self-awareness

A Hasty Word You Can’t Recall

/ James Browning

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Once in a while a realization comes of how perception was distorted or incorrect. In the times of anger or hurt, things get said one regrets; things that can’t be taken back. And the humbling part of such behavior is those closest to us suffer.

You always hurt the one you love,
the one you should not hurt at all;
You always take the sweetest rose,
and crush it till the petals fall;
You always break the kindest heart,
with a hasty word you can’t recall;
So if I broke your heart last night,
it’s because I love you most of all.
From an old Mills Brothers song

In situations in which we have nothing of value to lose, we seldom experience disappointment. In love, which involves our happiness and many of our most precious experiences, there is a great deal to lose. Hence, disappointment and frustration, and consequently hurt, are common. It has been said that completely blissful love does not exist. Indeed, in a survey of over 500 lovers, almost all of them assumed that passionate love is a bittersweet experience. Similarly, it has been found that people low in defensiveness have more experiences of love than do highly defensive people. This link suggests that to love is to make oneself vulnerable in ways that enhance the possibility of pain.

Since the beloved is a major source of happiness, this person is also a major threat to our happiness: more than anyone else, the beloved can ruin our happiness. Similarly, the security involved in love goes together with the fear of losing that security. Feeling happy is often bound up with the fear of losing that happiness. Caring for the beloved sometimes goes together with hurting the beloved. From article by Aaron Ben-Zeév, Ph.D., http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-name-love/201010/you-always-hurt-the-one-you-love

Perhaps we should say “I’m sorry.” “I love you.” “You are the only person who really knows me, and who still wants to be my friend even when I am terrible.” “Your love is something that allows the rest of the world and all of its small aggressions to not feel so cold.” Chelsea Fagan

To “not hurt the ones I love” is a lesson I still trying to master and consistently practice. Old abandonment issues from childhood conditioned me to anticipate being hurt. The problem with that is a manifestation of expectation can sometimes actually be the cause of what I fear. I am grateful for the reminder that I have not arrived and never will. Life is a classroom and school is never out.

It’s ironic how we ignore the ones that adore us,
adore the ones that ignore us,
hurt the ones that love us,
and love the ones that hurt us.
Unknown

Remember Your Reflection

/ James Browning

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How some one sees me is only one view.

Each interpretation of the person I am is different.

None is completely accurate, not even my view of myself.

Humility and gratitude are the best paths to self-awareness.

I am perfectly imperfect.

I am unique.

There has never been another just like me. There never will be.

Coming to know my true self is the path to an enlightened view of others and the world.

How very important it is, to see the reflection of yourself and to keep that reflection in sight— despite how much you have been pushed and shoved, forgotten and ripped, lied to and deceived! It seems like the number one most valuable thing you can carry with you is the constant appearance of your own reflection for the beauty and wonder that you are and it’s a fight and a struggle to keep that. If you had a treasure box filled with magical things— this would be the one thing it seems like people want to destroy or to take away or in some cases to even make their own! But you must remember your reflection, you must see yourself illuminated and you must remember, against all odds, remember. C. JoyBell C.

Today my gratitude is simple but large for the my growth in the last ten years. Sometimes I forget until I see an old photograph or read something I wrote long ago. If a year can make a big difference, then with dedication a decade can be utterly life changing. I am the ‘poster child’ of proof that big change is possible.

Just because I liked something at one point in time
doesn’t mean I’ll always like it, or that I have to go on
liking it at all points in time as an unthinking act of loyalty
to who I am as a person, based solely on who I was as a person.
To be loyal to myself is to allow myself to grow and change,
and challenge who I am and what I think.
The only thing I am for sure is unsure,
and this means I’m growing,
and not stagnant or shrinking.
Jarod Kintz

Fundamental to Living Well

/ James Browning

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I came across what’s below in an email a friend sent several years ago and found it particularly meaningful. Hope it serves others as well as it did me.

Checklist of 50 Characteristics & Views to Continually Live Better & Better:
1. You are absolutely confident that you can achieve what you desire
2. You believe that things will always work out the way they should
3. You are optimistic about the people around you and opportunities
4. You are loving
5. You are kind
6. You are generous
7. You are trusting and trustworthy
8. You refuse to let the past define or limit your current reality
9. You are easily able to let things go and get over things that bothered or upset you
10. You are open-minded
11. You are flexible
12. You refuse to reflect on all the things that can possibly go wrong
13. You are confident about the future and how it will unfold
14. You are appreciative of the big things…and the small ones too
15. You are thankful
16. You are humble
17. You consistently rely on and trust your good intuition and insights
18. You realize that everything happens for a reason
19. You aim to live and learn from everything around you and all that happens
20. You never lose your cool enough to get out of control
21. You refuse to waste energy on petty issues
22. You never complain
23. You are empathetic
24. You are helpful
25. You don’t brag
26. You always bring positive energy to every situation
27. You know how to control thoughts and ensure they’re positive and constructive
28. You are peaceful
29. You are pleasant
30. You continually choose to feel good regardless of what is going on around you
31. You know how to elevate your mood when necessary and get to a better place
32. You are inspired and inspiring
33. You are motivated
34. You genuinely want the best for other people
35. You have lots of great positive energy
36. You don’t judge others
37. You never gossip
38. You have no need to win an argument or be right
39. You are never really offended by anything or anyone
40. You are patient
41. You are satisfied with the time it takes things to play out
42. You have lots of great relationships
43. You are grateful to be exactly where you are at the current moment
44. You are inquisitive
45. You are understanding
46. You are able to tap into your innate brilliance
47. You are healthy
48. You are in good physical condition
49. You are able to truly enjoy silence
50. You consistently observe and notice things you like and what is working
We currently may not have all of these characteristics and views, but if we are interested in having more and more positive momentum and more positive results appear in our lives, we will work to develop and strengthen each and everyone one of these things. There are certain things that are just fundamental to living well. Original source unknown

Since moving stored knowledge into intention and action, slowly but surely my living experience has consistently gotten better. My forward movement is far from perfect but like a work being sculptured, I am my own chisel and hammer that shapes me and all I perceive about being alive. I am grateful to the person who sent the list to me three years ago and to have rediscovered it this morning.

A man sooner or later discovers
that he is the master-gardener of the soul,
the director of his life.
James Allen

Similar to a Blind Man

/ James Browning

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I’ve lived. I’ve learned.

I’ve failed. I’ve succeeded.

I’ve found myself. I’ve lost myself in others.

I’ve been kind. I’ve been heartless.

I’ve been loved. I’ve lost the love I had.

I’ve been loyal. I’ve been unfaithful.

I’ve been hurt. I’ve been hurtful.

… that and more is the human experience.

After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul and you learn that love doesn’t mean possession and company doesn’t mean security. And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead with the grace of an adult not the grief of a child. And you learn to build your roads today because tomorrows ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have ways of falling down in mid-flight. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much, so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure… that you really are strong and you really do have worth and you learn and you learn… Veronica A. Shoffstall.

I’m just a man who learned about life similar to a blind person feeling his way; the way we all do. Too rarely have I taken the advice of the experienced, and instead depended on knowledge gained first-hand. Because of my habit of not listening, you’d think I’d stop giving unsolicited advice. Probably humming a song to them would have more meaning. I didn’t listen to most advice given. Most never listened to how I might have counseled them. “I told you so’s” have little meaning.

No matter how many people come into my life or how many become a fixture in it, 95% of my knowledge about living well comes from what I have done and didn’t do. Realizing every moment is a lesson, whether big or minute, has been one of my great revelations. I am truly grateful for the experiences I learned that from.

Experience is a hard teacher
because she gives the test first,
the lesson afterwards.
Albert Einstein

Behind a Farting Camel

/ James Browning

 

Hafez or Hafiz was a Persian poet who lived in the 1300′s. His work has been influential since that time even though little is actually known today about him and his life. His work made deep impressions on writers such as Thoreau, Goethe and Emerson with the latter referring to him as “a poet’s poet. Hafez has been a favorite since I became aware of his writing during my young “hippie days” (or was that “hippie daze”?)

In this piece, Hafez writes about depression and seemed knowledgeable about the subject hundreds of years before Jung and Freud. There are a few days per month I have to deal with “cycling depression” that brings a sort of dimness and lethargy into my life. Writing like the piece below from Hafez helps me understand I am far from alone. Many today suffer as I do and many did a hundred generations before me did too.

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.
But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.
You can stay that way
And even bloom!
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel…
O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for dancing!

In recent years the days of my depression usually pass like wind through a tree when limbs are moved by the passing but no damage is not done. Through counseling, support of peers and those who care about me, and reaching a level of understanding that “depression” is a ‘normal’ malady, I am much healthier today than ever before. Some deal with migraines; some throw their back out; I cope with depression. And I do it quite well these days and am grateful for all the love, support and insight that makes that possible.

If depression is creeping up and must be faced,
learn something about the nature of the beast:
You may escape without a mauling.
Dr. R. W. Shepherd

Originally Posted on June 6, 2012

Better To Have Lived in Truth

/ James Browning

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There’s the little empty pain of leaving something behind – graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There’s the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There’s the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn’t give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There’s the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.

And if you’re very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realized that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last – and yet will remain with you for life.

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, it’s a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you’re alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another. Jim Butcher

I regret the times I damned my pain or prayed for it to be gone. At that moment I did not realize I was being sculpted by discomfort into a better and wiser man. In hindsight that sort of growth reminds me of being an adolescent boy when I woke with my legs hurting so much from growing overnight that they could barely support me. But once I walked for a few minutes, the aches subsided quickly. I was simply growing.

And so I have gratefully begun to better accept the outcome of pain, although the bearing of it will never be something positively anticipated. It is through allowing grief, sorry and anguish to do their work that I become wiser and through that  wisdom, grow more content.

We never know when our last day on earth will be.
So, love with full sincerity, believe with true faith,
and hope with all of your might.
Better to have lived in truth and discovered life,
than to have lived half heartedly
and died long before you ever ceased breathing.
Cristina Marrero

What You Think of Me is None of My Business

/ James Browning

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When considered all together, getting older is a good balance of what I am glad about and what I sometimes wish were no so.  Of course, having more of the hair I used to have or a back that does not ache after working in the yard or to not need reading glasses are good examples of what’s on the “I wish were not so list”.  Moving to the “I’m glad about list” immediately I find gratitude for knowledge not possible in younger years that has come from a broad range of life experience.  I cherish the wisdom earned the hard way mostly from my mistakes.

One of the gems of wisdom I am grateful for is summed up in the words of Wayne Dyer:  What you think of me is none of my business.  No magic immunity from such thinking have I learned, but what others think of me plainly matters much less here in the fifth decade of my life than ever before.  Bosses I work for don’t make me nervous any more (does it have anything to do with the fact that most are younger and less experienced than me?)  Dressing nicely still matters, but comfort in what I have on is at the top of my list and matters ten times more than what others think of my wardrobe.

A good deal of personal growth is evident to anyone who has long known me.  However, inwardly there remains speculation from time to time if I measure up in other people eyes.  An often successful method I use to combat such “stinking thinking” is to self-question with this thought:  How would I feel if I was literally unable to worry about another person’s opinion of me?  Getting some sort of silent mental answer in response to that quandary seems to banish the need to care what others think more often than not.

Deep down I know I don’t need the approval of others. It is my ego, the fragile little pretend person within, that craves approval and fears disapproval. Even with the wisdom of years my mind will take things personally sometimes if I let it.  The need to attempt to gain power through approval and disapproval games will always be there. Here in middle age I am grateful to be able to separate myself from my ego more successfully and know approval and disapproval have no real value whatsoever.  In reality, another person’s thought or opinion about me is never personal, because it is never really about me in the first place. It’s about them. A person’s thoughts about anything and everything are only about them self.

Writer Byron Katie has written several self-help books that have been insightful to me.  She says my business is what I think and what I feel.  If I get worried about how someone feels about me, I’m in their business. And if I’m busy living in their business, how am I present for my own business?  A helpful process Katie recommends to throw off untrue thoughts she calls “Inquiry”.  This process I have found helpful includes four questions to ask one’s self:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react when you think that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

The most intimate relationship I have is the one with my own mind.  When that chatterbox in my head is stressing and screaming, I find that it will keep on doing it until I give it some attention.  That sort of thinking is like a toddler in a grocery store pitching a fit until it gets attention.  One way I give that attention is  putting my thoughts through Byron Katie’s four questions.  When I truly question their validity it’s common to find beliefs I have had for 5, 10, 30 years, even the worst, most stressful ones, disappear with regularity.  Then the “monkey mind chatterbox” (my brain) slows down and living becomes easier and life tastes better.

When I can consider things objectively I see the most others can have of me is an opinion.  When thinking clearly I know to elevate another’s opinion of me to the status of a judgment is simply ridiculous. No one can judge me unless I grant him or her the power of being my judge.

When I let go of worry over other people’s opinions, I become free to reflect on my own opinion of myself. Living according to my own truth is an act of self-love and self-care. When I live according to my own beliefs and stay in my own  business (and out of other’s business), I find others usually will honor the truths I live by, whether they agree with me or not.  To know that tidbit of wisdom is a gift I’m grateful for.

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. Bill Cosby

Originally posted on December 7, 2011

Your Very Own Self

/ James Browning

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It starts innocently enough, perhaps the first time you recognize your own reflection.

You’re not yet 2 years old, brushing your teeth, standing on your steppy stool by the bathroom sink, when suddenly it dawns on you: That foam-flecked face beaming back from the mirror is you. You. Yourself. Your very own self.

It’s a revelation—and an affliction. Human infants have no capacity for self-awareness. Then, between 18 and 24 months of age, they become conscious of their own thoughts, feelings, and sensations—thereby embarking on a quest that will consume much of their lives. For many modern selves, the first shock of self-recognition marks the beginning of a lifelong search for the one “true” self and for a feeling of behaving in accordance with that self that can be called authenticity.

A hunger for authenticity guides us in every age and aspect of life. It drives our explorations of work, relationships, play, and prayer. Teens and twentysomethings try out friends, fashions, hobbies, jobs, lovers, locations, and living arrangements to see what fits and what’s “just not me.” Midlifers deepen commitments to career, community, faith, and family that match their self-images, or feel trapped in existences that seem not their own. Elders regard life choices with regret or satisfaction based largely on whether they were “true” to themselves.

It’s also a cornerstone of mental health. Authenticity is correlated with many aspects of psychological well-being, including vitality, self-esteem, and coping skills. Acting in accordance with one’s core self—a trait called self-determination—is ranked by some experts as one of three basic psychological needs, along with competence and a sense of relatedness.

Yet, increasingly, contemporary culture seems to mock the very idea that there is anything solid and true about the self. Cosmetic surgery, psycho-pharmaceuticals, and perpetual makeovers favor a mutable ideal over the genuine article. MySpace profiles and tell-all blogs carry the whiff of wishful identity. Steroids, stimulants, and doping transform athletic and academic performance. Fabricated memoirs become best-sellers. Speed-dating discounts sincerity. Amid a clutter of counterfeits, the core self is struggling to assert itself.

“It’s some kind of epidemic right now,” says Stephen Cope, author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self. “People feel profoundly like they’re not living from who they really are, their authentic self, their deepest possibility in the world. The result is a sense of near-desperation.” From an article by Karen Wright http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200804/dare-be-yourself

Here I sit showing the signs of age: reading glasses, mostly gray hair (but grateful to still have hair!), untouched natural lines on my face, memory not as razor-sharp as it once was, a paunch at my waistline, a few ages spots on my arms and so on. I have never given serious thought to changing any of it except losing 25 pounds. All of it is me just as I have naturally evolved.

It’s a personal thing, but I think for me there would be something dishonest about hair dye or plastic surgery. As a man it would be bothersome if I did remade myself synthetically and other guys found out. I’d not casting aspersions toward men who do, just saying that it’s not right for me.

Being real and authentic has become more and more important to me as the years have passed. I’ve earned every line on my skin and every gray hair. My face and body is an accurate living record of my life. I am 100% grateful to be who and what I am. It took a lot of hard work to get there.

The authentic self
is soul made visible.
Sarah Ban Breathnach

Become the Watcher

/ James Browning

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When I become aware of my thoughts, it does not make me become my thoughts. Quite the contrary, only then do I have a chance to sort out what’s real from what’s misapprehension, distortion and nonsense. Without attention most thought bounces mindlessly in my brain like light reflected back and forth between a hundred mirrors; lots of motion but getting nowhere.

The musing of my mind is most often barely me at all and instead some creation loosely based on a combination of all I have been through, felt or experienced. This kind of thinking is created like a mindless chemical reaction. When I pay attention to what is bouncing around in my head I become the watcher who is able, with good reliability, to sort out the good stuff from the ravings of a lunatic (which is exactly what the thoughts of an unattended mind are!).

A frantic mind misses opportunities and pushes them away. If a good opportunity comes your way, and your mind is going a mile a minute, that opportunity will wiz right by you.

When opportunities come, you need a quiet place for them to alight, to rest. A frantic mind actually pushes them away. Multi-tasking creates more stress and makes the mind more frantic. Do one thing at a time and complete it.

It is the nature of the mind to have thoughts. We mistakenly identify with our thoughts and think that’s who we are. But to the mind, all thoughts are the same. The thoughts that make our ego feel good, we pull towards us, and the ones that make our ego feel bad, we push away. This push and pull is what makes the mind frantic.

Truth comes through the mind, not from the mind. The mind is the vehicle for truth, not the source. The source of truth is the universe, spirit, God, whatever you want to call consciousness. Chandra Alexander

When beginning a meditation practice about a decade ago, my mind wrestled with me. It did not want to be closely examined and fought back by increasing the stream of silent babbling within my brain. Only for a few seconds could I redirect my thinking before the ‘bully’ that was my mind took over again. The majority of the time my unconscious thoughts still win, but over time I have found moments of peace while sitting still with my eyes closed and allowing myself to just be.

The key lesson learned has been once I started paying attention to my thoughts and attempting to sort out what is fact from fiction; what is reality from complete lunacy; an amazing thing happened. Gratefully I began to be able to sort out with decent consistency what was my own BS and what was truth.

The rational man doesn’t hate it
when he is proven wrong;
he is actually grateful,
since his knowledge
has been enriched.
Unknown

Better With Age

/ James Browning

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Walking across a college campus for a business meeting with the athletic director of a Midwest college an epiphany hit me. In my late thirties college aged people hardly noticed me. I suppose I just looked like someone’s Dad. It occurred to me that I had become “invisible to college girls”. And that makes sense considering I was on average close to twenty years older. However, the male ego is a fragile thing.

I’m absolutely certain the twenties are not an age I would want to endure again. Too much change; too many mistakes; too much uncertainty and a general lack of respect from those older. The thirties were a time of arriving, but not yet getting there. I swear I did not deserve to be called an adult until at least my 40s!

The quality of my life has continued to improve as I have aged. An article published in the U.K. sheds light on aging.

Researchers have found that people’s’ mental abilities peak at 22 before beginning to deteriorate just five years later.

Professor Timothy Salthouse, “Results converge on a conclusion that some aspects of age-related cognitive decline begins in healthy, educated adults when they are in their 20s and 30s,” he said.

The study of 2,000 men and women lasted over seven years. The respondents, aged between 18-60, were asked to solve visual puzzles, recall words and story details and spot patterns in letters and symbols. The research by the University of Virginia found that in nine out of 12 tests the average age at which the top performance was achieved was 22.

The first age at which performance was significantly lower than the peak scores was 27 – for three tests of reasoning, speed of thought and spatial visualization. Memory was shown to decline from the average age of 37. In the other tests, poorer results were shown by the age of 42.

However, the report published in the academic journal Neurobiology Of Aging, found that abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until at the age of 60. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4995546/Old-age-begins-at-27-as-mental-powers-start-to-decline-scientists-find.html

Another article about a related study in the same U.K. newspaper said, “While university-age participants were quicker to make choices which led to immediate rewards, another group aged 60 to 80 were much more adept at taking strategic decisions which took future stages into account”. Two experiments designed to mirror realistic decision-making scenarios showed that older people were far better at making choices that led to long-term gain.

So to the college kids who I am invisible to, enjoy your twenties because it’s downhill after that. I just can’t help smirking a little when I write that. The next time some 30-something hotshot who thinks they have the world by the ass lays a ‘tude on me I will silently think he or she is actually quite comical. They’re already past prime in some ways and don’t even know it.

I am happily grateful to be a bit less admiring of younger ages after reading the British articles. I’ve gotten better with age. All in all, I am the best I have ever been.

It’s not how old you are,
it’s how you are old.
Jules Renard