Daily Ramblings – Update – Bonus Content

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Adapt, Arizona, Brother, Chaos, Close the Year, creativity, December, Disruption, Improvise, Set Goals, Thanksgiving, Unexpected, Wife

I’ve been offline for a few days. My brother came out to visit for Thanksgiving, and we had a terrific time. I took a few days off from everything, to maximize my time with him.

I’ve also been busy helping my wife, who is in Arizona with some things, that took a lot of time.

Well, folks. Here we are in December. This is the month I use to begin preparing my goals for the new year, assessing where I ended up with my goals this year, and continuing to make adjustments to life and my daily rituals, in light of the unpredictable actions of our government in Michigan.

Like most states, everyone is freaking out about the second outbreak of COVID-19. What is the solution to all of this? It’s simple. Do not react to things you have ZERO control over. Can we do all the things we used to do? No. Can we go to the library, our gym, our coffee house, a sit-down restaurant? No. What can we do. We can follow the guidance we are given, be good citizens, protect ourselves, and continue to push forward with our goals.

It looks like going to the gym is going to be a hit or miss in 2021, so I invested in a professional set of exercise bands to use in my home. Daily exercise–check! Social activities are going to be on hold for the distant future, so now it’s all about digital social activities, whether they are ZOOM calls, phone calls, or various websites that allow one to interact with other people. Be flexible, folks.

So this year, knowing what we now know, will involve some creativity and improvisation to achieve what we set our sights on. Don’t fight reality. Accept it. COVID is not going away, and the likelihood of getting a vaccine is even more remote, since they only have about 40 million vaccines, which will likely go to government officials and their families, and those with underlying conditions and other folks with more susceptibility to COVID than others. Personally, I think everyone in a retirement or senior living facility should be given priority, followed by anyone with underlying conditions that COVID tends to kill, before the rest of us are given anything. I would then move to first-responders and teachers. I don’t know how the U.S. government will respond to this, but if 2020 was any indication, they’ll muck the whole thing up.

Plan on lockdowns in 2021. Plan on more disruptions in 2021. Plan on more unpredictability in 2021. All these things are now our reality. If you plan accordingly, you’ll succeed at selecting goals to shoot for that cannot be disrupted. That’s going to be my focus for December.

Well, that’s all I got today. Tomorrow, we’ll be back on track with postings. Have a great Tuesday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Going Within.

Tags

Calm, Chaos, Contemplation, going within, Meditation, News, Relax, Stress

The world just keeps getting crazier and crazier. This year has been a whopper so far. How do you remain calm in all of this chaos?

Each of us can go within ourselves in quiet meditation or contemplation. We can sit down and read a book that captures our attention. We can listen to Sound scapes, classical, or some easy listening jazz. The point I’m trying to make is you can be alone, quite, and relaxed, simply by going to your happy place in your home and just suck in the peace of silence.

Those that are hardcore meditators, particularly the Zen Buddhists, call meditation sitting, The simplest forms of their meditation is either following the breath or a body scan. Either technique achieves its end goal—serenity in the breath.

The greatest benefit of this process is learning to “control” the mind. You do so by focusing it gently on the breath and keep your attention there. It is harder than I describe it. Many of us have so many responsibilities, worries, and consume some form of news. The latter is the most stressful practice you can adopt. The news is designed to enrage, frighten, and confuse. If they achieve their goal, they have a person stuck in an endless loop of “soap opera”-type news stories that create a situation where you cannot stop reading to get your adrenaline fix.

Who can blame the news? They have to make money in a very competitive marketplace. They compete with podcasts, YouTube channels, Blogs, books, and social media. The news is on every channel in one shape or another. Even ESPN is political nowadays.

Chop down your news consumption. Treat yourself with loving kindness by taking 10-15 minutes to close your eyes and just listen to your breath. It provides tremendous benefits and will help you deal with all that is going on in the world.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Ted Talk Tuesday – What Orwellian Really Means.

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Anarchy, Chaos, Dictionary, Double Speak, Erasing History, George Orwell, Government, Orwellian, Tyranny

For those of you who have never read the book titled 1984 by George Orwell, I highly recommend it. It is a book where the government monitors every thought, every action, rewrites the dictionary, and rewrites history. And I mean rewrite history. When the government of George Orwell’s horrific future wants to change history, they literally erase it from every book, every monument, every document.

I hope each of you has a terrific Tuesday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Solving Problems

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Bifurcation, Chaos, entropy, Problems, Solving Problems, Spiritual, Systems, Transformation

There is nothing wrong with asking for help, but we must remember that our purpose for being on earth is to learn how to arrive at the correct solution to our own problems. We have to write the script and—as well as we can—figure out how to untangle the plot.

Harold Klemp, ECK Wisdom on Solving Problems, p. 2.

Imagine yourself in a boat. You’re enjoying the breeze coming off of the water. You see the sun dance across the surface. Everything is sublime.

You look down and see water coming into the boat through a hole. “Oh, my.”, you say to yourself. Troubles come into our lives unexpectedly. We’re floating along without a care in the world, and then a hole appears, and the water comes flowing in.

Problems in our lives arise this way. Some we can see coming. Others are unexpected. They blindside us.

Sometimes when we solve a problem, we try to bail out the water coming into our boat, hoping we can get rid of the water more quickly than it comes in. This is an example of our “system” trying to rid itself of entropy by getting rid of the excess energy coming into a system. This will work for a while, but we soon conclude that we have put a bandaid on the problem, but not solved the underlying cause behind the problem–the hole in the boat is still there.

Another solution to our leaking boat is to block the hole. This is like blocking out the entropy coming into our system. Here, we pull off our shirt or grab some item we brought with us and block up the hole. Is the hole still there? Yep. This didn’t solve the problem either. The underlying cause is still plaguing us.

Then we finally arrive upon our answer. We let the boat sink and swim to shore. We transform the system by throwing out the faulty boat and learn to swim in the water without a boat.

In the abstract, a problem is entropy throwing our system into chaos. The boat is our system. The hole is the problem. The water is the entropy overloading the system because of the weakness (hole) in it. Subsequently, the chaos overcomes the current system, and it transforms the system to a new and stable one that can withstand the water.

This is how problems transform us. When our lives are calm, we are satisfied and ride the wave of life. When a problem arises, sometimes we can block the problem, run away from the problem, or transform. Blocking or running away are temporary solutions. Transformation is the key. We have to rewrite the code that caused the problem in the first place.

Many of our problems are a disconnect with what is and how we want things to be. It isn’t the situation that is problematic; it is the way we “see” the situation. The problem is internal. Change the way you view a problem, and the problem typically ceases to exist.

I hope each of you has a terrific Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Attitude, change, Chaos, Lack of Control, Perseverance

Image above (https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/walter_elliot_190719?src=t_motivational)

I screw up all of the time. It is part of my nature. I used to get so frustrated about making mistakes that I literally stopped making any effort to accomplish things. I was so freaked about making mistakes I would never begin anything. This is the result of fearing failure.

After studying various folks like Edison, Ford, Franklin, Gates, Jobs, and many other greats, I discovered that everyone makes mistakes. It is part of the learning process. We have to make mistakes in order to learn how to do a new thing.

One of the things I have learned over time is that we are truly unique–each one of us. What may work for Joe over there will not work for Jane here. We all have to pay attention to what is going on and make adjustments to what we are doing.

I really enjoy the gym. I like to go and begin the workout. I like the feeling of walking out after my routine is completed. I like the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of self-discipline, the boost to my self-esteem.

This week I’m following my protocol–daily reading, daily writing, daily learning, daily exercise, and daily spiritual activities. This works for me but it may not work for you. You have to try things out–learn what works–then stick with what you learn. Be aware, however, that what works today may not work tomorrow. We all evolve as we go. Our interests change, our bodies change, our capabilities change. These changes dictate that we alter our pursuits to accommodate them.

Embrace the change. Embrace the things that disrupt your day. Embrace the things that are out of your control. All of these things will make you stronger–less susceptible to the things that occur outside of your ability to affect or control.

The metaphor of this is living in the “eye of the storm”. There are all kinds of chaos in the world. People are chaotic and unpredictable. The weather is chaotic and unpredictable. Anything you cannot control that is outside of you is chaotic and unpredictable. All of this chaos and unpredictability cannot upset you if you control the one thing you can control–your attitude and reaction to these things.

If you remain detached from these things they cannot affect you. Expect change. Expect loss. Expect the table to be overturned. Do your best despite these things and continue moving forward. Persist. If you keep moving, keep adjusting, keep accepting, you’ll achieve what you want to. You’ll get where you need to go. Just keep trying.

Here’s to a great week ahead!!

Until next time…

Dave