self-awareness

The Big Question

/ James Browning

I found this in my fortune cookie at lunch yesterday:

If
you
don’t
have
time
to
live
your
life
now,
when
do
you?

That’s a summation of the realizations that surround me these days. For far too long I put off living the life I yearn for in order to do what others wanted.  My myriad of excuses have included taking care of “responsibilities”, running from dealing with my “stuff, unfounded fear of not having enough money when I get old, doing the “right thing” and so on. No more. I reclaim my life and am so very grateful for the inspiration that makes me know 2012 is the beginning of the life I have longed for.

People often say
that this or that person
has not yet found himself.
But the self is not something one finds,
it is something one creates.
From “Personal Conduct, The Second Sin” by Thomas Szasz,

Courage To Start All Over Again

/ James Browning

Mentally, time is something I’ve been conscious of all my life. My family of origin was filled with watch carrying or wristwatch wearing people who paid lots of attention to time. From my tenth year through the sixteenth, my mother and stepfather had a small grocery store open seven days a week. Our days back then revolved around what time the store opened and when it closed.

In rural Alabama where my roots are, even farm daylight is measured between waiting for sunrise and hurrying to beat sunset. My profession of decades has kept me focused on time by the minute, either filling it with music or an advertisement on radio stations. Today I wear a watch if I am out and tell time at home by a clock in every room. I even collect old clocks.

I have always been conscious of time’s coming and going, but in its measurement I have been focused on the passing of time rather than any particular moment I was within.

About the psychology of time awareness, J.W. Brown of the Department of Neurology at New York University Medical Center wrote: Each mind computes the measure of time passing and duration from the decay of the… present in relation to a core of past events …a Self in a state of becoming, a Self that travels in time like the crest of a wave, always in pursuit of a future just beyond the grasp of the present.

That’s heady stuff and describes where I used to be.

No longer will I live every minute beyond my present. My awareness shifted yesterday when I became aware of time; not just conscious of its horizontal passing but aware of the largeness of particular moments. With one full taste of the “now” I am changed. When I witnessed firsthand the height and depth of the present, time slowed for a little while. Heightened awareness of “now” made time bigger and last longer. I did not suddenly have more time, but what time I have has become larger.

Now I understand what it means to “be the master of one’s own time”. Even a few minutes each day of such clarity about ‘time’ gives new direction to my life. I am grateful for such insight. It is life changing.

For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or,
in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be.
There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want.
You can change or stay the same,
there are no rules to this thing.
We can make the best or the worst of it.
I hope you make the best of it.
And I hope you see things that startle you.
I hope you feel things you never felt before.
I hope you meet people with a different point of view.
I hope you live a life you’re proud of.
If you find that you’re not,
I hope you have the courage to start all over again.
From “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” by Eric Roth

No Need To Worry

/ James Browning

Clarity of thought can sometimes be clouded with an over abundance of words where the essence becomes hidden. In presenting the quote just below, I have avoided pontificating and instead presented it without explanation. The words stand clearly on their own.

If a problem is fixable,
if a situation is such
that you can do something about it,
then there is no need to worry.

If it’s not fixable,
then there is no help in worrying.
There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.
Dali Lama XIV

I am grateful for wisdom in those thirty words and the impact they made on me this morning. As often happens when my awareness is tuned to receive, the message I needed arrived at precisely the best time.

If you break your neck,
if you have nothing to eat,
if your house is on fire,
then you got a problem.
Everything else is inconvenience.
Robert Fulghum

A Life of Gratefulness

/ James Browning

While getting breakfast together this morning it hit me that I eat like a king. A hundred years ago only royalty and the rich could have the food I am blessed to eating this morning. My breakfast is a banana, blueberries, strawberries, a croissant with egg and cheese and 1% milk. It’s not just food, it’s a plate of delicacies. How readily available and relatively inexpensive food is in this country can numb one to how blessed we really are. I am not immune to taking things for granted, but am glad my sense of gratitude kicked in this morning to remind me how fortunate I am.

Taken from “A Poem Of Gratitude” By Chuck Danes
I’m grateful for the many days when clarity is strong
As well as those it “seems” that life has somehow led me wrong
For it’s those times that awaken me and nudge me toward the light
Till once again my hopes and dreams are clearly held in sight.
I’m grateful for the fact I’ve learned that we consciously create
That to mold and shape a life desired I must keep my thinking straight
That when the fear that shows it’s head which is based on false belief
I have free will to change the thoughts to those that bring relief.
I’m grateful too for false beliefs which led me on my quest
For mentors met along the way I truly do feel blessed
Who clearly showed me of the need to understand my worth
And “Higher Truth” which promises a life divine on earth.
I’m grateful for the fear I feel at times because I know
That when it’s felt it’s purging power exists to help me grow
The awareness of it’s presence shows there’s something more to learn
That my focus must stay fixed on Love to attract these things I yearn.
My gratitude goes deeper still, for breath, for sight, for life
For teachers who have shown me that my “thoughts” create my strife
I’m grateful for the plan which says whatever you receive
Is drawn to you through feelings felt, created by belief.
I’m grateful for all wisdom gained as I journey through this life
Like words expressed in anger hurt, and only lead to strife
That truth will stand the test of time, that Love will show the way
That thoughts and feelings of the past are what create today.
I’m grateful too for all my friends who are reading this today
For the bonds that we have formed since your paths have crossed my way
And for the future and all it brings for all we have to share
The giving of ourselves to show the world how much we care.
I’ve learned to stay in gratitude no matter how things seem
That perceptions held as negatives will only slow your dream
So even though my path will lead through troubled spots I know
I must keep on, keep focus fixed, on life’s abundant flow..
One final thought I’ll share today before I say I’m through
I’m so grateful for these words to give today to all of you
It is my wish that they will help you keep the attitude
Which leads to that which you desire and comes through gratitude.

Gratitude humbles me, enriches me, fills me, stretches me and brings a joy that comes from nowhere else. I am thankful that I live a life of gratefulness.

Acknowledging the good that you already have
in your life is the foundation for all abundance.
Eckhart Tolle

A Thank You Left Unexpressed

/ James Browning

Today my leave-behind here is short and simple; a short story of unexpressed gratitude from yesterday about 5:25pm.

Late afternoon rolled around with an appointment for my every five-week haircut. Driving in the peak of late day drive-time traffic, my departure from work was later than it should have been.

As I drove my mind was a flurry of activity that included discussing an issue on a long phone call with a co-worker, concern about getting to my appointment late, reminding myself to stop at the pharmacy on my way home and then getting caught in traffic where two lanes are narrowed into one. It is there the subject of this story lies.

1) It is a personal pet-peeve about people who can clearly see the signs that a lane is closed, but chose to go down the closed lane as far as possible before merging (called a “zipper merge” I read somewhere). Of course, doing that slows down the lane that is open where everyone else has orderly lined up soon after seeing the signage.

  • Admission: In my haste yesterday I was one of those people. In my efforts to get to my destination I disregarded what I should have done to serve my own selfish need. Of course, it’s a little thing, but one I wish to apologize for to those who “followed the unwritten merge rule” . It’s fascinating to me what a human being can justify when they feel cornered; even me.

2) Even though I ‘cheated’ by going down the closed lane as far as I could, there was someone kind enough to let me in. That is one of the wonderful things about living where I do; people are genuinely good and thoughtful. What I regret is pulling into the space the person gave me, but never acknowledging them. Another peeve is letting someone in and not getting some sort of customary signal of thanks. Being late and caught up in my own “stuff” I disregarded expressing gratitude for a small kindness. So lost was I at that moment I could not tell you if the driver was a man or woman, much less what type of car they were driving.

  • My small retribution for a thank you left unexpressed: To that nameless, faceless person who let me merge in traffic yesterday, this morning I say “thank you” and apologize I did not express my gratitude at the very moment of your kindness.

Today I will be a little more aware of each kindness shown me and a bit more expressive of my gratitude for each one. For the small lesson of yesterday I am grateful and even more so for my awareness to notice it.

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

Wisdom In Triplicate

/ James Browning

(1) Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
So love the people who treat you right.
Forget about the one’s who don’t.
Believe things happen for a reason.
If you get a second chance,
grab it with both hands.
If it changes your life, let it.
Nobody said life would be easy,
they just promised it would be worth it.
Unknown

(2) Remember that things happen for a reason
and if it was meant to be
It wouldn’t have ended.
We should not cry cause it’s gone;
We should be happy that it happened.
Many people touch our lives in different ways;
Some come for a while,
others stay for a season
and show us their magnificent essence
for a purpose and then leave;
And then there’s the people that stay forever,
which ultimately are the ones that count;
so smile and cheer up.
Unknown

(3) Go for long walks,
indulge in hot baths,
question your assumptions,
be kind to yourself,
live for the moment,
loosen up,
scream,
curse the world,
count your blessings,
just let go,
just be.
Carol Shields

Some days my gratitude is general and not specifically focused; its on those mornings that simply being alive seems like such a gift I can’t move to anything more focused. Here at dawn today, I find myself precisely in that spot: flled with thankfulness; brimming with hope; balanced with lessons learned the hard way. I re-typed others words above to remind me of what matters most: life, in all the manners it may come.

Today you are You, that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is Youer than You.
Dr. Seuss

Opportunity to Discover

/ James Browning

The only sounds I can hear is the hum of my computer, the ticking of the old school clock on the wall in the hall and the furnace when it clicks on and off. I live in solitude and no longer despise it as I once did.

Most of the time now I enjoy being alone. I have grown accustomed to it, but do get lonely some time. That’s especially true when finding something I’d like to share but am the only one here. Either I never get around to sharing it with anyone or else have to wait until I have a visitor. Often the initial excitement has worn off by then and imparting my discovery to another never happens. All in all, being alone is okay. Solitude and I have become fairly friends, but do have our falling outs from time to time.

What has living alone for a number of years taught me?

* My eating habits have become a lot better as I am the sole decider of what I put in my mouth.  Part laziness and part awareness, I eat far more fresh vegetables and fruit than ever before. And the crock-pot and I have become buddies!

* Playing music loud and having no one ask me to turn it down is cool. What little I watch television is only the programs I like. Sometimes movies would be more fun with someone to share them with.

* Being alone has given me great introspection and healing that was easier to avoid when I lived day in and day out with someone. Alone it is difficult to constantly hide from my fears and regrets. Many of mine have been resolved in my days of solitude and there is far more serenity than I  previously knew.

* My awareness of the little things someone did in sharing the workload of a household with me are abundantly clear now. Being a ‘one man band’ these days in keeping a home is all up to me. For those I once shared a home with who helped keep things running, please accept my delayed humble thanks.  I never showed my appreciation enough.

* Being alone lets me listen to my thoughts without having to edit them for anyone else. It has helped to get to know myself better. I’ve been surprised, shocked, horrified, amused, impressed, and eventually I have gotten use to most of what I think. Being alone has helped me learn and sort out what parts are good and important and which parts to tolerate or put aside.

* Being alone helps me figure out what I want to do with my time when no one else has the right to make demands of it, when no one else has expectations of me. I can listen to music all day if I want. An entire weekend can be spent reading or watching movies. I can eat popcorn for dinner, though I wouldn’t advise keeping that as a regular habit.

* Being alone gives me the gift of better connecting with people who I never thought much about before. Each chance encounter becomes a little more important. It might be one of the few I have that day, so I pay attention and interact more. The grocery clerk, a neighbor, my dentist, the woman at the dry cleaners, people at work; every encounter opens me a bit more to awareness of the person before me, human and divine at the same time, and the chance to share a little of my light with them and they with me.

* Being alone forces me to face my fears and walk with them to get to the other side. I have come to know most fears are mainly children of my imagination or lingering ghosts of my past. I’ve learned to invite them to come closer and closer becoming intimate with each one until it loses most of their power. Eventually, most fall away, and stay unconscious the majority of the time. What a relief!

Being alone has brought me a connection with a Higher Power not previously known. I’m not a religious person but being alone as brought me to a very spiritual place. I find I have a more consistent connection not only with the divine but with myself, the world around me and everyone in it. My thankfulness has grown, my prayers seem to be answered more and my gratefulness is at an all time high. Life is good!

I think it’s good for a person to spend time alone.
It gives them an opportunity to discover who they are
and to figure out why they are always alone.
Amy Secaris

Only the Dead Don’t Feel It

/ James Browning

My supposition is that life would be boring if things were always good. Fact or delusion, that’s a mantra that rings in my head to help me keep going. Life just gets damned difficult sometimes.

There’s a well-worn phrase that goes “its, not what happens, but how you react to it that matters”. My conclusion is there is wisdom in that statement to keep one from making something dreadful far worse than need be. However, what is awful will still be terrible. All practicing the “how you react” train of thought can do is impact how deep and engulfing the pain, grief or misery becomes. To think I can stop myself from feeling unpleasant things entirely is pure foolishness. What I put off ends up hurting worse later anyway.

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

Ready for my rant? Here goes. So much of a quandary my life is these days: single and not wanting to be; lonely, but afraid to let someone get really close; so tired of my work but addicted to the money; unable to see more than a vapor of what my future might be; too regretful of my past and unable to fully put some of it behind me; not completely comfortable with my age but trying to not let it show; working hard to get in shape with frustrating slow progress; far more loving than I know how to comfortably show; misunderstood by just about everyone I have ever known; good progress in recovery from codependence while aggravated some of the dysfunction will always exist; wanting to travel the world for months at a time yet fearful of taking the leap…. oh, woe is me; gripe, gripe, gripe and it’s exhausting!

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. Louise Erdrich

It should come as no surprise that I am working my way through a few days of my cycling depression that comes around every few weeks for a few days. These are times the half missing in the glass is painfully obvious and I’m too stymied to see much of the half full part. This will pass. It always does. But for the time I wrestle depression it feels like trying to swim in quicksand; moving with great effort and getting no where fast.

My gratitude is for knowing what is going on. For years I had no explanation for these days that sucked badly. So I will use the weapon I’ve learned that helps me walk through these dark days: “fake it until I make it”. I’ll put on a smile and show the world sunshine instead of my darkness. Just because I feel bad doesn’t mean I should make others feel it with me. Hello world, here I come.

Everyone is down on pain,
because they forget
something important about it:
Pain is for the living.
Only the dead don’t feel it.
Jim Butcher

Five Good Things

/ James Browning

The article below was exactly what I needed for the start of this Friday.  I hope it serves you well too!

Are you frustrated with your life, feeling stressed, and find many things just aren’t working? Would you like to find a way to make your life work better? If so, then read on because there is a simple adjustment you can make in your life to help things immediately begin to work better and feel better.

Start focusing on your happiness instead of the absence of it.

Now let me guess … this sounds too simplistic to you, doesn’t it? You’re probably wondering how focusing on your happiness is going to help fix things so they work better, right?

Yet the truth is, that’s exactly the fix that can have the most immediate impact on your life. Consider the following five ways in which by you focusing your thought and attention on what makes you happy — and making a point of looking for and acknowledging those things each day — you will begin to notice things working better in your life.

  1. You’ll be more attractive to others. As you place your focus and attention on what’s right and what’s working in your life, you immediately start to feel a little bit better. Because you feel better, you begin to behave and carry yourself differently. And that shift in how you carry yourself makes you much more attractive to others which means you’re going to start receiving more invitations, more opportunities and more things that are working well for you.
  2. Your relationships will work better. Because you are carrying yourself differently, you begin to come across as friendlier and you’ll find that you’re better able to listen because you’re not so preoccupied with what isn’t working. That’s going to result in healthier, deeper, more successful relationships with your family, you co-workers and your friends.
  3. Your job or business performance will improve. Your shift in focus carries benefits over to your overall work performance. You will find yourself thinking more clearly, more alert, and making better decisions.
  4. Your health will improve. Because you are feeling happier as you place your attention on what is working, a whole set of physiological changes start to occur. Your blood pressure lowers. Your blood flow improves. Your immune system starts working better. These all have a positive impact on the state of your health.
  5. You will start to have more flow. By law of attraction, you attract more of what you focus upon. Since you have repositioned your focus and attention on your happiness rather than your unhappiness, guess what happens? You get more of the things that are working better. And now you’ve got a positive spiral that you’ve started that is going to deliver more flow and positive momentum into your life going forward. And so begins a positive cycle of being inflow where things start to come more easily and frequently. Warren Wojnowski http://www.inspiredabundance.com/happiness-and-self-fulfillment

“Every day is a good day.  Some are just better than others”.  For years now that has been my standard answer to the greeting question from others of “how are you doing?”.  And guess what: it has made a huge different.  I am grateful for the goodness a shift in perspective has brought!

Stress is nothing more
than a socially acceptable form
of mental illness.
Richard Carlson

Accomplishment Is Empowering

/ James Browning

Over the last two years intentionally my wake up time has become earlier. I decided to take the most rested part of each day and keep it for myself. That has allowed me to write, workout, meditate and do other things I never seemed to be able to get to as consistently as I wanted. Going to bed a couple of hours of hours before what was my habit and getting up two hours earlier took some getting used to. The first six weeks it was very difficult and temporarily I gave up several times.

Conventional wisdom bantered about says it takes about a month to break a habit or instill a new one. Research indicates it takes longer. According to research about three years ago by Phillippa Lally and colleagues from the United Kingdom Cancer Research Health Behavior Research Centre it takes an average 66 days to form a new habit. Below Phillippa explains the key factors in creating and breaking habits and how we can help set up for ourselves new patterns of behavior.

What exactly takes 66 days?
In our study, we looked at how long it took people to reach a limit of self-reported automaticity for performing an initially new behavior (that is, performing an action automatically), and the average time (among those for whom our model was a good fit) was 66 days.

How do you define a habit?
Habits are behaviors which are performed automatically because they have been performed frequently in the past. This repetition creates a mental association between the situation (cue) and action (behavior) which means that when the cue is encountered the behavior is performed automatically. Automaticity has a number of components, one of which is lack of thought.

What are the key factors in breaking or gaining habits?
To create a habit you need to repeat the behavior in the same situation. It is important that something about the setting where you perform the behavior is consistent so that it can cue the behavior. If you choose a context cue, for example after lunch, we don’t think that it matters if you eat lunch at different times in the day. It is difficult to break any habit even when you are motivated to do so. If you are ambivalent about breaking it then you will be less likely to succeed.

What happens if we miss an opportunity to perform an action that will help us build a habit?
In our study we showed that missing one opportunity did not significantly impact the habit formation process, but people who were very inconsistent in performing the behavior did not succeed in making habits. We don’t have any evidence to suggest that men and women or young and old people acquire habits differently.

I am thankful for my new schedule and its benefits. I’m consistent at writing (have written this blog now daily for over 520 days in a row). From working out several days a week I’ve lost 12 pounds and about an inch and a half around my waist. The sense of personal pride and accomplishment is empowering.

We would accomplish many more things
if we did not think of them as impossible.
Vince Lombardi