Tag Archives: personal power

A Challenging Game

The Hard Game of Life

Life is a challenging game, sometimes. No matter what you do or how you try to find the gentler 8235367099_8230f69c0cside of life, the easier the hard times seem to seek you out. When I look at people in their late teens and early twenties today, I have a hard time not telling them to be careful. There are some dark times in every life. Don’t worry too much, though, because they will bring you a lesson that will help you learn a valuable lesson. DO NOT BE AFRAID!

Look for the tough times that are inevitably going to come. But you know the warning is going to go unheeded. These words of caution are summarily dismissed as the rants of someone too old to understand the world today.   Yet, I know that that conversation will be quite different in twenty years.   Some of those “hard times” will give you your greatest gifts and allow you to stretch to lengths that you would have never reached without them.

If Experiences Didn’t Hurt, You Wouldn’t Pay Attention.

Every day, the experiences we have are not meant to be either easy or hard. Enjoyable or unpleasant. They are simply experiences that we apply our labels to based on our 304291_403371469749477_15828334_nexpectations of life and our limited knowledge of everything.

It is challenging to address hard things that way because if they are unpleasant or not desired, how can you not dislike that moment? If you had a broken arm or found out that you had cancer or any other experience that is on the negative side, who wouldn’t wish that away. Yet, our natural character and strength are revealed in these moments of despair and testing. Your strength will be tested, and your power revealed.

Personally, my dark times were not welcome, and I blamed everyone for the fact that things were taken from me for a long time. There was a lot of time wasted because, in the end, those experiences I detested and wanted to avoid allowed me to become more than I ever dreamed I could be. There is a well of kindness in your soul that needs to be released to do good, and sometimes the hard times provide the method.

Life doesn’t have to be challenging, but the lessons that are harder to learn to provide the whetted stone on which our talents are sharpened to their most helpful existence. You know in a more meaningful way than you ever have before. You may find hidden talents that would have never risen to the surface without the painful and necessary letting go of the past, who no longer carry the ideas and thoughts that now embody your personal experience.

One Constant in life is, It Goes On.

The everyday experiences of our existence are only opportunities for learning everything, from our way of dealing with people to accepting how we feel about and view ourselves. I look at those young people who dream of a comfortable life, and I understand why they think that way. It would be nice to sail calm seas for life. But that is not the way for any human being. Challenges are coming your way and to expect you can avoid them is to become delusional. They will be here waiting for you.

Yet to be tested and to find that you pass and that you are made of sterner stuff than you ever would have imagined is a priceless lesson. Don’t fear the hard times. Accept them as the learning experiences they are, and do what all successful people do, keep on moving forward with the lessons you have so honestly earned. Lay claim to your power and don’t give it away to people who don’t care about you or only care about themselves.

It seems that life needs to have moments of difficulty for us to examine our souls’ contents and value our actions. Things that are difficult to endure allow you to appreciate the little things in life that you have forgotten to pay attention to.

You are a wonderful human soul with unlimited possibilities, and the fences around your thought only limit the greatness you can achieve.

 

Choose Your Change

Every day is a new chance to rise!

Sometimes you reach the point where things are just not working in your life. There needs to be a change. The path you follow is dictated at this moment. Good, bad, propitious, right, or wrong, all of these adjectives will be applied to you and your journey depending on the tenor of your choices when change comes knocking. Some people will look at their circumstances and see no choices at all. But there are always choices, and they usually are triggered by the questions we ask ourselves about moving forward. There has to be a fundamental belief that life can be different from what you are experiencing now.

Believe Change is Possible

The first step to initiating change is to believe that it is possible. Many people have been told so many believe in Changelimiting things in their lives, and change seems like a fairytale located in the far reaches of reality. We hear, “You can’t do that.”, “You are wrong for thinking that way.”, “You can’t make a living doing that.”, “Your dreams are unrealistic or impractical.”, or “That is not normal.”.

All of these ideas that we have chosen throughout our lives have provided us with limiting beliefs that have led to painting us into the corner of life we are currently living in. If you are unhappy, it is time to change, and it is going to start with your limiting beliefs. All of them will have as much power as you give them. It may not be easy, but it can be done, and it can be done now, today, here this very second. Change the way you pay attention to your thoughts.

It Can Be Hard To Let Go

One of the funny things about being human is that even though things may be wrong, not enjoyable, hard to changeunhappy, or even downright depressing. We seem to be wired to resist change, to avoid it at all costs. Change is the only real option. The road to change is right in front of us, and we either standstill, refusing to take it, or worse, retreat from it. It exists, and we are moving down that road, like it or not. Change is inevitable and constant.

The devil you know is better than the one you don’t know, and even an attractive change can seem covered in peril. Our beliefs have been guiding us for a long time, and yes, change might be better, but what if…………..they get worse. This feeling is a fear that keeps many people away from changing behaviors that are not making them happy or even causing them harm.

Letting go of these comfortable, all be it, limiting beliefs always seems to start with a question. How can this be better? What can I do to make this better? If I was happy right now, what would it look like?

What Changes am I looking for?

Any journey needs two things, a starting point, and a destination. The starting point is where you are, and the target will change as your understanding, life experiences, and knowledge grows through time.

Hit your target by being clear about your desires.
Hit your target by being clear about your desires.

But it all begins with having the guts to create a goal to reach that destination you want to arrive at. What is it that you want? If you don’t have it right now, something is blocking you from having it. If you are looking for the right relationship and don’t have it, look inside yourself and see what you believe about relationships. Find the opposing points of view you have about love and relationships and recognize them as simply thoughts. They only have the power that you give them. Ask yourself, how can I change this? Why do I think this? LET IT GO!

It is like being in a prison where the doors are unlocked, and all you have to do to leave is push open the doors and walk out. Many stay, though, because it is safe and secure, and you always have the prison to blame for the things you aren’t happy about. It would be costly, and I would be satisfied. I would be in love if it weren’t for these prison walls around me. You are the warden of your prison, and you can walk out. Just choose to follow that change. Some people find all those walls, cells, and bars too safe to leave. Don’t be one of them.

A Time For Action

All things of power need power to fuel them. Your power comes from taking action. Action will eliminate fear. Answers to many questions will rise to the surface of your consciousness. Action will take you from where you are to the described destination. Sitting around, wishing will get you another day living exactly where you are. No house gets built without the action of putting up a frame, pounding nails into boards, and putting on the roof. The blueprints are great, but the act of putting them all together will give you the result you want. Taking action can be difficult, and taking the first action toward a dream can be intimidating. But there is a time for action, and this is it for you.

Make a plan, decide what you want, ask for it, take action to get there, and have confidence that you deserve what will happen. Get rid of limiting beliefs and weak points of view and move forward into a future that is made up of things you want and steps away from the situation that you are currently unhappy with. You are the master of your journey. It is time to start changing, and it is inevitable and constant.

“Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” ―Thomas Jefferson

“The path to success is to take massive, determined actions.” ―Tony Robbins

“An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.” ―Arnold Glasow

“God provides the wind, but man must raise the sails.” St. Augustine

“People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.” ―Lewis Cass

Your Choices

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

 

Your Power to Affect the World

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

 

To Forgive

forgiveness 99To live life is to be let down. Disappointment seems to come with the territory. We then have a few simple choices when things go wrong, and we can carry around the anger of being hurt or practice forgiveness and move on. Sometimes other people’s actions are so painful that it seems impossible to forgive like you will be letting the person who wronged you off the hook. That is the same attitude that keeps you suffering and under the control of an event or the actions of others for your entire life.  There are many benefits of forgiveness the will make your life a more enjoyable experience.  Freedom is one, and there are many benefits of forgiveness.

Your Health Will Be Better.

When you look around the internet for benefits of forgiveness, the Mayo Clinic offers a great many

Greater health and energy from forgiveness
More excellent health and energy from forgiveness

physical benefits the process of forgiving can provide. Letting go of the negative emotions surrounding any grudge-holding or hurt is not debatable. They include lower blood pressure, a lower risk of depression, decreased anxiety, improved relationships, better heart health, and a more robust immune system.

All of these were coming from the rational choice to forgive someone. The alternative is to hang on to the grudge and have all of the material things above become a problem, as in increased anxiety, higher blood pressure, more mediocre relationships, worse heart health, and weaker immune system. It seems like a no-brainer for your health to forgive others or yourself and let go of the negative emotions surrounding an event in your life. Your health will be better for it.

Buddha once said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

Forgiveness Nurtures Growth

It doesn’t seem to matter if it is a relatively small event you can’t forgive someone or yourself for or a choose to growhuge mistake when you maintain the grudge. You are remaining stuck where you are.  Think about it, an event that has happened in the past exists in the past, and as long as your focus is on the past, that is where you will stay.  To forgive and let go of the anger will allow you to move forward with your life. The only way to become unstuck and start to grow is to forgive those we are angry with.

Events in the past are not going to change, and they are what they are. Only your attitude about them can change, and you have total control over them. The person who gets the benefit of your forgiveness is going to be you. You will find that you can create, be optimistic about the future, and leave the weight of the past behind you. You will be surprised how much you can do without all that extra weight of blame, anger, hatred, and lack of forgiveness weighing you down. You can begin to grow again. Without growth, life ceases to exist.

Nobody is Off The Hook

Forgiveness is not weighted. That is, there are no levels of forgiveness, depending on the wrong forgive1committed. You will still be weighed down, trapped by an event or person, and unable to grow until you decide to forgive.  Many people I talk to say that what was done to them was too awful, too terrible to be forgiven. When you forgive, you do not condone or make anything morally right. You permit yourself to leave the experience of the event behind you and to move forward. Nobody is let off the hook by your forgiveness except for you.  You never have to talk to a person to forgive them.

Forgiveness is a rational choice that you make, allowing you to direct your thoughts more positively. It will enable a person to create positive new memories and a life full of happiness and joy, rather than to be weighed down by the negative memory of an event or person from the path. All of the control in your life will move you and away from an adverse event.  You will become a more reliable, more powerful person when you practice forgiveness because forgiveness is proactive. Anger, resentment, grudges, and hate are all reactive.

“Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.”— Desmond Tutu

“There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.”— Bryant H. McGill

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”— Mark Twain

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”— Lewis B. Smedes

Your Power

It isn’t something most people dwell on, but each of us contains a personal power we release into the world every day. We do this with the things we choose to think about and the actions we decide to undertake in life.  These choices determine if we are dominant positively or negatively. That is a magical thing to realize. Your consciousness will determine just how you are going to affect the world.  Your pledge to maintaining a positive mental attitude supported with like actions will allow you to produce a force in your life you will want to represent you.  Take a moment, and honestly, look at your thoughts and see if you are expressing your power in the right way for you.

Self Perception

When you think of yourself, what is it you see? Is there an influential person who makes choices, lives by them, and accepts the responsibility for them.  Or do you know a person who is just trying to get along, following directions, and looking for ways to fit in and not rock the boat?  Most of us fluctuate somewhere between being dominant and being weak. But the choice to be assertive is a personal one, and it starts with choosing to have a mindset of positive power.

You can choose today to entertain thoughts which are of a successful person. A person who makes excellent choices will want to live with the consequences of their actions.  There is a competent person there who deserves all of the good things life can bring you. If you are letting any other thoughts enter your consciousness, then you are limiting yourself. It is not arrogant to see the good things in yourself and live from them. It is intelligent and healthy.

Visualize Your Best Version of Things

Most people don’t realize the power their imagination holds for their lives. Nothing was built in any realm of man that didn’t first exist in someone’s imagination.  Your creative abilities are as high as anyone else’s if you choose to develop your skill.  This action is suitable for creating your life, just as it is in creating something physical. How you look at things matters.

The choice is to look at yourself as confident, vibrant, and happy now and always. If you don’t feel this way, start to visualize life more robust and secure. Picture in your mind what life would be like if you thought the power to see yourself as confident in your choices and abilities to follow through with your ideas. It will go a long way toward being successful.  It will get you past any short-term failure and keep your momentum moving to more compelling life.  Visualize the best you that you want to experience, and you can create it.

Develop a Positive Mindset

All lives include suffering. That is the way of life. It is how you face these challenges that define who you are and what you stand for. The talent to maintain a mindset that hopes for the best in all situations is a power that few people can cultivate.  But it is a path that will allow you to see the suffering as just an experience.  Life is going to change. Sometimes those changes are easy, and sometimes they are exhausting emotionally and mentally.  Perspective is the thing.

Looking at any situation and carrying hope for the best to come out of it will allow you the chance to do just that. A positive mindset is not a practice of ignoring the difficult things in life but understanding them as a part of the process and not a definition of life.  Negative thoughts exist; they are harmful because of our perception, and that perception is adjustable.  Great things can still come from situations in which we suffer. It may be three or four moves down the board, but it happens all the time if you have an attitude that expects the best in your daily life and your future.  Always expect excellence, and most often, that is what you will get.

Choose the Good

One of the factors you should develop in your life is the element of choice that is always available to us. We have to ability to choose one road, or it is opposite at all times we do this right now.  Should I go to sleep early or not? Should I eat this or that?   Being able to weigh the different options is a part of being human, and being aware that this choice exists the advantage of more active consciousness. It allows you to look at all things in your life and realize there is a choice. You can consciously choose images and actions, create the desired reality, or choose something else. That is powerful.

Understanding what you want in life can be a real challenge. There are many options, and to get some things, other things need to be let go.  But with a visualization of your goals and a belief in yourself to take affirmative action and create positively beautiful things can enter your life, regardless of where you find yourself right now.  The more extensive the challenges you overcome, the more valuable the experience. That is your power, and you can choose to use it or not.

“A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.”-Brian Tracy.

“If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”-Tony Robbins

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”-Laozi.

 

How You Look At It

Interesting Point of View
Interesting Point of View

What are you sure of in life? What philosophy can you stand behind and not shy away from because you know its validity? We all have some non-negotiable items in this cache. The sun will rise; the sun will set. Life is fleeting. It would help if you worked hard to be successful. The government is looking out for your best interest. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Many points of view are considered by people constant, unshakable, and permanent fixtures in life and creators of our reality. Yet, they are only new points of view that you can choose to believe or discard as you see fit.

Our thoughts on things have power. How we perceive is essential to the reality that we experience every day.  But let’s look at the interesting points of view, which are not factual in any way but held onto by people just as if they are.  You probably have a few. There are two main areas we all stay strong emotional points of view, love and money. The majority of our time is spent dealing with these two issues. Getting enough money to experience the life we want and finding someone to love us for it.

Money Matters

When it comes to money, we are all carrying points of view developed when we are young. Our

How you look at things determines their reality
How you look at things determines their reality

parent’s attitude toward money will go a long way in establishing our personal beliefs about money. Some believe it is hard to get; some believe it makes you greedy to have a lot. Some think that money is going to solve all their problems. It doesn’t matter what you think about it; all of these things are simply thoughts in your head and not reality. It is just as easy to believe that money is an energy that can be attracted to me quickly. Or Money comes easily, and I always have more than enough.  What you choose to believe is going to determine the reality of your financial situation.  Any point of view can be changed, at any time, instantly.

I Love You

Love is a topic that takes up a lot of time in life. We have even more points of view when it comes to experiences love in life. I think that it is because we all have experiences in this area, and the collective pain and pleasure of those experiences have combined to contribute to our feelings of love. Yet, it seems pov-different-exercisethat most of us have thought wrong about what love is. We are looking for someone who fits our point of view of love.   I don’t deserve love. Love is difficult to find. Love never lasts. Nobody could love me. On and on we go and put our points of view about love out there.  A point of view is just a thought, and thoughts can be changed instantly, today, right now.

The actual definition of what it means to love will be different for everyone based on their experiences. When I say I love you, what does that mean? Does it mean a commitment for a lifetime or a week? It depends on the person. This understanding implies that clear explanations of your perspective about that emotion will lead to many fewer problems.

Since Point of View is a Choice, Choose a Good One

There are many different philosophies on beliefs and how to change them. Still, the bottom line is that if you are carrying a negative, limiting knowledge about anything, it affects your life.  The first step is to recognize the shortcoming, and the second is to change that belief into an interesting point of view that will be more beneficial to your life and happiness.

Change is constant and continuous in life; we are all changing physically and mentally every day. You can move these changes in any direction that you choose. It all depends on which interesting points of view you decide to entertain. Since it is all a choice, decide to hold onto points of view that will make you happy and pursue those.

Forgiveness Sets You Free

Daily Positive Thought Project: Forgiveness Sets You Free

 

All of us have had “bad” things happen to us. Sometimes there are other people or circumstances we can blame for our misfortune. When you do this, you give away a little bit of your power.

When you carry this frustration, anger, and resentment around inside you, it is difficult to function in life as your best self.  You give your power and strength away to whatever or whomever you blame.

Simply by applying thoughts of forgiveness to each situation, you will be able to reclaim your personal power and result in personal freedom.  Forgiveness can set you free.

“Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.” Marianne Williamson

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”- Mahatma Gandhi