Problems…

Tags

God, Golden Wisdom, problem, problem-solving, Question, Solutions

“Be alert during the day for clues about your problem from other people. The Holy Spirit works through them too. So be aware and listen.” – Harold Klemp – The Spiritual Life

Problems, challenges, issues, we all have them. Some of them we create, while others are put in our laps by others. How do you solve your problems? Many search the Internet. Others confide in their friends and loved ones and ask for advice. Others avoid the problem altogether hoping it will just go away.

I have come to the realization of a few pieces of wisdom I’ve gained over the last 50 or so years of my life.

• Problems don’t go away
• Everything is in its rightful place in the worlds of God
• God never gives us a problem we cannot solve
• God will give you the answer if you ask

Problems don’t go away

Yeah, I’m one of those folks who procrastinate. When a problem comes my way, my first solution is to just ignore it. This obviously is not a good way to solve one’s problems. Problems always stick around. Once I learned this, I begin to brainstorm how to solve it. Once I’ve brainstormed, I put together a plan and create discrete action steps to begin working on.

Everything is in its rightful place in the worlds of God

God is perfect. If God was anything but perfect, our Universe would collapse on itself. Subsequently, we have to assume that an architecture, laws or principals exist to avoid this, even if we don’t have the full picture. Assuming this, the “problem” we see as a problem really isn’t a problem at all but a misunderstanding of this architecture.

God never gives us a problem we cannot solve

One of my beliefs is that this reality we exist in is a classroom. It is a classroom for our true self to learn and become better equipped to serve God. Subsequently, the lessons God gives us are for our betterment.

God will give you the answer if you ask

We do the best we can on our own by brainstorming the problem, putting together a plan to solve the problem and begin the work of moving through our plan step-by-step. We can also ask questions.

Problems or lessons are hard because we are charting new territory. We are doing something we have not done before. The reason we label these things as problems are because we don’t know the answer. Think about this for a moment.

If you are hit with a problem and you’ve solved that problem in the past, it isn’t a problem, is it? We already know how to deal with it and we do. The only way for God to stretch us is to present us with problems or lessons we have not dealt with before. The act of solving the problem is where the learning is.

Let’s say we’re stuck. We are hit with a problem and we have no idea where to begin to solve it. This is where asking a God a question can help. Simply ask a question like: What is the solution to this problem that will be good for me and for the good of the whole? Then keep your eyes, ears, and mind open for the answer. Sometimes the answer will come intuitively. You’ll just get an idea and it gets you moving. Other times the answer will come when you are reading a book, magazine, or an article online. You may be watching television, listening to the radio, or overhear someone in a coffee shop speaking about something related to your problem. Heck, you may even see your answer on a billboard.

For me, it comes in a variety of ways, sometimes in a combination of things. The key is to keep an open mind and be aware of anything that comes to provide you with an answer to your question. Now, there’s one more thing you’ll need to do. If you get an answer, you need to verify or confirm it.

Confirming something is all about the doing. Let’s say you get an idea that leads you along a certain path to solving your problem. As you are moving in this direction, you solve the problem. This is the confirmation you need. In another case, you may be moving in a direction from one of your gained insights only to find that you are moving in the wrong direction. This verifies that the solution you received was a little off. Then you ask the question again and continue moving along until you’ve solved your issue. In some paths, these insights are labeled the “Golden Wisdom”. In others, they would be a revelation, an “ah-ha” moment, or a paradigm shift.

Try this out the next time you have a problem you just can’t seem to get traction on. Do your best on your own, but when you’re stuck, ask the question. You’ll be surprised at what you receive.

Until next time…

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Daily Rituals…

Tags

daily, flow, habit, habits, Productivity, rituals, self-improvement, system, workflow

I’ve recently read a book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. This book lists out all of the Artists and thinkers over the years and how they ran their days. Some didn’t have any plan at all, but these were rare. Most had a very specific list of things they did each day. They got up the same time, retired the same time, and followed a system. I’ve always believed in rituals because they build consistency in my day and reinforce the things I want to focus on.

Let’s look at some things that are good for us. Sleeping 7-8 hours a night, exercising, meditation, reading, writing, hygiene, social networking, etc. By focusing on these simple things, you build a habit of doing these things and building a solid foundation that has been proven to be healthy and efficient. Who wouldn’t want that?

Here’s what my morning ritual looks like:

• Rise
• Record my dreams if I recall anything
• Make my bed
• Hygiene
• Meditate
• Visualize the completion of my most important goal
• Breakfast
• Check Email
• Check Facebook, Twitter, Blog, and LinkedIn, and email iteration 1
• Post quotes to social media sites and write down my recorded dream in my dream journal
• Writing in my Gratitude Journal
• Verifying my plan for the day (top 2-3 things I set to accomplish)

Daily rituals are cool because they provide a stability to my day. Now that I’m retired it gives me a structure, a system to follow, addressing what I consider important. I also have an evening ritual.

Here’s what my evening ritual looks like:

• Dinner
• Exercise
• Planning for tomorrow
• Gratitude Journal
• Check Facebook, Twitter, Blog, and LinkedIn, and email iteration 3
• Write in my Gratitude Journal
• Write in my diary
• Hygiene
• Evening Reading
• Retire

These are things I do every day. Not necessarily in the order, I’ve put them in. Things happen. If I’m sick or have an appointment that disrupts my ability to accomplish some of those ritualistic things, I’ll blow them off that day. The key to rituals is they build habits that are strong enough to deal with the chaos of our lives and survive as templates for our activities.

The key to building a great ritual is to select those things you deem important to your life or are very passionate about. Some of the things on my list may be a given for you, like hygiene. Some folks may decide hygiene isn’t one of those things they want to deal with in a ritual because they are going to do it. The ritual can be composed of anything you want. The key is to build your ritual on those things that you believe will provide value to your life if they are done consistently.

After using rituals for the last 6 months I am a firm believer in their efficacy. I am on automatic each morning and launch into my evening rituals with the same tenacity. My morning ritual is triggered by my waking in the morning and the bulk of my evening ritual is triggered by my dinner. After dinner is complete, I exercise, plan for the next day, check social media and this blog, hit my gratitude journal and my diary, and get ready for a relaxing evening.

I hope some of these ideas are helpful and wish you well on creating rituals that provide value to your day.

Until next time…

Automatic..

I posted yesterday about filters and was intrigued by the word “Automatic”. This word is linked to the filters we look through each day as we interact with our environments. If we are engaging our world unconsciously, this filter glosses over the beauty before us and taints it with our own internal map.

It is all about being aware, paying attention, grasping the lessons Divine Spirit gives us in each moment we are here. A mind is a machine. It is not us. It serves a purpose that is important to our existence, but it is not us. Most of the mind’s operations are automatic. The heart, lungs, and our internal systems are on autopilot. What is not automatic is our ability to stop and listen, evaluate what the mind thinks and why it thinks the way it does.

There’s a huge movement out there relating to mindfulness. It is merely the practice of living in the moment and to only do one thing at a time. To live now, experience now, and not worry about previous moments or future ones. It is savoring every bite of our breakfast, enjoying that first sip of coffee or tea, a word we read in our book. In a world running a million miles an hour, mobile devices surgically attached to our hands, we are so wrapped up in so many things that the noise of our lives drowns out the moments that should be precious.

It is in the silence of a moment that we truly feel. It is in the silence of a moment that we truly see. It is in the silence of a moment that we can feel an expansion of consciousness, a feeling of unexplainable largeness where we feel at one with all and everything.

Automatic is good when we need to breathe, our hearts need to pump, or we need to react to a dangerous situation. Automatic is not good when it becomes a default in our lives. Take some time to get quiet today. To breathe. To enjoy the moment. To contemplate. Your life will be fuller, you’ll enjoy things more, and more importantly, the stress in your life will lesson.

Have a wonderful day!

Until next time…

via Daily Prompt: Automatic

Filters…

Tags

assumption, conclusion, filter, internal map, mindfullness, paradigm

“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.” A. A. Milne

This quote inspired me to think about filters. Each of us has our own way of looking at things. We have predispositions, opinions, and a filter we look through that is uniquely our own. Some call this our internal map, a paradigm, or a worldview.

Have you ever experienced a paradigm shift? It is quite an interesting feeling to look at something one way and then have that view shattered with something someone says or writes. Sometimes this shift causes us to be ashamed, other times we get that rare “Ah-ha” moment, which opens us up to a whole new level of thinking.

The challenges we have with our minds is the way the mind works. The mind is a good collector. It collects. It takes snapshots and recordings of everything we experience. It interprets by comparison. Is this good? Is this pretty? Is this bad? Is it ugly? Subsequently, we are slaves to the way our mind interprets these comparisons and the subsequent feelings that are derived from these comparisons.

Is this wrong? Not necessarily. The ancient parts of our brains make comparisons and interpret certain things to scan for danger and react appropriately. This is the “fight or flight” response many of us feel when we sense danger or see a pattern that brought pain previously. We know, for example, that touching a hot stove will hurt us. We know this from personal experience or what we experienced when a friend or loved one burned themselves by touching a stove.

The problem inherent in this system is that it applies to every input we receive. This interpretation, which is hard-wired into us with years of reinforcement is our internal map, our paradigm, or our prescribed, self-built, reaction to our interpretation of the world. We each have our own definitions of what we like, what we don’t like, what tastes good, what tastes horrible, what we consider beautiful and what we consider ugly.

Maybe we get caught up in gossip about another person we work with. The input we receive from another person will affect us, depending on the credibility we give to the person transmitting the message. Based on our previous experience, we may be quick to judge someone based on how they look, how they dress, or how they act. Many times, these assumptions are incorrect. They are our mind, applying the filters we’ve built over the years of our life, and automatically placing judgment.

Think about the last time this happened. We see a news story, read an article, or see a posting on one of our favorite social networking sites. We immediately jump to conclusions based on that input without verifying our assumptions. We assume.

Think about the many dating services that are available today. We swipe left if we dislike someone; we swipe right if we like someone. We make mindless judgments using the same mechanism we use daily for our very survival automatically, just by looking through a few pictures and reading a little “blurb” this person is using to try and find themselves a potential mate. We do the same things when we evaluate another person on hearsay. All because we depend on the automatic evaluation system we built from our life’s worth of experiences.

The quote: “Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.” demonstrates the need to be more aware of our internal maps and to consciously use our awareness to circumvent this system to truly understand another human being. When you read something, verify it. When you see something, try to understand the underlying story. When you meet someone, listen to them. They have a story to be told, learned from, and cherished. By doing so, you may discover that the person you think is a weed, really is a beautiful flower that hasn’t bloomed yet.

Until next time…

Managing Ourselves…

Tags

Desire, Goals, motivation, Murphy's Law, Pareto Principle, time, time-management

“Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.” – Peter Drucker

Ahhh…time. Time management is prevalent in the productivity literature, but frankly, like many of my literary heroes have stated, time management is a misnomer. We don’t manage time. We manage ourselves. Yeah, sure, we schedule things on our calendar, we have our to-do lists, we have our productivity apps, but what do any of these things do, if we don’t execute?

Time management is prevalent in the productivity literature, but frankly, like many of my literary heroes have stated, time management is a misnomer. We don’t manage time. We manage ourselves. Yeah, sure, we schedule things on our calendar, we have our to-do lists, we have our productivity apps, but what do any of these things do, if we don’t execute?

The key is execution. To really do what we say we need to do when we need to do it. Over the last 40 years I’ve tried every trick, every hack, everything you can think of to plan, calendar, create lists, and all the rest, but what happens when reality kicks in? In the Army, there’s this guy called Murphy. No one knows who Murphy is, but Murphy is the all-knowing Oracle known across the military. I know you’ve heard of him. He’s responsible for the creation of Murphy’s Law, which states: “The worst possible thing will happen at the worst possible moment.” In a nutshell, this translates into another proverb: “Plans do not survive reality.”

So how do we get anything done? The key is to improvise and adapt. This is where the Pareto Principle comes into play. What makes the Pareto Principle so powerful? It can be applied to anything. This includes managing ourselves.

I had a commander during an exercise with the Minnesota National Guard (we were there to evaluate them) state: “A good commander will give you 80% of the plan. You’ll have to come up with the other 20%.” This is the Pareto Principle in action. If anyone reading this has been in a combat scenario, you know exactly what this 20% is. It is Murphy’s Law, it is chaos, it is the unexpected stuff that can turn units into heroes or corpses.

To brighten this up a bit, let’s think about a personal situation. Let’s say you have a goal you want to achieve this year. It doesn’t matter what the goal is. The point is you come up with your plan, which is 80% of the solution. The remaining 20% you’ll have to come up with on the fly. Why? Goals are meant to stretch us into territory we’ve never been before. We just want to do it, because we believe it will help us be better, stronger, feel better about ourselves, or whatever else is driving you. You will make mistakes, while you learn. Things will happen that cause you to deviate from your plan. This is what happens when your plan meets reality.

Whether it’s a trip you want to take, a financial goal you have, or maybe even in this audience, the number of followers you get on your blog. The 20% is that gray area that represents your ignorance, the other folks you need to get there who may or may not assist, or any other unpredicted piece of reality that will stick its ugly head up right before the finish line.

With all this ranting, I still haven’t given you the solution. The solution is desire. With desire, you can achieve anything you want to. But the desire, the hunger, the outright guts must be there to accomplish what you want to achieve. Without guts, a unit who is fighting for its life on some god-forsaken piece of land will succumb to the enemy. Without the desire to get up in the morning to hit the weight room when it’s snowing outside will test your desire to truly get in shape. Without the hunger, you’ll let the most insignificant excuse cloud your judgment and that 20% will be an impossible obstacle to climb.

How do we get desire or the motivation to do something? Honestly, this is a personal issue. What do you value? What do you want? What are you willing to do to achieve what you want?

There is more than enough literature on to-do lists, planning techniques, mobile apps, and all the rest for putting together a framework of the what you will do when, but without desire, these tools are useless. Do some soul searching. What do you really value? What really wakes you up in the morning? Is it creating art? Is it teaching others? Is it a challenge? Travel? Reading?

Take some time this weekend and really dig into that. Dig deep. My bet is when you find this thing, you’ll realize you’ve always known what that thing is. Once you begin pursuing what you really, really want, nothing will stop you. You’ll love every minute you put into it and not care if you make any money doing it. But you will succeed because it’s what you were put on this Earth to do in this lifetime.

I love to write. Lately, I’ve been using quotes as a prompt for my writing. What do you think? Is this something that is interesting to you? If not, tell me what you’d like me to explore with you in my writing. Daily Ramblings is nothing more than an outlet for my creativity. I enjoy writing about anything and everything, so don’t be shy.

I wish you the very best in 2017 and beyond. I hope you achieve whatever you want for yourself and your family.

Until next time…

Just Be

Tags

flower, Nature, simplicity, Zen

“A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms.” Zen Shin

Nature has an interesting way of teaching us. Read the quote above. The flower takes what it needs from the Earth, the Sun, the rain, and the bees and doesn’t take any more than it needs. It only uses what it needs to survive. In return, it gives a fragrance or provides itself as food, and purifies the air.

If we all step back from our lives for a moment, we can do the same thing. We eat what we need and no more. We drink what we need and no more. We can also contribute to society by using the talents and abilities we were born with.

We can write, create art, make music, or perform in a position for a company. Each of us possesses talents and expertise we were born with. It’s like each one of us was created to fill in a puzzle piece in the universe that makes this place just one step closer to completeness.

By just being aware of what we love doing, what we are passionate about, we fulfill what the flower does. It just is. It takes what it needs, gives of itself, and exists. Nature is simple.

I find that there is a pure joy in writing. A real joy in inspiring others. I believe that writing is my way of contributing to the world. I challenge you to find your passion. You’ll know what it is because you’ve always known. The difficulty with this is that sometimes we succumb to the pressures of society to work in a job we don’t like, to buy the things we don’t like, in order to fit in with the groups we don’t like. We box ourselves into the same trap everyone else is in. We buy, we owe, and then have to earn the money to pay for the things we really didn’t want or need in the first place, and the cycle goes around and around.

Remember the simplicity of the flower. It plays its part. It lives. It contributes. It does what its true nature dictates. You can do the same.

Until next time…

Small Things

Tags

change, children, family, habits, memories, minimalism, pets

I use the Calm Meditation app each day to get centered. One of the features of the Calm app is the quote they provide you when you’re completed with the day’s meditation. Today, Calm provided a quote from Beau Taplin which states: “Whoever said that small things don’t matter has never seen a small match start a wildfire.” This statement really rang true to me this morning when I began posting it on my favorite social networking sites. I try to find meaningful posts to share with my network. It’s just my way of contributing to my connections.

But this quote really got me. Small things can have wide-ranging impact in our lives. Think about the value in making small changes in your routine. What if you added just 10 minutes of cardio exercise into your morning routine? That would build to over 3,650 minutes over the year. What if you wrote one page in your journal each day? Again, that would be 365 pages or one or two books worth of writing. These small things can offer so much value with minimal input. I recently read a few books. One was a book called Mini Habits; the other was a book called The Power of Less. Both of these books speak to the difficulty with change and how to make change easier by doing small things. Focusing on small things each day will soon turn into big changes and those big changes will bring great value to your life.

Think about the most precious moments in your life. Most of these things started from small things. Your wedding day may have its roots from a smile across a room. The day you walked the stage to receive your diploma and degree, resulted from each assignment you began and completed one small piece at a time. More importantly is the impact of small things on relationships. Smiling at your partner in the morning. Giving your child a hug on the way out the door or giving your pet some love in the morning when you wake up. People remember the small things you do for them out of love, not the things you buy for them. They remember the hugs, the kisses, the sticky note left on the refrigerator, or even the quick text you send telling them you are on your way home and you can’t wait to see them. It is these small things that build a long-term relationship.

Our lives are composed of an infinite amount of small moments, each building on each other in a progression of memories, visual snapshots, and audio recordings all captured by our minds. Some remain vivid, while others fade away. Small things matter. The small things we do for ourselves and especially those small things we do for others. Focus on the small things and the big things will follow.

Until next time…

Inauguration Day

Yesterday marked the peaceful transition of power from one President to another. This inauguration was special to me because it was the first time in over 30 years I had the time to sit down and wa…

Source: Inauguration Day

Inauguration Day

Tags

change, inauguration, Politics, president, trump

Yesterday marked the peaceful transition of power from one President to another. This inauguration was special to me because it was the first time in over 30 years I had the time to sit down and watch the whole thing from start to finish. To say this inauguration was different is an understatement. This inauguration, like the election, was divisive before it began. On one side, there are protests, fiery rhetoric, and all kinds of skirmishes on the social networking feeds. On the other side, condescension, claims of fake news, and all the rest.

I’m a firm believer that each President that has been elected has been the right President at the right time. Initially, none of us will know if this belief rings true, but I have looked at past Presidencies and have found that each person, holding this office, has done things that moved our country forward. Each President has dealt with the pressures of the office in his own unique way, right or wrong, and did what he thought was the best for the country, with all the information he had at the time.

President Obama represented a paradigm shift for the Oval Office. Besides being the first African-American President, he brought a tremendous mind to the office and demonstrated to some of the American public a revelation that families are the same regardless of race, religion, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and all the rest. It was easy to see that the President loved his family and did the best he could to get done what he believed was the best for the American People.

President Trump, like President Obama and the rest of the men who held this office, takes the reigns of the most powerful nation on this Earth. Like President Obama, he continues to add to the fabric of the American Story. He faces challenges like each President before him. His first day in office was met with protests across the planet and a very divided electorate. He, like any other President is being faced with the same things that any other President faced, a country worried about the future, concerned about the changes that may come, and the need to know they are safe.

When I look back at my 20-year career in the Army, I remembered the epiphany I had, when I realized that the people I came to know in places like Germany, South Korea, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, weren’t much different from me. Despite our differences, all the people I met had the same concerns. They wanted to be safe, to be loved, to be treated fairly, take care of their families, and hoped the world would be a better place for their kids, that they had it a little better than they did as parents. Is there anything different today in our country? No. People are afraid that they will lose something they had yesterday. They are fearful that the new President will take away things they had yesterday. In a nutshell, they are afraid of change.

President Trump’s candidacy, and now Presidency, has met with opposition that many say is unlike any in history. I would argue that probably is a little exaggerated. If you look at each man who has run for the office of President, each faced his own demons, the opposition of the other party, coupled with the many challenges the office presents all by itself, not to mention the forces outside of our country who are vying for supremacy in the ever-competitive world.

Will our new President do well? Will his Presidency be an absolute disaster? Will he divide our country more or find that balance to bring our country together? Will he achieve something great for the American People or will he fail miserably, demonstrating to the pundits of his Presidency that they were right about him all along? Only time will tell. Personally, I look forward to the changes and hope that our new President will succeed, just like I have hoped that previous Presidents would win and accomplish what they were voted into office to achieve. Again, I believe that everyone elected to this office is the right person at the right time. Will I be right? All I can do is hope.

 

Writing for the Love of it

Thanks for stopping by…

I love to communicate with the written word. The title I have chosen relates to the intended randomness of my future postings. I enjoy reading and writing about a great many things. My hope is that one or more of these topics will provide value to you and inspires you to interact with me.

My creative muse has nudged me to begin writing about some of the quotes I find here and there. Here goes:

“As we give of ourselves, of our patience and love, to someone else who needs it more, something changes inside us. Something flows in, a flow of good feeling. A spiritual upliftment occurs both in us and in the person receiving the love.” – Harold Klemp – The Language of Soul

This quote speaks about serving others. It is so easy for each of us to be so wound up about our own problems that we become introverted. The flow goes inward. The above quote reminds us that when we give of ourselves through charity, a helping hand, or even something as simple as a smile, we pass along something to the person receiving this gift of self.

Think about a time in your life when everything was going wrong. Maybe you were sick, maybe you didn’t get a lot of sleep, maybe the pressures of life were just getting you down. The feelings you had at the time may have been a collection of things that just piled up and left you feeling paralyzed, unable to tackle anything–a feeling of absolute overwhelm.

Then something happens. You are waiting in line for your coffee or sitting at your desk and someone out of the blue looks at you and smiles or perhaps your boss comes along and tells you how great of a job you’ve been doing. This one kindness, this one simple act, may have brightened your day. Remember the feeling that small thing did for you.

Now imagine the situation in reverse. You’re in line for your coffee and you notice someone who is upset. Maybe their eyes are glassy, maybe they are frowning, maybe, you just feel they are having a bad day. What could you do to brighten this stranger’s day? Perhaps a compliment about what they are wearing, perhaps buying them a cup of coffee (have the sales person give this to them), or maybe asking them if it’s ok to sit down with them just to be there with them without saying anything.

I think if each of us approached our day, being mindful and aware of our surroundings, it would be easy to spot someone that just needed a little something to make their life a little easier that day.

What do you think of this quote? Would you interpret it differently?

Until next time…