Cleansing is Good for the Body, and Good for the Home

My wife Holly and I are preparing over the next two months to move from a 2500 sq ft house, to an 1160 sq ft apartment, which is all part of our long term plan to eventually move into a 45' Luxury Custom Motor Coach and hit the road.

To accomplish such a lofty goal, we must first pare down the contents of our house to mostly fit in a much smaller apartment, and so we are giving a lot of our furniture and nicknacks to children of ours that already have established homes, which is less than half of the seven children we have raised to adulthood.

The best part is that while we have maintained homes of at least 2000 sq ft for many years now, this will be the first time in decades that we are moving down in size by so much, so not only furniture must go, but so also must we cleanse ourselves of all the toxic buildup of life. This buildup has taken many forms, the most common ones being Tupperware dishes, and plastic cups and bowls galore, books of every kind on several shelves and many boxes, papers in boxes, tubs and bags, of things we thought for sure we would one day need and so we have kept them just in case.

After four years in this most recent home, we have a pretty good idea of how much we needed most of what we thought we would need and how much we have done without and done just fine.  The cleansing process as pertains to our home is as important as any bodily cleanse as it makes us leaner and more agile and of course helps our clarity and focus. When you have more things, than you have places for those things, it creates clutter and mayhem and our lives just don't need that any more, not that they ever did, but here is a great time and opportunity to cleanse ourselves and reduce the friction in our lives.

How often do we get a forced chance to do something like this? Most people have a hard time doing this without some sort of outside pressure to accomplish it.

We are finding the whole endeavor very liberating.  This type of cleansing is not without its emotional impact, such as deciding to move all the way down to only keeping 100 books after having had thousands at one point in my library and in boxes.

Ultimately it will be good for us to part with things that have become, through lack of need of them, useless to us, and yet, it is as difficult as changing the things we eat because we want to clean up our bodies.

Here is another stage in our progression in life and in our marriage, as we celebrate 25 years of marriage this year in October, we will find ourselves in many ways, opening a new chapter in our lives together.

We Are What We Eat

For a while now I have worked with the question of what is more important for our health, diet or exercise.  Some contend exercise, but I will say eating in its proper place, is the basis for all other personal improvement.  Without a proper diet, we do not even feel enough energy to exercise, and with a diet deficient in some of the minerals and vitamins that activate the body's many systems, I would say none of the base systems on which we depend will function the way we need them to.

So I have to say diet is of primary importance to any other efforts to improve oneself.  I would like to address another system today, leaving the muscles for another discussion.  The brain is a complex organ of seemingly infinite capacity, and yet, it is largely comprised of chemical receptors (even the nerves are chemically based) that pass messages to and from the rest of the body and thus is as much dependent upon the food we intake as any other system.

For years I read self help books and books of all kinds, finding great difficulty in retaining information and focus.  One good example is that for years I would find myself in the middle of six different books and at the end of a few months, I still had not finished even one of them.

For me that changed when I started to really change and clean up the foods that were going into my body, and started cleansing more. Not only did my memory capacity increase, but so did my focus and concentration, as well as other faculties our amazing brain provides for us.

Creativity started to increase, as well as the ability to remain at peace and not flare up so much at things that would normally trigger a fight response.

My diet began to incorporate not only a lot more salads, but salads composed of many elements including nuts and fruits to enhance and provide a wide array of minerals. The variety in my salads came from a direct attempt to make them more interesting. Isagenix protein shakes have played a huge part in this process, as has the Isagenix mineral drink, Ionix Supreme.  With over 100 ionic minerals from exotic places of the world, including one of my favorites, Nepali Shilajit, this drink alone I believe has helped me rewire my nerve circuits and pave new paths in my mind.

Positive thinking, proper visualizing, all of the tricks that self help books try to teach are just gimmicks until the brain can truly function properly and we don't have to trick ourselves into success or a hundred other things we seek.

I have found on my journey of self-improvement, that my demeanor, my ability to slow down and respond rather than react, my ability to analyze deeply before acting at all, are all affected by my brain health and it is 100% a function of the foods we take into our bodies.

Chew on that!!

The Changing Face of Love Languages

It is possible for someone to have been married a long time and miss the subtle fact that Love Languages, the ways in which we communicate our love and understand the love of each other, change with time and situations.  What at one time was a wonderful way to express our love to a spouse at some point may have become worn out through abuse or failure to follow through. 

An example may help my point here.  We may start out our marriage being able to use flowers as an expression of our thoughtfulness and love to our spouse.  Later, it becomes possible and even more welcome sometimes to perform more direct acts of thoughtfulness such as filling up her gas tank when she thinks she will have to do it, or doing the dishes, or folding the laundry she fell asleep on because she was exhausted.

These acts also say in much the same way as flowers do, but sometimes more potently, that I love you and am devoted to your happiness. 

Sometimes, we use the token expressions, such as candy or flowers but in other ways fail to show or to follow through with expression of our love, to the extent that the tokens lose their meaning and effectiveness.  Sometimes situations change, money gets tight, she feels more burden than before, he feels more detached, and so the things that we need to feel loved and to feel love for our spouse might take on a different flavor.

In a loving relationship, it may be easy enough to find out what the new love language is that we must learn to express our love in a better more fulfilling way, but like any language, it may be a stretch to learn and may cause us to feel that too much is being expected of us. Sometimes we show our love language to our spouse through our own actions hoping they will mirror those actions without realizing that their language is different and thus we may only be showing them how we want to be communicated to but not doing a very good job of communicating in our partner's love language ourselves.

Sometimes the best thing we can do to feel more loved, is to love more, without any thought of how long it may take for that love to be returned. Obviously forever is too long to wait, I speak only of a relationship where one or the other has for a time, withdrawn their willingness to express what they feel because they are hurting and need to feel safe again. So our best action is to help them feel safe again.

It is not always easy to get to this point, but it can begin a whole new level of wonder if we can push beyond the obstacles that threaten us and open up into a new world of discovery. Sometimes, this can only be done with outside help. If needed, get some.

There is no way to know easily that one has reached such an impasse without decent communications. Some people never get there, some couples never get there, and so they fade away. Don't be that person. There's too much at stake.

Learn the Direction of your Goal and make constant course corrections along the way

One time I was asked why my life seems so uncomplicated, which first of all, I had to admit, it only seemed to the other person to be so, for it has never actually been uncomplicated.  My answer, after brief thought however, considered the reason he had asked me, and I supposed it was because for him, life had constantly held let down after let down and nothing seemed to work long for him before it would fall apart and he would have to move on.

What I said was that some people wake up each day and they have a larger goal or destination in their mind, a purpose bigger than what they can accomplish that day, while others merely get through the day and largely let the outside events of the day dictate their overall direction.  

The second example could be likened to someone who wets their finger, tests the direction the wind is blowing and then sets their sails to go that direction.  At the end of each day their progress is only measurable in forward movement, but in the long run, they may be running in circles accomplishing nothing over the course of a week, a month or a year.  Or a lifetime.

Contrast this with the person who awakes each day with a goal (the same one as yesterday or maybe bigger) that rises above the day to day scuffle with circumstance and is measured against a goal that rises above the tree line making the daily as well as the weekly and monthly movement toward it, constant and measurable over the long run in progress toward that singular goal.

Each day, I arise with a purpose that transcends the daily or weekly obstacles that attempt to obscure my path, and because I can see the goal rising above the forest, my direction is more constant from one day to the next.  I liken this to using the celestial movements of the stars or the sun or even the mountains in the distance to help me determine the direction of my daily walk, so that in the short run as well as the long run, my direction remains constant and measurable, not only in forward progress but in less time remaining from one day to the next, to achieve my distant but constant goal.

My walk is not perfect, and at times, all I can see are the trees and the predators, but more than a few times, I hit a clearing, and the mountain comes back into view and my faith and my purpose are restored.  We are 100% more likely to achieve a goal that is planned and patterned after those who have gone before and know the way, than to follow the wind, or those who want only for the path to be fun, and care nothing for the long term results of their journey.

Consciousness is not the same as Thought

If consciousness were the same as thought, we could not actually be aware of our thoughts.  It follows then, that the constant stream of thoughts that are in most cases a natural chemical response to the constant barrage of external and internal stimulus, and not something we willed or caused to be thought.  How many times do we have thoughts we are sure could not have come from our own mind, because they reflect nothing of what we desire or want, but are simply deviations from the comfortable stream of innane and often useless thoughts that parade through our mind from morning until evening.

If we learn to observe our thoughts, and by extension the emotions that they generate, we can become more in touch with those thoughts which create or produce emotions and hence actions that we wish to change or eradicate from our daily behavor pattern.  How many times do we actually see a fight with a loved one coming simply because all the cues are falling into place and yet we do not seem to be able to stop the pattern from emerging?

This is something we can become better at steering away from by practicing the art of observing our thoughts and learning to dissociate ourselves from the ones that inevitably result in emotions that produce actions that are always destructive to our life and relationships.  By observing the thoughts that parade through our mind, we can even recognize those that seem to be inspired by the protective power of our ego, which always appears to be protecting us from hurt but which usually leads us directly into the middle of more pain and destruction of our precious relationships.

By becoming a skilled observer of our thoughts, our consciousness can eventually become more attuned also to the thoughts that lead to positive and desirable results in our lives and we can set ourselves on a pattern of repeating those thoughts which lead us to the joy we and our loved ones desire and deserve. 

Once we become skilled enough at this art of observation and only then can we begin to recognize when others thoughts and actions are contributing or attempting to revive our own ego's defense mechanisms, and by then we should be more adept at allowing those attempts to "fly out open windows" as Stephen R Covey so skillfully described the act of allowing the daggers or stones (comments) of others to pass through our windows without resistance and land softly on the ground below rather than meeting resistance of a closed window and having shards of glass resulting in cuts and mayhem to the thrower and the window.

The best observers, are the best listeners and are often those that can hear and see the reality of a situation instead of the image our chemical reactions begin to form as our thoughts attempt to steer us in a defensive course ultimately intended to protect us, but which inevitably leads to diminished love and joy all the way around.

Fear and Faith are two sides of the same coin, but "I Am" is where knowledge begins

Courage is not the absence of Fear, but the desire to act in spite of it.  So the opposite of Fear is not Courage but Faith.  When we are acting in Faith, we have an image of the completion of our action as a positive result.  Fear is as much a mental construct of some past or future that at present does not exist as is Faith.

Past and Future are both tied to time and so we are living as much in a creation of the mind when we say "I will do something" as we are when we say, "I wish I had never done something..."

The most effective affirmations that we can employ to change our lives toward a new existence is one that Bob Proctor and Jack Canfield often speak of.  It is simply to speak as if the thing we desire, or desire to become is already a part of our existence, and speak with gratitude for its existence.  Some examples of this type of affirmation are:

I am so grateful that I am a son of God, heir to all the promises of the kingdom as I follow His will in my life.  I am a teacher of spiritual wisdom of life and am sought by many to help them understand themselves and their place in life better.  I am a loving husband and father who leads my family by willingly doing anything I would ever ask of them, and by serving as the Savior served in his kingdom.  I am a magnet for good experiences because I am grateful for all that I have been given and ever seek to learn new lessons from all experiences that pass my way, even those that might be called bad or unfortunate by others.

We can use the faith in God that he desires for us eternal growth and expansion of life as the way to confidently be grateful for the promises he has made to us, as we seek more to do His will, or seek more to be a blessing to others through the gifts we seek or strive to obtain.

I am so grateful each day I awake next to my wonderful wife who has pledged herself to eternal growth by my side, developing an eternal friendship, and partnership as we seek together to bless the lives of others with our talents and our increasing wisdom that comes from our Father in Heaven.  I am grateful that God has given us a beautiful world full of people and experiences that are available to any who will seek a way that they may be of greater service to the world, through expansion of their own life and talents that they have been given.  I am grateful to see this principle taking hold in my life, and look forward with joy to the life that is unfolding before my eyes with my eternal companion and bride by my side.

We Must Learn to use Life's Hurts for our Good

I have recently been going through some painful realization that my marriage is not as perfect as I thought it was.  This is not as I might once have thought because of my wife’s attitude or lack of gratitude for what she has.  It turns out there are some things that I have been comfortable with that are, even in my own opinion, unacceptable levels of complacency with my financial and spiritual status quo.  It’s just that everyone reaches a limit of their own ability to tolerate something they have observed for so long, and while the initial revelation to me of these areas of concern hurt deeply to my core, it awakened something in me that needed to be awakened.

 

Many people at this point would simply allow their egoic self to put up another wall and blame others for why things have taken such a turn.  So part of the difference for me is that I truly see my marriage as an eternal companionship with my best friend, and that she is telling me things that only a best friend can get away with.  But even more deeply, I have come to understand that I am far from rid of the ego, the natural man, which I understand scripturally to be an enemy to God and to my eternal progression.  Obviously it is also an enemy to my eternal marriage, though things had gotten comfortable for a while.

 

Holly and I both know that we are committed to love each other, not just to be in love, but that we have reached the edge of the plateau we have been on and the next move is a bit of a jump to the ladder dangling from the next higher level plateau.  Leaping is scary, and holds its own dangers, but sitting down and quitting holds far more peril to both of us and our eternal union than the knowledge that I tried with all my might and perhaps failed.  We both know we cannot yet say that we have done all we are capable of and so there is the need again to take a leap of faith and move forward in faith that what the road ahead holds is more adventure and new levels of joy for a marriage that has been comfortably if mildly growing in the right direction.

 

I know change is always painful, and yet I also believe that pain is weakness leaving the body.  As we seek to rid ourselves of the egoic dominance that holds us back in so many ways, it becomes more apparent that it is not so much about throwing off any bad habits but about developing new necessary ones, which will eventually edge out through atrophy those that no longer have any use for us.

 

I see this now as a welcome and important new phase of my existence and a demand to run a little faster while I am able. 

Catching Myself Earlier Each Time

The best part of changing, of ridding ourselves of bad habits, is when we begin to see ourselves while we are doing what we want to stop doing, and eventually that becomes, catching ourselves before we do it.

I have a thing about rude drivers, discourteous drivers, mostly because I am a very conscientious and courteous driver and try not only to allow others to go ahead if they seem in more of a hurry, but I try to spot those potentially about to need to move into an opening that I could make, which I then do.

Well today I was leaving my neighborhood, turning left onto busy Gilbert road, and a tall XTerra pulled up on my right side completely obscuring my view of traffic to the right, forcing me to have to wait until she moved on before I could see if it were clear to go.

What happened next made my blood boil in an instant.  She pulled straight out into the gap of the median and made the left turn I was sitting there to make, so I instantly laid on my horn and of course yelled "Hey!"  Since it was now clear to go, I zipped out into my left turn and instantly thought, "what am I doing?"  "I couldn't go until she went, and here I am, so what did I really lose, besides an imaginary place in line?"

I caught up to her in the empty lane to her right but instead of looking left or saying anything else, I just went on my way, smiling and thought, "she might have decided after getting there that she wanted to go to Walgreens first before heading south, it could be anything," but certainly there was not one good reason to treat this as an affront to me.

I would like to say here that I had just earlier read in an Eckhart Tolle book on the Power of Now, that there is no pain or emotional hurt that is caused by anything outside of ourselves.  It is our thoughts about a situation that determine whether we will be hurt, or angry, or peaceful from that point on. All emotional response to any situation is 100% based on our views and thoughts regarding the persons, or situations involved. 

I saw that again today as I completely removed myself from anger by changing what I thought she had meant by her actions.  It was that quick, and that complete.  The time it takes for us to change away from our bad habits can be the time it takes to change the way we see ourselves or others around us, or maybe the way we see why we are here in this life, or why we are where we are at any given moment.

Gratitude is one thing that can help change a lot of anger and hurt inspiring thoughts and replace them with peaceful ones.  It takes real effort sometimes to change course once on a particular one, but the ease of changing course can also depend upon our resolve to change our lives.  My changes seem to be happening at a quicker pace each day, and for that also, I am grateful.

Be Ready For Change When It Comes

There is little room in most people's lives for change.  Most people by nature like to settle into a comfortable pattern of existence. Change however is in the grand scheme of things and is a daily occurrence.  Without change, our life can take on a monotony that stifles growth and hampers our ability to adapt later.

Aging in fact happens as atrophy sets in to once vibrant cells of the body, and though we have not yet figured out how to reverse the process, there are many who have slowed it down substantially and it is always by renewing the body's ability to adapt and by changing things up from time to time, or even daily.

In the book and movie, What the Bleep do We know? Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about how habits in life are formed by hardening neural pathways, which has the further effect in the long run of deadening the body's ability to form new neural pathways.  To combat this stifling stagnation of growth, we should endeavor to override the body's mechanism for forming habits by changing each day, the way we do things.  Whether it be holding the toothbrush with a different hand, or taking a different path to work in the morning, it keeps the senses alert and keeps the body from hardening certain response patterns to the same outside stimulus.

There is great wisdom in always being ready for change, as most of us found on 9/11/01 and while many people actually reverted back into old patterns once the smoke had settled, many more found themselves changed forever, most in a good way.

Change is rarely comfortable, but in most cases, if we are ready for it, can be full of lessons to prepare us for more and greater change, thus strengthening us for life ahead.  Our readiness for change and our adaptability to life's little annoyances can greatly affect both the length and the quality of our lives, improving both.  Are you accepting little changes in your life or are you completely resistant to them.  They are the very things that help us be ready for the big life changing events that most certainly will come our way.

How is Your Worldview Handling Things?

Some people literally move through life as a sailboat with nobody manning the sails and no rudder to steer. They are blown about by circumstances, tossed about by changing currents, and ever hopeful to reach the shore, without the slightest idea where that may be, if they ever get there.

I am happy to say that my life follows a constant direction, with a strong faith in the one who has supplied me with both the information regarding my current direction, as well as a way of constantly correcting my course. My destination is known to me, and I have been given rich descriptions of it, so that I may recognize when I have arrived.

I don't have all the answers to life's little challenges, but I have found that with my world view, even the hard times have purpose and lessons for me, and I take from them what I can, using a standard that has been laid down by countless travelers before me on the well trodden path I travel.

A brief outpouring of my joy online was met with a disappointing call to reality when a friend related that they have little for which they are feeling grateful, as I then came to discover they were referring to the death of their son-in-law who left behind a wife and six children and no insurance policy. I found out after some probing that it was a suicide, with apparently no note, which left even more of a mystery.

As I pondered what else could be said of any comfort, I was led to write this blog entry, to explore the subject of how do we find gratitude in such tragedy. I hope this is not taken lightly, as it is not created thus.

My first thought of gratitude was that in this case, unlike so many we hear of, the wife and children were not harmed by the suicidal husband/father. While no note can seem to be a bad thing, its absence can relieve the remaining family members from a declaration of fault that could bind them for the remainder of their lives to carry the chain of guilt forged by someone as their last act of weakness in this life.

Gratitude is a choice, just as grief, anger and wonder are choices. I just happen to believe that gratitude makes for a better lense through which we may see the choices that lie ahead, and thus through which we may find solutions to needs of the present moment. One might for instance simply be grateful that in this moment, I have the choice to move forward, and improve my existence. Yes, the choices may be hard, but to approach a solution, we must lift our thinking above the level we were at when the problems were created.

It helps if we have a worldview that tells us where we go when we leave this life. For most of us, it matters not whether it is ultimately the truth, as much as, does it allow us to picture some form of peace for the person at this point. That can certainly help.

For us to move on, it is certainly necessary to find others who love us enough to let us have some space, but also who are willing to help us move forward, and continue living. Absent enough sensible friends, one can let solitude get the best of them. Change is often hard enough as it hits us in daily routine, but this type of change can shift the very fabric of a life.

Having a worldview that teaches that we are here for but a moment of the eternity of our lives, to learn and to grow, and to return to our Heavenly Father gives me the strength to carry on in such a tragedy, I hope. I have not had to deal with death so close, or of such gravity, but each time a loved one deals with such a thing, it tests my worldview, and helps me to reinforce my beliefs as I share them in attempts to comfort those who are hurting.

My heart goes out to yet another family torn apart by the sudden and unexpected death of a loved one, even moreso because of the lives that will to some extent be forever changed by the not-knowing part of his departure. I am still searching for words, for now, these will have to do.

Show Me Thy Friends...

And I will tell thee who thou art. It is an age old adage, but it is so true, whether because we tend to hang around people who help us feel better, and are like us, or because we tend to gravitate our own behavior and thoughts to the level of those around us, so it is a self-feeding cycle.

At a recent meeting about making some necessary changes in our lives, the speaker, Garrett Gunderson, author of Killing Sacred Cows was asked a question about how do we change the way we think about things, to get off the self-defeating cycle we are on sometimes, and his response was so powerful. He asked the man back, "who do you spend most of your time with?" The man's answer was what started the wheels turning on this blog entry.

He said, "sure, I get what you're saying, I should spend time around better people, but how do I do that when the people I live around are all in the same boat?"

Garrett's answer was one that I will expand upon here because I feel it is central to where I am now, and where I am heading in my life. He said roughly, "you will usually have to pay for your mentor, for their time, and for their wisdom."

Not so long ago, I was hanging out in the lunchroom at work joining in the moaning about how life is taking so much from us, and what's not fair and yada yada. I have learned that 1) finding a direction and 2) going for it, is best accomplished by the third best advice, which is 3) find someone who has been there, or is there now, and serve them, so you can be close.

I did not say latch on, because we do not want to become a dead weight in their lives, and not all people who are where we want to be, are interested in taking on apprentices, so offer services, be creative, and be willing to do stuff for no pay, just to learn. Ultimately we should expect to give more in monetary value than we take, though most of the time, the benefit will far outweigh the cost.

Networking groups exist in so many forms, and in so many places that it is really a super place to start looking for like-minded people who are not only moving in the same direction, but in most cases are willing to support others doing the same and in some cases, will trade or barter services, or advice, or any number of methods that can help lend focus and momentum to your direction.

It is also true, if you always do what you've always done, you will always have what you've always had. Change little habits every day, or at least every week, starting with the obvious things that are not helping you get where you want to go, like excessive TV time, and having a complaining or whining attitude when things don't go your way. This process takes time, but it takes a lot less time, when you are learning from someone who has been where you want to be, and is willing to help shorten the learning curve.

You Know You're Changing When...

Praxis being the synchronization of actions with core beliefs, I have to say, it is working as I work on it. I have evidences each day that I am still changing for the better. Yesterday my evidence was in how I handled a fairly violent outburst with my 18-yr-old son who, as so many do, has gone on his own path, instead of the one we showed him, and is very unhappy with the results but continues down the path because of the short-term benefits.

I was trying to work from home, and his younger brother was schooling at home, and he, having lost his job, had nothing better to do than sit in the middle of the main room, with sit-coms on the TV, loud as could be. After repeated requests to turn it down or even put on the subtitles so we could think, and then asking if that was what he intended to do all day instead of something useful, he jumped up and started messing up the place, telling me that I am a dictator that needs anger management classes. When that did not, as it not too long ago would have, provoke me to a fit of anger, he went further all the while yelling challenges to me, by punching a hole in a cabinet door just feet away from me, while stating at the time, he would repair it, so obviously it was an uncontrollable urge to punch something anyway.

I admit I was shaking with the rush of adrenaline, wanting to act, and all the while asking him to just stop, knowing that most actions at this point could be severely life altering, and was even holding forks and knives I was putting away from the dishwasher, but I turned and left the room without any further words and stood until I was calm again, after which, I re-entered the room. We did not talk the remainder of the hour that he stayed, but he had turned off the TV, and eventually left.

When he returned, a couple of times with a friend, things were calm and we did not revisit the event, nor did he turn on the TV the rest of the day, though it was on the second time and so he sat and watched.

The series of events that transpired, as I reflected on them, showed me that I have indeed come a long way from the days when I would pounce on a son being that wild and destructive, or at least get more pushy with them. I dare say there were some words at the beginning that if better chosen, could have avoided this altogether, and I have learned even more from this than I usually do. This is the kind of event that would not happen at all in calmer climates, and so I need to continue to make my house more and more, a heaven on earth, but I have definitely made great strides to get even to this point, and it shows.

The point of this post is that so often after a heated exchange, we have so many regrets, and this time, I barely had any about the way I responded, and how I treated him during it. I did not hurl insults or yell, except occasionally to be heard over him, but the phrases were statements about my need for a peaceful work environment, as well as for his brother, and about how we do not have an obligation to provide our grown kids a place to crash and do nothing when they should be out working, which is not only true but needed to be said.

Still, there is more that can be done to change the launching point of such an exchange, and I am dedicated to find the better way. I know that challenging always brings defense, and so the point of this exercise is to analyze the statement or request that would have made it entirely my problem that he could help me solve, and hopefully he would be willing to solve it without my repeated pressure to do so more quickly.

To me, this is huge, and yet to some who read this, it might seem obvious where I tripped up. Thanks for any comments good or bad on the matter, I am still learning how to deal with all of life as God would have me do it.

Gratitude Can Be Contagious

I had a wonderful experience that proved to me that I have changed and that the change is contagious. The best part of it was how instantaneously my new behaviour manifested a change in those around me.

I was standing in line at, of all places, Goodwill, purchasing some wonderful books, one of which was called Brain Wave Vibration, and just about to be helped after waiting about 5 minutes for the ladies in front of me to buy all the clothes they had found.

A young man came up to me and timidly asked, "Would you mind if I stepped in front of you here, I have one item and I am in a real hurry." Without even thinking anything of it, I began to tell the young man he was welcome to cut in front, when out of nowhere, well actually right behind me, came the shrill voice of a very displeased lady, who said, in a fast and curt manner, "Well I have only one item too, but if you cut in front of him, you cut in front of me too, and I have been waiting patiently here also..."

I turned to the young man, and saw the look of utter disappointment on his face as he realized, it was not just up to me, but up to her also, and he had done her the disservice of not asking both of us, and now clearly he had his answer from her.

I stood for only a moment and the answer came so clearly, that it immediately seemed the only thing to do. Without a word, I walked around behind the lady who had been behind me, and then turned to the young man, and said, "you can now slip in front of me."

She immediately turned to me and apologized if she had offended me, she did not mean to, when I stopped her short and calmly, with a smile said, "you did nothing of the sort, it is just obvious to me that he is in a hurry, and I am in no hurry, so I am relinquishing my spot to you so he has one less person to wait behind."

She turned to him and said, "well you can get in front of me too, I'm sorry, I'm in no hurry either."

He thanked us both, made his purchase and ran off ahead of the ladies who were still gathering their bags for the trip to the parking lot.

The cashier smiled a knowing smile to me, and nothing else was said of the event, and yet I walked away knowing that I had shown some people another way to be, which was not the way most go through their days. Gratitude is a principle which, as it bubbles near the surface of our emotions, becomes easier to give to others without thought of guarding it only for ourselves. The more we give it away, the more it blesses us and others, and the more we have to give next time. It is one of those things that gets bigger, the more we give it away.

How Does Integrity Fit In With Praxis?

One of my favorite definitions of Integrity is simply "a quality or state of being complete or undivided." The reason I like this is that so many people live incomplete, divided lives. So many people perform actions each day that, if analyzed in concert with the big picture of what they desire in their lives, could be said to be in direct and blatant contradiction to those desires.

Why then do people do so many contradicting actions? It has to do with the word integrity. Why are our actions not more integrated with our beliefs? Well, for one thing, most people claim publicly one set of beliefs, but if their beliefs as reflected by their actions we laid bare, their beliefs would actually be shown in most cases to be very different.

Many people do in fact act in concert with their beliefs, but their core beliefs are not what they would be said to "truly desire" were they listed out and dealt with individually. Most of our core beliefs are things that were fed to us, or hammered into us over a lifetime, and that we have accepted. We keep many false beliefs in place simply by the entrained method of selftalk passed down to us by previous generations. "I'm no good at that," "Why do I even try," "I can't control my emotions." "Why always me?" and so forth.

I call them false beliefs because they are not beliefs that we at our core really want, they are things we were led to believe because they were real enough to our teachers that they were taught as incontrovertible fact. The truth is much grander, and would please us if we were to know it through introspection, or by associating with others who believe it.

So what about our actions? So many of us are on autopilot without realizing that we are in complete control of the program that runs the autopilot. Once we get in touch with our true core beliefs, there are ways that we can imprint our beliefs into our psyche such that we can begin the process of rooting out those actions that are not correspondent to those beliefs and replace them with actions which, when codified into habit, will allow us, even carry us into the life we thought we could never have, when all the old programs held us down.

Integrity then is very similar to the process of Praxis, it is the integration, into one harmonious whole, of our true core beliefs, and the actions we manifest. Praxis is the process whereby we attain integration of the two.

The Reason we are encouraged to use pictures to accelerate Change

The process of personal change can be one of constant frustration, as exemplified by the millions of people who set out each year to make some changes in their lives, in the form of resolutions, only to fail within a few months. Why is it so difficult to effect real change in our lives?

To understand why change is so difficult, we must first understand what it is we are up against when we endeavor to change a habit, whether it be a lifelong one, or one that developed only recently in our lives.

Our bodies are equipped with mechanisms that protect itself from outside attempts to shut it down. This applies to the automated systems of breathing and circulation and other simpler systems such as hunger, or even the eyes tearing up, or closing (flinching) when something is coming at them.

We also have many mechanisms that are set up to automatically respond to outside stimuli, often because of our repeated responses to the same stimulus over time. As we start to perform certain repetitive acts, triggered by the same outside stimuli, our bodies set up programmed responses, to those stimuli, regardless of whether the responses are the best for our bodies, they have been deemed favorable in that they either bring pleasure or avoid pain.

The first thing we must do to change any of those programmed responses, is to recognize the relationship that exists within us between certain situations in our lives, and the things they trigger within us. We have all heard of the obvious ones like when people have to eat or light up a cigarette whenever they feel stress. These are not natural responses to these situations, but are learned, and eventually programmed to save us the time of having to think about it.

The thing is that once these responses are programmed, we have to be able to find ways to overcome the protective mechanisms in the body that are required to overcome these processes. It cannot be merely an intellectual pursuit but requires that we find what association this stimulus has to our desire to either gaining pleasure or avoiding pain, and we must develop the necessary imagery to change the association we have on an emotional level.

Often pictures and music can be employed to accomplish this emotional connection in the body. Some stop too early in the picture process by merely placing pictures where they can see them daily, and fail to endeavor to form an emotional connection between the image and the emotional need for a certain behavior. We must by repetitive imagery in our own minds, connect emotion to the picture that represents what we desire, and it must be constant and frequent in its occurrence.

The use of pictures is merely a trick to get the image into the psyche, where we can really use it, as the picture itself holds no power to effect change. It must be connected within us to the gain of pleasure or avoidance of pain, and sometimes we must also perform the opposite trick to first get the old image changed to its opposite effect.

Tony Robbins speaks of this as one of six major steps that must be followed to effect real change and make it last. I will discuss these in a future blog, and will endeavor to insure that I am not just plagiarizing his materials. The process is real, and has taught me a lot, as I have applied them to my life lately.

This is the key that is so often left out of discussions of using images to help us change.

Learn to Worry in Reverse

There is no better example for how powerful the mind is in forming an image and then sending the powerful mechanisms of the body into full motion to make it a reality than the age old phenomenon of worrying.

We all have done it, though the person who has mastered his/her life does it minimally or to perfect themselves by incorporating the power of the mind in a positive manner, to image what they want, rather than what they fear, or don't want, and then allowing the natural mechanisms of the body loose to make that a reality.

What am I saying? Well, think for yourself, the last time you worried about something. You created a powerful image in your mind, so real, so vivid, so fearsome, that your body started to react as if the thing were real; elevated pulse, heartbeat quickened, sweaty palms, increased rate of breath, all for what, an image in the mind of what MIGHT happen. Our body is programmed to prepare us for a conflict that is approaching, and so as we image that conflict in our minds, our body prepares us by quickening all the systems that are setup for fight or flight. This is the way we are wired, by God.

Why is it we are almost all such experts at creating a vision so real of what we don't want to happen, that our bodies react, in all particulars as if it were real, but we cannot, nay, will not choose to create for ourselves any reality we desire with the skill and devotion with which we have created that which we fear?

To state it more simply, we can and should exercise ourselves positively, with the same dedication which we have up to now, practiced to perfection, the art of worrying. If we could simply decide that we have the power to create our life, to worry ourselves into success, whatever that may be, by creating a real image in our heads, and feeling all the feelings of gratitude as if it were already accomplished, already given to us. What could we then accomplish if we gave ourselves permission to be happy, and successful?

Could we see instead of a failed marriage, a successful one, could we see instead of the worst of intentions of our friend, the best, could we imagine that we are not clumsy, but instead skilled in our chosen profession, and getting better every day. Could we then without limit, choose the future to which we will awake tomorrow and the next day? I am here to say, that is exactly what could happen, if we sold ourselves the best possible outcome, instead of the worst.

God loves us, and in a world where we have not been taught to doubt and to fear, we can see instead, a life filled with promise, and hope, and endless possibility. Our mind was given to us to steer us, not to be steered by the winds of change, or the whims of those around us. Don't listen to the chatter that tells you that you are living an accidental life. You are a child of God, imbued with all the possibility that a father gives to a child, and with a direct link to his inspiring power, there is no dream that is not possible. Reach out for the best possibility, for the best you can see and dream, and there is nothing you cannot accomplish. You decide.

My Marriage Is Still Blossoming at almost 20 Years

Today, as I am often wont to do lately, I found myself analyzing my actions, and feeling an overwhelming rush of gratitude for what has taken place in my heart, and thus, in my life.

Early in my marriage, I used to get frustrated because my wife never seemed to have time for me, she was so busy with the day to day things that were important to her and by the end of the night, so often she seemed too tired to even acknowledge my existence, much less that I had needs.

One day she said, you know, if you want more time with me, you could help me get my list done. Now, it did not occur to me all at once, the simplicity of what she was suggesting, and for many years, my sole object in doing any chores, washing laundry, doing dishes, cooking dinner, was so she would have more time with me. I know, duh, still being selfish, even while serving.

The change was so gradual that I hardly noticed it, but I went from just doing those things for more time with her, to the next level, which was because she always had the same response, and it was always more or less, a swooning of appreciation, like I had handed her a dozen roses or something. So nice, all that for way less than the cost of a dozen roses, which I have also done randomly along the way, never just when society says I should but so often for no apparent reason, that she truly did get the message, "I am in love with you."

Backtrack to the beginning for a moment, Holly and I met on a chilly Friday night in October of 1989, at a Single-Parent support group sponsored by our church. She had two kids, 6 yr old daughter and a 4 yr old son, and I had two sons, 4 yr old and 2 yr old. Well, we met after waiting for each other to finish some side conversations, and my 2 kids were running around the flower planters while we talked. We talked into the night while my kids slept in the car, and finally went to Pioneer Park in Mesa, for a couple more hours. We had a short, but full-of-romance courtship over the next few days, I proposed to her on Sunday, and we married at the Mesa JOP on Thursday. We then married a year later in the Temple there in Mesa. Long Story, some other blog.

We started out busy, and Holly went from single mom with two kids and a foolproof system, to instant family of six. Our first of three more children came almost to the day 9 months later. We have about completely raised 7 kids, 3 are still at home with occasional short stays by two others, and though it has been no walk in the park, we've had lots of those too.

What has kept us together is nothing profound, but it is worth mentioning here. We have Loved each other through many years, weekly dedicated time to nurture our marriage. We have had a dedicated church life, hardly ever have we missed a Sunday at church, and we live our religion all week long, with Family Home Evening on Sunday or Monday night schedules permitting, and we have on countless early mornings or late nights, sat around reading from the scriptures as a family, or as many as could be there.

Well, anyway, all that to say this; I am lately working from home, and find myself doing a lot of loads of dishes and cooking and even laundry as I see it piling up, and I realized today that while I still get quite a charge from her googoo eyes and warm hug when she sees I have done all this stuff while she was gone, I realized, I do it now, mostly because I see it needs to be done. It is so weird, because I don't know where along the way it happened, but I tell people lately, our marriage works so well because I have been domesticated, and believe me, it does work well, no complaints ;)

The other day she almost teared up and said I am her hero, and I have to say, I felt it, and it felt great to be told that after almost 20 years of marriage. Marriages do not get here on accident, but there are still so many people who think that love is a noun that you can fall into or catch or worse, lose or fall out of. It is definitely a verb that must be nurtured and kept safe. Love is one of those few treasures that only grows when it is given away with no thought of return.

The Power of Music in Changing Your Life

I have recently been reminded about the power of music in the process of bringing about change in our lives. I have always been told that to produce a desired change in my life, I would have to have the picture of what I want go from my head to my heart. I never quite knew what they meant except that I understood that for real change or progress, or acquisition of any goal, there has to be some emotion behind it.

Well, change has been slow for me over the years, until fairly recently when I discovered one of several mechanisms that can be employed to facilitate the change I sought. I had learned that if I wanted something I did not have, I should get a picture of it and keep it in front of me, which I have done over the years to little avail. Then I ran across a concept called Mind Movies recently created formally by an Australian company, that put together a kit and sold it for a modest sum that allows a person to do what I discovered a free program called MovieMaker does.

It allows you to combine images, words and music tracks into a video that can be played on your computer, and it became so much clearer to me what had been missing. Music is a powerful way to get images burned into the psyche, into our soul, as can easily be attested by some very repeatable phenomena.

To this day, whenever I hear "Wish upon a Star" by Rose Royce, I am taken back to a very special moment when I had just graduated from High School and was at my Disneyland Grad Night, looking out over Pirate Island as Rose Royce played live, yes, this like 1979, so yeah, live, but the point is that moment was burned into my heart, not just my memory, and all the feelings of newfound freedom come rushing back as I listen to that song.

Another example, my wife and I have a song, "When I Looked at Him" by Expose, that she heard in her car right after she and I had just met and spent hours in a chilly parking lot talking to each other and finally holding each other as the chill set in, after meeting at a Single Parent Support group sponsored by our church. The song burned in for her and after she revealed to me later that night, in my heart also, the power and warmth of the moments we had just spent bonding in that parking lot. To this day, hearing that song, brings back a rush of the feeling of the newness of that night.

So, I decided to pick a song by Kenny Loggins "The Unimaginable Life" that inspires me greatly and I created my mind movie of some things that I want to happen in my life over the next few years. I am finding it is also best to do this for the short run, as it allows not only for us to change our daily focus to higher thoughts of what we want to accomplish, it ties those images, and words, to the emotional bonding strength of music. Music has a way of slipping words and images right past all of our normal defenses, straight into the soul, which is what must happen for us to have those images mean anything thing more than just something that would be nice to have. We need to picture them and feel gratitude for them as if they are an accomplished fact, and our internal mechanisms move to make them real, by inspiring us, and helping us to see things around us that will help us.

Music is a powerful mechanism, because it speaks not only to our ears, but to our hearts, and so can be used to convey images and thoughts to the heart in a way that words alone cannot do. Try it and you will see the truth of it.

We Must Trust Changing Ourselves

Often we decide that we can delay necessary changes in ourselves because we feel we are surrounded by people who will not appreciate the change because they don't appreciate us now.  Or we decide that even if we change, the faults of those close to us will make the change of no effect.

 

Nothing could be more untrue.  The only change of any lasting value that we can make is in ourselves.  We can inspire change in others, but typically that comes when they see us eradicate the junk from our own lives and begin to blossom.  Very often in fact, the only way we will see change in those close to us, is if we ignore their faults and work only on ourselves, with the intent of changing only ourselves.  This cannot be something we begin with the end in mind of changing others, but we can know as surely as the sun will rise, if they have it in them, they will be inspired by the change they see in us.

 

I say, if they have it in them, because some people are very set in their ways, and when accompanied by laziness, the desire to change may lie dormant in them until their dying day.

So, to change ourselves, as we shall see, is no simple prospect, however once engaged, the process of self-change can make it even easier to see why we should limit this process to ourselves, because even when we have clear and impressive motivation to do so, change can take a long time, and focused effort.

 

Sometimes, if we change ourselves, our attitude, we will be the only one that changes, but sometimes, that change is necessary to be able to manage otherwise unmanageable relationships.  As we learn to tolerate or even to find the good in all things, a principle of nature kicks in, called the Heisenberg principle.  This was formulated as a Quantum principle, but much of Quantum physics begins to be applied to our world as we learn just how much of our world is defined by our own mind.

 

Stated most clearly by Wayne Dyer in his Power of Intention presentation, "When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change."

 

More on this later 

Praxis should be the goal of everyone, but what is it?

The easiest way I know to exemplify Praxis, is to use the Belief Window example of Hyrum Smith, of Franklin/Covey. He described a process that is roughly the cycle of comparing results of our actions to the beliefs that spawned those actions, or in many cases, actions that were more impulsive, and were not necessarily based on what we believe at all.

If we look at results in a probative or questioning fashion, and ask ourselves, if we are happy or not with the results, especially if the action is one that is repeated often, we may be able to isolate those actions which are in opposition to our beliefs. But that is only the first and really the easy part of the proposition.

We often engage in regular activity out of habit, and often the action is so automatic that we do not recognize it as distinct or changeable. We may even consider the habit as part of our nature, making it almost impossible to visualize ever "not doing" or changing that action or activity.

Praxis then, is the act, whether over time or in short order, of bringing our actions in complete synchronization with our beliefs, and in correcting those beliefs which produce results which are neither desirable, nor in conjunction with our core beliefs.

The blog entries that will follow are intended to rouse a serious discussion of how exactly one may go about the process of praxis, and always within oneself, and never part of a program of changing another person. The beauty of praxis, is that once we reach an advanced stage of effectiveness, we may find that many of the dysfunctional relationships we have fostered along the way will heal themselves, which is often what happens, but only when we begin with ourselves.