Another
week is in our lives, and we're all going through
the week right now,
doing our best to make each day one that we can be
proud of, one the we can
look back and say of it, "I did something
positive on that day." Here's hoping
that you're able to say that about each day of this
new week in our lives.
Laws
alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that
every person present his or her views without penalty there must be a spirit
of tolerance in the entire population.
Every person creates his or her own reality.
Authorship of your life is one of your absolute rights;
yet so often people deny that they have the ability to
script the life they desire. They often use the
excuse that they cannot do what they want to do or get
what they desire in life because they lack the resources
to do it. They look past the fundamental truth that
it is not our external resources that determine our
success or failure, but rather our own belief in ourselves
and our willingness to create a life according to our
highest aspirations.
You can either engage in the blame game, making frequent
use of the statement "I couldn't because. . . ,"
or you can take control of your life and shape it as you
would like. You can either let your circumstances,
be they your physical appearance, your financial
condition, or your family origins, dictate what happens to
you, or you can transcend your perceived limitations and
make extraordinary things happen. The "yeah,
buts. . ." do not produce results--they just
reinforce the delusion of inability. Argue for your
limitations and eventually the universe will agree with
you and respond accordingly.
Joseph Campbell once said, "The world is a match for
you, and you are a match for the world."
By this he
meant that when you fully recognize your challenges, your
gifts, and your individual reality, and you accept the
life path they represent, the world provides whatever you
need to succeed. You, in turn, will discover how you
can make your greatest contribution to the world.
When you claim authorship of your life story, the world
responds, and genius ignites.
Clearly, the challenge of this rule is to create and own
your own reality. The first moment you are able to
do this is an awakening of sorts, since it means the
demise of your unconscious life. I remember vividly
the time in my life when this occurred. It was after
I had received my three messages about what I was supposed
to do with my life. Much to my surprise, rather than
feeling relieved or inspired, I felt depressed.
After crying for what seemed like days, with hardly any
idea why, I came to realize that the phase of my life in
which I could float in the murky swamp of "I don't
know" was coming to an end. Once I received the
three messages and knew what my purpose was, I had moved
out of the safety zone of not knowing, otherwise known as
"childhood," into the reality of the adult
world. I knew that once I began consciously to own
my life, it would be nearly impossible to sink back into
oblivion. I wept tears of loss, for I had passed
through a tunnel of maturity and left my unconscious life
behind. Though sad, I was now ready to take command
of my life.
When you begin to live your life understanding that what
you make of it is up to you, you are able to design it
according to your authentic choices and desires. You
will learn lessons with this Rule, such as responsibility,
release, courage, power, and adventure, that will lead you
to the life you were meant to live. These lessons
provide you with the essential tools you need in order to
take command of your life.
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!
Change doesn't have to be hard, and healing
doesn't have to hurt. Often, because we
expect a situation to be challenging, stressful,
or painful, we brace ourselves for the
worst. The truth is, we are equipped to go
through anything. How we get
through it is the result of what we tell
ourselves about getting through it.
When a change is about to happen, or when some
healing is about to occur in your life, you
remember others, the many others who have been
where you are going. You remember their
pain, their tears and the hard times they
had. You remember being there for them and
being afraid for them. Now, here you
stand, on the verge of a break-up, a breakdown
or some other form of a healing or growth
experience, and all you can remember is the
pain? Stop the imagination
train! It doesn't have to be that
way! The question is, are you willing to
allow it to be any other way?
Whether you are acknowledging something you have
denied, accepting something you have resisted,
confronting something you have avoided, or
healing something that once hurt you, it
doesn't have to be hard! The only
thing that will make the experience more painful
and more difficult than it needs to be are the
things you tell yourself about going through the
experience. Surely by now you know that
every thing happens for a reason! Knowing
that, you must be aware that there is something
better awaiting you on the other side of
this! If you would stop telling yourself
scary stories and stop imagining that monsters
lie ahead, the fear, guilt and shame would go
away.
Until today, you may have resisted the
inevitable by bracing yourself against the
pain. Just for today, stop imagining the
worst! Give yourself permission to weather
the storm of an emotional experience without
telling yourself how bad or hard or painful it
is going to be.
Today I am devoted to moving through all
experiences without the expectation of pain!
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.
We all have weaknesses.But I have figured that others have put up
with mine
so tolerantly that I would be less than fair not
to make a
reasonable discount for theirs.
William Allen White
The
Reality of Prejudice
As much as I hate to
admit it, one of the most important truths of our time
is the fact that prejudice has become extremely visible
in our society these days. Even more than visible,
though, it seems to have become much more accepted by
many people who don't seem to see anything wrong with
it. I never expected that in my lifetime, I would
read about a woman of color having someone call 911
because she was studying in a common area.
Somehow, she "didn't belong there" simply
because of the color of her skin. And many people
are okay with the police being called.
Whatever happened to walking up to a person and asking
questions if you're suspicious about something?
Whatever happened to realizing that sometimes in life,
you're going to be dealing with a person whose skin is a
different color than yours, and it's really no big deal
99.99% of the time? Why have we seemed to lose the
realization that the blood, the lungs, the heart, the
spirit of people of different races or religions are the
same as ours, and there is no "better" race,
no "superior" race, no "inferior"
race.
Prejudice
does not think logically. It does not ask why, and remains
on the deceptive surface. The mark of the sage is the lack of
prejudice,
that of a fool, the lack of thought.
Hans-Ulrich Rieker
When our society was
evolving, it was being controlled by the people in
power, aka, the people who had money. And they
set up the society to favor people just like
them--people who thought like they did, acted like
they did, believed as they did, and lived as they
did. For that reason, other people--people who
didn't value money as much, for example, were
sabotaged, and unable to thrive in the system that
was built. I'm a good example, myself--even
though I'm Caucasian, I'm kept out of many social
situations because of my choice of careers.
When I chose to teach for a living, I consciously
chose not to focus on money as an end goal, and for
that I'm always going to be a somewhat marginal
member of society. I can't join country clubs,
I can't dress in expensive clothes, I don't drive
fancy cars, and I can't afford expensive
vacations. That's the reality of my world.
And none of this changes a bit because I have a
Ph.D. I've worked as hard as I can to develop
professionally, but it really means little to
nothing in the long run, as long as the people who
run the show value certain things over others.
But that said, I know that my world is much more
positive than it would be if I were a Hispanic
teacher, or an African-American teacher. I'm
dealing only with economic inequality, whereas
teachers who belong to minority groups are also
dealing with prejudice--a prejudice that has become
more pronounced and more vicious over the years.
Hell, as a male teacher, I get treated better than
most women teachers, much to my dismay. This
kind of prejudice is subtle, but it's real, and it
makes life difficult for many teachers who happen to
be women.
Prejudices,
it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate
from
the heart whose soil has never been loosened or
fertilized by
education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.
Charlotte Bronte
Prejudice in all of
its forms is destructive. If I'm prejudiced,
then I lose out on many, many possible learning
experiences, friendships, contacts, and
opportunities for compassion. I don't grow
nearly as much as I could because my mind and heart
are closed off to the sources of much wisdom and
love. Other people suffer from a lack of
positive contact with me--they never get the benefit
of my knowledge, wisdom, or love. And I can
actively sabotage other people's opportunities and
lives due to my wish to act upon my prejudices and
prevent certain things from happening just because
of a person's skin color, national origin, or
religion.
When we focus on our prejudices, we focus on
division, not connection. We reject
cooperation because of perceived differences that
threaten our beliefs and traditions--we try to make
life conform to our version of it, rather than
allowing it to be what it is. Any time that we
try to control something out of our control in order
to "make" it be something that it isn't,
we're doomed to failure and we're going to harm
other people with our efforts.
Most
people wish to be consoled, confirmed. They want
their prejudices reinforced and their structured belief
systems validated. After all, it hurts to think,
and it's absolute agony to think twice.
Jennifer
Stone
Our beliefs are simply
that: our beliefs. When we extend them
to other people and the ways that they are, our
beliefs can become damaging when they turn into
prejudices against people who "violate"
some part of our beliefs, or who somehow fit into
our negative beliefs. If we feel that people
who wear red shoes are stupid and lazy and criminal,
then we're going to treat people who wear red shoes
as such--and we're going to lose positive
interactions with those people and unfairly subject
them to our judgment and discrimination, and
possibly even our anger. This isn't fair to
anyone.
Our world needs cooperation, not division. We
need love, not prejudice. As individuals, if
we succumb to the temptation to allow our beliefs to
create prejudice within us, then we're most
certainly not going to be getting the most out of
the many opportunities that we have in the
world. Let us focus on love and compassion and
kindness and helpfulness, and we'll find our lives
growing richer and richer with each passing day.
If I had influence with
the
good
fairy who is
supposed
to
preside over
the christening
of all
children,
I should
ask
that her gift to each
child in
the world
be a
sense
of wonder
so
indestructible
that it
would last
throughout
life as
an unfailing
antidote
against the boredom and
disenchantment
of later years,
the
sterile
preoccupation with
things
that
are artificial, the
alienation
from
the
sources of our strength.
Most
people squirm when they hear the word vulnerability.
They expect to be harmed when they are vulnerable.
These are the same people who go in and out of all kinds of
relationships, placing themselves in positions in which they
can be hurt, abandoned, rejected or violated in any number
of ways. These are people who do not trust themselves
and who cannot trust other people. Yet, when you think
about it, vulnerability is not something you can
avoid. It is our natural condition, and we must learn
to trust it.
When you allow yourself to be vulnerable, it
means that you are standing in the power of your authentic
self, which has no defenses and holds on to no
pretenses. Your authentic self is the foundation of
your power. It allows you to be innocent while being
strong. It allows you to be strong while being
compassionate. Your authentic self is the part of you
that knows no matter what happens to you, you will
survive. Consequently, your authentic self trusts your
vulnerability. It trusts the process of life, and it
trusts the resiliency of your spirit.
The survival of the fittest is the
ageless law of nature, but the fittest
are rarely
the
strong. The fittest are
those endowed with the
qualifications
for adaptation,
the ability to accept
the
inevitable and conform to the
unavoidable, to
harmonize with
existing or changing conditions.
Dave. E Smalley
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.
™
