Month: October 2013

What You Think of Me is None of My Business

/ James Browning

I dont care anymore tumblr_mksi38RmIN1s2ajc4o1_400_large

When considered all together, getting older is a good balance of what I am glad about and what I sometimes wish were no so.  Of course, having more of the hair I used to have or a back that does not ache after working in the yard or to not need reading glasses are good examples of what’s on the “I wish were not so list”.  Moving to the “I’m glad about list” immediately I find gratitude for knowledge not possible in younger years that has come from a broad range of life experience.  I cherish the wisdom earned the hard way mostly from my mistakes.

One of the gems of wisdom I am grateful for is summed up in the words of Wayne Dyer:  What you think of me is none of my business.  No magic immunity from such thinking have I learned, but what others think of me plainly matters much less here in the fifth decade of my life than ever before.  Bosses I work for don’t make me nervous any more (does it have anything to do with the fact that most are younger and less experienced than me?)  Dressing nicely still matters, but comfort in what I have on is at the top of my list and matters ten times more than what others think of my wardrobe.

A good deal of personal growth is evident to anyone who has long known me.  However, inwardly there remains speculation from time to time if I measure up in other people eyes.  An often successful method I use to combat such “stinking thinking” is to self-question with this thought:  How would I feel if I was literally unable to worry about another person’s opinion of me?  Getting some sort of silent mental answer in response to that quandary seems to banish the need to care what others think more often than not.

Deep down I know I don’t need the approval of others. It is my ego, the fragile little pretend person within, that craves approval and fears disapproval. Even with the wisdom of years my mind will take things personally sometimes if I let it.  The need to attempt to gain power through approval and disapproval games will always be there. Here in middle age I am grateful to be able to separate myself from my ego more successfully and know approval and disapproval have no real value whatsoever.  In reality, another person’s thought or opinion about me is never personal, because it is never really about me in the first place. It’s about them. A person’s thoughts about anything and everything are only about them self.

Writer Byron Katie has written several self-help books that have been insightful to me.  She says my business is what I think and what I feel.  If I get worried about how someone feels about me, I’m in their business. And if I’m busy living in their business, how am I present for my own business?  A helpful process Katie recommends to throw off untrue thoughts she calls “Inquiry”.  This process I have found helpful includes four questions to ask one’s self:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react when you think that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

The most intimate relationship I have is the one with my own mind.  When that chatterbox in my head is stressing and screaming, I find that it will keep on doing it until I give it some attention.  That sort of thinking is like a toddler in a grocery store pitching a fit until it gets attention.  One way I give that attention is  putting my thoughts through Byron Katie’s four questions.  When I truly question their validity it’s common to find beliefs I have had for 5, 10, 30 years, even the worst, most stressful ones, disappear with regularity.  Then the “monkey mind chatterbox” (my brain) slows down and living becomes easier and life tastes better.

When I can consider things objectively I see the most others can have of me is an opinion.  When thinking clearly I know to elevate another’s opinion of me to the status of a judgment is simply ridiculous. No one can judge me unless I grant him or her the power of being my judge.

When I let go of worry over other people’s opinions, I become free to reflect on my own opinion of myself. Living according to my own truth is an act of self-love and self-care. When I live according to my own beliefs and stay in my own  business (and out of other’s business), I find others usually will honor the truths I live by, whether they agree with me or not.  To know that tidbit of wisdom is a gift I’m grateful for.

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. Bill Cosby

Originally posted on December 7, 2011

A Happiness Weapon

/ James Browning

works-well-in-all-seasons

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
Friedrich Nietzsche

It’s an engrained habit of mine to prefer being the one who drives. I get bored easily on the passenger side. But that changed last weekend. Giving up control has never been more fun.

Someone one else was driving and the day was a stellar fall Saturday afternoon; cool but not cold with beautiful sunny skies. Windows were down and the breeze through the moving car window was strong, but felt good. It had been many, many years since I had last done what came next.

Long had I forgotten the pleasure of flying my hand like an airplane out an open car window. If I tipped my finders up, my hand would fly upwards. Moving them down made my hand dive. To one side or the other caused movement in that direction.

The speed the pickup was moving was fast enough that the air whipping past the vehicle could almost completely support my hand. It was a wonderful near-weightless feeling I enjoyed while flying my “hand-plane” down the road.

I lost myself in the moment, paid little attention to the scenery and barely heard the driver’s voice when she asked, “Are you having fun?”. I replied “Lots” and went right back to enjoying my regression to the wonders of childhood for the next five miles.

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air – explode softly – and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth – boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn’t go cheap, either – not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. Robert Fulghum

Call me childish if you want. I’ll take it as a compliment. This weekend I am going to buy a coloring book, a big box of crayons and a box to keep them in. On the days I feel depressed or down, when life is heavy, at times when a tough decision is weighing me down or a dose of feel-good fun is needed I will pull out my little therapy box and ‘color’. In those moments the good times of childhood will be let lose within to bring me back to what life is for: TO BE ENJOYED. I will be a thousand times better when the little boy is laughing within me again, having fun and centered in ‘now’. I am grateful he is alive within me.

Happy is he who still loves something
he loved in the nursery.
He has not been broken in two by time;
he is not two men, but one,
and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
G.K. Chesterton

Your Very Own Self

/ James Browning

child-mirror

It starts innocently enough, perhaps the first time you recognize your own reflection.

You’re not yet 2 years old, brushing your teeth, standing on your steppy stool by the bathroom sink, when suddenly it dawns on you: That foam-flecked face beaming back from the mirror is you. You. Yourself. Your very own self.

It’s a revelation—and an affliction. Human infants have no capacity for self-awareness. Then, between 18 and 24 months of age, they become conscious of their own thoughts, feelings, and sensations—thereby embarking on a quest that will consume much of their lives. For many modern selves, the first shock of self-recognition marks the beginning of a lifelong search for the one “true” self and for a feeling of behaving in accordance with that self that can be called authenticity.

A hunger for authenticity guides us in every age and aspect of life. It drives our explorations of work, relationships, play, and prayer. Teens and twentysomethings try out friends, fashions, hobbies, jobs, lovers, locations, and living arrangements to see what fits and what’s “just not me.” Midlifers deepen commitments to career, community, faith, and family that match their self-images, or feel trapped in existences that seem not their own. Elders regard life choices with regret or satisfaction based largely on whether they were “true” to themselves.

It’s also a cornerstone of mental health. Authenticity is correlated with many aspects of psychological well-being, including vitality, self-esteem, and coping skills. Acting in accordance with one’s core self—a trait called self-determination—is ranked by some experts as one of three basic psychological needs, along with competence and a sense of relatedness.

Yet, increasingly, contemporary culture seems to mock the very idea that there is anything solid and true about the self. Cosmetic surgery, psycho-pharmaceuticals, and perpetual makeovers favor a mutable ideal over the genuine article. MySpace profiles and tell-all blogs carry the whiff of wishful identity. Steroids, stimulants, and doping transform athletic and academic performance. Fabricated memoirs become best-sellers. Speed-dating discounts sincerity. Amid a clutter of counterfeits, the core self is struggling to assert itself.

“It’s some kind of epidemic right now,” says Stephen Cope, author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self. “People feel profoundly like they’re not living from who they really are, their authentic self, their deepest possibility in the world. The result is a sense of near-desperation.” From an article by Karen Wright http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200804/dare-be-yourself

Here I sit showing the signs of age: reading glasses, mostly gray hair (but grateful to still have hair!), untouched natural lines on my face, memory not as razor-sharp as it once was, a paunch at my waistline, a few ages spots on my arms and so on. I have never given serious thought to changing any of it except losing 25 pounds. All of it is me just as I have naturally evolved.

It’s a personal thing, but I think for me there would be something dishonest about hair dye or plastic surgery. As a man it would be bothersome if I did remade myself synthetically and other guys found out. I’d not casting aspersions toward men who do, just saying that it’s not right for me.

Being real and authentic has become more and more important to me as the years have passed. I’ve earned every line on my skin and every gray hair. My face and body is an accurate living record of my life. I am 100% grateful to be who and what I am. It took a lot of hard work to get there.

The authentic self
is soul made visible.
Sarah Ban Breathnach

Uniquely Original

/ James Browning

what-makes-your-company-uniqueLARGER

There will ever only be one of you — ever. In the history of the universe, you exist only once and you are it. There will never again be another person with your unique intellect, temperament, skills and abilities.

We often get stuck in a rut of who we are and what we can offer without really grasping the greatness that is contained in our uniqueness. We often fail to capitalize on our unique abilities. What limits us is a lack of understanding of our unique gifts, the community we create around us, and knowing the value of our role in life.

You are the only person in the world that will ever see things they way you do. Your personality, experiences, insights, and your emotions all lead you to interact with the world differently from everyone else. You may be only slightly different, but it is different. Only you have seen what you have seen, in the way that you have seen them, and can come to the same conclusions. That voice is essential not only to the world immediately around you but in our every day interactions around the globe.

Our ability to reach beyond our geographies now exceeds our expectations – expectations we set not just a few years ago, but a few months ago. We are continuously amazed at how far and how fast we can reach around the planet. Therefore, your point of view may challenge or support another idea around the globe. You may never know it, or feel it, or see it, but it is, nonetheless, there. Don’t ever underestimate the value that your uniqueness has on the conversation.

One of the universal truths of people is that we seek our own level; we find jobs, communities, partners, friends that align with our personalities and our abilities. Opposites may attract, but our “ecosystem” of personalities tends to mirror ourselves.

The problem with all this likeness around us is that it tends to darken our uniqueness. We see our ideas, beliefs, skills, abilities, etc. similar to others around us and then tend to feel we don’t need to be unique – others either don’t need to see it, or someone else has that covered. The very system we put in place to help support us – to make life easier – is the very system that stifles our own “uniqueocity.”

I am, and forever will be, the only unique me. And right back at you! From an article in “Forbes” magazine by Todd Wilms http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2013/10/04/i-unique-you-unique/

Wanting to fit in and be like others is not something I am completely immune to. The worst of it was when I was a teenager, yet even then I did not want to be completely like others. As I have gotten older any wish to be like someone else have become more and more rare.

To a fault as an adult I have frequently rebelled against the ‘norm’ just because it was what was considered ‘normal’. If the majority was going “North”, I’d turn and head “Southeast”. That has certainly NOT been easy, but over time that attitude shaped me, mostly for the best, into a ‘uniquely original’ human being. I am proud of the distinctive person I have become and grateful to be ‘me’.

Never love anyone
who treats you like
you’re ordinary.
Oscar Wilde

Just Go For It

/ James Browning

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There will be a few times in your life

when all your instincts will tell you to do something,

something that defies logic,

upsets your plans,

and may seem crazy to others.

When that happens,

you do it.

Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else.

Ignore logic,

ignore the odds,

ignore the complications,

and just go for it.

From “Remember When” Judith McNaught

And so it is with me as Judith McNaught wrote. The more I have become able to listen to the soften spoken voice of my heart and soul (or whatever you call that presence that lives in my chest and gut) the better my life has become. It’s damn scary to take off in a direction that a good bit of me is uncertain about while at the same time knowing at an instinctive level it is absolutely the direction I must go.

My destiny is not something I can always decide on or choose, but I can let it happen if I stop paddling against the current and let it take me where I am meant to go. I am not saying I don’t have to think and use my head. I do, but when logic has been thoughtfully laid out in my head I allow my ‘heart and soul” to lay over it. When the two match, “no problem”. When they don’t, more often than not, my logic is flawed. It’s then I need to do one of two things: 1) rethink the subject and stir in my heart and soul to see what surfaces or 2) simply follow my heart and soul. The latter has rarely ever been a mistake.

How utterly freeing it is to live life knowing I don’t have to figure every thing out! II am grateful for the mystery and excitement that living this way lends to my life.

Remembering you are going to die
is the best way I know to avoid the trap
of thinking you have something to lose.
You are already naked.
There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Anonymous

Letting Go of a Hot Iron

/ James Browning

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One of the more difficult insights to grasp has been that it is largely pain within a person that causes him/her to hurt me. Long did I believe those who caused me grief without cause, or pain far beyond what I deserved, were simply mean-spirited people. Experience has taught when someone is rude, mean or inconsiderate the vast majority of the time they have unresolved issues within.

Anger, heartache, resentment or some other harbored pain is festering inside most hurtful people that they have yet to face, cope with or overcome. As difficult as it can be, the last thing such a person needs is for me to make matters worse by responding angrily. My human ‘fight’ instinct first kicks in and only with strong intention can I keep from dishing out venom equal to or greater than the poison spewed on me.

When I react badly to someone who has treated me ‘less than’ any momentary feeling of satisfaction dims quickly. I end up tasting a bit of my own toxins I’ve thrown on them. Fire plus fire equals a bigger fire. It’s never any different. Even when things settle down and apologies are given and accepted a touch of bitterness always remains. Sadly, often those leftovers become catalysts for a later resurfacing of the clash.

Refusal to play the game by saying, “I am not going to fight with you” or “I’m not going to give you something to blame me for later” often makes the other person’s emotions flare further. But by sticking to my truth and doing just that will disarm the person eventually. Some time the absolute best I can do for both parties is to put temporary distance between me and him or her. No, it’s not easy but it is best.

Forgiveness is a gift I give myself. The other person need not even know I have forgiven them. Often its impossible to let them know even if I want to. To forgive someone is to give myself the antidote for another’s poison that’s been injected into me. If I don’t, at least in part, I give someone else control over my life. Forgiveness is about setting myself free.

When someone hurts me, I have to let it go or I end up contaminating my mind, heart and soul with the poison that belongs to someone else. Holding my tongue is not easy, but afterwards letting go what was said or done is even more challenging. Knowing they have done it out of their own distress takes time to settle in. Stephen Richards wrote, “When you initially forgive, it is like letting go of a hot iron. There is initial pain and the scars will show, but you can start living again.” That’s about as good of a perspective as I have been able to develop.

Being a normal human being, its impossible for me to always practice full forgiveness where and when I need to. However, I am grateful for the awareness that I should forgive that has made shorter the length and weight of bitterness.

Forgiveness is really not about
someone’s harmful behavior;
it’s about our own relationship
with our past. When we begin
the work of forgiveness,
it is primarily a practice for ourselves.
Gina Sharpe

Being Whole

/ James Browning

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Reflecting back there was never a time where I actually hated myself. There have been frequent times I have hated something I did and held myself overly responsible for a long time. It was from a collection of such things that I ended up with a very mediocre view of myself. That came from including credit for the good but neutralizing it with my negative deeds.

Giving myself credit for the good I have done is important to have a decent self-image, but such things should be kept far away from those I perceive as bad. Each is a far different thing and has little to do with the other. Good does not cancel bad any more that the reverse is true.

In photography a “gray card” is used to take light readings as it represents the colors of the average scene all melted down into one color. This medium “gray” does not attract the eye and is boring and plain. Life is not best lived like that. I should not try to stir all my good and bad together. Rather like a bold painting that has dark grungy areas and bright beautiful colors is how I should view my life.

In my view the opposite of being bad is not “being good”, but being whole; wholly human and a unique combination of dark and light. I am grateful to grasp that point and be able to use it to slow myself down when I start weighing out my ‘goods’ and ‘bads’.

There is so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in the best of us,
that it hardly becomes any of us to talk
about the rest of us.
G.E. Cooke

Darkness of My Soul

/ James Browning

magic_mushrooms edit thanks to image maker

I’m coming up on an anniversary. In 2007 I spent five life-altering weeks at “The Meadows” where I went to finally come face to face with my childhood abandonment and trauma issues. Reflecting back I can see the experience with clarity as only a retrospective perception can give. Those days were absolutely the most meaningful but difficult of my life. It was the journey out of the darkness of my soul.

Six years ago on the evening of October 6th I stood at the admissions counter at the nurse’s station in Wickenburg, Arizona feeling fearful, cautious and in severe emotional pain. I had lost my second wife due to my inappropriate actions (I cheated on her). It was that loss that motivated me, or better stated, it was the almost unbearable pain of that loss that moved me to finally do something about my compulsions.

Some people drink. Others do drugs. Gambling is the choice for many. My compulsion was to seek a woman for sex to temporarily mask the pain. The craziness of frequently having at least two and sometimes more relationships at a time had been a burden I had carried since I has eighteen years old.

The majority of my ‘affairs’ were not causal. Factual or not, I largely believed that love was the motivator. Always searching and looking to find in someone else a way to fill in what was lacking in me. I did not realize fully that I was already well-loved. I lacked the ability to receive love as a ‘normal person’ would. I did not love myself. I blamed two wives and many lovers for an emptiness that was not their fault. I hurt a lot of people. What most probably have never grasped is my compulsions hurt me as deeply or worse than it did them.

While at “The Meadows” (http://www.themeadows.org/) I purchased a copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Eat, Pray, Love”. Reading it I underlined in pencil the passages I found particularly meaningful as is my habit. One particular passage has stuck with me. It’s describes well how I have always wanted to be love and be loved.

I’m here.
I love you.
I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long,
I will stay with you.
There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love.
I will protect you until you die,
and after your death I will still protect you.
I am stronger than Depression
and I am braver than Loneliness
and nothing will ever exhaust me.

That passage moves me to the point of emotional overflow even today. The desire for it is stronger than ever, but there is no definitive knowing if I could yet let it in from someone else. Sitting here telling the world is another small step in my healing.

In hindsight I was loved as Elizabeth Gilbert describes but could not appreciate it. It’s too late now to do anything but learn the necessary lessons from those relationships. At least then the pain was not for naught. To those women who loved me who I could not love enough in return I will always be grateful and deeply regretful for the pain I caused. Without those experiences I would not be the mostly happy and optimistic person I have become.

Forget past mistakes.
Forget failures.
Forget about everything
except what you’re going to do now
– and do it.
William Durant

The Untethered Soul

/ James Browning



Holding onto thoughts instead of thinking them and letting go…
Recalling things that happened in the past and stewing about them…
Trying to control emotions by holding on or pushing them away…
Attempting to rewrite the past by obsessing on what might have happened…

Currently I am reading a best seller titled “The Untethered Soul” by Michael A. Singer a good friend gave me. It points directly at some of the reasons I have suffered from my heart and mind by trying to redirect and rewrite life to my liking. Here’ are a few passages from the book:

How would you feel if someone outside really started talking to you the way your inner voice does?

Creating thoughts, holding onto thoughts, recalling thoughts, generating emotions, controlling emotions, and disciplining powerful inner drives, all requite tremendous expenditure of energy.

If you look at the times in your life when you were in love or excited and inspired by something, you were so filled with energy that you didn’t even want to eat.

Have you ever noticed that when you are mentally or emotionally drained, food doesn’t help that much? Conversely, if you look at the times in your life when you were in love, or excited and inspired by something, you were filled with energy that you didn’t even want to eat.

The only reason you don’t feel this energy all the time is because you block it. You block it by closing your heart, by closing your mind, and by pulling yourself into a restrictive space inside. When you close your heart or close your mind, you hide in the darkness within you. There is not light. There is not energy. There is nothing flowing.

We are programmed to open or close based upon our past experiences. Impressions from the past are still inside of us, and they get stimulated by different events. If they were negative impressions, we tend to close. If they were positive impressions, we tend to open.

But closing your heart does not really protect you from anything; it just cuts you off from your source of energy. In the end, it only serves to block you inside.

Do not let anything be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.

There is no possible way I can completely stop grabbing and hanging onto my thoughts. The past is bound to surface and hurt a little or a lot. The future will never stop being something to worry about at least a little. I will always be a re-writer of the past to some extent. However, awareness of the unhealthiness of these practices can help me not get tied up in emotional restraints of my own making.

It’s an unexacting practice being human. Anything new usually seems difficult to near impossible as first. Letting things pass that are not healthy has always been a challenge. However, a little at a time, day by day, things have improved because I began years ago to practice what “The Untethered Soul” points out so clearly: “To attain true inner freedom , you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them. No solution can possibly exist while you’re lost in the energy of a problem”.

I am grateful for my progress and the reminder Michael Singer’s book is to live life with intention.

Pretending something did not happen
that really did happen…
Blaming others and not taking
rightful share of responsibility…
Are just two of the surest ways
to a tormented and tumultuous life.
James Browning

Casting Shadows

/ James Browning

sidewalk-poop

It’s difficult not to be critical when I see someone misbehaving, treating others badly or acting like they are the only one that matters. It has become my practice to try to replace being condemning with a thought like, “you don’t know what this person has gone through to get to here or how hard their life is. Just say a silent quick prayer for them and move on”.

To judge others is to bring judgement to myself. The more I am critical about people the more I train myself to be hard on me! My discovery with intentionally trying not to judge others is I have become less critical of me. It has become apparent that the same disapproving part of me used to condemn others is the same part that can be hyper-critical about myself. That way of seeing was in fact polishing a mirror I used to judge myself.

If we knew the cards and crosses
Crowding ’round our neighbor’s way,
If we knew his little losses,
Sorely grievous day by day,
Would we then so often chide him
For his lack of thrift and gain?
Casting on his life a shadow
Leaves on his heart a stain?

If we knew the silent story
Quivering through some hearts of pain,
Would our human hearts dare doom them
Back to haunts of guilt again?
Life has many a tangled crossing,
Joy has man a change to woe;
And the cheeks tear-washed are whitest,
As the blessed angels know.

Let us reach into our hearts,
For the key to others’ lives,
And with love to erring nature,
Cherish good that still survives;
So that when our disrobed spirits
Soar to realms of light again,
We may say, dear Father, judge us
As we judged our fellow-men.
unknown

I am far from perfect and find myself judging and casting shadows on others more often than I wish. But I am grateful more often than not I catch myself. I redirect my thinking realizing that every time I condemn someone else, I am in fact setting me up judge myself.

Judgement prevent us from seeing
the good that lies beyond appearances.
Wayne Dyer