One of the biggest problems with the good old days is that we don’t seem to recognize them as we are living them, only as we reflect on them. If we knew that 10 or 20 years from now we would be looking back and talking about the good old days that we are living right now, would it change how we are living right now?
Make it a good old day …today! Kirk
Our oldest daughter Brit just sent this quote today… I really liked it.
“In order to know oneself, no amount of introspection or self-examination will suffice. You can analyze yourself for weeks, or meditate for months, and you will not get an inch further–any more than you can smell your own breath or laugh when you tickle yourself. You must first be open to the other person before you catch a glimmering of yourself. Our self-reflection in a mirror does not tell us what we are like; only our reflection in other people.
We are essentially social creatures, and our personality resides in association, not in isolation.”
Reminded me of Julie B. Beck’s “Welcome the task that makes you go beyond yourself and you will grow.”
Love Ya, Brit
Thanks Brit… Dad out. 🙂 Enjoy your weekend… and for those of you who may be celebrating Father’s Day here is a fun clip that I think does a wonderful job of doing just that.
Posted: April 26, 2013 in Lifestyle
I met a guy whose life hasn’t always been an easy one, no one could possible say they knew him, but I think I understand him. He’s an expert at hiding the things he doesn’t want anyone to know about his life. I told him to one day write a memoir, but doubt he’ll want to, it’s mostly a sad story he says, but maybe that’s the problem with most people…..
For too long they chose to see the cup half empty instead of half full. There’s always time to fill it regardless of what ever happened. Genuine dedication, belief, faith and the power to control your mind can elevate you to levels you may have never thought you can reach the tyranny of impoverished thinking if I could call it that. I used to have the same thoughts at times, most of the filled with spite and negative, I fell into bad mental habits. Rather than focusing on all the good in their lives, as little as they think they have, and thinking of ways to make things better, they remain captives of the past, bitter about what others have and they don’t, how others have it easy and they’ve only really known one way of living, struggle. It’s no secret that the way we think stems purely from habit, but people never realize the power of their minds, which is equivalent to the power of choice. You let the happenings around you dictate your mood and how your life is going to be. So what if you can’t go to parties from Thursday to Sunday like the spoiled kids? Or go for road trips, travel abroad, drive a car? Weighing yourself down on such levels makes it even harder for you to fit in.
Sheer optimism can get you through a lot, the power of vision across adversity. Instead of trying to be like someone, or wanting what someone has, focus on how to improve your current situation, cultivating envious thoughts in your mind is just filling your head with negative ideas instead of freeing that space to think of more positive ideas to elevate yourself. It could be a job that pays you something you consider small, but that’s a stepping stone for greater things to come in your life as long as you keep pushing on, being buoyant that the best is yet to come. Sometimes your ‘I can’ is way better than your IQ.
So no matter what happens to you, no matter the past experiences, only you have the capacity to choose your response to it. One of mentors always tells me that regardless of what happened in the past, we are not captives of the past, but we are the captains of our DESTINY.
If everyone really resisted change, we would all be riding horses instead of driving cars. Progress is evolution meeting need. ~Glen Notman
And if everyone resisted change…we also wouldn’t have Jello!
On this very day in 1897 – “Jell-o was introduced Pearl B. Wait, a carpenter and cough medicine manufacturer from LeRoy, N.Y., produced varieties in strawberry, raspberry, orange and lemon fruit flavors, named Jell-O by his wife, May Davis Wait. Sales were poor; Wait sold the Jell-O business for $450 to his neighbor, Orator F.Woodward, who had founded the Genesee Pure Food Co. two years earlier. Success came slowly, but with Woodward’s creative sales and sampling strategies, Jell-O began to catch on. In 1902, when he launched his first advertising campaign in Ladies’ Home Journal, sales eventually reached $250,000.”
Jello – As a kid I ate it and slurped it with no thought or appreciation to who may have invented it…and certainly no thoughts that someone may have had to work really hard to help Jello “catch on. I also think it’s interesting that the guy who invented it didn’t have the skills to market it and sold it for $450.
All change isn’t a sign of progress and isn’t for the better… knowing what and when to resist change can be as challenging as knowing when not too. Progress is evolution meeting need… and making Jello.
Kirk Out
Forgiveness is difficult; maybe one of the most painful emotions to get through. After being betrayed, bullied, abused, or forgotten, being able to forgive can be worse than the actual reason forgiveness is needed.
Here’s what I do know. Not forgiving someone, even yourself, can make you sick; physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Yes, I know you’ve probably heard that before, but I’m here to tell you that it is true. You might as well take a ‘sickness pill’ and decide that you’re ready to go because eventually it will harm you. And if it doesn’t kill you, it definitely changes you through the wall that you build around yourself.
What is even sadder about not forgiving is that the person who you are trying to forgive, many times, doesn’t even care that you have been hurt all the way to your core. That makes it even tougher to get past the pain.
With that last bit said, that’s even more reason to forgive. Realize that many times the person you want to forgive is living their life, without any thought to your well-being. They are not drinking the poison of resentment and anger, and they must not care that they hurt you because they haven’t genuinely apologized. They are living life…as they should.
Why should they be able to live without the pain or poison? Why…because that is how God intended for us to live; in harmony and in peace. Do they deserve to feel the hurt that you are experiencing? Maybe they do in your mind, but not by God. We are all His children, and one of the best ways to support Him is to learn how to forgive; in spite of a person’s worthiness of it.
Forgiveness is not about forgetting, nor allowing someone to continually mistreat you; it’s about having faith that everything works out, as it should, in the end. Having to forgive someone is to know that how someone treated you has very little to do with you, if anything, but it does have everything to do with them. Forgiving makes sense spiritually, emotionally, and physically; you are healthier because of it. Your ability to excuse someone for something they did to you means you have peace within, you are closer to God, and that you now understand the big picture of life a little better than before.
Here are a few suggestions on what can work for you:
Life is full in complications, issues, and compromises. Someone somewhere will push your buttons, sabotage your efforts, or badger you in some way. What should you do? Go through the same process of writing or stopping your thoughts. You may fall back into your old ways at times, but now you know how to get yourself back on track faster and easier the next time around. Do yourself a favor…forgive.
“Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.”
Osho
“Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sometimes it helpful to have a physical reminder of our emotional commitment to avoid letting toxic things into our bodies, our minds and our lives. Of course we wouldn’t eat poison and would never knowingly drink it. So why would we ever listen to it, look at it or even waste time thinking about it.
BLOCK IT!
Kirk Out
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