self-care

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

Reasons You’re Not Getting What You Want

/ James Browning

Stones-49630I don’t care who you are, you’ve been in want for something before. And at one point in your life, that thing you wanted…didn’t happen.

You Didn’t Ask For It: This one might blow your mind with simplicity. A mentor once told me something that really stuck… “if you don’t ask, you don’t get.” That sexy project I really want? I’m going to ask for it. That bonus I know I deserve? I’m going to bring in a list of my accomplishments, speak to them and put a bow on my speech by asking for more cash. The promotion? I’m going to ask my boss what I need to do to get it.

It works in your personal life too. Especially in moments where you’d traditionally wallow in your own issues so as not to inconvenience those around you. Well, that’s silly. Because those around you often want to be inconvenienced so they can support you. So that favor you need from a friend when your life is totally turned upside down? Ask for it.

You Didn’t Try: This is the part where you’re not getting off the couch to train for the marathon you always wanted to finish. Or you watching brochures pile up on your desk and tease you about the dream vacation that you still can’t go on because you’re not saving up. Or I could be even more serious and talk about relationships. Maybe you wouldn’t be thinking of her as “the one that got away” if you had spent a little less time watching football with the guys. Or maybe your marriage would be a little different if you committed to a couple nights of home cooked meals and good conversation.

It’s one of our worst qualities…the fact that at times, we simply don’t try. Perhaps we’re scared of actually getting the very thing we want, or maybe it’s too intimidating, too new, or too outside our comfort zone. Whatever it is that’s holding us back from getting these things we want, isn’t a good thing.

You Wanted Something Else More: There are a lot of people looking to lose weight right now. They want to hit the gym more, eat better, yadda yadda. It’s kind of our thing as humans. We want to be better versions of ourselves. But how can you possibly get that if you’re going out to eat every night and ordering the worst thing on the menu? Truth is, you wanted that stuff more than you wanted less body fat.

You say you want to be in a committed, healthy relationship and you’re on the hunt for it. Well then why are you dating the guy who throws out so many red flags he’d put bull-fighting out of business? You know that’s not going to end well. And yet, you keep at it. Taken from an article by Molly Cain on forbes.com http://www.forbes.com/sites/glassheel/2013/01/11/5-reasons-youre-not-getting-what-you-want/2/

There were more ‘reasons” in Ms. Cain’s article why I may not be getting what I want, but the three that spoke to me loudest are those above: You Didn’t Ask For It, You Didn’t Try, and You Wanted Something Else More. Little reminders and subtle wake-up calls seem to always be around if I have my antenna up to receive them. I am grateful for insight and perspective that arrives just when I need it.

There will be NO HAPPINESS
if the things you want
are different than the things you go.
hellobeliever.com

No Apologies, No Regrets

/ James Browning

1961499_ce55_625x1000I faked it. I pretended. I spoke about it with words that were false. I made others think I was, when I wasn’t.

What was this “it” I fabricated, made up, manufactured, constructed and lied about?

The simple statement “I am proud of myself”. Now that such a proclamation can roll from my lips and be true, it is so easy to see how for so long I lacked the ability to have anything more than momentary self-pride.

You are your own best friend and your own biggest critic. Regardless of the opinions of others, at the end of the day the only reflection staring back at you in the mirror is your own. Accept everything about yourself – EVERYTHING! You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

People who are proud of themselves tend to have passions in life, feel content and set good examples for others. It requires envisioning the person you would like to become and making your best efforts to grow.

Being proud isn’t bragging about how great you are; it’s more like quietly knowing that you’re worth a lot. It’s not about thinking you’re perfect – because nobody is – but knowing that you’re worthy of being loved and accepted. All you have to do is be yourself and live the story that no one else can live – the story of your own unique life. Be proud, be confident, you never know who has been looking at you wishing they were you. http://www.marcandangel.com/2012/04/26/you-should-be-able-to-say-about-yourself/

Always thinking I was a work in progress that could not be appreciated until completed, beginning in my teen years I spent decades being dissatisfied with myself. Age has a way of increasing imperfection, especially physical ones, that set me up to either accept myself as I was or collapse under the weight of my self-dissatisfaction.

Ultimately both happened. I broke until the strain of my self-discontent and like an egg was cracked open to my own truth: I am wonderful and awful; I am brilliant and dim-witted; I am handsome and ugly; I thoughtful and hard-hearted; I am peaceful and restless; I warm to love and am cold to love at the same time. All these things exist simultaneously within to create the mosaic that is “me”. Gratefully, today, the former part of each statement rings more true that the latter.

The joy within glows with gratitude that I can now accept the perfectly imperfect being that I am. Today I accept wholly the man I am with “no apologies, no regrets”. With hope, effort and intention my perfection will grow, but only if I remain wholly cognizant and accepting of my imperfections.

Every second that you spend on doubting your worth,
every moment that you use to criticize yourself;
is a second of your life wasted,
is a moment of your life thrown away.
C. JoyBell C.

Ready To Be Changed

/ James Browning

natureThe paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life; we’ve added years to life, not life to years.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space, but not inner space; we’ve done larger things, but not better things. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we’ve split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less; we plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait; we have higher incomes, but lower morals; we have more food, but less appeasement; we build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; we’ve become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology has brought this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference, or to just hit delete… By Dr. Bob Moorehead

Within the hurricane of modern life my experience has included thinking lots of money fixed everything, only to find it fixed nothing and after a point only created a lack of appreciation. I have been loved deeply but walked past it thinking something somewhere else would be better, but nothing was. I chased success, achieved it and discovered it contains its own unique way of ‘undoing’ a person. There have been years when I knew more people and had far fewer friends than now.

Each and every broken stepping stone has moved me ever onward, often staggering and involuntarily falling forward. But keep moving I did and now on the far side of the mountain, life is very good. Imperfect certainly, just as I am. The landscape changed very little. Instead I did.  Lessons that arrived didn’t teach simply because they came into my life. Nothing was learned until I opened myself and was ready to be changed and became grateful for each difficulty that was my teacher.

We were all born equal,
but where we are in life now
is of our own making
Stephen Richards

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

To Learn and Grow

/ James Browning

Beautiful-Nature-beautiful-nature-1600x900Another new day has arrived I am blessed to get to live. Some things I do will be well done. Others mediocre at best. Through it all I will try to live the hours better than yesterday. I will do my best and be content with it, yet knowing life will continue to improve me day by day if I live with intention.

 “The true measure of greatness is our capacity to navigate between our opposites with agility and grace — to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never to stop trying to get better.”

Constantly seek to learn and grow, but accept yourself exactly as you are.

Learning and growing require a willingness to look honestly and unsparingly at our shortcomings. Start with your own greatest strength. When you overuse it, it’s almost surely a window into your own greatest weakness.
In my case, the strength is drive and passion. Overused, it turns into aggressiveness. By being aware of my inclination to overuse a strength — by recognizing my own vulnerability — I was able to make a different choice.

Add Value to Others and Take Care of Yourself

Gratifying our most immediate needs and desires provides bursts of pleasure, but they’re usually short-lived. We derive the most enduring sense of meaning and satisfaction in our lives when we serve something larger than ourselves. Giving to others generates an extraordinary source of energy.

Selfishness is about making your own gratification paramount. Self-care is about making sure you’re addressing your own most basic needs, so you’re freed and fueled to also add value to others.

Focus Intensely and Renew Regularly

Unlike machines, however, human beings aren’t meant to operate at the highest intensity for very long. Instead, we’re designed to pulse between spending and renewing energy approximately every 90 minutes.

The world’s best performers — musicians, chess players, athletes — typically practice the same way: for no longer than 4 ½ hours a day. They also sleep more than the rest of us, and take more naps.

These great performers figured out that when they push for too long, their attention wanders, their energy flags, and their work suffers. But because they’re so focused when they are working, they get more done, in less time. Taken from “Six Ingredients of a Good Life” By Tony Schwartz http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2010/12/six-ingredients-of-a-good-life.html

To find balance between who I am and who I wish to be is my intention this day. To wish for no more than I am, but know it is made possible by living each day well. For the every breath I take today, I am grateful!

2 things:
If it makes you happy, do it.
If it doesn’t, then don’t.
Unknown

Today I Will Be Happy With Less.

/ James Browning

sobering grateful thought one

That’s just eleven words with a
sobering with truthful meaning.
“Today I will be happy with less”.

more….

sobering grateful thought two quote tecumseh

…Eleven words at the top and forty-seven more just above; fifty-eight words of absolute truth about one of the greatest secrets of a good life….

Soon to be two years I have found something to be grateful for each morning and focused on it for about an hour. There are no words that I can say to tell you of the conviction I have that practicing gratefulness is life changing. I urge you… no I beg you with all my heart, to take a little time for gratitude every day. Do it for just a month and you will never be the same again.

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

With Our Thoughts

/ James Browning

19All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him;
if a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him;
like a shadow that never leaves him.
Buddha

In my mind there is always a wind of thought blowing. It’s precise force and direction is ever-varying, but the breeze is constant. If I focus on one way of thinking enough I become bent into that direction like a tree blown by a constant wind.

If I spend time thinking of my want and desire of something, I get no closer to satisfying the longing and instead cause unsated yearning to grow.

If frequently go to thoughts of how much someone hurt me in the past, I bring the pain to the present to breathe new life into it.

If I am able to bring a joyful memory to mind during a difficult time, my trouble is tempered and made less heavy.

The more I am grateful of love I am given, the more love I received.

The more I am grateful for happy moments when they arrive, the more come to me.

The greater my gratitude for life, more arrives to be grateful for.

It is not within my control to master all my thoughts, but at any given moment I am capable of moderating them. It is the direction of the winds in my mind that shape my life. Realizing quality of life is more about my thinking that any other factor has been a great insight. I am grateful that with awareness I can paint whatever comes at me with new color of my choosing.

With our thoughts,
we make the world.
Buddha

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