Patience

There are undervalued skills in this time of instant communication, instant social groups, instant news and needing instant results.
Most of us when we are making a change or achieving a goal tend to go overboard. Jumping into anything or everything that can stack the odds in our favor to complete the change/goal instantly without any consideration for our current habits and skills.
We often attempt most times to change too much and do it too quickly when it requires overturning the habits and thinking patterns we had for years and require new skills we don't currently have.
Perhaps the skills we need to develop and master before trying radical change are timing, appropriate choice of goals and above all patience.
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?

Biggest Block to Change

Why are we able to easily change some things and not others has intrigued us to the point of creating a whole self-help industry to answer that question. We have all made decisions or reacted to changes beyond our control with absolutely no problem. We just did it. So what is the stumbling block to the changes we want to make but can't seem to do?

Perhaps it is two simple words that create the block. Those two words are "I am". I am fat, I am stupid, I am no good at ....., I am ....? Whatever we say to ourselves and others is what we are because it is a belief we have created for ourselves and no one knows us like we do so, it has to be true and  thus we build our beliefs on who we are and how we function in this world of ours. It really is about our reality and only has to make sense to ourselves.

Perhaps the solution to change is simply deciding that "We are" something different and train ourselves to live that way just the way we taught ourselves to live the way we no longer want

Your thoughts?

Unhappy

We seem to have a consistent and never ending ability to make ourselves unhappy. If we are happy there seems to be a little voice in the background saying it won't last or in some way we don't deserve it. It is part of a protective cover we maintain so that we don't get hurt and we can say see I told you it wouldn't last.
The trouble is that attitudes like this are self-fulfilling. We make them come true so that we don't have to deal with the true underlying issue of self-worth, our purpose in life, or pay attention to open issues we have yet to deal with.
Being happy and making others happy is one of the few fundamental freedoms where it is directly our choice. So if happiness is a choice then why don't we choose it more often?
Your thoughts?

Purpose

It is generally believed that we need to find our purpose in life to be fulfilled. I don't argue that point but wonder whether we have only a single purpose as is often thought for our lifetime.
We are constantly changing according to the circumstances in our life. Events occur that are not in our control, peoples' decisions which we do not control impact us, changing knowledge and experiences change us, we age and see new concepts and interact with new people, and so on.
Perhaps we need to find different purposes at different times in our lives to keep growing. Perhaps we need to reexamine our purpose or purposes throughout our lives to maximize our lives to the best of our ability.
We need to keep ourselves challenged and evolving throughout our lives and perhaps a single unchanging purpose is not sufficient to accomplish that.
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?

Life Perspective

For a number of people winning at life appears to be an ever increasing list of things to have or to be accomplished. They are never satisfied with what they have and therefore are always living in the future. Others seem to live with the chains of the past. Every failure to achieve something adds yet another chain preventing them from taking chances at all and therefore end up doing nothing.
In both cases the present escapes them and they are never happy with any aspect of their life. Why do we make it so hard to just enjoy our lives?
Is there a better perspective?
Instead of making life a perpetual contest we could perhaps change our perspective by asking instead what is the legacy that we will leave behind us when we die. If we have made a positive difference in even just other person then we have won. Our life has meaning. If we were to use the analogy that life is like a poker game then each moment is like having a fresh hand dealt. What has gone on before has no bearing on the current hand dealt other than the experience of getting to know the other players. It is the accumulation of well played hands that produce a winner not dissimilar to life.
The change from winning to legacy and the focus on how we play the current hand dealt by circumstances and our interactions with others could lead us to living a more fulfilling life.
Your thoughts?

Defining Struggles

We are all familiar with the idea that struggles make us stronger and the more diverse those struggles are the more flexible we can be in managing change. This is the outer struggle that we all have with unforeseen circumstances, misjudgment, lack of proper planning, or caused by others. But I believe that there is an far more important struggle that has a greater responsibility for defining who we are.
I refer here to our inner struggles that no one sees but ourselves.
When someone takes advantage of us do we find some way to retaliate? When someone attacks us personally do we leap into the fight? You get the idea.
We could be very sneaky and find a way for payback that no one but ourselves would know about or we could just let it go knowing that sooner or later that individual we reap the rewards for their actions. We could take the stance that we are not responsible to correct everyone else to our standard of behavior and let it go.
This is the inner struggle and more clearly defines who we are than any external struggle.
Your thoughts?

Possessions

The interesting paradox is that we appear not to be free without possessions and yet once we have have them we are again not free. A place to live, food to eat, and something to do that takes care of those needs are necessities when there is only ourselves and multiply as soon as we have others joining our circle such as family or friends.
This is not a bad thing unless we allow it to take over and we become focused on obtaining possessions for their own sake; then it becomes a rat race that takes us further from ourselves. This trade off is something we all have to face and decide for ourselves rather than just going with the flow and ending up in a place we don't want and don't know how we got there.
Awareness and attention is always necessary to make proper and appropriate choices for ourselves.
Your thoughts?

Spectator Sport

Some people act as if they live in a fishbowl or better yet a stadium. They constantly worry how what they are doing looks to other people. Perhaps they feel life gets scored just like a game and they need to have a perfect game.

They play by the rules that are established or they presume are established by others. They find it hard to change their mind as life throws wrinkles into their plans as it would appear to them to label them a quitter or lacking in something.

It becomes extremely hard to live with constant change while trying to fix the rules and freeze roles for the others involved as life just will not be static. So when we give the rationale for our actions as if we are to be judged by the spectators of our life then we stop having a life.

We are totally responsible for our actions to ourselves. The choices we make are totally ours. The result is ours. Don't give it away to the spectators who do not and will not accept responsibility for our lives.

Life - a spectator sport OR your choices.

Your thoughts?

Technorati tags: responsibility, life choices, spectators

Life and Rules

People often seek to have a set of rules for life for obvious reasons. If we can have a set of rules then we can predict our future instead of coping with the uncertainty of results for our actions.

People can often create rules which when viewed by others make absolutely no sense but which they cling to despite evidence to the contrary. They develop a blind spot in their thinking and observations of the world around them.

Rules imply control and a comfort zone for people that they need but at the same time it ignores the interaction between people that changes events or events which are generated by others.

We don't like uncertainty.

Perhaps we need to recognize that life is not about control and rules but about choices in each and every moment. The quality of our life is determined by our choices.

Your thoughts?

Technorati tags: choices, rules for life, uncertainty

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

Life on InnerTV

We all seem to have an inner life of drama or InnerTV with multiple hi-res screens and Dolby surround sound. Things, events and people happen in our lives and up pops our InnerTV in technicolor complete with an announcer (little devil on our shoulder) with just the right voice to drive our emotions as our story lines unfold complete with commercials.

Screen 1 has Channels 1-23 and are the craving channels for all the things that we like and find pleasant. We like screen 1 and generally keep an eye on the channels as much as possible with an occasional flip to channel XX or the fantasy channel when we want an extra boost. Always new programs coming on all the time. 

On screen 2 are Channels 24-96. They are for the things we don't like and try to avoid looking at but peek at from time to time when nothing good is on the other screen. Screen 2 also shows our drama programs; the poor me and life sucks programs have high ratings due to high viewer interaction.

Screen 3 is for the reality channels and is reserved for all the things that we ignore and unless a special bulletin comes up we don't pay attention to it and just let it drone on in the background.

 Screen 3 will be displaying a beautiful sunset and all we can watch is the chocolate cake program on Screen 1 and we won't rest until we run and get it and then we will watch the guilt channel. Something happens today and we rush to watch the reruns on the hate/anger channel; the one that shows all the people that have wronged us so we won't forget instead of seeing the look of love in someone's eyes on Screen 3.

We need to take over control of the programming on some of the channels and/or create a special channel which features 'A new story line is in progress and under development. Stay tuned for previews'.

What programs do we choose to watch? What programs would we rather watch? What programs do we want to create? 

Technorati tags: story line, perspective, personal growth, habits