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.

Healthier

It is healthier to see the good points of others than to analyze our own bad ones. Francoise Sagan

How many faults of your own can you come up with? For most people it will be quite a few. We spend a huge amount of time criticizing ourselves. Sometimes we try to compare ourselves to an impossible ideal; we can never be rich enough or skinny enough. The advertising media love to cash in on our insecurities. They want us to beleive that unless we have the right make of car, for ex, we will never be rich or successful with the opposite sex. This is nonsense of course, but we are seduced into beleiving it when we are constantly bombarded with that kind of message.

It is typically the case that the more faults you see in yourself the more you will see in the people around you. You know underneath that all people are basically the same; so it stands to reason that if you are not a good person, if you have all these terrible faults, then other people must have them as well. And your attitude about the people around you will be reflected in their attitude towards you. If other people know you think they have all these faults, they will start acting as if they did, too. And they won't like you or respect you.

It is much healthier to see the good points of others. For one thing, if you always compliment others on their good points, they will like you and undoubtedly return the favor. Even more importantly, once again, you know underneath that all people are basically the same, so it stands to reason that if other people have all these good points, then you must have them as well. You feel better about yourself if you feel better about other people. Because we really are connected. Any opinions or feelings you send towards others do come back to you. So make sure they are good ones. And stop critisising yourself so much. You are a child of God, just like everyone else.

Beauty

There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Just what is really beautiful? We all have our opinions. The truth is that beauty is an opinion, not a fact. There is no absolute standard of beauty. What I think is beautiful, you might think is hideous. Frequently what's in fashion is what I think is of no appeal to me at all. How often has someone you know raved about how wonderful something is and you can't imagine what on earth he sees in it?

In a way, it is unfortunate that there is no absolute standard of beauty. Since we don't all appreciate the same things, that means that you might be motivated to get rid of something I want to keep and enjoy. But there is a bright side to that too. If you think that I am not beautiful, that doesn't mean that nobody will. Because everyone has their own opinions of what is beautiful, someone somewhere will find me beautiful. It won't be everyone. But there will be someone.

It is interesting to pursue beauty. We are all searching for something beautiful. What is beautiful to us is a reflection of our beleifs, attitudes, and values; and that is why it is a personal opinion and not an absolute. In fact, what we find beautiful can tell us a great deal about ourselves. It has a lot to teach us about who we are. What do you find beautiful? Ask yourself what that says about you. You might learn a lot.

Sins

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness. Franz Kafka

Impatience is a sin that is rampant in our society. We want things yesterday. We have grown to be accustomed to the idea that we should be able to get things right away. We get irritated if we have to wait more than 5 minutes for our fast-food hamburger. If it takes a long time for us to receive something we want, we just assume that there is some problem somewhere. But often there is no problem other than our own attitude.

One reason why things take a long time to come is because we aren't willing to do any work to get it. We have come to beleive that things should be handed to us on a silver platter. Preferably free. In all fairness, sometimes we simply don't know what work needs to be done, but many of us are simply lazy. We don't like to hear that about ourselves but underneath we know it's true. We also know underneath that other people aren't likely to just give us what we really want. They're too busy looking after themselves, as they should be.

Often we are so impatient to get what we want that we think that doing any work towards acheiving a goal will just take too long. We don't want to wait for our efforts to pay off; we want it now. Impatience and laziness are related. Both imply a false sense of our own importance, good for our ego but not for us. Impatience and laziness just get other people annoyed so they are not likely to help you get what you want either.

If you want to be truly successful, it is imperative that you are patient and that you are willing to take whatever actions are required. Success does not come overnight, and usually not without several failures first. And it does not come without hard and often unpleasant work. That's the reality of it. But the harder the battle is, and the longer you had to wait, the sweeter the success is.

Choices

It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
J. K. Rowling

What choices are you making in your life? What abilities are you demonstrating. What is the real reason that you are in the life situation that you currently find yourself in? To consciously answer those questions will take some thought. The biggest impediment to success is all those choices and abilities you don't even know about. Habits are very useful in their right place, but when we get to making choices we aren't even aware of having made, then we get into trouble.

Sometimes we make choices that are just to please someone else. We do whatever we think will make the other person happy, even if it does not support our own goals, or abilities. Sometimes we choose to do something just because that's the way it's always been done, failing to show any ambition or inititative to acheive a better life. Sometimes we make choices because we think we think there is a rule (spoken or unspoken) that we have to follow (for example if someone gives me a blue book and Joe a yellow book, I feel I have to have the blue book even though I'd prefer yellow (and Joe might prefer blue too), because that's what was given to me). None of these are conscious, authentic choices.

It is even our own choice whether to express our abilities. It is a choice we make to discover what abilities we have. It is not useful to us to have abilities we don't even know we have, or to use them in a way that does not benefit our own growth and development. When we make a conscious authentic choice to expresss our abilities in a positive constructive manner working towards our own goals, that says a lot about us. It says we are competent, and we know it, to make things happen. And that we care very much about our goals. And those are really the two main incredients for success.

Self-Awareness

I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.
Billie Jean King

It is very easy in our society, being constantly bombarded with millions of marketing messages, and comments from others, to lose sight of who we are. We are constantly being told who to be by the media; and who we are by all the people around us, who really don't know but often think they do. And all these messages are very convincing, especially when they come from our family who we think ought to know us because they've been living with us for so long.

We get so busy in our daily lives that we simply don't get around to sitting quietly and asking ourselves "Who am I? What are my strengths and weaknesses? What do I really love and value (and not because someone told me I should)? What do I really want to accomplish in my life? What do I want to be remembered for when I am gone? We never learn to choose our battles, to say no to what is not important to who we are as a person. Because we don't know who we are as a person so we can't know what is important in supporting that.

If you are going to be a champion at anything, you need to be aware of yourself. You need to know your strengths so you can improve them, and your weaknesses so you can fix them or at least find a way to cover for them. You need to know what you value and what you want to accomplish so that you know what field of endeavor to strive towards being a champion in. You need to know what is possible for you and what is not so that you remain focused and choose your battles wisely. Set aside some time today to become aware of yourself, of who you really are.

Bore

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
Voltaire

We sometimes talk about a bore as someone who talks on and on about himself and never lets us get a word in edgewise when we want to talk about ourself too and how we relate to what he has just said. We know that a good conversation consists of tossing the ball back and forth, and we resent it when that doesn't happen. But being a bore isn't just about not letting anyone else have their turn to talk.

When someone goes on and on talking about themself, there are no questions for us to ask. We are not curious about the way he feels about something or the way he sees something because he has already told us, or we expect him to tell us soon. We already know his experiences in life, perhaps more about him than we ever wanted to. There is nothing new to discover about him at all.

When someone just tells everything about himself, the listener gets bored because there is no mystery to engage her. The real joy in having a close relationship with someone else is in gradually finding out about who they are. It is the joy of wondering how they see their world, and gradually getting answers; of exploring all their similarities and differences with us, little by little. It is the mystery of another person which keeps us interested in them. When all is revealed too soon, our interest dies.

Solitude

Solitude sharpens awareness of small pleasures otherwise lost.
Kevin Patterson

Some of us actually fear solitude. We don't want to be alone with ourselves. We want to be surrounded by loving family and friends all the time. We don't know what to do with ourselves when there is not someone else there to entertain us. We need other people there to define us for ourselves. We don't know who we are and we are not sure we want to. We confuse solitude with loneliness.

But solitude is not the same as loneliness. There are times when we actually need solitude. We need time to get to know ourselves and how we really feel about what is going on around us. Our nervous system needs a rest every now and then from a constant bombardment of new stimuli. We need time to think quietly about what it is that we want to acheive in the future, and how we can get started on that. But most of all, we need time to "stop and smell the roses".

It is only when I am quiet and by myself that I am able to identify the more subtle physical feelings of how I am relating to my environment right now. Often being by ourselves engenders a desire to be quiet and still, and this is the only time we can really be aware of the small details of our environment. It's as though when we are with another person, they automatically take up most or all of our attention. Only when we are by ourselves can we really appreciate our environment, from the delicateness of a flower, to the majesty of a soaring eagle. Take time for solitude today.

Lover

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.-- Tom Robbins

We dream of the perfect lover. The knight in shining armour who will slay all our dragons. The hero on the movie screen who will sweep us off our feet and carry us off into the sunset. Marilyn Monroe. A fantasy partner who thinks we are the most wonderful thing in the world and will never get upset at anything we say or do. The list goes on. We want a lover who is stunningly beautiful, beleives the same things we do, never gets tired of listening to us talk, and who has no bad habits. But we also know from experience that this kind of person is pretty difficult to find in real life.

Why waste time looking for the perfect lover. Nobody is perfect. Perfect people only exist in the stories and on the movie screen. Real people have annoying habits. They are not often stunningly physically beautiful. They do get tired of listening to us talk because they want to talk about themselves sometimes too. They know we are not the most wonderful thing in the world; they have their own life without us too. They often get upset or annoyed at what we do, because we have our own bad habits too. But all of that is just part of being human.

Create the perfect love. My favorite Peanuts cartoon is when Charlie Brown finds the little red-headed girl's pencil and in a state of absolute reverence he beams "She nibbles on her pencil. SHE'S HUMAN!" Wouldn't it be nice if we could look at people this way more often? What if we loved everyone like that? People are not going to be perfect; so instead of wishing they were, it is much more constructive to love them for who they are, in all their imperfect human glory. We can all create the perfect love. It just is a matter of attitude and changing what you are looking for in someone.

Need

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you
Erich Fromm

It is very easy to confuse the words "love" and "need". There is a very fine line between the two of them. For most of us, love is need. You need something whenever you feel worry or anxiety at the thought of losing it, or you feel sad or angry when you have lost it. For most of us, the more we love something the more frightened we are at the thought of losing it. We set up insurance policies, elaborate alarm systems etc. For many of us, the more we love someone, the more jealous we are of any potential competitors.

But to love something because you need it is an immature attitude. It is definately unhealthy when you are talking about human relationships, because nobody wants to be with someone who needs them in the sense that they are made responsible for that person's entire happiness. That's an impossible burden for anyone to carry because nobody can make another person happy. It is unhealthy in general too, however, for the same reason; that is because it is an impossible burden for any one object or situation to carry. It is never healthy to make your happiness and feelings of success dependant upon one person, thing, or situation.

Mature love says "I need you because I love you". Mature love acknowledges that the person, thing, or situation is desirable enough for them to do whatever it takes, as long as it is moral and ethical, in order to obtain it. But their entire happiness and feeling of being successful does not depend on them obtaining it. If they don't obtain it, that's okay too. It's a very subtle difference but it can be the difference between success and failure. When you need something it will run away from you, but when you love something it will come to you.

Success

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.
Confucius

Many of us long to be successful. We want to impress our friends and family. We want to be able to drive the fancy car and live in a luxurious mansion and go on exotic vacations. We want to have the lifestyle of the rich and famous. We are so fascinated by how these people live that we read the tabloids when we go to the grocery store, and devour every love affair, every scandal, every outfit that these people have. It's as though our own lives were painfully boring so we have to seek escape through reading about the lifestyles of someone more successful than ourselves.

But we don't have to be rich and famous to be successful. To be successful simply means to accomplish your goal. A parent of well-adjusted children is just as successful as any celebrity. So is anyone whose profession involves directly helping the public (doctor, police, firefighter, teacher etc). So is anyone who is doing well with their own business. And so, probably, are you. We tend to ignore our own successes because they never seem as impressive as the successes of someone else. But that is the wrong yardstick to compare them to. All that really matters is that we succeeded today where we failed yesterday.

In order to be successful, we must have a goal that is important to us. We must have an obstacle to overcome, a problem to solve. So the man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business. The most important thing of all in determining how successful you are, is simply how big an obstacle or problem you had to overcome on the way to being successful. The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory. By that time, the outer rewards for success are actually not as important as the pride and confidence you feel when you know that you acheived a difficult and important goal.