self-awareness

Jumping To Conclusions

/ James Browning

Dont-Judge-a-Book-By-Its-CoverRecently I caught myself red-handed with a large case of mistaken impression. My first thoughts about someone turned out to be negative for no reason or fact. The judge and jury in my mind went to work and jumped to a completely wrong conclusion. Simply I added 2 plus 2 and came up with a total of 13. Wrong… wrong!

Jumping to conclusions is a type of negative thinking pattern, known as cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are habitual and faulty ways of thinking that are common among people who struggle with depression and anxiety. Theories of cognitive therapy claim that we are what we think we are. When a person is jumping to conclusions, they are drawing negative conclusions with little or no evidence to their assumptions.

Jumping to conclusions can occur in two ways: mind-reading and fortune-telling. When a person is “mind-reading” they are assuming that others are negatively evaluating them or have bad intentions for them. When a person is “fortune-telling,” they are predicting a negative future outcome or deciding that situations will turn out for the worst before the situation has even occurred. http://panicdisorder.about.com/od/livingwithpd/tp/Jumping-To-Conclusions.htm

There’s a song that says “…it ain’t necessarily so,” and it certainly isn’t. How often we accept someone’s casual remarks as fact. Even appearances can be misleading. But knowing this, we still have a tendency to take a threat and build a yard of cloth.

It makes all the different in the world what we believe. To simply accept an opinion, even our own when hastily formed indicates a lack of sound thought.

We sometimes have the failing of believing everything we hear. But it is far wiser to know, with certainty, the facts about a teaching by looking at its followers.

The eyes and ears of our hearts and spirits are often more accurate in determining right from wrong than we can expect from normal hearing and seeing. From the book “Think On These Things” by Joyce Sequichie Hifler

A simple case of judging a book by its cover; of jumping to conclusions, then realizing it was a wake up call. The message received was to remain a humble student of life. No matter how wise I become I am still very much human and possibly fallible at every turn. Seeking knowledge and working to be a better person, will never bring anything even close to perfection. Sometimes I become a little too self-impressed. I am grateful for the reminder from the school of life.

Good judgment comes from bad experience.
Unfortunately,
most of that comes from bad judgment.
Tara Daniels

Celebrate Your Differentness

/ James Browning

Odd Man out series - Reasoning Questions and AnswersIf you have been beat down long enough, believing in yourself can seem impossible. When you have had people in your life who do not lift you up, you pretty much take over for them when they are not there. You proceed to discount your skills and abilities based on what other people have said. You are doing a great disservice to yourself and giving your power to someone else. To reach your goals in this life, believing in yourself is extremely important if you want to get anywhere. Those assumptions about who you are become a way of life. You will stay stuck in these patterns until you change the way you think.

Here are some simple ways to start learning how to believe in you:

1) Try Even When You Still Think You Can’t Do It
Because you have a pattern of not believing in yourself, this will take a little work. Make a vow to yourself today that you will try your best at any opportunity that comes your way. It does not matter if you have fallen on your face before or whether you think it’s even possible. The important thing is to pledge to yourself that you will try no matter what the outcome may be. The worst thing to do to yourself is to assume you can’t do it before even trying. Tell yourself right now that any effort to do better is not a waste of your precious time.

2) Establish Evidence For The Assumptions
Get some paper and start a list. List every one of those things you really believe about yourself and your abilities or the lack of them. List them whether they are large or small. Once you have that list go through each assumption and examine it. Ask yourself, “Is this true? What is the proof?” Then go and do whatever it is you feel you cannot. It does not matter if you do it better than anyone else. It only matters that you DO.

3) Recognize The Possibilities
A constant onslaught of self-defeating assumptions obviously puts you in the place of believing you cannot succeed. This goes back to the people in your life who have impressed their own beliefs on you. A silly bunch of girls in high school told you that you were fat and no one would ever want you. Guess what you have been doing since? Saying that same self-defeating comment to yourself. It is time to push beyond what you believe are your capabilities. This is a scary thought. It also will be a step in the direction of finding the belief in you. The assumptions you have about yourself may not be true. You have simply accepted these assumptions as truth without proof. Consider all the possibilities of each situation. Challenge the assumptions and have an open mind to the possibility that you could be wrong!

With every success, whether large or small, the belief in yourself will grow. That will be the push you need to keep stepping outside your comfort zone and attain the accomplishments you truly deserve. Robin Skeen http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/How_To_Believe_In_Yourself.html

As I read over Ms. Skeen’s article this morning, the aspects of it seemed so simple; easy even. At almost whiplash speed, my psyche responded “that’s not how it used to be!”. I am reminded there were many years when I was awful at disputing the BS I told myself about me. Now on the other side of such thinking (mostly anyway) it is shocking how stuck I was for so very long.

It’s said that if you speak something aloud for thirty days in a row you will begin to believe it. Scoff if you wish, but it’s true. The disbelieving judge within was in fact the source of the trouble I had seeing all the good in me. Once I began to argue for myself against my thinking, things began to change; slowly at first but rapidly over time. The majority I used to think about me turned out to be false and untrue. My gratitude abounds for knowing that now.

If you celebrate your differentness, the world will, too.
It believes exactly what you tell it…
through the words you use to describe yourself,
the actions you take to care for yourself,
and the choices you make to express yourself.
Tell the world you are one-of-a-kind creation
who came here to experience wonder and spread joy.
Expect to be accommodated.
Victoria Moran

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.

Wisdom Accumulated Slowly

/ James Browning

jamesappleton04Once upon a time living felt mostly like an endless obligation to have a place to live, a car to drive, food to eat, money to spend and to take care of others. Although it often appears a break through insight comes quickly, usually it is actually wisdom accumulated slowly but fully realized in a moment. How true my perspective of being alive matches that process. From a life of obligated responsibility, to a true gift realized has been my path.

What I am obligated to has not changed much. But existance is far more than an endless list of “have to’s”. Instead I am pulled forward by the possibilities of life, for as long as I live they are endless. Thankfully, gone are those days when living felt mostly like a burden.

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life-like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you.
I will love you, again.
“The Thing Is” by Ellen Bass
From book ” From The Courage to Heal”

Today I love my life In a deeper way I never knew until recent years. There is something about accepting mortality that makes living far more valuable. Being old enough to have witnessed the cycle of life from birth to death many times takes away youth’s fantasy of living forever. Those words are written not with morbidly shaped thoughts, but rather with a perspective shaded with realness that makes being alive all the more precious. For every second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year and decade of my days, gratitude is deeply resident within.

You’ve got to take the good with the bad,
smile with the sad, love what you’ve got,
and remember what you had.
Always forgive, but never forget.
Learn from mistakes, but never regret.
Unknown

A Living, Not a Life

/ James Browning

4535868510_a1bdaf6707What is work? According to the dictionary: activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something; job; employment; a trade, profession; labor, task, or duty that is one’s accustomed means of livelihood.

Yep. That’s where I will be heading shortly this morning: off to work to earn my paycheck. But later this year I will leave the profession I have long grown tired of and jump off into the unknown. Each thought of doing more of I really want to do with less money, I grow increasingly excited. Fifteen years ago I would have thought that was craziness. Today I know the scorecard of life is NOT about money, what job is held nor how much one works, but instead about how much one lives.

We’re ambivalent about work because in our capitalist system it means work-for-pay (wage-labor), not for its own sake. It is what philosophers call an instrumental good, something valuable not in itself but for what we can use it to achieve. For most of us, a paying job is still utterly essential — as masses of unemployed people know all too well. But in our economic system, most of us inevitably see our work as a means to something else: it makes a living, but it doesn’t make a life. Gary Gutting, New York Times

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway. Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself. Adrian Tan

When I weigh things out I don’t believe I wasted the majority of my life working. The way forward was blessed with a rewarding profession that enhanced my existence to a great degree. Over time though, it became just a job; something I did because I thought I was required to do. There were true responsibilities of paying bills, saving, helping my son get the education he wanted and supporting a couple of ex-wives. Those are behind me.

Eventually I will need to generate income to augment my savings, but what I do will be something I truly want to do that does not rob me of too much time. What a rare advantage to have the room to sort out what that might be (actually I believe if I keep an open mind and my awareness sharp it will appear in my path). I’m approaching a new personal frontier that is both stimulating and forbidding. It’s the new and uncertain feelings that I am the most grateful for. They make me feel fully alive!

Work without love is slavery.
Mother Teresa

For Seekers and Searchers

/ James Browning

JDDavis-letting-go-water-efict-gifFor a long while long I have labeled myself a “seeker” and a “searcher”. That comes from an earnest desire to garner more wisdom, to understand and embrace life more fully and to grow my level of contentment and happiness. I think I picked the right labels. How do dictionaries define Seeker or Searcher?

a person who inquires;
 one who looks for truth;
 someone who makes a thorough examination or investigation;
 those who look carefully in order to find something;
 a person who intentionally comes to know

Within my seeking and searching here’s a few random bits of wisdom that have I have assimilated,  backed up by a quote:

Living well takes consistent practice.
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. Henry David Thoreau

You are the fix to whatever bothers you.
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. Buddha

There is only now. Nothing else.
What matters is to live in the present, live now, for every moment is now. It is your thoughts and acts of the moment that create your future. The outline of your future path already exists, for you created its pattern by your past. Sai Baba

Your difficulties are often your greatest teachers.
Adversity is the first path to truth. Lord Byron

If you keep going you’ll find the answer.
Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley. Theodore Roethke

The easy way is usually a trap.
The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs. John Dewey

Experience is the only truth humans readily accept. No matter how often we are told or reminded we don’t accept a fact as 3-dimensional until we have first-hand experience.  I am grateful for the life lessons learned without having to repeat learning them a dozen times.  And for the ones I have yet to learn, I will keep trying until they sink in.

If you find a path with no obstacles,
it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.
Frank A. Clark

Why Does Criticism Bother Us?

/ James Browning

!!~~!! morning-fogBenjamin Disraeli once wrote, “How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.” That thought was illustrated clearly to me a few days ago. Someone I know, but not particularly well, jokingly said something like “you drive me crazy with all your stuff about optimism, gratitude and hope for the future. I think you make a lot of it up.”

He saw the look on my face and think that’s why he followed up “Don’t worry about it. I’m just kidding.” It had never occurred to me that it was even possible to fake happiness successfully and I was a bit put off by the comment. My reply was along the lines “think whatever you want. Its your loss if you don’t believe in such things”.

The comment continued to take up more space in my thoughts than it should have for a couple of days. I found myself randomly quizzing my psyche asking if I was pretending or imagining the lightness of being that I feel most of the time. The response has been the same each time the questioning surfaced. What echoed back was, “you know it’s all true. You feel it too strongly deep down for it not to be the real.”

It’s idiotic how a random casual comment by another person can sporadically occupy a lot of room in a another person’s internal space. Now being past giving any credence to the comment, still I find a curiosity about why it bothered me at all.

On her website ( http://www.namastepublishing.com ) Constance Kellough shared her perspective.

Why does criticism bother us? And, the flip side of the coin—and possibly the most important question of all—why do we let what others say bother us to the point that we in turn criticize them? Have you ever considered that the two might actually be proportional? In other words, we are upset by criticism to the degree we ourselves are critical of ourselves, and often in turn of others.

Some years ago an Ohio State University study found that those who make disparaging comments about others often are tarred with the same brush. It’s the old adage that when we point the finger, there are three fingers pointing back at us. What this means is that a person who accuses another of being controlling is either controlling in themselves or, which is often the case, lacks self-control.

It’s our insecurity that causes us to resent others, criticize them, put them down. Sarah Grand put her finger on what criticism is all about: Our opinion of people depends less on what we see in them than on what they make us see in ourselves. When someone can criticize us and we can “let it in,” we are finally becoming mature. If the criticism is baseless, we can hear it, feel its intent, and evaluate it as nothing to do with us. There’s no emotional wash from it.

What do we mean by “no emotional wash?” Well, for a start it doesn’t make us feel attacked. We don’t become defensive, compelled to argue against what’s being said. We have no inclination to respond in any kind of protective way, just to appreciate the person and their concern.

Ms. Kellough’s comments ring true to me. What echoes in my thoughts is 1) what others say is frequently much more of a reflection of their state of being than the person they are criticizing and 2) Past pain and self-doubt can make a person more susceptible to swallowing anothers criticism.

Reflecting on what was said to me I concluded: the speaker lacks what they accused me of having too much of (optimism, gratitude and hope) and my old hurts, while healed, remain sensitive to being criticized. While the latter is much improved, I am grateful for the reminder. In spite of how much I have grown, I am still vulnerable and can give in to other’s false thinking about me, even if only for a short while.

Don’t criticize
what you can’t understand.
Bob Dylan

http://www.namastepublishing.com/blog/compassionate-eye/why-does-criticism-bother-us-so-much

Full Power Ahead

/ James Browning

letting go

If “holding on” was a class one could take, I’d get an A+ without having to study. Being a world-class practitioner of the tightly gripped past I have both benefited and been hurt by my stubbornness. It’s takes strength and wisdom to look into the murk of what was and clearly know what to let go and what to hold on to. Sometimes it’s impossible.

There is a danger in hanging on to what is unhealthy. Gerald D. Jampolsky was focusing on the potential peril when he wrote, When we think we have been hurt by someone in the past, we build up defenses to protect ourselves from being hurt in the future. So the fearful past causes a fearful future and the past and future become one. We cannot love when we feel fear… When we release the fearful past and forgive everyone, we will experience total love and oneness with all.  The key thought in all that is “forgiveness”. When I have truly forgiven my the pain becomes exorcised, but love remains untarnished.

Like most of us, often a past chapter of my life was a combination of joy and love mixed with heartache and pain. More than I care to admit I have swirled the two together and killed the good memories burying them with the bad ones. Doing that strips my recall of not only sorrow, but happiness as well. What works much better is to find some sort of equilibrium between the two where the focus can be the reminiscent joy and love. But the sadness is not forgotten for in many ways it is the pain that makes the good all the more meaningful, like night gives meaning to daytime. This only works if my forgiveness is genuine and complete. Grief, pain and sorrow are important landmarks for my life and to completely try to make any of them vanish is to deny myself wisdom earned the hard way.

Such thinking is nowhere more important than on the subject of romantic love. In “Never Let Me Go” Kazuo Ishiguro said I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. Often there is a story after the story where the same river brings the two who drifted apart back together at a later time . What once was can not be recreated, but with letting go new possibility is created.

A second chance is not feasible until the contents of the initial possibility are cleansed by releasing it. That does not mean to deny any part of what once was, but instead to hold memories with reverence in a past tense. Sometimes in your life you have to leave some precious things not because you don’t deserve it but because you deserve something better than that and it’s just like creating space for some bigger and much better things waiting for you in your life ahead is how Shubbanshu Tiwari explained clearing the path for new possibility. Precisely, what might be bigger and better can not come to be until what was has been let go.

I am grateful for what Ray Bradbury said: Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. It’s like boats. You keep your motor on so you can steer with the current. And when you hear the sound of the waterfall coming nearer and nearer, tidy up the boat, put on your best tie and hat, and smoke a cigar right up till the moment you go over. That’s a triumph.

Well written Mr. Bradbury! I am grateful that your words are exactly what I needed to read this morning. My past is at peace (at least much more so than ever). I gratefully have hope for the future that the best of my life lies in front of me. Full power ahead.

…Love is easy, falling in love is even easier,
but letting that love go, is the most difficult thing
you’ll ever have to do. Some of us never let it go
and sometimes it takes a while to realize what you want.
But your heart will always have the right answer in the end.
You just have to figure out what it’s telling you.
Marie Coulson

In a Small Space

/ James Browning

Oak and Crescent Moon

This is one of those days when a lot can be said in a small space. Here goes:

This life
is for
loving,
sharing,
learning,
smiling,
caring,
forgiving,
laughing,
hugging,
helping,
dancing,
wondering,
healing,
and even more loving.
I choose to live life this way.
I want to live my life
in such a way
that when I get out of bed
in the morning,
the devil says, “aw s#!t, he’s up!”
Steve Maraboli

And for today that’s ’nuff said. I am grateful for the reminder of the man I aspire to be.

I don’t want to get to the end of my life
and find that I have just lived the length of it.
I want to have lived the width of it as well.
Diane Ackerman

Comfort On Difficult Days

/ James Browning

558629_wrong_turn_okay1The first day of the year yesterday found me filled with hope and anticipation for what will be a grand year of discovery and exploration. Reflecting this morning on my sense of what is to come I began to wonder what is so different now compared to past years. With little thought the answer jumped into my mind quickly: “I am not afraid of failing”.

So what could happen when I fail?

Answer: I could look foolish to others.
Response: I don’t care that much anymore.

Answer: It could cost me a lot of money.
Response: I’ll make more or live more simply.

Answer: I could end up in a worse place than I have ever been.
Response: Not likely. Remember what you went through as a kid. You survived!

Answer: I could lose some of my confidence.
Response: Rebuild it. Failure is only permanent when I stop trying. Try again.

Answer: It may not turn out the way I hoped.
Response: So what! Embrace what comes and embrace unexpected happenings.

Answer: I could alienate friends by going after my dreams.
Response: If they don’t support me in pursuit of my dreams, they are not my friends.

What every man who succeeded at his dreams had in common with others was his failures. Thomas Edison attempted to invent the light bulb 1,000 times before he succeeded. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of imagination! Dr. Seuss’ first book was rejected 28 times. The biggest mistake I could make is to think I lack the stuff they had. Failures and mistakes are not supposed to paralyze me; they’re supposed to help me come to know who I am and what makes me the most content and happy.

From a poem by an unknown author here’s what I wish for us all:

Comfort on difficult days,
Smiles when sadness intrudes,
Rainbows to follow the clouds,
Laughter to kiss your lips,
Sunsets to warm your heart,
Hugs when spirits sag,
Beauty for your eyes to see,
Friendships to brighten your being,
Faith so that you can believe,
Confidence for when you doubt,
Courage to know yourself,
Patience to accept the truth,
Love to complete your life.

There’s much to do and my prospects for 2013 are exciting. I am grateful for the unexpected happenings and fresh opportunities that are swirling around me now in a soup of life that seems to be trying to make my dreams come true. And all I have to do is show up, do my part, belief in myself and not be afraid to fail.

Don’t wait.
The time will never be just right.
Napoleon Hill