Unhappy

If you are not happy there are only 2 choices.Change your experiences or change your expectations. Change your life or change your beliefs.
Anthony Robbins

What do you do when you are not happy. Most of us focus on what is making us unhappy and ruminate on all the things that are wrong with it, and even all the things that are wrong with us for having a problem with it. We complain to our friends and family, and discuss what is wrong in some detail. This never quite solves the problem however. Not only are we still unhappy but now our friends and family are unhappy too.

There are really only two effective solutions. The first is to change your experiences. To change your life. We need to find more effective ways of living so that we don't even run into all those problems. In other words, we need to find effective ways to avoid having problems. If we are in a relationship we don't like, we would find a way of finding a new relationship, either with that person or with someone new, that is not problematical. If we are in debt we would find a way of making sure we don't get into (more) debt in the future. If we go on doing what we have always done, we will always get the same results. If at all possible, we must change our actions to change our experiences which will change our life.

The second solution is to change your expectations. To change your beliefs. This is often the more difficult solution, depending on how deeply your beliefs are entrenched. If we are in a relationship we don't like, we would not expect so much from that relationship, or alter our beliefs about what a relationship should look like. If we are in debt, we would change our expectations and beliefs about either how much money we can make or how much money we need to spend on different things given our income level. We must examine our beliefs and weed out the unrealistic ones; the ones that have been handed to us by our parents, other influential people, and society that are not useful for us now

If you are not happy there are only 2 choices.Change your experiences or change your expectations. Change your life or change your beliefs. To ruminate on your problems is to invite more problems into your future; because you are focusing on the problem and what is wrong instead of on the solution and what will be right. Complaining to others makes things even worse because you, and they, are seeing yourself as a victim who has no control over your circumstances. The only effective thing to do is to find a way to either change your experience of life or to change your actual circumstances.

Let Go

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." - Lao Tsu

It is very difficult to let go of who you are. You have a history that is very hard for you to ignore. You have a self-image which has been burnt into your brain from countless repetitions, either by someone else or by yourself. You assume you must be the person your parents, teachers, and other important people in your life have said you were when you still beleived they knew everything about you. You continue to look for people, ideas, and conditions that support that self-image. And you find them.

But when you cling to a certain self-image, it blocks the possibility of other and quite possibly more useful ones. Who else might you be? More importantly, who else would you want to be? And most importantly, why not? We have the capacity to be just about anyone we want, if we will only clear the way by giving up our idea of who we are and allowing other options to develop.


When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. Have you ever thought about all the things and ideas you need to carry around with you in order to be the person you think you are. Wouldn't it be nice to just drop all that; to abandon the pretense. When you clear the clutter, you give the space for something new to develop and grow. Something better. Something that supports the person you were really meant to be.

Wings

Anything that ruffles your feathers is just a reminder that you've got wings. -- Stuart Rosen

What ruffles your feathers? We get angry all the time because things aren't the way we want. A certain person or group ignores us, or worse yet treats us in ways that hurt us either emotionally or physically. Injustices happen; one person or group gets more than what we think should be their fair share of resources, and so the other gets less than what we think they should get. One person or group is cruel to another. When we get angry it is either because we, or other people that we identify with, are not getting what we want.

Once we know what we don't want, we have a better understanding of what we do want. There is no time we want something more than when we are clearly reminded that we don't have it. There is no time we are not motivated to do something to get what we want. If everything is going well, there is no need for change. There is no motivation to do anything different. We are happy to be in our comfort zone. But we are not learning, growing or acheiving.

It is only when we get very upset about something that we are seriously motivated to fix it. This is when we start to find out our true powers. This is when we learn how to solve problems and get what we want. It is when we start to find out we do indeed have wings. We are focused on what we want, on the solution, so that the solution begins to present itself. We learn and grow. We taste success. We learn to fly. And that is what really makes life enjoyable. We have fun discovering we can do things we never thought we could do.

Action

Organized thought leads to spiritual and mental growth provided it is expressed through action. One does not grow spiritually or mentally by thought alone. Growth is the result of thought expressed through voluntary and definitely controlled habits of actions. ..... Napoleon Hill

It is tempting to think that our life will improve if we just think more positive thoughts; although for many of us, that is difficult enough all by itself. We've all heard of "the power of positive thinking". It would be great if we could just sit and meditate and visualize the things we are wanting, and have everything we want just drop into our lap. But that is not the way life works.

Thought that is not expressed through action is soon forgotten. It is not taken seriously, either by ourselves or by the Universe. We all know that if some idea is important enough to us, we will do something about it. We are active physical beings after all. We will physically try to make it happen. If we sit and visualize our shiny new car but don't even go to the dealership to find out about getting it, then we are just wishing. There is no intention on our part to actually have this car, or serious belief that it will happen.

Our thought must be focused through visualization of what we want, and then expressed through action. Action serves to further focus our thought, and be more aware of our progress towards what we want. It may be stumbling and inefficient at first, but it does get more productive over time, while your intuition is helping you. Both parts of the equation, thought and action, must be present if we are to get what we want. We have to do our part through organized thought as well as voluntary and definately controlled habits of action, if we want to grow into success. Think, then act.

Dreams

God gives us dreams a size too big so that we can grow in them. -- Author Unknown

What are your dreams? When we were young we were full of dreams. We were going to change the world. I know when I was a pre-teen I was going to stop all the pollution by shutting down the factories. Then slowly our parents and teachers and other important people in our lives convinced us those dreams were unrealistic and we forgot about them because we were focusing on what seemed practical.

But deep inside us we still have our dreams. We still want to make a big difference in the world somehow. We want to be rich and famous, but most of all when it comes down to it we want to significantly improve at least certain people's lives. We want to help, to be useful to people. We want to be able to put our talents to good use making our community, and our world, a better place to live in. Unfortunately many of us need to first of all find out what our talents are before we can figure out how to use them in the way that will benefit the most people the best way.

When we bring our dreams out into the open and acknowledge them, they typically seem unrealistic, too much for one person to manage. This is because we are not yet able to acheive them. But we can always learn and grow into the person who can acheive them. It is the truth that only challenges and obstacles cause us to grow and improve. If our dreams were easy to acheive we would become lazy and stagnant. We are meant to grow into our dreams. We are meant to be continually improving, to become good enough people to actually make our dreams come true. We are meant to overcome our challenges and succeed in fulfillng our dreams. That struggling and then the joy of succeeding is the purpose of our lives

Pain

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pa...in is self-chosen. --Kahlil Gibran

It is so easy to miss the daily miracles of your life, as you hurry to complete the goals you set for yourself, or those that someone else set for you. We seldom stop and smell the roses in our rush to get to our appointments. We rush to deal with what seems most urgent, forgetting about what is most important. Even watching TV in the evening often seems more important than listening to your family, or doing anything that requires thought (My opinion is that watching TV is the most significant and most prevalent time-waster there is for most people).

We spend most of our time wishing that we were more happy. Perhaps if the appointment goes well, or when I get my vacation, or when I find a new lover. We can't stand being sad or frustrated or disappointed, and we avoid it like the plague. We don't appreciate that without the bad times, we would never appreciate the good ones. Nor do we appreciate that because we are human, there will always be both good times and bad times, just as surely as winter is always followed by spring and fall is always followed by winter. We miss the lessons that the bad times are intended to teach us. All we think about is how to avoid them.

Much of our pain is self-chosen. For one thing, it is we who choose to see it as pain, instead of a lesson which is intended to benefit us and an opportunity to learn and grow into a better person. For another thing, we choose to see it as something that can and should be eradicated, instead of as a necessary part of our lives and one that makes us appreciate the good times so much more. Finally, we are so focused on the pain we have labeled as such and want to get rid of, that we fail to notice how wonderful life really is, and how everything that happens to us is actually good for us. If we see "bad" events as useful and necessary lessons for us and focus on all the wonderful things there still are in our lives, we will feel a lot less pain and a lot more happiness.

Happy

"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life." — John Lennon

What really is the meaning of life? When you were asked as a child what you wanted to be when you grew up. what did you say? Perhaps a firefighter, or an Olympic champion, or a pirate, or a superhero. Probably not the same thing you would say if you were asked now, and probably nothing like what you actually are today. At some point, we learn that our childhood ambitions are not realistic and we settle for some career that we think we can manage.

I could never understand why people ask me where I wanted to be in five years, or have a ready answer. Never mind planning twenty years or so ahead. It only takes a few minutes to radically change your life situation, and life is so unpredictable. You never know what opportunities are going to present themselves for you, or what obstacles are going to appear to seriously restrict your options. You could die tomorrow. So why is it so important who you think you will be when you grow up?

It would seem more important to consider what you want to be right now, that could continue into the future no matter what life threw at you. Whatever we want in life, we want it for one reason only. Because it will make us happy to whatever degree. Happy is what we really all want to be when we grow up, whether we are happy being a superhero or an accountant. John Lennon understood life where his teacher did not.
His mother was right when she said that happiness was the key to be life. Go out there and be happy. That's what life is all about.

Planned

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." --Joseph Campbell

Many of us cling for dear life to the life we've planned, the life we've always known. We plan our lives according to what we've known already, perhaps what our parents lived or what our friends or the people around us are living. It is what we are familiar and comfortable with. Even if our parents, friends, or loved ones are not doing particularly well with their lives, we still assume it must be the right one for us. We identify with our loved ones and even our neighbors and think we are supposed to be like them.

But we are not like them. We are unique individuals with our own unique destiny. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, and even desires, and must find our own unique direction in life. If we continue to do the same things as the people around us, we will never rise above them, or live the life that we were meant to. We will not be able to utilize our strengths most effectively or be truly happy in what we do. We will only acheive what other people want, not what we truly desire.

In order to be truly successful, we must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. We are more than just the some of our past experience. We are whole and perfect beings whose pathway to learning and growing was charted before we were born; and now we need to be looking for clues as to how to proceed along that path. Always look towards the future, towards emerging opportunities to live the life you were meant to live. And never compare yourself with other people and the lives they are living. There is a unique pathway to success waiting for you if you will just keep an eye out for it.

Complete

"It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself." - Betty Friedan

it is amazing how much time we spend searching for a person to make us whole. If we are a quiet person we are attracted to someone who is a social butterfly. If we are a couch potato we are attracted to someone athletic. Typically when we fall in love with someone we are attracted by some trait they have that we don't have but highly value. We think that if we hang around someone with that trait, it will somehow rub off on us. It will fill the hole inside and make us complete. Yet apparently when people divorce, it is very often the trait that attracted the person in the first place that has been turned around into a negative and caused them to want to leave.

Magazines that tell us every little detail about the lives of celebrities are huge sellers. It is as though our own lives are so dull that we would rather read about Brad and Angelina and how they raise their kids, among other things. We want to hear about their lives because their lives seem so much more interesting than ours do. We want to live like them. We want to live through them. So we don't spend enough time thinking about our own lives and how to improve them.

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself. Just as it is easier to blame someone else than to own up to your own mistakes. We resist taking responsibility for the quality of our lives. We have been taught that outside people and circumstances are what controls us. We have been taught to look outside ourselves for both problems and their solutions. We have been taught to do what we are told. But that is not how we become complete. Becoming complete requires a focus on ourselves and what we can do with our own lives to learn and grow and enjoy our world. It is a process; there are no quick fixes.

Success

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become." - Jim Rohn

We think that success is a prize that we get by working hard and doing all the right things. We strive for success. We do what we are told to do by society in the hopes that one day we will be rewarded. We do our duty. We greatly admire people who work hard and finally make it in the world. But so many of us work hard all our lives and then retire poor. And so many of us are examplary citizens but retire poor. Clearly it is neither hard work or doing the "right thing" that makes one successful.

The more we chase after success, the more it eludes us. When we are focused on what we can get, all the material things that show us we have succeeded, we forget about who we are and whether we are worthy of what we want. We forget about the growing that we have to do in order to enjoy and benefit from the success we want. It is useless to earn lots of money if you don't know how to utilize it in a manner that benefits not only you but the people around you as well.

Success is to be attracted by the person you become. When you cast off the "dirt" of all your limiting beleifs, fearfullness, and bad habits, then you shine. Then you attract the success you want. Success doesn't like all that "dirt", that negative energy, that surrounds most of us, even those who are hardworking and do "what's right" by society's definition. Success is attracted to those who are capable of dealing with it properly, benefiting themselves, the people around them and the planet. Grow into your success by getting rid of those fears and limiting beleiefs and learning to be the best person you can be.

Begin

Begin from anywhere but begin. The door is somewhere and you may stumble upon it. -- Osho

So often we are afraid to begin a project because we feel we are missing the information necessary for successfully completing it. What if something goes wrong? How will we handle it? The trouble is it would take us a lifetime to think of everything that could possibly go wrong, let along how we will handle all those things. And most, maybe all, of these things will never happen anyway. If something does happen, it will probably be something we never thought about. So many times we never get started on a project because we think we need more information about it. And then the window of opportunity closes.

I think the reason we operate this way is that we really don't trust ourselves. We think we are inadequate to the task. We don't see ourselves as adequate problem solvers; as people who can solve any problem as it comes up. We don't trust our intuition, and many of us simply aren't even aware of it. But the truth is that if we can learn to listen to and trust our intuition, we have all the resources of the Universe available to us. We are much more capable of solving problems than we realize, when we utilize our intuition, and deal with things as they come along.

Begin from anywhere but begin. The door is somewhere and you may stumble upon it. The most important thing is to just get started. Beleive in yourself. It doesn't matter where you are starting from or how many problems you anticipate having along the way. Learn to listen to your intuition (and tell the difference between it and what your ego is telling you to do). Not only will it help you solve all those problems, but it will show you the best way to get to that door to what you want.

Don't wait till you can walk confidently directly to the door because that will probably never happen. If you allow yourself to stumble around and make mistakes, which you then learn from, you will discover that you'll find that door faster than you thought possible. Just begin, and begin now. Tune into and listen to your intuition and learn from your mistakes. That is the route to success.

Competitor

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time. Henry Ford

This is not just true about business but about everyday life. In a way, we are all competitors. We are always competing for the time, attention, energy and resources of the people around us. We see ourselves as competitors because we can see that time, attention, energy, and resources seem to have a limited supply. Sometimes we openly compete; and the competition frequently gets ugly when "the winner takes it all". Then we begin to feel like losers, who are never good enough to get what we want.

We walk around constantly worried about how other people see us. We worry about whether they will think us worthy of their time, attention, energy, and resources. We are focused on ourselves and whether we are good enough. But our attention is on the wrong people. Our most successful competitors don't even notice us. They are not going to give us their time, attention, energy, or resources because they choose to keep it for themselves. We are not considered important enough to even be on their radar screeen.

The competitor to be really feared, in business and in life, is the one who goes on making his business, or life, better all the time. He isn't even trying to compete, because he knows he is, or will be, the best at what he does. He is focused only on his own improvement, so it doesn't matter what any particular other person is doing. There is a lesson to be learned here. The path to success is not one of open competition. We will get much further much more quickly if we stop comparing ourselves to everyone else and just focus on how we can improve our lives and our work.

Solitude

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
Albert Einstein


Most of us have very busy lives. We even pride ourselves on how busy our lives are because it makes us feel that we are getting a lot of things done. But none of these things bring us any real satisfaction. Some of us feel like we spend our whole lives putting out fires and never have time for what we'd really like to do. There is always some emergency to take care of. There is always something someone else needs; which seems more important than our own needs. We never seem to have enough time for ourselves.

We live in a world where taking action is highly prized. People who sit around are considered lazy unproductive couch potatos. We seem to have forgotten that in order for our actions to produce satisfactory results, we need to take the time to sit and think about what we want to acheive and how best to acheive those results. Instead we run around like a chicken with it's head cut off. Since we haven't thought out what we want, we spend our time dealing with other people's emergencies that don't help us get anywhere we want to go.

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind. We need time to ourselves to think about what we want to create in our lives. We need time to determine how things can be different and better in our lives and what needs to happen in order to make it so. Time spent daydreaming by yourself is much more productive than taking aimless action that deals with everyone else's needs except your own. The creative mind needs peace and quiet. It needs no distractions. It needs to be left to its own devices. When you give it this, for even short periods if consistently , it will reward you handsomely.

Given to Me

So much has been given to me--I have no time to ponder over that which has been denied." -Helen Keller

Most of us don't have nearly as much denied to us as Helen Keller did. We just take our ability to see for granted, and don't even think about what a wondrous gift that really is. We expect our minds and bodies to function well and don't have any idea of what a miracle that really is. We don't know how lucky we are until we live with someone whose mind and/or body is handicapped. There is so much in our lives that we just take for granted because we expect it to be that way, either because it's always been that way for us or because it appears to be that way for everyone around us.

Most of us are not satisfied with what we have. We dwell on problems, wondering how we can fix them. We dwell on what could be better, wondering how to make it so. We dwell on what we don't have that other people do. "If I could only have this, my life would be so much better". All of this takes us away from appreciating those things that we already do have. All of us, without exception, have a great deal to be thankful for, if we will just focus on finding it. We would probably feel much better even if we would just direct our comparisons to those who don't have what we have instead of those who seem to have more, and realize just how lucky we are.

There is no time for us to ponder what we don't have. There is a world full of riches that each of us has to explore and enjoy right now, just where we are. "It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got". The more we appreciate what we have right now, the more that will be given to us. You only have so much time on earth; spend it enjoying what is already here for you to enjoy. Be happy right here, right now.

Rich

"If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it." - John D. Rockefeller

Money is probably the most stressful word we have. We all want money, yet we are terrified of not having enough of it. We want a large and growing bank account. But we usually can't put our finger on exactly how much money we want or even why we want it. If we had a million dollars, most of us wouldn't really know what to do with it. All we know, all we have thought about, is that we want to have the money.

But money isn't real. At most, it is just a peice of paper. It is a symbol of a promise between 2 people that if I give you something that is valuable to you, you will give me something that is of equivalent value to me. It is just a sophisticated form of bartering. What we really want when we want money is the knowledge that we are valuable to other people, and the security of being able to always have everything we think we need.

We often use money as a means of competition; keeping up with the Jones's because the person with the most "toys" is seen as the most successful. But having more of the things money can buy is not an indication of true riches. Money-grubbing people are not looked upon kindly. Our true richness comes from the quality of our relationships with those people who matter most to us. If your only goal is to become rich by getting a lot of money, you will never achieve it. Because competing for money takes your attention off of the richness what really matters; and hinders or destroys the relationships that matter most to you. And because you have failed to give to them the love they wanted, they fail to give us the riches you wanted.

God

"I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him. I ended up by asking God to do His work though me." -Hudson Taylor

By God here we can mean whatever higher power we find in our life. We all start out by asking God to help us. Our life on Earth seems so overwhelming. There are so many things we want to do, and we seem so incapabale of them. And then there are all the things that other people want and expect of us as well. Even the earliest religions were for the purpose of asking God for help (with the rain, crops etc). We have learned that we are a victim of circumstances God controls, so we must ask it for help if we need to change things.

Once we really learn to love the world and to appreciate all the wonderful things God has created for us, the next question we have is how we can help God. We want to create beautiful things just to honor it, to show it our gratitude. We sing God's praises. We start to see God more as a helper than something threatening. We begin to want to do our part to make the world a better place to live.

Finally, we ask God to do his work through us. This is the point where we realize our true capabilities. We learn that we can do God's work and we can create a better world; but only when we operate under God's advice for us. We tried to do it on our own in the previous stage and that didn't work too well. When we really start accomplishing things and being successful, is when we know that we can succeed because we really do have the capability ourselves and we listen carefully to God's guidance when it comes to us as inspiration or hunches or ideas. This is how we can change the world.

Accomplish

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something." - Thomas Edison

What this means is that the creation of rules actually hinders you accomplishing whatever it is you want to do. Our mind loves to create rules. We feel as though it makes order out of chaos. It puts boundaries on what we should and should not do; giving us parameters to work within. This actually works fairly well in some situations, like governing society. But in others, where you have to create or accomplish something new, it is a big hinderance.

Whenever you create something new, you are by definition going outside the norm, outside what is expected or anticipated. Most of us don't create much that is new in our lives precisely because we are afraid to venture outside the norms of what everyone else expects of us. We are afraid of disapproval, and we are afraid of failing because we tried to do something we aren't familiar with. But all brilliant new ideas are greeted with ridicule and all innovators expose themselves to great risk. That is how things get accomplished.

There are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. This goes for our own personal development too. When we ask someone else for advice, there is no rule that says we have to follow it, or that what worked for him will work for us too. The only thing we can do is to try different approaches and see what works for us. There are no rules.

Of course that means there are no rules for how other people should do things either, and one of the hardest parts of life in this world is learning to respect that; to be completely unjudgmental of others. They don't have to do things our way, just as we don't have to do things their way. All of us must find our own path, based on our strengths and weaknesses, and experiences. There are no rules. Except one-- we must love: ourselves, others, and our world. That is the one and only rule.

Kindness

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love." - LAO-TZU

Kindness in words creates confidence. How you speak to others has a profound influence on how they see themselves. If you continually refer to someone as stupid, they will eventually see themselves as stupid and begin to behave that way. That will cause other people to say they're stupid and then you have a downward spiral. Hardly the way to build his confidence. If you continually refer to someone as bright and intelligent, he will eventually feel much better about himself and begin to behave better too. He will gain confidence in himself.

Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Negative thinking reverts to blame, which causes a closed mind. If what happened is the fault of someone or something, or even luck, then it closes off discussion of alternative possibilities. It's their fault, period. If we think we have no control over the situation, there is no point thinking about how the situation can be changed; that becomes an exersise in frustration and is quickly abandoned. If we think kindly about it, we can begin to explore the possibilities for improving it.

Kindness in giving creates love. It truly is giving that creates love. Love for someone comes from kindness,the desire to make them happy; instead of the receiving of their gifts. Of course, normally in our relationships both happen at the same time, which is why we get them confused. Real unconditional love is not at all interested in "what's in it for me". It is focused on what we can do for someone else in order to make them happier. It is fostered by kindness.

Dreams

God gives us dreams a size too big so that we can grow in them.
Author Unknown

What do you dream of? When I was a child, I wanted to save the world from pollution by shutting down all the factories. Wouldn't it be nice if it were that simple? My father quickly put that down by reminding me to face reality and that if you shut down all the factories then people would be out of work and the products wouldn't be available etc etc etc. I was crushed. Obviously stopping pollution is a much more difficult problem than I had realized.

That was a dream that was a size too big. I was only a child and didn't understand the way the world worked. It still is a dream of mine to stop pollution but now I understand better what is involved. I have grown into a bigger person, and if that was my major goal in life I would be in a much better position to find a solution now than I was then. It is unfortunate that so many children start out with great dreams only to have their family, teacher, priest etc tell them that it is an impossible or impractical idea and so they completely give up on it.

God gives us dreams a size too big so that we can grow in them. If my dream was to buy a new car, or to get through the day, how much growing would I be motivated to do? For one thing, I would just be thinking about myself; probably about how lousy my current car was or all my problems at work or at home. I can't grow when all I think about is myself and my own problems.

Growth happens when we have a dream that we don't right now have a solution to. The growth is in the discovery of the best way to solve a problem, and the more challenging it is, the more we grow. The most growth occurs when we have a dream that is so large that it affects many other people besides ourselves. Then, we have expanded our horizons significantly, which makes the dream both more meaningful and more powerful. Life is about growth. And that's why God gives us dreams and desires that we can't see the way to fulfilling yet.

Kindness

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
Joseph Joubert

Consciously or unconsciously, most of us run around judging the value of other people based on what we feel we are getting from them. It is as though other people were put on earth to serve us, and when they fail to do that effectively we want no part of them. We make freinds with, and fall in love with, those people who do things that make us happy, and say things that we agree with. And people who do things that make us unhappy or say things we don't agree with, we avoid like the plague.

But other people are not put on earth to serve us. They have their own purpose in life, their own pathway to follow. They have their own ideas based on their own experiences, which might be vastly different from ours. It has been said that "common sense" is only common to people with a common point of view (who see things the same way).

But none of that makes other people less worthy of our love. We are all trying our best to succeed in this world based on the knowledge and experience, and talents and weaknesses, that we have been given. All human beings are worthy of our love, whether they are a homeless person on the streets or the Queen. Everyone has a valid story to tell; and if they were all the same then we'd have nothing to learn from each other.

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve. If someone is very rude to you, for example, instead of hating him for being a jerk realize that he may be rude because he has had a bad morning; perhaps his wife left him, or his child is in trouble, or he has too many bills to pay. It has been said that the worse a person is behaving, the more kindness he needs from you. It indicates that he is hurt; and when you think about it, you know that it is when you are hurt that you need kindness the most. Other people are the same. Just as with love, it is easy to be kind to someone who is being nice to you. Real love and kindness is forged when you can love someone who is not behaving well towards you.

Desire

It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow.
Anonymous

"The devil made me do it". How often have we said that to ourselves after doing something we know we shouldn't, yet again. New good habits are very difficult to form, and old bad habits are just as difficult to break. The very nature of a habit, as something you don't even have to think about doing, renders it difficult to change. And, as they say, it is so much easier to acquire a bad habit than to acquire a healthy one.

The most effective way to suppress a bad habit is to go cold turkey. Give yourself a long list of reasons why this habit simply can't be continued. Study all the research on what the consequences will be for you if you continue it. Convince yourself that if you don't quit now, it will be very painful for you in the future. And that if you do quit now, your future will be so much better; so much more fun. Then just quit completely right now. If you quit gradually, it will be too easy to slip back into your old routine.

It is easier to never to get started on something that you know you will regret later than to live with the results. It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow. As they say, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Suppress the first desire. Don't give it a chance. If you don't get started smoking, you won't have to worry about having to buy cigarettes all the time, wanting to smoke in non-smoking areas or around people who clearly don't approve, getting lung cancer etc. It is easier to suppress the first desire than to have to deal with all the consequences of your continuing unhealthy desires, which will get increasingly hard to stop, the longer they continue.

Unhappiness

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations: Edward De Bono.

What makes you unhappy? Most of us can list a lot of things that make us feel sad. These turn out to be usually things that we want but for one reason or another don't have right now. We feel sad when we do not have something we want, whether it is a sunny day, a loving relationship, a vacation, or a new dress. The most important part of this though, is that usually we feel sad that we don't have something we want because we beleive it is possible that we won't be able to, for whatever reason, get it anytime in the future either.

Even if we haven't had a vacation in years, if we knew we were going to get one next year, we wouldn't feel sad about it. We'd feel excited. We'd be really looking forward to it with happy anticipation. That's the difference that expectations make. If you know you will get something in the future you have hope. You are able to picture yourself having what you want because you know it is just a matter of time. You expect to get what you want, and that makes it much more real for you.

We often know what talents we have but don't really know how to use them effectively. Often we have talents that we didn't even know about. So for most people a lot or most of their talent goes unused or underutilized. It is when we are not using our talents adequately that our lives are unfulfilling, even meaningless. So our talents are a very important part of the equation of unhappiness.

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations. When it comes down to it, unhappiness is the feeling that we are missing something and may never get it, and that something is ultimately the knowledge that we are utilizing our talents effectively. The happiest person is the one who expects to be able to utilize his talents effectively; to be the best he can be in this life.

Accept

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us -- Joseph Campbell

We all know the value of planning ahead. People are always asking us where we want to be 5 years from now, and how we are going to get there. I could never answer that question; it seemed too far out into the future. But I definately want to know what the plan is for this week or next week. I make appointments and figure out when the best time for me to do certain tasks. And I don't appreciate changes of plans. It is hard for people to let go of the need to know what the future holds. At some level, we all want the gypsy with the crystal ball. But I am learning to change that.

In order to enjoy life, we have to be flexible. Things do come up unexpectedly, not just in our own life but in the lives of those people we care about. Sometimes it does rain on our parade; and then we need to figure out the best way to cope with that, and to look for the gift in it (how that rain can benefit us). We could never plan for everything. We could never anticipate every eventuality. Even if we tried, it would leave us with no time to actually take action to move towards our goals.

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. We must learn to let go and go with the flow of life. The Universe knows best what is the most benefical life for us to have, even if we can't see the benefit in it right away. Life has its own effortless course so it is much better for us to just go along with that than to fight it and demand it cooperate with our plans. The most unhappy people are the ones that insist that life do whatever they have planned. The happiest are the ones who know that everything that happens is for their own growth and improvement. They accept the life that is waiting for them

Opposite

The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom. -- Tim Ferriss

We always think the opposite of love is hate. We think that because love is such an intense feeling of attraction, the opposite of love must be an intense feeling of repulsion. But we are missing something here. Whether we love a person or hate them, we are still caring about them. Even if we hate a person, they are very important to us. Since love is really about caring, the opposite of love must be about not caring. The opposite of love is being indifferent to someone.

We always think the opposite of happiness is sadness. This is because we associate happiness with having something and sadness with not having something. In our minds, if we don't have something we want, then we must be unhappy, and if we have something we want we must be happy. But happiness is not about having something. Happiness is about being glad we are alive. Happiness is about being able to act. Happiness is really about being able to make a difference in the world. The opposite of happiness is boredom. When we are bored we are unable to act purposefully to make a difference in the world. We don't even know what we want.

The ultimate failure in live is chronic indifference and boredom. Life is meant to be enjoyed actively because we care about other people and the world around us and want to interact with them. Real success is finding love and happiness in this way. It is essential to find out what you are passionate about and then to go out and do it, if you want to find real success in life.

Can Do

"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
John Wooden

It is so easy when we are faced with an obstacle in our lives to focus on what we can't do. When it is raining on our parade, we focus on how we can't control the weather. When there is a traffic jam, we focus on how we can't get the cars moving again. When our spouse does something irritating, we focus on how we can't get them to change. When we don't like our job, we focus on how unreasonable our employer is. It is so easy to blame someone or something else when things go wrong in our life, and complain about it to whoever will listen.

But the real problem, and the reason why we get so frustrated is because we are focusing on the wrong thing. If it is raining on our parade, or there is a traffic jam, or we don't like our job, or our spouse does something irritating, we can always focus on what we are going to do about it because there is always something we can do. If it rains on our parade, we can figure out a way to minimize the effect of the rain on it. If there is a traffic jam, we can focus on how we are going to benefit from the time that we are not going anywhere, perhaps listening to an educational tape or good music. If we don't like our job, we can focus on how we can make it more rewarding for ourselves. If our spouse does something irritating, we can focus on the things they do right and how to improve our relationship.

Even if we can't improve the situation, we can always improve our reaction to it. There is always something we can do about any problem that comes up. Focus on finding that thing that you can do right now that will make you feel better about the problem. Every problem has a solution hidden in it, and all we have to do is to find it. Even if we are not sure that our actions (even if that means just accepting that things are the way they are) are the best solution, it is better to do something right now than to just sit there feeling frustrated and upset. Never let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. Just go ahead and do it.

Criticisism

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things." - Winston Churchill

Nobody likes to be criticized. Some of us are addicted to approval. We go to such great lengths to avoid being criticized that we lose our authentic selves in order to become the person we think other people would approve of; forgetting that everybody has a different idea of what a desirable person looks like. We think that our authentic self is not good enough for others. We think that other people are somehow better, or more worthy than we are. This is especially true if they have more "success symbols" than we do.

But criticism is necessary, just as pain is. Without pain, we would never know what parts of our body were sick and needed to become healthy again. If nobody ever criticized us, we would never know where parts of us were weak and how we need to improve. We tend to think that our weak parts are an embarrassment that only we have; forgetting that everyone, even successful people, have weaknesses and need to improve in certain ways. Having weaknesses is part of being human. We will never be perfect.

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do to a person is to criticise their weak points (but of course this needs to be done in the right way). It is a mark of maturity to be able to accept constructive criticism. A wise person will want to know how he or she can become better. A wise person understands that having a weakness does not mean that they are a bad or undesirable person; it is simply something that they need to pay attention to and work on improving. A wise person knows that all criticism is is a way of calling attention to something that needs to become better.

Accept

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give. -- Eleanor Roosevelt

Sometimes it can be hard to accept whatever comes. We all have to deal with frustrations and setbacks every day. They can be something as trivial as the toast getting burned in the toaster or as serious as a death in the family. But even though all these things happen, there are always good things that happen in our day too. It is our attitude about what happens in our day that can make the difference between a relatively good day and a catastrophe.

It helps to realize that whatever happens in your day is sent to you for your own good, to teach you lessons you need to learn in order to grow and improve. This can be a tough realization for the person who has just been diagnosed with cancer and is afraid of dying. "How can getting cancer possibly be good for me?" But even then, it can be good for you if you develop a good attitude; one that sees possibilities for growth. Getting a terminal illness could help you appreciate life more, and/ or it could inspire you to educate the public or make the last days of other terminally ill people more pleasant.

It is no use fighting with life. You have to accept whatever comes if you want to be happy. The only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give. No matter how bad it seems to you now, you can give your best to it and eventually it will not seem so bad. If you learn to appreciate, instead of resist, the mistakes, frustrations, and setbacks in your life, it will free you to determine the best way to deal with them. You will enjoy life more. You will learn and grow, and in so doing you will have been successful.

Keeping Company

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best - Epictetus

How often have you been in a situation when your family or co-workers or freinds or relatives have been gathered together discussing their aches and pains, or illnesses. I was in a situation like that a couple of days ago and I just wanted to get away. I really felt that if I stayed around them, maybe I would get sick too, just from listening to their words. That is the effect that talking about physical discomfort has on the healthy people listening. It is very much a downer.

Most people are constantly complaining. Even if they feel good physically, they will find something else that is not up to par. We tend to focus on what is not right in our lives. How many long discussions have you had with anyone lately about the beauty of a rose or the resilience of the grass growing in the sidewalk? How would you feel after such a discussion? Imagine how much better you would feel in general if you talked mostly about what is good in the world instead of about what is wrong with it.

This is why it is so important to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best. You want to feel good, and that just isn't going to happen when you keep company with people who complain and blame and think that there is no hope for change. You want to be around people who can inspire, motivate, and encourage you to do your best, to make a positive difference in the world, to be the person you were meant to be. Having a solid group of people like this around you is one of the most important ingredients for your success. Seek these people out today.

Give

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. -- Lao Tzu

We often think we are helping someone by just giving him what he has asked for. We think that now that he has what he wanted, he should be happy. We forget that we are building a relationship of dependency. Now, in order for him to get what he wants, he must get it from us and we still can choose whether or not we will give that to him. We are creating a relationship where we have all the power. And that can only lead to resentment on the part of the other person.

The best way that you can help someone else is to show him how he can get what he wants by himself. That empowers him to take care of his own needs without having to rely on someone else. He doesn't have to keep asking you for help and you don't have to keep giving it. There is no guilt or resentment from either party. It makes him feel good about himself, and therefore, about you too. Everyone wins.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Education is so important for all of us. All of us are teachers and all of us are students. There isn't one of us who doesn't need to learn how to improve in some way, and there isn't one of us who has nothing to share that can help someone else improve in some way.

To be successful, we must be open to having someone else show us how to do whatever we need to do instead of assuming that we can, or should be able to, do it all by ourself. And we must be willing to utilize our knowledge and skills to teach others how to do what they need to do in order to be successful. What do you need to learn, and who can you learn it from? Who could benefit from your knowledge and how can you share it with them?

Failure

"Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success."
Napoleon Hill

We dread failure. If we fail it is the end of the world. We have been humiliated; shown to have poor intelligence, judgment or problem solving skills, and/or bad behavior. We have been measured and found to be wanting. We can practically hear everyone else laughing at us. And most of all we no longer have, or know that we can not get in the future, the thing that we had hoped to have, or keep.

But failure really isn't all that bad. A failure only becomes bad when we dwell on it while failing to learn its lessons for the future; when we lose our self-esteem and self-confidence, and waste our time regretting the past. If we had known what to do in order to be successful and had the right resources at the time, we would never have failed. A failure is simply a lesson on what not to do next time, on what doesn't work. We tend to forget that there will be a next time but there always is. "When God closes a door, he always opens a window somewhere"

Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success. It is important to ask what is the lesson this failure is trying to teach you. Perhaps you don't do your due diligence enough. Perhaps you don't listen carefully enough. Perhaps you are too impatient. These are all things that can be worked on and improved now that you are aware of them.

The other important thing is to ask what is the gift in this failure. Perhaps it has taught you the necessity of being patient. Perhaps it has taught you something you didn't know about other people's behavior. Perhaps it has clarified for you what you really want. These are all things that can help you grow for the future now that you are aware of them. A failure is most of all a learning experience. Forgive yourself, learn what you need to learn and move on. An equivalent success is waiting for you.

Genius

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." –Albert Einstein

Most of us are convinced that we are not geniuses. There always seems to be someone more intelligent than we are, and we are sure we could never accomplish the things they have accomplished. A genius is someone who can name all the capitals of all the African countries by the time they are 3 years old. Or who is in university by the time they are 14. I could never have done that. So that means I am not a genius, right?

Whenever we compare ourselves to other people we are comparing apples and oranges. Yes they are both fruits but they don't have much in common otherwise. An apple might think it is not good enough because it isn't perfectly round like an orange is or have as much vitamin C. But an apple tastes sweeter and is easier to eat. Each kind of fruit, and each person, has its own qualities that make it special. I can't engineer a rocket but I can create beautiful artwork. Joe down the street might be a brilliant engineer but has no artistic ability. We each have our own genius.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. We get into trouble because we insist on judging others. And that mistake is compounded when we judge others based on our own abilities, or even worse on some imagined person's abilities. Just because we, or someone we know or can imagine, can climb a tree does not mean a fish can, or should. The only useful criteria to judge people, or anything else, by is how they have improved from last time. This is the only way they will feel good about themselves and continue to improve.

Education

"It is almost a miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom." --Albert Einstein

I am fascinated by a school in Massachusetts called Sudbury School that is radically different from the school you and I went to, yet it works; so well that schools across the country have adopted its style of operation. In this school there are no grades, no exams, no classes. The students can do whatever they like, within reason. And it is completely democratic so because there are more students than staff the students pretty much decide most of the day-to-day operations of the school, including who their "helpers" (teachers) are going to be. And these kids move on to university at a comparable or even better rate than regular schools and do very well there.

When our education is controlled, as it has been for most of us, we are not able to utilize our unique strengths or determine what the best learning style is for us. We are told what we are going to learn and when and how we are going to learn it. Having an individualized education plan for every child would be prohibitively expensive and take up all the teacher's time, yet this is really what would be needed under our current system. Every student is unique and can't really learn effectively without their unique needs being taken into account.

"It is almost a miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom." The best learning occurs when a wide variety of subjects and approaches to learning them is available to the student so he has the freedom to choose what works best for him. Only he can decide what he is most interested in and how and when he can learn that subject best. Conventional education is trying to fit round pegs into square holes. It doesn't work. Some students get frustrated and give up, others simply lose interest. What these students need more than anything other than stimulation, is freedom to do what works for them.

Advice

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
Harry S Truman

We love to give advice to other people. It can be so difficult to see them doing something that we know that we would not be able to succeed at if we were doing what we see them doing. We are so sure that we know a better way because it has worked for us. We forget that other people have a whole different set of strengths and weaknesses and experiences, and they need to find out what works for them.

Of all people, we most want to give advice to our children. We love them more than anyone and we so much want them to be successful and happy. We want to teach them how to live well and prosper. And with our children more than anyone else, it is difficult for us to remember that they are not just an extention of ourselves, that they too have a whole different set of strengths and weaknesses. And as they get older, they develop their own set of goals and values which can be quite different from ours.

The best way to give advice to your children, or anyone else for that matter, is to find out what they want, and then advise them to do it. The only way for them to be motivated to do something will be if they can see how it fits into their own goals and values. We need to first of all appreciate that other people, including our children, are supposed to have goals and values and viewpoints different from ours, and then to find out what those are. Then we can encourage and advise our children to do what they need to do to find the path that's right for them. That is the only way we can actually be helpful to others.

Decision

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.
Maimonides

It is so easy to be afraid of making the wrong decision. What if other people laugh at my mistake? What if I lose a lot of money over it? We agonize over all the things that could go wrong if we made a bad decision. We try to figure out "What if ... and what is my plan B" but the truth is that we could never know everything that could possibly go wrong, let alone how to deal with it before it's even happened. And what if nothing went wrong? What if our decision was actually the right one? All that time and energy spent worrying would have been wasted going nowhere, instead of going into thinking about how to get started on our journey.

What's the worst that could happen if we made the wrong decision. The worst thing is that we failed to learn valuable lessons from it about what to do next time. But that is always something under our control. And sometimes what was the wrong decision from one point of view turns out to be the right decision from another. For instance, you might go to school for several years and then realize you didn't want to major in this subject after all and wasted all that time and money, but during those years you may have met your soul mate or important work contacts for what you really wanted to do.

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision. If you never make a clear decision you are always fearful of a future that is out of your control. You never know what is going to happen, because you haven't decided what is going to happen. And you become unclear about who you are and what it is that you really want and need, a wishy-washy person. If you make a lot of clear decisions, you will get better at it, and even if you make the wrong one you can benefit from the lessons it will give you about how to improve for next time.

Practise making clear decisions about even the smallest things and then work up to the more important things. You'll feel a lot better about yourself, and about your future.

Win

I can't lose, it's just too many ways to win.
Brandon Alexander

It is interesting that we are always so much more aware of the negative than the positive in our lives. We know we are unhappy even if we can't identify why because we don't know what it is that we want. And then when we determine what we want we are unhappy because we don't have it and don't see how to get it. We decide that this thing that we think we want is a life and death situation and we will be miserable unless we have it.

The truth is however that we don't really want to have any particular thing. What we really want is the way that we expect that thing to make us feel. What we really want is to feel happy, to feel good about ourselves. We feel frustrated because we are not asking ourselves the right question. We are asking how we can get this thing we want, which we don't have an answer for; instead of asking how we can become happy, which is much easier to answer.

There are many things out there that will make us feel happy and good about ourselves that we don't even see because they aren't the one that we have decided that we want. Life is a process of trial and error. If one thing doesn't work out, we can always try another. There are always plenty of opportunities for our happiness when we look for them, recognizing that happiness is our real goal. We really can't lose when we seek happiness. There are too many places to find happiness. When happiness is what we seek, we will eventually find it all around us.

Thinking

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
—A. A. Milne

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. These are the people who find it easy to just go with the flow and agree with whatever most people say is true. They assume that if most people beleive something then it must be true. They never stop to question who came up with the idea in the first place. They want to be part of the crowd and blend in.

The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. These people are not willing to go along with what most people say, not feeling like part of the crowd; yet they need some social support for their beleifs. They need to find some smaller group of people who agree with them. They are thinking enough to question the beleifs of the masses but not enough to have their ideas stand by themselves.

The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking. It needs no social support. It values ideas over social approval; knowing that many good ideas will not be approved of by other people. It doesn't want to let other people's agendas, opinions, and beleifs (which will be many and varied) get in the way of the truth. It knows that the truth is often unpopular but must be spoken anyway. It will not live a lie just because someone else doesn't know any better (that it is a lie). Never be afraid to speak your truth just because you think that the people around you will disapprove of it. Your truth is just as valid as anyone else's and must be heard.

Understand

The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing
George Bernard

We always think we understand. Of course we know why someone did some action; we would have done it for that reason. "She looked at him with "hungry" eyes because she wants to sleep with him. That is the reason why I would look at an attractive member of the opposite sex like that". We practise a reverse empathy a little too well sometimes. In truth, she is not you and may have quite different reasons to look at him that way. But we tend to forget that and get angry.

It is the meaning that you assign to an event that determines how you feel about it. We really have only one emotion, excitement, and how we name it and deal with it depends on our interpretation of what is going on around us. How many times have you felt afraid of how something would turn out and then it turned out very well. Our emotion is just an interpretation, and is even more so when we are trying to guess how other people are feeling. And especially when we are trying to guess about how we feel about how they feel.

The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing. It is only when we think we understand what is going on that we judge things to be good or bad. We assign a meaning to the situation which brings on the appropriate (negative) emotions. If I see a situation just as something that happened for no particular reason, or for some unknown reason, I can forgive it easily. If I see a situation as something that happened because "the world is out to get me" then it will be difficult to forgive. And I would be setting myself up for more of the same.

Hard

It's so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want to.
Annie Gottlier

Sometimes we really struggle with what would seem like an easy task. We fight with it and complain; busily thinking about the hundred other things we should be doing right now. It seems to take forever. It is dull and boring and we can't wait to get it over with. But we do it. This is because someone else, or society, has told us that it is necessary, either for our own good or for theirs. But they don't know what is really necessary for our own good because only we can determine that. And what is necessary for their own good they should be doing it, or at least finding someone who enjoys doing it to do it for them.

When I want to do something, it becomes easy. I can see clearly what I want to accomplish at the end of it and how that will benefit me directly. As soon as I become clear on those things, then I am willing to put up with the more unpleasant aspects of what I am doing. When I want to do something I have a purpose. Life becomes meaningful; and all those dirty chores that inevitably come with important goals become worthwhile. When I want to do something, and enjoy it, time falls away too. It seems to go surprisingly quickly.

Why struggle with life? If someone asks you to do something, you need to ask yourself if this is something that will benefit you in the end. If they are a person who is important enough to you then you may well want to do it just because you want to please them. Wanting to please them becomes your goal and purpose. But if they are not that important to you, then you don't have to do what they say. Never do something just because someone told you to. You don't have to (unless it is the police). Just say no. Life is too short to waste your time doing what everyone else wants. There's barely enough time to reach your own goals and dreams.

Should

Constant reminder: Stop thinking about what life "should be" and appreciate and celebrate what life is.
James Arthur Ray

"Should" should be a dirty word. I always want to say "Why should I?" Who is setting the standards of what my life should be like here? Should implies that whatever my life is like now is not good enough; that it is being compared to some other situation or way of life and found wanting. It often implies that someone else has a better idea of what my life should be like than I do; that their way is better.

Stop thinking about what life "should" be. Yes it is important to have goals but that is a different thing. That is what you want and expect your life to be like in the future. But should is about the present. You can change the future but you can not change the present, and neither do you want to. Whatever is going on in your life right now is there for a reason, to help you learn and grow to reach towards a your potential.

In reality life should be nothing other than what it is. It is, right now, with all its current problems and challenges, an opportunity to improve, to move forward. We must appreciate it for what it is before we can hope to create a better future. We can after all only deal with what is actually happening around us right now. It is a waste of time to wish that things were different. They are not. We must work with what we've got. We must appreciate and celebrate what life is; an opportunity for our continual growth and improvement

Criticize

He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.
Abraham Lincoln

We are constantly going around criticizing. We expect everybody to conform to our own wants and needs, even when we haven't told them what our wants and needs are. That homeless man shouldn't be asking for money because it's inconvenient for me, and it makes me feel guilty. He should be out working, or at least looking for work. That woman down the street shouldn't have such a loud party when I'm trying to sleep. She should be more considerate. People shouldn't be having abortions because they shouldn't have had sex in the first place. We seem to look for those things we don't want in people, so we find them, and then we criticize them.

But how often are we genuinely willing to help someone improve their behavior. Are we really willing to help that homeless man find work and/or a place to live? Are we willing to talk to the woman down the street about reaching some sort of compromise? Are we really willing to help those people avoid having sex too soon, or those who are pregnant and considering abortion, or those who are living with their children when they are just children themselves? Our talk is cheap.

He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help. What good does it really do to tell someone he is misbehaving without telling him a better way to behave? It leaves the person feeling bad about himself without having any way to redeem the situation, which isn't fair to them. For myself, that kind of criticism tends to make me angry, defensive, and stubborn. If you really want someone's behavior to change, don't just criticize them. Motivate and help them to change. Show them a better way. Once the person knows how to change, they are much more likely to give you what you want.

Gift

Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more
Anthony Robbins

We seldom really think of life as a gift; instead we go around thinking that we are somehow entitled to it. Often we think that life owes us something; instead of the other way round. We just take our life for granted, and even when we see life cut short for other people, we assume that it will never happen to us. We don't appreciate our life as the wonderful, fragile thing it really is. It really is a gift that we are very lucky to have. It deserves much more gratitude and respect than we normally give it.

We often wonder what the purpose of life is, and why we were put here. I beleive we were put here not just for our own learning and growing, but to help other people learn and grow as well. After all, as they say "two heads are better than one". Each of us has our own unique strengths that other people need for their own growth. Just like with all freedoms, our life comes with a responsibility; to do what we can to try to improve the lives of other people, and ultimately it will come round to improving our own life too.

It is a privilege and an opportunity for us to help others. It is only our own Ego that stops us from seeing this, because it is ignorant. The truth is that helping others feels good and also helps us with our own growth. We are all connected with each other and whatever we do for others always in some form comes back to us at some time. And the more we learn and grow in this way, the more we are capable of helping others. It is an upward spiral. It is what makes life meaningful, and truly enjoyable.

Forgiveness

The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.
Marianne Williamson

Many of us are terrified of making a mistake, of failing. We often spend many hours regretting what we did wrong. We all long to be forgiven. But true forgiveness is as rare and precious as is true listening. We say that God forgives us but I am not sure that we really beleive it, or that most people even know what real forgiveness is like. People often say they forgive us, and then expect us to reward them for it. And be forever grateful. Which just makes us feel used and resentful. Or else they say they forgive us this time but we better not do it again.

True forgiveness is recognizing that a crime was not even committed, so there is nothing to forgive. It is recognizing that we are all humans so we are all going to make mistakes and fail sometimes. We are all going to do things sometimes that in hindsight, or other people's sight, are really stupid. It is pointless to get mad at someone if you are just as likely to do something just as "bad" tomorrow. It is, of course, just as pointless to get mad at yourself for doing something that if you had known better, you never would have done. We are all doing the best we know how to do at the time. You need to forgive yourself just as much as you need to forgive others.

The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world. Forgiveness is the only way to show true love. If we cannot excuse someone for being less than perfect, then we can never truly love them. True love is loving even the ugly parts of a person. We all have those parts of us that we are ashamed of, and our greatest longing is to find someone who will accept all of us; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Only then can we begin to heal our shame.

Now

Never rest on your laurels nor dwell on your failures. Rather, start over; begin anew in each golden moment of Now.
Neale Donald Walsch

The only thing that we can be certain of, other than death, is that everything will change. Change is to be expected, but not feared. It is necessary to keep our lives interesting and ourselves learning and growing. It is the antidote of boredom. It allows us new opportunities even as it creates new challenges. Most importantly it teaches us to be flexible. But so many people fear change because it takes them out of their comfort zone.

One good thing about change is that whatever bad situation you are in right now will change soon too. It is of course in large part up to you whether it gets better or worse, but even if it gets worse that might open up a way for you to improve things. Just because you failed once doesn't mean you will always fail. Don't dwell on your failures, you will soon be given a new opportunity to try again and you want to be ready for that.

The same is true of your successes too though. There will soon be different circumstances which may change the meaning and importance of whatever successes you have had. Don't rest on your laurels, because new circumstances will mean that there are new goals to be set and successes to create. Seize the day, and the opportunities that will come with new circumstances if only we are watching for them. We are not meant to have one success, and then decide that is good enough. We are meant for greater and greater successes as we climb the ladder to reaching our potential.

Start over; begin anew in each golden moment of Now. Whatever happened, success or failure, is now in the past and "out of our hands". We need to take the new circumstances that are going on around us right now and start again utilizing that to create a new success, either from scratch or from out of the pieces of our previous failures. Now is all we have to actively work with to build a brighter future. And it is important to remember that what is now is not the same as whatever was in the past.

Wisdom

Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.
Horace

We know how important it is to read. Books are invaluable. They present us with all the knowledge of those people who have gone before us, and those who have dealt with things that we have not experienced yet. They tell us about other people's mistakes so that we don't have to make them ourselves, and they can often give us ideas about different ways to deal with a situation similar to the one we are going through now or might go through in the future. Of course these days "reading" would include media such as computers, and television, which Horace didn't have.

But reading is not enough. Knowing what to do isn't enough. We could have all the information in the world but unless we go out and take action, unless we apply it, it is useless to us. Many of us are addicted to reading, to finding out more and more information; to the point that it gets overwhelming and we don't know what to do first. That doesn't serve us very well. Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.

The only way to gain true wisdom is to actually go out in the real world and do something. Test out your hypotheses. See for yourself what really happens when you take a certain action in certain circumstances. No two lives are exactly the same because our circumstances are always a little different. Experiment with doing different things in different ways at different times and see what kinds of results you get. It is only when you understand what is likely to happen when you take a certain action at a certain time that you can learn how to do it more effectively and/ or at a better time.

Flying

Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway.
Mary Kay

We all know what we can't do. Or at least we think we do. We try to do something, make a mistake and fail, and then just assume that it is something we can't do. We assume that if we can't do it now, then we will never be able to do it. We give up on it. We build long lists of things that we can't do. We go around telling everyone "I can't"; even if it really means "I don't want to", but we are continually reminding ourselves of our inadequacy this way.

We never really know what we can't do. And even if we can't do it today, we may be able to do it tomorrow. The classic case of course is the woman who lifts the car to save her child when the next day she wouldn't be able to comprehend how she could ever have done that. Circumstances change, and we adapt to them. We have a much greater capacity within us to acheive our goals than we would ever realize unless we really needed to use it. When we really want to do something, we can do it even when other people would say it's impossible.

If a bumblebee thinks it can fly, it does. The same goes for us. It is only our beleifs about our inabilities that stop us from acheiving our goals. We will do what we need to do in order to get where we want to be as long as we don't know that we can't. Faith is everything. We need to have more faith in our capabilities, and less in our inabilities. We definately have the capacity to surprise ourselves with our capabilities. Never assume that you can't. You'll be amazed at what you really can do if you are motivated to do it strongly enough.

Dream

To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are
Tim Menchen

We all have lofty ideas of who we would like to be. We want to have a body free of aches and pains, and in perfect health. We want to be stunningly beautiful. We want to be rich and wildly successful at what we do. We want to be someone who is loved by everyone who sees them. We want to be calm and unruffled, and able to deal quickly and effectively with any problem or challenge that comes up. But of course none of this is going to happen anytime soon for most of us.

We must appreciate the person we are, right now. All of us have weaknesses; that is part of being human, and someone who was perfect would not be very attractive to the rest of us. We all struggle with aches and pains, a body which is less than stunningly beautiful or in perfect health. We all have trouble coping with conflict sometimes. We all have to deal with people who don't approve of us or our ideas. But all these problems make us much more interesting people, and much more involved with life and the world around us. They make us much more alive.

To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are. Learn to appreciate who you are right now, a person whose challenges give them plenty of opportunities to learn and grow. It is only if we focus on what we can do right now, to overcome those challenges, that we will move towards creating the person we want to be. It is important to know what kind of person you would like to become, for sure; but it is essential to love, and utilize, all of who you are in the moment, including all your weaknesses. Because it is your challenges and weaknesses that point the way towards being that person you want to be, and motivate your growth towards it. Don't waste the person you are by trying to ignore your weaknesses and challenges, or allow them to discourage you; learn how to use them to help you get towards where you need to go.

Save

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.
W. Churchill

Sometimes we get tired of the old. We get bored and yearn for something new and different. We get restless and want change. So we decide to get rid of everything we are used to and try something completely new and different. We want to create a whole new world, and the only way to do that is to destroy the old one. But we are overzealous and we throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. The problem with completely destroying the old world is that there are many parts of it that are very useful to us and we need to keep.

The truth is that our lives must be a balance of the new and the old. We need traditions and routines to keep us grounded with a sense of who we are as part of a group. We can't handle too much change at once; we get anxious and feel like our world is out of control. Yet we can't handle too much security at once either, because then we become stagnant and dull, and bored. We need both. We need to save the best parts of our old world, those traditions and routines we find very meaningful, and at the same time embrace new changes and challenges to renew our interest in life.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old. Decide what parts of your present world mean the most to you. There are family traditions and cultural traditions worth saving. There is old wisdom that can be used in dealing with a new world, and that should be saved too. It is certainly not true that "primitive" wisdom is of no use in a modern world. We can never completely predict what will happen so we can never know what knowledge is going to come in handy to deal with a new situation. Save what is left of your old world because it can help you in building the new one.

Count

Count not what is lost; only, what is left.
Old Chinese Proverb

How often we dwell in regret at the opportunities we missed and the chances we didn't take. We regret the "stupid" things we did that caused us to lose money or time or something else. And especially we regret not having those things we loved that are now no longer with us. We focus on what is missing in our lives, on the gap between what we want and what we now have. And because we are focused on the size of the gap, it widens.

Regret is pointless. As the saying goes "There's no use crying over spilt milk". We can't change the past. We can only pick up the pieces of what's left and go on from here. Our focus should always be on the future. If we can change our viewpoint and focus on what we still have right now, and how we can utilize that, that will expand in our life; we will have more to work with. There are always opportunities. No matter how much money etc we have lost previously with our "stupid" actions, we can always get it back.

If we focus on and appreciate what we have right now, no matter how little we have left; we will be in a position to take advantage of the next opportunity that arises. We will have the necessary tools to work with. Everyone starts small, with what they have available to them right now, and works up from that. Those who succeed know and appreciate what they have available to begin with. They know that they have everything they need to get started, and that they can just take it from there. They never dwell on what they don't have. They count what is left to them, and are grateful for the opportunities those things provide.

Beautiful

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

God never creates an ugly thing. There is beauty in everything. It's just that sometimes it is hiding and we have to look for it. Everything in our world is meant to help us learn, grow, and succeed. Obstacles are meant to help us find out how much we want to acheive something as well as to learn how to overcome them. Frustrations are meant to teach us perseverance and problem-solving. When something is a long time coming, it teaches us patience. Everything is there for our own benefit.

Beauty is really in the eye of the beholder. It is not anything to do with the physical attributes of something but has to do with the beleifs, values, and attitudes of the person who sees it. That is why there is such a variety of loved things in this world. It stands to reason that if we could adjust our beleifs, values, and attitudes, we really could see the beauty in everyone and everything.

When we see something that initially looks ugly, we need to look closer. There has to be something good about it somewhere. The desert hides a well, if only we will search it out. Nothing is without beauty, without a redeeming grace.

Power

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
Aristotle

We tend to think of power in terms of what we can do. If we have a lot of power, that enables us to do a lot of things. We tend to see it as a kind of strength that gives us more choices as to what we can accomplish. We beleive our true power is in accomplishing, in doing. We are focused on succeeding, often on succeeding more than everyone else. Power is even seen sometimes as a way of controlling other people by not allowing them to exersise their own power. But power is not just about what we can do.

It takes just as much power to not do something as it does to do it. It takes power to restrain yourself, to resist temptation. It takes power to "just say no". For a teenager, it requires perhaps even more power to refuse to have sex than it does to go along with it. It takes a lot of strength. Sometimes succeeding does not mean doing whatever you want to do. Sometimes succeeding means staying back and doing nothing, because sometimes going ahead and taking action will cause you more harm than good in the future.

For everything we think and do, we have a choice. Do we accept the beleif and do the action in this situation, or do we not? What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do. Our true power lies in making an intelligent choice as to which way to go. It lies in not being influenced by what other people want or expect from us when that runs counter to our own intuition about what we should do. It lies in knowing that sometimes doing nothing, or doing the opposite of what other people are telling us to do, is the choice that will benefit us the most. We always have the power to say no instead of yes. We always have the choice.

Faith

"When you come to the end of all the light you know, and its time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly"
Edward Teller

Faith is a very difficult thing to acquire. We always want to know exactly what will happen in the future if we do or don't do this particular thing. Fortune tellers have always been popular. We feel very uncomfortable if we don't have a clear directive as to the best direction for us to take, including an explanation why. Many of us are really afraid of taking risks and failing, since we can't tolerate the idea of making a mistake and doing the wrong thing.

But those of us who develop the courage to start taking risks gradually come to understand that most of the time we are successful. We can start to develop faith. We begin to understand that the Universe wants us to succeed. And we also understand that if we don't take that leap of faith and take a risk, then that is a way to guarantee failure. We can't possibly know all the pros and cons of every action we are considering taking, and figuring them out is often so overwhelming that most of us who try to do that don't get around to taking the action.

It is comforting to know that if we are willing to take the risk of stepping into the unknown, the Universe will make sure that we will safely succeed. Perhaps we will be given something to stand on, some source of security that we never expected. Maybe someone else will suddenly show up to help us, or maybe we will discover some object which turns out to be just what we need. But if that doesn't happen, then we will be taught to fly. We will learn how to navigate this new and mysterious situation, and how to find what we want within it. Have faith in yourself and in the Universe. We were meant to take risks and reap the rewards, and we need that faith to do it.

History

History is a set of lies agreed upon
Napoleon Bonaparte

Some of us are obsessed with the past. We study it in great detail, searching for clues as to why things are the way they are today. Sometimes we study it searching for clues as to how to avoid certain problems that occured in the past from happening again. Sometimes we study it just out of sheer interest, to see how people coped with life at a time when they had a different set of tools to use.

But we forget that the past is not necessarily the way it is portrayed in books. The people who wrote the books, if they were involved in the situation themselves, wrote about it according to their cultural and individual biases and points of view. Some people write the history books as if the Holocaust never existed, because they are so ashamed that it did. Writers want to make it look as if they, or their society, did the right thing; especially when they did not. History is a set of lies that people agree on.

But history is not just about the history of society. History is also a set of lies when it involves a particular individual. We look back upon our own past in a way that is colored by our present opinions and points of view. We choose what part of our past to bring into memory, and incorporate into our self-image. Our own past is the way we choose to see it at this time.

When we remember something we typically search for some memory that supports what we currently beleive about ourselves and who we are. Our own individual history is a set of lies, colored by our biases and opinions, that we, as an individual, have agreed must have happened in order to justify our self-image. The truth is that none of the past might really be true. Focus on what is happening now as you look towards the future. The past doesn't matter because it isn't even the truth.

Love or Beauty

Do you love me because I'm beautiful, or am I beautiful because you love me?
Oscar Hammerstein, II

Do you love me because I'm beautiful? We all have our own quirky standards of beauty. What I consider to be a beautiful woman might be someone you consider pretty plain, and vice versa. Sometimes a person seems attractive just because they remind me of someone else that I loved in the past. Then of course, there are those of us who think someone is beautiful just because the media label him or her as such. Just because many other people find them beautiful.

Am I beautiful because you love me? This is a trickier question. But so often, I find that if someone is beautiful on the outside but has been cruel to me or just has a personality I don't like, all of a sudden he/she looks ugly. And if I love someone for some personality quality, they all of a sudden look more physically beautiful to me. Sometimes love is all that is needed to make a person look physically beautiful in the beholder's eyes.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could make everyone beautiful just by loving them, just by finding something about every person to love. It's true that if we can love and accept a person just the way he/she is, that person will improve much more easily and quickly than if we tell them that we expect them to change before we can love them. That person will become more beautiful, and give us even more reasons to love them, if we will only love them in the first place. Here we create an upward spiral. And that is how we create heaven on earth.

Grindstone

Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us. Thomas L. Holdcroft

Our life on earth is meant to be a series of lessons to help us learn and grow. I like to think of it as a "school field trip" for our spirits. Just as when we are at school we are given a series of problems to solve, life presents us with a series of challenges for the same reason. They are meant to test how much we know, how motivated we are to solve them, and how flexible we are in finding solutions. They are meant to teach us lessons and build our confidence in our ability to deal with them successfully. But everything depends on how we see our challenges.

Just as in school, some of us struggle mightily with our challenges. We get frustrated and angry. We start feeling sorry for ourselves and ask "Why me?" We have some idea that life is supposed to be smooth sailing, that we should never make mistakes or, worse yet, even fail in our first attempts to get what we want. Sometimes we even say something like "I could never figure this out. I'm too stupid". We lose our sense of direction. We lose our ability to think clearly about the problem, and find a suitable solution. The grindstone of life grinds us down.

And, just as in school, some of us succeed grandly. We sail through challenges, getting all A's so to speak. We rise to a new challenge, excited to prove that we can indeed get through it successfully. We are confident that we have, or can find, all the skills we need; and so will be able to work it out. We expect to run into problems from time to time, and we know that they can be solved. We stay calm and alert, and think clearly about the problem and its solution. In this case, the grindstone of life polishes us up. We are able to learn the lessons we need to learn, and get done what we need to get done. We are successful in life.