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31 January 2023
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You had
better live your best and act your best and think your
best
today;
for today is the sure preparation for
tomorrow
and all the other tomorrows that follow.
Harriet Martineau
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Those who smile rather than rage
are always the
stronger.
Japanese Proverb
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Compassion
is not religious business, it is human business;
it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental
stability; it is essential for human survival.
the Dalai Lama
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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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Retrain
Your Mind
Cheryl Richardson
I remember hearing years ago a story about Mark Victor Hansen,
one of the creators of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
series. Mark would write down one of his goals in detail
on two index cards and keep one in his wallet and one on his
bathroom mirror to help him focus on his goals. When
getting ready to start the day, or when removing money from
his wallet, he would visualize himself as having already
achieved his goal as soon as he spotted the card. When I
heard about his technique I decided to use it in a different
way.
I bought a pack of little red heart stickers an placed them at
various spots in my home--on the refrigerator door, by the
kitchen sink, on the bathroom mirror, or anywhere else that
would cause me to see them on a regular basis. Each time
I came in contact with a heart I stopped to check in with my
thoughts to be sure that they were supporting my emotional
well-being. This constructive method, albeit simple,
helped to train my mind to follow my heart's direction.
My friend Charles Poliquin, a strength coach who trains
professional athletes, has a similar approach. When he
helps clients get into winning shape he has them imagine their
body at its optimum fitness level. When there, he then
has them create an affirmation to support this vision.
Once his clients have developed a firm vision of their
success, Charles instructs them to purchase a package of at
least five hundred toothpicks. The clients then use
these toothpicks by shifting them one at a time from one
pocket to another while repeating their affirmation an
visualizing their fitness goal.
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When a client
has gone through one whole package, he has them repeat the
process one more time. Charles has learned from
experience that it takes one thousand reps to set the vision
firmly in the client's mind.
Retraining your mind ensures that you use your power
wisely. To determine the quality of your thoughts you
need only pay attention to your emotions. Your
feelings always follow your thought patterns. For
example, I've learned to stop and ask myself the following
question the moment I feel a sense of disharmony:
Does this way of thinking serve me?
If my way of thinking does not support my emotional
health, I immediately shift my thoughts to something that
does. For example, I might focus on a specific word like
"balance" or "love," or I might use a
phrase like "move on" or "all is
well." Rather than trying to figure out why I'm not
feeling well, I simply focus my energy on raising my thoughts
to a level of health an well-being that serves me. Long
ago I learned an important lesson about dealing with
negativity from a meditation teacher. She used the
following analogy: "Imagine your mind as a
beautiful antique cup. When this cup is filled with
negative thoughts, trying to remove them will waste precious
energy an only give them more power. Instead, put your
energy into filling the cup with positive thoughts so that the
negativity just spills out." So when I'm feeling
frustrated, down, or filled with self-doubt, I have three or
four favorite books that I turn to when I want a dose of
inspiration or power-inducing thoughts!
Decide on a daily practice that you'll use to retrain your
mind. Purchase a package of stickers or toothpicks to
get you started. As simple as this exercise may sound,
those who do it can attest to how effective it is. Keep
a couple of your favorite books nearby, too. The goal is
to take charge of your mind!
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What
Do You Want?
Jack Canfield
People who have achieved their goals knew what they wanted in the
first place. They decided what to go after, and they went after
it. One of the most compelling reasons why people do not get
what they want is that they never decided what they wanted! They
never defined the desires of their hearts in complete detail.
Why don’t you know what you want? Why isn’t it spelled out
in detail in your mind? Most likely, it is because you
have lost touch with the desires of your heart. You were
probably taught that you couldn’t have whatever you wanted.
You were probably taught that it was more important to do what made
other people happy. Seeking your happiness was considered
selfish, so you learned not to define your happiness. Now, you
find yourself completely unaware of what your preferences are, how you
really want to live your life, and what your goals are for your life.
Take back your life! Start honoring your preferences, no matter
how small they seem. Even if you don’t know what you prefer,
pretend you do, and make a decision. You’ll be more keenly aware of
whether that decision made you happy or not and you will learn your
preferences!
Commit to this new belief: You deserve to have everything
exactly the way you want it. Make it a priority to begin to know
your wants and desires. Start simple by making a list of things
you want to do and things you want to have. Keep writing until
you find some of your core values, such as wanting to have loving
relationships, to make a difference in your world or to be financially
secure.
Think of what you love to do with your time. Write down several
things that you love to do, and then make a list of all the ways you
can think of to be making a living doing those things. Create a
detailed description of the vision you have for your ideal life.
Don’t limit yourself. Dream as big as you possibly can from
your perspective right now.
In detail, what is going on in the financial area of your life?
How much money do you make? How much do you have in savings and
investments? What about your real estate? What kind of
house or houses do you own? Create detailed visions of all the
major areas of your life, your ideal career, your recreation time,
your ideal body and physical health, your relationships with family
and friends, your spiritual life, and the community in which you
live. Create and write down your ideal vision for each area and
review it on a daily basis.
All you have to do at this point is clarify your vision to
yourself. Don’t worry about how it will happen right
now. Once you have a clear picture of what you want going
through your mind, the steps and opportunities to get it will
appear. When you have completed your ideal vision of your life,
share it with a supportive friend. Don’t let anyone talk you
out of it! More than likely, they want the same thing for
themselves but believe it’s impossible. Deciding what you want
is the first step to getting what you want. Don’t put off
creating your vision!
* * * * *
Reprinted with permission from the Jim Rohn Weekly Newsletter.
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Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
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To love solitude and to seek it does
not mean constantly traveling
from one geographical possibility to another. A person becomes
a
solitary at the moment when, no matter what may be one's external
surroundings, one is suddenly aware of one's own inalienable
solitude
and sees that he or she will never be anything but solitary.
From that
moment, solitude is not potential--it is actual.
Thomas Merton
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What We're
No Longer Learning
As I observe the people
around me and see the things that they're doing and not doing, I
can't help but notice that the lives of the children that I see
have changed significantly since the days when I was a
child. I don't see kids going outdoors as much anymore, and
I don't see them learning to do things like cooking and fixing
things that are broken in the house. I don't see them having
the chance to build a dam outside that will stop the rainwater
that's flowing down the gutter, and I don't see them making their
own kites or other toys that could help them to learn some very
important things about life.
My childhood was far from an ideal one, yet there were many
aspects of it that were extremely positive and that have helped me
greatly in later years. For one thing, I was usually on my
own when I was young, so I had tons and tons of learning to
do. I explored and I found things and I got into some
awkward situations that took some thought and creativity to get
out of. I learned how to build forts, in the process
learning what kinds of materials work well and which kinds don't,
which kinds of locations are good and which aren't. I
learned how to get in and out of trouble by myself, and those
lessons have gone a long way towards keeping me out of trouble in
later years--I learned that all of my decisions have results.
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Play
is often talked about as if it were a relief from
serious learning. But for children, play is serious
learning. Play is really the work of childhood.
Fred Rogers
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The most
important thing to me, though, was that I was out in
the world, interacting with the world and its
people, learning from the mud and the dirt and the
trees and the people in shops and on street
corners. I learned from experience more than
any other source, even though I was pretty good in
school. And my experiences were incredibly
varied and rich in content, and they taught me
lasting lessons that I still remember decades later.
When I look around myself at the world today,
though, and I think about the young people who have
been students in my classes over the years, I notice
that most of them really don't have a broad set of
experiences that will benefit them in the
future. The learning that they do tends to
come from two main sources--school and screens, be
they television, video game, phone, or computer
screens. And the lessons they learn,
therefore, are almost never first-hand lessons that
are based on their own experiences; rather, they're
learning second-hand lessons that are being passed
on--often ineffectively--by others who have written
the scripts or games that the young people are
exposed to.
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We should come home from
adventures,
and perils, and discoveries every day
with new experience and character.
Henry
David Thoreau
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When young
people have a question now, independent research is
out of the question for most of them--why would they
pick up a book and find something out if they can
just type a question into a search engine? Why
would they try to make their own boat out of
cast-off materials if they can play a video
game? Why would they learn about their own
limits of tolerance of cold and heat when the rooms
that their TV sets are in are always at a
comfortable 70 degrees?
The hard part for me is watching these young people
be sabotaged in their lives by the very people who
say that they want the best for their
children. Parents think that they're doing the
best thing by making sure that their kids have new
phones and computers and gaming systems, but what
they're really doing is keeping the kids from
learning through experience--mostly because these
kids spend so much time in front of screens that
they don't have time to have their own experiences.
Our young people don't play enough any more--they
don't spend time outdoors with their friends
learning about the world they live in.
Sometimes it's because parents are so worried that
their children won't get into the right schools that
they insist that their kids spend time studying and
practicing instruments or participating in organized
sports, which are a highly stressful environment
that resembles play only in the very basic elements
of the sport. Sometimes kids don't play
because the parents are worried about them being
kidnapped or murdered, so they don't even let them
out of the house on their own. Sometimes the
parents just don't care, and they let their kids do
whatever they want, even if that means plopping
themselves down in front of a screen for hours on
end.
Our young also don't read nearly enough any
more. After all, why would they read when
there are so many movies to watch and video games to
play, not to mention everything that's available on
the Internet. With so much time spent looking
at screens of varying sizes, who has time to look at
pieces of paper with ink on them? And when
they do read, very often they choose books that are
simply commercial fluff, books that have no real
story and nothing special to say, rather than books
that will make them think and help them to
learn. A good book can spark the imagination
and cause a young person to feel great compassion
for the characters, and they can also teach about
processes and the value of working towards goals and
being patient enough to make it to the end of the
story to find out what happens!
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Trees and stones will
teach you that which
you can never learn from masters.
Bernard of Clairvaux
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If I'm an
employer, I want people working for me who are able
to think for themselves, and who are able to come up
with creative solutions to any problems that we
might meet. I want that person who as a kid
built his or her own rocket ship in the back yard,
even if that rocket wasn't exactly a rousing
success. I want working for me the people who
learned just how quickly a stream of water will
break through a weak dam, and who were able to find
other materials on their own that stopped the flow
of water and created a tiny lake in the
gutter. I want that person who spent time on
the front porch listening to Grandpa or Grandma's
stories, and in doing so learned about patience and
compassion and caring for and about other people.
Our screens really teach us nothing--they only pass
on information. But our young people haven't
grown enough to know that for themselves yet--they
need us to tell them the importance of thinking for
themselves and growing greatly as a person. I
hope that somehow, we're able to help our young
people to know the difference between knowing
information and true learning about life, for if no
one helps them to learn this very important lesson,
their futures don't look nearly as bright as they
could.
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More
on learning.
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If
you're having difficulty
coming up with new ideas,
then
slow down. For me,
slowing down has been a
tremendous source of
creativity. It
has allowed me
to open up--to know that
there's life
under the earth
and that I have to let it
come through me in a new
way.
Creativity exists
in the present moment.
You can't find it
anywhere else.
Natalie Goldberg
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In a moment of
deep inner silence, I heard a gentle voice whisper:
"Beloved, dare to make the break out of the lonely
crowd. There is a wonderful plan for your life.
A magnificent purpose resounds through your unfoldment.
Release and let go of your outdated and outworn self!
Dare to be reborn in the brilliance of the freedom of
Spirit, filled and motivated with universal energy flowing
direct from the heart of God."
Fascinated, I listened: "Beloved, dare to lose
old patterns of expression, old habits of weakness and
death, old memories of destruction. Dare to witness
the activity of divine love expressing through you as
perfect life as it restores, rejuvenates, and regenerates
every cell of your being! Live in the wholeness of
spirit, and direct your light essence for the healing and
uplifting of the world."
Wow! I wondered, do I dare? The voice
continued: "Beloved, go beyond your present
understanding. Exceed your now consciousness of
Truth. Be fully immersed in your divine blueprint
through all good. . . on earth as it is in heaven. You
carry within the keys to the kingdom. Use them to open
all doors of joyous expression and to direct the wonder and
effectiveness of the spiritual gifts you possess into your
working knowledge."
In expectation, I remained silent, listening.
"Beloved, dedicate yourself to love. Watch as
love dissolves undesirable situations, unwanted
circumstances, and all thoughts and feelings of negative
nature. Dare to be magnificent! Dare to be a
self-renewing temple of the living God! Dare to be
beauty, harmony, light, and music as I created you to
be! Remember, I have loved you with an everlasting
love!"
Joy filled my heart as I asked: "Who are
you? Who is saying this to me?"
And from infinity within came the answer, "I am!"
Cristina Carlino
The
Rainbow Connection
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Learn to get in touch with
silence within yourself
and know that
everything in this
life has
a purpose. There are no mistakes and
no coincidences; all events are blessings
given to us to
learn from.
Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross
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