Ever drive a car whose front wheels aren't properly aligned? Then to feel the excitement of being a playful little kid again, you let go of the steering wheel until you were just about to become one with the guard rail?
I hope you have because I have, and I'd hate to have been the only one!
With improper alignment, if you let go of the steering wheel, you go -- wherever. With proper alignment, if you let go of the steering wheel, you go where you're pointed.
The same is true with your internal alignment. How aligned is what you do with what you believe? If you are properly "aligned," your internal beliefs and external behaviors are in sync. You can "let go" and be assured you will travel in the direction you intended.
"I should be doing it."
"But I don't want to do it."
"They are making me do it."
"If I don't do it, somebody will get me."
"So I'll do it."
"But I don't want to do it."
'Fess up, have you ever had that conversation with the person in the mirror?
I hope you have because I have, and I'd hate to have been the only one again!
If you have it's a sure bet you've experienced stress. Behaving in opposition to the way one believes (being out of alignment) is a major cause of negative stress today.
On the other had, when what you think and what you do is in alignment; that harmony, that's integrity, that's peace.
If your behaviors and beliefs are not aligned, and you "let go," you'll be bouncing off the metaphorical guard rail in short order. Just drift mentally for a moment and you lose your direction. To end up where you wish to go when you are not properly aligned takes constant pressure, means more work, produces more stress and could ultimately cause a "blow out."
Lesson: Choose not to give your body a double message. When confused the body tends to attack itself.
The all-leather, NFL-regulation football, inscribed -- 1963 Chicago Bears
Friday, February 24, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
CERTAINTY, OR NOT
What do you know for sure?
I don't mean this just as a casual greeting like "Wazzup?" I really mean "What do you know for sure?" What do you know that's always been true and will continue to be true?
To test your answer, ask yourself, "Does everyone you know believe the same thing?" Do you think everybody alive believes the same thing? I'm going with no. All you can really say is, "This is what I believe. This is what I know for sure, and I will continue to live my life according to that belief-- until I believe something else."
Short of death, there is nothing universally "for sure."
You'd believe everything if you could, but you can't; too many conflicts. You also cannot believe in nothing. (If you did, you'd be saying you believe in nothing, which is believing in something.) That leaves picking and choosing what, for you, will be the beliefs, the "for sures," the rules by which you live your life.
What causes us so much stress in our lives is our belief that the way we view the world is "for sure," and others who can't see it that way obviously just don't get it. Our never-ending mission in life then becomes bringing others to the one true meaning. Think about your work stress. How much stress is caused by your frustration over things not going the way you believe they should go? Should they? Why does it need to be your way? Could your way possibly be "wrong?"
How about when you send that letter in to the boss for her approval. You have been working on that mini-masterpiece for two days, crafted every word, and designed every sentence. You have a great pride of authorship. She changes a significant portion because the boss thinks it reads better her way. Who's right? Some who read the letter might prefer the boss's way, some yours. Is it worth getting nuts about? As Dave Berry wrote: "In the song 'Home on the Range,' where it says 'the skies are not cloudy all day' does that mean the skies are cloudy, but not all day, or does it mean that the skies are totally cloud free all day? Also do the deer and the antelope play with each other?"
What do you know "for sure?" Searching for absolutes outside your own skin is useless and stressful.
The deep thinkers keep telling us we should not be judgmental. Things aren't right or wrong, they just are. While I believe being completely non-judgmental is a worthwhile goal of mankind, and a significant reducer of stress, I also believe it to be impossible. Working toward the meaty goal of reducing stress through non-judgmentalism would be much easier if we didn't see the world as full of "for sures."
Some "sure" things in your life you change because the change is in your best interest. Some you change because life's experiences show them to be false. Either way changing "for sures" is tough because it doesn't leave you anything to wrap your arms around. And stress can pull us apart when we don't have anything to hold on to.
Lesson: Nothing in life is for sure, and that's for sure.
I don't mean this just as a casual greeting like "Wazzup?" I really mean "What do you know for sure?" What do you know that's always been true and will continue to be true?
To test your answer, ask yourself, "Does everyone you know believe the same thing?" Do you think everybody alive believes the same thing? I'm going with no. All you can really say is, "This is what I believe. This is what I know for sure, and I will continue to live my life according to that belief-- until I believe something else."
Short of death, there is nothing universally "for sure."
You'd believe everything if you could, but you can't; too many conflicts. You also cannot believe in nothing. (If you did, you'd be saying you believe in nothing, which is believing in something.) That leaves picking and choosing what, for you, will be the beliefs, the "for sures," the rules by which you live your life.
What causes us so much stress in our lives is our belief that the way we view the world is "for sure," and others who can't see it that way obviously just don't get it. Our never-ending mission in life then becomes bringing others to the one true meaning. Think about your work stress. How much stress is caused by your frustration over things not going the way you believe they should go? Should they? Why does it need to be your way? Could your way possibly be "wrong?"
How about when you send that letter in to the boss for her approval. You have been working on that mini-masterpiece for two days, crafted every word, and designed every sentence. You have a great pride of authorship. She changes a significant portion because the boss thinks it reads better her way. Who's right? Some who read the letter might prefer the boss's way, some yours. Is it worth getting nuts about? As Dave Berry wrote: "In the song 'Home on the Range,' where it says 'the skies are not cloudy all day' does that mean the skies are cloudy, but not all day, or does it mean that the skies are totally cloud free all day? Also do the deer and the antelope play with each other?"
What do you know "for sure?" Searching for absolutes outside your own skin is useless and stressful.
The deep thinkers keep telling us we should not be judgmental. Things aren't right or wrong, they just are. While I believe being completely non-judgmental is a worthwhile goal of mankind, and a significant reducer of stress, I also believe it to be impossible. Working toward the meaty goal of reducing stress through non-judgmentalism would be much easier if we didn't see the world as full of "for sures."
Some "sure" things in your life you change because the change is in your best interest. Some you change because life's experiences show them to be false. Either way changing "for sures" is tough because it doesn't leave you anything to wrap your arms around. And stress can pull us apart when we don't have anything to hold on to.
Lesson: Nothing in life is for sure, and that's for sure.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES
What are the WORST things that could happen to you in the next 24 hours?
When asked that question people generally lock on to the following events:
Death
Accident
Serious illness
Now the brighter side of that question: What are the BEST things that could happen to you in the next 24 hours?
I would ask you to stop reading and give serious thought to your answers to this "best/worst" question. Your answers must be personal (could happen to YOU) and could happen in the next 24 hours of your life.
[Pause here for thinking.]
What did you discover?
As this is a highly personal exercise I can only speak for my highly personal self, I found the greater likelihood of something bad happening in my life in the next 24 hours than of something good happening.
If you find more good than bad, (promotion, birth of a child, inheritance from an uncle you didn't know existed, and if you did know him you wouldn't miss him anyway)--congratulations! Then move on to the next 24 hours. The day after the best thing occurred, what's the best/worst that can happen?
After a few rounds of this exercise reality sets in, you're going to die. You'll probably be very sick before you die. As a human, you are an accident waiting to happen.
The conclusion I came to is, for most of us a twenty-four hour period is considered good when the bad stuff doesn't happen!
In a world where "big bads" are certain, and "big goods" are uncertain, what's the upside of this life?
When this fact first burrowed into my brain, I thought I had just paid in full for a life's membership in club pessimism. (What would be the use, they would only loss my membership anyway!) But the more thought I gave it, the more I realized the "best/worst" question might well be the mother of all life's lessons.
If "big bads" are certain, "big goods" are uncertain, then the joy of living HAS to be in experiencing and wallowing in the multitude of "little goods" that makes up every minute of every day.
Everything from eyes open in the morning to eyes shut at night, the list of what is good in your life is endless (The sunrise/sunset, the touch of a loved one, the lick of a dog, or the touch of a dog and the lick of a loved one, whatever). The things you can appreciate in your life are everywhere. The "little goods" have been the fodder of best selling books, grist of motivational speeches, lyrics of pop songs and the prattle in poems. The pleasant little thing in life have been embroidered on doilies, slapped on posters and forwarded by every well meaning friend with access to e-mail.
Most of the "little goods" seem, on the surface, to be sloppy, sentimental, simpering, syrupy and sappy, yet without fully embracing the sun, friends and dogs in your life, your knowledge of the inevitability of "big bads" could drive you nuts.
That is why it is so important to savor every moment of the "little goods". Maximizing the good things is conceptually easy because there are many more "little goods" in a life than "big bads". A life is wasted when you let yourself become so fixated on the few "big bads," you let the many "little goods" that make life worth living go by unnoticed.
Lesson: Everything you have ever loved in life will someday be taken from you--but you have them now.
When asked that question people generally lock on to the following events:
Death
Accident
Serious illness
Now the brighter side of that question: What are the BEST things that could happen to you in the next 24 hours?
I would ask you to stop reading and give serious thought to your answers to this "best/worst" question. Your answers must be personal (could happen to YOU) and could happen in the next 24 hours of your life.
[Pause here for thinking.]
What did you discover?
As this is a highly personal exercise I can only speak for my highly personal self, I found the greater likelihood of something bad happening in my life in the next 24 hours than of something good happening.
If you find more good than bad, (promotion, birth of a child, inheritance from an uncle you didn't know existed, and if you did know him you wouldn't miss him anyway)--congratulations! Then move on to the next 24 hours. The day after the best thing occurred, what's the best/worst that can happen?
After a few rounds of this exercise reality sets in, you're going to die. You'll probably be very sick before you die. As a human, you are an accident waiting to happen.
The conclusion I came to is, for most of us a twenty-four hour period is considered good when the bad stuff doesn't happen!
In a world where "big bads" are certain, and "big goods" are uncertain, what's the upside of this life?
When this fact first burrowed into my brain, I thought I had just paid in full for a life's membership in club pessimism. (What would be the use, they would only loss my membership anyway!) But the more thought I gave it, the more I realized the "best/worst" question might well be the mother of all life's lessons.
If "big bads" are certain, "big goods" are uncertain, then the joy of living HAS to be in experiencing and wallowing in the multitude of "little goods" that makes up every minute of every day.
Everything from eyes open in the morning to eyes shut at night, the list of what is good in your life is endless (The sunrise/sunset, the touch of a loved one, the lick of a dog, or the touch of a dog and the lick of a loved one, whatever). The things you can appreciate in your life are everywhere. The "little goods" have been the fodder of best selling books, grist of motivational speeches, lyrics of pop songs and the prattle in poems. The pleasant little thing in life have been embroidered on doilies, slapped on posters and forwarded by every well meaning friend with access to e-mail.
Most of the "little goods" seem, on the surface, to be sloppy, sentimental, simpering, syrupy and sappy, yet without fully embracing the sun, friends and dogs in your life, your knowledge of the inevitability of "big bads" could drive you nuts.
That is why it is so important to savor every moment of the "little goods". Maximizing the good things is conceptually easy because there are many more "little goods" in a life than "big bads". A life is wasted when you let yourself become so fixated on the few "big bads," you let the many "little goods" that make life worth living go by unnoticed.
Lesson: Everything you have ever loved in life will someday be taken from you--but you have them now.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
MINDLESS MOMENTS
The following testimonial for a brand of fly traps appeared in a Horse and Livestock equipment catalog:
"I bought two of your Fly Traps. I thought it was a good deal. I counted 2,972 flies in one trap. I would recommend them," Darrell Haywood, OK
I would ask you, if you have never tried number-crunching insects, to suspend judgement about the way Darrell chooses to use his time. Maybe in Haywood, OK dead-fly counting is considered a good job!
Darrell seems like the kind of guy whose hand I'd like to shake (after he washed it). He seems like the kind of guy that doesn't care what others think about what he does with his waking moments. He seems like the kind of guy who would admit to a magazine, (that has circulation outside of Haywood, OK.) that he physically tore apart at least one old fly trap and handled a minimum of 2,792 dead and decaying flies.
What Darrell-like thing do you do? I have a hobby collecting something I can't even name. For the last twenty years I've collected those little plastic fasteners that attach tags to new clothes. (This collecting is something I do while not actively engaged in obliterating ignorance from the face of the earth.)
Life is tough; it's full of good things you need to work at appreciating, and bad things you need to work at overcoming. With all that work going on, consider carving out those special little brainless moments dedicated to the likes of collecting plastic fasteners and counting dead flies.
Lesson: Not everything you do has to make any sense to anybody.
"I bought two of your Fly Traps. I thought it was a good deal. I counted 2,972 flies in one trap. I would recommend them," Darrell Haywood, OK
I would ask you, if you have never tried number-crunching insects, to suspend judgement about the way Darrell chooses to use his time. Maybe in Haywood, OK dead-fly counting is considered a good job!
Darrell seems like the kind of guy whose hand I'd like to shake (after he washed it). He seems like the kind of guy that doesn't care what others think about what he does with his waking moments. He seems like the kind of guy who would admit to a magazine, (that has circulation outside of Haywood, OK.) that he physically tore apart at least one old fly trap and handled a minimum of 2,792 dead and decaying flies.
What Darrell-like thing do you do? I have a hobby collecting something I can't even name. For the last twenty years I've collected those little plastic fasteners that attach tags to new clothes. (This collecting is something I do while not actively engaged in obliterating ignorance from the face of the earth.)
Life is tough; it's full of good things you need to work at appreciating, and bad things you need to work at overcoming. With all that work going on, consider carving out those special little brainless moments dedicated to the likes of collecting plastic fasteners and counting dead flies.
Lesson: Not everything you do has to make any sense to anybody.
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