Thinks I find along the way
“The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let it spring from love. Born out of concern for all beings.”
– Buddha
You don’t have to be an emotional sponge, picking up every feeling around you. Learn to distinguish whether what you’re feeling belongs to you or to somebody else:
Linda has a grown son. Whenever her son is going through a difficult time, Linda takes her son’s emotions on, as if those feelings belonged to her. She’ll talk to her son on the phone for a while. He’ll express himself intensely and powerfully about how he really fee]s about everything in his life. After all, Linda’s his mom. It’s safe to tell her how he really feels, even if he can’t tell anyone else.
Linda may feel fine when she begins talking to her son. But by the end of the conversation, Linda doesn’t feel that good anymore. She may feel angry, upset, or worried—or whatever her son was feeling before he talked to her.
Sometimes we soak up other people’s feelings because we forget to protect ourselves. Often, we do this because of the depth of feeling we have for this person. The remedy for this is the same as it is when we’re dealing with our own emotional stuff. We recognize what we’re feeling. We give that feeling its due. Then we let it go. We squeeze out the sponge.
Sometimes, it just takes the act of recognizing that we’ve taken on another person’s emotions to clear those emotions out. If we strive for awareness, we’ll begin to recognize when the feelings we’re feeling aren’t our own.
Children are often open and unprotected. If we re going through a lot of feelings around them, they may absorb our emotions, too. It’s important to share our feelings with others arid let people talk about their feelings to us. But we need to pay attention. If we’ve picked up someone else’s emotions, we need to let those feelings go.
God, help me know that part of being close to people and loving them means I sometimes take on their feelings. Show me how to protect myself so I can keep my heart open to the people I love without taking on their feelings.
We often talk about the importance of forgiveness and resentment release, release resentment, and make peace with what others have hurt us in the past. But what to forgive the person who unwittingly to blame more?
This person is the one you wake up and spend every moment of every day. It is the person most worthy of your love, understanding and forgiveness radical. Obviously, that person is you. Can you forgive?
As sure as you’re alive to read the words on this page, you hurt someone and you have been hurt by someone at some point in their lives. Part of his anger over it can permanently damage inside. It’s barely recognizable, unless you know what you’re looking for. Do you like the sense of wonder, freedom and invincibility fallen by the wayside, replaced by a disguised unforgiveness, fear self-doubt, anxiety, feelings of inadequacy or depression?
If you do not let them get to the last, is the time. There is nothing in the past for you, you can not change what you do. Whatever you want to do something else, let him go. You have the best you can do with what you had, you know and where you were in your life at that time.
You have complete control over how, where, on the effects of this. This is a new day. Do the best you can do. You will not always get it quite right, but that’s okay. Forgive yourself and start again.
That were not put on this earth to make everything perfect at all times in your life. In fact, life is just the opposite. The journey of life is full of unexpected twists and turns and sometimes unpleasant. Too bad and cause problems, to make bad decisions and experience the effects of other bad decisions. But you do not have to do is get stuck. Guilt serves no purpose other than to keep, then release. You live and learn. Forgive those who hurt you, and most importantly, forgive yourself.
Before proceeding with the rest of your day, I encourage you to take a long time now to repeat (5-20 times) my favorite positive affirmation of forgiveness:
I totally and unreservedly apologize to myself.
Use this daily affirmation. Tape to your mirror, your desk or dashboard of your car. Use it as a reminder to live like you’re in this for more than the past.
Your job in life is to recreate yourself and your life story every day, but how to change history if they do not move in the next chapter?
Stop reliving the past and start creating today. My friend … please fully forgive you.
“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
My wife and I had a beautiful walk along the beach after lunch today. Sigh…
We lose time when we check our phone every time it beeps and bings, especially if someone we love is sitting beside or across from us. We lose time every time we turn on the glowing box instead of pursue our future visions and goals. We throw away time every time we agree to an hour meeting when 20 minutes will do. We lose time chasing that extra six cents a gallon we heard they were getting for gas across town, not stopping to think that we’re only getting back $1.30 for that effort.
Every time we don’t say sorry first and end the stalemate, we are losing time. Every time we focus on our regrets, we lose time. Whenever you look in the mirror and judge yourself a failure, you are losing time. Strangely, this made me think of golf balls.
There is not one golf ball in the world that judges itself a failure. Sometimes they land in the hole. Other times, they get lost in the woods. But they are still primarily the same object. The same is true for you. Failure is something about a moment. Failure is a great thief of time. Learn. Embrace your learning. Move. Time only goes in one direction, and that’s away from you.
Make that call. Pick up that course of study. Practice that new idea. Experiment with that plan. Accept that you are who you are, and that change isn’t the goal: awareness and adaptation are the goals.
Set your phone to silent. Check it as infrequently as you can stand. Before we all had cell phones, our children all lived. The boss wants you to be responsive. Fine. Be responsive, but not a slave.
Time, friends, is the most difficult of the currencies to leverage, and we all spend it like it’s free.
This doesn’t mean “hurry.” This means “live.” Live in the way that suggests you know what time it is, with or without a watch. Because it’s your time. And that’s what matters while you still breathe.
And for the bonus round? Think about how you can use your time to extend value to people after you have stopped breathing. That’s why the world is thinking so much about Steve Jobs today. For every flaw you want to mention, for every truth about his temper or his choices, he built a legacy, more than once, with the time he had.
An open and honest continuing dialogue with our children is crucial for parental success. When walls are created and information stunted, we are not able to forecast trouble looming on the horizon. Lack of proper communication also stymies solid bonding between parent and child. Many family tragedies could be avoided simply by talking. Here are some thoughts to help bring the joyous sounds of constant family chatter to your home…
Follow the ‘via’ link to get the 10 tips…
“Leap and the net will appear.”
– Julia Cameron, Cameron is the best-selling author of “The Artist’s Way”.
I refuse to amuse the lie…
I was reading Confessions of a Shopaholic
recently and ran across a passage that struck a chord with me … the main character is avoiding thinking about increasingly urgent letters from banks and creditors, trying to push these worries out of her mind:
“I’m well aware that at the back of my mind, thumping quietly like a drumbeat, are the twin horrors of Guilt and Panic.
“Guilt Guilt Guilt Guilt.
“Panic Panic Panic Panic.
“If I let them, they’d swoop in and take over. I’d feel completely paralyzed with misery and fear. So the trick I’ve learned is simply not to listen. My mind is very well trained like that.”
This passage struck a chord because I’ve been there. I’ve had those horrors of guilt and panic at the back of my mind, many times.
I’ve done it with debt — I let the letters from creditors pile up, trying to ignore them, not wanting to face them.
I’ve done it with my health, knowing I was growing overweight, not wanting to think about the things I was eating.
I’ve done it with smoking, knowing it was bad for me, but trying not to think about it, puffing away.
I’ve done it with projects that I knew I should be working on, but didn’t want to think about them … because I was afraid, for some reason, to face them.
Does any of this sound familiar? Do you have fears lurking in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind? Fears you don’t want to face and try to push back, closing your eyes so you don’t have to see how horrible they are?
If so, I highly recommend you face them now. Be bold and brave. Bring them out into the light of day.
It’s an amazing relief when you actually do face these fears. They actually turn out to be not so bad, not so overwhelming or intimidating. It’s a huge load off your shoulders — you’re liberated from your fear!
Follow the ‘via’ link above if you’d like the rest of Leo’s thoughts…
You’d be surprised to know how many emails I get where people are stuck in their lives.
They’re broke, or unmotivated, or in a job they hate, or they can’t find their passion, or they can’t get motivated to get healthy.
And they don’t know where to start.
It hurts to read these emails. It brings back to life the pain I lived through not too many years ago, when I too was stuck.
I know the feeling of despair when you are unhappy with your life and don’t know how to change. When you’ve tried lots of changes, but couldn’t find the discipline to make them stick. When you feel crappy about yourself because you know you should get off your butt and start improving your life, but you’d rather put it off for another day.
Problems go away when you ignore them, right?
I also know that there is really only one way out of this mire of despair.
It’s to take an action, no matter how tiny.
You don’t need to fix everything in your life right now. You don’t even need to fix one thing.
You just need to do one little, miniscule, almost nothing thing.
Make a list. Go outside and take a walk. Get rid of some of your junk food. Clear off your kitchen table. Cancel something tomorrow so you can make time to create something, no matter how small.
Don’t do all of these. Do one. Or half of one, or one thousandth. It doesn’t matter how small — the smaller, the better.
Take that first step. Celebrate that first step. Love the step, not the destination. That step, even the motion of taking the first foot off the ground and moving it forward — that’s everything.
That’s the truth, and you’ll not read it in many self-help books: put every microparticle of your existence into that half step, and be nothing but that half step, and love it with all you have … and your life has changed.
With this half step, everything is different. You haven’t achieved any goals … but you’ve moved. You haven’t created something amazing … and yet, more than ever before, you have.
You’ve created beauty and joy and movement where none existed before, where previously only constriction and paralysis and confusion lived. You have changed the world.
h/t my buddy Steve…
Bright, shiny objects! 
You must be logged in to post a comment.