Hello
there, and welcome to this new day! We have a
whole new set of hours,
people, and experiences ahead of us, if only we'll
take advantage of the opportunities
that we have to reach out and stretch ourselves
beyond our previous limits! What are
you going to do with this brand-new today with which
you've been blessed?
Our
judgment is best when we can forget ourselves and any reputation we
may have acquired and can concentrate wholly on making the right
decisions. -Raymond
A. Spruance
When
you reread a classic you do
not see more in the book than
you
did before;
you see more in you
than there was before. -Clifton Fadiman
Sow
an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a
character. Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
-
Charles
Reade
Standing
in the middle of the road is very
dangerous; you get knocked down
by
the traffic from both sides. -
Margaret
Thatcher
Much has been said about "living in the
moment." Virtually every spiritual teacher
throughout history has suggested this solution. In
fact, this may be one of the oldest and wisest pieces of
advice for living a happier life. Yet, despite all
the emphasis on this advice, very few people seem able to
implement this critical principle in their daily
lives. I believe this seemingly simple concept
is so elusive because the untrained mind is much like a
puppy--it wanders off without realizing where it's
going! Before long, the puppy (like our thoughts)
gets away from us.
Of the five principles discussed in this book, this is the
one your therapist is least likely to have shared with
you. After all, much of therapy is spent discussing
your childhood and other issues surrounding your
past. And while you can certainly gain some insight
into your present life by understanding your past, doing
so is almost always taken to excess. Keeping your
attention riveted to the past (or future) can become an
insidious habit that's difficult to break. Many
therapists actually encourage their clients to live in the
past (or in the future), without realizing they are doing
so and certainly with no intended harm.
If you've
ever been in therapy, you are undoubtedly familiar with
the practice of encouraging a client to "reexperience"
the past.
Therapists prompt clients--sometimes harshly--to
focus on, think about, and most frequently, discuss in
great detail the past. This is done instead
of teaching clients how to bring their attention back to
the here and now--the only way to experience true
happiness. In addition to focusing on the past,
clients are encouraged to "get in touch with"
the negative feelings that accompany their negative
thoughts of the past. . . .
When your attention is primarily in the present moment,
the bulk of your experience comes from a place of wisdom
rather than reactivity. Although you will feel
content when you focus on the present moment, you won't
repress or deny anything that's truly relevant. The
thoughts and memories you need to grow as a person
(even the painful ones) will surface at the appropriate
time: when you have the ability to handle them and
the inner resources to know what to do with the
information you receive. Wisdom is like a built-in
emotional monitor. It helps you keep your bearings
and your perspective. It directs you toward
happiness without encouraging you to pretend that things
are different than they actually are. Wisdom does
allow for negativity, but only when it's necessary and
appropriate--a far cry from the negativity typically
generated in a therapy session.
The only way to experience genuine and lasting
contentment, satisfaction, and happiness is to learn to
live your life in the present moment. Regardless of
your past experiences, the specifics of your current
circumstances, how much you analyze your past or speculate
about your future, you will never be happy until you learn
to live in the present moment. A mind that is
"out of the moment" is fertile ground for worry,
anxiety, regret, and guilt. This doesn't mean that
every moment of your life should (or ever will) be spent
focused in this moment, only that it is important that
this occurs more often than not. . . .
Thoreau said, "Above all, we can not afford to not
live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals
who loses no moment of passing life in remembering the
past." I couldn't agree more. I think
you'll find that mastering this principle is remarkably
simple. It just takes a little practice.
Beginning today, start observing where your thoughts are
focused. Are you engaged in what you are doing right
now? Or, have your thoughts drifted toward the
future or the past? You'll probably catch yourself
drifting away dozens, even hundreds, of times a day.
Don't worry. Pretty soon, this number will diminish
substantially. You'll discover that when you are
engaged in this moment, you'll feel happy and
satisfied. This positive reinforcement will give you
the faith to continue your practice.
You can be amazing
You can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug
You can be the outcast
Or be the backlash of somebody's lack of love
Or you can start speaking up
Nothing's gonna hurt you the way that words do
When they settle 'neath your skin
Kept on the inside and no sunlight
Sometimes a shadow wins
But I wonder what would happen if you
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave
Everybody's been there, everybody's been stared
down
By the enemy
Fallen for the fear and done some disappearing
Bow down to the mighty
But don't run, stop holding your tongue
Maybe there's a way out of the cage where you live
Maybe one of these days you can let the light in
Show me how big your brave is
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
Innocence, your history of silence
Won't do you any good
Did you think it would?
Let your words be anything but empty
Why don't you tell them the truth?
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
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When I play the piano, I sometimes finish a
piece by holding my foot on the sustain pedal
and listening intently as the sound fades and
eventually merges with the surrounding
silence. When the last note is barely
audible, there is a moment when I'm not certain
if I'm still hearing the note or imagining it,
whether it's part of me or part of the world.
No matter how hard I struggle to discern where I
leave off and others begin, ultimately I find
that there's no telling. I cannot convince
myself that there is such a place.
I cannot find a ramrod boundary line, only
watery expanses, and in the diminuendo I'm
always being carried out into the world. I
grapple with a question once posed by the
psychologist June Singer: "The space
between us, is it a space that separates us or a
space that unites us?"
The world continually reminds us that our calls
both do and do not belong solely to us.
Just as calls issue from our own bodies in the
form of symptoms, they also come from the body
politic, of which we're each single cells.
Where an affinity of wounds connects us to
others, where the world in its shocking
condition touches our lives in a personal way,
we can find ourselves responding to a call and
turning from sympathizers to activists.
What we each determine is a fitting response is
entirely subjective. One person might take
on multinational corporations or federal laws or
the plight of an entire race of people, another
might adopt a child from the Third World, and
yet another might simply sweep the street in
front of the shop every morning. For some,
all the activism they can handle in this life is
in trying to heal their own souls, though by
most accounts this is the work of the
world. Contemplative nuns and monks,
writers, and most artists serve the world best,
for instance, in solitude. They touch the
world most intimately when they're completely
alone, conferring their medicine through prayer
and painting, through writing books and working
the beads. They may seldom see a soul yet
be engaged in the deepest soul work, which
simultaneously serves the greater community.
The world never stops calling, never stops
acting as though it belongs to us, and its pain
is always gathering force like storms
offshore. It sends out flares the way we
send signals into space, always hoping that
someone will come across them, will understand
what they mean, will trace the calls. It
shouts to us from the sickroom, from the cold
calculus of the daily news, and from whatever we
can't stand to look at and so avert our
eyes. The world gets harder and harder to
ignore as it gets smaller and its problems
bigger, as whatever hits the fan gets a little
more evenly distributed.
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
Just
as a word of encouragement during failure is
worth
more than a whole book of praises after success,
small
deeds done are always better than great deeds planned.
Patti
LaBelle
That
Person Who Seems to Be Rude, May Not Be
The
saying "What you see is what you get" has
consistently turned out to be one of the most
inaccurate sayings I've ever heard. I've
bought things that have turned out to be much
different from what they looked to be, I've made
decisions based on appearances that have turned out
to be faulty or misleading, I've admired things that
seemed to be admirable on the surface, but really
weren't at all things to be admired. But the
saying seems to be least accurate, consistently,
when it comes to people.
I've met "arrogant" people who are
incredibly fearful, and not arrogant at all.
They just come across as arrogant because their
actions, which are based on fear, make them seem to
be arrogant. I've met nice people who weren't
nice at all--rather, they're basically manipulative
people who are pretending to be nice in order to get
something out of someone. I've met plenty of
people who promise to be supportive of me, but only
as long as I'm supportive of them--no matter what
kinds of terrible things they do or say.
Some of the problem comes from the fact that human
beings know how to play roles in order to cause
someone to think or believe a certain way. If
I want you to think that I'm trustworthy, I know
what kinds of things I can say and do in order to
make you believe in me--even if I plan on stealing
all that I can from you at the first opportunity I
get. In short, I can lie; I can pretend to be
something that I'm not. That's why it's so
important that we NOT adopt the
"what-you-see" attitude about other
people, ever. The simple truth is that unless
we know someone very well, it's almost impossible
for us to understand their motivations or purposes.
I know that people often misjudge me, based on what
they expect to see versus what they do see.
There are certain things about who I am that I
simply want to be true to, and I'm not willing to
behave in ways that aren't true to my self.
For example, I really dislike participating in small
talk because I can never think of things to say, so
when I avoid it, people think that I'm
stand-offish. I don't judge other people who
do like small talk--I just avoid it myself.
I'm also pretty sure of myself when I speak, mostly
because I generally don't speak about things that I
don't know much about. Because my confidence
level is high when I do speak, then, some people see
me as being rather arrogant.
In the same ways, we see people from other cultures
as being indifferent when they don't find something
to be as important as we find it. Someone from
another country may seem to be mocking us when they
find something funny that we don't find funny.
That thing that they just said that seems so rude
might not be seen as rude by anyone in their own
land, but to us it seems extraordinarily rude.
When I'm out for a walk and that person who's
standing in his driveway turns around and walks away
right before I get there, I can see that action as
being rude or I can see it as someone turning around
and walking away. I know from personal
experience that that particular person may be having
a very hard time today, and may not feel strong
enough to face someone else today. If that's
the case, then my interpretation of that person
being rude is an incredible disservice to someone
who's fighting anxiety or depression.
Terms like "rude" and "arrogant"
and "stuck up" and "mean" are
judgmental terms, anyway. I've learned that
instead of taking a "what-you-see"
attitude towards other people, it's much more
helpful to remember that "it is what it
is." That person who turned away isn't
being rude to me--that's simply a person turning
away. That person who calls me an obnoxious
name may be rude, but that person also might have
just lost their job or a relationship and doesn't
know of proper ways to build up their
self-esteem--so they're just using the first
available target to try to make themselves feel
better. If I call the person
"obnoxious," I may be accurate on the
surface, but if I simply recognize that "that
person just said something inappropriate," I
may even help to create a situation in which I can
help them somehow.
I've done things that others have perceived as rude,
even though my intention was never to be rude to
someone else. My hope is that I can see past
another person's words and actions to root causes so
that somehow, in some way, I may be able to offer a
bit of help and healing rather than judgment and
criticism, for I've learned over the years that what
I see is very often not at all what was meant.
The
roots of love sink down and
deep and
strike out far, and they are
arteries that feed
our lives, so we
must see that they get the water
and sun they need so they can
nourish us. And when you put
something good into
the world,
something good comes back to you.
Merle
Shain
Several
years ago, a friend of mine lived with me during the final few
months of her life. Not completely understanding the effects
of her illness, I kept saying, "Michelle, you must eat.
You're getting too thin! Eat!" And after she
died, I read in her journal about how "Marianne takes it for
granted that if you eat, you gain weight; if you want to go out
somewhere, you can; and if you want to live past this year, it's a
reasonable proposition." She was someone who had so
little to be happy about, but she taught me so much about
happiness. During those months, right after the birth of my
daughter, I would come home to find my dying friend with my baby
snuggled next to her. There was a smile of bliss on both
their faces that I will remember all my days.
Everything
you need for your better future and success has already
been written. And guess what? It's all available.
All you have to do is
go to the library. And there's probably a library in every
neighborhood.
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.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic (there are five pages on adversity, for example).
™
