self-awareness

Stored, But Not Being Used

/ James Browning

wisdom

There was just not enough time early this morning to write this blog and still make an important meeting at work. So here I sit eating at my desk and writing during my lunch break.

Before leaving for work, I went into my archive and copied some sayings and quotes onto a flash drive thinking they’d be good inspiration later for GMG. When I brought up the saved list during lunch I was struck by how meaningful the first six felt while reading them. I decided those half-dozen jewels of experience and insight would be good for the blog today and good for me as well. Here we go:

Be wise enough not to be reckless, but brave enough to take great risks. Frank Warren

 Note to self: Take more calculated risks

You and your purpose in life are the same thing. Your purpose is to be you. George Alexiou

 Note to self: Be true to myself.

Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life-and-death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems. J. Jackson Brown Jr.

 Note to self: Lighten up!

When you are unsure about the future, keep doing what is in front of you with all your heart and with love, and what is meant for you will find you. Guru Mayi Chidvilasananda

 Note to self: One step at a time.

You can’t change the wind but you can set your sails. Billie Joe Armstrong

 Note to self: Adapt and keep going.

 I am struck by how much more the nuggets above mean when I slow down and absorb their meaning. This morning I was in a rush and  little, if any, of the wisdom rubbed off on me. Now is a different story.  So much knowledge I put away mentally is like that: stored but not being used.   I am reminded that life is grandly waiting for my arrival. It is happening at this moment and no other time. I am grateful for how much better I feel for being yanked back to the “now”.

Your mind can be either your prison or your palace.
What you make it is yours to decide.
Bernard Kelvin Clive

Note to self: Choose thoughts with intention.

What I Think, I Become

/ James Browning

Sun_after_rain_by_Ritsuka_kawaiMy life is living proof that changing the focus of thoughts can change a life. Worry and compulsion used to be stirred into my thinking most of the time which kept me constantly dealing with a brooding outlook on life. While not immune to feeling such things today, my ‘habit’, even addiction if you will, to negative thinking is no longer.

Buddha said it succinctly, “The mind is everything. What you think you become”.

For me it is all about what I pay attention to. If I keep “pulling the scabs” off the past, wounds never heal. If I spend too much time lamenting about how the future will turn out, what I hope for never arrives because my thinking crowds out its possibility.

Controlling my thoughts fully is impossible. Certainly I slip into old ways of thinking regularly, but usually catch myself before being there for long. At first, breaking my habit/addiction to negative thinking was damned hard; I was hooked on feeling bad. Success at reflecting away some of my thoughts would come for only a short while before slipping back into thoughts of fear, doom and gloom. I kept trying and slowly my success grew at not getting stuck.

If we tune-in on thoughts of failure, illness, discouragement, despair and hate, the charts of our lives will take a sharp downward course.

If we tune-in on thoughts of victory, love, hope and faith, our lives will become larger, finer, more worth while.

If we tune-in on the surface things that break like bubbles and leave us nothing, our lives will be shallow and empty.

If we tune-in on the deeper things, eternal principles of plain living and high thinking, the riches which men have put into immortal literature, art and music, then entire personalities will grow and expand.

If we permit ourselves to become selfish and cold toward others, the springs of love and sentiment will dry up leaving us but the husks of life.

If, on the other hand, we are kind and thoughtful and considerate of others; if we strive always to pluck a thorn and plant a flower wherever we think a flower will grow, riches more valuable than much fine gold will enter our lives.

Saint and sinner, prince and pauper, the things men tune-in on become a part of them and make them what they are. By Lilly Ames-Light

Ups and downs are just as much a part of my life as for anyone else, but my mood swings don’t tear me down anymore. Just like rain only lasts for a time, dark days and dark thoughts pass away as well. When comparing life to 15 years ago, I have friends who refer to me as the “old one” and the “new one”. My evolution has been that pronounced. I am grateful!

Rules for Self Discovery:
1. What we want most;
2. What we think about most;
3. How we use our money;
4. What we do with our leisure time;
5. The company we enjoy;
6. Who and what we admire;
7. What we laugh at.
A.W. Tozer

Stuck In the Labyrinth

/ James Browning

pfYou realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past…
From “Survivor” by Chuck Palahniuk

Who am I now?

Who have I been?

Who will I become?

Those “who” questions rattle around my psyche on a regular basis although life experience has taught me it is the first one that matters most. “Who I have been” is a far distant second and the future (“Who will I become?”) is way, way, way back in third place. If I do the “now” part well the past relatively quickly begins to be something I am mostly satisfied with and my future unfolds primarily in a manner I can be content with. While who I am “now” rests on a foundation of my past, the present is all I have any control over.

Life has a way of going in circles. Ideally, it would be a straight path forward––we’d always know where we were going, we’d always be able to move on and leave everything else behind. There would be nothing but the present and the future. Instead, we always find ourselves where we started. When we try to move ahead, we end up taking a step back. We carry everything with us, the weight exhausting us until we want to collapse and give up.

We forget things we try to remember. We remember things we’d rather forget. The most frightening thing about memory is that it leaves no choice. It has mastered an incomprehensible art of forgetting. It erases, it smudges, it fills in blank spaces with details that don’t exist.

But however we remember it––or choose to remember it––the past is the foundation that holds our lives in place. Without its support, we’d have nothing for guidance. We spend so much time focused on what lies ahead, when what has fallen behind is just as important. What defines us isn’t where we’re going, but where we’ve been. Although there are places and people we will never see again, and although we move on and let them go, they remain a part of who we are.

There are things that will never change, things we will carry along with us always. But as we venture into the murky future, we must find our strength by learning to leave things behind. Brigid Gorry-Hines

Being in the “now” is a process of on-going wrestling I have to still do mentally; always will. However, the more I work at it the more successful I become at winning each bout. That sure beats how I once spent most of my life as John Green described it in “Looking For Alaska”; You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

Most of the time I like living in the present and have been amazed how much better the future turns out when I do. I am grateful to understand my life tomorrow is being built by what I think and do today!

The past is a ghost,
the future a dream
and all we ever have is now.
Bill Cosby

Why the Sadness Passes

/ James Browning

the_stillness_of_march_by_nelleke-d5h14q9It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living.

Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us;
because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us;
because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.

That is why the sadness passes:
the new presence inside us,
the presence that has been added,
has entered our heart,
has gone into its innermost chamber
and is no longer even there;
is already in our bloodstream.
And we don’t know what it was.

We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened,
yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes.

We can’t say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens.

And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad:
because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside.

The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate. Rainer Maria Rilke

Rising whole and feeling well after a few days of moderate depression, I can find gratitude for those few days of monochrome life. Learning to use such times as a way of contrast to better days has greatly enhanced the good. And so today with much gratefulness I go into my day feeling contented, happy and a little stronger from enduring another little storm.

If you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger,
and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places,
then I am afraid that for you the road will be long and brown and barren,
and you will have trouble finding the light.
But if you DO believe, then you already know all about magic.
From “Liesl & Po” by Lauren Oliver

Like Quicksand

/ James Browning

5633485384_289d9cd89e_zDepression…

removes the color from the colorful…

reduces the difference between day and night…

crowds out self-esteem with self-loathing…

takes away the pleasing taste from everything…

creates a sense of being UN-loveable…

brings all past mistakes to present-moment…

shades life with a shadow without a sun…

invents pain and hides joy…

makes effort seem meaningless…

concocts a need to sleep that never results in rest…

takes away desire to work, create or achieve…

cuts one off from other people…

detaches love and happiness…

amplifies grief and sadness far beyond reality…

scorches the ability to love and feel love…

produces a state of caring about little to nothing…

generates self-told lies that are believed…

shapes a good person into believing they are bad…

and on and on and on and on…

Depression is a liar, a thief, a distorter, a con man, a fake, a fraud, a pretender, a robber, an imposter, a hypocrite, a crook, a phony, a sham, a cheat, a bandit, a charlatan, a deceiver, a trickster, a swindler, a rogue, a double-dealer, a villain and false in every sense, thought and feeling.

These are the sort of truths I remind myself when cycling depression comes to call on me for a few days every month or two (as it has this weekend). With such thoughts at the forefront, I am able to see the big shadow of feeling depressed is being caused by something small; like a mouse casts a giant shadow when light is cast at a particular angle. No longer do I resist depression for it is like quicksand; the more resistance given, the deeper I will sink.

So I will let my depression pass like a strong wind through a tree, knowing it will die out in a few days. Each episode makes me stronger now like a tree’s roots are made stronger by its standing up to storm after storm. I am grateful beyond words for my understanding today of depression that usually makes it little more than emotional indigestion; ’twas not that way for so very long.

One in six people suffer depression
or a chronic anxiety disorder.
These are not the worried well
but those in severe mental pain
with conditions crippling enough
prevent them living normal lives.
Polly Toynbee

Greet Yourself Arriving

/ James Browning

see myself arrivingLived in thirteen states and a foreign country.
Two marriages and numerous failed relationships.
Lots of jobs. Work, work, work.
Learned to fly. Bought an airplane.
Became a professional photographer.
Success and money.
Accomplishment created more emptiness
Often learned little from failure.
Going and going not getting anywhere.
Never satisfied. Always wanting more.
… et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

When first looking at that list of ten things it does not seem like such a short inventory should take up as much space as they have during the last thirty years. Of course there was more, but in majority those ten things are where I spent most of my time. Searching and searching but not knowing exactly what I was searching for.. Then a few years ago my focus began to be clearer. Slowly, so painfully slow, a form took shape. I was surprised  when I finally saw what I had been searching for. It was me…. I had been looking outside myself for what was inside all along

“Love After Love”

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott

Uncomplicated and plainly said; today I am grateful for “me”.

Whether I fail or succeed
shall be no man’s doing but my own.
I am the force.
Elaine Maxwell

Be Led By Your Dreams

/ James Browning

400_1209788157_wsredsunset1024x768 In my Internet Exploder bookmarks I found a post saved about a year ago titled “12 Things You Should Be Able to Say About Yourself” from a blog called “Mark and Angel Hack Life” ago http://www.marcandangel.com/2012/04/26/you-should-be-able-to-say-about-yourself/ (Thanks M&A for the inspiration. I will be a regular visitor to your blog from now on!)

Before I filed the blog away the material got only a tertiary scan, but today’s look included a good read of the twelve things to aspire to. Some I am doing good at; others need work. However, I am especially proud of my current state with number 1 and number 5.

1. I am following my heart and intuition.

Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams. Live the life you want to live. Be the person you want to remember years from now. Make decisions and act on them. Make mistakes, fall and try again. Even if you fall a thousand times, at least you won’t have to wonder what could have been. At least you will know in your heart that you gave your dreams your best shot.

Each of us has a fire in our hearts burning for something. It’s our responsibility in life to find it and keep it lit. This is your life, and it’s a short one. Don’t let others extinguish your flame. Try what you want to try. Go where you want to go. Follow your own intuition. Dream with your eyes open until you know exactly what it looks like. Then do at least one thing every day to make it a reality.

And as you strive to achieve your goals, you can count on there being some fairly substantial disappointments along the way. Don’t get discouraged, the road to your dreams may not be an easy one. Think of these disappointments as challenges – tests of persistence and courage. At the end of the road, more often than not, we regret what we didn’t do far more than what we did.

5. I am growing in to the best version of me.

Judy Garland once said, “Always be a first-rate version of yourself instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” Live by this statement. There is no such thing as living in someone else’s shoes. The only shoes you can occupy are your own. If you aren’t being yourself, you aren’t truly living – you’re merely existing.

Remember, trying to be anyone else is a waste of the person you are. Embrace that individual inside you that has ideas, strengths and beauty like no one else. Be the person you know yourself to be – the best version of you – on your terms. Improve continuously, take care of your body and health, and surround yourself with positivity. Become the best version of you.

In #1 “Be led by your dreams” is especially meaningful to me now. Before my 50’s I mostly put others before me, rightly so in some cases, but misguided in others. Now at times I feel like I just woke up and started living my own life after sleepwalking in a dream (not necessarily always the good kind) for most of my adult life.  I am leaving my profession this year to follow my dream of travel and writing. There will need to be income of some sort down the road, but I am convinced it is waiting for me. I only need to put my feet on the path forward and believe. The rest will come.

“..trying to be anyone else is a waste of the person you are.” After a myriad of failed attempts to be like others, eventually I became too tired to try. Through that exhaustion, as much as anything else, I began to make peace with who I actually am. Frankly, today I just don’t care a whole lot about what others think of me. Of course, I’d prefer it be good, but at a deep level it just does not matter much. Reaching that point is some of the best “growing up” I have done. Yea for me (as I pat myself on the back unabashedly). I am grateful to who I am… no more; no less.

Your perceptions are derived from your feelings
and your ability to be yourself, to own
and trust yourself, and to say what you feel,
even when it may be diametrically opposed
to everyone else’s opinion.
You may be called the Devil Incarnate.
You may feel like cow pies are being thrown at you.
Sometimes that is part of being true to yourself.
Barbara Marciniak

The Crumbling Away of Untruth

/ James Browning

tracks and sunset_osage city_018A shortage of happiness I hear talked about frequently but I’ve never heard “there is not enough disappointment in my life”. Those words haven’t fallen from my lips either, yet I know disappointment has been a good teacher. Things not turning out the way I thought has often created a pathway to something better. Dealing with being disappointed helped clear away misplaced beliefs, illusions, misconceptions and self-told lies.

Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretence. Adyashanti

Most people say the opposite of happiness is sadness. However, I believe feeling empty is the reverse of being happy. It is rare I have ever endured sadness that it was not connected to a happiness I had known. Being disappointed may have made me sad, but it never left me empty.

Happiness and sadness are states of feeling. Sadness isn’t in any way less than happy. Their opposite is not feeling at all. We aren’t here to live in a state of nothingness, in apathy, observing life go by. We are here to create something and forge personal relationships. Ara Bedrossian

Once upon a time I feared unhappiness most, followed closely by disappointment. I have come to see it was emptiness where my darkest times were spent. Those were the times when I felt as if I fit no where or with anyone and lacked purpose or direction. Climbing out of those pits of emptiness, brought renewed clarity about what I really wanted and didn’t want.

Fear is the natural reaction that brings us closer to the truth. Don’t fight the pain, let yourself feel it, accept it, love it. Don’t judge your fear, face it. Emotions come and go like trains at a busy station. You don’t have to get on them. You can acknowledge them without judgment and let them move on. Pema Chodron

There is a Chinese proverb that says you can’t keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair. I am grateful for that little bit of wisdom learned the hard way which has taught me so much.

God makes the life fertile by disappointments,
as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.
Henry Ward Beecher

Just Do It!

/ James Browning

elephantThere are nineteen weeks remaining until I retire from a profession I have been engaged in for forty years. There is certainty I will be busier then than now, but with what I specifically want to do. For example, there’s extended travel, a book to finish and publish, far away friends to visit, work to do on my home, several hundred books to read and so much more. It has been my tendency to be busier in my personal life than while working and expect that to accelerate. The excitement that soon my time will be all mine makes me smile every time I think of it.

If you can do it, should do it, and want to do it, what are you waiting for? Many things in life that we excuse or misplace blame for are not created by what we do but by what we fail to do. Maybe we just procrastinate and just don’t get around to action. Or maybe it’s just a thought, something that we think would be nice to do, but we just aren’t serious about it.

Some possible answers come from my own experience. One excuse is that we just can’t seem to find the time. That won’t wash. Whatever we do in life, we have found or made time for. Final choices are matters of priority, and sometimes we don’t prioritize well.

Fear is an obvious cause of inaction.
Fear of failure.
Fear of being different or out-of-step.
Fear of rejection.
Even fear of success.
Fear of failure arises from self-doubt. We may think we don’t know enough, don’t have enough time or energy, or lack ability, resources, and help. The cure for such fear is to learn what is needed, make the time, pump ourselves up emotionally so we will have the energy, hone our relevant skill set, and hustle for resources and help. These things can be demanding. It is no wonder there are so many things we can, should, and want to do but don’t do.

All our life, beginning with school, we are conditioned to consider failure as a bad thing. But failure is often a good, even necessary, thing. The ratio between failures and successes for any given person is rather stable. Thus, if you want more successes, you need to make more failures. Even the corporate world recognizes this principle, and the most innovative companies practice it. Jeff Dyer, in his book The Innovator’s DNA, says the key to business success is to “fail often, fail fast, fail cheap.” It’s O.K.. to fail, as long as you learn from it. Our mantra should be: “Keep tweaking until it works.” This is exactly how Edison invented the light bulb. Most other inventors and creative people in general have operated with the same mantra. Taken from the article “Just Do It” by Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, William Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D.  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201303/just-do-it-0

“Just do it” is the course I have set for myself knowing regrets for most people are not what they did with their life, but what they did not do. It’s time to reach high. My most exciting, enriching and creative period has already begun. I am grateful for my life!

Far better it is to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs,
even though checkered by failure,
than to take rank with those poor spirits
who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the gray twilight
that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Who I Am

/ James Browning

fear of not being good enoughI swear…

That my problems and failures will not stop me, nor will they dictate who I am.

That I will continue to be my own person.

That life is too short, and I will live every day as the best person I can be.

That I will grow and that I will change.

That I will smile and hold my head high.

That this is a new start and a new day.

That I will allow myself to cry or sit by myself when I need to.

That I will find things to really smile about.

From “Happyface” by Stephen Emond

If I’m among men who don’t agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself. A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man acts honestly, not deceptively. Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it’s absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish. Irvin D. Yalom

Three (2 above, 1 below) reminders to be authentically myself begin my day with heightened awareness that much of what I perceive about myself is either not true or relatively worthless to begin with. So many little stories I have spun about me, both from what others have said and from the mental ramblings of a man with more than his share of insecurities. The person I am is not that difficult to see. All I have to is slow down my thinking and just let myself be. Who I am has been there all along. I only need to step out of the fog to see it. I am grateful for a little self-told guidance this morning. It will serve me well today.

You must be true to yourself.
Strong enough to be true to yourself.
Brave enough to be strong enough
to be true to yourself.
Wise enough to be brave enough,
to be strong enough
to shape yourself
from what you actually are.
Sylvia Ashton-Warner