Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Adjusting to a New Home

Tags

Adjusting, change, Improvising, Learning, Overcoming, Solving Problems, wisdom

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay 

Today’s image is a great segue into my topic for today. Sometimes we wake up and realize the tools we are using to negotiate our lives are no longer effective. We are literally trying to fix our watch with a crescent wrench. This is a sign that something has changed internally.

Have you ever woken up feeling like you are in a different place, confused, and disoriented? I have been in this state for a good few weeks. It’s like the feeling you have when you move to a new city or state. You new surroundings excite you, but you still feel you are in limbo. You have yet to make new friends and still depending on your phone to get you to the grocer, the gas station, the post office, and many places commonplace in your previous home.

When these changes occur internally, they can be disconcerting. You feel you need to do something different or more. You feel out of place in your own home, neighborhood, and town. It’s hard to describe.

I was doing some research on this and found my answer. The answer is to just be. Changes occur around us all the time. We get nudged to change our routine, change our diet, change our workouts. We get nudged to change jobs, change locales, and change our associations. This is all about the mission you have in this lifetime.

My religion discusses this phenomenon in great detail. Soul, the real you, decides what it wants to learn in this lifetime before it arrives here and takes a human body. It decides what experiences it will have in this lifetime. Sometimes soul needs to experience poverty or riches, health and sickness, ecstasy and horror. These make up the fabric of the life it chooses.

The best solution to the feelings I have been having is to reexamine my goals, set up new ones, get a good plan together to accomplish these things, and execute. By doing this, you can adjust to the internal changes that have taken place and help the physical catch up with the spiritual. This happens all the time.

There is a quote from Jewish scripture that is appropriate here. The quote is: “As above, so below.” This suggests that we have an internal or spiritual life with a physical life in the human body. When soul makes a gain spiritually, the physical or human body has to play catch up. The way to do this is to reexamine how you are doing things and make adjustments to them to be in alignment with the new home soul has found for itself.

I realize that today’s post may be a little “out there”, but my spiritual path has never steered me wrong, just like your religion of Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam has never steered you wrong. Each of us is in the religious path we need to achieve what we need to achieve in this lifetime.

For now, I need to be patient, remain cognizant of any inner nudges that come my way, and be patient. Everything is in its rightful place in the worlds of God and God never gives us a problem we cannot solve.

To summarize. If you ever get the “feeling” like your out of place or something is not right, realize that Soul has found a new home or place to explore in the inner worlds. This feeling is a sign that you are growing. Rejoice. This is a good thing. We need to grow and experience and learn. The process of improvement and getting better never ceases. You may rest awhile here and there but the drive to improve our circumstances never stops.

I hope each of you has a terrific Wednesday! I’m off to do some chores around the house and get in a workout later today.

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Changing Things Up

Tags

Adapting, Adjusting, change, Creating, Goals, Lost, Planning, Resetting

Image by Jan Alexander from Pixabay 

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus

Recently I had the feeling of being out of place. You know that feeling you have when you arrive at a new town or take up a new job and you are excited and yet lost. The feeling came over me a few weeks ago. I can’t shake it. It’s like I am learning where the grocery store is, the closest gas station, the post office, and all the rest. Have you ever had this feeling?

To solve this problem, I looked for a solution. I ran across an article that suggested that once in a while our mental landscape changes. It isn’t drastic or anything, but produces the feelings of being out of place. It suggested a few things: 1) Set new goals. 2) Create plans for those goals. 3) Execute the plan with your whole heart. 4) Set even newer goals if needed and so on.

I went through this exercise yesterday and I have to admit that it is working. I spent most of the last two days examining my current goals and decided there were a few of them that weren’t worth the trouble. Then I created some new goals that aligned better with where I am today. Most of my goals stayed, but the exercise was worth it.

Going through this exercise caused me to realize that my goals weren’t the problem—my way of approaching them was. I was “going through the motions”. I wasn’t putting my heart into my daily goals. I was giving less than I am capable of.

Do I still feel a little lost? You bet. These feelings occur from time-to-time. It takes time to adjust to our new surroundings, even if our new surroundings are the same, but viewed through a different set of eyes or mindset. Be patient with yourself. Reexamine what you are doing with your life. Look at your motives. Why are you pursuing certain goals? What is the purpose? Does this ritual or routine still work?

I enjoy blogging because I can communicate to a wide audience and discuss these kinds of things with total strangers. I hope this article helps you if you are feeling like I do. I will continue to seek new answers. For the time being, I’ll continue to work with what I have and see where this takes me.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Brother’s Last Day

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Brother, Chernobyl the series, Dead Space, Eating out, family, Game of Thrones, Heading Home, XBOX gaming

Well, today is the last day my brother will be here. I’m taking him to the airport later today. We had a great time while he was here. We went out to eat a few nights; we got caught up on Game of Thrones and watched a show on HBO called Chernobyl, and played some video games, which we both enjoy immensely.

He’ll be heading back to Phoenix today to get back to work. My sister got a new job at GM and started on Monday. This week is predominantly orientations and training. My Mom’s cataract surgery went well. She has some follow-up appointments in the next week.

I’ll be back up to a full blogging schedule starting tomorrow. I wanted to avoid my daily rituals while my brother was here to make sure someone entertains him. Most of my day is writing on my laptop. We did get in a few workouts at the local Planet Fitness. My black membership allows me to bring one guest for free.

It’s always fun when my brother comes out. I’ll head to Phoenix sometime this year, but don’t know when yet. Maybe during Christmas or even around Thanksgiving time.

That’s all I got today, folks. Have a great Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave 

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Arthur Ashe

Tags

Arthur Ashe, Learning, Making Mistakes, moving forward, Perfecting, Self-doubt, The Journey, wisdom

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe

I don’t know about you, but I am always doubting what I do. Is it good enough? Is it right? Will people like it?

When I was younger, I played Dungeons and Dragons with my friends. If you are not familiar with the game, it allows players to create their own fantasy worlds where players go on adventures, rescue damsels in distress, fight dragons, and other creatures commonly found in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. For the game to work, you need a Dungeon Master (DM) who creates a world, the adventures the players will embark on, and acts like a judge when game play needs an outside advocate. I enjoyed writing the stories and creating these worlds. It was great fun getting the feedback from the players that were part of my game and watching them enjoy spending time in my world.

Jump ahead 30 years and I am in a doctoral program specializing in Information Technology. In the 13 years I was in the program I was writing 10-25 page papers every week. Needless to say, writing has been something I figured I would be good at, since I finished my doctoral program with a 4.0 grade average. I also realize that at some point I will be too old to work any type of job that requires manual labor or something as physically taxing as my service in the military. So, here I am, writing on this blog, working on books, and starting to figure out how to publish various essays I come up with to Medium.

The point I am trying to make is that regardless of what or who you want to be, what goals you want to achieve, or where you want to go in life, you have to start somewhere. Like the quote says, you have to begin with whatever you have at the time. This is wise advice because you will never be good at anything you try until you begin doing it. If you pay attention, you will run across people who will give you feedback. You will learn from other people who have already done what you are trying to do.

So you start doing and learning and doing some more. Then one day you figure out that you really don’t want to pay the price that this “thing” requires of you. That’s ok. Set your sails for a different shore. Try something else. It is the doing in life that brings rewards, not just the winning. Once you’ve won, it’s over. Once you accomplish a goal, it’s done. Now it’s off to the next adventure.

Every person you can think of that has made a big dent in this world, started somewhere. They either didn’t know what to do or doubted themselves. They started. They committed. They gave it their best shot. If you never start or take a risk you will never accomplish anything worth accomplishing. Keep plodding forward. It will be worth every step.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Using Your Imagination

Tags

Athletes, Einstein, Gravity, Heroes, Imagination, Neural Pathway, Olympics, Relativity, Visualization

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

Did you know that most of Einstein’s Theories were thought experiments? A thought experiment is using one’s imagination to conduct an experiment. Can you imagine that? (no pun intended). I often picture Einstein sitting at his desk with pipe smoldering, eyes closed, and thinking up the theory of relativity or gravity bending light? What a mind!

Another topic this quote brings up for me is the act of visualization. Do you realize that a good portion of our Olympic athletes and professional sports players visualize exactly what they will do before they do it? I remember a Winter Olympics a few years back and watching a member of the U.S. Ski team visualizing her entire run in her mind before she did it.

Visualization is a powerful tool for any of us. You can use visualization to replay a scene in your mind you would like to fix. The late Dr. Stephen Covey, in his book “The 7 habits of Highly Effective People”, describes how he helped his son perform better in football by visualizing passing the ball perfectly. He also worked with his son on a tactic that would help him drop a bad play that just occurred by snapping his wrist band. Imagine how powerful that is. Dr. Covey calls this process, “…rewriting the script.” He was referring to the scripts we have playing in our mind. Another name for these scripts is a neural pathway. You see your brain is so efficient at conserving energy it automates everything. It automates your thoughts, your feelings in certain situations, how to open a door, how to drive a car, and how to use a knife, spoon, and fork.

We can use the power of visualization ourselves. We can envision something we want and visualize how that future scene will look like, smell, feel, and sound. In fact, the more senses you can imagine in this desired scene, the more powerful it is. Another aspect of the brain is that it doesn’t know the difference between these visualizations and reality. Do you doubt that? Imagine biting into a lemon and see how much you salivate. It works.

I am a fledgling author. I visualize myself at a book signing. A simple visualization with a stack of books on either side of me. I can feel the pencil. I can smell the newness of my books. I can taste the coffee I have next to me that I bought at the Barnes & Noble cafe in another part of the store. I see the smiles of the people that are in line and exchange pleasantries with the people marveling at my book and wanting to shake hands with the author D.L. Gardner (this will be my pen name). This is all it takes. Visualize your most important goal every day and your mind will work night and day to help you achieve that goal. Why does your mind do this you ask? It is called cognitive dissonance. When your mind sees a difference between what you have now and what you want or visualize, it begins working on strategies and action steps you can take to eliminate this dissonance. This dissonance occurs when your brain recognizes differences in the present with the visualization you give it of the future. Your brain sees this visualization as “real”. Subsequently, it will do all it can to alleviate the stress that this dissonance causes.

You can use your imagination to create anything you want. I have a few fiction authors who I interact with. How do you think they create meaningful prose for their readership? You guessed it—they create their worlds, the scenes, the scenarios, their characters, and the dialogue with their imagination. For some of you this may be a HUGE no-brainer. Think about the imagination of the greats like Disney, Faulkner, King, and Tolkien. Imagine creating the worlds they have created. It is possible.

Your imagination is a powerful tool for creating poetry, books, new devices, and programs. It can create a new business that serve untold thousands. It is all available to each of us. We only have to use it and let it run free. Then, it takes the courage to pursue these creations despite our self-doubt, the naysayers, and all of those boogie men we create in our mind to defeat ourselves.

When I am deeply involved with a visualization or use my imagination, I feel like a kid sometimes. I feel like I can do anything I want. It really is a wonderful thing to imagine and visualize the future you want for you and your family. It is one of those human powers that allowed us to utilize fire, build the steam engine, and exploit the electron.

Try this out with something you want to do. What have you got to lose?

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Complainers

Tags

Beliefs, Complaining, Delete, Distort, Generalize, habits, Limiting beliefs, Neural Pathways, Problems, Values

Image by Prettysleepy2 from Pixabay 

“When you are complaining, you become a living, breathing, crap magnet.” – T. Harv Eker

Have you ever worked with someone who blames others, complains constantly, and never gets anything done? They are toxic and uncomfortable to be around. What’s even more sad is that they don’t even realize what they are doing half of the time.

If you don’t think your thoughts are real, tangible things that create your destiny. Think the worst thing you can think of happening every day for the next month and find out where that thinking will take you. You see, the brain is an economist. It likes to save energy, because it consumes more energy than your body does. It conserves energy by automating everything you show it you want to do all the time. It does this by strengthening neural pathways each time they are used.

Complaining, playing the “blame game”, and all the rest, are habits. If you habitually complain, blame, and all the rest, your brain will continue to show you every reason possible that you are justified in your complaining and blaming. Your mind will delete inputs from your senses that counter this belief. Your mind will generalize inputs to reinforce the same thoughts across many areas. Your brain will alter inputs to satisfy what it already believes. Subsequently, if you believe that everyone is out to get you, things will always go wrong, and you will never get this or that, your brain will make sure you are right. Once these thoughts and beliefs are hard-wired in your brain, you are stuck with them, and your life will literally be a living hell.

The only way to salvage this situation is to take responsibility for yourself. You are 100% responsible for everything that you have in your life. You are 100% responsible for your results. You are 100% responsible for your attitude and mindset. Everything in your life as it is, is the result of your actions, your beliefs and values, your decisions, and your attitude.

If you are unhappy with your life, change your beliefs and values. Change your attitude. Take your time and make better decisions. Act differently. You have to do this. Your friends can’t. Your relatives can’t. Your husband or wife can’t. It’s all up to you. You dug the hole you’re in, you can dig your way out.

Stop looking for proof to justify your feelings. Your mind is already sabotaging you. It will find the proof, because you have hard-wired it to do so. Look at your beliefs. How can you make yourself happy? How can you make yourself calm and collected? How can you make yourself less worrisome? It all starts with your current beliefs and values. If you believe all of your problems are caused by other people (bad boss, stupid people, uncooperative support personnel), your brain will prove it to you. It will identify every weakness of the people around you and prove to you that they are all brain-dead and are out to get you. Change that belief to I have a great boss, the people I work with all want to win, and support personnel will do all they can to help me succeed in my role, and your brain will slowly but surely begin to prove that to you as well. You see how this works?

Changing your beliefs is not easy. You have built these beliefs over and over and over again. You can change them. You do this the same way you built them. You repeat a new belief you want to create over and over and over again. My boss is great. My boss isn’t perfect but wants to win like I do. My boss is there to support me. My boss takes care of me. My coworkers are friendly and supportive. My coworkers are fun to be around. Support personnel do all they can to accommodate my needs. Support personnel are nice to work with. Support personnel are just like me–they want to do their jobs well.

You can literally do this with any of your belief systems. You can rewrite them. You can feed them and stop feeding the limiting beliefs that cause you to suffer. Look for pain in your life. Look for suffering. These are both huge clues in finding your limiting beliefs. If you complain, are unhappy, and believe that everything and everyone is out to get you, these are all limiting beliefs. A negative person will find something wrong in every situation. A positive person will find something right in every situation and the people they work with. Guess who is the happier person who will continue to look for more right things in their life? You guessed right.

A positive person’s beliefs work the same way a negative person’s beliefs do. They distort, delete, or generalize all of their inputs to satisfy their belief system. Change your beliefs and you’ll change your results.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Learning with the Written Word

Tags

Amazon KIndle, Christina DesMarais, Confucius, Freebooksy, Goodreads, Inc.com, Nook, Reading, Scribd

“You cannot open a book without learning something.” – Confucius

Image by Eli Digital Creative from Pixabay 

Do you have a reading habit? I read voraciously every day. I read to learn new things, explore different historical periods, and analyze why an author did this or that to get his or her point across. I can’t imagine a day without reading. I truly enjoy it.

According to Inc.com contributor, Christina DesMarais, “reading fiction can help you be more open-minded and creative” and help you live longer. How much should you read? Well, it is really about what you prioritize during your day. It is possible to read 12 books a year, without too much work (that’s one book a month). I like to make a game out of it. If you haven’t seen this yet, Goodreads.com has a free reading challenge you can participate in every year. Just create a free account and click on reading challenge. You can select the number of books you want to read this year and it will keep track of that for you as long as you keep your list updated. Luckily, the Amazon Kindle helps you by linking directly to your Goodreads account. Click Goodreads if you’d like to check this out.

I read predominantly online because it is easier on my eyes. I also use a few services to get access to books. I have a library card for anything I want to get my hands on that is not available on the Amazon Kindle. I also use Scribd (which costs about $8/month). To get access to a lot of free books by Indie authors, I use a service called Freebooksy. Click Scribd to check out their services. Click Freebooksy to check out this amazing service. Scribd has saved me a lot of money by offering books I would normally have to pay for individually, because many of the books that were offered a year or so ago make their way to Scribd as a means of building a following beyond the initial hype associated with a book’s initial launch. Freebooksy will deliver a list of titles you can download for free. Scribd has a huge repository of books, magazines, audible books, and comic books for your use as part of your membership. There is a limit to how many books you can download, but I have not breached my limit yet. I’m not too big into audible books yet, but in the future when my eyes degrade enough, audible books may be another option I used to satisfy me.

If you are one of those people that have not fully embraced digital content, because you like the feel of a book in your hands or enjoy the smell of a new book you pick up at a bookstore, no problem. I would utilize your local library for those needs. I would challenge you to adapt to the digital world. You have so much more access to many books you will not find at your local library or that are available in print without a lot of cost. Many Indie authors will offer a Kindle-version of their book for free and charge a pretty penny for a hardcover or paperback version of their book. This is because Amazon will print on demand the books people order from them. One word of caution: Please read a few books by an Indie author in digital form first. I’ve run across some really great talent in the Indie space, but have also run across some really bad ones too. It’s better to find out that a book is bad in digital form that was bad vs. spending your hard-earned money on an untested author.

There are some other great resources for books that are out of print, rare, or really old. Check out these services if you’d like to find some real gems. The links are:

The HathiTrust Organization

The Gutenberg Project

The Literature Network

Authorama

All of these sites offer e-books that are compatible with the Kindle, Nook (Barnes & Noble), and most e-reader apps you may be using from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. The link I’m most familiar with is The Gutenberg Project. I’ve read quite a few books from this site and they were terrific.

Well, I hope this helps some of you who may have been looking for some resources to help you get started on your reading quest. I truly enjoy reading and learn something new every day. Sometimes, just getting that one new idea from a book can provide untold benefits that will help you with your business, your writing career, your blogging, or even learning a new skill. I can’t recommend starting a new reading habit enough.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Pursuing Your Dreams

Tags

100 List, Achievement, Challenges, Dreams, failure, Fear, Goals, persistance, Planning, Starting, William Longgood

Dreams and dedication are a powerful combination—William Longgood

It is so easy to get bogged down with the trivial in life. We binge-watch television, we explore the postings in social media, or we gossip with our friends. The trivial things in life create nothing, contribute nothing, and accomplish nothing.

If you could accomplish anything you wanted in life, with no possibility of failing, what would you pursue? Keep this in mind while you list 100 things you’d like to do before your life ends. What did you write down? Did it involve traveling? Learning? Building a skill? Starting a business? Getting in shape? Seriously, use your imagination and dream a little. Whatever is on that list you can accomplish it. Dream big!

Once you have a list, go through it. Find that one thing on your list you can get to work on right now. Got your item picked? Good. Now look at what that finished task or goal looks like when you’ve achieved it. Do you have a good picture in your mind? Can you feel how good it will be when you’ve accomplished it? Who in your family is celebrating with you? Where are you when you complete this task? What colors are prevalent in your picture? What smells? How do you feel? Now, go backward from that moment and begin writing down all the things that need to happen to accomplish it. Now go through that list and make sure your tasks/milestones are in place. Is the time you’ve allotted between milestones realistic? Did you make sure your tasks are in order? In other words, are there any tasks that must go before another can be started?

Now commit. Commit to begin working on your dream task tomorrow. Begin working toward your first milestone daily until you hit it. Then look at the next milestone and begin working toward that. Stuck? Look at the milestone and your list of tasks, you may need to break these milestones down into even smaller tasks to get the job done. Do that. Get these milestones broke into small chunks that can be completed in 25-minute chunks. Now schedule these 25-minutes each day. Is it on your calendar? Good.

Does this seem easy? It is. The problem most people have when trying to accomplish something is they fail to take themselves or their dreams seriously. They dream about doing something and it stays in the dream state. The dream stays where it is and we get bogged down with our chores, our day job, or something else. These day-to-day commitments become a ball and chain that prevents us from pursuing what we’d really like to do. We let the mundane become more important than what we dream about. As the years roll by, we are still dreaming and not any closer to achieving the dream.

Everything in our lives become one big distraction, one more reason to delay, one more excuse waiting to happen. After a while we become like the circus elephant trained to believe that the small rope spiked to the ground is impossible for us to break. We learn how to be helpless. We create our own prisons. We give up the dreams that could be ours and replace them with the mundane. Instead of working on our book for 30 minutes a night, we get caught up in a television series about zombies. Instead of taking that trip to Iceland, we waste our money on junk food or material things we don’t need. Instead of pursuing that business idea we play video games. You get the point.

You don’t have to join the crowd. You can begin today and start living your life. Pursue that dream you have in your head. Plan it out as if you could not fail. Begin taking steps to accomplish it. You will be floored when you achieve it one day and the journey you take to get there will be something you will always cherish for the rest of your life.

You’ll wake up one day and look at yourself in the mirror with a pride you’ve never experienced before. You did it. Hell, you may even tear up because you’re so proud of yourself and what you’ve accomplished. Your family and friends will be proud. At the end of that glorious day, while you lay in bed, you’ll begin thinking about the next thing you’d like to do. And you know what? The next day you’ll begin planning and setting up your calendar to pursue your next dream.

Think about Edison, Ford, Lincoln, Washington, Einstein, Disney, Gates, Buffet, and Musk. Think about Keller, Curie, Earhart, Roosevelt, Thatcher, Rowling, Beyonce, and Oprah. The stories are alike. They started from nothing, with huge obstacles to overcome and naysayers in the background. They all had a dream and pursued it. Was it easy? No. Did they suffer at times? Yes. Did they experience failure and shortfall and doubt? You bet. The difference between you and them? They went for it. While their friends were diddling around with the mundane, they pursued their dreams. They stuck with it. When they failed, the got up, dusted themselves off, and started again.

It’s Wednesday, the 24th of April 2019. Over the next few days, put together your 100 list. Pick one thing you’d like to pursue. Get your plans set to begin execution on May 1st. You can do it. I believe in you. You have nothing to lose but the opportunity to learn more about yourself and gain the satisfaction that comes from starting your journey.

I wish you well.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Empowered vs. Disempowered People

Tags

change, Disempowerment, Effort, Empowerment, habits, Hard Work, Initiative, Persistence

“Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.” – Jacob M. Braude

I have had to learn this lesson many times throughout my life. I run across a friend. I see them struggling with a challenge, neglecting their health, or giving up on life, and I want to jump right in and try to show them the error of their ways. Then, after a few weeks or months, realize that they are not going to do anything about their situation. Have you ever run into this?

You see, people are who they are. Deep down, all of us know our weaknesses. Some people ignore them. Others have tried to make a change and realized that they are too weak to change ingrained habits. They have settled with these weaknesses and literally given up. The pain of change is too great a price for these folks to pay.

If you have a friend or colleague that has glaring weaknesses that are ruining their life, you have two choices: Remain their friend or colleague and accept these weaknesses in their character or cut them loose. They will not change because you want them to. They will not change because it is in their best interest. They will only change when the weakness they possess becomes so painful that they must change themselves.

Regardless of your opinion, people are happy with the lives they have chosen to live. You may think to yourself, “God, how do you live like that?”, but this isn’t your life—it’s theirs. Happiness is defined by each of us. What makes you happy will not necessarily make your friend or colleague happy.

You also have to examine whether the person you are dealing with is empowered or disempowered. Empowered people believe they are in charge of themselves. Disempowered people believe they are ruled by outside influences and circumstances. The empowered person is the champion who conquers adversity and overcomes their weaknesses. The disempowered person is the victim who gives up and lives with their weaknesses. See the difference?

If you are empowered, you will have very little in common with people who are disempowered. In fact, disempowered people will frustrate you to no end. Empowered people learn, apply the learning to their current circumstances, and alter themselves to improve their performance, their career, and their productivity. Disempowered people have given up; they are convinced that outside circumstances and other people our “out to get them” and blame their failure on these outside elements. Disempowered people have given up on taking action or trying to change—they have made quitting a habit. Empowered people keep trying out new ideas, new options, and look for solutions—they persist, because they know they will win if they keep trying.

Change is hard. It is hard because the habits we have built for ourselves are hard-wired in our brains. To make changes, you have to learn how to unravel these knots in your brain and create new wiring; wiring that will serve you better now and in the future. To do that, you need to know how to exploit the same processes in your brain that created the bad habits in the first place. You also need to be self-aware enough to identify which of these hard-wired scripts no longer serve you.

One of the best books I’ve ever read on making changes is Mini-Habits by Steven Guise. The Mini-Habit is simply a habit that is so small that you would have to be on your deathbed in order to fail to do it. Steven’s first mini-habit was a single push-up every day. After he had managed to master this habit, he added writing 50 words a day and reading 2 pages a day in a book he chose to tackle. The genius behind the mini-habit is that it is so small, you can easily accomplish this habit without too much thought, stress, or willpower. In fact, this is the reason Stephen is such an advocate of the process. He researched willpower and motivation and found that both aspects of our makeup are too weak to overcome the hard-wired habits in our brain, especially when you consider all the other stressors in your life and how they eat away at your willpower and motivation to begin with. There is one warning he provides, however. Mini-habits, even though they are small, must be meaningful. One push up a day is meaningful towards improving your health. Writing 50 words a day is meaningful toward writing an essay, a blog post, or even a book. Reading 2 pages a day will help you finish that book in a shorter period than not reading a book at all or reading a bunch of pages one day and then failing to touch that book for a month before reading it again.

The real benefit of mini-habits is the ability to get started on something. Once you get started on a mini-habit, you will build momentum. Once you build momentum, you will be motivated to do more than one push-up, write 50 words, or read 2 pages. You’ll likely do more exercises, write 100 words or more, and read an entire chapter of your book. This momentum will build and build, particularly if you add rewards at critical milestones.

I’ve used mini-habits since I read his book a few years ago. In fact, I’m such a huge fan, I re-read this book each year in December as I build out my goals for the next year. If you want to make changes in your life and you just haven’t been able to find anything that will help you build a new habit or make these changes, give Mini-Habits a try, you won’t be disappointed. Here’s a link to Mini-Habits on Amazon: Mini-Habits by Stephen Guise (I am not an affiliate for Mr. Guise, his book, or Amazon).

To conclude this article, I’d like to remind you that changing yourself is hard, but not impossible. You have to be persistent, utilize a strategy that will work, and monitor your progress. Don’t worry about your spouse, your friends, or your relatives. If they want to make a change, they will. If they don’t, no level of complaining, arguing, or harassment will make them change; in fact, they may stick to their guns even harder when pushed. Believe me, I’ve been down this road with a few of my friends and you won’t win. People will only make a change in their lives when they are ready. They will not change because you want them to. Take care of yourself and make the changes you decide to make in your life. It will be difficult, but you’ll get there. I wish you well on your journey.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Living the Detached Life.

Tags

Attachment, change, David Allen, Detachment, Flux, Impermanence, Mind like Water, Suffering, The Buddha

“The root of suffering is attachment.”  – Buddha

I wanted to discuss the character trait of detachment today. Detachment is not a passive state of mind. Detachment doesn’t mean that you don’t care about achieving things or finishing projects. Detachment is a state of mind that does not rely on an idea, material item, or outside circumstances or person. Detachment allows a person to be free from desire. Following the Buddhist mindset, detachment frees us from suffering.

Think about how our reality is in constant flux. This flux means that your body, your possessions, your relationships, and even what you think you know today, will change. Anything that changes is, by definition, an illusion. Subsequently, if you attach yourself to things that will change, you are just asking for pain and suffering. David Allen, author of Getting Things Done provided one of the best explanations for this state of detachment. His statement about having a “… mind like water…” is the best explanation of a detached state. Think about that for a moment. Water does not overreact to anything. It reacts exactly enough to accommodate changes to its environment. When you throw a pebble into a pond, the pond accepts the pebble without over compensating to the entry of the pebble through the water’s surface tension. Once the pebble has passed through the water, it generates a wave that expands outward from the point of entry. This expansion is equal and consistent. Once the ripples dissipate, the water returns to its normal state. It accepts change, reacts just enough to accommodate the change, and then returns to its original state.

A mind like water can be the same as the pond. Something happens with your job, your health, a relationship, or something you depend on. It upsets you for a moment. Like the pond, you let your mind return to your state of calm. It takes time to develop this mentality, but if you realize that nothing is permanent in life and accept this premise, life smooths out. The changes come but they do not adversely affect you as much. You react like anyone does when a loss comes. You are angry, upset, sad, for a time, but that time period is much shorter than someone who has not achieved this state of mind—the detached mind. You enjoy what you have when you have it, but when it goes away, you remain grateful.

When you pursue something, enjoy achieving a goal, we can use the same mindset. You enjoy the victory for a moment but realize that it is time to pursue another goal. The pursuit provides meaning in our lives. It gives us something to work toward. It is the time during the pursuit where the growth happens. We learn a new skill; we learn a new discipline; we learn a new way of solving problems. This we can carry with us for the rest of our lives.

Attachment causes suffering. It sets us up for failure because whatever you own, including your own body will atrophy and fade away. To avoid this, remember who and what you are. You are not the body. You are not the mind. You are a soul. Notice the wording. I did not say it is your soul. That would signify that your body owns a soul. That is not true. The soul uses a body. No one owns or possesses a soul. You are soul and it has a body for its use during this lifetime. This may take a while to wrap your mind around, because using the phrase: “my soul or your soul” is so common in today’s society.

If you can accept this idea—that you are soul—your life will smooth out. You will lose your attachment to your body, your mind, your possessions, your job, your friends and relatives. You will lose your attachment to an ideology. None of these things will last. You are only “using” them while you are here. When you pass away, die, or what I call translating, you merely move to a different state of consciousness. Your body doesn’t come with you. Your possessions don’t come with you. Your relatives don’t come with you. You leave your money, your toys, and your loved ones at some point. So, enjoy these things while you have them. There’s nothing wrong with being grateful for what you have now. Detachment will relieve a great deal of pain, when these things inevitably go away. A detached state of mind knows of our fleeting existence here. It knows that nothing is permanent. It expects nothing. It accepts the blessings that are present and strives for the sake of striving, because the striving is where the experience, learning, and growth are. Whatever happens, because of this striving, is not of concern.

Well, I’ve given you a lot to think about. Try getting your mind wrapped around some points I’ve made here. You’ll find that your life will take on a new meaning and you will be ok when things you depended on go away. (They all will at some point).

Until next time…

Dave