|
15 July 2024
| |
|
|
| |
|
Simple and Profound
Thoughts
(from Simple
and Profound) |
|
By being yourself,
you put something wonderful
in the world that was not there before. -Edwin Elliot
|
Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way
things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs
to you. -Lao-Tzu
|
|
Accept everything about yourself--I mean
everything. You are you and that is the
beginning and the
end--no apologies, no regrets. -Clark Moustakas
|
The young are looking for
living models whom they
can imitate
and who are
capable of rousing their
enthusiasm and
drawing them
to a deeper kind of life. -Bakole wa Ilunga
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
Breaking the Habit of Negative
Thinking
Carol
James
One behavioral symptom of
stress is negative thinking or self-talk, which usually contains
self-defeating or self-diminishing statements. For example,
"I just know I'm going to fail." or "Things just
never work out right for me." or "I always get the short
end of the stick."
I've noticed that
negative self-chatter is pervasive with many people. One example
comes from a conversation I had a while back with a desperate
woman who somehow found my phone number. Negativity and depressive
beliefs dripped from her lips. No matter what I said, she insisted
that she had nothing to be happy about and that her heart had
closed.
I tried to help her see
that as long as she looked only at what was wrong with herself and
her life, she would continue to find more things wrong, and that
she could not get to happiness from where she now stood. But she
kept interrupting me to share more problems.
Amazingly, this woman
also told me how happy and successful she used to be, but she had
lost it all. It was clear to me that she had allowed the
conditions and circumstances of her life to determine her level of
happiness. As long as things went well, she was happy. But as soon
as circumstances changed, she lost her happiness. Yet try as I
might, I couldn't help her break through her wall of
self-defeating talk.
|
|
|
After thirty minutes of
trying to help her remember something – anything – that would
bring her a feeling of hope or happiness, I began feeling hopeless
myself when I was suddenly inspired to say, "This may be a
little thing, but when you hear a bird sing, does it bring you
joy?"
Her response was
immediate: "That's not a small thing to me. I love to hear
birds sing."
"And hearing the
laughter of a child playing?" I countered. I could almost
hear the rush of relief (mine or hers?) that broke forth as she
shifted her perception. For the first time in our conversation she
stopped insisting that she had nothing to be happy about. In her
silence I could tell that my message had finally penetrated her
resistance.
I’ve found that
negative thinking derives from beliefs about ourselves that were
formulated long ago – about who we think we are and what we’re
capable of doing. In our early years, many of us had parents who
didn’t know how to be loving, nurturing or supportive, so we
learned from them how to criticize and judge ourselves. As a
result, we often treat ourselves exactly as we were treated as
children, scolding ourselves for being afraid or for making a
mistake and often taking on a distorted view of how things are
without ever questioning its validity.
But the past is ancient
history, gone, dead and buried (at least if you allow it to be),
and now it's time to treat yourself exactly as you've always
wanted to be treated. When you catch yourself beating yourself up,
remind yourself to be gentle and loving. After all, if you aren't
that way with yourself, how do you expect others to be that way
with you?
* * * * *
© Copyright Carol James
|
|
more
thoughts and ideas on thoughts
|
|
| |
|
(Simple and Profound is now a
part of this site. Visit by clicking
here.)
|
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
-
our
current e-zine
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
|
| |
|
|
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! |
|
| |
|
|
| |
Be
Improvement-Oriented
(Tip #3)
Hendrie Weisinger
It's
intrinsic. It is part of your nature. I'm speaking
about your desire to want to improve, to want to do better.
Vocational theorists and psychological research tell us that
people want to do their bests in tasks that are meaningful to
them. Use your own experience to validate this point.
For example, if
you love to play golf, I'm sure you do not need a pro to tell you
to play your best, although you will want the pro to tell you how
to play your best. If you love to cook, I'm sure you try to
make the dish as tasty as possible, although you may need a recipe
book and a few cooking lessons to satisfy your taste buds.
The problem is
that, for many of us, our desire to improve is stifled by the
criticisms we receive. Why? Because most of the
criticisms we receive (or give) place a strong emphasis on the
negatives (if you have a negative appraisal of criticism).
The criticized behavior is usually defined as irrevocable.
The recipient is told what he did, thus placing the action in the
past; any chance of change for the better is precluded.
Since there seems to be little chance for improvement, the
recipient, in order to protect his self-esteem, defends his
actions rather than looking for ways to improve. The
criticism loses its positive power.
Furthermore, whether
or not one feels that people lack an inherent wish to improve, the
fact remains that a constant barrage of negative criticism will
undermine any recipient's confidence, making it difficult for her
to believe she can do the job. Interest is diminished.
Many educators and much educational research testify to the point
that negative criticism (emphasizing the negatives) given to a
child in a particular subject will not only turn her off to that
specific subject but will also turn her off to trying to master
and explore other areas.
Similarly, the
sales manager who, after observing three presentations of the new
sales recruit, only emphasizes the negatives of each of her
presentations, is doing a good job of convincing the new recruit
that she is in the wrong line of work. Her apathy will soon
become apparent and, of course, will draw more negative criticism
from her manager. This is a bit ironic considering the fact
that the history of criticism tells us that one of criticism's
most important functions is to help one improve.
Do you--and those
you work with--emphasize the negatives when it comes to
criticism? Just think about the last three times you were
the giver or the taker of criticism. If you find that the
negatives are continually emphasized, then you can help yourself,
those you work with, and your organization become more productive
by making your criticisms improvement-oriented.
Making criticism
improvement-oriented creates the mental set of using criticism as
a teaching and educational tool. The task becomes to figure
out, "How can she do it better? How can I help her
improve?" You begin to formulate specific ways in which
you can help the recipient. You become solution-oriented.
One way to make
criticism improvement-oriented is to move the criticism forward,
into the future. Emphasize what the recipient is doing or
can do, not what he did. Instead of telling your new
recruit, "You did a poor job in presenting the data,"
which is sure to prompt recipient defensiveness, try, "In
your next presentation, use better overheads to show the
data. It will help clarify your points."
The latter
improvement-oriented criticism not only offers a helpful action to
take but focuses on the fact that your new recruit is going to get
another chance; you communicate the confidence- building message,
"I trust you to succeed."
Change becomes
possible because you stress how the recipient can do it better
next time. And this lets the recipient feel secure in
knowing she will get another chance. She can also feel
confident because her critic believes she has the ability to do
the job. With this in mind, your trainee can begin to focus
her energy on improving her future performance rather than on
defending past results. Criticism becomes a put-up instead
of a put-down.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
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 have had a number of opportunities to talk
to people at the end of their lives,
you have probably been struck with how many regrets most
individuals carry to
their graves. Contrary to what most people assume, the
regrets of the dying usually
are not about the goals they failed to reach, the experiences they
never had, or the
places they meant to see but never did. Most often their
regrets are about the ways
they hurt someone or the things they failed to do for certain
people. All their lives
they have been carrying these heartaches, these very sore places
in their minds,
and now they think it's too late to heal and be healed.
Hugh Prather
|
| |
Balance
It took me a
long while to realize that much of my early life was characterized
by a lack of balance in almost all things. As a child, I had
no one around who was able to teach me the lessons I needed to
know about balance, so I grew up without knowing just what balance
is or how important it is in our lives. What I've come to
learn is that balance is a result of my thinking and my decisions,
and a life in balance is entirely within reach if I make an effort
to keep this life of mine balanced.
Of course, we live in cultures in which advertising is one of the
strongest influences in our lives, and one of the last things that
advertisers want is for us to live balanced lives--if we eat
moderately, for example, they sell us less food. If we buy a
modest car and use the savings in another area of our lives, they
make less profit. As we grow up, we learn lessons about
acquiring and consuming more and more--and those lessons
definitely do not encourage us to seek out balance. So one
of the first things that we need to do if we want to lead balanced
lives is to recognize the messages that we receive regularly and
deal with them appropriately, modifying them or rejecting them in
order to bring more balance to our own experiences on this planet.
|
|
|
|
You are one of the
most important people you need to look
after and love. Balance your time, your energy, your life with
those
around you. You'll be able
to give more freely and joyfully
as a result, and you'll be more open to the
gifts of
the universe.
It's not wrong to give to others.
But it's okay to say
yes to ourselves, too.
Melody
Beattie
|
|
|
A lack of
balance can be extremely detrimental to us for many
different reasons. When we go too far toward
one extreme or another, we set ourselves up for
making huge mistakes or paying very high prices for
our actions. How many people end up with
problems like diabetes or heart disease because of a
lack of balance in their diet? How many people
are terrible stressed because they always make time
for other people, but not for themselves? How
many people pay a heavy price physically because
they don't balance their days sitting in an office
with physical activity?
It's important that we recognize our need for
balance, first of all. Balance in our lives
gives us a sense of peace, for when we know that
we're balanced, we don't feel strong needs to extend
ourselves past comfortable limits in order to feel
better about ourselves or to fulfill needs that we
perceive, but which possibly aren't legitimate needs
at all. Perhaps we feel a need for acceptance,
so we take on more tasks than we're comfortable with
to try to fill that need, when the truth was that we
already were accepted just as we are by most of the
people in our lives. That's a typical example
of putting ourselves out of balance for a perceived
need rather than a legitimate need.
|
|
|
|
According
to Chinese
medicine, it is accepted as natural that
we fluctuate from being in
balance
to being out of balance. Peace of mind comes from not attaching a
great
deal of
significance to either state. We simply note our moods and
physical states and gently move toward balance as best we can,
accepting it all as part of the flow of life.
Charlotte Davis Kasl
|
|
|
Many people who
take up sports, for example, respond to the initial
rush of positive feelings from it by suddenly
devoting huge portions of their time and money to
the sport. They buy all the equipment that
they didn't need at all just a few days before, and
they commit themselves to hours of practice that
weren't at all necessary just recently. Their
time has suddenly fallen out of balance, and other
things that they use to have time for now fall by
the wayside and become neglected. I've watched
this happen with a friend who took up karate, and
two years later, all she had in her life, really,
was karate--everything else was sacrificed as she
devoted herself entirely to the sport while
neglecting to keep her life in balance as she could
have done.
"What's wrong with that?" you may ask,
"as long as she's happy?" And it's a
very good question--in her case, though, she was far
from happy. She was quite lonely, and she
wondered why the friends she used to have weren't
her friends any longer. She turned down
invitations to parties and get-togethers and other
social activities because of her busy karate
schedule, yet she couldn't see that she had lost her
connections with her friends because she refused to
balance her karate commitments with her other ones,
and her social life suffered from a complete
imbalance.
We have many areas in our lives in which we could
and should strive for balance: finances,
relationships, commitments, diet, exercise,
television watching, time commitments--the list
could keep on and on. But first of all we need
to be able to step back and ask ourselves clearly
and objectively: Are my efforts balanced in
this area?
And if the answer is negative, we need to be willing
to make some changes concerning that activity.
We need to be able to look at what we're doing and
figure out how to reach a greater balance
overall. Do I ask too much from relationships,
or do I give too much and ask too little? Do I
balance my fat-laden desserts each week with other
desserts that are healthier? After all,
there's nothing wrong with a hot fudge sundae if we
don't each one every day, and if we balance our
sugar and fat intake with desserts that are better
for us on different nights.
|
|
|
|
The Amish love the
Sunshine and Shadow quilt pattern. It shows
two sides--the dark and light, spirit and form--and the challenge of
bringing the two into a larger unity. It's not a choice between
extremes: conformity or freedom, discipline or imagination,
acceptance or doubt, humility or a raging ego. It's a
balancing act that includes opposites.
Sue Bender
|
|
|
|
A balanced life
is a rich life, indeed, for such a life is one that
allows us to experience peace no matter what our
situations, and hope no matter how dark things may
seem, for when our lives are balanced, we realize
that life, too, is balanced. While things may
be difficult for a while, the brighter times will
come; and we'll never take things for granted, for
we know that days may come that can take those
things from us. With decisions that we make
about what we strive for and how we strive, we can
reach the ideal that Confucius speaks of: the
still water that is at peace.
|
|
|
|
Balance is
the perfect state of still water.
Let that be our model.
It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface.
Confucius
|
|
More
on balance
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
 ™
|
|
All contents
© 2024 Living Life Fully™,
all rights reserved.
Please feel
free to re-use material from this site other than
copyrighted articles--
contact each author for permission to use those.
If you use material, it would be
greatly appreciated if you would provide credit and
a link back to the original
source, and let us know where the material is
published. Thank you. |
|
| |
|
|
|
When someone accepts your help, that person is
giving you a wonderful opportunity. You're not only helping that
person but you also have the opportunity to grow in compassion.
On seeing the suffering of another, you have the opportunity to feel in your heart the suffering of that person. When
your heart softens and you feel compassion for that person, you become more selfless and rise closer to God,
your Higher Power, which is complete compassion.
Michael Goddart
|
|
| |
I have a friend, a chemotherapy
nurse in a children's cancer ward, whose job it is to pry
for any available vein in an often emaciated arm to give
infusions of chemicals that sometimes last as long as
twelve hours and which are often quite discomforting to
the child. He is probably the greatest pain-giver
the children meet in their stay at the hospital.
Because he has worked so much with his own pain, his heart
is very open. He works with his responsibilities in
the hospital as a "laying on of hands with love and
acceptance." There is little in him that causes
him to withdraw, that reinforces the painfulness of the
experience for the children. He is a warm, open
space which encourages them to trust whatever they
feel. And it is he whom the children most often ask
for at the time they are dying. Although he is the
main pain-giver, he is also the main love-giver.
unattributed
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
Matthew Fox
We must work on our souls, enlarging
and expanding them.
We do so by experiencing all of life--
the beauty and the joy as well as the grief and
pain.
Soul work requires paying attention to life,
to the laughter and the sorrow,
the enlightening and the
frightening,
the inspiring and the silly.
|
| |
|
