Free yourself

Stuck in a down time in your life?

 

Normal Vincent Peale has these suggestions to keep yourself positive even when things look down.

 

1.       Believe in your potential

2.      Nothing is impossible

3.      Break the limitation barrier

Become all that you were meant to be.  It is easier to create excuses or play the victim when things are going in the wrong direction.  Instead of having negative thoughts replace them with positive thought.   Think about the best things that have happened in your life, dwell on those things.

Have you created artificial limits for yourself?  Have you ever said, “I can’t do this, I’m not good enough, or fast enough, or smart enough, or good looking enough”, to do this or that?  Who said that?   Was it you?   Was it someone who long, long ago planted a seed in your mind that suggested that you weren’t good enough and you believed it?   Then from there that belief stuck with you and every time something went wrong you replayed the script “I’m not good enough”.   If you could believe that script it is possible to believe in a new script – play this thought in your mind “I am good enough and I will put my mind, body and soul into it”.    Play that script over and over and over again until it is stuck permanently in memory.   We are what we believe we are.

Create higher goals.  It is easy to sit back and watch someone else tackle the hard things.  Exercise for many is one of those “hard” things to do day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year.   It is easy to get out of exercise and difficult to stay in the flow of daily exercise.   Set a higher goal, reach further, and challenge yourself to something bigger.   Add one extra step to each day and that will be one step further than you were a day ago.   Think on bigger thought and write it down – make the dream a bit bigger and then develop a plan to make that goal come true.   It all starts with you.

my inner life is …

“the man who has no inner life is the slave to his surroundings”
Henri Frederic Amiel

What does your inner life look like?

Peace

Joy

Happiness

Contentment

Serenity

Synchronicity

Convergence

Filled

 

What words describe what your deepest feelings are?   Does anything on the list above strike a chord with you?

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” –Charles Kingsley

What are you enthusiastic about?

Your job?

Your daily life?

Your family?

Your health?

Your spirituality?

Your education?

Your view of the future?

Your dreams?

If any of those things are not where you want them to be right now what are you doing about them to get them where you want them to be?

Do you have a plan and a goal?

Do you have the focus and desire to become more than what you are today?

Does pride stop you from …

There are times we don’t contemplate doing the right thing because we would appear to someone else as being incapable.   In other words we might do something that would benefit us in the long run because of pride.  When we want to look like we know it all we wouldn’t admit that we need more education.  When we want to look like a superstar we wouldn’t admit we need more exercise.  When we want to look better than we are we won’t admit it.  Our attitude is corrupted by our own pride.

The poem “Indispensable Man” by Saxon White Kessinger talks about pride,

“Sometime when you’re feeling important;

     Sometime when your ego’s in bloom

Sometime when you take  it for granted

   You’re the best qualified in the room.

 

Sometime when you feel that your going

   Would leave an unfillable hole,

Just follow these simple instructions

  And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,

  Put your hand in it up to your wrist,

Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining

  Is a measure of how you’ll be missed.

 

You can splash all you wish when you enter;

   You may stir up the water galore,

But stop and you’ll find that in no time

  It looks quite the same as before.

 

The moral of this quaint example

   Is do just the best that you can,

Be proud of yourself but remember,

   There’s no indispensable man.

 

There are many things that humility will allow us to become, better is one of them and there are many things that pride will prevent us from becoming.

 

Develop a teachable spirit.  Listen to learn. 

Repeat this …

By Susan Jeffers

“Whatever happens to me,

given any situation, I’ll handle it!”

Repeat this to yourself over and over again until you realize that you truly can handle anything that comes your way.

a paradox of though

Allen writes, “I hated work that has to be done over; washing dishes, sweeping floors, paying bills. As a boy I had to chop weeds between rows of corn; all spring and summer they would grow and I’d chop them, and always they grew back. I never finished. So little time to shape permanence, and this was wasting it; and as I grew older I avoided or minimized everything that gets repeated – writing letters, even eating. It’s quicker to get a hamburger at the joint on the corner, to stand up and wolf it down, than to sit at a table set with linen and silver and crystal. The hunger for immortality makes food plain. I had no flowers; they have to be watered, fertilized, pruned, and put in the sun, and whatever you do to them you have to do again; you’re never through. Houses have to be painted, roofs patched, plumbing fixed, furnaces cleaned; I lived in furnished rooms. Pets have to be fed and walked and taken to the vet. I had none. Friendships too have to be looked after; so mine were few. My wish to live forever was in a fair way of preventing me from living at all. The sacrifice upon which talent was to flourish was starving any talent I may have had.”   Allen Wheelis from the “the illusionless man”

Marianne Williamson writes, “Our greatest weakness is the weakness of an undisciplined mind.  We need not let fear steel the morning; we can consciously choose not to allow our minds to be programmed by the worldly viewpoint that dominates the earth. “

And Marianne continues, “Remember, it’s not just the workers but souls who are gathered in the workplace; we’re not just here to ‘achieve’ in a worldly sense, but to spiritually learn and grow.  That is the purpose of work, because it is the ultimate purpose of everything.  The ego’s work drama is always centered on who does what, who works for whom, and how much money can be made.  But beneath the ego’s drama lies a deeper set of issues.”

Where do you fit?  Where do you want to fit?

It’s about my dreams …

I’ve dreamed many a dream that’s never come true,
I’ve seen them vanish at dawn,
But enough of my dreams have come true
To make me keep dreaming on

I’ve prayed many a prayer that seemed no answer would come,
Though I’d waited so patient and long;
But enough answers have come to my prayers
To make me keep praying on

I’ve sown many a see that’s fallen by the wayside,
For the birds to feed upon
But I’ve held enough golden sheaves in my hands
To make me keep sowing on

I’ve trusted many a friend that’s failed me
And left me to weep alone
But enough of my friends have been true-blue
To make me keep trusting on

I’ve drained a cup of disappointment and pain,
And gone many a day without song
But I’ve sipped enough nectar from the roses of  life
To make me want to live on.

“I don’t Regret a Mile” by Howard Goodman

 

What is your story?   Does it ring true with the poem “I don’t Regret a Mile”?

Our life is not always going to be easy and it’s not always going to be rewarding.  We can however set the stage to bring forth the best possible life.  When we prepare daily for personal growth we enable ourselves to get better.  When we compare ourselves to others we fail to maximize our own potential.  Does it matter what someone else is doing if we aren’t doing our best? 

Build your personal skills and keep developing those skills until your talent is exhausted.  At that point you will be all that you can be with that skill or talent. 

John Maxwell wrote, “To improve my game, I had to change the way I played golf.  I had to relearn the game, and that meant getting help.”   Sometimes, perhaps many times we have to ask for help.   “How can I get better at what I am good at?” 

What is the objective?

1.       To get as good as we can get using our talents and gifts.

2.      To learn as much as we can about our gifts.

3.      Get help we need it and recognize when we do need help.

4.      Never give up until the summit is reached.

Keep dreaming, keep working on those dreams, and have patience and perseverance to go the extra mile.

shift UP!

Life is a ten-speed bike.  Most of us have gears we never use.”  Charles Schultz

Are you just peddling along in one gear afraid to shift to those gears that would allow you to go much faster?

Charles Schwab said, “When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.”    When we keep peddling along in the same gear year after year we have limited ourselves to the familiar.  By shifting to a higher gear we can expect that it will take more work to go faster.   Eventually even this gear will become easy for us to use and that means it is time to shift up.  What gear are you in?

If we move along comfortably we tend to miss out on the best experiences.  Shift up and feel the breeze in your hair.  Shift up and feel the wind in your face.   Shift up and increase the rhythm in your heart.   Shift up and feel the lungs draw the air more deeply.  Shift up and feel the legs start to burn a bit as the increased effort begins stress the muscles.   Shift up to come alive.   Shift up to feel alive.   Shift up to be alive.   That’s all, just shift up.

“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”  

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

And then shift up!

make your talents work for you

Everyone has talents and skills that they can use.  Sometimes those skills have been identified and at other times they have not been identified.   Imagine having a great skill that has never been tapped or understood, wouldn’t that be a waste?

Talent can be our jumping off point to success if we know how to use our talents.  Talent by itself won’t make anyone successful but it can be a catalyst towards success.

“Have success and there will be fools to say that you have talent”, wrote the French Poet Edouard Pailleron.   Some people have success by just working harder than anyone else around them.   There are people who know they don’t have the great skills of a Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong or some other successful athlete, but they have something else, passion, commitment, desire and persistence.   It’s not that great athletes don’t have both skill and passion it is that skill alone won’t necessarily allow one to rise to the top.

John Maxwell illustrated some interesting bits of knowledge about talent:

·         More than 50% of all CEO’s  of Fortune 500 companies had a C or C- in college

·         Sixty-five percent of all US Senators came from the bottom half or their school classes.

Some would say that those statistics are visible with the business failures that we have seen.   And with 65% of all Senators coming from the bottom half of their schools explains a lot as well.

Are you using your talents, or are you wishing you could do something you aren’t good at instead?

It is far better to develop strength than it is to develop something you are not very good at (especially if you’ve been trying for a long period of time and you’re still not good at it).   Identify the strength and make it stronger.   Identify the weakness and manage around it.

Make your talents work for you.  Be passionate, take a stand, use your talent, use your gifts and consistently develop your strengths – practice building your strength.

your stage … your time

“Look.  This is your world!   You can’t not look.
There is no other world.  This is your world; it is
your feast.  You inherited this; you inherited those eyeballs;
you inherited this world of color.
Look at the greatness of the whole thing.  Look!
Don’t hesitate – look!  Open your eyes, don’t
blink, and look, look – look further.”
Chogyam Trungpa  “Shambhala: The sacred path of the warrior”

 

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.”  

From William Shakespeare’s As You Like It

 

An inherited world and a stage on which you are an actor and you have a part to play.  What part are you playing?   Is the dream big enough?  Is the dream worthy?