self-care

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

Uniquely Original

/ James Browning

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There will ever only be one of you — ever. In the history of the universe, you exist only once and you are it. There will never again be another person with your unique intellect, temperament, skills and abilities.

We often get stuck in a rut of who we are and what we can offer without really grasping the greatness that is contained in our uniqueness. We often fail to capitalize on our unique abilities. What limits us is a lack of understanding of our unique gifts, the community we create around us, and knowing the value of our role in life.

You are the only person in the world that will ever see things they way you do. Your personality, experiences, insights, and your emotions all lead you to interact with the world differently from everyone else. You may be only slightly different, but it is different. Only you have seen what you have seen, in the way that you have seen them, and can come to the same conclusions. That voice is essential not only to the world immediately around you but in our every day interactions around the globe.

Our ability to reach beyond our geographies now exceeds our expectations – expectations we set not just a few years ago, but a few months ago. We are continuously amazed at how far and how fast we can reach around the planet. Therefore, your point of view may challenge or support another idea around the globe. You may never know it, or feel it, or see it, but it is, nonetheless, there. Don’t ever underestimate the value that your uniqueness has on the conversation.

One of the universal truths of people is that we seek our own level; we find jobs, communities, partners, friends that align with our personalities and our abilities. Opposites may attract, but our “ecosystem” of personalities tends to mirror ourselves.

The problem with all this likeness around us is that it tends to darken our uniqueness. We see our ideas, beliefs, skills, abilities, etc. similar to others around us and then tend to feel we don’t need to be unique – others either don’t need to see it, or someone else has that covered. The very system we put in place to help support us – to make life easier – is the very system that stifles our own “uniqueocity.”

I am, and forever will be, the only unique me. And right back at you! From an article in “Forbes” magazine by Todd Wilms http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2013/10/04/i-unique-you-unique/

Wanting to fit in and be like others is not something I am completely immune to. The worst of it was when I was a teenager, yet even then I did not want to be completely like others. As I have gotten older any wish to be like someone else have become more and more rare.

To a fault as an adult I have frequently rebelled against the ‘norm’ just because it was what was considered ‘normal’. If the majority was going “North”, I’d turn and head “Southeast”. That has certainly NOT been easy, but over time that attitude shaped me, mostly for the best, into a ‘uniquely original’ human being. I am proud of the distinctive person I have become and grateful to be ‘me’.

Never love anyone
who treats you like
you’re ordinary.
Oscar Wilde

Just Go For It

/ James Browning

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There will be a few times in your life

when all your instincts will tell you to do something,

something that defies logic,

upsets your plans,

and may seem crazy to others.

When that happens,

you do it.

Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else.

Ignore logic,

ignore the odds,

ignore the complications,

and just go for it.

From “Remember When” Judith McNaught

And so it is with me as Judith McNaught wrote. The more I have become able to listen to the soften spoken voice of my heart and soul (or whatever you call that presence that lives in my chest and gut) the better my life has become. It’s damn scary to take off in a direction that a good bit of me is uncertain about while at the same time knowing at an instinctive level it is absolutely the direction I must go.

My destiny is not something I can always decide on or choose, but I can let it happen if I stop paddling against the current and let it take me where I am meant to go. I am not saying I don’t have to think and use my head. I do, but when logic has been thoughtfully laid out in my head I allow my ‘heart and soul” to lay over it. When the two match, “no problem”. When they don’t, more often than not, my logic is flawed. It’s then I need to do one of two things: 1) rethink the subject and stir in my heart and soul to see what surfaces or 2) simply follow my heart and soul. The latter has rarely ever been a mistake.

How utterly freeing it is to live life knowing I don’t have to figure every thing out! II am grateful for the mystery and excitement that living this way lends to my life.

Remembering you are going to die
is the best way I know to avoid the trap
of thinking you have something to lose.
You are already naked.
There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Anonymous

Letting Go of a Hot Iron

/ James Browning

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One of the more difficult insights to grasp has been that it is largely pain within a person that causes him/her to hurt me. Long did I believe those who caused me grief without cause, or pain far beyond what I deserved, were simply mean-spirited people. Experience has taught when someone is rude, mean or inconsiderate the vast majority of the time they have unresolved issues within.

Anger, heartache, resentment or some other harbored pain is festering inside most hurtful people that they have yet to face, cope with or overcome. As difficult as it can be, the last thing such a person needs is for me to make matters worse by responding angrily. My human ‘fight’ instinct first kicks in and only with strong intention can I keep from dishing out venom equal to or greater than the poison spewed on me.

When I react badly to someone who has treated me ‘less than’ any momentary feeling of satisfaction dims quickly. I end up tasting a bit of my own toxins I’ve thrown on them. Fire plus fire equals a bigger fire. It’s never any different. Even when things settle down and apologies are given and accepted a touch of bitterness always remains. Sadly, often those leftovers become catalysts for a later resurfacing of the clash.

Refusal to play the game by saying, “I am not going to fight with you” or “I’m not going to give you something to blame me for later” often makes the other person’s emotions flare further. But by sticking to my truth and doing just that will disarm the person eventually. Some time the absolute best I can do for both parties is to put temporary distance between me and him or her. No, it’s not easy but it is best.

Forgiveness is a gift I give myself. The other person need not even know I have forgiven them. Often its impossible to let them know even if I want to. To forgive someone is to give myself the antidote for another’s poison that’s been injected into me. If I don’t, at least in part, I give someone else control over my life. Forgiveness is about setting myself free.

When someone hurts me, I have to let it go or I end up contaminating my mind, heart and soul with the poison that belongs to someone else. Holding my tongue is not easy, but afterwards letting go what was said or done is even more challenging. Knowing they have done it out of their own distress takes time to settle in. Stephen Richards wrote, “When you initially forgive, it is like letting go of a hot iron. There is initial pain and the scars will show, but you can start living again.” That’s about as good of a perspective as I have been able to develop.

Being a normal human being, its impossible for me to always practice full forgiveness where and when I need to. However, I am grateful for the awareness that I should forgive that has made shorter the length and weight of bitterness.

Forgiveness is really not about
someone’s harmful behavior;
it’s about our own relationship
with our past. When we begin
the work of forgiveness,
it is primarily a practice for ourselves.
Gina Sharpe

The Untethered Soul

/ James Browning



Holding onto thoughts instead of thinking them and letting go…
Recalling things that happened in the past and stewing about them…
Trying to control emotions by holding on or pushing them away…
Attempting to rewrite the past by obsessing on what might have happened…

Currently I am reading a best seller titled “The Untethered Soul” by Michael A. Singer a good friend gave me. It points directly at some of the reasons I have suffered from my heart and mind by trying to redirect and rewrite life to my liking. Here’ are a few passages from the book:

How would you feel if someone outside really started talking to you the way your inner voice does?

Creating thoughts, holding onto thoughts, recalling thoughts, generating emotions, controlling emotions, and disciplining powerful inner drives, all requite tremendous expenditure of energy.

If you look at the times in your life when you were in love or excited and inspired by something, you were so filled with energy that you didn’t even want to eat.

Have you ever noticed that when you are mentally or emotionally drained, food doesn’t help that much? Conversely, if you look at the times in your life when you were in love, or excited and inspired by something, you were filled with energy that you didn’t even want to eat.

The only reason you don’t feel this energy all the time is because you block it. You block it by closing your heart, by closing your mind, and by pulling yourself into a restrictive space inside. When you close your heart or close your mind, you hide in the darkness within you. There is not light. There is not energy. There is nothing flowing.

We are programmed to open or close based upon our past experiences. Impressions from the past are still inside of us, and they get stimulated by different events. If they were negative impressions, we tend to close. If they were positive impressions, we tend to open.

But closing your heart does not really protect you from anything; it just cuts you off from your source of energy. In the end, it only serves to block you inside.

Do not let anything be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.

There is no possible way I can completely stop grabbing and hanging onto my thoughts. The past is bound to surface and hurt a little or a lot. The future will never stop being something to worry about at least a little. I will always be a re-writer of the past to some extent. However, awareness of the unhealthiness of these practices can help me not get tied up in emotional restraints of my own making.

It’s an unexacting practice being human. Anything new usually seems difficult to near impossible as first. Letting things pass that are not healthy has always been a challenge. However, a little at a time, day by day, things have improved because I began years ago to practice what “The Untethered Soul” points out so clearly: “To attain true inner freedom , you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them. No solution can possibly exist while you’re lost in the energy of a problem”.

I am grateful for my progress and the reminder Michael Singer’s book is to live life with intention.

Pretending something did not happen
that really did happen…
Blaming others and not taking
rightful share of responsibility…
Are just two of the surest ways
to a tormented and tumultuous life.
James Browning

Casting Shadows

/ James Browning

sidewalk-poop

It’s difficult not to be critical when I see someone misbehaving, treating others badly or acting like they are the only one that matters. It has become my practice to try to replace being condemning with a thought like, “you don’t know what this person has gone through to get to here or how hard their life is. Just say a silent quick prayer for them and move on”.

To judge others is to bring judgement to myself. The more I am critical about people the more I train myself to be hard on me! My discovery with intentionally trying not to judge others is I have become less critical of me. It has become apparent that the same disapproving part of me used to condemn others is the same part that can be hyper-critical about myself. That way of seeing was in fact polishing a mirror I used to judge myself.

If we knew the cards and crosses
Crowding ’round our neighbor’s way,
If we knew his little losses,
Sorely grievous day by day,
Would we then so often chide him
For his lack of thrift and gain?
Casting on his life a shadow
Leaves on his heart a stain?

If we knew the silent story
Quivering through some hearts of pain,
Would our human hearts dare doom them
Back to haunts of guilt again?
Life has many a tangled crossing,
Joy has man a change to woe;
And the cheeks tear-washed are whitest,
As the blessed angels know.

Let us reach into our hearts,
For the key to others’ lives,
And with love to erring nature,
Cherish good that still survives;
So that when our disrobed spirits
Soar to realms of light again,
We may say, dear Father, judge us
As we judged our fellow-men.
unknown

I am far from perfect and find myself judging and casting shadows on others more often than I wish. But I am grateful more often than not I catch myself. I redirect my thinking realizing that every time I condemn someone else, I am in fact setting me up judge myself.

Judgement prevent us from seeing
the good that lies beyond appearances.
Wayne Dyer

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

Years of Friction

/ James Browning

tree adapting to friction

It is not work that kills men, it is worry.
…worry is rust upon the blade.
It is not movement that destroys
the machinery, but friction.
Henry Ward Beecher

In Colorado last week visiting my son, I was waiting in the car when I noticed the little tree in the photo. No only had the sapling accepted to its position in life and had adapted to it, the tree had begun to use the adaptation to its benefit against the winds in Boulder.

Years of friction of the tree trunk rubbing against a cable caused the sapling to adapt. Now as the tree gets older it has begun to grow around the source of friction making itself stronger in the process. It changed and now benefits from what once was the source of injury.

And so it is with life. Resistance to life as it is, does not benefit a person. The injury is to the thinker and not the subject of the thoughts. Things improve when one allows them self to be adapted to real life. The little tree does not think. It only does what is the most healthful for survival. For the tree, like humans, adaptation is often he different between a good life and a difficult one.

The sapling could not know the Serenity Prayer, but practices its principles implicitly.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
From a poem by Reinhold Niebuhr

I am grateful to the small tree. It “spoke to me” with a reminder to adapt to one’s circumstance when there is not other option.

A gem cannot be polished
without friction,
nor a man perfected
without trials.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Exploding Fireworks and Ringing Bells

/ James Browning

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I am a lover of love in it in all forms. Mother or Father for a child; a child for parents; a friend for a friend; a lover for their beloved and even the way one can dream up a fantasized person and fall in love with him or her.

A lover’s feelings can be intense and severe when expressed frankly and bluntly. I was moved by the sincere rawness within a letter from “A Wallflower Christmas” by Lisa Kleypas shared below.

“The letter had been crumpled up and tossed onto the grate. It had burned all around the edges, so the names at the top and bottom had gone up in smoke. But there was enough of the bold black scrawl to reveal that it had indeed been a love letter. And as Hannah read the singed and half-destroyed parchment, she was forced to turn away to hide the trembling of her hand.

—should warn you that this letter will not be eloquent. However, it will be sincere, especially in light of the fact that you will never read it. I have felt these words like a weight in my chest, until I find myself amazed that a heart can go on beating under such a burden.

I love you. I love you desperately, violently, tenderly, completely. I want you in ways that I know you would find shocking. My love, you don’t belong with a man like me. In the past I’ve done things you wouldn’t approve of, and I’ve done them ten times over. I have led a life of immoderate sin. As it turns out, I’m just as immoderate in love. Worse, in fact.

I want to kiss every soft place of you, make you blush and faint, pleasure you until you weep, and dry every tear with my lips. If you only knew how I crave the taste of you. I want to take you in my hands and mouth and feast on you. I want to drink wine and honey from you.

I want you under me. On your back.

I’m sorry. You deserve more respect than that. But I can’t stop thinking of it. Your arms and legs around me. Your mouth, open for my kisses. I need too much of you. A lifetime of nights spent between your thighs wouldn’t be enough.

I want to talk with you forever. I remember every word you’ve ever said to me.

If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.

You would say it’s too soon to feel this way. You would ask how I could be so certain. But some things can’t be measured by time. Ask me an hour from now. Ask me a month from now. A year, ten years, a lifetime. The way I love you will outlast every calendar, clock, and every toll of every bell that will ever be cast. If only you—

And there it stopped.”

The letter from Lisa Kleypas’s book is powerful, passionate and gritty just as real  love actually is. Loving someone means going beyond what is politically correct and speaking heart and soul honestly in their full dimensions.

I am grateful there are some with deep feelings about love who write about them (like Lisa Kleypas).  They encourage me to finish the love story book I have been working on for a few years. And I am reminded to settle for nothing less than love that is genuine with plenty of beautiful fireworks.

Love encompasses so much,
reaches so far, and heals so deeply,
that any attempt to describe it,
no matter how poetic, only dilutes it.
Steve Maraboli

Allow Gratitude to Transform Your Life

/ James Browning

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We all know that being grateful and appreciative is very beneficial, but have you ever noticed that it’s often easier said than done? Sometimes finding the good in a trying situation can by pretty challenging. Yet, the benefits of maintaining genuine gratitude and appreciation in spite of what’s going on around us are certainly worth looking into.

This is where focus comes to the rescue. You can actually transform your life by training yourself to search for, discover, and focus on legitimate reasons to feel grateful and appreciative.

We all have blessings in our life! No matter where we are, and regardless of what we might be going through, there are always things we can be grateful for. The challenge is to train ourselves to focus on gratitude, and to intuitively search for reasons to manifest appreciation. This may, or may not be your natural tendency, but with practice, all of us can certainly develop a predominate attitude of gratitude backed up with true expressions of appreciation.

Do you know someone who never has a bad word to say about anyone or anything? Someone who just naturally sees the silver lining, even around the darkest cloud? How do you feel when you are in the company of that person? Don’t you feel refreshed and positive?

What about the other end of the spectrum? Do you know someone who always needs to point out the negative aspect of every situation? How does that make you feel? Nobody feels empowered around someone like that, especially since negative attitudes can infect those who are exposed to them regularly.

When trying to cultivate a greater sense of gratitude in your life, you should seek out those whose dominant tendency is positive and upbuilding. It’s also a good idea to avoid spending too much time with those who like to dwell on the negative. Choosing your associates wisely can really help us to cultivate a much greater degree of gratitude and appreciation.

It can be very difficult to resist adopting a negative viewpoint when you are surrounded by it. To maintain a more grateful and appreciative perspective, we need to break away from the mentality of the masses and learn to think for ourselves. We need to make a conscious effort to filter the information we are exposed to. That means we need to find ways of limiting our exposure to negative input. We also need to be willing to take action to actively move away from sources that influence us in a negative way.

See the big picture. When you find yourself in a difficult situation, look for the beneficial aspects created by that situation. Ask yourself: “What have I learned here that will benefit me in the future? When I look back on this experience a year from now, what will I be grateful for?”  http://advancedlifeskills.com/blog/allow-gratitude-to-transform-your-life/

Finding something to be grateful for every day is life changing, even when that gratitude is for something that was difficult to endure. Over time my slant on being alive and my perspective of other people has shifted to be far more positive that it ever used to be. My chosen emphasis on gratitude has been life changing and brought a new way of seeing everything.

I truly believe we can either see the connections,
celebrate them, and express gratitude for our blessings,
or we can see life as a string of coincidences
that have no meaning or connection.
For me, I’m going to believe in miracles,
celebrate life, rejoice in the views of eternity
and hope my choices will create a positive ripple effect
in the lives of others. This is my choice.
Mike Erickwen