Hello,
and welcome to the newest week in our lives!
We're just over
half-way through this year, so perhaps it's time to
consider just what
we want to do with the second half!
I believe in the old adage: "Cleanliness is next to
Godliness," but not as a reference to dirt under our nails
or behind our ears. Clean thoughts are what we need to
have in order to grow closer to our own souls.
Do your thoughts leave you feeling fresh and sweet, or do they
slime your self-concept with a brackish film of criticism,
doubt, and shame? Your thoughts are yours alone. No
one can clean them up but you. Exploring the seed
sentences planted within you is a great way to uproot weeds,
clean up your mind, and plant some flower seeds.
Seed sentences are clusters of ideas, words, or scripts that we
all create in order to keep us congruent with our underlying
assumptions and hidden beliefs. If our seed sentences are
self-affirming and supportive, we are naturally self-confident,
creative, and excited about life. These I call
"flower sentences." When sentences are
derogatory, we are more likely to be emotionally vulnerable,
have low self-esteem, and find it difficult to be
ourselves. Definitely "weeds."
Most seed sentences remain unspoken, perhaps even
subconscious. They are bits and pieces of ideas we've
picked up along the way until they form the heart of our beliefs
about ourselves. Seed sentences come from many
sources--parents, mates, TV, movies, magazines, advertising--and
contribute to our ideas of how we're supposed to live and what
we can expect to receive from life and from others. Our
lives, in effect, sprout from seed sentences we carry.
If all of our
seed sentences blossomed into flowers, our lives would be gardens
filled with beauty and grace. Unfortunately most of us have
picked up weed seeds that grow into thistles and thorns, choking
our spontaneity and the realization of our authentic selves.
Some examples of flower seed sentences:
"I am a worthwhile person."
"I deserve to be loved."
"I am lovable."
"I can do anything I set my mind to."
"I am proud to be a woman [or man]."
If seed sentences such as these are blooming in your subconscious,
you probably have a wonderful life, filled with loving
relationships. When you look into the mirror in the morning,
you are happy with what you see.
Weed sentences, on the other hand, sound something like this:
"I can never do anything right."
"I don't deserve to be loved."
"I'm no good at (_______) or (_______)."
"Everyone handles things better than I do."
"I'm so ashamed of (_______)."
Constant use of weed sentences undoubtedly means you feel pretty
down on yourself. When people try to love you, you question
their motives. "How can they love me? They
must not be very bright." Weed sentences go hand in
hand with low self-esteem. . . .
How do we pick up our packets of thought-seeds? People make
the most unbelievably careless statements within the hearing of
children. "She has a face only a mother could
love." Or "You're about as graceful as a bull in a
china shop." Children take such pronouncements as
authoritative, because they come from people who are ten feet
tall. . . .
It pays to sort through the seed sentences you've carried over
from your associations with religion and society. A
remarkable number of my clients come from backgrounds of
guilt-fostering religious environments. Guilt and fear keep
them emotionally vulnerable and prevent them from experiencing
their authentic selves. . . .
Freeing ourselves from underlying assumptions and bringing our
beliefs into harmony with the goal of lovingly supporting
ourselves takes time and doesn't come easily. We need to be
gentle with ourselves and remember that we are called upon to love
our neighbors as ourselves, not to the exclusion of
ourselves. As a natural outgrowth of loving ourselves, we
will learn to love others more fully and authentically.
Become aware of your beliefs and automatic default settings.
Bring them into the light of your present, adult knowledge.
Gently acknowledge that they are what they are. Then accept
that they constitute what you've believed until now, and that you
can transform them into beliefs that allow you to fully express
who you really are. Without judgment, patiently begin
working to change subconscious and limiting beliefs into true
expressions of your authentic self.
We
have some
inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is
through the sale of books, either physical copies
or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the
online reader). All of the money that we earn
through them comes back to the site
in one way or another. Just click on the picture
to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and
non-fiction!
Somebody said you have to love what you do, but
that's not necessarily true. What is true
is that you have to love the opportunity.
The opportunity to build life, future, health,
success and fortune. Knocking on someone's
door or making that extra call may not be
something you love to do, but you love the
opportunity of what might be behind that door or
call.
For example, a guy says, "I'm digging
ditches. Should I love digging
ditches?" The answer is, "No,
you don't have to love digging ditches, but if
it is your first entry onto the ladder of
success, you say, 'I'm glad somebody gave me the
opportunity to dig ditches and I'm going to do
it so well, I won't be here long.'"
You can be inspired by having found something;
even though you are making mistakes in the
beginning and even though it is a little
distasteful taking on a new discipline that you
haven't learned before. You don't have to
love it, you just have to learn to appreciate
where you live, appreciate opportunity and
appreciate the person who brought you the good
news; that found you.
Appreciate the person who believed in you before
you believed in yourself, appreciate the person
who said, "Hey, if I can do it, you can do
it."
If you will embrace the disciplines associated
with the new opportunity you will soon find that
your self-confidence starts to grow, that you go
from being a skeptic to being a believer.
And soon when you go out person to person,
talking to people, you will find it to be the
most thrilling opportunity in the world.
Every person you meet - what could it be?
Unlimited! Maybe a friend for life.
The next person could be an open door to
retiring. The next person could be a
colleague for years to come. It's big time
stuff. And sometimes in the beginning when
we are just getting started we don't always see
how big it is.
So, before you are tempted to give up or get
discouraged, remember all success is based on
long term commitment, faith, discipline,
attitude and a few stepping stones along the
way. You might not like the stone you are
on right now, but it's sure to be one of the
stones that lead to great opportunities in the
future.
* * * * *
Reprinted with permission from the Jim Rohn
Newsletter.
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
If
you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever
acquire
deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth
reading
are precisely those that challenge our convictions.
unattributed
We
Have to Take Rests
This is something that
I've found I'm very bad at. (Well, I'm bad at many
things, but I'll address just one for today.) Even when I have some
down time, I often try to fill it with activity, for
there's something in me that tells me that I need to be
productive, that I need to spend my time well and
actually accomplish something with the time I've been
given. In theory, that sounds accurate, but in
reality, it's a very destructive way to look at
things. There are several problems with not taking
rests, and I suffer from all of these problems fairly
regularly--including right now, which is the main reason
I'm writing these words!
Not resting greatly diminishes the quality of the work
that we do. Sure, if you're not resting, you're
supposedly doing more, but are you as productive as you
could be if you did rest? I've always told my
writing students that if they have five hours to work on
something, it's better to work for two and a half hours,
take a 30-minute break (taking a nice walk to clear the
mind--or to allow ideas to settle into place), and then
finish the last two hours so that they don't burn out
and make the last hour or two completely useless.
But do I follow that advice myself? Sometimes.
Rest
is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass
on a
summer
day listening
to the murmur of water, or watching
the clouds float
across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.
John
Lubbock
When I don't rest, I'm
much more prone to make mistakes. I get tired,
and it's easier then to be tempted to cut corners,
or to not pay close attention to exactly what I'm
doing. This is especially true when I'm doing
work that's pretty repetitive, such as painting (and
I do a lot of painting!). After a certain
amount of time has gone by, I find that I let paint
drip more, and if I'm painting on edges, I don't do
nearly as neat of a job as when I've had some rest,
even if that rest is in the form of a short
break. The best work that I do is when I'm
just starting out, and as time goes on there's a
huge risk that the quality of my work will diminish
as I get more tired.
That doesn't mean, of course, that I have to take a
break every ten minutes or so. Depending on
the job and the pace I'm setting, I could go for
hours without needing to rest from the work that I'm
doing. When we're talking about long periods
of time, such as working on a book for weeks or even
months, we face a completely different
dynamic. That's what's been happening to me
this summer--once the semester ended, I picked up a
new task to work on, which lasted for a good five
weeks. When I finished that one, I simply
moved on to the next project I had, without taking
any sort of break at all. After a couple of
weeks of this new project, I've noticed that I'm not
enjoying it at all, and that I'm not getting nearly
as much done on it as I should be.
Every now and then
go away, have a little relaxation, for when
you
come back to your
work your judgment will be surer. Go some
distance away because then
the work appears smaller
and more
of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack
of harmony and
proportion is more readily seen.
Leonardo Da Vinci
So I decided to take a
week off from tasks and projects. This past
week, whenever I've had a bit of free time, I've
picked up a book and read it, instead of getting
back to work on the project. When larger
blocks of time have freed up, I've gone for long
walks, something that I used to do regularly, and
something that always has benefited me
greatly. Just walks, with no real destination
and no real purpose behind them. And these
walks are in addition to the running that I do to
stay in shape, because the runs definitely have a
purpose.
And I'm feeling much better about things now that
I've had a week of taking rests instead of tackling
tasks. I feel much more clarity--my mind was
starting to get a bit muddled before, and I wasn't
able to think things through as well as I usually am
able to do. I also wasn't able to work as long
as I normally am, as I found that after a short time
my brain was shutting down on me, not wanting to
tackle the problems I was working on any more.
I know now that when I get back to doing those
"productive" things, I'm going to do a
better job at them, and I'm going to enjoy doing
them much, much more.
The most
valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally,
is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room,
not try to be or do anything whatever.
May Sarton
It's so easy to want
to be "productive" all the time.
After all, we don't want to be wasting all of our
time here, doing nothing that will benefit
others. We want to contribute to the world and
to life and to the other people in our lives, so
it's tempting to want to be contributing all the
time. We simply can't do that, though, if we
don't want to burn ourselves out. There are
plenty of people who don't rest at all, and who say
that they're fine without it, but I can guarantee
you that they'd be doing more and doing it better if
they built rest into their schedules. The
rests that we take recharge us, and they give us
strength to do more things and to do them better.
There's a reason why those "mental health
days" are so valuable.
I've witnessed people burning out, and many of them
say things like "I hate this job," when
what they really mean is "I've been working too
hard and I need a break from this job."
They say things like "I can't do this any
more," when they really mean, "I could do
this much longer and better if I were to take a
decent rest." (Of course, I've also known
people who really need a change in their lives, but
that's another issue!)
Do you need to rest? Then what are you waiting
for? Find some time to take a break from what
you're doing to take off, and to do something
else. Sometimes a rest from one thing while
doing something else is effective, but usually, a
rest from one thing while not planning on doing
anything else is one of the best things we can do
for ourselves.
I
sincerely believe that there is a time in life for
drifting. There is a time
for sitting back and getting in touch with yourself. Some
of our most
interesting illuminations and ideas will come when we take time
to reflect, time to kick back and cruise awhile.
A leader's job often includes changing your people's
attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to
accomplish this:
Principle 1
Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
Principle 2
Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly.
Principle 3
Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the
other person.
Principle 4
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Principle 5
Let the other person save face.
Principle 6
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every
improvement. Be "hearty in your
approbation and lavish in your praise."
Principle 7
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up
to.
Principle 8
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to
correct.
Principle 9
Make the other person happy about doing the things
you suggest.
The
person without a purpose is like a
ship without a rudder--a waif, a nothing,
a no body. Have a purpose in
life, and, having it, throw such strength
of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.
Thomas
Carlyle
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
™
