Embracing life

Tiny Little Prank

/ James Browning

growning olderAs age ticks off with an increasing number, ever faster and faster, I find my sense of humor about growing older increases. Middle age and older presents a myriad of opportunities to practice the phrase “learn to smile at yourself and you’ll always be amused”.

My Rememberer

My forgetter’s getting better
But my rememberer is broke
To you that may seem funny
But, to me, that is no joke.
For when I’m ‘here’ I’m wondering
If I really should be ‘there’
And, when I try to think it through,
I haven’t got a prayer!
Often times I walk into a room,
Say “what am I here for?”
I rack my brain, but all in vain
A zero, is my score.
At times I put something away
Where it is safe, but, Gee!
The person it is safest from
Is, generally, me!
When shopping I may see someone,
Say “Hi” and have a chat,
Then, when the person walks away
I ask myself, “who was that?”
Yes, my forgetter’s getting better
While my rememberer is broke,
And it’s driving me plumb crazy
And that isn’t any joke.
Denny Davis

So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.
From “Nature” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Some years back I adopted the practice of announcing the age I would be on my next birthday several months early. It was my way of sneaking up on another notch on my birthday stick. So it has begun again this year here now four months before the anniversary of my birth. I am certain a psychologist would have a field day sorting out why I get satisfaction from telling people I am a certain age knowing all the while I remain a year younger. I am grateful for the joy it brings me to play this tiny little prank on the world!

At age 20 we worry about what others think of us;
At age 40 we don’t care what they think of us;
At age 60 we realize that they haven’t been thinking of us at all.
Denny Davis

Reasons You’re Not Getting What You Want

/ James Browning

Stones-49630I don’t care who you are, you’ve been in want for something before. And at one point in your life, that thing you wanted…didn’t happen.

You Didn’t Ask For It: This one might blow your mind with simplicity. A mentor once told me something that really stuck… “if you don’t ask, you don’t get.” That sexy project I really want? I’m going to ask for it. That bonus I know I deserve? I’m going to bring in a list of my accomplishments, speak to them and put a bow on my speech by asking for more cash. The promotion? I’m going to ask my boss what I need to do to get it.

It works in your personal life too. Especially in moments where you’d traditionally wallow in your own issues so as not to inconvenience those around you. Well, that’s silly. Because those around you often want to be inconvenienced so they can support you. So that favor you need from a friend when your life is totally turned upside down? Ask for it.

You Didn’t Try: This is the part where you’re not getting off the couch to train for the marathon you always wanted to finish. Or you watching brochures pile up on your desk and tease you about the dream vacation that you still can’t go on because you’re not saving up. Or I could be even more serious and talk about relationships. Maybe you wouldn’t be thinking of her as “the one that got away” if you had spent a little less time watching football with the guys. Or maybe your marriage would be a little different if you committed to a couple nights of home cooked meals and good conversation.

It’s one of our worst qualities…the fact that at times, we simply don’t try. Perhaps we’re scared of actually getting the very thing we want, or maybe it’s too intimidating, too new, or too outside our comfort zone. Whatever it is that’s holding us back from getting these things we want, isn’t a good thing.

You Wanted Something Else More: There are a lot of people looking to lose weight right now. They want to hit the gym more, eat better, yadda yadda. It’s kind of our thing as humans. We want to be better versions of ourselves. But how can you possibly get that if you’re going out to eat every night and ordering the worst thing on the menu? Truth is, you wanted that stuff more than you wanted less body fat.

You say you want to be in a committed, healthy relationship and you’re on the hunt for it. Well then why are you dating the guy who throws out so many red flags he’d put bull-fighting out of business? You know that’s not going to end well. And yet, you keep at it. Taken from an article by Molly Cain on forbes.com http://www.forbes.com/sites/glassheel/2013/01/11/5-reasons-youre-not-getting-what-you-want/2/

There were more ‘reasons” in Ms. Cain’s article why I may not be getting what I want, but the three that spoke to me loudest are those above: You Didn’t Ask For It, You Didn’t Try, and You Wanted Something Else More. Little reminders and subtle wake-up calls seem to always be around if I have my antenna up to receive them. I am grateful for insight and perspective that arrives just when I need it.

There will be NO HAPPINESS
if the things you want
are different than the things you go.
hellobeliever.com

No Apologies, No Regrets

/ James Browning

1961499_ce55_625x1000I faked it. I pretended. I spoke about it with words that were false. I made others think I was, when I wasn’t.

What was this “it” I fabricated, made up, manufactured, constructed and lied about?

The simple statement “I am proud of myself”. Now that such a proclamation can roll from my lips and be true, it is so easy to see how for so long I lacked the ability to have anything more than momentary self-pride.

You are your own best friend and your own biggest critic. Regardless of the opinions of others, at the end of the day the only reflection staring back at you in the mirror is your own. Accept everything about yourself – EVERYTHING! You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

People who are proud of themselves tend to have passions in life, feel content and set good examples for others. It requires envisioning the person you would like to become and making your best efforts to grow.

Being proud isn’t bragging about how great you are; it’s more like quietly knowing that you’re worth a lot. It’s not about thinking you’re perfect – because nobody is – but knowing that you’re worthy of being loved and accepted. All you have to do is be yourself and live the story that no one else can live – the story of your own unique life. Be proud, be confident, you never know who has been looking at you wishing they were you. http://www.marcandangel.com/2012/04/26/you-should-be-able-to-say-about-yourself/

Always thinking I was a work in progress that could not be appreciated until completed, beginning in my teen years I spent decades being dissatisfied with myself. Age has a way of increasing imperfection, especially physical ones, that set me up to either accept myself as I was or collapse under the weight of my self-dissatisfaction.

Ultimately both happened. I broke until the strain of my self-discontent and like an egg was cracked open to my own truth: I am wonderful and awful; I am brilliant and dim-witted; I am handsome and ugly; I thoughtful and hard-hearted; I am peaceful and restless; I warm to love and am cold to love at the same time. All these things exist simultaneously within to create the mosaic that is “me”. Gratefully, today, the former part of each statement rings more true that the latter.

The joy within glows with gratitude that I can now accept the perfectly imperfect being that I am. Today I accept wholly the man I am with “no apologies, no regrets”. With hope, effort and intention my perfection will grow, but only if I remain wholly cognizant and accepting of my imperfections.

Every second that you spend on doubting your worth,
every moment that you use to criticize yourself;
is a second of your life wasted,
is a moment of your life thrown away.
C. JoyBell C.

Minute By Minute Trivial Goodness

/ James Browning

226P80301-560x373Have you ever heard anyone complain of having too much joy in their life or heard about a person who got sick from an overdose of happiness? It is possible for anyone to receive too many blessings or have too much to be grateful for? I don’t know of any. I do believe the quantity of joy and happiness each person experiences is largely derived from their attitude about living.

Each person generally finds what they expect to find. Certainly life is challenging and there are days when just getting through it is a major accomplishment. However, on a generally average day each person comes in contact with the amount of happiness or sadness anticipated. I have framed it before as “expect mostly good things and the sun will shine lots of them on you. Expect mostly bad things and the sky will rain sh!t on you all day long”. It’s not what happens, but how one frames them in the mind that shapes a persons existence.

Feel free to label me as some new age, hippie-dippie and blissed out late middle-aged man. I could care less how others think of my positive attitude about life. A hard-earned lesson here on this revolving blue ball called Earth is that more than any other factor, it is “I” who create the reality I exist in. Once I stopped blaming parents, previous spouses, employers and such, things changed markedly.

Shining the bright light of self-examination was scary stuff at first because I did not like what I saw. It was initially unnerving to accept complete responsibility for “me”. However, in time with good effort and much kindness I began to accept myself. Through making changes needed and keeping my commitment to them I began to live the sort of life I had long dreamed of, but previously prevented myself from having.

I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college “adult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I’d become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that’s when life will really begin. And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin.

But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that movie-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of use will ever experience. From Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life” by Shauna Niequist.

So many years were spent chasing a bold life; one worthy of awe and accolades. That sort of life gleaned from movies and advertising never assembled itself for me because it does not exist. It is the American way for us to seek the impossible; to desire what can never be; to always want more than we have.

There are extraordinary moments in my life, but most of the are humble and small. In learning to appreciate the minute by minute trivial goodness of living I made the discovery I had long been living a remarkable and exceptional life. What a great gift to arrive at that realization and begin living in a way that embraces that reality. I am profoundly grateful for the insight.

When life is sweet,
say thank you and celebrate.
And when life is bitter,
say thank you and grow.
Shauna Niequist

Letting Go of Regret

/ James Browning

amazing-sunrise-on-the-track-hdr-250896If I had followed through on the childhood dream of being a scientist, would my life be better or worse? What would my life be like now if I had married a different person when I was twenty-two? What might have been if I had left for the woman I loved when I was thirty-five? How might life be now had I not been so careless with money when it was flowing in freely?

Questions…meaningless, worthless questions, but knowing that plainly does not stop me from playing the shoulda, coulda guessing game occasionally.

In an article on psychologytoday.com, Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D. wrote:
We often associate regret with old age – the tragic image of an elderly person feeling regretful over opportunities forever missed. Now, groundbreaking new brain research shows how this stereotype may be true, at least for a portion of the elderly who are depressed. On the other hand, healthy aging may involve the ability to regulate regret in the brain…

A new study conducted by researchers at the University Medical Center – Hamburg, in Germany provides an exciting demonstration of how healthy older people may actively disengage from regret when nothing can be done. Young people, who, presumably have more life opportunities for change and depressed elderly, who, presumably, have a deficit in emotional processing, were more regretful when confronted with missed chances for financial gain.

These researchers scanned the brains of three groups of subjects using MRI technology: Young people with average age 25, healthy older people with average age 66, and depressed older people, also 66 on average. All participants worked on a computer game during the brain scan in which they had to decide whether to keep opening boxes or rest. Each box could contain an amount of money or could contain a devil emblem that meant they lost all their money and ended that round of the game. To prime regret, researchers showed people after each round how far they could have gone to earn more money.

Behavioral strategies differed between the groups in a way that was consistent with the brain findings. Whereas the young and depressed elderly took more risks on subsequent rounds, the healthy elderly did not change their strategies across 80 rounds on average. Overall, the riskier strategy did not lead to more money, suggesting that the young and depressed elderly took on extra stress for no gain.

An exciting implication of this study is that brain functioning does not merely deteriorate in old age, but that aging can result in better emotion-regulation and stress management. This is consistent with other research showing old people have less intense negative emotions and are happier than middle-aged people on average. Feeling that one has done the best one can, given the circumstances and letting go of regret can lead to self-compassion and peace. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201206/the-neuroscience-regret

After reading that article I feel better and believe I’m in the “healthy group”. As the years pass there is less regret and I am more often filled with contentment and happiness. Getting here did not happen accidentally. In the last decade there has been great personal exertion to grow, heal and improve that have paid off. While some of the growing pains hurt like hell, the overall results are something I am ecstatically grateful for.

A man is not old until
regrets take the place of dreams.
John Barrymore

Today I Will Be Happy With Less.

/ James Browning

sobering grateful thought one

That’s just eleven words with a
sobering with truthful meaning.
“Today I will be happy with less”.

more….

sobering grateful thought two quote tecumseh

…Eleven words at the top and forty-seven more just above; fifty-eight words of absolute truth about one of the greatest secrets of a good life….

Soon to be two years I have found something to be grateful for each morning and focused on it for about an hour. There are no words that I can say to tell you of the conviction I have that practicing gratefulness is life changing. I urge you… no I beg you with all my heart, to take a little time for gratitude every day. Do it for just a month and you will never be the same again.

Happiness cannot be traveled to,
owned, earned, worn or consumed.
Happiness is the spiritual experience
of living every minute
with love, grace, and gratitude.
Denis Waitley

Only Time Will Tell

/ James Browning

2 real selfHaving grown up in 1960’s Alabama, it seemed everyday I witnessed the distance between people; the void between have’s and have not’s and between races. I was blessed to grow up poor in a family that believed all people should be treated with kindness and respect. Trials and difficulty is a great equalizer of people.

By sixteen I had long hair and the south generally did not like “my kind”. I learned first hand what it is like to be refused service in a restaurant and repeatedly heard “is it a boy or girl?”. While tame compared to what many went thought, it was one of the early great lessons of my life. At eighteen I left the deep south to finish my growing up in Colorado with a vow never again make my “down there” and I haven’t (yet, anyway).

Leaving Alabama and Mississippi (where I graduated high school) behind was the first major permanent detour in the life planned as a teenager. I left behind the dream of a scholarship and advanced education at the University of Alabama and of even finishing a college degree. I left behind the first true love of my life, the first girl/woman I cried over. And ever since life has been ever leading me where it does; not necessarily in the direction I imagine.

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” (credited to both E.M. Forster and Joseph Campbell) sums up what living has shown me over and over: have a general idea of where I’d like life to take me, but be flexible knowing most of it will turn out differently than I imagine. Aging has helped me become more readily adaptable. Now in middle age and having swallowed scores of “never’s” from my teens, gads of “not me’s” from my 20s and baskets of “won’t happen’s” from my 30’s, my view of life is pliable and malleable, and becoming more so.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. From “The Painted Drum” LP by Louise Erdrich

There have been times I could not see forward. All ahead looked black and bleak. There was little imagination for the future. I’ve lost people I couldn’t for a time live without, but learned to anyway. Professionally I have been blessed with more success than I would have ever dared imagine when younger, but my work has broken my heart far more than romance ever did.

These days there is more hope within me than I previously have ever known. The storm of youth has subsided and I am enjoying the beauty of the late fall of life. The cold of winter is a page or two back on my life calendar, but I am hopeful to live it well. Within love penetrates me as never before with a depth of joy I could not have appreciated when I was younger. I am grateful for the steadfast belief that the best of my life is ahead and that the greatest period of personal development lies there. My instinct tells me not to worry; those good things will be mine, but only time will tell.

How terribly sad it is
that people are made in such a way
that they get used to something
as extraordinary as living.
Jostein Gaardner

Let Life Dream You

/ James Browning

let-life-dream-you1“Stop Dreaming”. You’re not likely to find those two words in pretty script on some inspirational poster hanging in a CEO’s suburban office. You wouldn’t say those two words to your kids. But what if you were supposed to be doing something more beautiful than you ever could have imagined, something bigger than you ever could have dreamed? What if you only had to let go of your (and your parents’, your culture’s, your religion’s, your everything’s) preconceived notion of success to make room for a life lived truer and deeper? What if you stopped dreaming, let go, and let life dream you?

I dreamed of being a successful singer-songwriter. I dreamed of playing to sold-out arenas and talking to Springsteen on the phone about summer plans. And I went after it. So many people carry the burdens of their ‘if onlys’ and ‘somedays’ when it comes to their dreams; they end up twenty years down the road thinking that if only they hadn’t gotten married, or had the baby, or whatever, they could have gone after their dream and had the life they imagined. I had no ‘if-only’s.’ No excuses, nothing holding me back. I went for it.

I spent over a decade of my life chasing the dream through dirty little clubs, where my feet would stick to the thin pool of beer and vodka residue on the floor. And I chased the dream down the interstate to the next town, passing the littered remains of those who came before me who chased their own dream, caught it, and got what they wanted. And found it wasn’t what they needed.

I know what it’s like, because somewhere out there on that road I caught my dream, too. And once I caught it, I held on fiercely, but it was like holding a fistful of sand: the tighter I closed my fingers, the emptier my hand became. Around that time I got a letter from a woman named Emily, which started me down my own path of letting go of my identity, my self, and what I thought was my dream. I wrote a song with a friend about her letter, and that song evolved into a project that has touched more lives than I could have ever imagined.

Every step of the way, I let go of the dream of being a singer-songwriter, of selling out arenas and making summer plans with Springsteen. I started writing songs for other people to sing, about other people’s stories, which made everything less and less about me at each turn.

And I got out of my own way and began to trust the process, which gave me the most amazing lightness of being. It was as if life started dreaming me, rather than me dreaming about life. Slowly, deeply, beautifully, something bigger started to happen. I had the opportunity to work with some Grammy-winning friends I’d been dreaming of collaborating with for a long time. We wrote songs about other peoples’ deeply moving letters, and have traveled around the world playing the songs their letters inspired.

I can tell you that the world will be no sadder and no less hopeful if you let go of your own dreams. Birthdays will not be cancelled. Why? Because when you let those dreams go, they don’t disappear. They don’t cease to exist, because energy can’t be destroyed… only transferred. Dreams are fluid, ever-changing scenes of hope on a movie screen in your mind, so let them move and dance and be themselves. Let your dreams float out into the ether and find their true home. They may come back to you in a more beautiful way than you ever could have imagined.

When I was 19, I heard a story about an old man on his deathbed. As he took his final breaths, the old man grabbed the hand closest to him and said ‘I have lived my spring, my summer, and my autumn. Now I enter my winter, having never sung my song, because I have spent my seasons stringing and re-stringing my instrument.’

To me, that story is about sacrificing the present for a future that doesn’t exist yet, a future that may never come, when something beautiful could be made right now. The world needs your skill and passion and talent, and it needs you to do the best you can today. The rest will take care of itself. Today is what matters the most, not someday. The old man was waiting on someday, and never got to sing his song. You have your own song to sing. Stop dreaming about life. Let go, let life dream you, and sing. Taken from an article posted on February 12th, 2013 by Alex Woodward http://inspiyr.com/let-life-dream-you/

Thank you for the inspiration Alex. I am deeply grateful for your thoughts that showed up just when I needed them.

It is a risk to live fully.
Yet a much graver risk not to.
Brandon A. Trean

What the World Needs More Of

/ James Browning

 

1

The world has enough beautiful mountains
and meadows, spectacular skies and serene lakes.
It has enough lush forests, flowered fields and sandy beaches.
It has plenty of stars and the promise of a new sunrise and sunset every day.
What the world needs more of, is people to appreciate and enjoy it.
Michael Josephson

A Blue Rose

/ James Browning

blue_roses_3_1400x1050Two thoughts by a favorite young writer living in the Czech Republic:

What if you could pick one day of your life, and everything would stop changing, every day would be similar and comparable to that one day, you’d always have the same people with you?

If you could do that, would you do it?

Would you pick that day and make that choice?

We crave for things to stop changing, we wish that things would never change.

But if we got what we wanted, there are so many things that are better, that we would never, ever know about.

Sure, things would stay the same as that one wonderful day, but then there would be nothing else out there, ever.

So can you remember the very first day when everything really did begin to change?

Is there a thing that can remind you?

Mine is a blue rose, and that’s when everything began to change because that’s the day I began to believe in things I never believed in before; the day I found three blue roses.

Think about your first day of change, can you remember all the new heights you’ve soared since that day?

All the new people?

All the better things and times?

Would you throw all of that time away?

I wouldn’t.

Instead, I want to finally accept all the things that I couldn’t change, which led to me being right here, right now.

Maybe we all carry around inside us one day we wish we could keep forever, something we wished never did change.

It’s time to let go of that day, and soar.
C. JoyBell C.

There have been times I wished for change to slow down or stop. Yet, I know that is not only unhealthy, it’s impossible. To wish for something that can never be is a pure waste of my energy. So instead I gratefully embrace all that comes to me for every happening, person or situation that arrives is uniquely a part of my life.

We can’t be afraid of change.
You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in,
but if you never venture out of it,
you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea.
Holding onto something that is good for you now,
may be the very reason why you don’t have something better.
C. JoyBell C.