That Which is Inside You August 17, 2009
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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.
Be Your Own Cheerleader August 16, 2009
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living, Motivation, Positive Thinking.add a comment
I carry a 3X5 card in my purse with by biggest dreams written on it. When I feel less than positive, I read the goals and remind myself that at one point, I felt I could achieve them. Taking that moment for the bitg picture reinforces that if I believed in myself to achieve something significant (like building a school) then I can easily deal with the smaller hurdles in my daily life.
~Sarah Taylor, Sebastabol, CA
Letter to the editor from Whole Living: Body + Soul
What can I add to that? One of the hardest things for us to do is to continue to hold on to our dreams. We set our goals when we feel strong and all is going well, but when times go bad — the car breaks down, there are layoffs at work — we can have difficulty keeping the faith. What were once vivid, spirit-filled dreams can now appear foolish and overly idealistic.
But we need to move past that. Great things aren’t accomplished in 30 days, and that means facing emotional peaks and valleys. If we gave up every time things got tough or every time we faced self-doubts, we’d never do anything.
One of my favorite quotes says,”Sometimes you have to believe in other people’s belief in you until your own belief kicks in.” What Sarah suggests above is that you can be the other person whose faith supports you when doubt creeps in. You look back and trust the other you who dreamed those dreams and had enough faith and courage to write them down. That person believed in you and your dreams. Use that strength to carry you through.
Make a great day.
Heck, while you’re at it, make it a great day for someone else, too.
Tip #34: Spiritual Cross-Training August 15, 2009
Posted by beholdthestars in Tips.Tags: cross training, exercise, gratitude, happiness, inverse gratitude journal, meditation, muscle confusion, personal mission statement, self help, spirit, volunteering
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Do you ever exercise? You know how it works. You make the trek to the gym to lift weights. You suffer for a couple of weeks until your body has gotten into the swing of it. You soon feel better, stronger, and you’re starting to see changes in your out-of-shape body. Two or three months down the road you have transformed your body.
But after a while, something starts to change. You don’t feel as strong. Where once you could add weight to your exercises each week, you now can’t seem to get any stronger. Those bulging biceps that grew like weeds six weeks ago have stopped growing. You’ve hit a plateau, and your progress has come to a discouraging halt. What happened?
The scientists know. It called adaptation. Your body had adapted to the exercise routine. That’s why you get fitter in the first place: your body adapts to the exercise. That’s the good part. The bad part is that after your body adapts, you don’t get the same response to the exercise. You can’t do the same things and expect the same results.
But what about our spiritual/emotional/happiness work? I noticed that my beloved Gratitude Journal began to have less impact as time wore on. For the first few months, the effects were astonishing, totally unlike anything I’d done before. But as time went on, I found it harder and harder to find the energy to come up with list items. In fact, it got to the point of being a chore. Little good it was doing for me at that point. Like the effects of exercise, the effects of my Gratitude Journal were stalling.
I just found an explanation in “The Mixed Success of Positive Psychology” from the August 7, 2009, issue of The Chronicle Review: A Weekly Magazine of Ideas, the supplement that comes in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a research psychologist at the University of California at Riverside, has found that “people who take time to count their blessings, write optimistic visions for themselves, or express thanks, report greater happiness.” Okay. We expected that. And she found that “subjects who performed any of a list of 10 acts of kindness three times a week for 10 weeks reported increases in happiness.” But what interest us here is that “another group that performed the same three acts every time actually ended up feeling worse.”
Of course, it makes sense. Our bodies adapt to exercise, our minds adapt to learning, wouldn’t our spirits adapt, as well? And since they adapt, we’ll have to adapt our efforts, as well. What do athletes do to counter the negative effects of adaptation? They use techniques like cross training and muscle confusion, methods that constantly confuse the body and force it into a state of continuous adaptation. In other words, they build a routine that is never routine.
Let’s do the same. Rather than taking an exercise like the Gratitude Journal and drawing from it until the well is dry, we can draw from different sources by regularly selecting from a number of exercises: meditation, exercise, volunteering, reverse gratitude journals, personal mission statements, and so on. Doing that will allow us to stay fresh, and perhaps more importantly, allow all our sources of inspiration to recharge. After all, variety is the spice of life.
Make a great day.
Tip #33: Stop Discounting the Positive August 9, 2009
Posted by beholdthestars in Positive Thinking, Tips.Tags: discounting the positive, happiness, performing, Positive Thinking
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When I was younger, a friend and I played music in local clubs. It was nothing special, really, just two college guys playing acoustic music in places that would let anybody play. No matter how badly we had played, someone would come up and tell us how great we were. We got requests for our original songs, and girls would cry when the sad ones reminded them of their recent breakups. Often, as people were saying how much they liked a song, my inner voice was also talking: “Didn’t they see that you missed a note on the solo? And what about the flubbed word in the second verse?” My suspicion was that either they were lying to be kind or had tin ears. Couldn’t they see that we weren’t any good?
It’s true. We weren’t any good — compared to our heroes — but for two local guys, we were okay. We took these “gigs” seriously. We practiced, worked up interesting harmonies and guitar work, and tried very hard to set a standard above what others were doing. But what ultimately mattered to me was one simple thing: practice was challenging and fun, but performing was Hell.
I have to admit that one of the reasons I stopped performing so many years ago was that during my performances I was totally focused on perfection and aware of every mistake. I thought that music, like math, had a right answer and a wrong answer. You practiced, got it down, and then played it perfectly in performance every time. So when I missed a note or forgot a lyric, it felt like failure. Disaster.
Four hours of playing each night. A room full of appreciative ears. A handful of compliments. A handful of tiny mistakes. Which do you think I took home with me?
Think about that for a minute. You’ve been there, and you’ve had friends who have been there. You know where I’m going with this. Is there a better way to make ourselves miserable than by discounting the positive in our lives and acts?
Look at your life. I suspect you’re doing some of that right now in some area or another. Work? Relationship? Hobbies? Cooking? Where are you doing something pretty well, but not giving yourself credit or not enjoying your success? Think about it.
Make a great day.
