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.