Think of the world you carry within you.  ~Rainer Maria Rilke

We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. ~ Wayne Dyer

I think there is more power in considering not the beauty in ourselves or the world we carry …but the world and beauty within others.   And the real trick is to invite, inspire and create a culture where people desire to share their beautiful stuff.  Kirk Weisler

May Awesomeness spill all over you today!  Heck all week!

Kirk Out

K’onte is a 14-year-old boy who has not had an easy life; he spent 4  years in foster care looking for a family. A local TV news anchor had featured him in a story about adoption hoping to help find Ke’onte a home, but he had little success. Finally, after a second story on Ke’onte had been published, he was able to find a permanent home.

1. You paid the bills this month, and maybe even had extra to spend on non-necessities. It doesn’t matter how much you belabored the checks as they went out, the point is that they did, and you figured it out regardless.
2. You question yourself. You doubt your life. You feel miserable some days. This means you’re still open to growth. This means you can be objective and self-aware. The best people go home at the end of the day and think: “or… maybe there’s another way.”
3. You have a job. For however many hours, at whatever rate, you are earning money that helps you eat something, sleep on something, wear something every day. It’s not failure if it doesn’t look the way you thought it would – you’re valuing your independence and taking responsibility for yourself.
4. You have time to do something you enjoy. Even if “what you enjoy” is sitting on the couch and ordering dinner and watching Netflix.
5. You are not worried about where your next meal is coming from. There’s food in the fridge or pantry, and you have enough to actually pick and choose what you want to eat.
6. You can eat because you enjoy it. It’s not a matter of sheer survival.
7. You have one or two truly close friends. People worry about the quantity but eventually tend to realize the number of people you can claim to be in your tribe has no bearing on how much you feel intimacy, acceptance, community, or joy. At the end of the day, all we really want are a few close people who know us (and love us) no matter what.
8. You could afford a subway ride, cup of coffee, or the gas in your car this morning. The smallest conveniences (and oftentimes, necessities) are not variables for you.
9. You’re not the same person you were a year ago. You’re learning, and evolving, and can identify the ways in which you’ve changed for better and worse.
10. You have the time and means to do things beyond the bare minimum. You’ve maybe been to a concert in the last few years, you buy books for yourself, you could take a day trip to a neighboring city if you wanted – you don’t have to work all hours of the day to survive.
11. You have a selection of clothing at your disposal. You aren’t worried about having a hat or gloves in a blizzard, you have cool clothes for the summer and something to wear to a wedding. You not only can shield and decorate your body, but can do so appropriately for a variety of circumstances.
12. You can sense what isn’t right in your life. The first and most crucial step is simply being aware. Being able to communicate to yourself: “something is not right, even though I am not yet sure what would feel better.”
13. If you could talk to your younger self, you would be able so say: “We did it, we made it out, we survived that terrible thing.” So often people carry their past traumas into their present lives, and if you want any proof that we carry who we were in who we are, all you need to do is see how you respond to your inner child hearing, you’re going to be okay, from the person they became.
14. You have a space of your own. It doesn’t even have to be a home or apartment (but that’s great if it is). All you need is a room, a corner, a desk, where you can create or rest at your discretion; where you govern who gets to be part of your weird little world, and to what capacity. It’s one of the few controls we can actually exert.
15. You’ve lost relationships. More important than the fact that you’ve simply had them in the first place is that you or your former partner chose not to settle. You opened yourself to the possibility of something else being out there.
16. You’re interested in something. Whether it’s now how to live a happier life, maintain better relationships, reading or movies or sex or society or the axis on which the world spins, something intrigues you to explore it.
17. You know how to take care of yourself. You know how many hours of sleep you need to feel okay the next day, who to turn to when you’re heartbroken, what you have fun doing, what to do when you don’t feel well, etc.
18. You’re working toward a goal. Even if you’re exhausted and it feels miles away, you have a dream for yourself, however vague and malleable.
19. But you’re not uncompromisingly set on anything for your future. Some of the happiest and best adjusted people are the ones who can make any situation an ideal, who are too immersed in the moment to intricately plan and decidedly commit to any one specific outcome.
20. You’ve been through some crap. You can look at challenges you currently face and compare them to ones you thought you’d never get over. You can reassure yourself through your own experience. Life did not get easier, you got smarter.

No matter how bad your mood is, bet you can’t make it through this without a smile.

“The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.” Ashley Montagu 

Friend Floyd Sheets offered me the above quote along with some wonderful feedback yesterday . While graciously thanking me for my noble efforts to share bits of inspiration and wisdom, he offering this bit of wisdom and perspective that had to do with not getting so focused on “Seizing the Day” that we don’t create space, possibility by pausing and being open to the ‘day seizing us.”

Happiness and success and other important outcomes in our lives need not be solely the result of pursuit.  We must remember that many of the most important and memorable things in our life didn’t come during or in the moments of our dogged and determined pursuit of them..  Rather they manifested themselves in the moments when we paused.  Taking us almost totally by way of a most pleasant and welcome surprise.

“The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.”  Ashley Montagu

 Pause with Purpose

Kirk out

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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle

Some people seem to live in a place of perpetual disagreement.  No matter what is said they feel a need to disagree with it or at the very least add some bit of correction to it.  It’s almost as if their carry a “Yes but” or “What you probably don’t know…” on the end of their tongue and are ready to drop them like a hammer on anyone else’s expressed idea or thought.

Their need to be heard, to say something, and ultimately to be right or to appear to know is not just unattractive.  It’s in many ways repulsive and causes people to want to keep a distance.  Often they don’t understand why people are keeping a distance…and I have heard more than once a person express their belief that people avoided them because, “They are intimidated by my knowledge.”!!

On the other hand when someone expresses an idea and the listener receives it with interest instead of criticism something much different can happen, in part because a most basic need is beginning to be met.  The need to be understood.

In receiving the idea, one does not have to accept it or agree with it.  Just like I can receive a person into my circle of friends or even into my home for an evening who may have a different philosophy and lifestyle.  I can entertain them, enjoy their company and be considerate of their views without adopting them for myself.

Statements I have learned from the Aristotle’s in my own life as they responded to another’s idea have sounded like this…

“That is an interesting idea, please tell me more about it.”

“Yours is a viewpoint that I hadn’t considered…I am glad you have shared it with me.”

“I now understand just a little bit more about your world view and am better for it, thank you.”

“Yours is an idea I have never considered I want to take some time to think more about it.  Thank you for sharing it with me.”

These types of statements can go a long way towards creating a meaningful dialogue that seeks true understanding rather than  a debate where the chief focus is on winning by proving which idea is better or which person is right.

I have always loved Covey’s teaching.  ”Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

In our seeking first to understand…. we are not obligated to seek for agreement… just understanding.

And it’s been my experience that there is seldom agreement without understanding.  Even the kind of agreement where we agree to disagree.

Do you agree?  🙂

Kirk Out