Fashion

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.
Quentin Crisp

I have heard that the thing that really seperates humans from the apes is their love of teaching others. We learn a lot from each other. We are constantly teaching each other new things. But we get into trouble when we try to teach other people who they are, and more importantly who they should be. Our first mistake is to categorize and seperate different groups of people. Then we judge them according to some standard we have about who people should be and then make it clear whether they pass the test. Prejudices can arise very fast. But if we don't really understand who we are, how can we tell other people who they are?

Fashion is just a way of fitting into a certain group. Different groups adopt different fashions as a way of making themselves stand out from other groups. When we moved to a new state and my daughter went to a new high school, she was effectively cast out because she didn't wear the same brand of clothes as her classmates. She had to run out and buy a whole new wardrobe. She had to look like everyone else in order to belong in her peer group.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are. It is people who are searching for an identity that grab onto the first one that is shown them. The fact that everyone around you is doing something makes it seem a good thing for you to do, even if it isn't. A clear example of this is street gangs. People who join street gangs are people who are lost emotionally and searching for something, a fashion, they can belong to.

If you really knew who you were, and all of your unique strengths and weaknesses, why would you want to be like all the others. You would be celebrating your originality. When you blindly follow fashion you lose your individuality. You become just like them. You exchange not knowing who you are for thinking you are someone you are not. But you still don't know who you really are. And now you no longer even think about it. After all, it is easier just to let others tell you who they think you are.

Discovery

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin

How much do you think you know? Most of what we think we know has been told to us by other people. Perhaps we have read it in a book or seen it on TV, or simply talked about it over coffee. We have taken what they said and compared it to what we already know. The process of communication is very imperfect. First of all we can misunderstand what they said. And then we see what we think they said framed in the biases we already have. And then we pass on this mistake to the next person we talk to.

So we think we know a lot. There is an abundance of information floating around us. But how much of it is true? And even if it is true for someone else, it may not be true for us. The only way we can really find out whether our information is right for us is to test it out and see if things really happen the way they were supposed to. If we don't have the time or resources to test it out, we end up comparing it with what we already think we know and seeing if it is consistent with that. This is where we get into trouble because that process narrows our range of vision.

This illusion of knowledge is the greatest obstacle to discovery. If we think we already know it all, then what incentive is there for us to learn? And since the world is always changing, if we don't learn and adapt we will not be able to cope with what is coming. Ignorance is actually a good thing because it motivates us to ask questions. And when we start asking questions, we discover endless surprises, not just about our world, but about ourselves too. And that makes life much more fun.

Ideas

The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.
Dwight Eisenhower

So many of us, deep down, want the world to stay the same as it is. Sometimes we love certain things and wish that they would always be there. Sometimes we are afraid that if the world changed, it would change for the worse. And then stay that way. We often forget that if the world changed, it might very well change into something that works out better for us. And we forget that the world is constantly changing; that change is inevitable and it's only a matter of time. Whether we love something, or hate something, it is not going to be around us very long.

As the world changes, so do our needs and priorities. We constantly have to reinvent ourselves to keep up with our surroundings. Some days we need more and some days we need less. Some days we need more encouragement and some days we need more food. Some days all we can think about is how to survive the day, and some days we are busy thinking about what fancy new toy we want to buy. All of this makes life more interesting and challenging. And it is all meant to teach us lessons about ourselves.

But with all these changes, ideas that were practical and useful at one time will not always be that way. It is those people who come up with fresh new ideas, and who continually adapt their thinking to the changes they search for and see just around the corner, who are the most successful. Just as it is essential to continually be learning new things, it is also essential to continually be open to new ideas; even if those new ideas are so radical that they sound silly at first. Of course, you need to do your homework, since many new ideas really are as impractical as they sound, but never reject then out of hand. Mixed in with all the rocks, you just might discover a pearl.

Children

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
Albert Einstein

There probably isn't one of us who doesn't wish that they could be a child again. I think that is partly because children are carefree because they have someone to look after all their needs but I think that mostly it is because children still find the world an exciting place. Those of us who are lucky enough to be around small children invariably find them enchanting no matter how much work they entail. The reason for this is that small children see their world as wondrous, and we have forgotten how to do this.

Slowly but consistently over the years we have been taught to disregard what we experience and learn the facts that other people think are important. We are taught to do what other people think we should do (in order to please themselves, not us). Our world becomes that of other people, of society's expectations, and their perceptions become more important than our own. We become adult and the world is no longer a fun place. Because it is no longer our own world. It is theirs.

But it doesn't have to be like that. Those people who pursue truth and beauty (the artists and the scientists) can remain children all their lives. And we all have the artist and the scientist in ourselves if we will search for it, and when we find it nurture it. We can make time in our lives to play, to pursue truth and beauty, and have fun. Watching TV isn't fun. Make your downtime count, do something special. Go outside and study the leaves on the trees, or the bugs on the sidewalk. Create your own art or visit an art museum and admire someone else's. Do whatever you need to do to connect with your inner child. Your life will be much more enjoyable.

Choices

“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”
Denis Waitley

We always have choices. The problem that most of us run into is that we don’t know what our choices really are. Sometimes we aren’t aware that we have any choice. Sometimes we feel like a situation is hopeless. Sometimes we feel like we just don’t know what to do about a situation. We feel like things are out of our control, that they are controled by someone else. And then we tend to complain and blame the other person for creating a situation that we don’t want. But even if we can’t change the situation, we can always choose what we are going to do about it.

We can choose to accept conditions as they exist. This is much easier if we beleive that God really has our best interests at heart and maybe there is a good reason that things are this way that we just can’t see yet. We need to beleive that every cloud has a silver lining, and if we just wait patiently that silver lining will eventually show itself. “The darkest hour is just before dawn”.

We can choose to accept the responsibility of changing things. If we don’t like the situation, we need to tell the right people that, if the situation really is due to someone else’s decisions and under someone else’s control. Or, if it is possible, we can personally take action to make things better, even if it is difficult and other people don’t like what we are doing. Taking action is the best antidote for worry and even fear that there is. The more action we can take, the more empowered we can feel. And, of course, the more empowered we feel, the more successful we can be. But our response is always our choice.

Trouble

It is the trouble that never comes that causes the loss of sleep.
Chas. Austin Bates

Lack of sleep is epidemic in North America and probably the rest of the world too. Part of the problem are people who stay up too late but I am quite sure I am not the only person who doesn't sleep enough because they don't stay asleep at night, or toss and turn for a long time before they can get to sleep. How often is it that you can't sleep because you are worrying about what will happen tomorrow. My guess would be very frequently.

But how many of the things you toss and turn at night worrying about actually come to pass? And has your tossing and turning about them made them any easier to deal with? Probably not since it is very difficult to think clearly when you are tired; quite aside from the fact that focusing on the problem itself does not lead to solutions. The truth is that worrying about what may happen in the future is just a waste of time. We will never know what will happen in the future. But whatever happens, we will be able to deal with it, if we have had enough sleep.

When trouble does come, when we are staring it in the face, it is then we gain the energy and wisdom to deal with it. I think even in the last few weeks there was a story about a man who lifted a car off of his young daughter. We are given strength we never knew we had. And we are given wisdom too. We don't wait around to gather courage because we know we have to act immediately or all is lost. Fear flys out the window in the face of emergency. We do what we need to do, and the trouble is over with.

So there is no need to lose sleep worrying about what might happen in the future. It would be a lot better for you, the next time you can't get to sleep, to imagine what you want to happen, instead of what you fear will happen. It will feel better, probably send you to sleep faster, and will help create a better future for you too.

What are you doing for others?

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?
Martin Luther King, Jr.

What are you doing for others? The first question that comes to my mind is which others. Family often takes precedence. Anyone who is raising children conscientously is doing so much for them that they perhaps don't have much time to think about strangers. And that's okay. It would be the same if you had a disabled or very sick person in your family. Your family are the people you are closest to and you know the best so it is natural to want to take care of their needs first.

The next comment many people make is "But I can't keep on giving and giving and never receiving anything. At some point, my well will run dry if it is not being replenished." I have thought that way myself. It is true that yes we often don't receive anything back from the person we are giving to, and that can feel frustrating. And some people just demand your help instead of asking for it, and that can be really annoying too. But if we are giving to someone else, we will receive something from someone, even if it is someone entirely unrelated to the person we are giving to. That is the law, the way the world works.

So what are you doing for others? It doesn't have to be giving them money if you don't have any. You need to determine what you have to offer others, and then who needs those things. If you don't have any money, perhaps you could volunteer your time and energy. Even just smiling at someone who doesn't get many smiles, or listening to his story, might be a great thing to give. But the more you give to others, the better you will feel, the better they will feel, and it has been shown that even witnesses will feel better. Everyone wins. And that is what real success is all about.

The Secret

he secret is developing away from a conciousness that gets what it wants to a consciousness that wants what it gets.
Jagdish Parikh

It is your ego that is the conciousness that gets what it wants. Your ego is constantly wanting new things in an effort to make you feel more important or powerful. It is a useful question to ask ourselves what is the real reason that we want some thing. Typically it is because we beleive that that thing will make us more important or powerful, and therefore happier. But the truth is that no particular thing can make us happy. Real happiness comes from inside us. It comes from an attitude, not any particular thing.

Real happiness comes from wanting what you get. If you only wanted what you had, you could never be discouraged or disappointed; and if you wanted everything you had without exception, you could never be sad or anxious or fearful. Thing how nice that would be! But when we are in a state of pain or poverty or hunger, it is very difficult to want what we have. In order to really want those things, we have to truly understand that the pain or poverty is meant to teach us something; to help us learn and grow and evolve. "Every cloud has a silver lining" if we will only stop to look for it instead of just wishing the whole cloud would go away.

So the secret of success is being happy with what you have already got; and being able to see the blessings all around you. But that doesn't mean you need to be perfectly content with what you have and never want more. There is a balance between having a burning desire for something and having a desire that hurts you. We are meant to always be wanting more. But when we approach our desire from a veiwpoint that doesn't expect this particular thing to make us happy (because we are already happy) or build our picture of who we are (or feel we should be); but is something we expect to get because we feel worthy and capable of it, then we will have found the secret to real success.

Imitator

"The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity"
Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the United States at least, Halloween is a huge holiday, at least as popular with adults as it is with children. And as far as I can tell, what everyone enjoys about Halloween perhaps more than anything else is the chance to dress up as someone else. How many of us have not felt the desire, at some time in our lives, to have been somebody else. We wish we were Susan because of her popularity, or Joe because of his luxurious vacations. We wish we were John because of his job, or Betty because of her well-behaved children. We wish we were Michael because of his fame.

We don't really want to be John; we simply want his job. But we often don't see it that way. In our minds, we blur the distinction between John and his job. We zoom in on some aspect of another person life and wish we had it, but we conveniently forget that it is only one aspect of their life. Maybe John does have a fantastic job but he might also have a terrible marriage, or a mentally ill brother.

We don't really want to be someone else and deep in our hearts we know that. We want to have our own lives, perhaps with a job like John's as part of it. "The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity". The biggest problem with wanting to be like someone else is that you have restricted your possibilities. You can only have a job like his. But maybe his job isn't right for your personality, or entails more hours than you are willing to work, or doesn't make as much money as you could make if you did something more suited to your unique talents.

There are probably many people you look up to and admire. But if you were exactly like them you would never be able to reach your full potential. You would not be growing through learning about yourself because you would be too busy focusing on them. You would not be exersising and growing your own unique talents, but theirs. You would not be contributing to the world what you alone were meant to contribute. You simply would not be as successful as you could be.

Tomorrow

The poor, the unsuccessful, the unhappy, the unhealthy are the ones who use the word tomorrow the most.
Robert Kiyosaki

How often do you think about tomorrow? Do you think about tomorrow as being better or worse than today? Perhaps the worst thing you can do is to create an unconsious conflict within yourself between your here and now, where you don't want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be; a state of mind in which you don't want what you've got, and you want what you haven't got. Whenever you have a mental conflict like that, you have a problem.

To a person who is emotionally healthy, there is no false seperation between the past, the present, and the future. All that matters is what he wants and what is going on around him right here and now that he can utilize to move towards what he wants. He knows that success is a journey instead of a destination, and life is intended to be for the purpose of enjoying the ride. He knows that no matter what his circumstances are, no matter what happens to him, there is much to be grateful for right now; it is only right now that he can think, feel, and act towards what he wants.

The poor, the unsuccessful, the unhappy, the unhealthy are the ones who use the word tomorrow the most. It is they who believe that they have no control over the future, and so they vainly hope that something good is going to happen independantly of anything they think, feel, or do. It is they who see tomorrow as seperate from today so that nothing they do today can influence it. It is they who are victims of circumstance. But you know better. You know that the most empowering place you can be is right now. There is no tomorrow.

Confidence

Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.
Earl Gray Stevens

Deep down inside us, we know we don't have all the answers. Just like a person who has been humiliated, we boast to everyone else that we know it all in a desperate attempt to make ourselves seem good enough, and to impress our neighbors. We want to measure up to the Jones's and we don't know that the Jones's don't have any more answers than we do. We judge other people by what they say, but what other people say isn't necessarily the truth about themselves even when they beleive that it is.

Nobody knows everything, and nobody, except God, ever can. There are always events in our lives that we didn't expect and don't know what to do with them. It is part of being human to wish we were better than we are. It is also part of being human to ask questions; to want to understand the meaning of life and how the world around us works. There are endless things to learn. But we can't learn if we don't ask the right questions, even questions about why we aren't learning. And unless we are learning, we can't gain confidence in ourselves that we will be able to handle new experiences.

So many times people miss out on valuable lessons because they are too embarrassed to ask questions; they think others will laugh at them if they don't know all the answers. Don't let this happen to you. In order to grow at a person you must be open to first examining and then asking questions about all those things you are ashamed of or embarrassed about; especially the most important question of all "Why?". In order to learn, we must know what to ask, but also who to ask, for the information we need; and that in itself is often something that demands asking questions of yourself. Be open to all the questions, because nobody will ever know all the answers.

Teachers

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.”
Kahlil Gibran

We have learned over the years to focus on how much we want to get rid of anything that seems to interfere with us getting what we want. We are very much aware of what we don’t want. Most of us, when asked to describe a person, can make a long list of all their faults but a very small one of their virtues. We want them to get rid of their faults, instead of to develop their strengths. We focus on wanting to end all wars, instead of on how to develop peace.

But there is a reason that sometimes bad things happen. They are meant to teach us a lesson but we very rarely learn from them. Often we just see them as some sort of punishment from God or as what we “deserve” somehow. Sometimes we see them as proof that God doesn’t really care about us. But that is all wrong. God sends us these events precisely because God cares about us a great deal.

Those negative events are meant to teach us to really appreciate the positive ones. People who know no unkindness have no appreciation for kindness. People who know no intolerance have no appreciation for tolerance. And even more than that, those negative events encourage us to become more resourceful and less fearful. They are meant to teach us how to cope with things that are not what we want.

So those negative events are very valuable to you. Instead of being afraid of them, be grateful for them. You will never appreciate, and therefore enjoy, what is desirable in your life unless you have had a taste of it’s opposite. You will never be motivated to strive for peace until you have experienced war. And you will never be motivated to become successful unleass you have tasted failure.

Small Jobs

Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.”
Albert Schweitzer

Many times, those of us who have taken the time to formulate clear, well-defined goals make the mistake of focusing entirely on the end result. The problem with that is that it will undoubtedly take time and many mistakes and possibly failures until you get to the end result. You need to have stepping stones to get there, short-term goals that are easier to devise an action plan for so that you can get started and keep moving. Often reaching that first objective is more exciting than reaching your final goal because you have discovered that your actions actually do pay off.

The most important foundation for success is self-confidence. And if you focus completely on your end result, you may start to feel like you may not be able to get all the way there and then give up and not get started. But if you focus on a seemingly reachable objective, and get started, you will start having small successes if you give your best to the small jobs that are on your action plan. And “nothing succeeds like success”. The more successes you have, the more your self-confidence rises, and the more action you will take, which will bring even bigger successes.

Every time you conquer a job, no matter how small and trivial it seems, it makes you that much stronger. It makes you feel like a success. It gives you the courage to attempt something greater next time. And if you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves. Before you know where you are, you will have indeed reached your end goal.

Mistake

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. - Elbert Hubbard

How often we dread the possibility that we will make a mistake. Some people dread this because they assume that if they ever make a mistake they will be laughed at and ridiculed. Some people dread this because they assume that if they ever make a mistake, it will mean that they have failed, which means that they are a failure. We learn at a very young age that if you make a mistake there will be some kind of punishment, either from an authority figure or your peers. Few people tolerate a mistake, whether it is their own or someone else's.

We all assume that mistakes are inevitable, and we typically fear the consequences. This is a major reason why we don't start a project in the first place, why we procrastinate until we think that we have absolutely every base covered (and by then it is usually too late). But mistakes are not inevitable, although they are likely, and we don't have to fear their consequences. All mistakes do is tell us that we need to try something else next time. They are meant for our benefit, but we are so afraid of them that we fail to take advantage of them.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. Imagine what you would attempt if you were not afraid of making a mistake! See how much your fear of making mistakes is holding you back. Once you understand that mistakes happen for your own benefit, to help you succeed, if you will just learn their lessons, there is no stopping you.

Riches

My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.
Brotherton, J

When we think of a rich person, we think of someone who has lots of possessions; a mansion, fancy cars etc. We think of a person who has all the things that we want but have always seen as out of our grasp. We define ourselves as not rich because we don't yet have everything we want. We think that when I have ... then I will be rich. But our very definition of rich may be off. Maybe being rich is not about how many things you have. When it comes down to it, the only one who cares how many things you have is your ego. And your ego is never satisfied, so you will never feel truly rich if you define being rich as having everything you want.

One could say that a rich person is someone who does not want many things. This is a person who appreciates all the blessings he already has. He knows that he is rich right now, not if and when he gets something he wants. He is satisfied right now, because he is not letting his ego run the show.
Yes, he does want a few more things, but they are not what will make him happy, because he is already happy. And the truth is that the only real definition of rich is how happy a person is.

We all know of cases when I person is very rich yet miserable, and that often what we would consider a poor person is very happy. It is not the extent of our possessions that make us truly rich because it is not the extent of our possessions that make us truly happy. The key to being happy is to appreciate, and utilize, all the blessings that we already possess. A thankful person is a happy person, and therefore truly rich.

Believe

“Whatever you want in life, other people are going to want it too. Believe in yourself enough to accept the idea that you have an equal right to it
Diane Sawyer

There is a lot of competition in life. Some people thrive on it, and others are scared of it. But we all want the good stuff. Most of all, we all want to know that we are better than someone else. Our ego really thrives on winning, on being the best. Winning is it’s lifeblood. But the problem with competition, of course, is that only one person can win. Everyone else “loses”. That’s why some people are so scared of it. They see themselves as losers. They lack to confidence to try again.

They don’t think they deserve to win. They think that they don’t have enough talent to be as good as their competitors. They feel that they will never be better than them. They remember all the times that they have lost in the past, and assume that will continue. They have no confidence in themselves. They don’t have faith in their abilities. They don’t even see themselves as worthy of having the prize.

In order to be a winner, it is essential that you beleive in yourself and in your abilities. You need to beleive that you deserve success and that you can do whatever it takes to acheive that. You need to beleive that you have just as much of a right to those things you desire as anyone else does. You need to beleive that your talent is, or can be, just as great as any of your competitors. You need to beleive that you are just as deserving as they are. You must beleive that all people are created equal in the sense that they all are worthy and deserving of having everything they desire.

Obstacles

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin–real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.– Alfred D. Souza

Are you waiting for life to begin? A life that you can finally relax and enjoy? We tend to beleive that “When … happens I will be happy”. Most of us spend our whole life trying to figure out what must happen before we will be happy. Our milestones come and go and yet we still don’t feel happy. We always find that something else needs to be taken care of, more unfinished business. We decide that we will be happy when that has been taken care of and the next problem is solved. And the cycle continues.

It seems that no matter what we do, there is always some problem still to be solved, some action still to be taken, some unfinished business. We never get everything sorted out so that we can finally relax and be happy. It just doesn’t work out that way. We are designed to be growth seeking beings, and in order to grow we must continue to solve problems and take actions to work things out. Obstacles are an essential part of life. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t be happy.

A truly happy person knows that obstacles are a part of life that is there for his benefit. He just learns to take them in stride. He expects and plans for them, and knows that there is always an opportunity in them if he will just look closely enough. He doesn’t let obstacles steal his happiness. He acknowledges and accepts that there will always be obstacles, and even times of challenge and suffering, and he also knows that by staying true to who he is he will not just endure but thrive.

Responsible

“I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.”
Walter Anderson

We all wish we could somehow prevent anything bad from happening. We want a guarantee that we will be happy because we will have circumstances that please us. But that’s not the way the world works. God can’t please everyone all the time. Sometimes people have conflicting desires, and giving one person the circumstances they want would make the other person unhappy with their circumstances. Sometimes things have to happen that please nobody, such as this recession.

What is really important is not what happens to you but how you react to it. You always have a choice whether to make the best of the circumstances you find yourself in, or the worst. You always have a choice of complaining and blaming, or of doing something to improve the situation. You always have a choice of how you see the situation, as God punishing you or as just something that happened. You always have a choice as to whether to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of your loss, or to rise from the pain and treasure life itself.

Joy comes from knowing that you can deal with whatever life gives you, not from always having the circumstances you want. Character comes from coping with bad things, not from never having anything bad to cope with. A better quality of life comes from being empowered to deal with whatever circumstances you find yourself surrounded by.

Doubts and Fears

Don't waste your life in doubts and fears: spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

How often do we worry about the future? And when we are not worrying about it, we are busy trying to guess what it holds in store for us. We are worried that we won't get what we want, or that some unfortunate surprise will happen. Some of us even worry about the world coming to an end! But all this worrying is completely useless. It isn't going to change the future; especially when we don't even know what the future will hold in store for us

Sometimes we are afraid that we will continue in the future all the mistakes we have made in the past. This is a valid concern, but assumes that we don't have the capacity to change our behavior. And indeed, we probably won't change our behavior; unless we forget about the future, and about the past, and concentrate on what is going on around us right now. Now is the only time we can change our behavior for the better.

We can only act on what is going on right now. The past is over with and the future is unknown. The only way we can influence the future at all is by taking the right actions in the present moment. And we can only take the right actions if we are aware about what actually is going on around us at the present moment. If you want to prepare for the future, and to create a future you love, you must focus not on the future, not on the past, but on the present moment. If you focus on what you want most for the future and do what needs doing right now, that future will fall into place.

Anger

Anger is just a cowardly extension of sadness. It’s a lot easier to be angry at someone than it is to tell them you’re hurt.
Tom Gates

We often hide beneath our feelings. We do things because we “feel like it”. We talk about ourselves using comments like “I am angry”. It is as if we are our emotions. Not only that it feels like we have no control over our emotions and so our emotions run our lives. No wonder we feel so out of control. We are behaving like puppets on a string, ruled by emotions we have no control over. But we can learn to control our emotions and make them work for us.

The first step towards controlling anything, including ourselves, is to understand what it is that we are trying to control. We have to understand first of all what we are really feeling. When we feel bad, it could be for all kinds of different reasons which are not at all obvious. Feeling angry has all kinds of emotions behind it, such as sadness, jealousy or envy, a feeling of injustice, and fear. It takes a lot of self-awareness sometimes to figure out the real reason for your anger. But until you do that, it will be impossible to do anything constructive about it.

We don’t usually think of anger as being cowardly. It tends to make us feel powerful. But in reality, anger only strengthens your ego, and not the real you. It is much easier to blame the other person than to question your own feelings and needs. And it takes courage to ask for what you want or need, especially when you feel unlikely to get it. But ultimately being able to tell the other person that you are hurt and what you really want, is the only constructive way to deal with anger. Any other reaction hurts both you and your relationship with them.

Adventure

“Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life - Facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and in the process, discovering our own unique potential.”
John Amatt

Most of us have this idea that adventure is doing something spectacular like mountain-climbing or discovering lost cities in the jungle, or deep-sea diving. We are often jealous of people who engage in activities like this. We imagine how much more fun they must be having than we are. We can feel the excitement that often seems to be completely lacking in our own lives. But the lack of excitement in our own lives is only a result of our attitude towards life.

We are meant to face new challenges, seize new opportunities, test our resources against the unknown and in the process, discover our own unique potentional. Only then do we truly live. But the good news is that these things can be applied to our everyday life. Even something as mundane as cooking allows us to seize new opportunities (to try a different food), to face new challenges (to decide which foods would go together best, or how to prepare them most appealingly), and to test our resources against the unknown (to find the most practical yet tasty thing to make for dinner tonight).

Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life. As we go through life, we are constantly overcoming little challenges that we barely notice. The thrill of conquest doesn’t have to come from climbing Mount Everest. Sometimes it can come from just pleasing everyone at the dinner table. We need to realize that life itself is an adventure, given to us so that we can discover our own unique potential. And sometimes our greatest growth is gained from just getting along smoothly with our family, friends, and workplace.

Last Phone Call

“If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?”
Stephen Levine

How would you feel if you were told that you were going to die soon, that you only had a short time left to live. Most of us would feel panicky, because we would realize just how many things that we wanted to do before we die, that have been left undone because we always assumed that there would be plenty of time to do them in the future. Usually, it is only a diagnosis like this that makes people realize what is really important to them, and what has been neglected for too long.

Our lives tend to be filled with trivia. We are constantly bombarded with messages from different people trying to get our attention, and we often react by ignoring all of them, even the ones that would be important to us. We spend our lives reacting to whatever life throws at us without stopping to reflect on whether it is important or not. Many of us long for peace and quiet to just stop and think. Few of us really know what we value most in life until it, or life, is taken away from us.

“If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?” The truth is that none of us know how much more time we have to live. We might even drop dead without warning, it does happen. So it’s important to first of all stop and really think about who and what you value, and secondly to let the person know or to celebrate the things. Don’t just think how much you love them, actively show it. Make the world better.

Rest

Make rest a neccesity,not an objective.Only rest long enough to gather strenghth. -- Jim Rohn

We all need rest. To run ourselves into the ground does nobody any good. We can't be so focused on working that we ignore our health and welfare. We all know workoholics and they are not healthy people. We need time to rest and rejeuvenate ourselves. We all know that very often it is when we are quiet and relaxed that we get ideas for how to proceed, and when we come back to the task at hand we can cope with it a lot better.

So rest is a necessity if we are to efficiently cope with the inevitable problems and obstacles we have. We need to make an appointment with ourselves to have a time of rest every day where we can be quiet and will not be disturbed. If we fail to schedule a time of rest, it will be forgotten amongst all the other things we have scheduled.

The next question is how long to rest. Only rest long enough to gather strength. Only rest long enough that you feel ready to tackle your problem or obstacle again with new understanding and new strength. If you rest too long, you are wasting valuable time that could be spend overcoming obstacles, solving problems and moving forward to your goals. You will start to feel lazy and sluggish and unmotivated if you rest too long.

Even with resting, there is a window of opportunity. Make sure you catch it. You must rest every day, but only until you are ready to tackle the next step with enthusiasm, and newfound strength and wisdom. The turtle probably won the race against the hare because he stopped to rest but not for too long.

Helping Hand

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm ... As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
Audrey Hepburn

You have a helping hand at the end of your arm. What this means is that you can't expect other people to help you. They are often busy helping themselves at the time when you need them. And if they did come and help you, they do not necessarily have your best interests at heart. They quite possibly don't even know what you really want. They may also have ideas about what you "should" want. This is why it is best that you help yourself when at all possible. Only you can truly know what the best solution is for you.

On the other hand, sometimes you can't help yourself. You might not have access to the necessary resources right now. You might not have adequate knowledge about the subject you are trying to deal with. In cases like that, you can and should ask for help from others.

"As you get older you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others". It feels good to help others when they really need it. It makes us feel useful and valuable. We are meant to help others along when they are struggling. But only when they are struggling. If they don't really need your help, they are likely to resent it. And that doesn't do anyone any good. The trick is to know when people really need your help, and what help you can provide. But once you do, don't hesitate to offer a helping hand whenever it is needed. It's good for you, and it is good for them. Everyone wins.

Love, Foregiveness, Faith, and Hope

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
G. K. Chesterton

It is easy to love something that is loveable. It is easy to forgive minor slights. It is easy to beleive what makes sense to us. And it is easy to hope when life is going your way. But our lives were not meant to be easy. We were meant to learn and grow, and as much as we don't like it, to learn and grow means to encounter obstacles, problems, and difficulties. An easy life is a boring life, and ultimately one full of fear.

Can you love the unlovable, foregive the unforegivable, beleive the unbeleivable, or hope when everything seems hopeless? This is the true test of character, of faith, motivation, and success.

Remember the times when you needed love and foregiveness the most. It was of course at those times when you were at your most unloveable and unforgivable. Is it fair to deny your love and foregiveness to other people at the time when they need it most? It is likewise when everything seems hopeless that you, and others, need hope the most. It is when good things seem impossible that you need faith the most. The time to give is the time when whatever you have to give is needed the most. But those times are the ones when it is the most difficult for us to give.

Practise loving more and more unloveable things; and forgiving more and more unforgivable acts (this does not mean you have to approve of them, but you need to distance yourself from them emotionally). Practise faith and hope when you are more and more unsure that anything good will come from the situation you find yourself in. In this way, you refine and strengthen your character, and that will increase your success.

Limited

“Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets.”
Nido Qubein

How focused are you? We live in a society in which thousands of marketing messages are constantly bombarding us, let alone all the messages from the people around us. Some people can’t get off their cell phones even when they are in the bathroom. We are constantly being encouraged to look at this and do that. It can be completely overwhelming, unless you are able to prioritize which messages are really improtant. You don’t know what’s really important unless you have very clear goals so that you can choose to only pay attention to messages that are relevant to what you intend to acheive.

“A jack of all trades is a master of none”. We only have a limited amount of time and energy and money, so it only makes sense not to waste it on things that aren’t going to produce the results we really want. What results are produced when you watch TV? Does it help you move towards realizing your goals? Unless you’re watching educational TV, the answer is almost certainly no. So why watch it? Why not go out there and do something that does help you acheive the things you want most?

The fewer things you focus on, the faster you will see results. If you work on one goal at a time, and you can give it all your attention and energy, and even money, imagine how much faster you will acheive that goal. If you are thinking about many different things at once, you can’t move forwards very far on any one of them. When you can’t move forwards on any one thing, you will start to feel overwhelmed and frustrated and inclined to quit working on any of them. Start today to only focus on one goal at a time. Concentrate on that until it is acheived. Then move onto your next goal. That’s the way to really get things done so you can acheive what you want.

Simplify

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
Hans Hofmann

Our lives get pretty complicated. We are bombarded with messages that our lives will not be complete unless we buy whatever they are selling. Our society encourages us to have as many things as it takes to keep up with the Jones’s. It has become a status symbol to have the most, biggest, fastest, and most expensive, things. We accumulate as many things as much as we can manage. Our lives get bogged down in the details of finding them, getting them, looking after them, and worrying about them.

Our error is that we have not thought about which of those things are really important to us and which of them we have acquired in order to impress others and which of them we acquired because they seemed appealing at the time. How many things have you bought, and then realized that this was not what you really wanted after all, it just didn’t bring you the sense of satisfaction or even happiness that you had hoped for? Many of the things we have are simply unnecessary. They just take up space, in our minds as well as in the physical world.

We need to be able to tell the difference between what is necessary and what is unnecessary. Then we need to get rid of the unnecessary things, so that we can find and focus on the things we really want and need. If we don’t, finding the good stuff can be like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s pretty difficult. It is only when we rid our lives of everything except those things that we really want and need, that we can find what we want. And when we get rid of all the fluff, there will be room left for even more good things to come into our life. Simplify your life and you will be rewarded.

Shadows

Never fear shadows.... that always means there is a light shining somewhere. -- Jonathan Santos

We are very fearful creatures. We are always afraid that the worst will come to the worst. We are afraid that something will go wrong, that we will make a mistake, that other people will laugh at us. We are afraid of having a problem that we can't fix. We even talk about it being "the end of the world" if something really bad happens to us. But it isn't the end of the world. The trick lies in getting ourselves to really beleive that.

We will never live in a world where bad things never happen. God sends us bad things for several reasons. One is to prove to us that we can cope with whatever happens (life goes on). Another is to show us how strong our integrity, dedication to our goal, and character is. A third motive is to help us realize what we need to know about ourselves in order to improve. God never sends us bad things to punish us or make us miserable.

Never fear shadows.... that always means there is a light shining somewhere. There is always a lesson to be learned from whatever happens to us, and it is up to us to find it. We need to train ourselves to look for the light that is shining somewhere.
Whenever something "bad" happens, no matter what it is, we need to ask ourselves "What is God trying to show me here. What is the lesson I can learn from this, either about myself or about other people or both? How can I use it for my own improvement?". So often, a disaster becomes a blessing in disquise. If we learn to ask the right questions, this will happen all the time.

Closed Doors

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
Alexander Graham Bell

Frustration is not a pleasant feeling. We don’t like to be thwarted in our actions. Anything that keeps us from doing what we think we need to do is resented and feared. We get angry. We regret that we could not finish our plans and thus achieve what we wanted to. We are stuck spinning our wheels because we don’t know what to do next. Often it seems like there isn’t anything that we can do to acheive our goal. We made our plans and pinned our hopes of success onto them, and without them we are lost.

When something unexpected happens that prevents us from following our plans, we get upset because it shows us that we are not in control of our world. We want everything to go the way we want it to, the way we planned it to. But the world doesn’t work like that, and that’s a good thing because we often have very limited vision and understanding of the best way to acheive something.

God knows better than we do. It tries to nudge us in the right direction. Unfortunately we are so attached to our plans that we don’t even notice God’s nudges. We are staring so regretfully at our failed plans that we don’t notice the new and better opportunity to get what we want. Don’t let that happen to you. Focus on your goals; and if your first plan doesn’t work out, watch and wait for a better plan to come to you. It will.

Closed Doors

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
Alexander Graham Bell

Frustration is not a pleasant feeling. We don’t like to be thwarted in our actions. Anything that keeps us from doing what we think we need to do is resented and feared. We get angry. We regret that we could not finish our plans and thus achieve what we wanted to. We are stuck spinning our wheels because we don’t know what to do next. Often it seems like there isn’t anything that we can do to acheive our goal. We made our plans and pinned our hopes of success onto them, and without them we are lost.

When something unexpected happens that prevents us from following our plans, we get upset because it shows us that we are not in control of our world. We want everything to go the way we want it to, the way we planned it to. But the world doesn’t work like that, and that’s a good thing because we often have very limited vision and understanding of the best way to acheive something.

God knows better than we do. It tries to nudge us in the right direction. Unfortunately we are so attached to our plans that we don’t even notice God’s nudges. We are staring so regretfully at our failed plans that we don’t notice the new and better opportunity to get what we want. Don’t let that happen to you. Focus on your goals; and if your first plan doesn’t work out, watch and wait for a better plan to come to you. It will.

Comparison

“Nothing is good or bad but by comparison.”
Thomas Fuller

We are always comparing, even if we don’t realize that we are doing it. Sometimes we compare what we have with what our neighbor has. Sometimes we compare what we have with what we used to have. Sometimes we compare what we have with what we have seen in a store or book or an advertisement. Sometimes we compare what we have with something we have created in our imagination. But we are always comparing what we have right now with something else. And most of the time, what we have right now seems less desirable than the other thing that we are comparing it with.

Our egos are always dissatisfied with what we have. We always feel incomplete, as though there were something lacking in our lives. And we are continually searching for it. But whatever we find is soon inadequate again, because the truth is that there is no thing outside ourselves that will make us complete. We are already complete. We don’t need anything else. All we really need to be happy and satisfied and peaceful is to be able to appreciate and enjoy the things that we have in our life right now, without any comparison and negative judgement.

When was the last time you were perfectly content with the things you have right now? Probably never. Imagine how much happier you would be if you were. Wouldn’t it be wonderful not to be always pressured to get something better, to need something you don’t have? Wouldn’t it be wonderful never to have to worry about whether you deserved whatever it is that you don’t have right now, or whether you have the ability and resources to get it? If you stopped judging whatever you have right now as being inferior to something else, then you could finally relax and enjoy the things you have. You could finally find true happiness.

Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and endless plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves, too.
-Goethe

Some people hate to commit themselves to anything. They like to keep their options open. They are afraid that if they commit themselves to doing something, it may not work out for them. They don’t commit themselves to marriage, for example, because they are afraid that if the relationship turns sour they will be stuck with it because it will be difficult to get a divorce. They just don’t want to take that risk. So they drift from one person to another, searching for a relationship that is foolproof. Unfortunately the only things that are guaranteed are death and taxes.

If you keep your options open, you are saying to “God” (or spirit or the Universe or whatever you would like to call the higher power) that you don’t think any one of them is very important and/or you don’t beleive that any of them will work out for you. You essentially don’t know what you really want. “God”, then, doesn’t know how to help you. It is only when you choose an option that is so important to you that you are determined to make it work, that “God” can know what you need.

Once you commit yourself to one particular option, then “God” will provide you with whatever you need to make that thing happen. When you are commited to acheiving something, then your heart and mind will be focused on it. You will be much more motivated to make it work, because you have effectively cut off your escape routes. There’s no going back. You have taken a big risk, and so you expect that risk to pay off for you. And with “God’s” help, it will.

Barriers

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

We’ve all heard about “looking for love in all the wrong places”. It’s such a commonplace experience that it’s become a cliche. Why do we look for love in all the wrong places? Where is the right place to look for love? Why can’t we ever find enough love in our lives? It’s because all we know is conditional love. We have all had a broken heart at some time or another. We have all encountered people who didn’t love us enough.

Because we all know what it feels like to be rejected, to be hurt, we have put up barriers inside ourselves to try and protect us against being hurt in the future. Deep down, we expect to be hurt by the people we love. Sometimes we are so afraid of being hurt that we simply stay away from other people; which, of course, guarantees us that we won’t find the love we need and deserve.

Sometimes we are shy. Sometimes we are cocky, perhaps boastful and arrogant, in an attempt to convince ourselves and others that we beleive other people will like us, which has the effect of making other people not like us. Sometimes we just plain resent everyone for not loving us before they have had a chance to figure out for themselves what they think of us. There are all kinds of different barriers we erect within ourselves to try and prevent being hurt. And they all backfire on us, making us more hurt than ever.

Love is all around us, if we are brave enough to cast aside our doubts and fears. It is our barriers against hurt that are preventing us from finding the love we crave. Once again, the greater the risk, the greater the reward. It is when we take down our barriers and become most vulnerable, that we find the love we thought we never could.

Less Difficult

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other”
George Eliot

What do you live for? I think most of us struggle between our own selfish needs and a real urge to help others. It is a struggle because we can’t be really happy unless we look after our own needs and desires, which frequently conflict with what other people want, or expect, of us. We want what we want, not what other people want. We know how unsatisfying it feels to do what someone else wants that goes against what we want. That’s the thing. We end up feeling resentful of others who “make” us do things we don’t want to do. And chances are, we’re not going to do a very good job of it anyway. They aren’t going to be happy with it.

Yet we do want to help other people. Perhaps what we need is to find a way to do that without sacrificing our own needs and desires in the process. It turns out that the only time you can help other people is when you can think about the person and feel good at the same time. It is when you can expect the other person to succeed at whatever it is that they want to acheive because you beleive that they can do it. The truth is that helping other people helps ourselves too. We live to make life less difficult for each other. Helping others makes us feel good about ourself. But only when we aren’t sacrificing what we want in order to give them what they want

Success

“Success is merely the process of fulfilling your own hopes and dreams–not the standards set by society, but by the standards set by you.”
George Pataki

If success is the process of fulfilling your own hopes and dreams, clearly the first step is to have your own hopes and dreams. Other people are very happy to tell us what we should be doing. Some of them are great at manipulating us into thinking that their wishes are what we want too. Often parents try to persuade their child to follow in the same career footsteps as they did. Or perhaps they encourage him to take a more prestigious career path even though it isn’t the right thing for him. He might well go on to have a prestigious job, but if he isn’t thriving and happy in it, he isn’t really successful.

Society has it’s own set of standards too. Some jobs are considered as more desirable than others. It is not just parents that encourage us to go for a more high-paying and prestigious job. There is a general understanding that it is better to get a university education than one from a community college. But society ignores the fact that some people would be more successful graduating from a community college and getting a job that is not prestigious.

It is time for you to set your own standards. Don’t let your parents, or society, or anyone else tell you what is best for you. Only you can know that. Only you can know what it is that you really want and value. Only you can define what success means to you. Once you have established what your own individual hopes and dreams are, then all you need to do is to fulfill them. Start taking action towards acheiving your dreams as soon as you have defined them. There is no time to lose.

Rage

“Even raw and messy emotions are a form of light, crackling, bursting with energy. We can use that light of rage in a positive way, in order to see into places we cannot usually see.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

You can learn a lot from your anger. Most people just use it to think of a way to get back at someone who has hurt them. It fuels their thinking that something is wrong with the other person. It tells them that they don’t like the other person at the moment, and that they want to hurt them in the same way that they have hurt us. But anger can be used more constructively that that.

Anger can be used to show you something about yourself that you had chosen not to see before. It could show you how quick you are to judge a situation in which another person is not doing what you want them to do not because they are purposely being mean to you but are simply thinking about something else, or even because they misunderstood what you wanted.

A favorite story illustrating this is the one about two people who agreed to meet at the statue in the park. Each one sat for hours waiting for the other and growing angrier all the time. The next day they talked to each other and realized that there were actually two statues in the park and each person waited at a different statue. There was just a misunderstanding about where to wait. How often does this kind of situation happen in your life?

Your anger can also be used to show you what you really value and what your goals in life really are. Most people don’t stop to think about WHY they are angry; they just figure the important thing is that they are angry and that it is the other person’s fault. The truth is that it is not about the other person at all, your emotions come from your own interpretation of what the other person has done. Once you realize what this interpretation is, then you can change it to something more closer to the truth. Use the light of rage in this positive way.

Thankful

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”
Oprah Winfrey

You get what you are thinking about. This is because you see what you expect to see, and what you see (how you perceive the situation) determines your actions. You get what you expect to get. Most of us are focused on needing to acquire something we don’t yet have. We think we need it in order to be happy so consequently we expect to be not happy until we get it. Since we see that what we already have is inadequate, since we are missing this one special thing, we end up beleiving that we can’t be happy right now. We effectively put our lives on hold until we can get the thing that we beleive will finally make us happy.

If we concentrate on what we don’t have, we will never have enough. We will be perpetually dissatisfied with our lives. because something will always be missing. We are so distracted by focusing on the one (or few) things that we don’t have yet, that we are blinded to all the things that we already have. We can’t see the blessings all around us. And if we can’t see them, we can’t be thankful for them.

The only way to gain true happiness is to be thankful for what you already have. It is important to recognize the distinction between needing more and wanting more. The truth is that you don’t need anything in order to make you happy, although there are many things that would be welcomed. You already have enough, and when you realize that, you will be grateful for it. You will be aware of all the multitude of blessings all around you, and be filled with joy, love, and gratitude.

Criticism

Make your burning desire stronger than the fault-finding and criticisms of others. When your desire burns brighter than the sting of criticism, then criticism has no sting, and nothing can or will stop you.”
Matt Furey

It is so much easier to do something when we have the support of the people around us. But often they don’t approve of what we are trying to do, and they’re not shy about telling us so. We all too often give up on our dream in an effort to please the people around us, or at least because we don’t like to hear their critisism. It hurts.

We tend to listen to our friends and family because we think that perhaps they know something that we don’t know. Maybe they are right. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea after all. We end up trying to second-guess ourselves. We pay attention to their words. We beleive them more than we beleive ourselves. It is only when we beleive ourselves more than we beleive them that we can ignore what they say, and plough ahead on the strength of our convictions. We must beleive in ourselves, in our choices, and in our ability to fulfill them, before we can not listen to the critisism around us.

When we are so sure about our choices and we desire our goals so much that we can ignore what other people are saying about how we shouldn’t or can’t do it, then nothing can stop us. The critisism of others is the last barrier between you and your success. When you want something so much that you don’t care what anyone thinks about you or your goals, it is only a matter of time before you will get it. Your desire will be burning so bright that you won’t even see any obstacles. Success is yours.

Shine

“People are like stained glass windows; they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.”
Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Stained glass windows are truly beautiful when the light is shining on them. Their colors come alive. They sparkle and shine. But when there is no light, a stained glass window looks depressing. It looks even worse than a regular window would because we know of its potential. We know it can look much better than this. If only there was a light to shine on it and reveal it for what it was meant to be.

We are like a stained glass window. It is easy for us to sparkle when a light is shining on us. For us, the light that is shining on us, our sunlight, is usually praise and admiration from other people. This is what makes us happy and motivates us to show the beauty of who we are. We feel sometimes that we have to have someone else to show it to in order for it to be real. But if they’re not watching, does the beauty fade?

Whether we still have that beauty when we are by ourselves, or more importantly, when other people don’t approve of us, depends on our character. It depends on whether there is a light turned on inside ourselves. Some people have forgotten what beauty really is. Some resent it and try to destroy it in others because they don’t see it in themselves. These people are completely dependant on the approval of others for them to shine. Their inside light has been turned off. But truly happy and successful people have an inside light. Their true beauty is always visible because they value it enough to shine their own light on it regardless of what anyone else thinks.

Handicap

A true handicap is what we don’t do with what we have, not what we can’t do with what we don’t have.
Christopher Brewer

We tend to be always focused on what we don’t have. We tend to define ourselves by what we don’t have. “I am poor because I don’t have the mansion that the guy down the street does.” “I am unsuccessful because I don’t have the glamorous job that the woman on TV does”. “I am stupid because I don’t have the graduate degree that my neighbor has.” It’s always about keeping up with the Jone’s when the Jone’s have something that you don’t have. We measure ourselves by what other people have instead of by what we have.

Of course, if we don’t have something, we can’t do anything with it. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t do anything at all. We can do something with what we do have. We can define ourselves by what we have and not by what other people have. Although we can’t change what other people do and have, we can change what we do with what we have. In that respect, we do have control over the way we see ourselves and consequently the person we are becoming.

A true handicap is what we don’t do with what we have. When we don’t use our god-given skills and talents to improve our lives and the lives of the people around us, we are just wasting them, wasting who we are. It is the most important task of our life to come to understand what our own skills and talents are and how we can use them in the most effective ways. That is what ultimately gives meaning to our lives, and gives us a reason to be here. Instead of wishing that we could have whatever someone else has, we need to make the most of what we ourselves have so that we can be just as successful in our own unique and valuable ways.

Upset

“Often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. We lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year’s time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings.”
Andre Maurois

I have found myself getting into this kind of situation a lot lately. I think a lot of it is unforgiveness. We resent the fact that somebody did something that we didn’t want them to do. Perhaps we feel that they didn’t pay enough attention to us, or praise us enough, or give us what we feel we deserve. Our ego loves to remind us that we are not getting enough from other people. So we complain about it; and typically blame everyone involved except the people who could do anything about it anyway. And all the time we just feel worse.

We literally waste our time brooding about things that can’t be changed because they are in the past. The ego has a powerful influence over us. Instead of focusing on what should have happened, or on what shouldn’t have happened, we would do much better to start thinking about how we could solve that problem situation, or get to work on something that we enjoy. We can change the present to make a brighter future, but the past is over and done with.

With hindsight, we will be able to see how trivial this situation we have allowed ourselves to get so upset about really was. Our life is too short to waste it worrying over things that can’t be changed and ultimately aren’t important anyway. Eventually everyone will have forgotten them, even ourselves. “Let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings”. Let us focus on creating a brighter future and a better world for everyone. Let us focus on the things that really matter, so that we can be really successful.

Brick Walls

“Brick walls are not there to keep us out; brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”
Randy Pausch

For most of us obstacles are very frustrating. We don’t like to see them. We are sure that they are keeping us from obtaining our goals so we resent them for being there. How dare anything make it difficult to get what I want. We want it to be easy to acheive our goals. The quicker and the less work we have to do the better. But if it was quick and easy to acheive our goals, they would not be satisfying to us and we would not value our acheivements much.

Obstacles don’t have to stop us from acheiving what we want. Generally when they do it is because we don’t beleive in our abilities or because we don’t beleive in our goal. Many of us lack self-confidence. We are secretly looking for reasons why we can’t accomplish something, in order to prove to ourselves that we aren’t good enough, and any obstacle makes a convenient excuse. We expect to fail so we do fail, because we let our obstacles stop us from succeeding.

Like everything else in our life, our obstacles are sent to us in order to teach us a lesson about ourselves. They are not sent to us in order to annoy and frustrate us. They are sent to us to demonstrate to ourselves just how serious we are about obtaining our goal. The truth is that if we are really determined to succeed, and are completely focused on our goal, we won’t even notice those obstacles. They won’t be a problem. We’ll just ignore them and brush them aside. Instead of complaining about the problem, we’ll be working on the solution. We’ll be strategizing and planning the answers to any challenges and creating systems to make sure the problem doesn’t come up again. We’ll successfully acheive our goal.

Keep on Going

“Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.”
Charles Kettering

This is one of the biggest reasons why it is so important to be taking action towards your goal, and to keep taking action until you finally acheive your goal. If you wait until you know the perfect action to take, then you will never get started. That’s called procrastination.

It is unrealistic to expect that we will know exactly what to do before we actually do anything. Nobody does. As we know, the most important thing is just to get started, as soon as we have a clear enough understanding of the situation to think of a way that we just might be able to move towards our goal.

The first step of a journey is always the hardest. The truth is that once you are out there doing things, making mistakes and learning from them, then you will be stumbling upon things that will help clarify the next step you should take, or even that make clear what the pathway ahead will be like. You will be noticing things that you didn’t notice before. You will feel more and more confident that you are moving towards your goal. You just can’t get all of this from just sitting there and visualizing success. There’s no substitute for action. Keep going and watch out for the things you’ll be stumbling upon.

Concentrating

“Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets.”
Nido Qubein

How focused are you? We live in a society in which thousands of marketing messages are constantly bombarding us, let alone all the messages from the people around us. Some people can’t get off their cell phones even when they are in the bathroom. We are constantly being encouraged to look at this and do that. It can be completely overwhelming, unless you are able to prioritize which messages are really improtant. You don’t know what’s really important unless you have very clear goals so that you can choose to only pay attention to messages that are relevant to what you intend to acheive.

“A jack of all trades is a master of none”. We only have a limited amount of time and energy and money, so it only makes sense not to waste it on things that aren’t going to produce the results we really want. What results are produced when you watch TV? Does it help you move towards realizing your goals? Unless you’re watching educational TV, the answer is almost certainly no. So why watch it? Why not go out there and do something that does help you acheive the things you want most?

The fewer things you focus on, the faster you will see results. If you work on one goal at a time, and you can give it all your attention and energy, and even money, imagine how much faster you will acheive that goal. If you are thinking about many different things at once, you can’t move forwards very far on any one of them. When you can’t move forwards on any one thing, you will start to feel overwhelmed and frustrated and inclined to quit working on any of them. Start today to only focus on one goal at a time. Concentrate on that until it is acheived. Then move onto your next goal. That’s the way to really get things done so you can acheive what you want.

Miracles

Miracles: You do not have to look for them. They are there, 24-7, beaming like radio waves all around you. Put up the antenna, turn up the volume - snap… crackle… this just in, every person you talk to is a chance to change the world…”
Hugh Elliott

Do you believe in miracles? They sound too good to be true. Or maybe they could happen to someone else but not to you. Pigs might fly. You may have read about a miracle that happened to someone and thought “There must be some scientific explanation for that somewhere”. We aren’t willling to accept the existance of something we don’t understand. We don’t understand that life itself is a miracle. We just take it for granted.

Miracles are going on all around us but we don’t see them because we are not looking for them. We are not even acknowledging their existance. Have you thought about how miraculous your life is lately; to say nothing of the sheer diversity of life forms? We are unaware of the miracles around us because we are focusing on the practical and urgent matters of our life. We don’t have time for anything that we can’t take action to fix. If it is not being a problem, it seems not worth our time. We fail to see what is going right in the world.

More importantly, we fail to see how we ourselves participate in the miracles around us. We figure that we are too insignificant, or perhaps too incompetant, to have much of an effect on anything. But even the smallest things we do can work miracles. By saying a few kind words to someone, we might have saved his life. By making an idle comment, we might inspire someone to do something really significant. Every person we talk to, everything we do, is a chance to change the world. Our awareness of that fact is what allows us to change the world for the better.

Holding On

“If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive.”
Dorothee Solle

What are you holding onto? Perhaps it is a cherished idea, your idea about something you feel very strongly about. Perhaps it is a cherished hope or even expectation of what the future should be like.

Perhaps it is a cherished possession, that reminds you of someone you used to know, or even of wonderful days gone by. We are all holding onto everything we can find that gives us a sense of who we are. Our ego demands all these things because they give it life.

But if we are fully occupied with these things, we can’t give. We can’t give another person those cherished possessions no matter how much he needs them. We can’t give another person reassurance that his belief about the world or the future is valid even though it disagrees with ours. To give those things away is to give away a part of us. And that our ego would never allow. To our ego, there is never enough validation of who we are, and any loss of that is a disaster.

If we are fully occupied with these things, we can’t receive either. If our attention is fully on what we already beleive about the future or the world around us, we can’t learn anything new. If our attention is fully occupied with having those cherished possessions of ours, there is no room to discover new desires and even better possessions. If we are fully occupied with who we beleive we are, then we prevent ourselves from learning new and exciting possibilities about who we really are.

Always keep your hands unoccupied as much as possible so that you can give and receive; so that you can really grow and really make the world a better place.

Criticism

“If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.”
Donald H. Rumsfeld

We all want to avoid criticism. Criticism hurts. In fact, criticism can even kill. We need everyone to approve of us. We want them to like what we are saying and what we are doing. Our ego thrives on that. Some people even get to the point where they will do whatever other people tell them to do, whether they want to or not, just to avoid their criticism. They lose their sense of the boundary between who they are and who those other people are. That’s a heavy price to pay.

The truth is that everyone has their own unique view of the world based on their own experiences. So everyone will have their own unique view of what you should be doing. That might depend on what they have learned about what is appropriate for people, or men, or women, or children etc to be doing in particular situations. It might also depend on what they want or need that they think they can get from you. Everyone has got their own opinion about what you should be doing or saying at any given time. But you can’t possibly be everything that everyone wants.

This means that whatever you are doing is going to be criticized by someone. The only way to avoid criticism is to do nothing. And if you do nothing, you don’t have much of a life. The truth is that the more you grow, the closer you get to reaching your potential, the more success you have, the more you will be criticised. If you are successful, you will be criticized simply for being better or doing something better than the other person. If you fail, you will be criticized for not doing a good enough job at something. Learn to embrace criticism. What it really means is that you are moving forward and accomplishing things.

Editing

At church on Sunday, our pastor gave a sermon that spoke to me. He pointed out that finding and telling a story are difficult work. He pointed out that sometimes you can't find the story because there's too much material and you are too attached to the good beautiful stuff to determine what belongs to the story and what doesn't. Your story gets thicker and thicker but never actually takes on or conveys any meaning. This principle works with our lives too.

If the meaning and purpose of life elude us now, it's because we have refused to make choices about what activities and what people are most important to us, and which ones are less important. He said that every one of us are living a story. And every one of us will have a better story if we recognize that the story will benefit from editing.

He went on to suggest that that should be the function of the church, that if you stick close to Jesus then he will help you find your story. I would also argue that it should also be the goal of a good parent. So often parents are bad editors, prefering to try to mold the child to fit their story instead of helping him to find his own. And I know, from experience, just how much of an impact that can have on a child.

He points out that in the Bible there is a connection between letting Jesus be a good editor and the commandment to love one another. He speculates that part of the work of loving one another is being willing to become good editors for each other's lives.

"Even as members of the same body, God has given none of us either the responsibility or the right to tell someone else what story they ought to be making with their lives. But God does give each of us a story to discover, and we can help each other discover that story if we can be, as Williams advises, disinterested in ourselves and attentive to the heart of the neighbor. If we can be, in other words, good editors rather than bad editors. "

I think that in order to be truly successful, we need to first of all recognize that our lives would benefit from editing. We need to make those choices about what and who is most important to us and discard those good but irrelevant things in our lives. And if we can find someone else (or even God) who we can trust to help us do that, it would be an ideal situation.

Slow

To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.
Shakespeare

For most of us, the more we want something, the more we want it yesterday. In our society, we have learned to expect to get everything right now. They say that we have turned into a nation of people with ADD. We are not willing to wait for anything, and very often we are not willing to put in much effort to get anything either. We would rather get a 5 minute clip about an important news event on the TV than to read the full story about it actually involves. But that is a way of thinking that sets us up for disappointment because the world really doesn't work that way.

Nothing comes to us without some work, whether it is mental work or physical work, or usually a combination of both. There is no free lunch. And, of course, it takes time to do any work. As "Abraham" points out, that extra time between you deciding what you want and you actually getting it is a good thing because it allows you to make sure that you really do want it enough to do what you need to do to get it. We've all heard "Be careful what you wish for because you might actually get it".

"To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first." When we desire something that is far removed from what we have now, we will be moving slowly in the beginning. We will start with just a single step. We can't rush at a steep hill and expect to get very far without losing momentum and falling back down it. But if we consistently keep taking what seems like slow baby steps, our momentum keeps building. We will find ourselves climbing the hill faster and faster. And when we get to a certain point, we will start to get exponential growth. And at that point reaching our goals will seem to take no time at all.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Circumstances

Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him."
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

What do your circumstances reveal about you? We tend to beleive that we are controled by our circumstances, instead of beleiving that we, in fact, control them to a large extent. And even when we don't control them, we can change the outcome by changing the way we react to them. We beleive that circumstances make the man, that he is who he is because of the circumstances he finds around him.

Your circumstances are typically the result of your thoughts. Therefore, to a large extent, they reveal what you have been thinking. If your life is impoverished, that is because you have been thinking impoverished thoughts. You have been expecting to not get much, and so you take the kind of actions that will lead to your poverty. If there is violence in your life, it is because you have been thinking violent thoughts, which make you do things that lead to violence. But you can always change the thoughts you have. Let your circumstances reveal that you've been thinking about good things.

A person's character is revealed by the way he reacts to circumstances. Some people react to winning by going around and boasting about how great they are. Others appreciate that it's only a game and next time someone else may win. They may even console the loser by reassuring him that he played a good game and maybe will win next time. Some people react to unfortunate circumstances by assuming the world is out to get them, and look around for someone to blame. Others look for the opportunity and the lesson in those difficulties.

A wise person understands that success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal. They also understand that they can control a large part of their circumstances by expecting things to be good. And even when things don't turn out to be the way they wanted, they look for the lesson and the gift in their problems.

Given Up

Anger, tears and sadness are only for those who have given up
Katie Gill

Have you given up on your goals? Do you even have goals that inspire you? Few people actually have inspiring, motivating, long-range goals. For many of us, our goal is simply to get through the day without any disasters happening. No wonder so many of us lead lives of quiet desperation. We live our lives full of fear that something will go wrong in our lives, not knowing how to prevent that. We feel like we are victims of circumstances we can't control so there is no point having any real goals since we probably won't acheive them anyway.

Those of us who do have goals often have goals that are about acquiring things that we think we want, such as a fancy car or a maid. But goals like this tend to just be idle wishes, not inspiring enough to motivate us to do the work we need to do to acheive that goal. But that doesn't stop us from being jealous of people who do have those things and angry about life's unfairness. We don't see that those people had a inspiring goal that they beleived in, and because of that they kept going until they acheived it. They were successful because they didn't give up despite many obstacles and setbacks.

Anger, tears and sadness are only for those who have given up. Those people who are really happy with their lives have inspiring goals; goals to make the world a better place, not just for themselves but for others too. We were created to improve, not just ourselves but the world around us. We were created to continually grow, and everything that happens to us is intended to support our growth. But in order to truly grow, and to be truly happy, we need goals that inspire us enough to motivate us to do whatever is necessary to acheive them. We need to never givie up on our goals; even if they seem far away, what our soul really needs is to know that we are steadily working towards them. That's really all that matters.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Glory

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.
Betty Smith

Most of the time, we look at things and don't really see them. We figure" well, that's not interesting because it's just the same as it was last time" or "well, if I really needed to see it, I could do it later when I have time". We don't expect change; in fact some of us are actually afraid of change, we want things to stay the same way forever. But the only thing that we can really depend on in this life is that there will be change. It may seem like a change for the better, or a change for the worse. But there will always be change.

Try looking at everything as if you were seeing it for the first time. Everything would seem new and fresh. We wouldn't be expecting it to be a certain way so we would never be dissapointed. We would not bring any emotional baggage to it. We would not be prejudging it; and this would allow us to notice all the good things about it.

Try looking at everything as if you were seeing it for the last time. If you thought you'd never be seeing it again, you'd pay much more attention to it. You would appreciate all it's finer qualities and forget it's worse ones. You wouldn't take it for granted. You would be very grateful for the time that you had it. And you would be expecting change, even though you wouldn't know what change would bring.

In order for our time on earth to be filled with glory, it is essential that we be always aware of the blessings surrounding us. We can only really appreciate the wonder of the things around us when we see them with a new viewpoint. We can only be truly grateful for them when we appreciate that they won't last forever, and that something new will soon come to take their place.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

What We Can Do

"If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do."
Samuel Butler

Most of us get into trouble because we don't realize exactly what we can do. Some of us think that we should be able to do anything and so we claim responsibility for things that we have no control over. We get frustrated and angry when those things happen that we didn't plan on, and we blame them for not cooperating with us. We feel like victims. We feel depressed because we can't control all those things. We begin to feel like things happen just to spite us. It rains on our parade.

Some of us think that we can't do anything and so we claim responsibility for nothing. Nothing is our fault. Whatever happens to us has nothing to do with anything we might have done or not done. But this also leads to a feeling of lack of control. If what happens to us has nothing to do with anything we do, then we have no way of influencing what happens to us. And when we feel like we have no control, depression is the inevitable result. Once again we feel like victims.

It is those people who realize that there are some, but not all, things that they can control by their own actions that gain a sense of control and therefore joy. They are then motivated to focus on the things that they know they have control over and exersise the control over those things that they really have. And like a muscle, the more their power of control is used, the stronger it gets. The more they practise it, the more control they gain over things that they previously had no control over. And soon there is a surprisingly small number of things that they can't control.

Priorities

You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage, pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say no to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger yes burning inside. The enemy of the best is often the good.
Stephen Covey

Have you decided what your highest priorities are. Most of us act as if our highest priorites are to do whatever is the most urgent, or whatever other people are in a hurry for us to do. We often forget that what other people want for us is not always what we really want for ourselves. We seldom take the time to sit down and really think about what we want our lives to be like; about what is really important and valuable to us.

Once you have decided what your highest priorities are, it is a whole other task to actually act on them. You have to have the courage to disappoint the people around you by not giving in to their expectations and requests all the time. You have to be pleasant yet unapologetic. You have to be able to not automatically jump to deal with whatever seems urgent at the time, to stop and think about whether it is really important or whether it can wait until the more important things get taken care of.

Whenever you make a choice as to whether you should do something, you are comparing it against other things that you could possibly be doing at that time. You will choose whatever seems most important. If nothing is more important than watching TV, then you will watch TV. You have to have a burning yes, something that is really important to you, before you can say no to the television or any other of the things which seem attractive but leave you with a feeling of having wasted your time. You need to spend your valuable time doing not just a good thing but the best thing you could be doing, so you need to say no to things that are just good.

For ideas about how to be truly successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com

Who We Are

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
Jean-Paul Sartre

What have other people made of you? Chances are the picture they have created of you is like a crazy quilt. One person thinks you're fat. Another thinks you're thin. So which are you? You can't be both. This is why you can't rely on someone else's opinion. It is colored by their own experiences and their own comparisons with what they like and don't like. It has nothing to do with who you really are.

The only person who knows who you really are is you. And who you really are has nothing to do with comparisons with other people and value judgements about what you like and don't like about them. But we are all very social creatures. What other people say is extremely important to us, even when it is someone who we don't particularly care about. It takes a lot of diligent effort to ignore their opinions of us.

But the hardest thing of all is to ignore the opinions of our families, who have known us our whole lives. Yet their opinions are often the most faulty. It is our families who have the most to lose if we are not the way they think we should be or expect us to be. And it is them who have been telling us who we are all our lives since "We know you better than anyone else does". But they do not know us better than we know ourselves, however much they may claim to the contrary.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us. It takes courage to reject completely what other people say about us and determine for ourselves who we are. We may not always like what we see. But then we may also discover strengths and capabilities we never knew we had.
Knowing who we are means knowing what we can really do, and when we know what we can really do, we can more fully reach for what we really want.

For ideas about how to acheive true success, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com