Roll the Die February 29, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living, Motivation, Quotations.Tags: life and living, peyri, reward, risk, Roll the die
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Mission 90: “As soon as you get up in the morning, grab a die. Roll it.”
Title of a photo by “Peyri” on Flickr
We forget that each day, each moment, is a journey into the unknown. Peyri reminds us that each day is risk, each act is risk, each breath is risk, and that we must boldly face it. In that risk, though, is the gambler’s magic: the exhilaration of the Big Win and the grief of the Big Loss.
There is enormous boldness and assurance in this approach to life. You stand at the top of the cliff of your life. You dive. You don’t think about the risks. You don’t mentally rehearse your dive. You just dive. After all, your life is the dive.
As you go through your day today, remember how truly amazing life is. Enjoy the uncertainty. Relish in the ambiguity. Appreciate it all — the love, the sorrow, the anger, the disappointment — because that’s all there is. Just your life. Here. Now.
Make a great day.
Photo: Peyri
Tip #20: Do an Inverse Gratitude Journal February 28, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Motivation, Positive Thinking, Tips.Tags: appreciation, Compassion, gratitude journal, happiness, inverse gratitude journal
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I have suggested gratitude journals often, and often to the point of annoyance. I’m absolutely convinced that doing the practice daily for a few weeks will dramatically change your outlook. Today, I’m going to twist things a bit and come in through the back door. I’m going to ask you to do an Inverse Gratitude Journal. The Inverse Gratitude Journal is the back door to the gratitude journal. It works like this:
- Make a list of everyone in your list.
- Go through the list and recall everything ever done on your behalf by each of those people
- If you’re really motivated, make a list under each name of all the wonderful things he or she has done for you.
C’est tout. That’s all.
What you’ll find is that almost everything in your gratitude journal came from one of those people (except that one about making all the lights on your way to work). You’re swimming in a sea of people who care about you. Some are kind, some are shy, some are cheapskates, some are hip, and some are bastards, yet they’ve all still found a way to do something for you.
We are not alone in this life, folks. We support each other, and we lift up the ones who have fallen. Notice those who have quietly been there for you. Got it? Now spend the rest of the day thinking about them.
Then go do something for somebody.
Make a great day.
Photo: 顔なし
Tip #19: Write a Personal Mission Statement February 28, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living, Tips.Tags: happiness, Laurie Beth ones, meaning, personal mission statement, Steven Covey, The Path, thinkpublic
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What is a personal mission statement? According to Laurie Beth Jones’ The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life, a personal mission statement is a “brief, succinct, and focused statement of purpose that can be used to initiate, evaluate, and refine all of life’s activities.” Steven Covey says creating one is a way of “connecting with your own unique purpose and the profound satisfaction that comes in fulfilling it.” In other words, it’s a quick summary of what matters — to you.
The process of creating a personal mission statement is fairly straightforward, but not as easy as it looks. To write a statement that resonates with you in a fundamental way will take some effort. I suggest that you get one of the many books on personal mission statements (I used and recommend Laurie Beth Jones’ The Path, mentioned above) and let them walk you through the process. Then set aside some quiet time, and get to work.
As you go through the process, it’s important that you constantly ask yourself, “Does this matter to me, really, or do I just think it should matter to me?” Remember, this is about your mission, not what you think you should want as a mission. Absolute integrity to yourself, your dreams, and your values is essential. A mission statement based on what you think would impress others will not motivate you or keep you on track.
I created one for myself during the deepest, darkest days of the Dark Period. I was desperately trying to get myself straight, so I had no interest in wasting my time on anything but the truth. I spent three days sitting in my favorite grungy, bohemian coffee shop in south Austin, Texas, and wrote like crazy. Here’s what I came up with:
To inspire magic in myself and others,
To follow the path with heart in all actions and interactions,
To bring peace to those around me, and
To deliberately live an extraordinary life.
That’s it. It may look simple, but remember that it was written to have meaning for me and only me. So to me, those four phrases are filled with layers of hidden meaning; it implies a lot more than what is contained in the four sentences. For example, “Follow the path with heart” may mean nothing to you, but to me it is the doorway to a larger set of concepts. It means something to me, and that’s all that counts. It has been six years since I wrote that, and I’m still happy with it. Do I always live by it? I would be lying if I said yes. But I try.
So that’s all there is to it. If you haven’t done a personal mission statement, I encourage you to give it a try. If you have, how about sharing it with us in the comments? I’d love to see what others are thinking.
Make a great day.
Photo: thinkpublic
Let Go of Fear February 27, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living, Links, Quotations.Tags: Goethe, Love is Letting Go of Fear
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As soon as you trust yourself, you now how to live.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German Poet, etc.
So simple, yet so complex.
I have been in the habit of asking people what they want from their lives, a polite version of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Most tell me, “I don’t know,” so I ask again, and they give me the same answer. This frustrates the daylights out of me. You see, I believe that we all know what we want — we’re just afraid to do it. Because we’re afraid to do it, we’re afraid to say it or even imagine it. Our deepest dream then becomes the Dream Which Can Not Be Named.
Let’s turn Goethe’s statement around and come at it from the other end: you know how to live; you just don’t trust yourself. Ah, there we go. Standing up for our dreams is scary. We’re afraid of failure, looking stupid, and being different from the crowd. We’re even afraid that our dream isn’t really the right dream.
They say love is letting go of fear. Well, trust is letting go of fear, as well. When we let go of our fear, we are trusting that things will turn out okay. I’m here as a living, breathing survivor of personal disaster to tell you that things will turn out okay whether you get everything you want or not. Everything will be okay even if your book is rejected or you don’t get that job, even if you never lose that weight or are dumped by your girlfriend.
Once we understand that we truly have nothing to lose, we are free to do, without fear, the things that matter. But we don’t have to lose everything to discover that. Look around. There are plenty of great things about you and in your life. Notice them. Practice doing that every day, and soon you’ll awaken to who you are without fear. Then, as Goethe says, you’ll know how to live.
Make a great day.
Photo: wiccked
Do You Need a Little Christmas? February 27, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living, Positive Thinking, Quotations.Tags: disco, grunge, happiness, heavy metal, Jerry Herman, Joy Behar, optimism, waltz
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Here’s another suggestion for beating the blues from Joy Behar’s When You Need a Lift: But Don’t Want to Eat Chocolate, Pay a Shrink, or Drink a Bottle of Gin:
I go to my piano and force myself to play a rousing chorus of “We Need a Little Christmas,” followed by a few bars of “It’s Today,” and after subliminally saying, “Listen to your own advice, kid,” the gray snaps back to its usual chrome yellow and I walk away laughing.
Jerry Herman, Composer and Lyricist
I challenge you to sing “We Need a Little Christmas” from start to finish without getting in a better mood.
It’s amazing how certain types of music have the ability to instantly change our emotional state. How about disco? After hating disco for many years, I realized that people liked it because it was peppy, happy music. Or listen to a waltz. Could you write lyrics for a waltz that weren’t upbeat? Now imagine applying heavy metal or grunge lyrics to a waltz or disco. You can’t do it. Your mind would reject the mix.
Today, take Jerry Herman’s advice. Find some music that you love and that always puts you into a good mood. It may be Stevie Ray Vaughn turned up loud, , or the songs from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (admit it: you can’t sing the Oompah Loompah song without feeling better.). Put it on right now. Turn it up. Sing. Feel the love, brothers and sisters. Remember: You don’t have to feel bad to feel good.
Make a great day.
Photo: Sister72
The Whisper of Okayness February 26, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living, Links, Positive Thinking.Tags: Charlie Brown, fulfillment, happiness, Peace
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Last night I read a very nice post called “Late Afternoon” over at the blog House of Apollo that got me thinking about a post I’ve been planning to write. Here’s a taste of his post:
People are coming home from work and families are reuniting. This is what you worked all day for: To come home, relax, slow down, and spend time with the people you love doing the things you enjoy. It really is quite worth it. I don’t kiss my wife as she gets home like in the movies, but she kisses me with her voice as she brightly says hello, as if totally happy to see me.
I take in this quiet moment because it makes me smile, it really makes me quite happy. Sometimes I wonder if one of the big secrets to happiness is just slowing down and breathing in deep.
Helios Apollo, House of Apollo
We chase stimulation and larger-than-life experiences. We play video games, talk nonstop on cell phones, watch movies with car chases and explosions, and listen to ipods. And when we talk of happiness, we and the self-help gurus discuss it in the same terms: Slam! Bam! Exciting! Breathtaking! The sensation of happiness, we say, is tantamount to the rush of skydiving. As a result, we run in circles in search of increasingly more intense experiences. Oh, we succeed — we have more and more extreme experiences — but we never seem to find happiness.
This is where Helios Apollo is on to something. Happiness isn’t about more and more intensity, but just the opposite. What we’re searching for, and what we find the wise and the peaceful, is a sense of okayness. We’re okay. Life is okay. In the future, we’ll be okay. True happiness, it turns out, is much closer to Charlie Brown’s “Happiness is a warm puppy” than living permanently in the emotional state of just having won the lottery.
To find that sort of okayness, though, we have to turn off the noise. We have to cut the internal and external chatter enough to see what’s both around us and within us. It’s not easy though. If we suddenly reduce the noise in our lives, we’ll experience the kind of rough shift of gears that leaves transmissions smoking on the side of the road. Better to reduce gradually, wean ourselves off the drug of constant stimulation like a reformed junkie,and give our spirits the chance to adjust.
Today, let’s reduce the noise in our lives, and let’s pay special attention to what’s left behind after we do. We may learn something.
Thanks, Helios Apollo, for reminding us.
Make a great day.
Photo: Medmoiselle T
The Lesson of the Lotus: Happy Despite… February 25, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Positive Thinking.Tags: Barry Neil Kauffman, happiness, lotus, overcoming obstacles
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The lotus begins in the mud, grows through the pond’s muddy water, and breaks the surface to produce a clean and beautiful flower. It grows beautiful despite its surroundings, despite its muddy beginnings. One of the most beautiful Buddhist symbols, the lotus represents a way to approach our lives. Like the lotus, we can rise above our environment to find peace and happiness.
We lead messy lives. We struggle with money, we have pressures at work, our kids need to be taken to soccer, we want to paint the house but don’t have time, we want to go back to school, we want a better job, we would like to find the perfect mate, our family upbringing was painful, and we’ve been hurt relationships. The list goes on and on. Despite our struggles, we can still live pretty good lives. And we can do it by being like the lotus.
Our situation in life doesn’t create our happiness; our reaction to it does. As Barry Neil Kaufman, author of Happiness is a Choice, says, “How we look at our life determines our experience.” Our beliefs create and shape our thoughts, which create our actions. The results of our actions feed back into our beliefs and thoughts creating a circle of happiness or unhappiness. From the lotus we learn that we can control our response and choose to be happy despite the negatives in our environment.
We don’t have to be Buddhists to appreciate the beauty of the lotus’ symbolism, any more than we have to be Christian to appreciate the beauty of “Love your enemy” or “Thou shalt not kill.” Wisdom is all around us, if we stay open to it – whatever the source.
Today, or even for the next hour, follow the lesson of the lotus. Be happy despite. Despite what? Despite anything.
Make a great day.
Photo: joka2000
“Ghastly Nontragedies” February 25, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Links, Positive Thinking, Quotations.Tags: Diane Sawyer, happiness, Joy Behar, Mark Twain, nontragedy, optimism, reframing
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I have three friends who know that the world is full of what one of them calls “ghastly nontragedies.”
They turn everything into funny, immediately. True but funny.
In other words, they rewrite the story as fast as possible. Most depressing encounters contain only the past, not the future. Laughter is the balloon that carries you out of the present.
Diane Sawyer
What a phrase: ghastly nontragedies. It reminds me of another quote:
I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
Mark Twain
I like these quotes because together they remind me of three important things:
- The need to view our lives objectively. Many of us can turn any negative experience into a catastrophe although most of the “disasters” in our lives aren’t really disasters, but merely obstacles and temporary setbacks.
- The need to have people in our lives who can keep us balanced — who can share our pain, make us laugh, correct our faulty thinking, and on our worst days, talk us down from the ledge.
- The need to reframe our problems. Good and bad are judgments, not facts. If we can learn to see things through a different lens, we can often talk ourselves down from the ledge.
Think about those things today. Try to be realistic about your problems, don’t let your emotions overrule your reason. And as for your relationships, don’t try to find a friend. Try to be one.
That’s all.
Make a great day.
By the way…
The first quote comes from When You Need a Lift: But Don’t Want to Eat Chocolate, Pay a Shrink, or Drink a Bottle of Gin, by Joy Behar. According to the cover of the book, “In When You Need a Lift, comedienne Joy Behar and a host of her friends share the simple, silly, profound, and personal things they turn to for comfort when life gets hard. ” There are 88 of these friends – actors, writers, politicians, and other celebrities – and their advice ranges from thinking of others to downing a shot of whiskey (I bet you won’t find that one in a self-help book!). The Mark Twain quote comes from, well, any quotations book or website.
Lessons from Hell (3): Bring Out That Which is Inside You. February 24, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Lessons from Hell, Life & Living, Motivation.Tags: depression, dreams, fulfillment, happiness
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If you bring out that which is inside you, that which is inside you will save you. If you do not bring out that which is inside you, that which is inside you will destroy you.
Jesus Christ, The Gospel of Thomas
Sometimes we’re drawn to particular quotations. We memorize them, write them down, and put them up on our refrigerator. These quotes articulate some conclusion or other we’ve already drawn from our experiences. For me, this is one of them. Religious aspects — like The Gospel of Thomas’ place in Christianity — aside, this quotation contains one piece of advice I’d gladly give my daughter.
We all know what we want. If we’re miserable, it’s because somewhere inside ourselves we’re comparing our reality with the internal model of who we wanted to be — and finding a mismatch. That mismatch causes us pain. How many times have we heard friends say wistfully, “I always wanted to get my degree,” or “I wanted to be a doctor/writer/entrepreneur/librarian/race car driver/whatever,” or “I always wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail.”?
Oddly enough, it’s not necessarily the lack of achievement of these dreams that causes us the most pain, it’s the fact that for a thousand reasons of our own, we didn’t go after them. These dreams are part of our personal magic, and the degree to which these dreams match our core being is the degree to which they’ll save us if we go after them, and the degree to which they’ll destroy us if we don’t.
Experience brings wisdom, and often, I used to think, wisdom come too late. In the last couple of years, though, I’ve learned that wisdom is wisdom, and is a blessing any time. Once I knew where my magic was, but foolishly chose to follow the “safe” path of convention and did what others my age were doing. As I came to realize my blunder, it seemed impossible to leave the path I’d begun. My magic seemed lost forever, and I began the slow spiral into the Dark Period. I know now that it’s never too late, and that our magic is always there to save us. We just have to reach for it.
My wish for you today is that you have the courage to bring out that which is inside you. It can change your life.
Make a great day.
My 7 Rules for Living February 23, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living, Motivation, Positive Thinking.Tags: feeling good, fitness, forgiveness, happiness, optimism, rules for living, volunteering
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During my Dark Period, I was somehow smart enough to sit down and make a list of rules intended to keep me from completely falling off the edge. These came about when I asked myself, “Based on my experience, what are things I can do that always make me feel better about myself?” Two aspects of this were key: 1) “based on my experience,” and 2) “made me feel better about myself.” I wasn’t interested in what others thought would work, only what I knew from experience would work for me; and I wasn’t interested in what perked me up for a short period — like listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan cranked up loud — I was interested only in what made me feel better about myself.
I thought about it, made a list, and turned that list into what I called my “Rules for Living.” I wrote that list on a 3″x 5″ card and carried it in my back pocket for about four years. Oh, and I tried very hard to put it into practice, to varying degrees of success.
The list is very simple — nothing you haven’t seen before. But like so many bits of advice, these are easy to look at and say, “Of course, that’s so obvious…,” than to actually do. But they were well worth the effort. I give them to you here because I realize that not only can they help keep you from dropping off the world, but they are a pretty good way to make a normal life better.
Here are my seven rules, with some comments:
- You can forgive anything — and you must. This is the hardest one on the list. You must not only forgive those who have harmed you, but more importantly, you must learn to forgive yourself.
- Take care of your appearance. Bathe, shave, wear clean clothes each day. When you’re down, it’s easy to lose respect for all aspects of yourself. Dressing in sweats and t-shirts won’t make you feel better, and it won’t encourage people to treat you better, either. Dress like you have respect for yourself. It sounds superficial, but it works.
- Stay social. Many of us isolate ourselves when we’re down, but isolation only makes things worse. Get out and see all those people who like you.
- Remember others. Volunteer. There is someone somewhere who needs what you have to offer. You may not believe it, but you have a lot to offer.
- Stay fit. Not only will you be healthier and more energetic, you’ll feel much better about yourself.
- Eat well. I don’t mean Coq au vin with a nice Pouilly-Fuissé. I mean… well, you know what I mean.
- Stay spiritual. You get to define this any way you see fit. My thoughts are irrelavant here. Only yours count.
As you see, the list provides only general guidelines, so each day I would set specific tasks related to each item. For example, three days a week I went to the gym, three days I ran in my neighborhood, and some days I did specific forgiveness exercises. (Workouts of all kinds, I guess.) Anyway, it helped me through some tough years, and it helped through some good years. Maybe it’ll work for you.
Make a great day.
