A year in review

Today is the last day of 2006.

New Year's Eve is a time of reflection as well as forward vision. We take the time to look at what we have accomplished in the past year and begin to plan for what we want to accomplish in the next.

It has been many months since I posted anything. I came upon a spiritual grand canyon and needed to find my way around it. I believe that there are many times in our lives where we find ourselves staring into a cavernous void of uncertainty and it is in these times that we reexamine our system of beliefs.

I once saw these times of questioning as a lack of faith or a flaw in character, but I now have come to the understanding that they are a part of the process. These times give us the opportunity to unpack our baggage and see what we are carrying. We can stop and study those pieces of thought that trouble us and decide to accept them, change them or dump them in the trash and move on.

Sometimes these are momentary pit stops, when a specific belief is challenged and analyzed; other times these questionings become a longer voyage of their own. Either way, when we continue with the next steps in our journey we do so with a renewed sense of purpose and clarity of thought.

This is where I now find myself. Moving forward once again.

Today is a good day.

Everyday we make statements about our lives without even thinking about it.

We talk about how bad our day is going to be based on traffic or the fact that our child didn't want to eat breakfast. We tell ourselves how difficult our work day is going to be because of something that happened yesterday. The best one though is when we are actually having a good day, but want to appear part of the crowd so we tell a co-worker how bad our day is.

Have you ever noticed that almost always these statements come true?

You might be saying, "Well, of course. I was just stating fact." However, what you are really doing is making an affirmation. Every time you make a statement of "fact", what you are really doing is affirming a condition in your life. If you affirm it enough, it is going to come true.

There are a couple of ways to look at this:

1. You actually create your own reality based on affirmations.
2. By making these affirmations your mind becomes predisposed to seeing situations in that manner.

Both are really saying the same thing.

Now, think about what you can accomplish if you change your statements. Instead of looking at slow traffic as a bad omen, tell yourself that the slow traffic means you are going to have a nice, slow day at work while still accomplishing what you need to. After all, even slow traffic gets us where we are going.

Affirmations work affectively in all areas of our lives. We can make positive and negative affirmations. We can make them purposefully and accidentally. We can change your lives with the power of affirmation.

Now, here is the caveat, you still have to do the work. You cannot just affirm that you are going to get a new car and one will appear. Affirmations are not magic. However, you can affirm that you have the means to provide yourself with a new car and continue to work toward that goal. By making the affirmation you will feel positive about the progress you are making and may even recognize opportunities quicker.

Affirmations can be simple too. As simple as the statement, "Today is a good day," or, "I am energetic."

In fact, if you want to try an easy experiment, the next time you are feeling tired and need and extra bit of energy to get through the day, close your eyes and say to yourself, "I am awake and energetic." Repeat the statement several times then open your eyes and continue with your work, repeating the affirmation a few more times. My bet, you'll find that you now have the energy to finish the work at hand.

CH-CH-CH Changes

Thoughts are powerful.

Thoughts begin the creation process. Thoughts can stop us in our tracks. Thoughts can keep us up at night. Thoughts can change our lives.

I grew up hearing the phrase, "change your mind, change your life." Like so many things in life, I don't think I truly understood its meaning until I was an adult.

Looking back over the course of my life (which is still young, thoukyouverymuch), I can see the turning points where my beliefs led me in a certain direction. There were beliefs about what I was supposed to do and about who I was. As time has gone on, I have realized that these thoughts didn't have to be.

Don't get me wrong, I don't regret that I allowed these thoughts to move me. I see that I had to have those experiences in order to be able to become the person I am now. What I have come to understand is that the journey I took was but one of many paths to the same destination. Had I changed my beliefs back then, I would still have become who I am now, it just would have been different landscape along the way and maybe not so much pain.

I wrote earlier about consciously changing your emotional reaction to situations. Oddly, I find the process of changing my thoughts easier than changing my emotions. I guess, because emotions are such an immediate response they can be hard to catch, where as thoughts are slower and easier to trap and remove.

The first step in this process is to evaluate your beliefs. Are these beliefs yours or someone else's that you have adopted? Do they serve a positive purpose in your life or are the limiting you? If you were to find out that what you believe isn't true how would it change your life? Would that change be for the better?

As with anything, don't try to change everything at once; take small steps. Make the easiest change first, whatever that is for you, and see what happens. Embrace the change and allow yourself to discover all that it holds. Then decide on your next move.

One small change in thought can send a ripple throughout your life.

Two Cents

Giving someone the benefit of the doubt can save you from unnecessary stress.

I was at the grocery store the other day and the woman that was at the front of the line was paying for her items. She handed the clerk her dollars and said that she thought she had the two pennies that would allow the clerk to give to give her whole dollars back. She proceeded to rummage through her wallet and then got distracted by the child anxiously pulling on her shirt. The clerk handed her the change and she started to turn to go. At this point the clerk said, in a rather offended tone, "you still owe me two cents." The woman shook away the child and placed the two pennies on the counter, apologizing for forgetting and telling the clerk it was because she was in a rush. He took the pennies and she left.

If that had been the end of it then the story wouldn't be remarkable in any way; a simple transaction completed.

However, the clerk immediately began to grouse about the woman forgetting to give him the two cents saying things like, "Sure you were in a hurry. She thought she would get away without having to pay. I can't believe some people," and on and on through the next two customers. When I had finished my transaction the clerk was still complaining to the bagboy about the woman and her two cents.

Because, for whatever reason, this clerk could not bring himself to give the woman the benefit of the doubt, he spent at least 15 minutes creating more stress for himself. If he had simply believed her and said something like, "it happens," once she had left he would have had more pleasant interactions with the customers that followed.

All that stress over two cents.

How many times in our lives do we deny someone the benefit of the doubt for no good reason or over something that is as inconsequential as two cents? The next time you catch yourself making a judgment about someone's behavior stop and think about if you can just let it go and assume they had good intentions.

If you can truly let it go then you may find that you have a more pleasant day.

Be Selfish

Being selfish is sometimes necessary in order to be able to provide others with what they need.

We lead busy lives. We all have obligations (work, school, kids, family, activities, the gym, etc.) that all place demands on our time. Amidst all these commitments it can become very difficult to see where we can even take time to breathe. It may feel like taking time for anything solitary is selfish and will just have to wait until later in life. The thing is, later in life never really comes; all we have is today.

Planning time by yourself to recharge your emotional battery requires a little bit of planning. First, you need to get time off from work, school, friends or whatever else needs tending. Pick a day and put it on your calendar. Treat that day as you would any other obligation. Don't let yourself give up that time simply because you don't have to be anywhere.

Second, make sure that before that day gets here you have completed all necessary errands and chores. The last thing you want to do on your day is feel guilty because you should be doing something more productive. Regaining a sense of calm in your life is productive, or at least you will be more productive after you have recharged.

Finally, when the day arrives, do whatever you want. This may mean sitting around all day in your pajamas watching movies, or taking out the art supplies from the back of the closet and finishing that long forgotten painting, or sitting in front of the TV playing video games.

For me it meant spending the better part of a day sprawled on the bed in front of the air conditioner reading all the magazines that I hadn't had a chance to read for the past two months. It was the first time in nearly a year that I had taken the time for myself.

What I realized afterward is I was a happier person that was able to give more to my family and work and all it took was one, single, solitary day. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't seem like a selfish act at all, but before I took that day I viewed it that way.

So if you feel that taking that time away from your other obligations is selfish, then give yourself permission to be selfish.

Celebrate yourself

For many of us one of the most difficult things in life is celebrating ourselves. However, celebrating yourself is one of the best ways to improve your self esteem.

The celebration doesn't have to involve anyone else, though sometimes it may, and it doesn't have to be anything more than an internal grin. What matters is that we take the time, even if it is only a moment, to acknowledge and celebrate something specific about ourselves everyday.

Each day pick one thing, anything, to honor about yourself. I like my eyes. Today I walked around the block at lunch. I landed a big account today. I smile at everyone I pass on the street. I got up and went to work. Any of these things, and many more, are worth celebrating. In fact, anything you can think of about yourself is worth celebrating.

We all need to remember that we are unique beings with something remarkable to contribute to the world and that no one outside of ourselves has to tell us so. We are capable of recognizing our own exceptional qualities on our own.

The more you celebrate yourself the more confident you will feel in all areas of your life.

Filters

We see life through filters.

When a photographer wants to change the look of a picture, be it film or digital, one of the things he can do is apply a filter. This filter adjusts certain elements of the real image until it matches the presentation that the photographer want to achieve. The color and be changed as well as the way that light appears, making it difficult sometimes to see what the original image was like.

Our view of the world is very similar, although, unlike the photographer, we don't always realize that these filers are present. From the moment we are born we start to acquire filters in the form of our experiences. Experiences are what train us about life; they color our reality.

It has been said that intuition is nothing more than our brain looking at what is ahead of us and comparing it to our past experiences to give us a feeling about what to do. We react based on what we think is going to or could happen. In some cases this can actually save our lives, but in other cases it can close us off from new experiences and make us judgmental.

When someone is said to be pushing our buttons, what is really going on is they are triggering one of our filters. Our reaction has little to do with the current situation and usually more to do with how we are perceiving the situation based on our filters. First impressions are also generally based on past experiences with similar people. We compare their actions, dress, mannerisms, etc. to people we have met before to come up with an idea of who this new person is, and often we can be wrong.

Stop and take a moment the next time you find yourself having an intense reaction to something or when meeting a new person. Consider your reaction, and then search your past for similar situations and see what might be triggering your current reaction. Once you can recognize what filter you are looking through you then have the power to change it or completely disregard it.

Filters are not good or bad, they are what we make of them, which means we have the power to change them at any time.

Today I choose

Today I choose _____________.

Those can be some of the most powerful words to say. They invoke an authority over our lives, an authority that we often forget that we have.

Every day, actually every moment, of our lives is a choice. What we do and what we don't do, what we say and what we don't say, every reaction we have is a choice. To believe otherwise is to stay in a victim mentality where we have no control over what is happening to us.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

It can be a hard reality to face that we ourselves make the choice to feel bad, miserable, unfit, flawed, pathetic, stressed, unwelcome or any other negative feeling found in your average thesaurus. It can be even harder to make the change in ourselves to be able to choose happiness.

You see, we are seldom rewarded for being happy. As a child we learn that if we are upset our mother will comfort us, our teacher will help us, our friends will sympathize with us. When we are happy we are frequently asked, "what are you so happy about?" Many times the question is spoken with deep sarcasm. We learn that others don't celebrate in our happiness, only in our misery.

We have the power to change that.

You may say that with the state of (the world, my job, my finances, my life) how can I possibly be happy. Simple, just make the choice to be happy. Eventually, you will get better at choosing happiness. It does take practice. It isn't something that will come to you overnight. Just as with any skill the more you use it the better you get at it.

Don't allow yourself to get discouraged and stop practicing if the untroubled feeling doesn't last long. At first it may be a fleeting state, but you will learn to sustain it longer. You just need to state to yourself, "I have the power to change my emotions. Right now I choose to be ___________."

Try it. I think you'll like the outcome.

Small Things

How often do you take the time to stop and consider the smaller things in life?

A smile from a stranger as you pass on the street. A ladybug making its way across the hood of your car. The laugh of an unseen child heard across the backyard fence.

It's amazing what we can observe when we can take time out of our busy lives to stop, look, and listen. In that moment of observation, if we take the time to let everything else in our lives slide out of consciousness and just focus on these things, even for a split second, we can relax.

In that moment in time there are no bills to pay, no bosses demanding more of us, no deadlines to meet. There is only the small joys of the world.

Sometimes its the smallest of things that allow us to feel peaceful.

I can do that!

Expectations can change everything.

When we place expectations on ourselves we limit what we are capable of achieving. We do the same when we allow ourselves to give weight to the real or perceived expectations of others.

Now, to clarify, this type of expectation is not the same as your boss giving you a deadline that he expects you to meet. There are times in our life when expectations are necessary. There has to be a set standard we are expected to complete if we want to earn an advanced degree. There are qualifications we must meet in order to finance a new house.

What I'm talking about is the expectation that you have to be perfect in order to do a specific activity or the expectations that society places on us for relationships. Expectations that have no real basis for existing. Sometimes we don't even realize that we have these expectations until we take the time to turn inside and really listen to the chatter in our brain.

Giving up expectations is difficult, or at least it is for me. I grew up expecting a lot of myself and I rarely had to be punished for any misstep, because I mentally beat myself up enough as it was. As an adult I have spent a great deal of time working on letting go of these perceived expectations. I'm not entirely there yet, but writing this daily blog is a giant step in that direction.

Take a look at your own life. What activities have you held yourself back from doing because you thought you would fall short of other's (or your own) expectations? It can be very liberating to step outside your expectations. Why not try it and see what else you can achieve in this life.

Say what?

Integrity seems to be in very short demand these days.

Granted, it is not in human nature to be completely honest all of the time. There are occasions where we bend the truth or edit our internal dialogue to spare feelings. It just seems that lately people use sparing someone's feelings as a convenient excuse for being dishonest.

It's important to be careful how we present ourselves to the world. If we claim that, "I would never _______, because it's been done to me and I don't want anyone else to feel that way," then when push comes to shove we better be prepared to stick with that commitment. When we speak without thinking things through we may unintentionally call into question our integrity with our future actions. However unintentional it may be, the damage once done is hard, if not impossible, to repair.

I make no claims to be any better at this than the next person, but only by pointing these things out do I set myself on a course to correct the areas of my life that I do not like.

Take a moment to call your own thoughts and actions into consciousness and ask yourself, "do the words I speak match my actions? "

Stop and Think

Stop and think about how what you say and do affects the people around you.

Now realize that no matter how long you think about it you will never know what lasting effect you had on someone. You might not even realize that person heard/saw you. Then again, it might be the person that you were speaking directly to.

There are a great number of people in this world that expend a great amount of energy being upset about what amounts to trivial items (i.e. not getting the right color shirt, not getting tickets to the hot show/band, someone else getting a better parking spot, etc.), and then spend even more energy telling everyone around them about it. The unfortunate thing is about this is that society deems it ok to grouse about these things, but when it come to the good things that happen in our life we are told not to brag.

Why is it that we are allowed, dare I say encouraged, to vent our negative feelings, but are told to suppress our positive emotions?

Could the state of the world today be a result of all those negative emotions venting out into our atmosphere?

If it is, imagine what would happen if we all began venting our positive emotions. Could that simple change in our behavior make a drastic change in the world.

A first step

This morning is like every other.

I awake from my slumber to the discordant sound of my alarm clock, I stumble into the shower in an attempt to regain actual consciousness, I sit at my computer and stare at a blank screen.

Ah, today is different. Today I actually force myself to sit and write. I write about nothing of consequence, but at least I write. It is a first step.

First steps are difficult and often they lead immediately to falls. The important part is to get up and keep taking small steps. Eventually, all those small steps turn into the fluid motion of walking.

I hope eventually this becomes as second nature as walking.

I figured it out

I've been desperately trying to figure out how to get past the writers block that I have been suffering from.

I think I've finally figured out that it isn't truly writers block that has got me stumped. It's that internal editor/critic that is actually keeping me from completing my writing projects.

I start to write something and my internal critic, let's call him Fred, chimes in with a nice round of "this is going to go nowhere," followed by, "you don't even know how it is going to end so how can you write the middle."

I'm here to tell Fred that I don't have to know the end of the story or even what happens in the middle. I'm not writing these pieces for him, I'm writing them for me. Most importantly, Fred, these pieces do not have to be perfect in your eyes (or in mine), they just need to be written.

So here it is. This is what this Blog is about. Clearing my mind of Fred (or at least getting him to back off quicker). My commitment is to write something everyday, even if it is only a couple of sentences.

This is for me and no one else, but everyone else is welcome to read as I go through my process.

In the beginning

In the beginning there was a blank page.

The blank page was full of possibilities.

One day at least one of those possibilities will manifest itself.

For now, I am content to publish whatever comes to mind, however incomplete it might be.