Tag: Wisdom

Focusing Away From Distractions

Your newsfeed on Facebook. That email you forgot to write. The text message from your ex. The model’s body on the cover of a magazine that you wish you had. The mountain of work stuff that won’t let you visit your parents this weekend. The shiny object over there! All of the aforementioned have something in common and they all serve the same purpose. They’re all distractions and you allow them to keep your focus away from what’s happening right in front of your eyes.

Everyday we allow excuses, complaints and stories to close the portal to the depth of intimacy in our lives. Intimacy, or lack thereof, can show up in every kind of relationship. Why do we use our decoys to keep it out of our space? Because we’re so terrified of being let down, abandoned, forgotten, overseen, discouraged or denied? Yes, we block intimacy on purpose and we’ve conditioned ourselves to do so for as long as we can remember.  If you think you’re being strategic about selecting the kind of intimacy that you let in, get ready for a wake up call. If your wall is up, nothing can get through. The walls we build aren’t made out of Swiss cheese.

The other night I was out to dinner with four of my closest girlfriends. I noticed some things that night that inspired my blog today:

We all had our cell phones on the table instead of in our purses. In the middle of our catching up, one of my friends got a text message. The screen of her smartphone lit up like a beacon in the distance. It caught all of our eyes in the lowly lit setting of the swanky restaurant. She grabbed her phone and became invested in her own little world for a couple minutes while the rest of us continued to chat. The pulling away of her energy from the intimacy of the present moment began a domino effect. Another one of my friends began scrolling through her text conversations… just because.

Another friend started talking about something that her ex boyfriend wrote on his Facebook wall and she couldn’t wait another moment to show it to us. While she waited for her Facebook app on her iPhone to update, my other friend said, “Shoot! I forgot to email my investor!” So she jumped on her phone to send him a quick email. My iPhone sat innocently on the table next to my empty bread plate, but I pushed the button to see if I had missed a text while everyone became invested in their handheld lifelines.

Yep, I missed one from a handsome young man I had lunch with the day before. I began to write back and then looked up at my dinner dates. We were ALL on our phones. “We’re RIDICULOUS! Look at us right now!” I said. We all laughed about it in the moment, but later that night I wondered why that has become even somewhat normal.

We all used shiny objects to take our attention away from being fully connected with each other. To truly be connected and invested with someone can feel risky and uncomfortable. What’s the longest you’ve looked into someone’s eyes? Staring contests end when someone smiles, laughs, looks away or blinks. If this were an easy thing to do, we wouldn’t call it a contest. Looking into the windows of another being’s soul can stir up a lot of stuff on both sides of that looking glass. Since we’re all reflections of each other, connecting with someone on that level also makes us look inside of us. Not only do we block intimacy from others, we also avoid getting truly intimate with ourselves. What you see in the people before you is exactly how you’re showing up to them.

via thedailylove.com
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On blame…

Dilbert.com

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Design your life…

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Love & Hate Can’t Occupy The Same Space…

Love ? I love love love you.
Image by doug88888 via Flickr

You’re either loving or hating – it can’t be both.

No one really understands that love and hate can’t occupy the same space until they experience real love.  Love is love and hate is hate. The two do not mix because, when put next to one another, love will consume the hate. Hence the phrase, “love conquers all.”

When you experience real love you find that you no longer can hate anyone else. What was hate towards others is now replaced with sympathy. You feel sorry for those that you would normally hate because now you understand that they are the way they are because they’ve never experienced real love. This type of love does exist because I have it. It started by loving myself, understanding my purpose and knowing my worth. After that, I was able to love any and everyone else.

Love changes things! Love conquers all!!

via thedailylove.com
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Untangled

 

I thank God for this post from Chris Brogan today — I wanted to be sure to remember it and share it with you, too, in case you don’t follow Chris like I do…

We go about our lives quite tangled up with other people’s lives, whether we want to admit that or not. We carry with us tangles from our past connections, and tangles from worries about future events that haven’t even unfolded yet. These tangles affect our choices and decisions and feelings all the time, if we let them.

Untangled

This has been on my mind for a while, as I’ve been learning to see my own tangled self. I wrote about taking back your strings not too far back, but with the context that we let other people twist us up with their own choices. The more we come to see this, the more we can help ourself get untangled.

Yesterday, I let someone’s tangle frustrate me. (Let’s be honest: every day, we let people’s tangles get in the way.) With great visibility comes no small number of critics, and though I’m learning every day how to let people’s criticisms be their own, I’m still occasionally susceptible to prodding. But why should I care about someone’s opinion of me? That comes from their experiences, their tangles, their view of the situation. I don’t know this person, and yet, I carried around frustration all day, slept, and then woke up thinking about him this morning. How un-useful.

I spoke with someone else yesterday whose choice of spouse caused both sets of grandparents to stop talking with her for over a year (tradition thing). Here she is, happy and in love, and looking forward to starting her new life, and because it didn’t follow the tangles of her culture, her blood relatives chose to cut off connections to her. She didn’t tell me this with sorry, only a sense of the fact that it’s unfortunate, but with a smile on her face for what she did have: a loving husband and a future.

We can’t choose how our relatives feel about us. We can’t choose how our loved ones think about us and react to us. We can’t alter how those people at work speak about us when we’re not there. None of that is ours.

You Own Your Head

What you can do, however, is work on yourself, is accept yourself as you are right now, is start to fuel your own personal inner fire of belief without any external sources. It’s not that you don’t value the thoughts of friends and people you love, but instead, that you accept them as simply that: thoughts and input from the outside world. If every time you speak to a group of people, they yawn and look away, accept that maybe you’re boring them, but don’t take it any further than that. Don’t read minds. Just take that information and decide what you want to do about it.

In the above example, maybe you’re talking to the wrong people about the right stuff. If you’re passionate about dance but you’re talking to a bunch of farmers, maybe that’s not a good fit. (Maybe it is.) But own your head, and don’t let their tangles snarl you.

via chrisbrogan.com

Chris Brogan [who I frequently quote on my business blog] has some great personal insight in this post and I captured quite a bit of it here. You can follow the ‘via’ link if you’ve read this far. His final thought? “accept every thought, opinion, value, and emotion outside of your own as someone else’s tangle, and then try to steer clear of them. Yes, we’d love for the people we love to be happy. But even that isn’t our duty. It’s not our job to make people happy. It’s our job to live in such a way that we hope to positively impact other people’s happiness.” …but first, let’s create our own!!!

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Bear Bryant on quitting…

Bear Bryant
Image via Wikipedia

Here is legendary Coach Bear Bryant’s speech to his Alabama football team before a 1974 game:

“Most of you will live another fifty years or more. I hope it’s seventy, but if it’s fifty that’s still a good life, and what happens today you’ll have to live with the rest of the way. You can’t get it back if you don’t win. It’s sixty minutes and over. The losers are the ones who say, ‘Oh I wish I could play it again.’ You can’t play it again.

Well, you’re not really going to have to play sixty minutes. None of you. The longest play in a game is six and a half seconds. The shortest play is less than two seconds. That’s barely a wink of the eye. You’ll average five seconds a play. Five seconds of total effort, going all out, giving a hundred percent. You oughta be able to hold your hand in a fire that long…”

Good quote. He probably said it before losing to Notre Dame in the 1974 Sugar Bowl, though… ;-)

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10 Things to Consider Before You Let Your Children Quit

Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the Unite...
Image via Wikipedia

Life is difficult. It’s a given! We’re born, we open our eyes, dad misinterprets our cry, mom puts the diaper on too tight, someone else drops our pacifier – and it begins.

But this is how life works. Challenge is built into the equation; learning requires patience; problem solving is a key element to fulfillment; obstacles come our way every day.  World leader Winston Churchill gave a speech at his old school in the darkest days of WW2; he’d had a miserable time there and was considered a failure. He walked to the podium and surveyed the crowd of awe-struck students. “This is the lesson,” he said. “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small – never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense….”

But we also live in this world of entitlement: “’I deserve this.” “I want mine now!” “Children should have everything they want.” “It’s my responsibility to make my kids happy.” “Satisfy me now!”

But, and experience proves this every time, pretty much everything worthwhile comes at the price of investment. It’s not just that the reward is sweeter after the long haul.  It turns out that the process of getting from A to B is intrinsically worthwhile – regardless of the payoff at the end.  The key to success is perseverance.

However, there are times we and our children should quit something.  We do the math and realize the best option is to do something else.  But what are the guidelines?

via allprodad.com

Follow the ‘via’ link if you’re interested in the 10 things to consider…

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Thoughts on ‘margins’…

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Nothing is as it seems…

This is a good reminder for me from Elena Brower…

Nothing is as it seems.

We humans have a tendency to make assumptions without verifying, then wondering why it feels like we cannot move forward. So even if something really seems to be a certain way – whether it’s horrific or perfect – make no assumptions. Make no assumptions about other people. Have no opinion until you make sure it’s true. Ask, verify, find out before you speculate or assume anyone or anything to be a certain way.

In this way, you can ride right down the middle of the situation and be the source of elegance, grace and peace.

Nothing is as it seems.

via vimeo.com

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Re-Label Yourself & Be Self Approved!

fruits labels
Image by masaaki miyara via Flickr

Opinions and labels from others are just that, THEIR opinion and labels. We have been taught that to be happy we must be independent of the other opinion of others. It’s SO liberating to know that our reality and how we see ourselves doesn’t have to be defined by others, but we get to define ourselves. We can re-label ourselves to match who we see ourselves to be, not how others see us. And within that is great freedom! It’s awesome! It’s exciting and it’s LIBERATING!

via thedailylove.com
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10 things scripture says about being a father

Father/Son A and B
Image by heymarchetti via Flickr

There is nothing easy about being a dad. Especially nowadays, if conversations around the water-cooler are anything to go by. Well, we hear your pain. But an honest look at history reveals a—well—comforting familiarity to the foundational premise.

Fact is; dads have been throwing their hands up in the air for literally thousands of years. Fortunately for us this means we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The iPod, maybe. But the wheel, no.

While children were frustrating the dads of yore, the teachers of yore also came up with their own ideas. So we took a look:

“10-Ways to teach your son to fight Romans” didn’t seem PC.

“10-Ways to marry off your daughter before she becomes a teenager” also didn’t work for us.

“10-Ways to plague the Egyptians” wasn’t going to pass muster with the State Department.

The good news, however, is that we did find the following—more appropriate—10 things scripture says about being a father.

via allprodad.com

Follow the ‘via’ link if you’re interested in knowing what Scripture says about Fathering…

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5 Traits of a Good Marriage

Hindu marriage ceremony from a Rajput wedding.
Image via Wikipedia

Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, say in their book, When Bad Things Happen to Good Marriages, that there are 5 traits of a healthy, life-long marriage: ownership, hope, empathy, forgiveness, and commitment. Here is a summary of each of those characteristics.

1. Ownership: Taking Responsibility

Often, couples believe their problems are the result of the other person’s actions.  It’s easy to avoid responsibility for our problems by blaming someone else.  But in the long-haul, admitting mistakes and owning up to our part of the problem is the single most powerful predictor of turning something bad into something good. Couples need to realize that it’s not who’s wrong, but what’s wrong that counts.

2. Hope:  Believing that Good Ultimately Triumphs

The foundation of hope is belief.  We must believe that the kind of marriage we want is possible.  Hope keeps love alive.  Stop hoping and marriage dies.

3. Empathy:  Walking in your Spouse’s Shoes

A spouse must be aware of what their spouse is feeling and what’s behind that feeling.  Empathy involves both the head and the heart. Many of us do one or the other pretty well; we either feel our partner’s pain with our heart, or we try to solve their problem with our head.  To do both can be a challenge.  But that is what empathy is all about.

4. Forgiveness:  Healing the Wounds

In a good marriage, both husbands and wives are quick to ask for forgiveness and to grant forgiveness. The simple words, “I was wrong. Will you please forgive me?” are magical in marriage. Forgiveness was designed to heal the deepest wounds of a human heart.

5. Commitment: Loving for Life

No matter how long a couple has been married, commitment may be the most effective tool good marriages use in battling bad things. Without commitment and the trust it engenders, marriages would have little hope of lasting.

In the face of difficulty, the key is to stay committed to your spouse and work together. Sit down with your spouse tonight and discuss how you are doing in each of these categories.

via markmerrill.com

As the Apostle Paul said “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” I’m struggling with many of these issues right now, trying to do the right thing with my wife despite manipulation from her family. Don’t they realize we have enough drama in our lives without more from their Karpman Drama Triangle?! Apparently not — the problem is that other people are unmanageable and the only thing I can manage is me…

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Accept The Good To Receive It!

“God gives some more than others because some accept more than others.”

“Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.”

via thedailylove.com
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Be strong…

“Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something special in them. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and too noble for anger.”

– Christian D. Larsen, Larsen was a New Thought leader and teacher, as well as a prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books.

via thedailylove.com
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Make it a Habit

"Praying Hands" (study for an Apostl...
Image via Wikipedia

Melody Beattie says…

After I left treatment, praying in the morning became part of my routine. I prayed as though my life depended on it, because it did. I didn’t feel like I had begun my day properly unless I started it with a recovery prayer, asking for God’s help and guidance.

After my son died, I was so angry about his death that I stopped my morning routine. But there came a time when I had to get back to my routine of talking to God. It can be hard to believe that God cares about the details of our lives. It can feel awkward talking to a force we can’t see or hear.

Challenge: For me, the hardest thing about praying is that I drag my heels and balk at the discipline of regular prayer. I need to remind myself that prayer isn’t work, It works.

via melodybeattie.com
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Peace for the Past

An interesting perspective from actress Mena Suvari…

I think one of the keys to life, happiness and success is about learning and always moving forward. We have to learn from the experiences we have, the heartaches we go through and continue to move past them into the light of a new day of opportunity.

Too many times did I lose sight of what was important to me, what really mattered in my life, by staying caught up in what I had suffered from in the past. There’s a certain lack of responsibility that goes along with this, because I somewhat blamed others for the painful experiences I’d had and not given credit to the fact that most often I’d had a choice in the matter. I wasted a lot of energy-I was giving my power away.

I started to then feel the deep need to control as much as I could in my life, thinking that I could work harder to prevent anymore hurt/heartache. I mean, who would want to go through the same painful things again? It wouldn’t be a possibility for me! Yet, ultimately, I realized that life simply doesn’t work like that. I don’t think there’s really ANYthing that we can control. So, again, I found myself giving my power away.

It’s like a stream: water is flowing down continuously and if you throw a rock, a boulder or two, the water will continue to just flow around it. It will always find a way of continuing to move. Such is life. Therefore, I had to continue to move. Move from my thoughts of guilt, my thoughts of painful memories, and my thoughts of control. I needed to be peaceful and move forward.

We are loving beings at our core. We are seamless; we are fluid. We just need to keep connecting with that foundation.

I am FAR from perfect in any way, but I choose each and every day of my life to move forward from the past to create the life I enjoy living. I believe everything happens for a reason and there are only messages/truths to learn that give us the ability to grow stronger and be better people. And therefore, we cannot let our thoughts lie in the past. I believe that whatever we went through, we did the best that we could at that time with the tools we had acquired along the way. It’s only important to ‘keep collecting’ those tools. So that when difficult times arise, we are better prepared and can move forward more quickly.

“No matter where you are in life right now, no matter who you are, no matter how old you are it is never too late to be who you are meant to be.”

via thedailylove.com

*Sigh*…

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GW Bush at Flight 93 Memorial: “Evil Is Real, So Is Courage”

George-W-Bush edit2
Image via Wikipedia

On 9-11, “The most lives lost on American soil on a single day since the Battle of Antietam.”

“One of the lessons of 9-11 is that evil is real and so is courage.”

“At the moment American democracy was under attack our citizens defied their captors by holding a vote. The choice they made would cost them their lives. And they knew it. Many passengers called their loved ones to say good-bye. Then hung up to perform their final act.”

“The Flight 93 heroes led the first counter attack in the WAR ON TERROR.”

“The temptation of isolation is deadly wrong.”

via humanevents.com

See his remarks in their entirety here…

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Never Forget, Choose To Live!

The north tower (1 WTC) of the World Trade Cen...
Image via Wikipedia

Mastin Kipp of The Daily Love shares a healthy perspective on 9/11…

Today is September 11th, 2011. 11 years ago this date had no significance, but on this 10th anniversary of the Twin Towers falling, 9/11 is a date that will live with us for the rest of our lives as a day that changed us, forever.

The events of that day are a reminder to us of what happens when fear, separation, anger and hate manifest in the real world by actions of human beings.

We beings are capable of such greatness, such inspiration and beauty and yet we are also capable of great acts of terror, genocide and worse.

I went back and watched a lot of the footage from that fateful day in September and, now, 10 years later I still cannot fathom the shock, horror and terror that went down that day. All kinds of acts of darkness are perpetrated on a daily basis and have been since the beginning of man, but what happened on 9/11/01 was big, loud and in all our faces. My heart still yearns, still weeps, and still cries out in rage watching the images of those burning towers.

The numbers 9/11 has been associated with human darkness and evil manifest. And while it is beyond appropriate to be wide awake to what happened on that day that we will never forget, I would like to suggest a new meaning.

Many people died on 9/11. People from all walks of life, financial backgrounds, faith systems, race, gender, and sexual orientation died that day. That day, there were no countries; there were no borders; that day we all wept as citizens of the world as we witnessed the events of the day.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have lived in fear ever since. It’s been a subtle fear. I have felt vulnerable and a subtle uneasiness whenever I fly. To know that things like that can happen in real life and not just movies changed my life forever.

But this year I am deciding to step out of fear. Life is for the living. Those who participated in the acts of that day will have won if we continue to live in fear.

Fear is what they wanted from us and fear is what they got. But no more. Not from me. And if you have been living in fear, then I hope not from you either.

Instead of 9/11 being numbers that remind of how so many died, let us honor those that died and let’s make 9/11 remind us of how we are going to live.

Life is short and we don’t know how long we have; 9-1-1 is an emergency number; let us make it an emergency to live our dreams out loud. I would venture to make a bold claim that it is UNPATROTIC to live in fear. Our Founding Fathers are cheering us on as we step back into creating the American Dream and as we peel back the layers of fear that have been placed there for 10 years and reinforced every year since.

We have been given the right to the pursuit of happiness.

We cannot pursue what makes us happy from a place of fear. If we really want to pay back those that brought down the Towers, then let’s get busy living our dreams and shining our Light. Those dark acts cannot hold us back. We must remember the terror of that day, but not dwell on it. We must always remember and honor those that died that fateful Fall day, but not stop our lives in the process.

Life is for the living.

I say that from now on we declare September 11th as a day we will all live free from fear and honor those that died by living FULLY in pursuit of what makes us happy.

This has been the hardest and most emotional blog I have ever written. I am overwhelmed with the weight of the events of that fateful day in September and at the same time I am inspired by the American Spirit to overcome, to persist and to shine when all seems dark. All of the world wept for us that day and they are weeping for us again, today.

Let us never forget what happened. And let us never let those that seek to instill fear into our lives win. Let us LIVE OUTLOUD, let us DECLARE OUR LOVE and let us love one another.

Today, there is no male or female, there are no religious differences, no gay or straight, no race division; today we are all citizens of the world collectively as one honoring those that died by choosing to live.

I am honored to be with you on this day. Let’s make our lives GREAT!

via thedailylove.com

His perspective is much better than mine. Me? I think we’ve forgotten the lessons of 9/11 and that we have the attention span of gnats when it comes to something important like this. What are your thoughts today?

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“I Am Right Dammit! …and by the way.. You’re Wrong!”

Good thoughts on ego and anger from Tommy Rosen…

Ah, the need to be right.  Who hasn’t felt their ego rise up with all the determination in The Uni-verse and say, “I AM RIGHT DAMMIT!” And look out when that happens because that’s the voice of separation. That’s the voice that wants you to believe you are actually unconnected from other people and from the power, which underlies all things. Because of that voice things like fighting, jealousy and wars can take place.  The minute we feel separate from each other, we lose the ability to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and to understand them through compassion and empathy. Without those critical qualities, harmony and peace between people is fleeting at best.

Eckhart Tolle writes:  “The ego has a fear and distrust of others, but not YOU.  You are a spiritual being able to connect to all things.”

Let’s look more closely at how the ego works when we try to be right.

via thedailylove.com

Follow the ‘via’ link above if you’d like more, but you might also enjoy the video clip below…

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Just Be You

Sunrise in bog
Image via Wikipedia

One of the amazing things about life is that every day we get a fresh start. Every day we get the opportunity to learn a new lesson, grow a little more, deepen our connection to life, to each other and to our own spirit.

Sometimes, the desire to expand can cause us to forget that which we already are.  While it is important to continue evolving, learning and growing, being too focused on this can get in the way of our ability to be present and enjoy what we have.

via thedailylove.com
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How To Take Your Power Back From The World!

Love is Fragrant
Image by Fe 108Aums via Flickr

You know, every day we get up and try to “make things happen” – especially with the Western mindset. There is nothing wrong with this per se, but many times we can push ourselves so hard that we are just tired, worn out and feeling empty.

This is not a thriving life.

As we step out further onto The Path, we Seekers are asking for more than just the rat race. We are sick and tired of letting “the economy”, the “stock market”, the “Government”, the “Media” and all other kinds of things “out there” determine how we feel. None of these things are bad. But the way they are going has a lot of us asking, “There HAS to be a another way, right?”

Yes, the reality is, our global economy is in a certain state right now that doesn’t promote the perception of widespread abundance. Yes, the stock market is up and down and all over the place. Yes, it feels like many folks in the Government are fighting just to fight instead of having our best interest in mind. Yes, the Media seems to be full of all kinds of negative things to say about the world.

But what of it?

Everything that is happening in the world today is a reflection of our collective inner state of being. We are not victims to these things or anything “out there”. And problems “out there” cannot be initially solved “out there”, but “in here”. Which means that rules, laws, regulations and more policies cannot change the world. The only thing that can change the world is each and every one of us waking up and changing ourselves.

It’s so easy to get caught in the outward drama of the world, because it helps us stay distracted from ourselves. But, it is ourselves, far more than the world, which we must change.

via thedailylove.com

Follow the ‘via’ link above if you’d like the rest of Mastin Kipp’s perspective…

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