self-awareness

Words Of Wisdom Borrowed

/ James Browning

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This world is your best teacher.
There is a lesson in everything.
There is a lesson in each experience.
Learn it and become wise.
Every failure is a stepping stone to success.
Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith.
Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength.
Therefore nil desperandum (never despair).
March forward hero!
Sivananda Saraswati

“Everybody wants to be on the mountaintop, but if you’ll remember, mountaintops are rocky and cold. There is no growth on the top of a mountain. Sure, the view is great, but what’s a view for? A view just gives us a glimpse of our next destination-our next target. But to hit that target, we must come off the mountain, go through the valley, and begin to climb the next slope. It is in the valley that we slog through the lush grass and rich soil, learning and becoming what enables us to summit life’s next peak.” Andy Andrews

I make no profession of being wise; only that I am wiser than before. There has been no gain of wisdom from my casual observations of life. It came only from walking into the fire, letting it burn and scar me then walking out of it with intention, a changed man. Being mostly content with who I have become, it is impossible to damn the blazes of pain and heartache that shaped me. I am grateful for the those flames, especially those that scorched me when I resisted most.

By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second, by imitation, which is easiest;
and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius

“Now” Is ALL There Is

/ James Browning

string_vibrations2A man is as great as the dreams he dreams,
As great as the love he bears;
As great as the values he redeems,
And the happiness he shares.
A man is as great as the thoughts he thinks,
As the worth he has attained;
As the fountains at which his spirit drinks
And the insight he has gained.
A man is as great as the truth he speaks,
As great as the help he gives,
As great as the destiny he seeks,
As great as the life he lives.
C.E. Flynn

The way is forward. There is nothing to be found behind but cinders of days burned already. There is only the fire of today to forge living from. I’m thankful for the certainty of those words. “Now” is ALL there is.

You can’t go back to how things were.
How you thought they were.
All you really have… is now.
Elizabeth Scott

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

Who Am I?

/ James Browning

welcome_to_the_good_life_by_CYWORLDThe following taken from words spoken almost a hundred years ago by twentieth-century Indian Guru Sri Ramana Maharshi is heady stuff and took me a few reads to let it soak it.

Every living being longs to be perpetually happy, without any misery. Since in everyone the highest love is alone felt for oneself, and since happiness alone is the cause of love, in order to attain that happiness, which is one’s real nature and which is experienced daily in the mindless state of deep sleep, it is necessary to know oneself. To achieve that, enquiry in the form ‘Who am I?’ is the foremost means. ‘Who am I?’ The physical body… is not ‘I’. The five sense organs… and the five types of perception known through the senses… are not ‘I’. The five… vital functions such as respiration, are not ‘I’. Even the mind that thinks is not ‘I’. Devoid of sensory knowledge and activity, even this [state] is not ‘I’. After negating all of the above as ‘not I, not I’, the knowledge that alone remains is itself ‘I’. The Self, one’s real nature, alone exists and is real.

What I end up with in boiling down the Guru’s line of thinking is: when everything I think, feel or can do is stripped away, it is there “I” am to be found. It is only then when I am in touch with the essence of myself can I be truly happy. I get it and am grateful for light into my understanding. It is in the letting go; letting go of everything, where “I” am to be discovered.

We carry within us
the wonders we seek
without us.
Eric Butterworth

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

Simply This Thing, and Then the Next

/ James Browning

fragile_as_we_are_by_nelleke-d5dqyfsIf 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. Lilly Ames-Light

A hard learned, greatly meaningful lesson of my life has been nothing stays the same; given time every thing changes. Impermanence is the only constant that life offers. My attitude toward living is the fountain of richness of for my existence. Embracing living as it comes with as little consternation as possible is the key to my happiness. “It’s all good, even when it is bad”. I am grateful.

Life is perhaps after all simply this thing, and then the next.
We are all of us improvising. We find a careful balance
only to discover that gravity or stasis or love or dismay or illness
or some other force suddenly tows us in an unexpected direction.
We wake up to find that we have changed abruptly in a way
that is peculiar and inexplicable. We are constantly adjusting,
making it up, feeling our way forward, figuring out how to be
and where to go next. We work it out, how to be happy,
but sooner or later comes a change-sometimes something small,
sometimes everything at once, and we have to start over again,
feeling our way back to a provisional state of contentment.
Anne Giardini

If You Don’t Love What You Do…

/ James Browning

berlin1

I had been busy deafening my parents for years by creating high-pitched squawking melodies on my “recorder”, the closest thing we had to a wood instrument at home. On band day I was so excited to finally get to see and hold a genuine, shiny flute in my 10-year-old hands.

I picked it up, my eyes gleaming, and held it to my lips. “Pfffffffffffffffffffft.” Nothing. I tried again, blowing into it like the 12-year-old owner of the flute had showed me. Again, nothing but a music-less “Pfffffffft.” I couldn’t believe it. My heart-felt heavy in my chest, and tears pricked at my eyes. I gave up, and handed her back her flute. Next, I decided to try the clarinet. It wasn’t the flute, and I wasn’t a huge fan, but at least it was still in the part of the orchestra that got the pretty melodies. “Honk-screech!”

Feeling even worse, I made my way to the back of the room where the brass instruments were. Someone handed me a French Horn. I held it to my lips, and out came a full, rich sound totally recognizable as belonging to a musical instrument. I shrugged, and wrote down “French Horn” next to my name, as by default this was obviously my instrument.

I played the French Horn for five years, including the first couple of years of junior high school. I hated the thing. I never got the good parts of any musical piece. In my second year of junior high school, my apparent “rare talent” for this instrument got the attention of a professional French Horn player in the city. He even offered me free private lessons after school. (It really was so kind of him to do that, I hope he never reads this). The plan was that I’d play in a major youth orchestra, and eventually play professionally.

I don’t remember how, but somehow I managed to quit the darn thing, despite everyone’s excitement about my supposed talent. I didn’t get much respite though, as fairly soon after I got sucked into the vortex of being a “gifted student in the Sciences”. I was finally spit out by the system at the age of 28. By then, I was not surprisingly a suicidally depressed Emergency Medicine resident. Same phenomenon, different vocation.

People don’t mean any harm by identifying talent in kids and giving them opportunities to develop that talent. If the child actually enjoys the activity, this is a fantastic thing. A friend of mine in junior high was discovered by a professional ballet company, and within weeks accepted an offer of a full scholarship at the best ballet school in the country. She dances professionally today at a well-respected company. But she loves ballet – this is the difference.

I so wish that some grown-up had encouraged me to choose the musical instrument that I loved passionately, along with the reassurance that I could learn how to play it. I wish that someone had seen past my “gift for science” and paid equal attention to how much I loved my creative writing classes.

You can only go so far on talent alone. If you’re good at something, it gets noticed and valued by others, and it certainly opens doors. It can generate much-needed income, which can be important. Yet when it comes to truly fulfilling your potential and knowing the joy of doing what you were made to do, the only thing that will give you that experience is what you love.

I fully appreciate that you can’t always do what you want. Economic realities are what they are, and it would be foolish for many people to abandon the job that pays the bills in order to pursue their passion. Then again, there are plenty of people who have done just that, and have done very well.

Regardless, if you’re honest with yourself about what your true passion is, you owe it to yourself to pursue it in some form, even if you never quit your day job and you never earn a penny doing what you love. The key is to do what you love, somehow. From “Being Good at Something Doesn’t Mean You Should Be Doing It” by Dr. Susan Biali, M.D. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/prescriptions-life/201203/being-good-something-doesn-t-mean-you-should-be-doing-it

And so it is with great gratitude within the last year I discovered what I have long done as a profession was never what I truly loved, but instead what I chose to make money doing. The avocation has treated me well, but is far from the work I want this life to leave behind. This is the year I change direction and follow my dreams. For the inspiration and new courage to try something new, I am thankful.

Until a person can say deeply and honestly,
“I am what I am today because of the choices
I made yesterday,” that person cannot say,
“I choose otherwise.”
Stephen R. Covey

Fullness Of Self

/ James Browning

stand-aloneFeeling alone while with another is loneliness at its worst. In those times something was not right outside of me, but also very much within. In every case a portion of the incompleteness was from being with the wrong person while the one I yearned for was far away. Sometime the “other one” was fabrication hope conjured in my imagination. And right there is a clue to what was going on then.

My loneliness for a long while was actually feeling lonely for “me”. Having become so well-practiced at running from myself it took an extended period of heightened loneliness to see that I could never be content with anyone until I was at peace with myself.

Then came the years of isolating and keeping others at a distance; a sentence of sorts I judged myself needy of. The tonic served to be a good cure in the long run. However there was an unhealthy aspect that self-imposed sentence. In time I came to see I was punishing myself for the pain I had caused others and came to self-forgiveness that healed me.

That was then, and this is now. The lonely depths I experienced were the most difficult days I have experienced. I spent my time in the shadowed valley of loneliness and learned well that it was an emptiness within that ailed me most. Being able to feel loneliness has not completely left me, but now I have a healthy strength to bear it when it comes to call on the more rare occasions it appears. Today within I am whole. I love who I am, imperfections and all (the majority of the time at least!).

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way. From “White Oleander” by Janet Finch

Only in recent years was I even capable of loving as a man should be able to love. My experience in arriving here, allows me able to care with a depth that would be beyond what most might know. Ironically that gift came from great loneliness. I am grateful for the fullness of self I feel today and grateful for the pain that taught me how to be that way.

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.
From “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert

Like Friction On the Strings

/ James Browning

gmajphotoWhen life seems to have possibility, the present has so much more meaning. I know that psychologists and philosophers say the present moment being lived in is where I should be centered. For the most part I am. However, it’s deeply meaningful how much accepting the real possibilities of life ahead brightens today. The point is not to get stuck there too far ahead of myself.

Certainly to spend too much time daydreaming moves me out of the present and falling head first into “future tripping”. Yet, thinking about what might be and the many branches life might take helps me to make good choices when I come to forks in the road.

Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that’s why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that’s why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living. Alysha Speer

Unlike getting lost driving when one can do a u-turn and get back on the intended course, life is lived forward only. The best I can do if a bad choice is made is take a detour and attempt to get back headed in the direction I first intended; or pick a new heading. Sometimes getting lost is how I have discovered myself.  Many of the greatest discoveries about myself have come from a period outside of my comfort zone when I was completely lost and even out of control.

“You’re reaching out
And no one hears you cry
You’re freaking out again
‘Cause all your fears
Remind you another dream has come undone
You feel so small and lost like you’re the only one
You wanna scream ’cause you’re
Desperate
You want somebody, just anybody
To lay their hands on your soul tonight
You want a reason to keep believin’
That someday you’re gonna see the light
You’re in the dark
There’s no one left to call
And sleep’s your only friend
Well even sleep
Can’t hide you from all those tears
And all the pain and all the days
You wasted pushin’ them away
It’s your life, it’s time you face it ”
― David Archuleta

Feeling desperate enough to take a pointed look at my behavior has brought great rewards. The lessons were learned not because I wanted to. There simply was no other choice. With one way out it’s easy to choose that direction. When discomfort and sadness have been strong enough is when I stepped up to face my wrong turns and mistakes.

I am grateful for the grief and sadness of my life for within has been my most prolific teacher. And there I have also gotten the clearest look forward at life’s possibilities. Discomfort has a way of clearing one’s “windshield” forward.

Pain is the greatest of teachers. It makes me look up from wallowing in my own junk. Like friction on the strings toughens a guitar player’s finger tips, I have been made strong.

If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant,
or weak, return to yourself, to who you are,
here and now and when you get there,
you will discover yourself,
like a lotus flower in full bloom,
even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.
From “The Secret Life Of Water” by Masaru Emoto

Getting Back Up

/ James Browning

There comes a time

Living is not nearly as complicated as I frequently have made it to be. Once the self-created gray began to clear my true needs, wants and desires were no longer obscured. Life is simple. It really is. It’s just very, very difficult at times. Acceptance of that simplicity and coming to know “love is all that really matters” have been the largest two nuggets of wisdom that have come my way. Never more do I frequently make life complicated in ways it is not. I live. I love and am loved. I am happy. I am grateful.

Life is simple.
Everything happens for you,
not to you.
Everything happens
at exactly the right moment,
neither too soon nor too late.
You don’t have to like it…
it’s just easier if you do.
Byron Katie