living life fully's e-zine for September 16

16 September 2024

Good day, and thank you much for dropping by! We hope that there's something in this issue that will be a positive part of your life for today, that there's something here that interests you and perhaps even helps you out just a bit!
	Learn to Make Good Choices Elaine St. James
	I Don't Believe in Defeat Norman Vincent Peale
	Acceptance tom walsh
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Simple and Profound Thoughts (from Simple and Profound)
The longer you live the more you realize that forgiveness, consideration, and kindness are three of the great secrets of life. -unattributed	The best index to people's character is (a) how they treat people who can't do him or her any good, and (b) how they treat people who can't fight back. -Abigail Van Buren
Sometimes things which at the moment may be perceived as obstacles--and actually be obstacles, difficulties, or drawbacks--can in the long run result in some good end which would not have occurred if it had not been for the obstacle. -Steve Allen	Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. . . . You can only see one thing clearly and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin. -Kathleen Norris

Learn to Make Good Choices Elaine St. James In order to simplify, we have to start making choices, sometimes difficult choices. And often it means saying no, even to the things we want to do. Shortly after Gibbs and I began taking steps to simplify, we found ourselves having dinner with some friends who were into hang gliding. We spent the entire evening listening to them rave about the thrill of this fascinating sport. As we sat there being seduced by yet another activity, we imagined ourselves leaping off the cliff and soaring silently over the beautiful hills behind our home. By the time the evening was over we'd promised our friends we'd meet them at six o'clock the next morning on a nearby peak to try out their gear and have our first lesson. All the way home we talked about how wonderful it would be to start hang gliding. Then we walked through the front door, looked at each other, and reality began to set in. We reminded ourselves of how little time we actually have available. We realized there was no way we'd be able to fit a new sport into our schedule, especially one as time and energy consuming as hang gliding. We knew that our short list would suffer if we did. And our short list had been suffering long enough.
When we analyzed it carefully, we realized hang gliding was not as high on our list as we'd originally thought. Reluctantly, we called our friends and explained why we wouldn't be able to join them. "Sorry, we got carried away. We'd truly love to meet you tomorrow morning, but we're making some changes in our lives, and we simply won't have time to get involved in hang gliding for the time being." When we thought about it later, we realized this was progress for us. In the past, we'd have purchased all the equipment and had six weeks of lessons before it dawned on us that we couldn't fit this new activity into our schedule. And all the time, we'd have been wondering why, when we were at last engaged in this wonderful activity that we both had thought we wanted, our lives had become even more complicated and stressed out. The choices then would have been to stop hang gliding and feel guilty about all the time and money we'd wasted, or to keep trying to justify the expenditure by continuing with an endeavor that we didn't have time for. The need to make wise choices encompasses every area of our lives. Since we have time for only a limited amount of stuff, we need to choose wisely what stuff we're going to allow to take up that time. Since we have only a limited amount of time to spend with friends or to engage in leisure activities, we need to choose our friends and our activities wisely. Take a look at your own life to see if there are any choices you might be able to make that would free up more time and energy for the things that are higher up on your list.
more thoughts and ideas on choices

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I Don't Believe in Defeat
Norman Vincent Peale

There is no difficulty you cannot overcome. A wise and philosophical man once said to me, when asked how he overcame his difficulties, "How do I get through a trouble? Well, first I try to go around it, and if I can't go around it, I try to get under it, and if I can't get under it, I try to go over it, and if I can't get over it, I just plow right through it." Then he added, "God and I plow right through it."

An effective method for making your mind positive in character is to eliminate certain expressions of thought and speech which we may call the "little negatives." These negatives clutter up the average person's conversation, and while each one is seemingly unimportant in itself, the total effect is to condition the mind negatively. When this thought of "little negatives" first occurred to me, I began to analyze my own conversational habits and was shocked by what I found. I was making such statements as, "I'm afraid I'll be late," or "I wonder if I'll have a flat tire," or "I don't think I can do that."

These are "little negatives" to be sure, and a big thought is of course more powerful than a little one. But it must never be forgotten that "mighty oaks from little acorns grow," and if many "little negatives" clutter up your conversation, they are bound to seep into your mind. It is surprising how they accumulate in force, and before you know it, they will grow into "big negatives." So I determined to root those "little negatives" out of my conversation. I found that the best way to eliminate them was deliberately to say a positive word about everything. When you keep asserting that things are going to work out well, good results do occur.

On a roadside billboard I saw an advertisement of a certain brand of motor oil. The slogan read, "A clean engine always delivers power." So will a mind free of negatives. Therefore flush out your thoughts, give yourself a clean mental engine, remembering that a clean mind, even as a clean engine, always delivers power.

So to overcome your obstacles and live the "I don't believe in defeat" philosophy, cultivate a positive-idea pattern. What we do with obstacles is directly determined by our mental attitude. Most of our obstacles are mental in character.

"Ah," you may object, "mine are not mental, mine are real."

Perhaps so, but your attitude toward them is mental. What you think about your obstacles largely determines what you do about them. Form the mental attitude that you cannot remove an obstacle and you will not remove it. But when your mind becomes convinced that you can do something about difficulties, astonishing results will begin to happen. All of a sudden you discover that you have the power you would never acknowledge.

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.

I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare
at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be
concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they
are. I shall joyfully allow them their "divine, magical, and
ecstatic" existence.

Clyde S. Kilby

Acceptance

Things are as they are. Right here and right now, that is a very simple truth, and there's absolutely no way to change that truth. If we want to change things, we change them for the future, and when moments of the future become the present, then things will be as they will be. But in this moment, they are as they are. We really have no choice at all but to accept them as they are, and to work from that reality if we want to make changes in our lives.

We sabotage our own efforts when we're unable to accept things and people as they are. We can make our lives miserable when we fight against things that are unchangeable, when we reject the truths of any given moment, when we refuse to believe that situations are what they are. A person who is lonely must accept that loneliness and allow it to be a part of his or her life instead of denying it and thus never being able to deal with it. And that's the problem with not accepting things as they are--we don't deal with our issues clearly; rather, we deal with what we think we want things to be, and the results of our efforts are thus skewed rather ineffectively.

Some people confuse acceptance with apathy but there's
all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish
what can and cannot be helped; acceptance makes the
distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action;
acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens.

Arthur Gordon

If a relationship is going poorly, it's important that I accept the problems of that relationship if I'm going to be able to do anything to deal with the problems in it. Many people, though, lie to themselves with the thought that there are no problems in the relationship--or that the problems are much less severe than they really are--and they actually act surprised when it suddenly ends. Or they try to make the relationship what they think it should be, rather than learning from the problems and trying to allow the relationship to develop on its own terms. A strong relationship, after all, also involves accepting the other person as he or she is, and accepting the development of the interactions of both people. Accepting the problems allows us to learn what those problems really are so that we can effectively deal with them head-on.

There is a tendency among people to think that when we accept things, we're being weak and allowing life to "have its way" with us, that we're relinquishing control over our lives. Nothing, though, could be further from the truth. Acceptance simply shows a great sense of awareness, and it allows us to be fully present in each moment as we make our ways through life.

Sometimes we get so caught up in seeing life as we want it to be that we're completely unable to see life as it is. When that happens, we're unable to deal with our situations as they are because we still see them as we want them to be. I might be somewhat less than adequate on my job, due to a lack of training or other factors, but until I accept the fact that I need to improve my performance, I never shall. And if I'm unable to see that I truly need to improve my performance, I never shall accept that fact, and I will continue to work at levels far lower than my potential.

Acceptance of one's life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not
mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary it means accepting
it as it comes. . . . To accept is to say yes to life in its entirety.

Paul Tournier

Learning to accept life as it is has been one of the most liberating perspectives that I've ever experienced. In the classroom, when I'm able to accept each student where they are right now, I give them the chance to grow from that point and improve in ways that are realistic to them. I don't expect everyone to be at the same levels--I accept them as they are, and we work from there. That means, of course, that not everyone's at the same level when we end a course, but that's okay, too--they don't need to be.

When I accept my wife as she is, then there's much less stress in both of our lives, for I'm not trying to change her to fit some image I have of what she should be like. I'm allowing her to be who she is, to think how she thinks, to do as she will--and we're both better off for it. And when she does the same for me, then we're simply able to spend time together and enjoy each other's company rather than trying to change each other because we refuse to accept some aspect of who that person is.

On a hot day, we have the choice between accepting the weather for what it is and making the best of it, or resenting it and wishing it were some other type of weather. If it's raining we may have to change plans, but the weather is what it is, and we must accept it if we want to keep our peace of mind. When we're stuck in traffic, things are as they are--and we can't do anything about it. So it's better to accept where we are and accept the fact that we can't move any faster so that we can at least try to enjoy the ride. If we're in debt, then we won't be able to do anything about it until we accept our debt so that we can start working towards paying it off.

The curious paradox is that when I accept
myself just as I am, then I can change.

Carl Rogers

Very often, our need to accept ourselves is our strongest need of all. We are who we are, and no amount of wishful thinking will make us someone else, will make us different. We are the product of our environments, the product of our genetic material, and the product of the choices and decisions that we've made and the thoughts that we have. We may be able to start right now to become someone different for tomorrow, but there really is no way of changing who we are at this moment. It's important to realize that we've done the best that we've can, we've made mistakes, and we've had our triumphs, and we are who we are. Accept that, and move on with your life, or deny it, and remain unable to make positive changes because you're not in touch with what really needs to be changed.

Acceptance is not giving up, and it's not being fatalistic, and it's not resignation. Rather, it's the healthy recognition of things as they are, a recognition that can help us to move on with our lives and improve them, and improve ourselves. Without acceptance, we continue to fight against forces that we deny even exist; with acceptance, we're able to work with life in order to make our lives and our experiences more positive and more fulfilling.