Wednesday 27 February 2013

THE WORK


Can’t be stressed enough, surrender to authenticity - it’s the work that matters and if it isn’t authentic, then...
Looking back over a long career in a number of fields of writing, if I ask myself, “Steve, when did your work get its most efficient exposure?,” it was when I did absolutely nothing and the work spoke for itself.
Why is that? It seems so unprofessional. So counter-intuitive. Is there some law of Inverse Effort, which states that if you try hard to achieve some effect, you will accomplish either nothing or the precise opposite of what you desire?
~Steven Pressfield

Tuesday 26 February 2013

UNDERSTAND


When we’re ready to understand, we’ll understand.

It’s impossible to try and understand the meaning of our life when we’re not ready to hear it.  

Luckily the universe will present us with hints, prods and smacks upside our heads as many times as is necessary until we get it.

Sunday 24 February 2013

SOMETIMES


Sometimes the one that needs our forgiveness the most is us.  Especially for those times when we don’t get a single thing done on our to do list.

Saturday 23 February 2013

CRISIS


Living with intention means paying attention.  Unfortunately paying attention takes time and effort.  Who has time for that?  We’re busy living our lives moving from one crisis to another.   

Interesting isn’t it that crisis is what shows up. 

Friday 22 February 2013

JUDGMENT


Today I do not judge - not people, not circumstances, not the way things are.  They are neither good nor bad, wrong or right, they simply are.  I do not need to react - reacting is oftentimes a call to arms for judgment.

SOMEDAY


Dr. Phil hits the bullseye on this:
“The difference between goals and dreams is a timeline.  Someday is not a day of the week.”

Such a clear distinction.  What is it about a timeline that scares us so much?
Is it because we’re afraid to fail? To not meet that timeline?

Here’s another brilliant nugget from Deepak Chopra, paraphrasing:
“Failure is part of the mechanism of the creative process.” 

Failing often, means you’re creating often, you’re moving forward even if that means you’re moving that timeline around -- so long as you’re creating with failure built in -- which means you’re engaged in meaningful creation not just movement for the sake of movement.

Thursday 21 February 2013

PAIN


Martha, brilliant as ever.  The moral here is that it is all an education, even when, in the middle of that education, it hurts like hell.

“There are many ways to get your heart broken, all of them highly educational. Breakup 101 will teach you all about the discouragement and guilt that set in when you end a relationship that just isn’t working. In Situational Heartbreak 165, you’ll learn about the pain that occurs when you and your loved one are separated by circumstances such as geographic distance or (God forbid) death. Then there’s Advanced Conflict 206, a combat-training course you enter when you and your significant other become locked in a war of wills. Most unpleasant of all, in my opinion, is Unilateral Torture 262.”
Read the whole article at www.marthabeck.com

Wednesday 20 February 2013

FORCE


We can’t force our happiness on others. But we can wish true joy for them - the joy of living authentically.  Joy presents the same for everyone.  Happiness does not.  That’s because happiness deals with external things, and joy is all about the internal things.  Neither of which, unfortunately we can force on others.  No matter how much we’d like to.  Not even with a Vulcan mind-meld.

Tuesday 19 February 2013

HEARTBREAK


True heartbreak is watching someone you really care about living a life of denial.  On the one hand we’re afraid of the time they’ll have to face reality, it will come.  On the other we’re afraid that when reality presents itself they’ll either not recognize it or refuse to accept it.

Monday 18 February 2013

BUNKER


Sometimes we hold onto stuff like hurt feelings, rancor, anger, much longer than we have to.  In fact, we sometimes snuggle into these feelings like much loved flannel jammies. These feelings become our fortresses, our bunkers, our barbed wire fences intended to keep further hurt away. 

While initially constructed as a means to keep us safe, as a means to cope, what happens over time, as we hold on to this toxic stuff, is that we become imprisoned in them.  

A telltale sign to me is someone who is chronically defensive, or someone who responds preemptively -  I’ll be rude and mean to you before you can be rude and mean to me.

The thing is, we constructed them, once upon a time when that’s what we knew to do.  But surely we know better now, we can take them down, blow them up, demolish them.  The sooner, the better so we can move on.

ON FIRE


It’s when we’ve messed up, done something stupid, facing recriminations, been mortified, have hurt other people, have hurt ourselves -- in other words, we’ve set ourselves on fire, the thing to remember is that we don’t burn up - we are not consumed by it.

Rather we are given an opportunity to make it right OR, if that’s not possible, to surrender to what is and move on.

Sunday 17 February 2013

ALL HELL


When we’re close, when we’ve been working really hard toward our goal, we’ve jumped through hoops and overcome many many obstacles and now we’re beginning to see results and we’re getting excited and we can see the end, we glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel, just then...right there - looking at that light that looks like the sweetest sunshine, the bright path to fulfilling our dreams, will, to our horror, be an oncoming train.

The bigger the risk, the fear and the challenge, the bigger the train.

That train is the embodiment of the ultimate question, and it’s not “how badly do we want what we’ve struggled for?   Rather, when all hell breaks loose, ESPECIALLY when we’ve worked and struggled toward something meaningful and we catch a glimpse of accomplishment, the question is, DO YOU HAVE THE COURAGE?

We mistakenly think that the challenge of the train is about attaining our ‘thing.”  But it’s not, it’s about cultivating courage.  

So, when the train presents itself, and it will, our instinct is to resist it, try and stop it, get discouraged and double back.  Instead try something completely counter-intuitive that will TAKE A LOT OF COURAGE - RUN TOWARD IT, EMBRACE IT, WELCOME IT.

Saturday 16 February 2013

PERFECT


If we’re waiting for life to be perfect in order to get some peace so that we can live the life we want to live, we’ll be waiting a long time AND we’re not understanding what real peace is.

Peace is doing what we need to do to feed our soul irrespective of the cataclysm that’s going on around us.

Friday 15 February 2013

CAREFREE


Cultivating carefreeness doesn’t mean we’re learning to be irresponsible.  Rather, it means that external toxic energy doesn’t have the power to seep into us, and that we’re not allowing the internal bad stuff to touch our soul.  

Carefreeness means we’re practicing to be distant, and when we’re very lucky, free, of the negative stuff that gets us stuck or positions us on the top of that slippery slope to self-destruction.

In other words, we are free of caring about the negative crap, AND most importantly, that being FREE TO NOT CARE is our choice -- we decide. 

Thursday 14 February 2013

LOVE


We must be the love we wish to see.  
This means that we know what complete, utter and unconditional acceptance feels like. Not just once, not just for a moment, but over and over, every day, especially on those days when we struggle to find that compassion inside us.

Tuesday 12 February 2013

RESIST/PERSIST


It just can’t be stressed enough that whatever we resist, persists.

That feeling of stuckness is us resisting.  

But here’s the thing, if we want to get unstuck we not only have to let go and surrender we in fact have to embrace what we’re resisting.  Crazy, right?  Got fear, anxiety, worry, anything you don’t want to face, anything that’s scaring the pants off of you? Don’t try to push it away because the very energy of trying to push it away invests it with focus.  Embrace it, all of it.  Surround that fear, anger, anxiety with love and compassion, it shifts the focus and paves the path toward  a way out.  

Sunday 10 February 2013

FOCUS


Gratitude exorcises demons.

And gratitude doesn’t have to be cosmic and all encompassing.  We can be grateful for the simplest things: a cold glass of water, a parking space, a smile.  Those dark demons in our heads don’t stand a chance against this kind of power.

Just shift the focus.

Saturday 9 February 2013

WISDOM


There is wisdom that comes from living life and then there's the deeper wisdom that comes from intuition.  

Some people mistakenly think that the voice in their head is the voice of intuition but intuition doesn’t speak, it sends messages through your body.  That deeper wisdom is knowing without knowing how you know.

Friday 8 February 2013

SPIRIT


For all the amazing things that people put out into the world that is deemed genius, wondrous, groundbreaking, uplifting to humankind, I believe, there are gifts of genius and wonder a hundred times more magnificent that never see the light of day.

That realization is heartbreaking.  But I completely understand it.  

The difference between the gifts that are born into the world and those that are not is one of surrender.  One surrenders to the vile voice in our heads, and therefore holds those gifts back.  The other surrenders to the spirit that lives in our hearts and souls, and knows it is more than the hurt that lives both inside and outside of us and therefore releases those magnificent gifts into the world. 

In other words, don’t let anyone or anything hurt you so badly that you withhold your spirit, your gift, from the world.

Thursday 7 February 2013

Monday 4 February 2013

TRIBE


Never underestimate the power, thrill and delight of finding someone or more than one someone with a like mind and similar values.  It can be not only magical but downright life changing.  

SURPRISE

The real difficulty is in loving those that cause us pain.  The difficulty is not in the pain itself rather it's in the surprise of where that pain is coming from.

Saturday 2 February 2013

TOOLS


I don’t believe that difficult feelings surrounding our family of origin will ever go away. I don’t believe we can exorcise them and be free of them.  What we can do however, is learn better skills, acquire more sophisticated and varied tools to help us master the effects those negative feelings have on us.

The acquisition of those tools is a lifelong process.  What slows and sometimes hampers that process is our forgetfulness and our impatience.