Opinions

Most people have opinions on almost every subject we can think of and are prepared to tell anyone who asks what they are. Nothing wrong with this unless someone is looking for help on making an important decision or change in their life. What that person is really looking for is an informed opinion otherwise known as experience.
So how can we discover whether or not we are getting an informed opinion?
By using the skill of asking better questions. Instead of asking a person what they think about something we would ask do they have any experience with whatever we are interested in. In essence; does their resume have the skills to answer our need.
Your thoughts?

Traps

Our habits of thinking can easily lead some of us into a trap that we sometimes don't recognize. When we are satisfied with our viewpoint on a topic we have effectively established a filter on our senses and our thinking that stops from reexamining that viewpoint even in the face of new information. We literally cannot even see that new information because of our filters. Unfortunately this can occur at a very early age or be affected by work and personal interactions.
Our filters in essence create a box within which we look for our answers. This leads us into the trap of continuing to ask the same question over and over again and frustrating ourselves by always getting answers from our box that don't work.
Perhaps the way to break the trap is to start searching for questions rather than continuing to look for more answers within our filtered box. New questions can come from reading, movies, conversations, controversy and so on. When we start looking for questions we will often find that we have a answer to that question that resonates with us and changes the filters we use.
Your thoughts?

No Escape

Many of us think that there is a perfect path of choices that would successfully give us everything that we desire and beat ourselves up for once more making a poor choice that we are currently painfully receiving the results of.
This decision of ours that we have once more missed making the perfect choice of actions now colors our perceptions for making future choices and we can often lose the opportunity of a choice due to not being perfectly sure of the result.
Where does perception of perfect choice come from?
We look at successful people and automatically assume that they are successful because they made perfect planned choices from conception of idea to final result. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every success has portion of it which when examined consisted of luck, timing, cooperation of others, opportunity, etc. which could not be controlled by the individual.
Perhaps then there is no escape from making mistakes as it is a natural part of being human and we are cannot have total control over all things impacting our lives and our choices. Then we could stop being afraid of making mistakes.
Your thoughts?

Reasons

We can spend a great deal of time trying to discover the reasons for a particular situation we are in especially if we decide other people are involved. The moment we consider the situation may be caused by others we seem to go on a witch hunt. Who did it? Why did they do it? How do we prevent it from happening again? Just to name a few of the questions we could ask.
People take action according to their beliefs whether we agree or not so we could waste a lot of time and effort trying to answer why and never get it right. We can examine the situation for clues to preventing a similar situation occurring in future. After that we should just accept the results and move on.
Your thoughts?

Gateways

We can tend to believe that the choices we make could be temporarily made and undone by making another choice later on. Another perspective could change how we think about choice. Borrowing from the magical realm of fantasy we could call choices more appropriately as gateways that magically appear to us whenever necessary.
This would occur whenever we stop to ask ourselves a question:
Is there a better way?
Do we like the results we see in our life?
Why are others treating us this way?
Do we want to accept that offer, relationship, deal, etc.?
In short anything that makes question what we are doing.

Gateways seems more appropriate as once we have passed through the gateway of our choice then life can never return to what it was. Gateways could lead to paths that are harmful to us or good for us or appear to make no difference but in all cases it is a change in direction in our lives and should not be made blindly, in fits of anger, to punish others or ourselves.

We have the freedom to step through the gateway of our choice and by calling it a gateway rather than choice recognizes the importance of taking the right actions in our lives.

Your thoughts?

Twisting Reality

We can be very adept at twisting reality without a great deal of purposeful thought. How do we do this? Think back to any occasion when you wanted something so much that it could be called an obsession. It could be an item, a relationship, an event, well you fill in the blank.
What happens is we lose our perspective. Our intense desire makes us look at unfolding reality with rose colored glasses. We ignore anything that would thwart our accomplishing our desire and focus on any detail that would indicate we would achieve it. A very slanted perspective.
We can often come to believe that we have it within our grasp and are shocked when it evaporates before our eyes. It can be very difficult to keep our perspective in the face of great desire when it is also that desire that focuses us and drives us towards our goals.
Again balance is the key and I have to admit that I have fallen into this trap despite my best efforts.
Have you had this happen to you and what do you do to help yourself?
Your thoughts?

Caught Up in Trivia

We can easily lose sight of what is truly important in our lives. We get focused on obtaining the next toy or worrying about status or bemoaning the lack of respect we are given by others.

So if we ask ourselves the question of whether any of what currently upsets or makes us angry would mean if today was our last day alive; what might we answer.

We have no guarantee that we will be here tomorrow other than our wishful thinking. So perhaps we shouldn't get so wrapped up in the trivia of life rather than the things that give it meaning. What that would be is very individual to each of us and we should honour that commitment to ourselves. After all it is ourselves who give the meaning to our lives.

Live everyday as if it were your last because someday it will be so don't waste it by being caught up in trivia.

Your thoughts?

Technorati tags: life, focus, meaning, priorities

Are We Special

One of the most difficult things to do is to stop thinking that we are special. You know that others should automatically know our wants and needs and should make sure that they don't trespass on our boundaries.

We might say not me but think about it. When someone is loud and interrupts us when we want quiet what do we think. That they have no consideration or respect for us. If others continue to pursue their own objectives instead of ours what do we think.

If we cannot convince others what do we think about them. When we are hurt by the actions of others what do we think. It can be a very long list that is generated by that thought that we are special.

This type of thinking leads easily to us taking everything personally because we think we are special but the bottom line is that we are not any more special than anyone else.

When we change our thinking to considering relationships and how we contribute to those relationships then our whole focus changes along with the results achieved.

Your thoughts?

Technorati tags: perspective. personal growth, results

Choices Define Us

Definitely one of the focus points on this blog has been about choice. The reason the emphasis is placed on choice is because our choices define us.

Can you think of any result in our lives where our choices were not part of the factors that created that result?

Your thoughts?

Technorati tags: choice, life, results

Reincarnation

I was asked the question of whether I believed in reincarnation. I then asked if they meant the Christian sense of reborn in Heaven or Hell, the Buddhist sense of rebirth in the realms of existence, the Muslim sense of paradise, the Hindu sense of earthly realms until they cease to desire  and then reside in the infinite ocean of divinity, and so on.

They replied whatever.

I responded by saying that being reborn is no less surprising than being born once and that I had to wait to find out that answer. However, I said that in all cases, that how and when I would be reborn was dependent on how I lived my life right now.

What I do from moment to moment determines everything.

Your thoughts?

Technorati tags: reincarnation, living fully

Our Garden

I like a lot of people had left my garden to grow untended. I allowed stray seeds to drift in on the winds of indecision and lack of understanding and settle in my garden without thought of consequence. There they lay amidst weeds and other seeds to grow if they would without care and nurture unconcerned about the final result.

It slowly dawned on me that the consequence of my lack of concern would be a twisted and snarled result lacking beauty except in isolated pockets through no effort of mine. This forced a new perspective to better manage my life.

A seed is magical as it is full of possibility some good and some bad as determined by how we nurtured it. When we plant a seed such as happiness it has the potentiality to blossom fully or become stunted and malformed into prolonged sadness depending on what care we gave it.

When we don't take time and effort to dig out the weeds they will choke out the life of the seeds we truly want in our lives. As the gardener in charge it is our choice only if we recognize it and decide not only the seeds we want but also to spend the time and effort necessary to grow them to maturity.

Throughout our lives we need to tend our garden carefully rooting out the weeds and dead plants and providing nourishment as needed and appropriate to bring our seeds to luxuriant and vibrant life.

Each garden we see reflects our true self. Does our garden stop visitors to exclaim in wonder or does it cause them to scurry past with downcast eyes.

How does our garden grow?

Your thoughts?

Curiosity

Their is one trait that is often undervalued. It keeps the mind open to new ways of thinking, new perspectives, exploration of our abilities, and defines our ability to cope with and manage change.

It is curiosity.

When we are curious about anything we seek ways to satisfy it. It is self-motivated and stops only we are satisfied with what we find. It is not tied to practicality and actually may be of no use other than we wanted to know.

Curiosity is the mother of innovation as we place with pieces of the puzzle just to see if we can discover new ways to put it together. Curiosity doesn't require justification for it's use. It is creativity in action in a way that is fun and delights us.

It answers the question of why with one of why not. It can be a poke in the eye of conformity and flies in the face of normalcy. A good place to be sometimes and can be the founding stones of dreams.

An exercise in imagination and thinking outside the box.

Your thoughts?

Technorati tags: curiosity, change, creativity

Our Thinking Box

I love finding out new things, perspectives, authors, theories, odd facts and miscellaneous trivia. Everything I learn about changes my thinking box.

What we know is like a box. It has specific limits defined by our knowledge. It is not the total of all knowledge but we can unknowingly use our box as if it were. 

We define things by the words we use. If we have no words then we have to lump our experience into something we already know about. We define our problems from our thinking box and our solutions.

We do that when we simply write out or state our problem to our self. We cannot state what we don't know. Nor can we look for solutions outside of our knowledge unless we realize that fact.

Now without a doubt there are problems that we can solve with our knowledge or by looking at solutions provided by others who answer the same defined problem. But if we are stuck then we need a different approach.

We need to know what we don't know.

By understanding the limits of our thinking box in our ability to define the problem and/or solutions then we can look for more knowledge. Whatever we learn increases the size of our box and therefore increases the possibilities of new definitions for the problem or new solutions or both.

How do you change your thinking box?

Technorati tags: thinking skills, perspective. personal growth

Seeking Happiness

We think we know what will make us happy. We remember the feeling of that promotion or raise we worked so hard to get. We remember getting our first new car. What we don't usually remember is how long that lasted.

For many of us it wasn't a long period of time. Two weeks after the promotion were we just as happy as we were on the day of getting it? After driving our new car for a couple of months were we as happy as when we first drove it off the car lot?

Our happiness is very fleeting and so we press on to find the next thing that will make us happy. We strive for the next promotion or thing and achieve it but it doesn't bring us the same level of happiness we first experienced.

It is like eating a banana creme pie. The first bite is everything that we expected but by the 5th bite it has lost it's uniqueness and it becomes ordinary. It is similar to a need to always seek peak experiences for an adrenaline junkie.

Is this the route to happiness? The continual seeking or is their another way. Does making a contribution matter? What can we do on a daily basis that would keep us in a happy state? Or is that a pie in the sky wishful thinking?

Your thoughts?

Technorati tags: seeking happiness, perspective, personal growth

Building Blocks or Masterpiece

We have a tendency when wanting to make changes to take things apart so that we can focus on key areas for fixing and moving our life in the direction we want to take it for achieving our goals.

We strip our problems or obstacles down to components ready to rebuild them like building blocks; but, in the act of tearing things apart we can lose it's meaning. We can become so focused on the mechanics and the process of building that we never stand back and look at what we are building.

What if we changed our perspective to considering that our life starts as a raw block of stone full of possibility within which is a vital and glowing self. It is waiting for us; the sculptor, to break off the pieces we don't need, to sand, shape, and polish it and bring ourselves fully into the world in all our possibility.

Just consider all that could be created. Just consider how it would change our direction of searching and how we could look at ourselves as a work in progress. A masterpiece in the making that takes our lifetime to create.

Which would you rather do?

Technorati tags: vision, personal growth, perspective, masterpiece

The Pleasing Syndrome

We learn at a very early stage of our life that pleasing our parents is a good thing to do. When we pleased them we got what we wanted sometimes and avoided getting into trouble sometimes. We spent a lot of time and effort to increase our sometimes. We also spent a lot of time testing the boundaries to see what we could get away with.

Then came our friends, school mates, work mates, bosses, dates and significant others. Always we needed to test our boundaries so that we could classify our relationships.

Other times we can get so lost in the pleasing of others that we lose sight of who we are and have no boundaries for ourselves. We can hear this in some of the tales of people who have lost a long-term relationships or are feeling the empty-nest syndrome and are lost. 

Some people rebel so strongly that when they become independent  they develop a personality that repels any close contact or intimacy. They feel that in pleasing someone it would mean that they are giving up on what they want and refuse to do that except in little none important matters.

For some people it is not an issue because they have built their life around the pleasing of people as they have found that it guarantees that they will not have to be alone.

Then there are others who realize that all boundaries in relationships are artificial and work to take the relationship to new levels equally valuing each other.

I find even today that I can automatically fall into my old habits of wanting to please and devalue the possible relationship into a pleasing equation.

What has been your experience?

Technorati tags: habits, pleasing people, perspective, personal growth

Perspective on Creativity

There are some that argue that creativity is a gift bestowed on some individuals without rhyme or reason. There are others that argue that there is no such thing as creativity; instead, it is an uncovering of information that has always been there waiting patiently to be discovered.

Self-help programs, guides and literature abounds with how to create more love, create your dreams, create wealth, and so on. There is a $10 billion industry just waiting to help us create whatever we want. I wonder how we got so many geniuses or social scientists to repackage age long secrets able to help us in our hour of need. 

I believe that creativity is a fundamental birth right of being born human. As I have stated in previous posts that no one else has our unique blend of experiences, emotions, health, beliefs, truths, knowledge, thoughts and perspective on life and self.

Everyone on earth can look at the same sunset and what we see and feel will be different as seen through the filter of our experiences and concepts. The way in which we express all aspects of our life is uniquely ours. Some find that expression in the arts, some in the sciences, some in their work, hobby, parenting and so on.

How we express our life is creativity in action; our fundamental birth right.

Your thoughts?

Technorati tags: creativity, perspective, personal growth

 

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Take Things Too Personally

We can easily be hurt or become angry when someone does something that doesn't fit with the way we feel we should be treated. We take things personally. I know I usually get reminded of this daily.

Someone leaves the cap off the toothpaste. Someone else doesn't clean up after themselves. Someone cuts you off in traffic. Blows their horn when you stop to let a pedestrian cross. Some days it can be a seemingly endless list of petty and major issues of disrespect.

What if it wasn't about us?

We take it personally because to us we are the center of the universe. Everything around us and interacting with us is personal. What if the other person doesn't even know we exist? When they blow their horn they don't know us from a hole in the ground. They are just acting out their frustrations with their personal world or acting absent mindedly from their needs.

It is when we take it personally that it causes suffering in us and reactive responses from feeling hurt to outright anger. When the cap is off the toothpaste just put it back on if that is what we want.

Nothing is personal even when they insult us. They are simply acting out their frustrations, anger, fear or issues of self-worth. Short of being a safety issue for ourselves do we want to join them in having a frustrating life or do we want something better for ourselves.

The choice is ours.

Technorati tags: perspective. personal growth, taking things personally

What Color is Your World

Sunglasses perform a useful function in protecting our eyes from harmful rays. A lot of us at one time or another have tried on sunglasses with different color lenses and noticed how everything gets tainted with that color of blue or yellow. Everything appears a little different.

Resistance to dealing with unwanted circumstances does something similar to putting on colored sunglasses. We resist in order to block changes we may have to make in our life or issues that we need to deal with to stay in balance. The resistance only ensures that the issue stays around sometimes for a long time and like sunglasses distorts and colors our view of the world and the people in it.

Sometimes it can distort our view so much that we forget that most things are a shade of gray rather than black and white. We can label ourselves as bad or some other negative trait and then go out and prove it by our actions and justify our view of ourselves.

Unwanted circumstances is just a signal like pain to tell us we need to make adjustments to accomplish want we want in our life. Donning sunglasses just makes that more difficult to do.

What color is your world?

Technorati tags: perspective, personal growth, resistance, thinking skills

Finding Truth

Truth is used as if there is some kind of external dictionary somewhere that if we could find it; then, we would know what is true and we could all have the same path to follow.

The more I read my way around the blogosphere the more I see that some of us struggle with our truths about concepts such as love, identity, needs, wants, happiness, and self. Why do we have this struggle? Why aren't we satisfied with our answers?

There are some who say I know and you are just not listening. They have found an answer; the truth, that satisfies them and have stopped thinking about it. Their minds are closed and they feel that there are two ways of looking at life: their way and the wrong way.

Not everyone is satisfied with some else's answer. We feel that we need to find our own answers and have that feeling of certainty for ourselves and are not content with borrowing.

Maybe the truth is that we will never have that certainty. We each see the world through our glasses of perception and experiences. Our truth is just that; our truth. It will change as we gain new perspectives, new experiences and our truths will not be the same for anyone else.

Can we accept that no one will every see our truth as we see it? Can we accept that other people have their truths which we will never see with the same eyes? Can we accept that is what we have in common with every other person on earth? Can we accept that as a minimum starting point for respecting another's truths? 

Food for thought. 

Technorati tags: truth, perspective, thinking skills