“It takes courage to really live. It takes courage to really live with your heart, body, mind and soul wide open. You can live your life by taking from the world. Or you can realize no matter what you take you cannot take any of it with you. Then you wake up to what you are here to give and who you are becoming in the process of life itself. When you die. No iphone. No ipad. No Gucci. No Mercedes. No big house. Just you. Who are you becoming?” Source: All Of Us Die, Few Of Us Truly Live, Will You Be One Of The Few?
Please go to the source and read the rest of his perspective and don’t forget to watch his video…
Sorry, but I couldn’t help but share this excerpt, too…
“There is a reservoir of riches within you. The more you tap into the riches inside, the more you are free and the more truly powerful you become. At some point you might fulfill every desire you can imagine. But then you will surely reach a point of dissatisfaction. How many cars can you drive? How much food can you eat? How much sex can you have? How many outfits can you wear? The moment you hit a point of dissatisfaction is the beginning of growth. You have outgrown old things that you thought brought you fulfillment. If material things were going to make you happy then we would be the happiest generation in human history. True riches are not material. You can have everything, yet still be poor inside. You are poor when you are not growing. You are poor when you cannot give or receive love. You are poor when you cannot see your own beauty. You are poor when you are dependent on external things to validate you. You are poor when you are stuck in narcissism. You are poor when you waste your time on petty resentments and gossip. You are poor when live in fear. You are poor when you live in the future and miss the beauty of this moment. At some point in life, beyond theory, you realize that you will die. Accept it. Face it. Embrace it. Then you ask yourself. “If I am going to die and I don’t know when, then how am I going to truly live my life in a way that is meaningful, now?”” Source: All Of Us Die, Few Of Us Truly Live, Will You Be One Of The Few?
I met an interesting guy named Jon Swanson via his blog yesterday through a link shared in Google Reader by Chris Brogan. Jon said…
I asked a bunch of my friends to answer some questions about how they looked at the Bible.
You, in fact.
It wasn’t a Bible knowledge test, the kind that students at a Bible college take. I taught at one years ago, as a communication prof, not a Bible prof. All the students coming in had to take a Bible test, a knowledge test. It determined whether they could skip the Bible survey courses that were part of the requirements. If you knew enough Bible facts, you didn’t have to take a semester of Old Testament survey and a semester of New Testament survey. Which meant that those courses were also about Bible facts.
My questions were about how often people looked at the Bible, what metaphors they had for what the Bible is, what questions they have. And I discovered as I read their responses that these friends, these people who show up regularly to read what I write about at 300wordsaday.com, all look at the Bible differently. Which is to be expected, on one hand. But is challenging for me as I write five days a week about following Jesus.
I mean, when I refer to the Bible as I write, what does that mean to you as you read?
Keen insite this morning from Mastin Kipp of The Daily Love…
Many times in relationships we love to blame the other person.
We like to blame them for not loving us the way we want to be loved, or for not making us enough of a priority, or for being too stubborn and on and on.
Then we start giving names to the way we interpret others actions. So instead of saying: “Hey, I’d really appreciate it if you let me figure it out on my own,” or “The way I really feel loved is when you (fill in the blank)”. When we are lacking, we say: “You’re a jerk”, or assume that they don’t love us.
So instead of expressing how we feel, we blame, judge and then convict the other person of being guilty. Then we project our verdict onto them and wonder why they react negatively and then use that negative reaction as further proof that our verdict was in fact, correct.
Instead of blaming and judging, if we can open up, become vulnerable and EXPRESS our feelings and needs, we give the other person an opportunity to course correct and with this new information.
And, if over time we are expressing our needs and feelings and they aren’t being seen, have the courage to pick up our things and leave. That’s the Master’s path – vulnerability and courage.
It might seem scary, but showing emotion and expressing your needs is how you build intimacy. And having high standards and the courage to maintain them is how you make sure that only the best kind of relationships remains in your life.
It’s the mark of a Master to no longer blame the other person, but instead to see the other person as a mirror of his or her own life. It’s the mark of a Master to share his or her feelings, rather than blaming someone else for not meeting the needs that were never expressed in the first place. It’s the mark of a Master who is strong enough to walk away from a broken and unfulfilled kind of love if his or her needs and emotions aren’t being seen. It’s the mark of a Master to be able to also meet the needs of their partner.
When you see the current relationships of your life as not a victim, but as a mirror of your own life, you can begin to take empowered action.
So, you say you want love, yes?
Then whatcha gonna do today? Blame them? Or express yourself and set loving boundaries?
Do you want to keep going round in the dramatic circle of blame or do you want to step into the loving flow of vulnerable expression?
Here’s a perspective from Chris Assaad I found interesting…
“Most people have a very negative association with the word “failure”. That one little word carries so much weight in our minds and it tends be loaded with so much meaning and negative energy. I call it the other F-word. Well, I’m going to come right out and say it: I’m a failure. There, I said it.
What many of us often forget or don’t realize is that the road to success is paved with many failures. What tends to happen to many of us is that somewhere along the way, we fail and we decide that we’re not going to get where we’re going so we give up. The irony of it is that what actually stops us from succeeding or reaching our goals is not failure itself, it’s how we respond to failure. It’s how we interpret our failures and what we make them mean. Things like: “I’m not good enough, I can’t do it, I’ll never be able to do X, Y or Z, I don’t deserve to have my dreams come true, to be in a loving relationship, to be successful…blah, blah, blah.” Sound familiar? Maybe not, because the voice that says these things is very sneaky. It shows up at our weakest moments and kicks us while we’re down or even worse still, it speaks up when we are so close to the finish line and tries to convince us to give up on a goal we’ve been working towards for so long.
Why is that? Well, it’s very simple. Many of us learned this distorted perception of failure at a young age and have carried it forward into our adult lives. We may have failed a test in school and were traumatized by the associated stigma. We may have liked someone in our adolescent years only to get our heart broken and decided never to express our feelings again. The examples are endless but the pattern is the same. We fail at something and we take that failure as conclusive evidence that we’re not worthy or capable of the thing we’re after, that it’s not going to happen and so we might as well give up. Right? Wrong! Continue reading “The ‘truth’ about failure…”→
When you are in the midst of a situation itself, it can be excruciatingly painful. But I want you to also remember that sometimes the real reason you are going through the experience often gets revealed later on and isn’t so apparent at first. We often only see our experiences through a certain perspective. We only see part of the picture. Our view point is somewhat limited.What can often seem like something terrible today could turn out to be something amazing tomorrow. However, we only see this once we have come through it.It’s then we realize that it could not have been any different. Life needed to be the way it was. The situation although challenging forced you to grow, and become more of who you really are. The challenging situation was the necessary fire to give birth to the diamond you ultimately are. The challenging situation led you in a new direction, and opened up new opportunities and meeting new people that you otherwise would not have. Often what you think something is actually isn’t and what you think isn’t, in reality, is. Don’t be so sure that you know why something is actually going on in your life at that moment. Your biggest breakdowns can be your biggest breakthroughs. They can teach you the most about what is real, who you are, and what is truly important in your life. They can cause you to let go of everything that is inauthentic and serve as a wake up call. They can end up leading you to your soulmate, or your dream career. You just never know. So when things happen that you don’t understand, develop a curiosity about it, rather than being too quick to make up a meaning that causes misery or keeps you disempowered…”
“One of the keys to real leadership is fearlessly inviting those around you to be more successful in their lives; to view their success as your success, and your success as theirs. David Fischer, a longtime colleague of Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, says of Sheryl’s true leadership throughout her career, “A key part of what Sheryl does in her life is helping people advance, helping them to be seen and to be heard.” Echoing that sentiment, Seane Corn, Founder of Off the Mat Into the World, concurs. “Leadership means pulling people up with you as you rise.” May we all challenge ourselves to be perfectly willing to encourage others in the direction of their own success, so everyone thrives. Abundance.”
Editor’s note: I wrote this post 15 years ago for father’s day and I thought it was perfect. He passed away a couple of days ago and in rereading, I realized there were a few important things that I had left out — namely, the last three points I added at the end of the post…
The original German version of the Schiller quote…
…and every day I am reminded that ‘I am my father’s son’. As I get older, I am more and more aware of the positive impact he has had on my life…
Recently, I attended Mass with my parents and there he was again — reading the Epistle at Church [photo above]. It gave me pause to think about his influence on my life. Here are just a few of the many of the things he taught me:
A Lohenry’s place is at the front of the room.
I don’t mean this in a vain way. In a world where most people would rather die or have a root canal than speak in public (Seinfeld reference), my dad modeled public speaking as a way of life for me. My earliest public memories of him are like this — reading at church, leading the worship team, etc. Because of his example, I became a consultant, a teacher and a public speaker who thrives on being in the front of the room. I am my father’s son…
It’s ok to have a big vocabulary — words have meaning and it’s good to know what those meanings are and be able to use them effectively.
I remember sitting around the dinner table and my father would bring up a ‘word of the day’ — some new word that had interested him recently. Sometimes, it would be a joke with a fractured pun with a punchline like ‘people who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones’. He passed on a love of language and wordplay that has become my passion and my craft. In my academic career, I studied German, French, Russian, Croatian, Norwegian and Italian and my mastery of English vocabulary is well-known — I can only trace this love of language and communication to his influence. I am my father’s son…
Technology is fun and awesomely powerful.
When I was in college, I was a German major and my father was a systems analyst working with mainframe computers in the ‘glass house’. Every time I wanted to understand more about his passion, he’d sit down and start drawing diagrams to explain computers at the machine level and it would go nowhere. Later still, I used one of my electives to take a FORTRAN programming class back in the day of punch cards and mainframes because I wanted to better understand his world. I gave him the final project for that class on Father’s Day 31 years ago and told him ‘I don’t ever want to have anything to do with computers ever again’. Well, it would seem that he had the last laugh on that one! These days, among other things I am a website developer and I just launched his new site yesterday. The business blogging that I do is the perfect marriage of communication and technology — again, I am my father’s son…
Adoption is a loving option.
My father met and married my mom and me when I was around three years old and he adopted me at the age of five. There was nothing in his life that prepared him for this situation but he stepped up to the challenge. I still remember going before the judge and having him ask if I wanted this man to be my father. I don’t know if it would’ve made much difference if I said no but I do know that saying yes has made all the difference in my life. Not only did my yes open the door to a lifelong relationship with a man who always did his best to be a dad but later in life when I fell in love with a beautiful single-parent much like my mom I did not think twice about whether I could adopt her son. We have formed a family of eight people who would not exist without his example. I am my father’s son…
Here are the three things I left out of the original post…
Readers are leaders.
In the early days, my dad read to me much more often than did my mother. My favorites? If I Ran the Circus by Dr. Seuss and T. S. Eliott’s ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ and in particular Macavity: the Mystery Cat.
Later on, when he had his first traumatic brain injury, I read those books back to him in the intensive care unit to test his faculties.
My parents read a lot of political thrillers like Exodus by Leon Uris. I would pick up the books when they finished them and I read way over my head but I learned an awful lot about the world from them. I am my father’s son…
Music is life.
I spent a great deal of time when I was younger sitting around the hi-fi with my dad. I don’t know where he picked up his love of music, but he was the one who passed it on to me. His favorite genre was jazz and ironically, modern jazz might be my least favorite but every now and again, I will listen to a little Dave Brubeck Time Out when I want to feel close to him again…
I still remember riding around in the car with him while he was listening to FM Jazz and tapping to the beat with his wedding ring on the roof of the car. I couldn’t wait until I got a ring and my arm was long enough to tap on the roof. I am my father’s son…
Sometimes you have to laugh.
It makes me sad to hear about the fall of Bill Cosby because when I was young, my dad really loved his sense of humor along with Bob Newhart and Vaughn Meader. We spent hours around the Hi-Fi listening to Bill Cosby’s classic take on Noah and the Ark and once in awhile, there was an appropriate time to say “Voompa, voompa, voompa” and laugh hysterically…
Vaughn Meader you say? He was a comedian who made a great living spoofing the Kennedy family. Unfortunately, his career came to an abrupt end on November 22, 1963.
Hanging with him gave me a great appreciation for good humor which I still have today. I am my father’s son…
Finally, real men cry.
That’s all, real men cry and it gives me great pleasure to know that he’s crying as he reads this just as I am crying while I write it…
I could go on and I will at some point I’m sure, but as I reread this before clicking the publish button, I’m reminded of the song ‘Leader of the Band’ — perhaps one of the world’s greatest musical testimonies to fatherhood…
The leader of the band is tired And his eyes are growing old But his blood runs through My instrument And his song is in my soul — My life has been a poor attempt To imitate the man I’m just a living legacy To the leader of the band.
I may not play guitar like Dan Fogelberg, but my ‘instrument’ is my words — spoken and written — combined with my computer skills. ‘I’m just a living legacy’ and I AM my father’s son…
Bright, shiny objects! 
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