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Posts tagged ‘Positive attitude’

Apr 21

Keep Going

Be present today. Get off the sidelines, move from spectator to participant. Stay in the arena of life. Strive. Try again and again. Err. Miss. Victory. Enthusiasm. Devotion. Dare greatly. Keep going.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

Apr 20

From and To. Here and Now

“Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.” – Mao Zedong

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” – Epicurus

Anchored in their own roots, flourishing with light and water, flowers breaks ground in due time and on time. Through old leaves, surrounded by weeds, aiming for the sky, completing their own journey.

Move me from striving to thriving;
From seeking to finding;
From want to gratitude;
From noise to quiet;
From distraction to attention;
From critic to cheerleader;
From pessimism to optimism
From hurry to saunter;
From spotlight to mirror;
From calculation to celebration;
From more to what already is;
From clinging to letting go;
From worry to ease;
From the past to the present;
From floundering to hope;
From counting to love, unconditionally;
From shadow to light;
From bud to bloom;
From no where to go but here and now in this moment, senses reawakened, a shift;
Move me, nothing else.

“It’s not only moving that creates new starting points. Sometimes all it takes is a subtle shift in perspective, an opening of the mind, an intentional pause and reset, or a new route to start to see new options and new possibilities.” – Kristin Armstrong

Apr 18

A Good Busy

“Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.” – Khalil Gibran

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi

A walk with friends, two playgrounds, one dog park, the first lawn cutting of the season and a big bouncy ball kind of day. No schedule, nowhere to be but in the present, exploring, climbing, balancing, sliding, swinging and playing. When we let go of the should, must, have to, checklist busy days and enter the play zone, the world widens, deepens and gratitude appears in simple moments.

“Never, ever underestimate the importance of having fun.” – Randy Pausch

Foster playful moments daily to awaken to the present, ease into flow and enjoy the journey.

“With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” – Thomas Merton

Apr 16

The Acorn

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.” – Marianne Williamson

Doable – 20 minutes a day. Morning and evening, bookend your day with a gratitude practice to create meaning and depth of the space in between. It takes repetition, practice, intention, attention and mindfulness to bear fruit of joy, peace, delight and awe. Do the work.

Take inventory of blessings and gifts, be grateful in this very moment. If we can’t see what already is, it will be impossible to ever be satisfied. Pursue light and expansion, leaving fear and scarcity in the dust.

Each of us is the gardener of our own life. Stop waiting for others or circumstances to change to produce steady-state contentment for yourself. Plant your own seeds of gratitude, whole-heartedness, optimism, kindness, generosity, enthusiasm, imagination and light.

Growth, gratitude and expansion come from an active cycle of planting, cultivating, waiting and harvesting the bounty found in mere seeds. What we actively plant, we actively reap. If we plant nothing and expect a harvest, we come up disappointed, empty again and again. Plant the seeds, seek the light.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”

The strong oak begins with one acorn. Plant, cultivate, harvest.

“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.” James Allen

Apr 12

Luminous

“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.” —Rumi

When I turned on my laptop to write my daily post, the camera lit up for facial recognition to bypass the log in. I leaned in and a message popped up: “Too close, move farther away.” When I leaned back a bit, it worked. If I was too far away, it would probably say, “Too far, move closer in.” I didn’t expect to get my post today from the Artificial Intelligence on my laptop, but here goes.

When we get too close in or too far away, stuck in a fixed mindset, ego and spiraling thoughts, go in the opposite direction. Scan and then zoom. Zoom and then scan. It’s a dance. Live with intention and attention rather than by accident.

“Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up.” – Allen Klein

Search for color and light, find color and light. Choose awareness and gratitude over speed and scarcity. Find awe in the ordinary. Surrender your need to be right, to know everything, allowing the mystery and unknowing to expand and deepen to your very soul.

“There is a land beyond the ego’s striving to be “better than,” or its fears of being “less than.” That land is where we know ourselves to be both sovereign and connected—“ part of” as opposed to “better or less than.” When you come home to the truth of who you are in the marrow of your soul, you begin to break the ego-shell.”— Marrow: A Love Story by Elizabeth Lesser

Apr 9

Blue or Grey or Both

“You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.” – Pema Chodron

“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
― e.e. cummings

What do you see? The grey clouds or blue skies peeking through. Or both. What you look for, you find. If you look for the blue, you find it, not denying the grey, for the clouds make the blue even more brilliant. Take off old glasses and put on new glasses to see the same in a new light.

Become aware of your thoughts, words, what you see and do not see. Who influences you, who inspires, who leads you away from you? Return to yourself and keep on the path to becoming, unfolding and discovering. Look and listen without judgment or assumption, allowing wonder and awe to make their way through the cracks of time and experience. Create new experiences.

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” – Mary Oliver

Keep paying attention to find new things that are not ahead or behind but all around and available in this very moment.

“may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile”
― e.e. Cummings, e.e. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962

Apr 7

The Good Fight

“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” – Christopher McCandless

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.” – Leo Buscaglia

I started yesterday with focus, attention and intention. Meditation. Exercise. Positive mindset. After a day of meetings, I ended the day tired, worn out and sick of everyone. All the negativity, the weariness, the heavy weight people bear and share. Overcounting burdens, undercounting blessings, bypassing bliss. I’ve done it too. I just don’t want to stay there anymore.

We are so much more than our fickle feelings, deeper than our temporary circumstances. When we refuse to engage and respond by allowing feelings to pass by without fuel or expansion, we detach from being victims of negativity to victors of optimism, hope and resilience.

We all have bad days. Let them happen, but not too many. Precious time is being wasted in the spirals we enter and allow others to pull us in. Your mindset is under your control so allow others to be who they are and fix what’s yours to fix – your own outlook and perspective. You can have empathy and offer hope at the same time.

Looking up at the sky last night with the sun breaking through the clouds as the rain prepared to enter, my consciousness rose above the day, breaking the earthly bonds of heaviness, equilibrium returned, a steady joy state.

“If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment.”- Carlos Santana

Allow feelings to enter, pass and be released. Ease and peace will enter with no effort. The gift of grace. Accept it. Offer it to expand it. Fight the good fight, the right fight.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” – 2 Timothy 4:7

 

Mar 22

2 Comments

Joy Recipe

“You must pass your days in song. Let your whole life be a song.” – Sai Baba

“All action results from thought, so it is thoughts that matter.” – Sai Baba

As the week begins and the weight of all that needs to be done fills on your mind, stop. Allow play, laughter, fun in to do its work in you. Do one new activity each day this week. Swing on a playground, jump rope without a rope, walk a new path. When you find yourself complaining and comparing, count your own blessings and give away that which you most desire.

When conspiracy theories, assumptions and judgment come to the forefront, change the narrative to believing the best and in all and everything to create space for joy in simple ordinary sacred days. Expand, absorb, lighten, deepen, laugh, dance and cast light.

don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements is a simple recipe for more daily joy:

  1. Be Impeccable With Your Word.
  2. Don’t Take Anything Personally.
  3. Don’t Make Assumptions.
  4. Always Do Your Best.

Mar 15

Mister In Between

“Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” – Colin Powell

“But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.” – Elizabeth Edwards

It was Sasha’s fourth birthday yesterday. We celebrated with new toys, walks, the dog park and birthday bones. Kids and dogs show us how to remain in the moment and lean into joy with a grateful heart.

My Dad used to say let negativity wash off you like water off the back of a duck. When we were kids, he also would sing a few lines from an old song by Johnny Mercer, “Accentuate the Positive”:

“You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In Between”

We get stuck in between, not fully joyful, not fully miserable. Rocking aimlessly from side to side as if we have no rudder to steer our own boat, allowing others water to get into our boat and sink it.

Optimism and positivity are not easy. They take work, intention, attention and focus. Listen to your own thoughts and words as well as others around you – complaining, gossip, negativity, chirping, glass not even half full but empty and dry?

Make a hard stop, take a sharp turn and go the opposite direction. Double down on the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative and certainly don’t mess with “Mr. In Between.”

“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” – Christopher McCandless

Mar 14

EVERYTHING!

“Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.” – Epicurus

“The world is full of abundance and opportunity, but far too many people come to the fountain of life with a sieve instead of a tank car… a teaspoon instead of a steam shovel. They expect little and as a result they get little.” – Ben Sweetland

On our walk around Como Lake yesterday, Lynn asked a woman who was holding a camera with a very large lens, “what are you looking for?” Without hesitation, she responded “everything.” What an awesome answer! Rather than being uncertain, specific or narrow, she set her expectations high – EVERYTHING!

Hurried and unaware, we move swiftly through our days in a flurry of activities and tasks, barely observing or acknowledging what’s right in front of us. We assume life is happening “to” us rather than “for” us. The menu of what we can feast on each day is abundant through a lens of gratitude and adventure.

If someone asked you that question today – “what are you looking for?” – what would your answer be? I’m changing mine from “I don’t know” to “everything.” In setting that expectation and intention, I will surely find more than nothing and something.

Use your wide-angle and zoom lens each day to search, invite and welcome in the beauty, mystery and delight woven and hidden in plain sight. Suddenly nothing becomes everything.

“The key to abundance is meeting limited circumstances with unlimited thoughts.” – Marianne Williamson

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