Tag Archives: acceptance

22

Inner Security

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One might look for a mighty castle to provide safety.

Life seems to be a maze of things we develop fear about experiencing. We are continuously looking for security in our day-to-day experience. Sometimes we look for relationships to provide a safe place to be ourselves. In other moments we see money as a security blanket against the world’s troubles. We create a constant state of stress and worry about what might happen and never know the joy and power of the moments we are in right now. To live in this way will push people to block good things from entering life and keep you on the treadmill of unhappiness. To stop the cycle, a person needs to start to look inside for items that are always there, always accessible, and always positive. These things are inside each of us, and turning your focus to them will provide as much security as you can expect in this life.

No matter what we do or how well we plan, the truth is. We have very little control over our external security, and we have total control over our inner security. To lack the ability to find safety inside is the definition of insecurity. No matter what happens outside, be secure about your reactions and feelings. Here are some areas your awareness can go to find security daily.

Find The Moment

Too often, too many people choose to live their conscious moments worrying about the future or regretting the past. Ignoring the most precious moment they have, the present moment. Being mindful of where you are right now and becoming aware of the situations, people, and things in your current reality are the only thing you have. The past is recollected the way we think of it, and the future is nothing but a fantasy. It hasn’t happened yet and may never occur the way you think.

Getting into the moment is as simple as being aware of what you are doing and living from that perspective. Sometimes we are so routine-oriented we make the majority of our choices through subconscious programming. Making conscious choices and noticing the moment is a power we have at our fingertips in each moment. There is significant security in this because the moment will always be the only thing there is, so making the most of it and finding joy in it makes a lot of sense. This appreciation comes from the inside, and you have it available to you all the time. It can be hard to see if your focus is “out there.”

Be Open

Another way to be secure is to be open-hearted toward the world. Too often choose to separate ourselves from others because they are different from us. But we all are the same, and by practicing an open heart, we can foster security of connection with all people because we are all connected. We all have the same blood in our veins and breath the same air. We have thoughts, take actions, and love one another. So many see fear when they look at individuals who are different from themselves, and it causes people to withdraw.

When you open your heart to others and life, you realize you are all in the same production, doing your best to play the role you have been assigned. Don’t waste time judging someone else; invest your time getting to know someone from a different station in life. Send love to everyone, especially those who are negative. They need it the most. Open your heart, and security will be yours.

Accept Yourself

Most people see the flaws in themselves quite easily. We compare ourselves to the images we see in the mainstream media or even on social media and pick out the ways we don’t quite measure up. Rather than seeing our uniqueness as a strength or an unusual defining characteristic, we dislike ourselves and hate that part of us. We have to accept what we are. It doesn’t mean we can’t improve and change. If you don’t get yourself now, you won’t receive yourself in a month or a year or five years when you have made all these changes.

Bring your awareness to the things about you, which are lovely and unique and make you a one-of-a-kind experience for the world because each of us has the luxury of being this. There has never been another person who looks like you, talks like you, or has your skillset throughout time. It has never happened before, and it will never happen again. Too often, people fight against who they are and what they look like because nobody is perfect. It is in our imperfections that many of our strengths lie. There is absolute security in the person you are. Embrace that person and accept them, strengths, flaws, and all.

Awareness and Appreciation

You are an infinite, creative, unique, and inventive living on this planet. Start to use your awareness to see all of the things already in your life, which are lovely, and then take a short moment to appreciate them for just being themselves in the scope of the world. Your awareness is the connection to your attention and focuses on what you are experiencing. Knowledge stops you from taking things for granted and allows opportunities for growth from passing by you.

Appreciation is a door you can open, which will bring more into your life. Are you a person who always sees the bad? Or can you find the good in any situation? All people have a choice about where they fall on this continuum. The majority of the thoughts you entertain and believe to be true will dominate your energy and the life you experience. Focusing on more positive things will allow more of those things to enter your life—a choice.

Unconditional Love

This emotion is the rarest of things because society has conditioned us to expect something in return for what we create or give to others. Putting your focus on the love you have for others is a great place to seek security, but the best is how you choose to love yourself. Nobody is perfect, but all of us are entirely constructed to be exactly who we are. It is too easy to stop and put awareness of your flaws rather than your talent and greatness. It is not arrogance or avarice to be proud of what you do well or what you love about yourself. To want more of these  things is a natural progression,

To offer unconditional love to the world or someone else is tough to do. The ego always tells you to judge someone for their harmful actions and punish them by not loving them anymore. It happens every day worldwide; love is lost and replaced with vengeance, anger, and even hate. Letting these emotions and thoughts dominate your mind and reality will harm you, not the person you are angry at and hate at that moment. You can love someone and keep them at a safe distance. Choose to love, no matter what, and see how it changes your life and gives you power.

Learn to focus and awareness of these things and develop the inner security that comes with them. There is little we can do to avoid the pitfalls and challenges that come to us externally, but we can build a security net inside ourselves, which is totally in our control.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.– Buddha

 

22

Spiritual But Not Religious

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People define themselves in many different ways, spiritual but not religious is a way I have thought of my relationship with God for about half my life. Nobody has ever asked me what the definition of this statement means to me until today, and it was astonishing to me I had never really written it down. I am stating my views in this way to define spirituality and why it has little to do with religion for me. The tableau of results depicts my path, and like most trials in life, I am on it due to my choices.

Being Conscious of Choices

The first thing I will explain about myself is that I have become more conscious of my choices in life over the years and the subsequent repercussions each decision will bring to your life. We are all programmed from the time we are born to the actions and beliefs which will help us become accepted in our culture and to belong. If you are not aware of your choices, then this programming will make the choices for you.

I was raised by my parents and family religiously, and I went to church every Sunday for my entire childhood. I believed what people told me wholly and blindly. As I grew in life, I noticed inconsistencies between what they told me and the life I experienced. When I started to question these things, the answers I found moved me away from my upbringing. But not away from God. We are all gifted with the ability to ask and choose for ourselves, and I think that is a skill that makes us uniquely human.

Nobody Excluded

One of the teachings I found most incorrect was that if someone didn’t believe as you did, they were wrong and probably going to be denied a trip to heaven in the afterlife and sent to an eternity of punishment in hell. As a child with a pure heart, I never understood how a God, who is love, would ever make anything like that happen. The conclusion I came to was that they wouldn’t.

I have found there is the ability to be a great person and the ability to be the opposite of that inside each of us. You have to fight to be the best person you can be because it is far too easy to drift into the negative. Since we all have goodness inside them, all people deserve redemption. I think a person’s actions demonstrate how they are living life right now. Most people are doing the best they can at this moment, and they deserve our encouragement, not our condemnation.

I Am Responsible

So to be spiritual means to me that I am responsible for my choices and the reactions I have in life. If I fight to continually act in kindness, understanding, empathy, sympathy, joy, and love in dealing with all people, then I feel I am on the right path in life, doing what I can to make things better.

On the other hand, should I choose not to live that way and give in to the easy decisions of being hateful of others who think differently from me, judging others, indifferent to the difficulties of others, acting from a place of fear, then the harm I cause is my responsibility in life. I have found that which choice I make leads directly to my experiences in life.

In Conclusion

To sum it up, I believe being spiritual is my relationship with God and what that means. Seeing that all people are connected, even those we may not like. Through our common humanity, we are here in this life together. To judge someone negatively because of their religion, nationality, ethnic heritage, skin color, or other factors is not Godly.

On the sunny side of Sunday, I have met many people who preach love, but in the shade of the rest of the week speak hate about those who are different from them. To be exclusionary, judgmental, and hateful are not positive traits of any Godly organization or people I want to be associated with within my life.

We all can choose which road we take. Acceptance or judgment? Kindness or meanness? Giving or taking? Love or fear? You will decide for yourself as I have and continue doing for yourself. That is what defines spirituality to me.

“Spirituality is not running away from the battlefield of life. Spirituality is blossoming every dimension of life with love, responsibility, equanimity, creativity and compassion.” – Amit Ray

 

 

22

Harmony In Life

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Harmony- a pleasing combination or arrangement of different things.

To have a combination or arrangement of different things, you must allow various elements into your life. Harmony occurs in everyone’s life at some point. Some days ideas flow smoothly, and others, it is like you are stuck in the mud. The reason for this seems to be based solely on your attitude and decisions. How you choose to look at situations and people in your “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” -Thomas Jeffersonday will determine the harmony you experience. Being aware of your power to create or destroy harmony in your life should allow for a higher level of consciousness. This level begins with a focus on the balance you are creating for yourself and others who have the joy or misery to deal with you daily. It all starts with a hard look at your thoughts, words, and actions today. Do you create harmony or discourse in life? 

Acceptance for Harmony

To create harmony, a person needs to focus on accepting yourself and the situation you are experiencing. Many people see this statement as an indictment of improvement, and it isn’t recognizing and accepting who you are and where you are in the reality of life. Harmony comes from moving from this point and taking action toward your goals. Arriving at a place with absolute acceptance frees you up to create balance with others because you are looking out at the world and seeing where you best fit. This harmony can exist in relationships, work, play, or any other activity in life. Peace will elude you if time is spent seeking the approval of others. You don’t need anyone else’s permission to be great at being you. Just be that!

Equal acceptance of others is the other half of the equation. You can’t spend your time judging others and what they are doing either. The analysis is done to place yourself on a false pedestal above someone else. Hard to be harmonious with others or life in general if you don’t look at the good in people. You can never achieve harmony if you mentally deny others your approval. This choice always leads to conflict and disharmony. Just as you have permission to be great, so does everyone else. Let them be that!

Harmony  of Life

Harmony allows you to move quickly through life, achieving goals and experiencing things without difficulty or struggle. It is easy, and it focuses on the present moment. The two things that distract from doing this are focusing on regrets for the past or anxiety about future events that might happen. These two things stop you from accepting things as they are today and working with them.

The past stops harmony because we look at circumstances long gone, and either we revel in glorified stories, or we carry the burden of regret about what we should have done. Acceptance is putting the past behind you, no matter how good or bad, and understanding where you are. This time is the only moment that you are guaranteed. Learn from the past, but don’t let it take away from your acceptance of where you are in reality. Accept it. It doesn’t mean you like it, but it is a reality you can create harmony with and enjoy.

Anxiety about what might happen is going to destroy harmony as well. Too much effort and thought are wasted worrying about how things might never work out or the danger of suffering. No amount of fear will change the future. Challenges are going to come and go. Creating harmony with these future events starts with accepting yourself and where you are. Seeing a world of abundance and potential rather than lack and limitation will help. You can only create this harmony through your attitude, choices, and vision. Choose to create balance. 

Harmony of Diversity

People are different for a reason. Other talents, tastes, and preferences create a colorful palette to create almost everything. When true harmony exists, there is a field for the best of everyone to meld together with the best of others. Our strengths are being highlighted, and our weaknesses being limited. Seek harmony in all that you do and find your flow in daily life. The most magnificent harmonies are achieved in music when simultaneously sounded musical notes produce chords and chord progressions, having a pleasing effect. This relationship is also genuine; the messages are actions, and the chords are accomplishments. Let the harmony of different sounds in the symphony of your life. Accept the differences between others and see the potential. Raising your consciousness starts with your thoughts, words, and actions to create harmony each day.

“The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are, and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality – it connects you to reality.” ~ Paulo Coelho

“No person, no place, and no thing have any power over us, for ‘we’ are the only thinkers in our mind. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our minds, we will find it in our lives.” ~Louise L. Hay

 

 

22

Character Development

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Character- the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.

CharacterIn our development as people, we result from the experience we endure in life. This fact is particularly actual when it comes to a person’s character. Either we have a good or bad feeling. The type we are provides a quality that is displayed clearly through a person’s thoughts, words, and actions. If you have traits you wish to improve yourself, we all have the free will to do this. Think about your character today, not just the areas you are doing well, but all of the ones you want to improve in. Character is what you do when you think nobody is looking. Remember, you are always looking. You can’t fool yourself. Consciously develop the character you want to represent you and share it with the world. It will be your legacy, one way or the other. The great news is you get to decide what impact you will have.

Character is in Constant Development

A person’s character is not chiseled in stone the day they are born, and it is developed through conscious choice over a lifetime. It has many aspects to Characterit. The way you treat others, level of honesty valued in life, consistency of behavior, the story of courage, ability to think, confidence in yourself, integrity, and many other factors all combine to create your character. We are taught many of these things, but we are continually adding to them through experience, even if we are not conscious of this process. People enter your life and change you, and a new understanding of loss or gain shifts your perspective.

Once you know that you can develop your character, there is no excuse not to find ways to improve. It involves two simple things:  1. honesty about yourself and  2. a willingness to grow and develop. Nothing is stopping you from enhancing but your self-imposed limitations. Find your strong points and celebrate them. Find areas in need of improvement, set goals to get better, take action to do just that. At the end of life, you will be the one responsible for all that you did or did not do. There is no deceiving yourself then. Don’t lie to yourself now. Develop your character exactly as you want it to be. Your choices in every moment of every day decide if your character traits or positive or negative.

Your Character Is Important

Not only will your positive or negative character influence your own life, but it will have sway over everyone you come in contact with as well. There is an energy connected to each thought we have, and positive or negative will be evident to those we have a connection with on our daily journey. Think of Characterthe people you enjoy having contact with, and think of those you don’t. With every interaction you have each day, the person you interact with has one of those two reactions. Your character determines which one.

Your choices in character will stem from your preferences of thought. It is a constant struggle to maintain the positive qualities of honesty over deceit, kindness over meanness, giving over selfishness, confidence over doubt, or love over fear. The decisions we make in character are vitally important because they determine your real value to the world and its collective consciousness. Developing a better attitude improves the world.

Tough Times Build Character

Stressful moments are, unfortunately, a part of living life. Tough times come to us, whether we feel we want them or need them. But there is an element of need we all have of roadblocks in life to grow into the best versions of ourselves. It is impossible to see what good can come from a situation when you are in a storm of pain and suffering. You are just in survival mode. But as that mode kicks in, you have to start to grow and change, or you will be overwhelmed and unhappy for the rest of your life.

Finding hidden strength and talent waiting hidden in your being is the reward for tough times. The character still maintains the things you think are correct even though the pain and sadness of life are real characters. In these extreme moments of choice, our true person is developed and revealed to the world. If you don’t like who you are becoming, then choose differently. The development of a positive life or a negative existence is all up to you and the choices you make.

Be Conscious of Your Character

CharacterThat makes the challenge today to look at your character honestly and critically. It isn’t easy to look at the fiber of our being and see where we fall short. But it is in this realistic vision your path of improvement will become evident. Do you need to be more honest? Braver? Follow through better? Be kinder? Be more accepting? Love yourself more? Whatever the points in need of improvement are, you can change and improve them. Nothing can stop you except for you. Be conscious of your character and what makes up your vital essence of today’s thoughts, words, and actions. By developing this element of your personality, you will be defined to the world: one way or another. There is no covering up or hiding from the results.

“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” –Helen Keller

“Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.” –Albert Einstein

“The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.” –Abigail Van Buren

 

22

Your Choices

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Don't Regret the Past
A Ship Carrying A Choice You Made

I was discussing with a friend the other day about all of the things we had done that, in retrospect, seemed like bad ideas.

Failed relationships, poor decisions, wrong turns on the path of life all came up, and my friend said the magic phrase, “If I knew then what I know now, things would be different. If I could only do it all over again.”   That thought is probably one that everyone has had at some point in their lives. I, myself, have thought this before, but not any longer.

If allowed to go back in time and make different choices, I would have to pass, and here is why.

First of all, it is common to look back with a sense of nostalgia and not with realism. Choices were made for a reason. You have no way of knowing how a change in your life would affect you today.

Things could have turned out much worse for you. A Teacher best explained it to me this way. If you picture all of those choices you didn’t make as ships sailing in the distance, you can see the sails full of wind pushing them off into the horizon.

You are wasting your time chasing them with regret because you will never catch them, and you don’t know what is beyond the horizon. Those ships may have carried you to some very unsavory and unwanted results.

Things could have been much worse for you if you had made a different choice. We only focus on a lofty, positive result when we think of doing things differently. When the outcome could have been disastrous.   Since you could be far better off with the choice you did make, thoughts like this appear to be a waste of effort.

Secondly, constantly questioning your past decisions will make it much more difficult to enjoy what you do have today.

You may have a good job or a relationship you value, and you won’t be giving them your full attention and enjoying them as much as you could if you waste your energy pining away about the past and what might have been.

Every one of life’s choices is a potential learning experience, and usually, the decision of whether it was a good or a wrong choice is made solely by you. You can choose to get something good out of almost every situation you encounter, or you can choose to get something wrong. It is all up to you.

So why not enjoy what you have today and appreciate the experiences that have gotten you here, rather than spend your days rehashing old mistakes and carrying around the regret of what might have been.

Third, one of the great things about getting older is that we do, even if we don’t try, gain experience and a form of wisdom with it.

From the day we are born, we are continually learning new things to navigate the sometimes tricky channels of life. Some people take much more advantage of these learning experiences than others. Without all of the “mistakes” we have made along the path of life, we would lose much of the hard-earned wisdom and knowledge we have gathered over the years.

Everybody has the ability for good and to live a life that satisfies them and makes the world a better place. Regretting your past decisions is a form of self-loathing that decreases your self-esteem and makes living an authentic life more difficult.

If you dislike your choices so much, you must dislike who you have become, and it is hard to be happy when you are forced to face a person in the mirror every day that you are not very fond of sometimes.

 

Don't Regret the Past
You Choose to be Whatever you want.

Finally, we all have the ultimate choice for what type of person we are to be. Regardless of all of the options we have made. What you did yesterday, ten years ago or twenty years ago, has very little to do with who we choose to be today.

Nothing can stop you from being positive except yourself. Nothing can stop you from being productive except yourself. Nothing can stop you from being great except yourself.

The past is stored in the high attic of your mind. It is OK to remember and visit and pour over past experiences to glean wisdom, but to carry around a profound sense of regret about things will get you nowhere.

Today is the next great day of your life, and you can choose to make it so or decide to turn it into another moment you will regret in the future as you watch it sail into the horizon.

Quotes About Regrets:

“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”  – John Barrymore

“Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you, and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.”-Henry A. Kissinger.

“Apologies are pointless, and regrets come too late. What matters is you can move, on you can grow.”
Kelsey Grammer

“Chris Cooper once told me never to have any regrets. After Chris said that to me, I walked into every scene thinking, ‘exhaust every possibility.’ Once you get to a certain place, it’s like you just deliver everything you’ve got. I don’t have any regrets. It pops up in my mind over and over and over again.”
Jake Gyllenhaal

“For my own part, I abandon the ethics of duty to the Hegelian critique with no regrets; it would appear to me, indeed, to have been correctly characterized by Hegel as an abstract thought, as a thought of understanding.”
Paul Ricoeur

“Had we not pursued the hydrogen bomb, there is a very real threat that we would now all be speaking Russian. I have no regrets.”
Edward Teller

“Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.”
Louisa May Alcott

“Having regrets and things, it just takes your time away.”
Leif Garrett

“He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.”
Edith Wharton

“I already gave my best. I have no regrets at all.”
William Hung

“I do not allow myself vain regrets or foreboding.”
Mary Chesnut

“I don’t have a lot of regrets in my life.”
Cathy Freeman

“I don’t have any regrets. When I quit college and moved to Los Angeles to become an actress, it was so that I would not look back and have any regrets.”
Amy Weber

“I don’t really believe in regrets.”
Wayne Newton

“I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about regrets because there’s nothing I can do.”
Sheryl Crow

“I felt that I ostracized myself by my behavior, by the past, by living with all the regrets of my mistakes, that I sort of wore a hair shirt and beat myself up most of the day thinking and regretting why did I make such a mistake? Why have I made so many mistakes?”
Sarah Ferguson

“I gave everything in my career, so I have no regrets at all.”
Michel Patini

“I have a lot of regrets, but I’m not going to think of them as regrets.”
Debbie Harry

“I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret… if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.”
Katharine Hepburn

“I have no regrets about launching Salon. For the life of me, I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
David Talbot

“I have no regrets about my life.”
Jane Badler

“I have no regrets because I did everything by the book.”
Alexis Arguello

“I have no regrets in my life. I think that everything happens to you for a reason. The hard times that you go through build character, making you a much stronger person.”
Rita Mero

“I have no regrets. I don’t believe in looking back. What I am proudest of? Working really hard… and achieving as much as I could.”
Elena Kagan

“I have no regrets. I wouldn’t have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.”
Ingrid Bergman

“I have no regrets. I’ve got my health.”
Naomi Campbell

“I have to say that I have no regrets about my decision to become a priest or about the major directions my ministry has taken me… I have been and am happy as a priest, and I have never been lonely… I could have used a bit more solitude.”
Andrew Greeley

“I try to live my life where I end up at a point where I have no regrets. So I try to choose the road that I have the most passion for because then you can never really blame yourself for making the wrong choices. You can always say you’re following your passion.”
Darren Aronofsky

I usually say I did the best I could with what I had. I have no major regrets.
Stokely Carmichael

“I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.”
David Herbert Lawrence

 

“I’m not gonna try to defend, or undo what’s been done. All I could say about whatever’s been done, it’s been done, and it’s water under the bridge. I have no regrets of my life.”==Ike Turner

“I’m very lucky, I’m happy with life because my experiences led me to do what I had to do. I don’t have any regrets whatsoever.”
Van Morrison

 

22

Your Power to Affect the World

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Power- the ability to do something or act in a particular way, especially as a faculty or quality.

Each of us has the power to affect the world. We may not be conscious of it, but it exists. It allows you to overcome the feelings of being powerless. Listening to the media message sent to you every day will make you feel vulnerable and helpless. Reported stories and events make the world seem big, scary, and out of the realm of your safe little world. That is a perspective advantageous to industry and sales. If you feel powerless, you look for comfort, buy things you don’t need, and try to protect yourself by doing what the messages tell you to do. In short, it is easy to manipulate a person who feels powerless and weak. Worry comes directly from this belief. But you have power and can affect how you look at and act with life.

Seeing Your Power

Your power does not come from the things you own, but it arrives from who you are. It is the choices that you make every day which define you. Decisions made every day without a conscious thought determine much of your life. Look at your options and only choose those you want to represent you. These are the choices you know are for the greater good. Trust, a larger purpose, can be served by your straightforward, positive options every day. Then take responsibility for your decisions and your ability to make a positive difference in your life and the world.

Your power will influence others, even if you don’t see it. That influence will be positive or negative, depending on the tenor of your thoughts throughout your day. Do you know the danger in every conversation? Do you see a potential enemy in others? Or do you see the opportunity for kindness and creating an ally? Which way your thought pattern falls dictates your power. Are you making it positively or negatively? Power is yours every moment of every day.

Powerful Vision

Once you have actively embraced your ability and responsibility to make a positive difference in the world, then it is up to you to direct your power in a particular direction. Into your relationships, career, personal development, or any other thing you choose to improve. It begins with establishing a vision of what you would like to see in your life. Use your imagination to create the scenario you would like to see become a part of your life. Then be true to that personal vision. If you want to change your physical appearance, develop a health plan of exercise and diet that resonates with you and brings it to reality. Be consistent and live it as you move through every day; it will come to pass.

Each area you want to improve will change your life in schedule and activity. Rather than fight change, learn to embrace it. It is difficult for all people. Actively embrace the positive changes you make in your life. Focus on the personal honesty you use with people. Don’t worry about the result of your goodness. Be honest and accept the consequences. Have a vision pursue that vision honestly, and eliminate the worry from your life. The power to dictate positive change will result from that.

Challenge Your Inaccurate Beliefs

Lies and inaccuracies take away our power as well. We develop beliefs over our lives. They come from our family, peers, teachers, society, and authority figures. We try to place these things into concrete in our minds, and they provide us with rules to follow in life. But a myth can take your power if you attach it to a limiting or untrue belief. The perception we have of things dictates our patterns of thought and behavior. This can refocus any mind at any point to see things more positively. Hate, judgment and fear turn into kindness, acceptance, and love with a change of focused thought.

To do this, look at the negative beliefs you are carrying about other people, places, things. Stereotypes and fear of others you learn through your programming through history, family, or the media. Change those thoughts to the positive. Don’t allow people to mistreat you. It is the opposite. You have power. Never accept behavior that is below your standards. You recognize poor behavior for what it is. If you don’t want contrary in your life, remove it. If someone treats you poorly, it is your choice to tolerate it or not. That is power. That is your power. Believing that it is ok for someone to treat you poorly or deserve it is what we want to eliminate because it is a weak mentality. Be authoritative in your choices, and of course, you will have power.

Find Your Power

Take a moment and consciously consider where you put your power every day. How much worry do you participate in? Fear takes away your control; being a positive and confident person gives it to you. The way you think about your experiences will dictate the words you use and then your actions because of it. If you live in fear of this or that, later you will play a small game, make a few changes and meekly accept bad things as your fault. I encourage you to live with power. Take responsibility for where you are and what you have done. More importantly, look where you want to go and start taking action to get you there.

“In an expanded state of awareness, you perceive beyond the limitations of your body and mind and feel that you are part of the vast universe around you, connected to All That Is.”

“A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

21

Learning to Surrender

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Learning to surrender to where you are in life is confusing to comprehend. It is the idea that you accept the present moment, but it doesn’t mean that you have to allow yourself to stay in an unhealthy or dangerous situation. It means that you recognize the problem for what it is, and then through conscious choice, you can start to make decisions that will allow you to move in a more positive and healthy direction. Seeing clearly and concisely is not a victim mentality but the beginning of your conscious choices.

Thinking about Surrender

Many hear the word Surrender and think you are giving in to whatever is wrong in your life. If you are experiencing abuse, addiction, or other adverse situations, you are not just allowing it to happen. Instead, it means identifying where you are clearly and in the present moment. Too often, our minds avoid the now because we hope it will change or for the reason that nobody will notice. To look at your moment and honestly understand where you are is a moment where you can pivot into a change. Knowing where you are, allows you to construct a map to flow toward where you are meant to be.

Surrender never means being passive in accepting any situation you may be living in and having no power of action. You always have that. People should never stop planning, dreaming, or creating a decisive battle in their lives. Surrender is honestly seeing where you are and flowing with that situation instead of fighting against it. Accepting your present moment without condition is the beginning of giving up your inner resistance to change, life, and who you are. Internal resistance uses mental judgment and negative emotions to say no to what is happening in your life.

Here Comes the Pain

Things will go “wrong” in life. Things will never be exactly as we think they should be in all aspects. First of all, who are we to think we understand how things should be? Millions of variables affect the world that we know nothing about. Life is much wiser than any of us. So rather than judge, accept things and people as they are, not force them to be what you think they should be. The difference between what your rigid expectations create and what is in the world is the pain you are experiencing in life.

Surrender is the power to let go of your expectations of your children, parents, spouses, loved ones, bosses, employees, and anyone in your life. When you accept people as they are and surrender your expectations, much of the pain and sorrow of life is eliminated from your life. This subtraction is a process that takes place on the inside and will allow you to make decisive, healthy actions for positive change in the outside physical world. But with no inner change of thought and understanding, external change and positive movement are nearly impossible.

Acceptance and Choice

Accepting where things are now does not make you take the situation you are in total. All undesirable or unpleasant life situations need not be accepted as part of your reality in the present moment. Stating the obvious is not acceptance but denying something as if there is nothing wrong when it is maybe delusional.

An honest recognition of a situation will allow you to choose if you want to get out. Looking at the current location without judgment or resistance to what it is will let you see what affirmative action is required from you and decide whether to take it or not. Being in the present moment ultimately will allow you the power to break out of your conditioned past and move you toward a life of surrendering to what is and away from the constructs of the egoic life.

“Surrender is deeply misunderstood as an act of weakness. Surrender is the bravest and most obvious thing a human ever does, and that’s why it’s so precious to the Divine.” – Andrew Harvey

21

Monsters

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I have been running from a monster my whole life. Where does this creature come from to haunt me? What does it want from me? Sometimes it is on the far reaches of my consciousness, but inevitably it returns with a full force to the center of my existence. You know the monster I speak of because it is the same one haunting you for your entire life. It is the villain in all of our minds, the one that speaks to you, even when you don’t want to hear, saying things like, “You are not good enough.” or “You don’t deserve good things.” or “You don’t deserve to be loved like you need to be loved.” Or “You are worthless” Or any other negative message you think about yourself in your mind. For that is, the greatest demon we have to face in our lives has been created by ourselves, and the harder we run, the more power it has over us. There is a way to move past the monster and find a better version of yourself.

Know Your Monster

Our demons have been developing throughout our lives, and with each painful moment that caused us to suffer, the monster gained power because we looked at those moments and feared them. Allowing these experiences to push us away from liking who we are and the lives we can create. You see, the monster has

I think my monster looks like Shrek, but yours will look at how you envision it.

Such power because it has insight and access to every thought you have ever thought and known all of the secrets you would never tell anyone else about your past. There is no deceiving them, and they can use all of that against you.

For many of us, the messages have been pervasive and consistent for years, and we have not wanted to listen, but we can’t help it. We find things to fit the message and accept they are correct. We try to improve ourselves in many ways, but until we decide to face the monster once and for all, we are only placing small band-aids on the gunshot wounds of life. There is only one way to eliminate these thoughts and suffering from your life.

Hug The Monster

Instead of running away from these things, we think, embrace them. Look at the messages your mind is telling you and trace them to their origin. Most were born in your past, and you accept them to be a definition of your worth to the world. How much power you give them is totally up to you. Looking at things you experience and focusing on the negative stuff is food for the monster. It allows them to grow bigger and become scarier each day. Soon this creature in our head is so vast and pervasive you feel hopeless ever to defeat it and become a happy version of yourself, but this is where we miss the point.

We are never meant to defeat the monster. These thoughts are given to us as a gift to guide us, not as a punishment to define us. Rather than continue fighting the monster, stop running from it, and hug it. No matter how big it has become in your mind, learning to accept the things in your past as just a part of you will allow you to learn to love your value. Many have had to overcome great tragedy. Imagine how great they are to survive. Caring for your monster will enable you to see past the thoughts of negative self-image and view, just for a moment, the person who is so lovable behind it all. They have been there all along.

A Life Without Fear

Seeing the value in yourself will give you many things. One is the understanding that you are not defined today by the actions and situations of the past but by what you choose to do today. We are all responsible for what we do in every moment, accept that responsibility for the positive and negative, and then move on to become better. Life is a short game, and spending too much time beating yourself up for the things you experienced a year ago, ten years ago, 20 years ago, or ever is a waste of your valuable time. It is fear of being not enough that guides everything, but you are enough. Just look at your true self.

Take that first step into an experience without fear guiding you, and seek the best inside you to share with the world. Each moment provides you with the opportunity to grow, be positive, and make a positive impact somewhere. You can do it just by being kind and thoughtful. How difficult is that? The monster will tell you it is impossible to do, and you are not capable. But look inside of yourself, look past the beast, and know you are very capable of helping someone else feel a bit better about their relationship with their monster. What could be more valuable than that?

Finally……..

Realizing that your monster is just a side of you that needs to be soothed and acknowledged is necessary to move past the fear in your life. All people face this to some degree. All you can do is be responsible for the monster in you and take care of him as best you can.

In your head, in the dream, you are both the monster and the person the monster is chasing. You are the fear in you and also the love that takes it away. All things you feel are a representation of who you are in some aspect of your experience. What do you do with this knowledge? Either you embrace it, or you continue to run from it. One method will bring you peace, and one will push you further from your true self. Life is a series of continual choices and the consequences that come from them. What are you doing with your monster? For my part, I am sorry I ever looked away to try to please someone else. That is a formula to build a meaningless, empty life. Be yourself and if people don’t love you for that, stay far away from them because they probably don’t love themselves either. They have their monsters to deal with; you have yours.

“Love and peace of mind do protect us. They allow us to overcome the problems that life hands us. They teach us to survive… to live now… to have the courage to confront each day.” —Bernie Siegel

“You’ll never find peace of mind until you listen to your heart.” —George Michael

“Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” —Dalai Lama

“Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.” —Wayne W. Dyer

“We stop looking for monsters underneath the bed when we realize they are living inside of us.”

 

 

 

21

Love It or Fear It

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To fear or to love?

You May Disagree
You May Disagree

All situations in life can break down into simple choices. Will you think and act out of fear? Or will you believe and work out of love?

I believe EVERYTHING you think will make a difference in your life and come with emotions attached, which affect your decision-making. I believe this because of a lifetime of experience and entertaining the wrong types of thoughts. I lived much of my life under the influence of fear but have chosen to make a change and look at things with feelings of love. No small endeavor, but I encourage all others to attempt to do the same.

How You Think Leads to How You Live

This article is about the fundamental belief that I have developed in my game of life. If you are thinking judgmental, mean, sarcastic, or hateful thoughts about other people or groups of people, there is no doubt that you will experience those things in your own experience.

These are negative thoughts which lead to unhappy experiences
These are negative thoughts that lead to unhappy experiences

If you choose to focus on accepting, kind, and loving thoughts, then that will be the overall experience of your existence. How do I know? I used to think the former and now try to focus on the latter, and although I am the same person, the experience of life has been entirely different and much more positive and enjoyable in all ways.

Fear is the chief motivation of those who are critical. A person rejects any thought or action that will lead to change or be different from comfortable beliefs. Even if things are currently going poorly, people avoid change because they fear that changes might make things even worse.

There is nothing wrong with experiencing fear itself because fear gives you adrenaline and or motivation to act. Still, if you focus on and allow it to move your actions from day-to-day, your experience will suffer from negative energy. We all face fear every day, but it is how you deal with it that matters. Each moment comes down to this simple choice between fear and love, the one you choose will define your life and you as a person.

Change is Always Possible

change-thoughtsThe most daunting task for anyone to accomplish is to change the way that you think. We have spent a lifetime accumulating experiences that come along with mental programming, which has managed to keep us safe and alive. But it also can make us unhappy and not allow us to reach our capabilities.

Yet, at some point, even though we are safe and alive, the quality of our life needs value. Once you start to pursue happiness and caring, you notice what has been making you unhappy. What is it that makes you hang your head with worry? What makes you afraid to speak? What makes you hide your individuality? What makes you disappear who you are? Fear.

Fear that you won’t be accepted, or fear that someone will take something from you that you love. Fear that someone is going to harm you or those that you care about can hurt you. The mainstream media feed these fears to gain ratings and Madison Avenue to earn consumer dollars.

The reality is that fear is just a thought and an illusionary thought at that. What you are afraid of is not accurate, it is a thought, and that is it. What if? What should? What Might? Questions that provide these thoughts; are not real they don’t exist, yet they offer genuine suffering for people. Your thoughts about things are the cause of most of our issues. Change your thoughts, and many of our problems go away.

There are many dangers in the world, and those should be avoided because they can hurt you, but fear of them will only stop you from doing what you want and becoming the best you can be. Fear limits you and destroys dreams.

Getting Out of Fear

Beliefs are merely thoughts that you choose every day to add weight to.
Beliefs are merely thoughts that you choose every day to add weight to.

Getting rid of fear in your thoughts is simple, but it is not easy.

Stop thinking fearful things. Now that would be easy to control all of our thoughts, but you really can’t.

Thoughts pop into your mind at a rapid pace, representing your lifetime of experience. Bias, prejudice, hatred, fear are all a part of your knowledge, and they are all associated with others.

You can’t stop them from popping into your mind, but you can control how much you pay attention to them. Simply noticing the thoughts of fear as what they are fake surprisingly releases you from their power. All of their power over you comes from inside your head and the thoughts you choose to give power to. Let the negative go and replace them with something more positive. The human mind is only capable of entertaining one idea at a time. If your thought is positive, so will your mood, actions, and life.

Replace thoughts of fear with thoughts of love

enigmaOnce you recognize and admit your worries and let them go, it is incredible how easy the right ideas and feelings flow. It feels better to be happy, healthier to love, and more enjoyable to live without fear.

It takes time, and you have to be honest with yourself. Recognizing your weaknesses can be painful and challenging, but you have a simple choice here. Choose caring over callousness, kindness over being mean, understanding over judgment. Keep living your life in fear and be unhappy or admit to your negative thoughts and recognize that you can just let them go and think differently.

The choice is up to you! Nobody else can make it for you.

“Fear and love can never be experienced at the same time. It is always our choice as to which of these emotions we want.”-  Gerald Jampolsky

“Love and fear represent two different lenses through which to view the world. Which I choose to use will determine what I think I see.”-Marianne Williamson

“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.”-  Marianne Williamson

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”-  John Lennon

21

Responsible

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NEVER MAKE EXCUSES

Accept Responsibility for Life.

Each day, we can make these decisions to bring our lives into balance, enjoy the experience more, and connect us to life in general.

Today is a day of potential with a chance of increasing your enjoyment and energy by accepting things as they indeed are and taking responsibility for them.  Those two skills will allow you to experience a more happy and balanced life.  It is a simple concept but takes discipline to perform consistently. It begins by being conscious of your thoughts, the words you use to express them, and the actions you take because of the ideas you entertain. These are not complex concepts to fathom, nor are they trying to put into practice, but few choose to do them consistently because you have to be consistent in your practice.

Things Are What They Are

It can be difficult for people to accept unpleasant things as a part of their lives. This fact is true of experiencing some significant change on our part. Sometimes it is just easier to wish things were like they used to be, but they never are.  Change is happening all around you and inside you every day. The new comes and takes the place of the old, and that is a reality. To refuse to accept this is a cause of suffering.  Things are what they are. To think anything else is delusionary.

Accept the things in life. All the changes and growth that are going to come until the time that life ceases to exist continually.  Accept yourself and all others and the role they are playing in your life. Acknowledge that there is a divine presence in everyone, even if their actions are harmful and their behavior is unsatisfactory. Accept them and their journey as a part of yours. Life moves, injuries occur, rehabilitation is needed, you may find yourself down and in need of a comeback. All of these are possible once you accept how things are. You will have a solid base to go wherever you want. Accept things as they are because that is how they are.

Responsibility For All

My thoughts, words, and actions are all my responsibility, always.  This fact is a concept more people should focus on in their life. We all make a million decisions in a day. Most are rote actions we complete daily, and those decisions are made subconsciously and may or may not represent what you want to stand for. Focusing on all the ideas we bring into reality with our words and actions means you have to be conscious and aware. Choices of harsh words can harm people deeply below the surface where you can’t directly see the harm. It doesn’t matter what your intent is. It matters what the actual result is. If your words hurt someone, you are responsible for that, regardless of your original intention.

Many people choose to avert responsibility for whatever reason. It is a habit that allows the negative energy of a poor choice to stay with you for a long time.  Learn to accept responsibility for all things in your life, and when it needs to be “fixed,” then start fixing.  The acceptance will lead to a higher quality of life, bringing balance and happiness to your daily experience.  When you accept responsibility for all things, there is no fear of what others think. You are going to be productive and feel better about yourself. Your relationships with significant others, friends, family, and co-workers will also be better. When you make a mistake or hurt someone, take responsibility, and make amends.

Make Two choices Today.

It is up to you today to look honestly at your location and accept that it is a reality. You live where you live. You make the amount of money you make. You have the friends you have. If any of those things aren’t where you would like them to be, then you have the power to change them.  Be responsible for your choices every day and look for ways to learn from those who aren’t so good.  Use them to become better the next time you have options.  All of the things you choose are in your power.  Things may happen out of your control, but your decisions about dealing with them are all under your control. Nobody can make them for you.

As you move through this day, please take a moment and look at the thoughts you are entertaining about your life and how it is progressing today. Are you taking responsibility for where you are? Are you blaming others or circumstances? Are you just existing without much thought about it at all?  You have a conscious choice to see where you are and to accept responsibility for it. Once you do this, you can use your words and actions to make your life a more enjoyable experience. The level of enjoyment you experience is all up to you and the thoughts you choose to entertain in your conscious mind.

“The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.”- Nathaniel Branden.

“Even the acceptance of personal responsibility may not overcome the temptation to believe that now is not the time to repent. ‘Now’ can seem so difficult, and ‘later’ appear so much easier. The truth is that today is always a better day to repent than any tomorrow. “-Henry B. Eyring.

“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”- George Orwell.