Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – We are Spiritual Beings Having a Human Experience

Tags

Anger, Attachment, Contentment, Detachment, Discrimination, Forgiveness, Greed, Humility, Lust, Passions of the Mind, Soul, tolerance, Vanity, Virtues

“Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Stephen Covey

Read more at: Brainy Quote

Have you ever wondered how you can think about thinking? What part of you is watching you? My religion is ECKANKAR and we call this you—soul. Soul is a spiritual being. It is the real you. It is that part of you that can watch what you are thinking, saying, and doing. Soul is what thinks about what the mind thinks and what the body does. Soul uses your body to experience this life.

I believe in reincarnation. To believe in reincarnation, there must be a something that outlives the body and takes a body when it is time to live another life. This is soul. Soul experiences. Soul learns. Soul needs a body to experience things here. It needs a body to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. It needs to experience the mind’s memory, it’s intuition, and its subconscious, automatic processes.

Soul is the real you. It is a spark of God. God creates soul and soul exists because God loves it. Soul is forever. It never dies, it merely moves to another realm of existence when the human body dies. In this realm it interacts with other souls to continue its learning on another plane of existence. It can return here, it can go to other dimensions or planes, it will go where it needs to go to continue its spiritual journey.

I know this may be a little mind-blowing to some of you. I like using Saturdays to move away from the self-improvement chats and all the rest to dedicate one day a week to discuss my religion and some principles and insights it offers. I am not here to evangelize or push my beliefs down your throat. I merely want to educate. In ECKANKAR, we believe that each soul chooses the religious path it needs during this lifetime. Some souls select Islam, some Christianity, some Buddhism, some Judaism, or Hinduism. Regardless of the religion soul chooses, it is the perfect religion for that soul at the time. As an ECKIST, I believe this to be true. Your religion is yours and yours alone. It is exactly what you need in this lifetime to move ahead spiritually.

The viewpoint of soul is the highest. When you come to realize that soul is the real you, life gets a lot easier. Life isn’t scary anymore, when you realize that you have an infinite amount of lives left. Soul never dies. Soul is infinite. This life will come and go, but soul is forever. Soul takes all its experiences with it when this body finally goes to sleep for the last time. Soul needs these experiences to learn the lessons it needs to gain wisdom and progress spiritually.

Think about all the things you learn during a lifetime. You learn about love. You learn about work. You learn about loss and suffering. You learn about joy and ecstasy. You learn about horror and evil. Soul learns why the passions of the mind like lust, anger, greed, attachment, and vanity are dead ends. Over time, it learns that the virtues are ever-lasting. These are discrimination, tolerance/forgiveness, contentment, detachment, and humility.

When you are lustful, angry, greedy, attached to material things or ideas, or vain, there is a coinciding feeling, a pit in your stomach, an ache in your heart, or some other discomfort. When you are discriminating, tolerant and forgiving, content, detached, and humble, the feelings are lighter. You have a feeling that is long lasting. Things are just right. Soul needs to learn these things through millions of lives and even more experiences. It is the only way.

You are soul, a spiritual being, learning and experiencing through a human body, not the other way around. I wish all of you a Happy Easter tomorrow (for those that celebrate).

Baraka Bashad (May the blessings be).

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The HU Chant

Tags

Calm, Focus, Good Habits, HU Chant, Meditation, Relaxation, simplicity

Have you ever thought about meditation? There are many benefits to this practice, particularly the benefits of calm and focus. Another benefit is the simplicity of the act. You can close your eyes and meditate anywhere, provided you are comfortable and the place you choose is remote or away from noise.

Here are the basics:

• Sit down or lay down on a bed or couch
• Close your eyes
• Focus on your breath (breathe in and breath out)

If you would like to use another technique to keep your focus you can chant silently to yourself or out loud, depending on where you are. If you chant, use the word HU. HU is an ancient name for God and pronounced like the word “hue”. Chant this word for whatever period you have available. I recommend 10 minutes for starters.

Chanting HU can help you in times of stress or trouble. Chanting HU is not religious. You can use the HU chant if you are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or any other religion.

Try it. Many people, the world over, use the HU chant daily. I do this in the early morning, before I head to the gym. Other people I know do the HU chant during their lunch break or right before they go to bed. Start small. 10-20 minutes is all you need.

If you try this out or have questions, comment below.

Have a great Saturday folks!

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Replacing the Negative with the Positive

Tags

Changing the Script, Focus, Gratitude, Gratitude Journal, Negative, Positive, spirituality

“If you fill your consciousness with the positive aspects of Divine Spirit, there is no vacuum where the negative may enter.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Do you have any bad habits you’d like to rid yourself of? I was thinking about this, this morning as I searched for a quote for today’s article and this one is right on spot. If you’ve ever looked into Neuro-linguistic programming, you are probably aware of some aspects of the brain that are interesting, to say the least. One of these interesting aspects is the brain’s inability to distinguish between don’t and do. If you say you don’t want to smoke anymore, your brain captures smoking. If you say you won’t get angry at stupid things anymore, your brain captures angry. It is interesting and true.

So how do you rewire your brain to break a bad habit? You fill it with a replacement. If you focus on health, exercise, or any other positive trait, you will slowly drain energy from the neural pathway that was created to automate the bad habit you are trying to get rid of. The key is to continuously fill your consciousness with positive aspects. By doing so, you will starve the automatic neural pathways that coincide with your bad habits and they will dissipate. I know. It’s harder than just filling your mind with positive things. It takes a concerted effort.

It is possible, however. If you begin to realize how your brain automates things—truly see your brain go through this process, it is easier to unravel. It is like witnessing your brain go through the steps that are necessary to do something, say something, or feel something. There is a natural progression of steps your brain goes through for everything you do in a given day. These steps are automated, so you really have to pay attention and watch what your brain does. Once you witness your brain traveling down the road of a bad habit, it will naturally fade away. This awareness is hard to capture but once you do, there is no way you will continue to do something that hurts you.

I have found that doing meditation helps me with this process. When you have developed the ability to watch your breath and ignore everything else physically, it is easy to rise above the thought stream. For those of you who have conquered the “monkey mind”, you know what this feels like. You imagine your thoughts as a steady stream. When you rise above that stream, you are no longer bothered by your thoughts—you are above them! This same process can be used to observe your unconscious mind. The unconscious part of you is where all your good and bad automated processes are located. Let me explain.

When you first learned to drive a car, you had to think about every single step of driving. It was painstaking, nerve-wracking, and exhausting. Over time, you became proficient with driving. Your brain “automated” driving. Once your driving became unconscious, driving was simple. You get in the care, put your foot on the brake, turn the key in the ignition, put your car into gear and off you go. It was seamless from beginning to the end.

You also have unconscious processes for being angry, being jealous, being frightened, being happy, and so on. The unconscious mind becomes visible once your active mind settles down. You can begin to witness different parts of your body. You can begin to witness your thoughts and how they come about. When you truly see the inner wiring of a habit and see how harmful it is, it is much easier to change the wiring, or what the late Stephen Covey calls “rewriting the script”.

To get back to the quote for today’s article, you just must observe your negative inner wiring with positive wiring. It is simply keeping your attention on the positive things in life and letting the negative things fade away. Don’t get me wrong. There will always be things that get under your skin. The key is to minimize the duration you stay in this negative state. Pout or have a tantrum, cry, scream, and then, LET IT GO.

One of the ways I remain in a positive state of mind is by keeping a gratitude journal. Each morning I write down all the things I am grateful for. I don’t hold myself to a time limit or a set number of statements. I just keep writing until I get that feeling. A feeling that everything is ok, everything is going well, and a deep satisfaction that all is well. I have enough; I have great things to look forward to, and everything is exactly as it should be.

Try this technique. Gratitude journaling is really enjoyable once you get the hang of it and spend the time to truly appreciate all you have in your life. If you need some help or some ideas about how to create a gratitude journal, simply do a Google search on gratitude journaling and you’ll find all kinds of articles on the topic.

I hope all of you have a great Saturday.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Self-discipline

Tags

Balance, Harold Klemp, Holy Spirit, Key Areas, Love, passion, Self-discipline, spirituality

Self-discipline is an absolute necessity if one is to have a productive spiritual life. Replace old tastes and preferences with new, better ones. But do it in the name of the Holy Spirit, with love and a sincere heart, or nothing will come of this experiment.

—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Self-discipline is nothing more than doing what you agree to do. These agreements can be about your exercise routine, your diet, planning your day, and any other topic you can think of that requires effort. A person who can evaluate themselves and come up with a game plan to improve weaknesses or bolster their strengths are powerful people. They can do anything because they are willing to commit and stick with it.

Change is difficult. Evaluating yourself is difficult. Holding yourself to a new standard is also difficult. Self-discipline enables these and more.

So many people just ramble through life. They occupy their time with meaningless activities with no forethought. Think about all the people who literally live on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or Pinterest. What are they accomplishing?

Are you happy with your life? If so, change nothing. Keep doing what you are doing. It’s your life. If you’re happy and fulfilled, why change anything. This article is for the rest of us that are not happy with our current circumstances. We want to lose weight, get in better shape, eat better, and build skills that will garner us the ability to make an income throughout our lives.

Where do you start? This is probably the hardest thing to do—decide. We only have so many hours in the day. What will you spend your time on? Do you want to write a book, start a blog, or create poetry? Do you want to learn a new language? Do you want to start an exercise program? Do you want to start a business? What other things can you do each day that will contribute and build?

I started my search online. I wanted to know what I could do to improve my life, make lasting change, and build skills that would provide me with an income as I pursue a third career. I chose specific areas of my life to look at. These areas are Physical (eating right, getting enough sleep, and exercise), Mental (reading and learning every day), Social (staying connected with friends and family and make new friends and connections), and Spiritual (daily meditation, religious readings, attending spiritual events and retreats).

The areas I want to learn are two-fold. Write books (nonfiction and fiction) and learn how to write computer programs. Once I began my investigation into these areas, I found all kinds of resources to help me on my quest. These are now daily habits that I dedicate my time to. I write every day for this blog and work on my books. I also code every day. I have made great strides in both areas because I do a little each day to add to my abilities.

I need a little discipline in these areas because I love both. I love writing and I love coding. They are closely related because a programming language has rules and a whole new language to learn to enable my code to work. Book writing is a combination of actual writing every day and learning the craft. I try to read a writing book daily and find courses online that can teach me the various aspects of writing whether these classes are on grammar, style, or the specifics of writing a book. There are books on plot development, world building, and character development. The learning never ceases.

What are your passions? What would you like to do with the rest of your life when you retire? Do you want to keep working? Do you want multiple streams of income? Take time on a weekend and think about some of these things. Once you have discovered what you’d like to do, add that to your day. Do a little on these areas each day. How long does exercise need to be to be a benefit? How much writing do you want to do each day? What can you fit into your schedule after your workday is done and you’ve attended to your home responsibilities?

When you start out, put in a half-hour or so to each thing you’d like to try. I would recommend grabbing one item you’d like to add to your day. Then, once you’ve solidified your newfound habit, add another and another, until you are hitting all the things you want to pursue. You’ll be amazed how many things you can do by chipping away a little at a time.

Well, folks. I hope you are having a great Saturday! Enjoy your weekend. If anyone is interested, comment on this thread. I am more than happy to give you some ideas to help you move forward.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Acting As If

Tags

Acting as-if, Deleting, Distorting, Generalizing, Internal filtering, internal map, spirituality, Visualization

“A person who has a high degree of spiritual unfoldment will be balanced in his everyday life. He will use common sense and common courtesy with the people around him.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

What is spiritual unfoldment? The easiest way to explain it is to use the analogy of a map. Initially, we start with a folded-up map. We see some map but miss the details that are in it. As we unfold the map, we see more of the surrounding territory and have a better view of how to move to the places we want to go. The more unfoldment we gain, the higher and more detailed our map becomes. When our internal map improves it gets us closer to the true terrain. This truth, once we recognize it, helps us live our lives better.

I find the topics of psychology and cognition fascinating. Over the years I have discovered that each of us use our own map to negotiate life. Some parts of the map are like other people’s maps. Some parts are not. These maps are unique to us. As we move through life, our maps change to adapt. I recently learned about filters. These filters do three things. They distort, generalize, and delete. These filters are necessary because they help us interact. Imagine having to relearn common, everyday tasks like walking to the mailbox, going out to eat, and anything else you can think of. This automatic filtering saves time and energy.

The downside to these internal filters is what they do with inputs we receive through the senses. Let’s say you have a bad boss and you are traumatized by your interactions with him or her. The part of your filter that generalizes could generalize that all bosses are bad. This causes us to “expect” to have bad bosses. If this auto filtering becomes strong enough in our internal wiring, you will delete or distort anything that differs with your belief that all bosses are bad.

Our beliefs are powerful. They are hard to circumvent or change because of the internal map we possess and the filters we used to analyze new information. We can change, however. We can short-circuit this cybernetic loop by changing our behavior or our beliefs. The beliefs we should target are called “limiting beliefs”. Limiting beliefs are those beliefs that cause us to doubt something or make it appear unsafe. Beliefs like “no one will love me”, “I’m horrible with money”, or “I can’t find a job” are all examples. How do you change these limited beliefs? One way is to behave differently. Act as if. Acting as if is like making pretend. We pretend we can do something we think we can’t. Since the mind can’t tell the difference between what it perceives and what it imagines, it can be fooled into believing that it can do something it couldn’t do before. This is quite a revelation, right?

I’ll leave you with this thought. You can change whatever you want if you can act your way into believing it. Once you believe something, your auto filtering system will do the rest.

Have a great Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Finding Truth

Tags

Contemplation, Emotions, Intellect, Intuition, Meditation, memories, Prayer, The Mind, Truth

No matter how much insight we gain about God, there will always be something that lies beyond the horizon of our understanding. That is simply the nature of truth.

—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

If you search for God, you will never find IT. God is within, buried beneath layers of the mind, the emotions, memories, intellect, and intuition. If we look deep enough, we will find God. Looking deep enough is hard because our minds are so dominant in this reality. To experience God, we need to peel back all these layers first. How do we do this?

We meditate, pray, or contemplate. In my religious path we contemplate. Contemplation is like meditation but active. Meditation typically requires us to focus on the breath, chant a mantra, or focus on an object in our mind’s eye. Contemplation requires us to visualize scenes and actively interact within. Prayer can achieve the same things by chanting a verse, focusing on a religious concept. Why do these activities help us? They focus on things other than our immediate environment. This focus projects us to another place. The more we practice prayer, meditation, or contemplation, the easier it becomes to lose ourselves in the act.

We must drop the mind. Some of you are asking, how in the heck do you drop the mind? You drop the mind when you realize that the mind is not you. You are something else. You are that which thinks about thinking. In my religion we call this being soul. Soul is the real you. It is that part of you that can watch your thought stream. Soul is not the ego. Soul is not your emotions. Soul is not your hunger or lust. Soul is not the part of you that thinks or remembers. Soul is not your intuition. Soul is you.

For some, this can be difficult to understand. It is difficult to understand because science and our society has taught us that the brain is us.  It is not. Soul is the real you.

No one will convince you of anything related to truth. Truth is something you find on your own. Finding truth takes work. It requires you to act, to take matters into your own hands. Once you find truth, you soon discover that it changes. This is the nature of things. It isn’t the truth that changes though. You change. As you change, truth takes on new meaning as you look at it through “new” eyes. Truth never changes, only illusion changes.

If you are unsatisfied with your current religious path or seek questions you cannot answer, look around this website: www.eckankar.org This is the website for my religious path. On this website you can request information. You may like what you find. I have been an Eckist for over 40 years. It is the only path I know. It is a blessing to be an Eckist. Check it out. You have nothing to lose.

If you visit this site, get the materials and still have questions, you are welcome to reach out to me directly. Comment on this thread with: “Contact me”. I hope you have a great Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Higher You Are, The More You Can See

Tags

Emotional, habits, Intellect, Intuition, memory, Physical, Ruts, spirituality

“As Soul, you are like a balloon that rises above the ground. The higher you go, the farther you can see. And the farther you can see, the better you can plan your life.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Have you ever observed other people’s lives? Have you ever wondered about the friends you have, the job you ended up with, or the situation you find yourself in? All of us are here to learn. We learn about ourselves. We learn from others. We learn how to do new things.

I notice patterns. I have always possessed an innate ability to recognize patterns and processes within various systems. I notice patterns in other people’s lives. Patterns that help them and patterns that hurt them. The patterns that hurt are self-destructive. Patterns like excuse making. Patterns such as blaming other people or outside circumstances. Patterns of apathy that contribute to a person giving up, accepting their lot in life and doing nothing to improve their circumstances.

If you pay attention, you can uncover destructive habits in yourself too. When I think about or observe myself, I take the view from the real me—soul. Soul is the real you. It is not the ego or your mind. It is that part of you that can view the things you think about. When you can stand back and look at your life or the lives of others, you can see what’s wrong and make changes. You can break down “you” by understanding that each part composes multiple levels of consciousness.

We have the physical or lowest level. This is the part of you that gets hungry, tired, and horny. Next you have the emotional part of you. The part of you that gets scared, bored, angry, fearful, and lustful. Beyond the emotions is the memory part. The memory contains your past and highlights key events in your life you have learned from. Beyond the memory is the intellect. This part of you represents your ability to think, analyze, and learn. Soul decides on a course of action by using memories and other environmental inputs. Finally, you have the intuition. This is the part of you that gives you little hints or ideas when you are trying to solve a problem or decide after you have analyzed all the things your mental part of you is thinking about or learning.

At the top of all of this is Soul. Soul is the real you. Soul uses these lower parts of you to interact in each sphere of existence. Soul is infinite. Soul can rise above these lower parts to glimpse the whole. When you act at the soul level, you can make better decisions because soul sees the entire picture of you. Soul can also explore beyond you. It can go places your lower parts cannot. When you get an impression or idea, this comes from Soul. Soul can warn you before you make a mistake. Soul can show an idea that might help you solve a problem. This is the analogy of the quote at the top of this posting. The higher soul goes the more it can see.

You can also limit yourself. Have you ever gotten so mad you cannot think? This is when soul has activated your emotions and focuses its attention on this part of you. Soul blinds itself to any higher faculty. When Soul focuses on the past, the same thing occurs. Soul is so entertained by the past it can’t think or analyze new ideas. Instead of rising above these lower parts of you to see the whole, it entertains itself by these lower parts, and restricts itself from the higher view it is capable of.

This leads me back to the statement I made in the initial few paragraphs. People become occupied with one part of themselves and get stuck. Soul gets stuck in the physical, emotional, memory, or mental realms. This prevents soul from seeing all there is to see and prevents soul from providing the ideas or advice these people need. They get caught in an automatic loop that the lowest part of them used for survival. Bad habits rule over them.

Your brain builds habits. It builds neural pathways to perpetuate actions that repeat. The brain does this to conserve energy. This system is automatic. We can exploit this process for good when you recognize a harmful neural pathway or habit. The only way to determine the advantage or disadvantage of any habit is to measure the results a habit produces. How do we do this? We take the time to analyze ourselves. If something we do is destructive, we can identify the specific actions we take and change them.

Changing or altering your habits is difficult. The neural pathways that compose our habits are as strong as steel cables. The longer you have acted out a habit the stronger it will be. Undoing a harmful habit can take as many years to undo as it took to build. Be persistent. Remember the harm this habit causes.

Need outside help? No problem. Research. Look for books, websites, blogs, and research articles that address this problem. You’ll find that there are many people that have run across the same problem and broke their harmful habits. Record as many ideas as you can. Try each one until you find the solution that works. Engage with other people on social media that have had the same problem. Ask them questions. Most will be happy to help you out. In fact, it is highly likely they got help from others the same way.

Remember who and what you are. You are soul. You are not your brain, your emotions, your memories, your intellect, or your intuition. You are above these individual facets.

Until next time.

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Living a Life of Victimhood

Tags

Escapism, ideology, irresponsible, Pity-party, Prejudice, Self-Pity, Victim, Victimhood

“Self-pity is spiritual suicide. It is an indefensible self-mutilation of the soul.”―Anthon St. Maarten

Victimhood is a plague on our societies. Playing the victim is lazy. Victimhood is irresponsible. Victimhood dictates you are not responsible for anything that has gone wrong with your life. The victim constantly blames others, circumstances, and their upbringing for their lot in life. Like the picture of this article depicts—Victimhood is self-imposed slavery.

Do you have any relatives or friends that play the victim card every time something goes wrong in their life? These people are toxic. They are never happy. It does not fulfil them. There is always something going wrong with their life.

Victims run away from responsibility. Unfortunately, we are all 100% responsible for everything that happens to us and for us in life. There is no escaping this reality. You can fight this reality all you want to, but when you do, it is like a seagull fighting the waves of the ocean.

Think about the horrific life that victimhood guarantees. Imagine waking up every day and thinking you cannot do anything because someone else is holding you back. Imagine the helplessness a person playing the victim feels. They can’t do anything or change anything because it is someone or something out there that prevents them from doing so. Victimhood is a sickness and a special insanity.

I am always uncomfortable around people who play the victim card. I am uncomfortable with people who complain. You can’t speak to them about improving anything, because they really don’t want to improve. They are happy being a victim and blaming everyone else for their problems. They gravitate to the people who take part in their victimhood. They thrive on pity. With victims it is always something “out there” that is causing their problems.

Why is victimhood so attractive? This ideology eliminates personal responsibility. Victims are not at fault for anything in their lives. Victims are in their position because of racism, misogyny, or some other prejudice. They are in their position because of their upbringing. They are in their position because they always gravitate to the path of least resistance. Victims also have a hard time delaying gratification. They want something with no effort.

Do you recognize any of the above in yourself? If you do, I would recommend reading a book by Stephen Covey. The title is The 7 habits of Highly Effective People. This book changed my life. It will change your life too. It will teach you the importance of building your character. It will teach you about the circle of concern and the circle of control. It will teach you concepts like the P/PC balance. I won’t explain these here. Get and read the book. It is available on all the major book seller’s websites.

I hope all of you have a terrific weekend! I’m enjoying a warm cup of coffee and looking out my office window at the snow outside. I love my view!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Doing Your Best

Tags

Doing your Best, Effort, Harold Klemp, Love, Meaning, Purpose, wisdom

If you make a meal, put love into it instead of the frustrations of your day. Because whatever is put into the food is a reflection of what you have inside yourself, and it goes out to your family, it goes out to your friends. And it makes a very real difference.—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

This quote advises us to put love into everything we do. Love builds. Love gives meaning.

I remember my first few years in the Army. I thought I had made a mistake, shortly after I arrived at my first duty station. I was going through the motions. I did what I had to do to avoid getting into trouble. I realized one night that this was not working for me. I put more of myself into the job. I read field manuals and regulations. I put extra effort into my uniform and appearance. I put in more time into exercise. My Army career changed for the better. Instead of biding my time, I embraced my career. This made all the difference.

Love what you do even if your current job is not a perfect one. You will find, like I did, that the more you put into the job, the more rewarding the job becomes. Your job will have more meaning. Love is active. Love is doing. Love requires you to give your best. What you give to the world returns to you.

Do the best you can in every situation. Take the time to do things right. Give everything your best effort. You will find what I have found—the more you give, the more you get.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Saturday.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Action Plans, Focus, moving forward, Opportunities, Overwhelm, Procrastination, Resistance

Divine Spirit opens new opportunities, but we must take them. We must make our own choices with the best information at hand.—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Opportunities present themselves to us constantly. What do we do with them? Do we grab the opportunity, investigate it, and make a choice to use or not use it or do we let it pass by because we are too busy to take the time and test its value? I think many people do the latter. Why? Perhaps we are exceptionally busy being banged and bumped around by life.

Unlike the person above, another person may grab every opportunity that comes their way and scatter their attention and efforts to the wind. They run down this rabbit hole and then another, accomplishing nothing. This too can be problematic and aid a person’s procrastination. Both routes can lead to missed opportunities and add to a person’s level of confusion.

Again, I ask why? Why would one person be oblivious to opportunity and another be hyper-actively pursuing all these new ideas? Fear. Person #1 is fearful and avoids everything. They are like the cartoon Ostrich that buries its head in the ground. Person #2 is fearful and pursues everything around them, enabling procrastination. They are like a puppy in a brand-new home, running this way and that, smelling and investigating everything that comes their way. If you watch people in these states, you soon see how ineffective it is to follow either path. What’s the solution?

The solution to these problems is focus. Focused people stay on track. They move forward with their goals. They concentrate their efforts on what they must do today to move them one step closer to their goals and avoid getting side-tracked by that next idea that pops up in their head. They track these ideas, however. They write their ideas down. They capture these ideas and process them later.

An idea comes, you capture it, and get back to your work. This way you are capturing all the ideas that come your way and avoiding the scatterbrain effects of moving on everything you receive right now. This is the most efficient way of maintaining a steady flow of ideas and remaining focused on the task at hand.

If you find yourself in either of these states (ignoring your ideas or chasing every idea that comes) take a moment and ask yourself some questions:

Am I working on my goals or am I doing busy work?

Am I missing opportunities or capturing them?

If you are doing too much busy work and avoiding the pursuit of your goals, take time to think about why you are resisting action. Is the next task too big? Are you lacking information? Are you lacking the skill to accomplish the next step in your plan? When we resist something, it is likely because of one of these reasons. Brainstorm. Think about all the things you could do right now to move yourself forward. If you are lacking information or skills, look for some online tutorials, classes, or YouTube videos that could give you some ideas. Once you find the solution, add that to your goal’s action plan, schedule it, and get to work. If the next task on your action plan is too big, break it down into more action steps and continue.

I hope this helps some of you. I find myself in this place from time-to-time. When I recognize that I’m stuck or resisting an action step in my plan, I look at the step and ask the above questions.

Until next time…

Dave