Search

Open Search
Tag

change

Consistent Actions

A lot of times we don’t achieve the results we desire because we behave in opposition to the results we want to manifest. We say things like “I want a new job,” but don’t fix up our resume and actually apply to new jobs. We say, “I want to lose weight,” then continue to eat unhealthy meals and do little to no exercise. It is no surprise that we keep hitting the same brick wall and remain stuck in the same old story. It is so much easier to just keep doing what we have always been doing because our brains have developed strong neural connections for our current behaviors. Therefore, change, at first, won’t come easy. The moment we start creating new habits, our bodies will naturally want to gravitate back into the old, familiar behaviors. So it is crucial that we be consistent.

Suppose you want to start eating vegetables every day but your body is used to eating bread every day, your bread cravings will naturally surface. Your body will say to you, “OoOh, look at that yummy piece of bread. Wouldn’t it just be amazing to have it with some delicious butter?” Your body will remind you of the salty-sweet, rich smell of bread. It will recall to you how comforting it feels to just bite into that soft piece of deliciousness and how satisfying it makes your belly feel.  If at that moment, right when your old patterns start to creep in, you do not make the conscious decision to say, “BREAD – ALTHOUGH YOU ARE DELICIOUS,  I AM GOING TO EAT SOME BROCCOLI AND CARROTS INSTEAD,” then you will fall back into your old pattern. You have to say “NO” to whatever is against the result you want to achieve. I’ve used bread as an example, (I love me some bread, mmmm) but it’s the same equation with anything else you want to change in your life. The old pattern will creep in and you must interrupt it with the new pattern you want to make habit of.

Real change will happen once you start to take consistent action towards your desired goal. Caveat – you may not always want to take the necessary action to get what you want. You may not always want to get up early before work to go exercise. You may not always want to spend hours in front of your computer to search for new jobs. You may not always want to eat broccoli instead of a Wendy’s burger (mmmmm). It’s not about wanting to. You have to listen to the inner sergeant within you that fiercely commands you, “GET THE HECK UP AND JUST FREAKING DO IT ANYWAY!” Great results require your committed effort on days that you feel like it and on days that you don’t. Even when you don’t really feel like taking action, push yourself. You have to be consistent if you want to see real results. You will be so glad you did!

(Picture credit to Google images)

0

Storms

Processed with Rookie Cam
You just have to wait for the storms to pass. Look — look yonder – the light still shines behind those blackened skies.
0

Go For It!

Without action all we really have is potential.
It’s great to imagine and plan things in life, but it’s even better when you actually put your thoughts and goals into action. Without actions your dreams will remain dreams. It’s so much easier to imagine the ideal job, make wishes upon stars, day dream, fantasize, and wonder how things could be. It’s much harder to actually DO something about it. So we remain stuck in limbo. Boo! That’s no fun place to be.

It is only when we actually start taking steps towards our goals that we begin to see our dreams materialize.  Everything starts with an idea, but it will end with an idea if we don’t do anything about it because ideas without actions are powerless. We have to actually GO FOR IT! LITERALLY, start doing what you want to see change in your life.

You want to lose weight? Stop wishing it, and start to work out. Start small, grow as you go.
You want to change jobs? Work on your resume and send it out to new employers.
Want to create your own business? Research online resources on how to make that happen and get in touch with people who have successfully done so already and who can help you along your journey.
Want to learn a new language? Sign up for a class whether online or at a school.
Whatever it is – DO IT. NO EXCUSES!
Whatever excuse you come up with for not following your dreams, come up with a solution to replace it and GO FOR WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFE. Put your noggin to good use and find solutions for your excuses and TAKE ACTION TODAY!

It is only through action that you are going to actually get anything done for yourself. No one else is going to come take over your body and do things for you – YOU GOTTA DO IT YOURSELF.

There is no point in sitting there wallowing in self-pity, feeling bad because things aren’t happening for you. Newsflash – things aren’t going to really happen for you if you’re just sitting there doing nothing about it. It’s great to dream, but dreams don’t just pop into reality outta nowhere – you actually have to DO something about it.

Today I purchased a planner and have decided to become a more powerful me. A me that is going to take action in life in order to see my goals manifest into reality. I am going to save myself through my actions!

Save yourself. GO FOR IT!

0

Now What? Just Flow With It

You never really know when life is going to rattle you and send you waltzing towards a new direction you weren’t at all expecting. Nothing is written in stone, but even if it were – not even that is permanent. We make plans and set goals for ourselves, then life comes along bringing new factors into the equation.
“I wasn’t planning for this. Now what, life? Everything was so clear! Now I am foggy again.”
Sometimes the curve balls that are thrown at you help you see more clearly what it is that you TRULY want. If your original plan is your true intention, then a curve ball will only serve for the increase of that path. Curve balls that cloud your path and beckon you to question your intentions, show you that perhaps what you really want isn’t what you thought you wanted in the first place.
You are constantly changing, evolving, learning, growing, expanding — so it’s only natural to re-evaluate your goals and life situation as you unravel.
Remember! It’s always important to look within yourself for the answers you seek. You are the ultimate creator of your life and no one else can walk in your shoes. Trust your intuition! Avoid making hasty, rash decisions and allowing the motivation of others to cloud your own heart and guiding system. Consider putting aside all or nothing, extreme forms of thinking and find a balanced way to make the necessary adjustments. This way, we realign ourselves to the path we truly wish to experience at a pace that feels natural and free flowing.
There is no ONE STRICT path — you can color in a new road any time you feel it necessary. This is your life! Draw the picture you wish to see. Take baby steps. Re-arrange when needed. Make changes in the moment you feel ready without putting added pressure on yourself. Don’t rush yourself. Don’t worry yourself. Breathe. Trust your intuition as you go. Let your heart guide you and trust your choices. Don’t be afraid when life brings you new challenges – it’s a sign that you are ready to expand into new territories!
Have fun as you explore. Be kind to your self. Don’t cling too hard to the past – let it pass like clouds in the sky. Embrace each moment and dwell in the present – because NOW is the eternal hour, and now is all that will ever matter.
0

Whether Here or There, I Am Still Me

“Wherever you go, there you are”  – Jon Kabat-Zinn

I realize more clearly that no matter where I go, I will follow. And what I mean by this is that I can’t run away from myself. I can change my environment, move away, change jobs, change friends, change partners – but I will still be the same consciousness dealing with the same issues no matter what new circumstance I am in. I can’t run away from myself simply by changing the external world. I must change my internal world first; I must face myself, not run away. If I change myself from the inside, then it will not matter where I am because I will be just fine.

For instance, sometimes I am shy to express myself and I think that if I move where no one knows me, then maybe I can feel less shy to express myself. But then I find myself visiting new places only to find the shyness still present.

Or sometimes I feel awkward about how I look in a bathing suit so I think that maybe if there were less people at the beach I will feel more comfortable. Yet even with very little people at the beach, I still feel awkward.

See? I am externalizing an internal issue. I keep saying things like “When I move, I will feel better” or “When people grow nicer, I will think the world is a better place.” But the more I meditate and experience life, I see that I need to work on my internal issue, not the external world. Sure, having the external conform to my ideals help, but so long as I still have an internal conflict, no matter how perfect everything in the outside world is, my experience will still be distorted by my warped perspective. But better yet, if I build a strong, loving, and accepting internal world for myself, then no matter what is going on in the outside world I will still be peachy! Change, my friends, happens from the inside out.

I need to look in myself and see what is it in ME that I am projecting out into the world – and start by fixing that. One step at a time.
It’s a journey! And even though it may hurt sometimes, the process is so rewarding.

2

Dance With Your Life

“Everything – the good and bad, pleasure and pain, approval and disapproval, achievements and mistakes, fame and shame – all come and go. Everything has a beginning and an ending and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.” – Richard Carlson

Life can be so unpredictable. One moment you are sitting there smiling, sipping some coffee – the next you’re in tears because of unexpected events beyond your control.

We cannot control what happens outside of us. A plate breaks, someone yells at you in traffic, a woman cuts you in line at the grocery store, your company downsizes and you are cut from the team, the kids are in trouble at school, there is a sickness in the family, the list is endless. Nevertheless, you can control how you react to your external circumstances.

When you live your life from the inside out, you finally come to a place where you always have control. You always have a choice when it comes to your internal feelings about the chaos going on all around you. Life will hand you curve balls. Inevitably, something will eventually go wrong, and it is at this moment where you can breathe and tell yourself “I am in control of how I respond and of how feel about this situation.” You can think to yourself, “Will I react by feeling defeated, angry, and upset? Or will I let go, breathe and invite peace into my heart as I take deliberate, intuitive steps to bring myself out of this situation?” You always have the power to choose the latter. You do not have to choose to feel bad when the car breaks down or when you lose your job or whatever other difficulty. It may not be easy at first to realize that you have the power within you to switch from painful reactions to peaceful ones. But with practice and awareness you will come to see that you do have a choice as to what you harbor in your internal space and how you will react to your external world.

Life will always hand us troubles and because of this it is important to become a peaceful warrior. Challenges are opportunities for our growth. We learn from our mistakes and from our difficult circumstances. We learn to let go and realize that when one door closes it also opens new doors of opportunities. One day, we will all eventually let go of everything – this is called death – the total letting go of all. So why not practice now? Let go of painful reactions and embrace peaceful responses that allow you to dance with the unexpected maneuvers of life rather than battle with them only to bring yourself more pain. Dance with your life!

0

Becoming The Change

Be the change you wish to see in the world” – Gandhi

I sometimes get caught up in trying to change the world and forget that the change needs to happen in me. Sometimes I worry too much thinking I must teach kindness and teach love and teach peace, all the while forgetting that I must first BE kind, BE loving and BE at peace (or whatever else I wish to see) and then the rest will follow.

The Bible has a nice quote that says: “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure.” (Titus 1:15). You can interpret this is many ways. The way I like to interpret it is: If my intentions are pure and if my perceptions and actions stem from a place of innocence, then all that I see/perceive/intake/experience/observe/feel/etc, will consequently be pure because the lens through which I observe and engage with the world is not a lens of malice but a lens of innocence. I must be like a child – despite having developed the physical form of an adult and having undergone numerous life experiences, I must continue carrying an innocent heart, becoming a living testament of purity despite my moments of flaws. As long as I am human I am subject to failure — and that’s ok because infallibility is not a property of humanity. It is not my perfect acts that will make me pure at heart (because I can do everything right in action yet in my heart I may hide my intention of doing right for mere approval or for the desire of praise or for whatever other motive) — a pure heart is pure because in it abides no malicious intentions — but should such intentions creep in (and believe me, they do all the time), our good and faithful friend, the mind, can help the heart be guided back to its pure, innocent state.

It’s only natural for the heart to be presented with what exists – all the possibilities for good and all the possibilities for bad. It is then up to me, a conscious and aware being, to ultimately decide what I will harbor within me.

AS OF THIS MOMENT, I AM NO SO CALLED “SAINT” LIVING IN SO CALLED “HEAVEN.” I AM A SO CALLED “HUMAN” LIVING ON SO CALLED “EARTH.” 

Sometimes I can be judgmental as hell.
I say or think things like:
“People are rude and need to change.”
“Some people are so disrespectful, boy, I tell ya! I just want to smack some sense into them!”
“Look at these freaking hypocrites, man, no morals.”
“Ugh, I can’t stand these damn politicians, so crooked.”

I even judge myself at times.
“I am so irresponsible! I am constantly late to work.”
“I can never do anything right.”
“I am so out of shape. I have to be more disciplined.”
“I am so dumb. I will never get anywhere in this life.”

All these thoughts, all these mean, condemning words I have allowed to abide in me have become basis for my perception. I have allowed my mind to be receptive to and my heart to feel that these negative words and thoughts I profess are real and true. I have allowed my inner space to be infiltrated by negative conclusions. (I am using the word “negative” here for lack of a better word… I can’t think of a more appropriate word right now to refer to the “yuckiness” I have allowed to abide in the space of my being).

I must be the change. If the change does not happen within me, even if everyone else in the world has already changed, I will not see it or realize it because the filter of my perception is set to the channel of malice and not the channel of innocence. The moment that I change my perception, inevitably my world will change. But it can’t be a half-assed change – it has to be fully real.
I can fool my spectators and become like an actor in the theater who plays the role of a hero, but I cannot deceive myself in thinking I am truly the hero I know I am pretending to be.
I must truly embody that which I wish be.

If I want peace – I must be in tune with peace.
If I want patience – I must be in tune with patience.
If I want kindness – I must be in tune with kindness.
If I want understanding – I must be in tune with understanding.
If I want innocence, I must be in tune with innocence.

How could I experience peace if I am in tune with war?
How could I experience understanding if I am in tune with ignorance?

I must channel my experience.

I must be that which I wish to see.

Once I am that which I wish to see, it will not matter if someone says to me: “Psst. Hey. Look. See that rude, greedy, lustful, prideful, cheating, lying, phony, unworthy person? Look how terrible he or she is!”  Because the moment I am what I wish to see, when I look out at the world I will not see rude, greedy, lustful, prideful, cheating, lying, phony, unworthy, terrible people. Instead, I will see kindness, sharing, sincerity, humility, honesty, truth, reality, worthiness, wonderful, people. Additionally, I will see love. I will see friendship. I will see compassion. I will see forgiveness. I will see understanding. I will see beauty. I will see life. I will see perfection.
I could then respond saying. “Hm. I hear what you are saying. I do not deny the existence of your claims but I do not see it as you see it because in the space of my being I have made the conscious choice to abide in perception of the good, the beautiful, and the blameless, because that is how I wish my world be.”

I am not denying the existence of the bad, the ugly and the guilty.
Let what IS – BE.

I accept all that IS, and as a conscious, aware being, I choose to embrace, be, perceive and act through that which is good.  May in goodness I abide and be.
_____________________________________________________________

BUT TO RAP UP THIS DISCUSSION FOR NOW….

I am not saying “Let’s be passive about everything and ignore and PRETEND there ISN’T any bad out there.” What I am saying is: If you are conscious and aware, choose the good and cast away the bad. If harboring condemning ideas in your mind such as “people are rude” make you see the world as a bad place, consciously make the effort to harbor loving-kind ideas such as “if there is such a thing as rude people, let ME BE KIND, that there be one less rude person in the world.”

I will embrace and cultivate tools such as patience, perseverance, kindness, forgiveness, understanding or any other helpful tool that will enable me to be the change. Will I succeed 100% of the time? Hmm…Given my human circumstances probably not. So if and when I do not succeed, I must be 100% merciful with myself during my moments of shortcomings, acknowledging that I have limitations but not allowing my limitations to stop me from persevering.

There’s a line in the 1997 Disney movie, Flash, where a boy fights to be able to keep and care for a horse he falls in love with and when told “you’ll never make it” the boy responds saying, “Then I won’t make it. But it won’t be because I gave up.”

I may never be perfect, “but it won’t be because I gave up.” I must undoubtedly believe in myself as well as believe in my dreams, utilizing my belief as fuel for transforming my dream into reality by actually living that which I wish would be.

I cannot completely change my world through force or through demand. There’s billions of us out there and it’d be humanly impossible (or perhaps tremendously unlikely and would require an unfathomable amount of effort) for me to externally transform the world to fit the very real and possible utopia that for now exists only as an imagination in me.

I cannot make or demand a person be kind.
I cannot make or demand a person be respectful.
I cannot make or demand a person be loving.
I cannot make or demand a person be in peace.
I cannot make or demand a person be good.

I can only make these things be true for myself and in making it true for myself I can hopefully inspire you to do the same for yourself.

If together, we call forth the good, I promise, our world will be good because all the conscious and aware beings abiding in it have willingly chosen to make it so.

To end this post…

To end this post, I just have to say this about all of the above I just said:

1. All this is just a bunch of words, and words are only symbols. So don’t take everything I said here TOO literal.

2. In the end all that matters is that: YOU ARE THAT WHICH YOU ARE, and not I, not anyone, or anything, could ever define you because only your very essence defines you, and your essence does not depend, and does not require any words.

❤

1

Filing the Void

I lived with a sense that something was missing. Although my basic needs were met (food, shelter, clothes, enough money to survive and sit here to write this blog) there was still something inside me that was crying and saying “it’s not enough. Something is missing.”

In my love life, I often blamed my partner for the void.
“I am sad because you are watching more TV than paying attention to me.”
“If only you would do X, Y, Z, then I will feel loved.”

Then I began to realize something I never realized before.
I realized that I blamed the world for the void.

“I don’t have my dream job. That is why I am sad.”
“My partner isn’t this X, Y, Z, way. That is why I feel unloved.”
“My father abandoned me as a child. That is why I have attachment issues.”

I also realized something else.
I realized that I wanted the world to take responsibility for my happiness.
I wanted everyone to do for me so I wouldn’t have to do for myself.

I wanted my job to make me happy because I didn’t want to be happy myself.
I wanted my partner to love me unconditionally so I didn’t have to love myself unconditionally.
I wanted others to be there so I didn’t have to just be with myself.

Once I realized this, I was able to learn the meaning of “Love yourself.”
I realized that if I wanted to be loved, all I needed was to be love.
If I wanted happiness, all I needed was to be happy.
If I wanted company, all I need was to be with myself.

Embodying this new notion has enabled me to be less afraid.
Now, when my partner is watching TV instead of giving me attention, I don’t interpret his behavior as a statement of non-love.
Now, although I still do not have my dream job, I do not interpret that as a sad thing because I haven chosen to BE happy not because I have something or another, but because happiness lives in me. Happiness has become a living entity in me; its being lives in me. If sadness tries to invade my being, I can more easily channel happiness back to me.
When I think of being abandoned and that makes me afraid, I remember that I can still have me.
I can still talk to myself. I know you might think that the idea of talking to yourself is crazy, but it really isn’t. We talk to ourselves all the time. When you have to make a choice between two things and you sit there analyzing which would be best for yourself – who are you analyzing with? Yourself. So you are constantly in communication with your being. I have learned to be my own friend.
It’s such a cool experience. You literally just communicate with yourself and yourself teaches you so many things! Everything I am writing here, I discovered through talking to myself. I have told myself that I needed to improve and to fill the void inside, and my-self responded with a new way of being.

I told myself: “I am.”
“Hm. I am? I am what.”
“I just am. and whatever else I wanna be, I am that too.”
“Oh, wow. I never thought about it that way.”
“I know!! aren’t I cool?”
“Yes. you are if you say you are.”

So I choose to BE HAPPY.
I choose to BE LOVE.
I choose to be COMPANY.
I choose to be WHOLE.
I choose to be  ALL THAT I AM. AS I AM. IF I AM. WHEN I AM.

When I am sad, I no longer tell myself “don’t be sad.”
If I am sad, then f#ck it – I am sad. That’s what I choose to be. And I will be sad for as long as I feel like being sad.

But since being sad doesn’t feel so “good” for me, but being happy does…I choose to be happy more often than sad.

How are you today?
Remember, however you are, you are because you choose to be whatever you are right now.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑