Improvement

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? – Robert Browning

This quote troubles me a little. Now that I think about it, I’m not certain that I should include it in the blog. There are two sides to it, or rather one side that continues on longer that I would want.

Trying for something you want, something you don’t have currently – whether that be a thing or a situation or a circumstance – is a good thing. However, never being satisfied with what you have is a bad thing. Improving your life until you are content is one thing. Never being content is another.

Your life (most likely) could be better, and improving your life, going beyond your comfort zone, trying new things, are all wonderful things to get that life that you deserve. But, if enough is never enough, then you are in store for a whole lot of misery. So where do you stop? When is enough enough?

That’s not a question anyone can answer except for you, though there are plenty of people who will do their best to answer it for you. People who want you to stay on the rat race, people who think that you’re getting too big for your britches, people who don’t want you to succeed more than they do – all of these people will tell you when it’s time to stop and when it’s time to keep going. That doesn’t mean that they’re answers are the right ones for you.

On the other hand, your family may have a legitimate observation or two. If you’re working 80 hour weeks to provide for a family who already has enough, then they may call you on it. If you’re headed for burn out, or if you are spurning your former friends because they don’t have as shiny a car as you do now, or if you’re becoming a jerk, then hopefully someone will call you on it. And hopefully you’ll listen.

Listen, when someone says to you “reach” or “be content”, but listen to the “why” behind it. Why are they telling you that? Don’t assume that because they say so that it’s automatically right or automatically wrong. But take the time to make a quick check of your own feelings on the matter. Do you have enough? Should you try for more? Decide for yourself. It’s your life.

The Whole Loaf

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little. – Putarch

I read a novel where a woman was wondering if she should accept the nomination as vice presidential candidate, since the presidential candidate was offering her only some of what she wanted for women’s rights. A wise old woman told her to take the job. She said that you take the half the loaf and then another slice and another slice and before the other person knows it, you’ve got the whole loaf. That’s perseverance.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Someone ate a bicycle like that. It took him something like a year, but he did it. Is that your aspiration? To eat a bicycle? You can do it. Take one bite first. To make a million dollars? You can do it. Make one thousand dollars first. To write a novel? You can do it. Write one page first.

And then you do it again. You take another bite. You make another thousand. You write another page. And then you do it again. And again. And again. And if you lose the money or your computer eats your novel or whatever tragedy befalls you, you make a thousand dollars, you write one page, and you do it all again. You persevere. Because that’s what it takes to achieve your goals – little bits over and over again.

Circumstances

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them. – George Bernard Shaw

There are people who start with nothing and end up brilliant doctors or multi-millionaires or the biggest name on TV and radio. There are people who start with everything in life and waste it all on booze and drugs. There are people who have awful, horrible parents and become a success anyway. There are people who continue to say at the age of 45, “If only my parents had believed in me.”

How long do you think you’re going to get away with it? How much of your life gets to be blamed on your parents or the circumstances of your birth? At what point is it no longer “their fault” and something you’re allowing or causing to happen?

Sadly, for some people, all the bad in their life will forever be someone else’s fault. And that’s not only false but also a trap, because if it’s someone else’s fault, then someone else is in control of your life. And if someone else is in control, then you aren’t, and you won’t ever be able to get out of whatever hole you’re in.

Even if someone else is to blame for how your life is right now, you are in charge of what your life is like tomorrow. Yes, there are things that are beyond your control – car accidents, earthquakes, someone breaking into your house and stealing everything. But there are things within your control, and if you don’t like those things, then change them. If the circumstances of your life are not what you want, then make them different. Take control, take charge, take responsibility for you, your life, and the circumstances in which you live. Only then can you shape your life and create your Future.

Elevate Your Life

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. – Thoreau

Which is more important in this sentence – the “unquestionable” or the “conscious”? They’re both very important.

Your ability to improve your life is unquestionable. It is certain. You can improve your life. No matter how bleak it looks, it is possible for you to improve it.

But, it takes conscious effort. You have to make it happen. It’s not just a “sit back and wait” sort of thing. It takes you consciously – thinking, aware, intentionally – making the effort to improve your life.

Can your life improve by accident? Through no effort of your own? Sure. Miracles occur. Is it likely to? Not really. Not nearly as much as if you put in some effort.

It is possible for you to improve your life, if you intentionally make the effort. It’s a wonderful thing. Don’t give up hope. It may not happen right away, but it’ll happen a whole lot sooner than if you wait a year before you start making the effort. Good luck.

All The Good You Can

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. – John Wesley

There are always opportunities to help. There are always chances to do good. No matter what the situation, you can make it a little better, if by nothing else than by not complaining unnecessarily. Your attitude can make a slight difference, even if nothing else you say or do does.

Think about all the kind words that were ever said to you, every time someone held the door open for you even though they didn’t need to, every time someone said “Have a nice day” and sounded sincere. Did these times make your day just a little better? Perhaps even your life, in the case of words that were inspiring as well as kind? What if the person had done the opposite? Said something mean, let the door slam in your face, not even bothered to say good bye? Would these things have made your life a little worse?

The ripple effect of a person’s actions has been said so often that it’s in danger of becoming a cliché. However, clichés are also often true. What you do can have consequences you don’t know. You may never know. And it is precisely because you can never know what effect your actions will have that you must do the good you can. You don’t know what’ll happen when you do that good thing, so you do it just in case.

The cynics among you are wondering, “What about all the times that you do a good thing and it backfires on you?” How often does that happen? Really? Every time you do a good thing? Even half the time? If it isn’t every time, then why not do the good you can for those times when it actually does good? Also, check out those times when it does backfire. Why does it backfire? When does it backfire? Is it when you think you know what’s best for someone else? Is it when you don’t ask permission to do something that alters another’s life? Is it when you barge into someone else’s business when what they really want is some privacy? Sometimes, with some people, you need to be cautious that what you do is really good. But not every time, and not with every person.

Do the good you can, because it will ripple into the Future, making it better.

A Little Bit

Yesterday I didn’t go into work as usual. I first had a doctor’s appointment. I left my home 15 minutes later than I usually did, and that made a lot of difference. Traffic, for some reason, is much heavier at that time that it is 15 minutes earlier. It took me half again as much time to get to where I wanted to go.

Recently, I noticed that one of the two bulbs in my bedroom light had burned out. The difference in light quality is staggering. Just one bulb makes a lot of difference in how a room is lit.

A little bit can make a huge difference. What if you ate just 10 calories less in a day? In a year, you’d lose a pound. Just one bite of food less in a day, and you lose a pound every year. What if you wrote half a page every day? In two years, you’d have an entire novel’s worth of writing done. Just half a page. Write just one paragraph, and you’d have it in four years. How many people do you know that are going to write the great American novel “some day”? Most of them won’t. But just a little bit of change in your day can make certain you do.

Do you have seasonal affect disorder? Then you know how much a difference it can make changing a light bulb from a 40 watt bulb to a 100 watt bulb. It’ll affect your attitude, which will affect your life and everyone around you. Just a little bit of change.

One less cigarette – even half a cigarette less. One less shopping trip in a week. One fewer videos rented. One quarter hour less on the computer or the TV. All these things can add up and help you create a different life. The changes you make don’t have to be big to be effective. They just have to be made.

Face to Face

Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith, Mysticism, and Awakening, edited by Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson, is an excellent book. It covers a wide range of spiritual beliefs, including Christianity, Judaism, shamanism, Wicca, and several others. It’s a series of short essays or excerpts from longer works by woman on their spiritual beliefs. It’s a fascinating read and certain to have something resonate with any reader.

Appreciation Day (one day late)

For this month’s appreciation day, I tried to send word to J. K. Rowling how much I enjoyed her books. Unfortunately, I could not find a way to contact her. Her official site was very confusing. So I’ll say it here instead.

I really loved the Harry Potter books, and I wish there were more of them. I loved most of the movies, and I wish that they could have been done better, to better show all the intricacies and great things in the books. The books and movies have provided me with hours of entertainment, and I appreciate that.

Reaching Out

Very few of us want to appear weak, but a lot of us have different definitions of what weak means. To some, being weak means crying. To others, being unable to cry is a sign of weakness. Some look at physical strength or stamina, others to mental agility. But one definition that a lot of us use for weak is needing help.

Because we don’t want to appear weak, we don’t want to admit we need help. Which means we don’t ask for help, even when we need it desperately. Which is sad, and cuts us off from our friends, neighbors, family.

Think of a basket or a cord. Each time we interact positively with our friends, family, neighbors, we add another reed or piece of twine. The basket is strengthened. The cord is sturdier. Our relationship grows. And when we are in desperate need, we can return to these same people and get the help we need, because we have already created something strong between us.

The tricky part is not asking for help more often than you give. Not just give help, but give at all. You can also give advice, a shoulder to cry on, an ear to complain to, a batch of cookies, and thanks. When you give, you add to the bond between you and the other person, just as they added to it when they gave to you. In giving and receiving, you strengthen what is between you. In taking only, you create resentment that will ruin the good will and spoil what you’ve created.

Some people will give only. They don’t want to take. They don’t want to appear weak. But, they don’t create the bonds needed. They don’t give other people the opportunities to help you. Just as with those who only take, those who only give also spoil what is between them and others.

Giving and taking, sharing, creates bonds that can last you through the good times, comfort you when you feel lonely, and help you when you need it most. I want in my Future a community of people who help and give and care for one another. I will create that by giving and taking, and you can too.

Persistence

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experiences behind him. – Eleanor Roosevelt

This message has been said before in this blog, and it’ll be said again. Persistence is key. Don’t give up. Keep trying. If you fail, try again until you succeed. Not in the same way, but improve your tries. Conquer your fears. Again and again, people throughout history and the world have known that to do what needs to be done, what you want to do, you need to do it and not give up until it is done. Create your Future as you want it. Don’t settle for something less, just because it’s easier. Create. Try. Succeed.

When Everything Falls Apart

When everything falls apart, what do you do? When things are going to hell in a handbasket, what do you do? When you’re so depressed that opening your eyes, though you’re awake, is just too much, what do you do?

You boil everything down to the essentials, the basics, the necessities – whatever you want to call it. So very much of our lives are trappings, extras, but they’re needed to live a full life. But when everything falls apart, you buck living a full life and you go for survival.

You eat. Even though you don’t want to. Even though everything tastes like ash. Even though you don’t really have the time. You eat. You grab an apple or banana, you stop at a drive through, you get a protein shake. You do something to get nutrients into your body, because your body will tell you when it’s done, and when it is, you’re going to stop whether you like it or not.

You bathe. Even though you don’t want to. Even though you don’t see the point. You clean yourself of the germs and dirt so you don’t get sick. You make yourself presentable in case someone decides to try to rescue you or you need to go and rescue someone else. You bathe not because it will make you feel better than you do right now. You bathe because it will make you feel better than you would if you didn’t. Maintenance more than improvement.

You take care of your dependents. This includes kids and pets. You make certain they have food and water, that they also are clean (because you don’t need a sick dependent right now), that they are safe, that they have access to toilet/cat box/outside (because it’d take you longer to clean it up than it would to make certain that they had somewhere to go).

You sleep. Even though you don’t think you have time. Because you need to be at your best, or at least as good as you can be, and for that, you need energy. The energy you get from food and the energy you get from sleep. Mistakes are made more by sleepy people than rested people. And do you really need to make mistakes right now?

If you are spiritual, you pray. Even though you don’t feel grateful. Even though you rail against the power(s) that be for your current situation. Even though you don’t think you have time. You pray, whether it’s a plea for help, a damnation for circumstances, or a thank you that nothing else has gone wrong today. Because, like with bathing, it’ll feel better than if you don’t. And, you may get an answer.

That’s it. You do those five things. You take care of your body, your dependents, and your spirit. And when your life has fallen apart, these are the pieces you use to start over. These are the first pieces you pick back up. First, and before anything else, you survive. And that is how you will later be able to Live.

Make Your Own Luck

Sometimes, you just have to make your own luck and your own opportunities. Opportunities will present themselves to you, but sometimes, they wait around for someone to stumble over them or to dig them up. And sometimes, you just have to make them.

Was there really a lack of burgers in the pre-McDonald’s world? Was there a craving, a need, for a quarter pounder with cheese? Probably not. That didn’t stop McDonald’s from growing into an international fast food chain currently worth no one knows how much money.

Weren’t there enough books to read, enough authors already published, before Stephen King came around? Was there a hole in the universe the precise size and shape of a rabid St. Bernard? Or a man-eating car? Or a recurring killer who took the form of a demonic clown that prowled around in the sewers? I doubt it. But how many of you recognize all three of those things?

Sometimes, there’s a niche in the world just for you, a place or action that only you can fulfill. And sometimes, there’s not. Sometimes, you make that niche anyway. The world is big and beautiful place, and there’s room enough for all of us and all of our dreams. Make some of yours come true.

One Year Anniversary

Today is the one year anniversary of when I became cancer-free. January 30, 2007, I had surgery that removed the portions of my body that were or perhaps were infected, and they all came back benign. This was wonderful news.

Over the past year, I spent 6 weeks off work, recuperating. I had numerous set backs and phone calls to the hospital, and even one trip in an ambulance to the emergency room. I still have problems sometimes with my scar.

But I’m alive.

My life is different now than it was then. I dumped the secure but lousy job. I reached out to other women, including family members that I had allowed to become estranged. I learned I was very strong and that I could reveal weaknesses without being weak. I learned a lot about humility and about allowing others to do what they need to do to take care of themselves. I learned that a healthy friend was worth more than my pride. A lot of things are worth more than my pride.

I also learned that taking care of my health is an ongoing process, that it’s never “over”, much like dishes or cooking. I have learned a lot about my body and how everything is interconnected. I learned how lucky I was to have caught it as early as I did.

I also have a lot more to learn. How to relax, how to take the time for myself I need, how to fill my life with things that nurture me rather than pass the time or merely entertain me, how to stand up for myself and my needs. I’m still learning those things, but I am learning, and I am living, and that’s what’s important.

Happy anniversary to me. Thank you for sharing it with me.

Inertia

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. – Will Rogers

Dictionary.com defines inertia as the property of matter by which it retains its state of rest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force, also known as one of the three big laws of physics – an object in motion tends to stay in motion, an object at rest tends to stay at rest. It’s also, human-ly speaking, the force that makes you want to keep your butt in your chair once you got it there. It’s why it’s that much more difficult to get up and do the dishes after you’ve sat down. “I’ll do them later” is a whole lot tougher than “Let’s get it done now”.

There’s a way to beat inertia at its own game, though. You get started. And once you’re started, you are now “in motion”. And it feels good, and you figure “I may as well wipe off the counter tops since I just did the dishes. It won’t take long.” Getting out of the chair and away from the TV or computer to wipe down the counter tops is difficult. Wiping off the counter tops when you’re standing there having just finished the dishes is much easier.

And it works for dreams, too. You can stall on a dream and let it stagnate, and the longer you go without making a move, the harder it is to take the next step. But, if you work on it, even a little, every day, then it’s weird, even hard, to go a day without doing something about your dream. Exercising is the same way. It’s a lot harder to exercise the first day of your routine than it is the second.

The big thing about the “every day” things is that you don’t bite off more than you can chew. Don’t swear to jog three miles every day when you know that you’re going to Grandma’s on Saturday and won’t have the time. Better that you promise yourself you’re going to walk or jog every day, three miles when you have the time and the weather cooperates, around the block if you don’t. Or if you can’t go outside, find some inside thing you can do to keep up the habit of exercising every day. That’s the key – don’t make the habit “jog three miles”; make the habit “exercise”. That way, you keep the habit going.

And if you do skip a day, don’t beat yourself up. Just pick yourself back up and get back to the habit. One cigarette after three months smoke-free doesn’t mean that you can never quit. It means you had a cigarette. Go back to being a non-smoker as soon as you stub it out. One piece of cake does not break a diet. Throwing out all your healthy eating habits because of one piece of cake will break a diet. And why are you on a diet that doesn’t allow cake? Moderation over deprivation.

Put yourself in motion towards your dream, and make it a habit to move in that direction every day, even if it’s just a little bit, even if it’s just thinking very hard about it for five minutes. Make inertia work for you, and you will create your Future.

How not to commit suicide

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. – Nietzsche

I used to be suicidal, when I was a kid. Home life was hell. School life was hell. I lived in the middle of nowhere with no friends around, so my entire life was encompassed by home and school. I thought about it a lot, tried to figure out a way to do it that was guaranteed. I didn’t want to just injure myself. I didn’t want to end up a vegetable or dependent on my family for the rest of my life. I couldn’t figure out a way. So I lived. In time, home life became better. I changed schools. I made friends who didn’t betray me. Life improved.

My “why” to live went from not wanting to only injure myself to getting out of grade school so that at least half of my life would get better. I have a lot more “why”s to live now. I love my life. I believe I can make a positive difference in this world. I love to create, and I really don’t know if I’ll be able to on the other side of death. I have the “why” to live now, ones that are positive and energizing.

If you’re suicidal or depressed or just can’t bear to live like you do any longer and yet you don’t know how to change your circumstances, you need a “why” to live. Not just exist, but to live. Existing and living are two different things, though it’s difficult to live without existing. Though some people do “live on” though the changes they made in the world.

Some people live “for others”. Their “why” is to serve those others or some cause. This can be a good start, but it’s rarely a good end. The best “why” I can think of is because you want to. Next best, because the world is a better place with you in it. Those are two of the best “why” reasons to live that I know. If you have other really good ones, feel free to comment.

If you don’t have a “why”, then get one. Start contributing to something. Volunteer, pick garbage off the street, say prayers for people. Give to someone else. Or create something that you refuse to leave unfinished. A masterpiece of some sort. If you have to, tell yourself that you can kill yourself later, but only after you finish this. Buy yourself a little time.

So many people kill themselves because they believe they have nothing to live for. Give yourself something to live for. Even a small something. It probably won’t be your destiny, your purpose in life, or even something that you’ll still want to be doing in five years. That’s okay. It’s a start. It’ll keep you living until you can work through what’s wrong and get to the other side of the problem – the side where even if it isn’t fixed, at least it’s resolved.

Give yourself a why to live, if you don’t have one right now. And if the one you have isn’t working, get a new one. You deserve to live.

Commitment

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genus, power and magic in it.” – W. H. Murray, the Scottish Himalayan Expedition

“Unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance” is exactly what you need to complete you destiny and create your Future. Someone once said that success is when opportunity meets preparation. Be prepared.

For those of you who do not believe in a Higher Power who will move Heaven and Earth in order to provide you with the opportunities to do what you want, think of it this way. There are opportunities around you constantly. There are people who are looking for skilled people, hard working people, people willling to do certain things. Are you the person they’re looking for? Maybe, but how will they find you unless you have the right connection? How do you get the right connection? By meeting people and knowing people and being the type of person who they would recommend.

For example, let’s say someone needs a band to fill in last minute for tonight at their bar. Are they going to ask you? Not if they don’t know you. However, if you’ve prepared enough – asked and gotten an audition, been good enough to be considered – then, they might ask you. You don’t even have to have played for the bar owner. They might ask one of their other usual bands or even the band that couldn’t make it. Do you know other bands? Do you know other bar owners or managers? Has anyone heard you play other than your other band members? Are you ready for the gig? Are you prepared enough?

If you are good enough and have gotten word out that you are a good band, then the opportunity could lead to success. If you aren’t good enough or if you haven’t bothered telling anyone that you’re in a band, then the opportunity will pass you by. Your preparation won’t lead to there being more opportunities in the world, but it will lead to there being more opportunities in your life.

Who would you rather hire, someone who’s thinking about changing careers or someone who’s been getting a degree in a new field? Someone who has written (though not published) many things and has been able to hone their skill, or someone who has been thinking about writing a novel someday? Someone you know is interested because that’s what they talk about and that’s what they’re doing with their life, or someone that you might not even know exists because they’re never at the business conventions or the free seminars or the open mike nights or anything else connected with the opportunity? Be the person they see, be the person they know about, be the person who’s good enough for the job.

Even if you don’t know what kind of Future you want to create, begin. Boldly. If you pick the wrong one and in five years you have to start over, that’s fine. If you hadn’t picked at all, in five years’ time you’d still be trying to figure out which path to take. If nothing else, you eliminate some of the clutter in your life and are able to focus more keenly on what you really want, what is really important.

Begin, and the universe will reward you.

Destiny

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. – William Jennings Bryan

A lot of people believe that they are destined for something greater than what they have in their lives, but few of them get off their butts and do anything about it. Don’t be one of these people.

They go through their lives, waiting, expecting something to happen to them or near them where they can be the hero – an accident where they pull the baby out of the burning car, a brilliant idea that launches them into the vice-presidency of their company, a song or band that gets them fame and fortune and plenty of roadies, something. But in the meantime, they wait. And life keeps ticking away.

So much of their focus is on what they’re going to do after this thing has happened. They think about how great it’s going to be, how they’ll blow all their money or not squander it like all the lottery winners you read about, how people will respect them and they’ll be able to do anything they want. They aren’t just tied up in the future; they’re tied up in the part of the future that happens after the event – just one portion of the future, over which they have decided they have no control. Inspiration will strike from outside. Or someone else will cause the accident. Or a recording agent will happen to be driving past their garage while they practice. Something. They don’t know when, but it will happen. Someday.

Don’t be one of these people. Don’t live in an uncertain future that hinges on something you don’t control, that will happen at a time that you can’t anticipate. Will things happen to you that you can’t control? You bet. But you don’t have to give up control to the whims of chance, expecting that destiny will do everything. If you do your part, you can shape your destiny and perhaps help it happen a little sooner to you.

Are you destined to come up with the brilliant solution at just the right time? Foster your creativity. There are plenty of ways to improve your creativity, help you think in new ways, see solutions that others do not.

Are you destined to be the roadside hero? Do you know CPR? Do you know the signs of shock? Do you know the numbers for the police and fire department? Can you swim? Can you swim well enough to help a drowning person? Are you nimble enough that you can dodge an out-of-control car? Can you fight well enough to scare off a mugger? Take a CPR class. Take a lifeguard class. Take a fighting class. Keep yourself in shape. Be prepared for the emergency in which you will be the hero.

Are you going to be the hottest musician since Elvis? Can you sing? Can you play an instrument? How many hours a day do you practice? How many songs have you written? Not just started, but completed? Even if that particular song is not the song that will make you a household name, it can be good practice. How many demo tapes have you sent out? How many have you made? How many people in the recording industry do you know? Practice your music. Practice your writing. Go to open mike nights and get used to playing in front of an audience. Even if they don’t deserve your talent or don’t recognize it, it’ll be good practice, and it’ll make for great stories when you do hit it big. Get to know people in the recording industry. Not just the big people, but the little ones. Little ones know small ones, know medium sized ones, know big ones, know the ones that can make you rich. And they also know the opportunities that you may otherwise miss, not being in the industry yourself.

There are a lot of things you can do to shape your destiny or at the very least be ready for it when it happens to you. You can shape your Future. Do the things that give it the shape you want.

Appreciation Day

One of the things I want more of in the Future is kindness, “thank you”’s, and appreciation. From here forward, I am going to have the 7th of the month be Appreciation Day on this blog.

There are many people that you can have appreciation for and show your appreciation to. Teachers, writers, actors, directors, cops, firefighters, librarians, coworkers, bosses, family, and many others. There most likely is someone in your life who has done good things for you either directly or as “just part of the job”. Was there a teacher that helped you? Is there a writer whose books bring you joy? An actor who moves you no matter what you see him (or her) in? A director whose every movie is on your book shelf? Cops and firefighters keep us safe. Librarians manage the source of wonderful free items. Perhaps you have a coworker who always has a kind word for someone, a boss who has helped you in your career, a family member who has always supported you, or someone else who has improved your life in some way.

If there is no one in your life, then think about history. There are many freedoms that I would not experience if it were not for numerous historical figures. What about in your country? Or researchers who have done great things for medicine – Louis Pasteur, Jonas Salk, and many others. There are also great organizations that have helped improve the world, if no individual captures your fancy.

Write this person or group your thanks. If you can and are willing to, send them a note. If not, then keep the note or toss it away, knowing that even if the other person doesn’t feel appreciated, you feel the appreciation. Sometimes, it’s difficult to express your thanks, but there are ways to feel appreciation without leaving yourself vulnerable.

To kick off this Appreciation Day, I have just written to a pair of authors whose joint works are some of the best I read. Virtually anonymous, yet sincere. Let me know who you thank. You could even thank them in the comments section, letting everyone know what they’ve done for your.

Happy Appreciation Day.

Helping Yourself

Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand. – Hippocrates

This goes along with the saying “God helps those who helps themselves”. Prayer, hoping, wishing, planning, and preparing all are good things, but without action, it doesn’t do a bit of good. It may make you feel better, it may bring you more opportunities, it may do something, but it will not make the changes that need to be made.

Let’s say you’re looking for a new job. You pray, you prepare your resume, and you plan exactly what kind of job you’re going to take. If you don’t send out your resume or agree to the job, you won’t get the job.

Let’s say you’re on a diet. You choose to use one of the many methods that requires you to buy special foods. You chose; that’s an action. However, you also need to buy the foods, prepare the foods, and eat the foods. If you don’t take that action, it’s not going to help. Likewise, you can pray or wish all you want for weight loss, but unless you take the action of changing your eating habits or activity choices, you aren’t going to see a difference.

I have nothing against prayer. I pray. I pray for guidance and opportunity, for peace and serenity. But I know that unless I take the opportunity, unless I follow through on the guidance, unless I make room in my life for the peace and serenity, even if I get what I pray for, I won’t keep it.

Prayer is an excellent tool, but do not let it be your only tool. The Future needs action to be born. Pray for what you need, then use what your Higher Power gives you to take the actions necessary to create your Future.

What are you afraid of?

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. - Bertrand Russell

The defeat of cruelty and the enhancement of wisdom – two things that I would love to have in the Future. To gain that, we need to reduce fear. So, how do we do that?

First, you have to know when you’re afraid. You have to be willing to admit to yourself that you feel fear and to recognize it later when you do feel it. Sometimes, when you are constantly afraid, fear can feel normal. It’s not feeling fear that is weird to you, that creeps you out. Like living next to an airport or highway that suddenly goes quiet. The quiet seems unnatural to you. To reduce fear, you have to admit it is there.

Once you know that you feel fear, you have to figure out what you fear. That’s not always easy. If you have someone with a gun in your face – it’s easy. If you’re two seconds away from crashing into a wall at a hundred miles an hour – it’s easy. If you’re sitting in a diner or a park and suddenly you feel afraid, it’s not so easy.

It may have been something you heard. Things that are a threat to you, like a car crash or a gun shot, can be identified as fearful things. It may be something else that your fear noticed, even if your conscious didn’t. If something has made you afraid in the past, especially if you refused to admit you were afraid and buried that fear under denial, then something that reminds you of that time could trigger the buried fear. A laugh, joyous now but menacing then. A scream, as part of child’s game now but in terror then. The sound of someone falling to the cement, a mere trip now but part of something much worse then. You hear everything that goes on around you. You just don’t pay attention to it, for the most part. But your fear may pay attention to more than you think. Sight, touch, taste, smell – all of these may also hold triggers to the past.

You have two choices in this case. You can figure out what’s causing this from the past and unbury that fear so that it leaves. Or you can force the fear farther down, lock it, so that it can never trigger you again. Whatever works for you, though I don’t have quite the control for the second one.

You know you feel fear. You know why you feel fear. Then you can change the way you feel about that situation. Behavioral modification works, whether it’s by a trained psychotherapist or a person who just knows that when you fall off that horse, you got to get right back in the saddle. Same thing, essentially. You turn a fearful situation into something less fearful through pleasure, triumph, or survival. Or a combination of all three.

You can reduce the fear in your life and enhance your Future with your efforts.

Perceptions and Attitude

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven. – Milton

You ever know anyone who seemed bound and determined to be miserable? It’s a beautiful day out, and they’ll talk about how much it’s going to rain that night. They get a raise at work, and they complain about how much more in taxes they’re going to have to pay. They could have a great day, except for the papercut, and that’s the part they’ll talk about. They prefer being miserable, no matter how good or lousy their lives are.

Then, there are their counterparts, their opposites. They’re the ones who will tell you that the rain is good weather for ducks or the lawns really needed it. If they get in a car accident and break a leg, they’ll thank god that no one else was hurt or that at least they’re alive. They see the silver lining in everything, or at the very least see a way to turn even the worst of times into an advantage.

Some people are born like this. Some people become this from a lifetime of habit. Some people choose to be like this. Your life is as good or as lousy as you want it to be, not just because of the way it really is but also because of the way you perceive it. If you want more heaven in your life, put it there. You can do it.

Worrying (2)

We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still. - Lewis Thomas

Worry can be useful, if it prompts you into action. Worry as an action by itself is useless. Though the phrase “don’t worry” is common, it’s all but impossible to obey without action. You cannot will away worry. You must act or distract.

Take action against that which you are worrying. If you are worrying that your car will not make the long trip, have it checked by a mechanic. Get the oil changed before you go. Wash all the windows, headlights, and taillights so that nothing will impede your sight or others’ sight of you. Make certain that the air pressure in the tires is correct. Get rid of all the garbage or extra weight (unless you’re headed into snow or ice country, in which case extra weight may be exactly what you need). Take action to make the likelihood of what you fear as small as possible. That’s really what worry is – fear.

If you have taken all the action that you can, and you still worry, then do something else to distract yourself. Or, if you cannot distract yourself, find something you can do on autopilot. Dishes, sewing, weeding, vacuuming – none of these things really take any of brain power. If you do them while you’re worrying, you still worry, but your house is cleaner.

Animals live too much in the present to worry. We, as humans, are the ones who have part of ourselves in the past and part in the future. When those parts are in conflict or fear, then we worry.

Do you fear the Future? Why? Either you can change it – in which case take action – or you cannot – in which case turn to distraction. Worry is common in situations like getting a test back, sitting in for a performance review, or speaking in public. But, these things cannot be changed in the present time. You’ve already taken the test. You’ve already done your work for the past month, six months, year, however long since your last review. You cannot change these things. You have already practiced your speech, though some people worry about screwing up when they get on stage. That is in the future, and you really can’t do a whole lot about it, other than practice more (act) or calm yourself down so that you can do your best (distract).

Are you discontent with the present? Act. Don’t distract. Too many people distract themselves with TV, food, an affair, sports, and many other things. The funny things about the present, though, is that the problems in it follow you into the future. If you’re discontent about your small house, and you distract yourself instead of taking action to change it, you will still have a small house in the future. If you’re in a lousy marriage, same problem. There are times when these things will change for you. Your house may burn down or your spouse may leave you, but in most cases, what you have now is what you’ll have in the future, unless you act. Worry because you’re discontented with the present is like complaining about the weather – pointless. Act, or at the very least stop complaining so you stop annoying the rest of us.

Are you unable to take the idea of dying? Don’t blame you. Most people can’t. Most humans like to have a certain amount of control over their lives, and dying is a huge uncontrollable thing. Not even suicide is completely controllable. While you may think you have a foolproof plan to kill yourself, so did thousands and thousands of others throughout time who tried and failed. You may just end up even worse off than you are now. (Yes, that is possible.) You can’t know when or how you’re going to die, and unless you have unshakable faith, you don’t know what’s going to happen afterwards. It’s a scary thing. But you have no control over it, so it’s not something you should worry over. Fear it, sure, if you want. But put your fear on a shelf at the back of your brain or heart, because it’s not going to do you any good.

Are you unable to sit still? Act or distract until you’re in control of yourself again. What do I mean “in control”? You’re not out of control, are you? If you are unable to sit still, even when you try to sit still, then you are out of control. You cannot control yourself enough to force your body to sit still for an amount of time you determine. Act or distract until you can do what you want.

The Future will unfold in its time, no matter how much you worry. But, you can shape it, if you act. Don’t let worry prevent you from birthing your Future. Let it only guide you away from incorrect actions or towards correct ones.

Courage

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin

Again, it’s about your comfort zone. There are people who never leave more than two miles around their parents’ home. They know their neighborhood, and they don’t need to leave it to find what they want. Or so they think. It’s hard to know what you want if you know very little. It’s like asking a paint store for blue paint. If they give you royal blue, then you’re happy. Unless, of course, you know of and perhaps wanted periwinkle, cornflower, baby blue, or aqua.

For others it’s not a matter of physical limitations. The limitations are mental or social. Some people know only accountants or people in their company or people in their club. They have a small group of people and situations they encounter, all very similar to one another. There’s not a whole lot of adventure in jetting off to Europe if you always go to the same hotel with your friends from back home.

What’s wrong with doing things you’re comfortable with? What’s wrong with staying in your comfort zone? Everything, if the Future you want is outside of it. If you want to be a world traveler, but you refuse to take a trip out of state, then there’s a problem. If you want to have a wide variety of friends with whom you can discuss all sorts of political and international issues, yet you won’t join any groups that have different people, not even a newsletter, then there’s a problem. If your Future is within your current comfort zone, congratulations and well done! But if it’s not…

Courage will expand your life. Even if you fail at first, try again and fail better. Or perhaps even succeed. If something is too scary for you, break it down into smaller pieces. Each piece you accomplish is another step towards your Future. Courage is doing what you don’t want to do, because you want what’s on the other side of it.

Two main ways of making things less scary and thus bumping up your courage to actually do them – breaking them down and familiarization. I’ve discussed breaking them down in other posts, so let’s take a look at familiarization.

Do you want to travel the world? Read a book – preferably a picture book – about the countries you want to see. Learn their languages. Get a pen pal from that country. In time, the country will seem more familiar to you, less scary, and you will be able to take that next step of a trip to one foreign country.

Do you want to be more assertive? Start saying hi to people you know but don’t normally say hi to. Join a discussion group (in real life or on line) and participate. Even a book club would work well. Write complaint letters to companies that give you bad service. Eventually, you’ll be able to tell the manager in person about the bad service rather than take it for now and vent later.

Do you want a new job? Audit a course (check with your university or college to see if they allow this) in the profession. Sign up for the newsletter of one of the profession’s organizations (most professions have one or more). Start talking to other people and see if anyone knows someone who is in that field. See if there are any library books about it or websites.

Learn more about what you want so that it becomes familiar to you. The familiar is less scary than the strange. Courage, and you will achieve your Future.

Unexpected Success

I learned this at least by my experiment that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. - Henry David Thoreau

Have you ever had something go incredibly well? Better than you expected? Better than you even thought it might? Or have you ever had a great idea or a sudden need and discovered yourself right outside the correct store or a coworker whose brother was an expert in whatever you needed? There are all kinds of ways that the universe will give you what you want and what you need when you go after the life you want.

If you don’t believe in a Higher Power or if you believe that a coincidence is just a coincidence, then read this paragraph and no further. It’s a similar situation as when you (or someone you know) get pregnant, and you see all around you advertisements for baby clothes, pregnant women, or shelf upon shelf of baby food in the grocery store. Those things have always been there. You just didn’t notice them. But now that your life is affected by babies, the baby-related items stick out in your memory. Life and success can be a lot like that. You may never know that your coworker has a brother who owns an art gallery until you start to work at your dream of painting and casually mention it at work. If you hadn’t started up your dream, if you hadn’t been confident enough in your abilities, then you wouldn’t have mentioned it. So you wouldn’t have known. There are a lot of different connections that people have. A person’s life is varied and rich. But you might not know that until you say something. And you might not say something until you start creating your Future, working on your dream, living your Life. And thus, in the “common hours” before your created, worked, and lived, you didn’t know just how much help was only a person or two away. Your success would be “unexpected”.

Me, I believe in a Higher Power. I believe that this Higher Power helps those who help themselves. I believe everything I wrote in the previous paragraph, but I also believe that the Higher Power will help you out. This help may take the form of gifts, loans, contacts, opportunities, or troubles. Even your troubles may be a good thing. They might slow you down if you’re not ready, test your resolve until you are certain that this is what you want no matter what, discourage you from a bad opportunity that looks really good, or strengthen you by forcing you to learn skills that you just didn’t want to learn before. You can get something out of adversity, if you look hard enough (and if you’re willing to get something out of it).

Your Future most likely will be even more wonderful that you had imagined, but only if you advance in the direction of your dreams and keep confidence in yourself and your goals.

Affecting Others

I realize that making myself a better, strong, more aware person will affect those around me and perhaps others through them. - Rebecca Latimer

This is why we concentrate so much on ourselves, because it is through example that we best get others to change. It is by being loving that we encourage others to love. It is by being generous that we encourage others to give. We have all known people whose motto is “Do as I say, not as I do”. How effective is that? Did you really do what they said for longer than you were forced to?

I want the Future to be more loving, more creative, more giving, more peaceful, and I can do that by starting with me. I be more loving, more creative, more giving, and more peaceful, and I bring a little more of each into the world. I make that change, and even if no one else follows my example, at least that little bit is still in this world.

You never know who’s watching you, who is inspired by you, who may hear of your deeds or kindness or words and decide to make changes as well. You don’t know all of the effect you will have on the world, so be what you want to see, and others will follow your example.

Results

It does not matter if today's results do not show. They will in time. - Tracy from Flylady

Everything is very rushed, according to the media. Everything is “buy now” and “for a limited time only” and “only two weeks to a new you”. It leaves us with the impression that unless something happens right now, it’s not going to happen. That’s not true. Unless you give up, of course. If you allow your impatience to convince you to give up, then what you’ve been working on, working towards, may never come to be.

I won’t go into how the Grand Canyon took eons to make. It took eons. We, as humans, don’t have eons. We have years, decades. But not eons. So, let’s go with some things that took less than a lifetime to create. Humans, first of all. A human takes nine months, roughly, from conception to birth in order to be created. Each day seems very much like the previous during this time, especially during the first 3 months, before the mother begins to show. However, this is when some of the quickest changes are taking place. They’re just small, compared to what we can see.

A beautiful building can take years to complete, especially if you have to get rid of the old building that was on the site before it. Again, each day doesn’t look a whole lot different from the day before, but it is. The small changes keep piling up and making a noticeable difference between then and now.

The last Harry Potter book was published two years after book number 6. It took some hard core fans less than a day to read it. But it took two years to write. I’m fairly confident that J.K. Rowling did not wait for 1 year and 11 months and then write her book in 30 days or less. In this case, the minor results show – another page written, one more piece of editing done, an entire chapter complete, but the whole and complete package took time.

If there is something you want, be prepared for it to take some time. Maybe this time is mental preparation. Perhaps there’s something you need to “psyche yourself up for”, and that can take weeks. These weeks are not wasted, because they were needed to get you ready for what you need to do.

Maybe this is physical preparation. Maybe you want to get a sculpted body with well defined muscles. Depending on where you start, you could have a long way to go before you get there. And if you’re very much overweight, it could be quite some time before you can see the results with your eyes. But the results are there, buried beneath your skin. Slowly, your body loses its layers of fat and your muscles grow a little bit more, until one day you can see the muscle definition when you flex. This is a great day, and if you keep at it through those times of “no results”, you will get there.

It could be spiritual preparation, something you have to pray over, discuss with your spiritual advisor, or reconcile ethically. You may have been brought up one way but now believe another (especially true if your parents were abusers of any kind), and you have a difficult time to align your actions with your new beliefs. Be kind to yourself and keep taking steps to the goal.

It could be emotional preparation. Perhaps the “psyching yourself up for it” isn’t just a mental process, but an emotional one. Do you need to tell someone you love them? Do you need to leave someone? Either one of those things can be emotionally difficult, and you could need some time to get yourself prepared. Just make certain you’re not using “preparation” when what you’re really doing is “procrastinating”.

Not every wonderful thing that will happen to you or because of you will be instantaneous. Not everything will happen right away or when you expect or as soon as you expect. But the small results will happen, and they will build up over time, and eventually, what you build will come true. You can birth the Future one step at a time.

Anniversaries and Kindness

It’s been just over a year since I found out I had to have surgery. It seems both a lot longer and a lot shorter than that. That’s the way with a lot of “first-after”s in our life, a good number of them sad. The first Christmas after a loved one dies. The first spring after being forced to move. The first work day after you were fired from your last job. Life is full of “first-after”s, but they pass. And the “second-after” isn’t as hard. “This too shall pass” is an ancient saying, but it is still true. If you allow yourself to grieve and do not hold on to the pain but let it flow from you, the pain will pass with time. Will you ever be “all better”, “as good as new”, “just like before”. Probably not. Hopefully not. Because if you don’t change, then there was no reason for you to have gone through it. The Future is shaped by change and by inertia. The Future is created by change alone. Create your Future, and be kind to yourself during your “first-after”s.

Deepest Treasure

Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure. - Rainer Maria Rilke

Some of the most wondrous things and times in our lives have come immediately after facing our fears and not backing away. Fear is what makes up the boundaries of our comfort zones. It’s like the maps of old where along the edges they would write “Here be dragons”, to let sailors know that no one knew what lay beyond the borders of the map. But the borders of the map blocked off the New World. The borders of your comfort zone can block off a New Life.

A lot of people live on the surface of life. They don’t bother with things that make them uncomfortable. They work at their safe jobs, drive home, turn on the distraction, and fall asleep mentally and emotionally long before their bodies do. And in the mornings, they do it all again. They back away from adversity or new things or change. Why? They think they have it all. And yet, these are the same people who are constantly trying to keep up with the Joneses. Why? Because the Joneses have more than they do. It’s amazing how a person can “have it all”, until their neighbor gets a new car. And then they want a new car. A new car is their dream. Or a new TV or lawn mower or whatever.

Even their dreams are small.

Their comfort zones are small, and their dreams are small. If they’re going to spend enough money to get a new car, why not go to France instead? They obviously have a perfectly good (if a few years old) car in their own garage. Why keep following in the footsteps of their neighbors? Why not live a little differently? Or if not France, what about dance lessons or music lessons or saving the money and joining a public speaking group? They want to be noticed and different and admired, but only in exactly the same way that they notice and admire other people. Different really doesn’t quite make it from their claims to their true wishes.

What about you?

Are your dreams small? Is your comfort zone small? Do you want them to be small? Are they are large as you want? Is fear stopping you? Fear is only an emotion, and not always a rational one at that. Fear has its place, but not as a dream stopper. Fear of black ice so you drive carefully, that’s a good fear. Fear of the snarling dog foaming at the mouth coming towards you, that’s a good fear. Fear of taking dance lessons? Not really a good fear. Fear of going to France? Not really a good fear. Could something awful happen in a foreign land where you don’t know anyone and you don’t speak the language? Why, yes, bad things could happen, including things that wouldn’t happen in your native country. But, you can take precautions against those bad things, just like you take precautions against black ice and rabid dogs. Don’t let it stop you from going to France or joining a choir or finishing your degree.

Small dreams come true. But, you know what? So do big dreams. And if your dreams are going to come true, which would you rather have? Face your fears, slay your dragons, find your treasure, build your Future. You can do this.

Life Or Nothing

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. - Helen Keller

You have a choice. You constantly have choices. You may not think you do. You may have so many restrictions upon you that your only choice is your attitude. But you always have a choice. At least one. How will you see today? As a day of drudgery or one of adventure? Will you dare to live or will you merely exist? Will you choose to be defeated, or will you hold on?

You have a choice. And the most insidious, the sneakiest, the most wonderful thing about this is that you don’t have to change your life in order to make a different choice. You just have to change your living. And this choice is the most important choice, one that feeds or hinders all others. It is the one of attitude.

And if you play it right, if you do nothing differently except think, if you show outwardly nothing of the change of choice you’ve made inside yourself, then no one will know. Except you. They may suspect. But since you’re doing the same things as you did yesterday, how would they know? If you’re truly in so bad a situation (and some of you are) that you dare now smile if you’re not allowed, dare not frown when sad, dare not shed any tears or express an opinion, then keep it all inside you. Make your choice of attitude and realization, and change the way you live your life, even if you don’t change your life.

The realization is that you have a choice. Once you realize that, things get both a lot tougher and a lot easier. It’s tougher because now the control is in your hands, and you can’t blame someone else for it. It’s easier because now that you realize you have the control, you can make that choice. Do you look at life as a victim or a survivor? Do you see yourself as imprisoned, or merely biding your time here until you have somewhere else to go, someplace better? Do you see yourself as powerless or powerful? Are you the central character of your life, or have you given that role over to someone else?

And make no mistake, you are the one who makes that choice. Do your parents think the world of your little sister and nothing of you? So what? That’s their choice. Do not make their choice the center of your world. First, see yourself as wonderful and then find other people who share that opinion. Your parents can keep their opinion. You don’t have to agree or fight. Are you in an abusive relationship where the other person insists that you wait on them hand and foot, always taking them into consideration no matter what you do? You can still make the choice about how you think and whether or not you leave, and if so how. Suicide is unfortunately the choice that some abuse victims make, whether it be by knife, car accident, starvation, or refusing to see a doctor until they are too sick to be cured. Abuse survivors, on the other hand, do not choose suicide as how they will leave, if they choose to leave. They figure out a way to make it out with their bodies and more importantly their spirits intact.

Any other scenarios where you are not the central character of your life can pretty much be referred to those two cases. Annoying coworker who seems to get promotions and raises more often than you? See the first case. Annoying boss who thinks that work should be your life rather than your job? See the second case.

Realize you have the choice to make your life what you want, and then choose your attitude. With your attitude in place and consciously chosen, you can then create your life more easily, more readily, and more happily. Realize, choose, and give birth to your Future.

The Next Step

Writing is like driving at night. You cannot see beyond your headlights…but you can make the whole trip that way. - E.L. Doctorow

Sometimes, you can see your goal and everything between here and there. You can see where the path twists and turns. You can see the roadblocks ahead and prepare for them. You can slow down at the bumpy parts and speed up on the straight areas.

And then night falls.

Night can be exhaustion (and is usually accompanied by exhaustion). It can be a more urgent priority (sick kid, sick parent, sick yourself, car accident, house fire, etc.). It can be an unexpected obstacle (the local college doesn’t offer that degree, you get fired, the program you’d signed up for gets cancelled, something goes out of business, etc.). It can be confusion (I thought I’d know what to do once I got to this point).

Night is the time when you know what your Future looks like, but you just can’t see how to get there from here.

But night doesn’t last, unless you sit on your butt and give up. If you choose to stay in the night, then night will stay with you. But if you continue on, the dawn will come, and things will be clear again.

Take care of the emergency (just be sure to set boundaries and take care of yourself at the same time!). Figure out another way around the obstacle. Do some more research, if you’re confused. Keep alert to possibilities and options. They’re all around us. Read the newspapers and the signs at the library. Check out the books on your subject; perhaps they’ll have an idea you hadn’t thought of before. Talk to supportive people about your dream (and keep it defended against negative people); they may know someone or something you don’t. Night time is when our bodies rest and prepare themselves for the coming day. Use your night to figure out the next step and prepare to take it once you can.

Energy

Sometimes the only thing we do to avoid success is refuse to be energetic on our own behalf. - Barbara Sher

Have you ever been to a football game? If you’re tuned into other people’s energy levels or in least bit empathic, it can be quite a heady experience. The energy everyone expends at a good football game is immense. The players play hard, the coaches coach, the cheerleaders cheer, and the fans go wild, and everyone spends a whole lot of energy doing it. It’s what they want to do, for entertainment, for a job, or for their passion. At least, for some people it’s their passion. Some people want to be football players, coaches, cheerleaders, or fans, and if their Future contains that, that’s great by them. But for others, it’s just entertainment. It’s just a way to socialize and unwind from a long day or a long week. Or it’s just a job that they have right now until something else comes along. The game serves its purpose, but not the person’s purpose in life.

You see those people, and then you step back and take a look at the rest of their life. Where else do they spend as much energy as they do at that football game? With their buddies at the bar? In bed? Ranting and complaining? Are any of those their purpose in life? The basis on which they will build their Future? Probably not. They are energetic, and they are passionate, but not about themselves or their lives.

What about you? Where do you spend your time and energy? On entertainment? On a job that’s “just a job”? Or on your passion, your purpose, your Future? Give it some thought.

Bored in the Face of Shoulds

Are you ever bored? It’s actually rather easy to become bored. Most people do it at least once in their lives, some as often as several times a week. Being bored does not mean that you have nothing to do. Usually, it’s the opposite. You have things to do, but they’re not the things you want to do. They are the “shoulds”. I should unload the dishwasher. I should review my notes for the test (or meeting) tomorrow. I should take care of the thing I said I’d do today. But I don’t want to. Boredom, at least in this affluent country of the United States of America, comes more often from having something you should do and nothing really want to do. At least, not at this moment.

There are other boredoms, too. There’s the day-in-day-out boredom of being in a job that doesn’t challenge or excite you. There’s the boredom of waiting in line. There’s the boredom of life today being the exact copy of life yesterday and of life tomorrow. These boredoms are easy to take care of, though. For the first, find a new job. For the second, get a walkman or an ipod or hum under your breath. For the last, build and create your Future. When you create your Future, your tomorrow will be different from yesterday.

But back to the original topic – getting bored when there’s plenty to do, but you just don’t feel like doing any of it. It can occur even when there’s fun stuff to do (watch a movie, put together a puzzle, call a friend), but you’re just not in the mood for any of it. What do you do then?

Being bored is a huge time waster. You can sit on your butt and wonder, “What should I do?” Eventually, that will be answered for you, because you’ll have wasted an hour or more just sitting there, and you can no longer avoid all those shoulds that you had been avoiding before. You’ll have to do the laundry, because you have no more clean clothes. You’ll have to unload the dishwasher, because you don’t have any other clean dishes. You’ll have to review your notes, or at the very least it’ll become to late to do anything about it, and that “should” gets taken off your list anyway. So, what do you do?

You do the should. I know, I know. You don’t want to. The good news is, there’s a catch. That wasn’t the complete sentence, but I wanted to make certain you were paying attention. You do the should until you think of something you would actually enjoy doing. In the case of reviewing notes, that can be difficult, because when we are bored, our minds tend to wander, and that makes intellectual activity a problem. However, we are in luck in that there are very few times that any of us is plagued by just one should. Most of us have plenty of shoulds to go around. And if you’re just too bored to do the one that requires thinking, do the one that doesn’t. And if you don’t have one that doesn’t require thinking, I’m impressed. Because at that point, all your dishes are clean and put away, all of your laundry is done and put away, all your floors are swept or vacuumed, the pets and plants have been taken care of, there is no dust in your house, all of your bills have been paid and your checkbooks have been balanced, your toilets are clean as are your shower and tub, all your library books and videos have been returned, the groceries have been bought, your windows are washed, and your bed has been made. I don’t think that I’ve had all of those things happen in my home at the same time ever.

This is where a little planning can come in handy. Your Future is a wondrous place, and I’m certain that there are things that you can do to create it. Big things, little things, and medium-sized things. Make a list of all of the things you need to or want to do in order to create your Future and keep that list handy for when you get bored. Do one of those things, and if they’re all too big to do, use your boring time to make the steps smaller.

Do a should or do a creative step. Even if you are still bored when you’re done, at least you got it finished. Congratulations on that.

Let it go

How do you let it go when someone has hurt you? How do you let it go when there is a pain in your heart that no amount of crying lessens, that no amount of time seems to dull? How do you let go of something that keeps popping into your head, no matter what else you try to think of?

Or, how do you make the choice to let it go? Some people are not plagued by old wounds and remembered slights. Instead, they relish them, relive them, recount them to others and themselves over and over. They enjoy the pain, though they claim to be plagued by it. They play the martyr. These are not people interested in the Future. They are mired in the past, dragging it with them wherever they go. First thing you have to do to build the Future? Prepare for it in the Present, and you can’t do that if you’re living in the past.

Those of you who read this blog are the ones who want to create the Future and are willing to let go of at least some of the past hurts and pains. So, we’ll just continue on as if you aren’t one of the people in the second paragraph (or at least aren’t that way about everything), and we’ll go back to the first. How do you let go?

A lot of the self-help books tell you to forgive, but I’m not sure that’s right. I was taught that you forgive someone when they’ve made amends for something, or when you’re willing to say that it’s no longer a bad thing. There are just some things that I can’t do that for. There are people who’ll say that “to forgive” means to let go of the hurt whether or not someone’s made amends or if it’s something that can ever be okay. That’s not what I was taught. Instead, if you can’t forgive the sin and if you can’t forgive the sinner, then let it go.

After all, if that’s what “forgive” means to some people, then we are in agreement. Let go of the anger, the hurt, the pain, and leave the past in the past.

What does this not mean? This doesn’t mean you haven’t changed. This doesn’t mean that you haven’t gone through something horrible. This doesn’t mean that you say it wasn’t that big of a deal or that it was okay or that you are willing to see that person again or treat them well or even wish them well (that’s a little more than I can do for some people, though it does feel really good when you can expend positive energy, even against those who have wronged you).

What does this mean? It means that you take what you can from the experience, use it to grow, learn, strengthen, and change, and leave the rest in the past. You let go of anything that’s not of use to you. You let go of the pain when it no longer serves a purpose. You keep the good, and you let go of the bad.

How? You focus. You focus on the positive aspects, when you have to think about it at all. You focus on the positive in your life, on building your Future. You give yourself something else to think about, so that you don’t dwell on it in the dark of the night or any other time. You find a mantra, an affirmation, a prayer, a koan, or anything else that you can use to fill your head with something positive and building, rather than mulling over something destructive and painful.

Is it really that simple? Yes. But it’s not easy. By all that exists in this universe, it ain’t easy. If it was, you would have done it long ago. But it can be done. Persist, build, and focus. In that way, you let go of the past, clear out your Present, and make room for your Future.

All or nothing? Why?

Why does it have to be all or nothing with some people? For some people, it’s a way of life. For most, it’s an occasional thing. But, just about everyone, at some point or another, will insist that some event or some characteristic or some something be all or nothing. But it doesn’t have to be.

There are a few situations in which all or nothing makes sense. Drug use, for example, and other addictions where a single slip can start a dangerous cycle. Fidelity in a relationship, if that is something you agree upon (there are some who are in a polygamous relationship). Honesty, for some (though others will allow white lies and times of privacy to intrude on the honesty between two people). Allergies, especially the more lethal ones. But all or nothing doesn’t belong in a lot of areas of life.

Diets, for example. To tell yourself that you are never allowed to have a cookie or an ice cream cone is ridiculous. To tell yourself that because you had one cookie, you may as well have a dozen is also ridiculous. Moderation in your diet will work better both for your metabolism and your will power. If you get a cookie now and again, it won’t hold so much power over you.

Anything that you are trying to control in your life, make it easier on yourself, if you can. Don’t have “just one drink”, especially not with that cute guy from accounting that you “haven’t really” been flirting with. Those are a couple of areas that you should keep as all or nothing. But there are plenty of other areas where you can lose the “all or nothing” mentality.

One big area that this affects is changes that you’d like to make in your life. A lot of people crash and burn because they try to make too many changes at once, or they make one change, but it’s radically different from their life as it was. Need to change your social life? Make one change until it sticks. Join one group? Go to one night out? Try one different place to go? Pick one thing and try it. If it’s good, keep it. If it’s not, get rid of it. It’s easier to figure out what isn’t working and what is when there’s only one difference you need to keep track of.

Need to change your diet? Go one dish at a time, one snack at a time, one food at a time. Need to change your job? Go in small changes – scout out the jab market and brush up on your resume. Increase your contacts within the field you choose. Do you want to change fields? Take one course, start reading one journal, attend one seminar. Make one change and stick with it.

If you feel like your entire life needs an overhaul, you still need to go slow. If you change your diet along with your job and your relationships, and suddenly you have headaches and you feel unsettled and unsure of yourself, how will you know what change is affecting you?

Very few people have a perfect life. Most people need or at least want some change. But you don’t have to make all of the changes at the same time. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You are allowed to change slowly and create the Future you want and need.

Persistence

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more commonplace than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and Determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge

You may have noticed that I do not post on a regular basis. I want to, and I mean to, but I don’t. Why? Because I do not persist in my posting. I allow things to distract me. I let myself use the excuse “I’m too tired” or “I don’t want to” or a variety of other things. But, like with all other worthy goals, regularly posting to my blog takes persistence. And sometimes, persistence lags.

Nothing gets accomplished if you don’t persist. The Future you want does not get created if you do not continue to do what needs to be done. If you quit part way through the process, it doesn’t get done. The Future you envisioned doesn’t come to pass. You must persist in what you want.

Sometimes, this may take years. There are times when the next step has to take a back seat to more pressing concerns. Sometimes, you can do only bits and pieces for a long period of time. For example, if you are caring for children or parents, their needs cannot be put on hold – but neither can yours! Remember that – take care of yourself so you do not become bitter towards their needs. You may have only a few minutes here and there each day (if that!) to work on your Future, to persist towards your goal. But if you don’t persist, if you allow those minutes to waste away, then your Future not only will be a long time coming – it’ll never arrive. This is not to say that you must spend all of your time working – first for those dependent on you and then on your Future. Part of your Future should be (in my opinion – you’re entitled to disagree – it’s YOUR Future) you, healthy and relaxed as often as possible. Which means that you should take time to relax, recharge your batteries, catch a breath. Just remember what I said earlier about junk food for the soul. When you relax, actually relax. If you’re going to fill your soul with some kind of activity, make it about relaxing rather than your Future. Make it about your Future rather than about junk food. If you’re already relaxed and have taken care of yourself, work on your Future. Persist in it. Give it a couple of minutes each day, or at least a thought if you don’t have a couple of minutes. Not a guilt-ridden thought about how you “should” or “ought to”, but a reminder, both to yourself and to your Future. “I haven’t forgotten. I just don’t have time right now.”

The only way to write a book is to persist in putting words on paper (or at least virtual paper on word processing software). The only way to build muscles is to exercise them a little or a lot over a period of time, consistently. The only way to lose weight is to not eat the extra calories every day, or at least more often than you used to (you are wonderful, and you do deserve cake and/or ice cream every once in a while!). You have to persist in what you want. Or you will get what you persist in.

Your Future can be created. You can give birth to a wondrous Future. Don’t lose hope. Persist.

Routines

Routines mask disaster. You think if you’re getting up in the morning, putting on clean clothes, going to work, eating from time to time, and watching some telly that everything’s under control. – Marian Keyes

Routines are a good way to mask reality. When you are busy with the minutia of life, it’s easy to miss the big stuff. If time slips by you, and just about every night you think to yourself, “It’s that time already?”, then perhaps you are a victim of routines. There are two ways to get yourself out of control of routines in order to help you see reality and base your Future upon it. First, you stop all routines. Second, you make new routines.

You may not think that you have a routine, but you probably do. Do you go to bed the same time every night? Or every work night? You know what a work night is. It’s like a school night, only instead you have work in the morning. You may be thinking, “I try to go to bed by 9 every night, but I never do. Of course I don’t have a routine.” Nope, sorry, but that excuse just isn’t going to cut it this time. You don’t think you have a routine because you aren’t following the routine that you have planned, but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t doing things the same way over and over again. How often do you get take out or delivery because you come home exhausted after work, or you just forgot to defrost something? Not making dinner could be a routine for you. Yes, not doing something can be a routine. Not making that phone call, not getting to bed “on time” (who’s time? What time is it that you’re not getting to bed on?), not eating breakfast because you overslept your alarm. Oversleeping your alarm can be a routine as well.

What do you do about it? First, you can shake up your routines by abandoning them. This does not mean go out and do whatever you like. The dog still needs to be fed, someone has to watch the kids, and you do need to go to work in the morning, so you really ought to get some sleep. But if you always watch TV on Wednesday nights, this Wednesday, don’t. If you usually miss your bus on the way home because you were doing one more thing at work, have it wait until the morning. If you buy canned peas because you believe they’re good for your family, but they say they’ll mutiny if they have canned peas one more time, make something else. Buy something else. There are other things that have nutrition, too. Play a board game in the middle of the week. Go out for a walk before bed time. Do your grocery shopping late at night. Get to work early. Move your alarm clock so that you can’t hit the snooze button any more. Change things up a bit and see what happens.

If your family worries for your mental health, tell them you’re trying a two week (or however long) experiment, and that they can just bear with you for a little while. The laundry will still get done, people will still get to soccer practice, and the groceries will still be bought. Things are just going to happen a little differently for a while.

You may find that you notice different things. Because you aren’t busy with whatever at the usual time, you may see things with new eyes.

The second way to get out from under your routines is to make new ones. Sounds silly, I know, but some of us don’t work so well without routines. Things keep getting done “tomorrow”, but tomorrow never comes. With routines, you choose when those things get done. The trick is to choose your routines, not just let them happen to you. Not making dinner is a routine that a good number of people have. Most of them don’t choose, though. They think it just happens. No, it doesn’t just happen. It’s their routine, even if they didn’t choose it. Choose your routines, the ways that get things done in your time. By choosing your routines, you not only choose the timing of the things you do, but the things you do. Being late is something that you do, not something that happens to you (most of the time). Morning commuting traffic is the same most every morning, so if you’re late every morning “because of traffic”, the truth is that you’re late because you refuse to face the fact that traffic is that bad in the morning and you’re just going to have to leave a little earlier. If you choose to face this fact and choose to leave a little earlier, being late is a routine that you destroy.

Go easy, and add a little bit to your routine at a time. Getting a good night’s sleep is a good place to start. If you hit the snooze button all the time, change your alarm to the later time you really get up. That way you won’t be woken up every ten minutes during the last bit of sleep and can get more rest. If there is something that you always forget in the mornings, take care of it in the evenings, so you don’t have to worry about it as you go to sleep. If there’s a chore or a task that you typically do just before going to bed and it always delays you, do it earlier. If you can’t do it earlier, do the rest of the evening earlier and move up your “just before going to bed” time. There are many things you can do to change how well you sleep, when you go to bed, and when you get up. But do it slowly, and don’t worry if you backslide now and again. It happens. Just pick yourself up and do it again. Fail better, as a previous post said.

If your new routines don’t work out for you or if your life changes in such a way that they become strangling rather than freeing, change them. You are entitled to change your life in the way that makes it easier for you to live, provided you hurt no one else.

Don’t let your life become routine. People controlled by routines, especially ones they don’t even know they have, do not Create the Future. They let it happen to them. Be a Creator.

Listen to your body, see reality

When you were a kid, you had to learn how to walk. You had to learn how it felt to balance your weight on two feet in order to stand and then how to balance your weight on just one foot as you took a step. You had to be very aware of your body and what you were doing in order to learn this. Similarly, you had to learn how to use the toilet rather than a diaper, which involved listening to your body in a whole different way. When I had surgery this past January, my abdominal muscles were cut, which altered the way my abdomen felt, including my bladder. I had to relearn what it felt like to have a full bladder so I knew when to use the rest room. I had to relearn what it felt like to have an empty bladder so I knew when I was done. I had to listen to my body and become aware of it in a way I wasn’t used to before. This wasn’t the first time in my adult life that I had to learn something new about my body.

I had to learn what it felt like to be hungry.

My family rarely wanted for food. There was usually enough, more than enough, really, for had we eaten only when we were hungry, our refrigerator and pantry would have been more full than they were. We ate, often. We all repressed our emotions and ate in order to keep them down. We ate snacks between meals and after meals. We ate plenty at the meals, too. As soon as I was uncomfortable, I ate, whether that uncomfortable feeling was due to the emotional turmoil, actual hunger, or whatever else was going on in my life. When I was 6, I weighed 60 pounds, and I gained 10 pounds a year after that, until I was 16. I weighed 160 pounds, and I didn’t want to keep gaining weight like that. I would have weighed 200 when I was 20, 220 when I was 22, and I didn’t want my life to be like that. So, I had to eat less and increase my activity. I still gained weight, because I was still eating more than I needed. I was still eating even when I wasn’t hungry.

It wasn’t until I started to learn what it felt like to be hungry that I was able to take real control of my weight, though I admit that I am still learning. I still eat more than my hunger needs, though I am working on eating only when I am hungry.

What does your body tell you? Do you listen to it? Do you rest when you need to rest? Do you drink when you are thirsty? Do you eat what your body craves? Some (and I have been guilty of this often) will eat something sweet when they are craving salty, and keep eating, wondering why their craving won’t subside. Do you stretch and move your body to keep out the kinks and the stiffened joints? Listen to your body.

Is this another one of those “be the change you want to see in the world” things? Is this just another one of the “improve yourself first” things? No! This is vital. For you to create the Future, you must build upon the present. You cannot make changes in the future. It hasn’t happened yet. Everything you do must be done in the present. In order for it to be effective, in order for it to truly create the Future, it must be built upon reality. And to build upon reality, you must see reality.

Reality can be tough to see. You don’t want to see the cheating spouse, the extra thirty pounds, the abusive sibling, the dead end job. It’s so much nicer to make believe that these things are better than they are, or worse than they are so that you get sympathy and can concentrate on them instead of the rest of your life. But, to change the way things are into the way things can be, you must first see things the way they are. Your body is a good place to start.

Don’t believe me? Let’s say you have a friend who wants to lose 20 pounds. Just about every American has at least one friend who wants to lose 20 pounds. What does your friend do first? She weighs herself. Why? So she knows where she starts. It wouldn’t make sense to try to lose 20 pounds without knowing when “20 pounds less” is. In order to find out where your target, your goal, your Future is, you need to know where you are starting.

Do you want there to be less racism in the world? How will you accomplish that? How will you know what methods are effective? If you don’t know how much racism there is in the world currently, how will you know when you have less?

Do you want there to be more peace? Same questions. Do you want there to be more or less of anything? You need to know when you have accomplished your goal, and for that, you need a starting point. You need to know the present, the reality in your life, in order for you to make effective changes.

You can make changes without seeing reality. We’ve all had friends who have made the same mistakes over and over, thinking that they were doing something different. They date what is in truth the same person over and over, because the outer trappings are different. They go from one dead end job to another, thinking that because the situation is different that there is a real difference between this job and the previous one. They aren’t seeing reality. They’re seeing what they want to see. And they make changes to change what they see, but it doesn’t change reality.

See reality to create the Future. Listen to your body to see reality.

Faith and your comfort zone

When you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe one of two things: There will be earth to stand on, or you will be given wings to fly. – Unknown

Eventually, you will reach the end of your comfort zone. You will try something new or be about to try something new, and perhaps you’ll want to draw back, to retreat back into the known. But if you want the Future to be different from the present, you can’t do that. Mother Theresa is the only person I know who managed to do a whole lot of good by doing the same thing over and over again. Ghandi had to change what he did and even what country he worked in. Martin Luther King, Jr., had speeches and marches and television appearances and many other things that he did. And for both of these men, there was a first time for these things. Even for Mother Theresa, there was a first beggar, a first clinic, a first leper. If these people had not done these first-time things, the world would be a worse place.

You may be afraid that you won’t be successful in what you want to do. That thought has kept me from so many different experiences and possibilities that it makes me very sad if I think about it too long. Instead, I use those thoughts and memories to inspire me to try new things now. I don’t bother with “if only”, but I do my best not to add any more to my life. You may be afraid that you will be successful, and then people will expect more and more from you, and you’re not sure you can handle that. I’ve had that thought, too, and that still scares me, but I refuse to let it rule me any longer.

Your comfort zone is a nice place. It’s comfortable, hence the name. It’s predictable. You know how to react to whatever happens. You know how others will react to what you do. But your comfort zone is not always a safe place, nor is it always where you want to be. But getting beyond your comfort zone is not always easy.

When an alcoholic decides to stop drinking, the family reacts, whether they realize it or not. Living with a drinking alcoholic was what they knew. They knew that when the alcoholic looked like this or said that, that they should respond in this particular way to manipulate the drunk or to avoid getting hit or to spark or avoid an argument. But, when the drinking alcoholic becomes a recovering alcoholic, that person’s reactions change. People don’t know what to do any more. Plus, now that the drinking is no longer the big problem in the house, other problems start jostling for the spot light, problems that were easily ignored before now. Living with a drinking alcoholic was not safe, was not healthy, was not pleasant, but it was what the family knew. It was their comfort zone, whether they knew it or not.

You may also have an unsafe or unhealthy or unpleasant comfort zone, or a portion of one. That one friend who always starts a fight when you go out to drink. The boss who always yells at you for any reason she can think of. The cheating spouse. The home town that has gotten too small for your dreams. You may have a pretty good life – except for that. But to change that would be to leave your comfort zone, and like with the alcoholic’s family, it may bring about unexpected results. The family all wanted the alcoholic to stop drinking, thinking that it would make everything better, but “everything better” required more work than they expected.

There is only one reason why you wouldn’t need to leave your comfort zone – you are already living your ideal life. You are already creating the Future you want by your current actions. There is no more for you to do other than continue on the paths you have already begun. Are you there? I’m not. I don’t know anyone who is. So what do you do?

You do the thing that scares you. You make the phone call, you leave the abuser, you quit the job, you take the class, you take the job in the other town. You do what you need to do to create the life you want, even though it isn’t something you’re afraid to do. You take the chance, you make the decision. You don’t put it off! As the band Rush says, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” If you delay your decision, you are making the choice to stick with your comfort zone for now. That isn’t always a bad thing, but always doing it is a bad thing. Soar, create, be do. Live.

I can hear some of you saying, “But I wasn’t meant for that big a life?” Says who? And if you’re truly terrified by that big of a life, of being that great, then make yourself only a little greater. Change something small. Cultivate one new friend who supports you. Look into new jobs, even if you aren’t going to go on interviews yet. Brush up your resume. Dust off that old novel. Go to the museum once. Plan a trip to the Bahamas, even if you don’t go yet. Take a little sip from the ocean of Possibilities. It takes a lot of sips to make a full gallon, but if you keep taking those sips, you will get where you want to go. Expand and stretch your comfort zone, and then breathe. Like your new comfort zone and refuse to allow it to retract and confine you again. Then expand it again. Do it slowly so you don’t frighten yourself or others who may wonder who you are and what you’ve done with who you were.

Or, perhaps you’re so confined and restricted that it’ll take a major effort to get you out of your comfort zone. Then you prepare the best you can and do it. Blow a hole in the wall that’s encircling you and step out into the Future. Breathe deep and watch the walls of your old prison crumble beneath your gaze. You are powerful and mighty. You can do it.

Comfort zones are good starting places, but don’t let it be your final resting place. Be.