17 January  2023      

   

Welcome to the third week of 2023!  Our new year is moving along at
its own pace, and we hope that you've been able to make the most
of the thirteen days that you've had so far!
   

   

New Life (an excerpt)
Marianne Williamson

Achieving Your Dreams
Jim Rohn

Undivided Attention
tom walsh

   

   

     
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In every walk with nature one receives far more than one seeks.

John Muir

Humility is strong--not bold; quiet--not speechless; sure--not arrogant.

Estelle Smith

If you do not hope, you will not find out what is beyond your hopes.

Clement of Alexandra

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.



Will Rogers

   

  
New Life (an excerpt)
Marianne Williamson

New life emerges not from strategy but from character.  Before realizing this, you might think that making plans, devising blueprints for your future or whatever, are the keys to the path ahead.  But our real keys to victory are internal.  Your state of doing must be matched by the state of your being, or the incongruity will sabotage even your most brilliant plans.

It's been fascinating over the last few years, watching the high and mighty in business and politics fall precipitously--not because their plans didn't work, but because their character flaws undercut those plans.  Whether the microphone caught them making racist comments or their greed overcame their common sense, who they were as people made all the difference--more than their résumés, their degrees, or even their past successes.  If you fail at the art of being human and staying human, you recklessly court disaster.  Yet how do we cultivate the betterment of our humanity?  What is the how-to of personal transformation?

What I've learned, to the extent to which I've been successful at any of this, is that the path of right living is walked one moment at a time.  Whether you show up for life as a jerk or a saint has little to do with belief or theology; it has to do with personal integrity.  We aren't transformed in our hearts by mere belief, because belief isn't of the heart.

The heart's transformation is not attained through the mind--it's attained through surrender, authenticity, forgiveness, faith, honesty, acceptance, vulnerability, humility, willingness, nonjudgment, and other characterological values that have to be learned and relearned continuously.

We might skip some lessons at school, but we can't skip any of the lessons of life.  They will find us.  If a lesson is up for us and we don't learn it now, then it's programmed into the universe that we will just have to learn it later.  It's said in A Course in Miracles that it's not up to us what we learn, but merely whether we learn through joy or through pain.

But by midlife, we're destined to learn.  Whatever parts of you are blocking the emergence of the highest, best you, have simply got to go now.  And one way or the other, they will.

Allowing the pain of personal growth to be a crucible of your spirit--the alchemical grail through which the metal of your former self turns into gold--is one of the highest callings of life.  Pain can burn you up and destroy you, or burn you up and redeem you.  It can deliver you to an entrenched despair, or deliver you to your higher self.  At midlife we decide, consciously or unconsciously, the path of the victim or the path of the phoenix when it is rising up at last.

Growth can be hard, and laboring a new self very difficult.  Growing older just happens; growing wise is something else again.  And by a certain point in life, most of us have been hurt.  We have been disappointed.  We have had dreams die, and find it hard to forgive ourselves or others.  The challenge of age is not to skip life's disappointments but to transcend them.  We transcend them by learning the lessons they taught us, however painful, and coming out on the other side prepared to create, with God's help, a new life.

Marianne Williamson
The Age of Miracles
   

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Achieving Your Dreams
Jim Rohn

While most people spend most of their lives struggling to earn a living, a much smaller number seem to have everything going their way. Instead of just earning a living, the smaller group is busily working at building and enjoying a fortune. Everything just seems to work out for them. And here sits the much larger group, wondering how life can be so unfair, so complicated and unjust. What’s the major difference between the little group with so much and the larger group with so little?

Despite all of the factors that affect our lives—like the kind of parents we have, the schools we attended, the part of the country we grew up in—none has as much potential power for affecting our futures as our ability to dream.

Dreams are a projection of the kind of life you want to lead. Dreams can drive you. Dreams can make you skip over obstacles. When you allow your dreams to pull you, they unleash a creative force that can overpower any obstacle in your path. To unleash this power, though, your dreams must be well defined. A fuzzy future has little pulling power. Well-defined dreams are not fuzzy. Wishes are fuzzy. To really achieve your dreams, to really have your future plans pull you forward, your dreams must be vivid.

If you’ve ever hiked a 14,000-foot peak in the Rocky Mountains, one thought has surely come to mind: “How did the settlers of this country do it?” How did they get from the East Coast to the West Coast? Carrying one day’s supply of food and water is hard enough. Can you imagine hauling all of your worldly goods with you... mile after mile, day after day, month after month? These people had big dreams. They had ambition. They didn’t focus on the hardship of getting up the mountain.

In their minds, they were already on the other side–their bodies just hadn’t gotten them there yet! Despite all of their pains and struggles, all of the births and deaths along the way, those who made it to the other side had a single vision: to reach the land of continuous sunshine and extraordinary wealth. To start over where anything and everything was possible. Their dreams were stronger than the obstacles in their way.

You’ve got to be a dreamer. You’ve got to envision the future. You’ve got to see California while you’re climbing 14,000-foot peaks. You’ve got to see the finish line while you’re running the race. You’ve got to hear the cheers when you’re in the middle of a monster project. And you’ve got to be willing to put yourself through the paces of doing the uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable. Because that’s how you realize your dreams.

* * * * *

Reprinted with permission from the Jim Rohn e-zine.
  

Living Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a place
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are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do we
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from them what you will, and disagree with whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you each week.

   

Find the passion.  It takes great passion and great energy to do anything
creative.  I would go so far as to say you can't do it without that passion.

Agnes DeMille

   

 

Undivided Attention

I was once looking to buy a new printer, and I went to Office Max to see what kinds of printers they had to offer.  I had a couple of questions about their wireless capabilities, so when one of the guys who worked there came over and asked if I needed help, I said yes and asked him a question.

I was about halfway through the question when he asked "Which operating system are you using?"

I was a bit taken aback that he had interrupted the question before I had even finished it, and a bit perplexed that he was asking a question that had nothing to do with my question.  It wasn't until I looked back up at him that I realized that he was talking on the phone with someone through the Bluetooth unit perched so prominently on his ear.

He had asked me if I needed help, while he was supposedly "helping" someone else on the phone.  It was ridiculous, and I told him that I was fine and that I'd figure out my questions on my own.  He looked at me a bit surprised, and asked, "Are you sure?"  I said yes--after all, what good can he do me when he's not even focused on what he's doing?

   

The present moment is filled with joy and
happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.

Thích Nhat Hạnh

Peace Is Every Step

   

I'm constantly amazed at the number of people I see spending "quality" time with their kids, only to pull out the cell phone and have a long and involved conversation with someone who isn't even there.  The poor kid is relegated to the status of ignored companion, unless they do something they shouldn't do, when the adult will take two seconds from the conversation to say "Knock that off!"

It makes me wonder if today's little kids will have to become even more destructive and anti-social in order to gain the attention that they crave.

In spite of the reams of evidence that cell phone use while driving is incredibly dangerous (at least 2600 people DIE every year because of it), many, many people still insist upon carrying on phone conversations and maintaining text exchanges while behind the wheel in traffic.  Tens of thousands of people have lost their husbands, wives, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers. . . . you name it, only because someone thought "It'll never happen to me."  Those people were wrong, and they've killed other people because they weren't willing to give their undivided attention to the task at hand, which was driving.

    

A study done in Boston found that all the attention to
devices takes parents away from parenting. It creates
conflict.  “I think they’re ignoring their children and I think
the kids are pretty upset about it,” says Dr. Jeanne
Floerke, child psychologist.  She sees kids acting out with
bad behavior having to compete with a device for attention.
“Kids are saying ‘pay attention to me’ so I think what we need
to do is engage in positive behavior with our kids, turn off
the cell phones, and interact with your kids.”  Or else
they’re likely to seek other ways to get attention.

David Mitchell and Dave Young

    

Why are we so unwilling--and almost unable--to give our undivided attention to the tasks that we do?  All throughout our culture and society, we see declines in the quality of work and the service, and much of this is due to the fact that people seem to think that multi-tasking isn't just a new norm, but a necessity.

In the United States, at least, we used to have a very strong work ethic, and we used to teach our kids to be proud of the results of their work.  We much more often focused on outcomes, and because we wanted it to be positive, we learned to put our undivided attention to the task we had taken on.  When a parent spent time with a child, they spent time together, talking or playing or just going for a long walk.  Nowadays, though, parents seem to resent this distraction that keeps them from watching their TV and spending time on the phone talking about trifles.  So they compromise by being there physically with the kid, but certainly not there emotionally or mentally for  the kid.

In the classroom, in spite of all the people who glorify the idea of multi-tasking, I find that the students who are able to sit down and focus on the assignment are the ones who succeed in learning the material.  Because of that, I spend a lot of time in class teaching kids how to focus, and believe it or not, these kids appreciate that.  Over and over again, these teenagers thank me for helping them to learn how to study, because no one else ever had tried to do so.  Most teachers are so intent on the assignments that they never pay attention to whether or not their students are even able to focus on the material they're supposed to be learning.

   

Supported by research into how the brain functions, Dr. Deak
argues that the brain is only able to focus deeply on one task
at a time. And not only that, trying to do too many things at
once causes the brain to lose the capacity for deep thinking
altogether.  “When you try to multitask, in the short-term it
doubles the amount of time it takes to do a task and it usually
at least doubles the number of mistakes,” she told the conference.

Nick Morrison

   

And with the role models that these young people have, is it any surprise that they have a hard time focusing?  Whom have they seen who models the ability to put their undivided attention on a task?  Even many pro athletes don't focus on their sports exclusively any more--during games, watch how many NFL players are just as interested in the crowd and the cameras as they are in the game.  And those are the ones that the networks give the most camera time to. . . .

I know many people who are almost never satisfied with the results that they get in life, whether that be at work, with their hobbies, in their relationships, or in other areas.  Most of these people don't get the results they desire because while they're doing something, they're also focused on something else.  Is a conversation with your wife as valuable when you're also watching a TV show?  Is time spent with your teenager going to be as valuable if you--or her--spend most of your time on the phone with someone else?  Can you really get your work done well if you're also surfing the Internet?  These are questions that most of us never seem to address--and probably because we already know the answer, and we just don't really want to hear it.

     

   
   

   

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Nothing is too great or
too good to be true.
Do not believe that we
can imagine things better
than they are.  In the long
run, in the ultimate outlook,
in the eye of the Creator,
the possibilities of existence,
the possibilities open to us,
are beyond our imagination.

Joseph Wood Krutch

  

Gifts That We Can Pass On to Others:

THE GIFT OF LISTENING


You must REALLY listen.  No interrupting, no daydreaming, no planning your response.  Just listening.

THE GIFT OF A COMPLIMENT

A simple and sincere, "You look great in red," or "You did a super job" or "That was a wonderful meal" can make someone's day.

THE GIFT OF AFFECTION

Be generous with appropriate hugs, kisses, pats on the back and handholds.  Let these small actions demonstrate the love you have for family and friends.

THE GIFT OF A CHEERFUL DISPOSITION

The easiest way to feel good is to extend a kind word to someone; really, it's not that hard to say Hello or Thank You.

THE GIFT OF LAUGHTER

Clip cartoons.  Share articles and funny stories.  Your gift will say, "I love to laugh with you."

THE GIFT OF KINDNESS

Every day, go out of your way to do something kind.

THE GIFT OF A WRITTEN NOTE

It can be a simple "Thanks for the help" note or a full sonnet.  A brief, handwritten note may be remembered for a lifetime, and may even change a life.

THE GIFT OF SOLITUDE

There are times when we want nothing more than to be left alone.  Be sensitive to those times and give the gift of solitude to others.

THE GIFT OF ENCOURAGEMENT

It costs nothing, it's easy to pass on, and its effects can be truly magical.  Find some aspect of another person's life in which he or she could use an encouraging word or three, and pass it on!

   

  

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes
or a fig.  If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer that there must be
time.  Let the tree first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Epictetus

    

  

Yes, life can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's actually rather dependable and reliable.  Some principles apply to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning.  I use it a lot when I teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.  What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or generous, compassionate or arrogant?  In this book, I've done my best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life, writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.  Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too!
Universal Principles of Living Life Fully.  Awareness of these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration out of the lives we lead.