Monday, January 17, 2011
random thoughts...: Dont' let them get you down
random thoughts...: Dont' let them get you down: "Subjected to the bad moods, frustrations and energies of the people around us, it is really hard to not be affected, to not be plummeted in..."
Dont' let them get you down
Subjected to the bad moods, frustrations and energies of the people around us, it is really hard to not be affected, to not be plummeted into states of unhappiness, depression, and fear. Is there something we can do about this?
Yes. We can own who we are, and accept that “their shit is their shit, not mine!” I don’t care if that makes us look cavalier…I just care that we not continue to live in this sewer of negative energy when it’s not ours!
I witness people facing challenges and difficulties because of what other people are doing, saying, and how they are acting. They get hurt because they take it as a judgment of who they are as a person. I think we need to allow other people to learn from every challenge that arises, and quite frankly, anything that causes a negative emotion, mood, or behaviour to arise within you is an opportunity to ask yourself 'why am I reacting this way, and what is the most positive way I can respond to this situation?' It is an opportunity to learn about who we are.
So, own who you are, as you continue to discover who you are, but accept also that you will change day to day as you continue to grow. It would be my hope that a year from now (heck, even a month from now) that you would be able to say to yourself, I am a better person today than I was a year (or month) ago. I am calmer, more peaceful, happier, and am enjoying life more, and enjoying interacting with the people in my life.
Life should be about joy. Life should be filled with laughter!
I saw a great quote today “What other people think of you is none of your business.” And you know what? We can’t make all people love and adore and cherish us, it has to come from them! We can’t make them appreciate us – though we can live in a way that gives them something to appreciate.
There will always be people who truly see who we are, who appreciate and love us, and these are the friends we cherish! But there will also be people to whom we are almost invisible, just this background noise, and they will never know us. This, surely, is their loss!
If you cannot see the glory of another person, you should damn well be looking for it!!!! And shame on you if it is staring you in the face each and every day and you don’t even bother to look!
Be true to who you are, knowing that negative behaviour is not who you are!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Happy New Year Everyone!
January the first is always such an interesting day, so full of promise and excitement…and an empty diary.
Every year I experience the same unspoken question: what will I fill this diary with?
So here we are…a new year and an empty diary…
I don’t make new years resolutions, but I do have hopes and expectations of myself, and these I embrace without demand, and without putting myself under any pressure.
I have entered 2011 slimmer, toned, with a better wardrobe, and (most importantly) with a greater understanding of who I am (although I know that this will evolve). At the beautiful age of 47 I came to finally know ME…in all my glory…and it was almost a surprise to meet the real me.
As a writer I expect myself to work harder this year…and so long as we don’t have another big earthquake and relentless aftershocks, I think I can manage that! I know that this is my ‘work’, and I know that the works that I write are not just a part of my journey, but will (hopefully) be a part of your journey. (All I need is a publisher who will say ‘Yes!).
I personally believe we should all use this new year to be greater people, to be more loving, kinder, compassionate, tolerant, understanding, to be greater human beings.
Every year I experience the same unspoken question: what will I fill this diary with?
So here we are…a new year and an empty diary…
I don’t make new years resolutions, but I do have hopes and expectations of myself, and these I embrace without demand, and without putting myself under any pressure.
I have entered 2011 slimmer, toned, with a better wardrobe, and (most importantly) with a greater understanding of who I am (although I know that this will evolve). At the beautiful age of 47 I came to finally know ME…in all my glory…and it was almost a surprise to meet the real me.
As a writer I expect myself to work harder this year…and so long as we don’t have another big earthquake and relentless aftershocks, I think I can manage that! I know that this is my ‘work’, and I know that the works that I write are not just a part of my journey, but will (hopefully) be a part of your journey. (All I need is a publisher who will say ‘Yes!).
I personally believe we should all use this new year to be greater people, to be more loving, kinder, compassionate, tolerant, understanding, to be greater human beings.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Figuring out who we are
To figure out who we are … we need to let go of all our preconceived notions, and to ignore everything society says.
To figure out who we are, we must stand naked before ourselves, and leg go of everything.
Sounds easy. It is anything but!
How many of the notions we have, about the world, society, and ourselves, are not truly ours? How many are the rules and creations of our society (and church)?
Do any of us truly know who we are?
As children we are taught how to behave, how to dress and how to eat, we are even taught what to wear and what to eat. We are told what is right and what is wrong. And then we start school and we are taught a set of values and rules, we are told what is important, we are taught a system of measuring ourselves against everyone else. We are taught a ‘worldy’ set of values, but we are not taught to learn who we are, to develop a deep understanding of ourselves.
We are not taught to learn about us. We are not encouraged to discover our own passion and taste, we are taught to embrace academia, we are taught to compete against everyone else.
I am not disparaging academia, I am disparaging that we don’t encourage the passion outside of this. I have met so many people who don’t know who they are, who have spent a lifetime trying to be what other people wanted them to be, trying to play a role. This is tragic! I have known women who are in their forties and they are the most magnificent women I have ever known, and yet they do not realise this for themselves, they see only their faults. They were never encouraged (taught!) to discover who they are, to learn how positive values and behaviours may resonate through them and make them feel good or bad, they were not taught that all our passions have value and have a place in this world, and that our passions are our life guidance.
Let me make it clear: we were not all born to be academic geniuses. If we were this would be a black and white world without art, music, sculpture, fashion, makeup, stories, poetry, movies, beautiful gardens, without dancing….and without passion! I don’t want to live in such a world! The reason we all do have such different passions is because these passions and loves make the world!
Every passion is a stroke of colour in the masterpiece of life on Earth!
Don’t let society tell you who you are. And when it comes to the taboo of sexuality, if you are a woman attracted to women, then embrace that about yourself. If you are a woman attracted to both men and women, then embrace that about yourself. If you are a woman attracted to men only, embrace that. Love is what is important, not the sex of the person you feel that love for. To deny love, is to deny a part of yourself, to be dishonest. I am not saying you need to act on it, but at least you can be honest and say ‘yes I do love this person, and I cherish that this love is in my life, but I will not act on it.’ You don’t need to act on everything, but it is often better to acknowledge the existence of your feelings, rather than pretend they do not exist.
If you love roses, but not carnations, embrace that about yourself. If you like to dance around the house, embrace that and dance around the house! If you love to cook, embrace that! If you love to garden, embrace that! If you like dressing sexy because your women friends always tell you how great you look—even though your boyfriend never tells you—then dress sexier for them! (Face it, women ‘get’ women, and men may never fully understand us! It is just the way it is!) Don’t ever feel that your passion has lesser value than anyone else’s passion. Just because one man has a passion for surgery on the human body, and another has a passion for baking, neither is of lesser or greater importance than the other.
Learn who you are, what you love, what fires your passions, how you feel about all the people in your life, how you feel about music. Discover what sets you alight!!! As you make these discoveries you will change, you will find where the joy is, you will feel it burning through you, you will discover your own innate sense of style, (and not follow what everyone else is wearing!). You will evolve. And you will be living the most honest life possible.
Let go of everything, and discover who you are…it will be the most fascinating, and most joyous, passion filled journey you will ever take!
To figure out who we are, we must stand naked before ourselves, and leg go of everything.
Sounds easy. It is anything but!
How many of the notions we have, about the world, society, and ourselves, are not truly ours? How many are the rules and creations of our society (and church)?
Do any of us truly know who we are?
As children we are taught how to behave, how to dress and how to eat, we are even taught what to wear and what to eat. We are told what is right and what is wrong. And then we start school and we are taught a set of values and rules, we are told what is important, we are taught a system of measuring ourselves against everyone else. We are taught a ‘worldy’ set of values, but we are not taught to learn who we are, to develop a deep understanding of ourselves.
We are not taught to learn about us. We are not encouraged to discover our own passion and taste, we are taught to embrace academia, we are taught to compete against everyone else.
I am not disparaging academia, I am disparaging that we don’t encourage the passion outside of this. I have met so many people who don’t know who they are, who have spent a lifetime trying to be what other people wanted them to be, trying to play a role. This is tragic! I have known women who are in their forties and they are the most magnificent women I have ever known, and yet they do not realise this for themselves, they see only their faults. They were never encouraged (taught!) to discover who they are, to learn how positive values and behaviours may resonate through them and make them feel good or bad, they were not taught that all our passions have value and have a place in this world, and that our passions are our life guidance.
Let me make it clear: we were not all born to be academic geniuses. If we were this would be a black and white world without art, music, sculpture, fashion, makeup, stories, poetry, movies, beautiful gardens, without dancing….and without passion! I don’t want to live in such a world! The reason we all do have such different passions is because these passions and loves make the world!
Every passion is a stroke of colour in the masterpiece of life on Earth!
Don’t let society tell you who you are. And when it comes to the taboo of sexuality, if you are a woman attracted to women, then embrace that about yourself. If you are a woman attracted to both men and women, then embrace that about yourself. If you are a woman attracted to men only, embrace that. Love is what is important, not the sex of the person you feel that love for. To deny love, is to deny a part of yourself, to be dishonest. I am not saying you need to act on it, but at least you can be honest and say ‘yes I do love this person, and I cherish that this love is in my life, but I will not act on it.’ You don’t need to act on everything, but it is often better to acknowledge the existence of your feelings, rather than pretend they do not exist.
If you love roses, but not carnations, embrace that about yourself. If you like to dance around the house, embrace that and dance around the house! If you love to cook, embrace that! If you love to garden, embrace that! If you like dressing sexy because your women friends always tell you how great you look—even though your boyfriend never tells you—then dress sexier for them! (Face it, women ‘get’ women, and men may never fully understand us! It is just the way it is!) Don’t ever feel that your passion has lesser value than anyone else’s passion. Just because one man has a passion for surgery on the human body, and another has a passion for baking, neither is of lesser or greater importance than the other.
Learn who you are, what you love, what fires your passions, how you feel about all the people in your life, how you feel about music. Discover what sets you alight!!! As you make these discoveries you will change, you will find where the joy is, you will feel it burning through you, you will discover your own innate sense of style, (and not follow what everyone else is wearing!). You will evolve. And you will be living the most honest life possible.
Let go of everything, and discover who you are…it will be the most fascinating, and most joyous, passion filled journey you will ever take!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Friendship
I don’t look at friendships as in ‘what can I get out of this?’ I look at friendships as in ‘what can I give?’
The most rewarding bonds I have with people are the ones where we both contribute to the friendship.
There are, of course, those relationships that are (to put it bluntly) selfish, where the other person is only every after something, be it someone to explain their life and help them, or someone to rant on and on to about their life. But they don’t give, emotionally, to the relationship.
As much as we might want to talk on and on about our life, our woes, and to complain endlessly about everything…the less we take time to listen. And if we are always focussing the conversation on ourselves, then that is the only area that gets explored—and we stay within the small confines of that conversation.
The greatest friend ships you will ever have are the ones where both sides want to give to the relationship, to help, to listen, to support, affirm, embrace, and to just unconditionally love and accept the other person…but also be the one to say ‘actually, I think you’re just being a pratt.’
For me, life is about people. It’s all about people and relationships. And if I have reached the end of my lifetime and not truly loved … then I have wasted a vast opportunity. And so, when it is one of those beautiful friendships … I give it all I have to give, all the love in my heart. To do otherwise is to cheat both my friend and myself. I won’t do that.
The most rewarding bonds I have with people are the ones where we both contribute to the friendship.
There are, of course, those relationships that are (to put it bluntly) selfish, where the other person is only every after something, be it someone to explain their life and help them, or someone to rant on and on to about their life. But they don’t give, emotionally, to the relationship.
As much as we might want to talk on and on about our life, our woes, and to complain endlessly about everything…the less we take time to listen. And if we are always focussing the conversation on ourselves, then that is the only area that gets explored—and we stay within the small confines of that conversation.
The greatest friend ships you will ever have are the ones where both sides want to give to the relationship, to help, to listen, to support, affirm, embrace, and to just unconditionally love and accept the other person…but also be the one to say ‘actually, I think you’re just being a pratt.’
For me, life is about people. It’s all about people and relationships. And if I have reached the end of my lifetime and not truly loved … then I have wasted a vast opportunity. And so, when it is one of those beautiful friendships … I give it all I have to give, all the love in my heart. To do otherwise is to cheat both my friend and myself. I won’t do that.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Making the changes
I have noticed that a lot of people are being pushed to make changes in their life.
This is not a new thing, it is simply that the intensity has kicked up a few notches.
Why?
Because many people were pushed years ago to start making these changes, and they didn’t. They continued with the same way of living, the same negative patterns and behaviours. They saw no need to change, and so they didn’t.
The drawback of this is: if they have started paying more attention to those little nudges to change, they would have completed the process of change by now. But they didn’t, and so it is crunch time. What could have been easy of the could of years, not has to be completed in months. Why? Because that is what the Universe is pushing!
And that is why people are having such a rough time. Life seems harder, things are more ‘unfair’…but the fact is, it they/we had listened, it would not be this tough.
Pay attention to what needs to change in your life. Start the process. It will be a lost easier in the long run.
And if life is tough…just take it one step at a time, and keep going, keep pushing yourself to make the changes. It is all for a reason, even if we cannot see what that reason is yet.
The world is changing...and it's not something we can stop.
This is not a new thing, it is simply that the intensity has kicked up a few notches.
Why?
Because many people were pushed years ago to start making these changes, and they didn’t. They continued with the same way of living, the same negative patterns and behaviours. They saw no need to change, and so they didn’t.
The drawback of this is: if they have started paying more attention to those little nudges to change, they would have completed the process of change by now. But they didn’t, and so it is crunch time. What could have been easy of the could of years, not has to be completed in months. Why? Because that is what the Universe is pushing!
And that is why people are having such a rough time. Life seems harder, things are more ‘unfair’…but the fact is, it they/we had listened, it would not be this tough.
Pay attention to what needs to change in your life. Start the process. It will be a lost easier in the long run.
And if life is tough…just take it one step at a time, and keep going, keep pushing yourself to make the changes. It is all for a reason, even if we cannot see what that reason is yet.
The world is changing...and it's not something we can stop.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Time to dive back in to writing
I have not updated this blog for a while. Why? Because I can’t seem to relax enough to let the writing flow. So, I decided, maybe the flow is found within the process of the writing itself…
Aftershocks continue. Most of them are in the 3s (magnitude) and we barely feel them. Those in the 4s give us a bit of a jolt, and a bit of a reminder that the aftershocks may go on for months. The reminders serve to keep us slightly on edge.
Whilst our house is fine, we do have cracks along the cement between the concrete blocks. These move every time there is a decent sized aftershock. We decided yesterday that they are our very own tectonic plates! The thing is…these areas (3 of them plus a crack part way down each side of the chimney) are weaker areas, and if we get an aftershock in the 5s or higher…well, I am not sure what might happen. This is the worry that lays at the back of the mind. And it has been getting in the way when I try to write!
...
I was thinking about the way we live our lives, the focus we apply to our days. How often do we think too much about what we don’t have, and not enough (if at all) about what we do have?
I don’t dispute that we need money…just as I hope you will not dispute that we need to be happy in life. If I had to live in miserable worry about lack of money, every day of my life…I would rather not live at all. I do not believe that we are here, on Earth, for material gain. I believe we are here for spiritual gain. Yes, there is a necessity for money, and I respect that, but it is not the purpose of our life, it is a means.
If we don’t celebrate life … what’s the point?
If we don’t cherish the people in our life … what’s the point?
If we don’t laugh every day … what’s the point?
It’s time to examine the way we live in every hour of every day … and it’s time we made better choices!
Aftershocks continue. Most of them are in the 3s (magnitude) and we barely feel them. Those in the 4s give us a bit of a jolt, and a bit of a reminder that the aftershocks may go on for months. The reminders serve to keep us slightly on edge.
Whilst our house is fine, we do have cracks along the cement between the concrete blocks. These move every time there is a decent sized aftershock. We decided yesterday that they are our very own tectonic plates! The thing is…these areas (3 of them plus a crack part way down each side of the chimney) are weaker areas, and if we get an aftershock in the 5s or higher…well, I am not sure what might happen. This is the worry that lays at the back of the mind. And it has been getting in the way when I try to write!
...
I was thinking about the way we live our lives, the focus we apply to our days. How often do we think too much about what we don’t have, and not enough (if at all) about what we do have?
I don’t dispute that we need money…just as I hope you will not dispute that we need to be happy in life. If I had to live in miserable worry about lack of money, every day of my life…I would rather not live at all. I do not believe that we are here, on Earth, for material gain. I believe we are here for spiritual gain. Yes, there is a necessity for money, and I respect that, but it is not the purpose of our life, it is a means.
If we don’t celebrate life … what’s the point?
If we don’t cherish the people in our life … what’s the point?
If we don’t laugh every day … what’s the point?
It’s time to examine the way we live in every hour of every day … and it’s time we made better choices!
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