over the newsletter, it doesn't matter whether I
have experience in the field or not, as long as I'm willing to do
my best to learn how to do so well.
What can I do? Me? Everyone else is more
talented than I am, or they have better skills, or more
resources. Or no one will listen to me, of all people.
There are just so many negative ways to consider ourselves and our
potential for helping, and most of them involve looking at
ourselves with an artificially low evaluation of our own ability
to make a significant contribution towards something positive or
productive. "I'm just weak and helpless," we're
saying, when the fact is that we're neither of those things--we
have plenty of potential to contribute in positive ways if we just
take the time necessary to consider closely and carefully the
possibilities available to us.
When we talk about ourselves as if we're helpless, we can most
definitely convince ourselves that we're just that--completely
unable to help. And once we convince ourselves of the truth
of the statement, guess what we have become?
But this question can also be a positive one. It can cause
us to consider our gifts and talents that have been given to us in
very unique combinations, and come up with an answer that's truly
unique to us. If a friend of mine is ill, I can't provide
medical help or financial help, but I most certainly can write a
letter of support, or provide meals for the family if
necessary. When I'm involved in organizations, I try to find
ways to contribute either through education or writing, two of my
stronger skills. When I'm teaching, one of my greatest
strengths is in diagnosing areas of weakness that can be
developed.
Sometimes, though, the best thing we can do is find someone else
who's better suited to help. In one of my novels, a
character sees a young girl who desperately needs help, and
instead of helping her himself, he tells someone else of the
girl's plight. He beats himself up over this act until
someone else points out that what he did was the absolute best
thing he could have done in the situation, as he was completely
unprepared to help, while the other person was much better able to
help the girl.
What can I do? Action. Isn't this what our
lives come down to in the final analysis? Not what we
intended, but what we've done. Not what we planned to do,
but what we've started and worked through as far as we
could. Sitting and thinking is fine if it leads to eventual
action, but if it doesn't, then our time has been wasted.
Sometimes when we feel helpless we feel that no action will be
effective, so we freeze in our inactive state and we don't even
try. That's almost always a mistake, for nothing that needs
to be done can get done if we never even try to start doing
something. Sometimes that first step helps us to see further
steps that we hadn't seen before, and the road before us become
much clearer and easier to follow.
Life gives us many situations in which we're faced with doubts and
struggles, in which we have a hard time deciding upon a course of
action that we think will be effective and helpful. We can
be sure, though, that as long as our intention is to be truly
helpful and not to be self-serving, we can find something to do
that will contribute in positive ways to any situation. As
long as we're not trying to control someone else, as long as we're
not trying to sabotage another person's efforts, our contribution
will be important--even if it isn't recognized as such right away.
What can you do? You can trust yourself, have faith in
yourself and in life and in God, and you can act from the
heart. You can use your unique gifts to make a truly unique
contribution, and in doing so you can make a difference in someone
else's life in your own special way. It's one of the gifts
we've been given in life--the ability to contribute to the lives
of others.
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more
thoughts and ideas on action
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A
miracle is nothing more or less than this: Anyone who
has come into
a knowledge of his or her true identity, of his or her
oneness with the
all-pervading wisdom and power, this makes it possible for
laws
higher than the ordinary mind knows of to be revealed to him
or her.
Ralph
Waldo Trine
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Sometimes
Sometimes
things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a person aims high, and all goes well.
A people
sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some people become what they were born for.
Sometimes
our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we were meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
Sheenagh
Pugh
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Step into this moment, because it is the only one
you have right now. It
is not
wasted or thrown away.
The divine opportunity could be stolen
unless you tell
yourself it is here right now; available to you this moment,
to make of it anything
you choose.
Why not choose this moment, right now,
to be available
to
yourself by declaring, I AM GOOD! . . . . The richness
of
the present is here. The
fullness of now is present.
If you are not
here now, it means you could be
missing
the love, joy, peace
and brand-new ideas that are here right now.
Iyanla Vanzant
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