Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Acceptance, Contentment, Grateful, Happy, Life, spirituality, Unhappy

“Even if you are living a nine-to-five life, you can make it an adventure. We owe it to ourselves to live life to its fullest in whatever we do. And the motivation to do this must come from within.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

So many people take life for granted. Life is a special thing. It is a privilege to learn, to love, to experience. Even the hard times prove to be the best teachers.

In a previous post, I mentioned how I always felt like I was losing. It didn’t matter what I did or tried I would always end up with the “short end of the stick”. Then, I changed my mindset and things turned around. When I discovered that the new mindset brought out a part of me that I didn’t like, I decided to not fiddle around with this at all—to simply take life as it comes and just be happy with it all.

Happiness is really about attitude. Are you happy or are you unhappy? If you are happy, why? If you are unhappy, why? It is about creating happiness, regardless of the circumstances. Happiness shouldn’t come from outside. It should be internal. Depending on people, situations, or any outside influence to make you happy or sad will make for a tough time. Lose the dependence. Decide to be happy today.

Get out there and live your life. Don’t settle. Don’t use excuses. Get out there. The whole world is special because of you and your uniqueness. There are so many adventures and experiences waiting for you.

Embracing even the little things is such a treasure. For me, a little thing is a nice cup of coffee on my deck or listening to some good music while I read or working on a writing project. Sometimes I sit and just think. I ponder. I take the time to be quiet and just soak life in.

I enjoy life for what it is. I don’t need some outside thing to make me happy. Life just is and it’s wonderful.

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote

Tags

Discrimination, Illusion, Learning, Life, spirituality, Stephen King, unfolding

Today’s Quote:

“Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always comes around to where you started again.” Stephen King

It seems to me that we are introduced to a problem now and again to learn from. We learn the lesson. We see another problem and again we learn from it. Interestingly, our problems address certain weaknesses we have. Perhaps we are easily duped. The person who learns to avoid this has begun to master discrimination, or the ability to see the truth for what it is when presented with an illusion.

God continues to present us with problems to help us unfold spiritually. Each problem we solve gets us closer to the realization that there really are no problems per se, only wrinkles in ourselves.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Workout Log

Tags

Documentation, Goal Setting, healthy living, Life, Random Events, Unexpected Situations, workout

Living Your Life

Folks, as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve not been working out this week. I’m afraid my Mother’s issue last week, through my schedule out of whack. Since she’s come home, I have to help with cooking, run more errands, and help my Dad out with some of his appointments (he no longer drives a car).

I know some folks when they begin a workout routine do not want to let anything disrupt their routine, but frankly, this is not realistic. Life happens and you will be disrupted by it because that’s just the way life is. Life is one big dice roll and it is better to ride the wave than fight it.

I’ve decided to kick in my routine again tomorrow, now that my Dad’s appointments are knocked out. This leads me to my next topic–documentation.

Documenting your Workout

I cannot tell you how important it is to document what you do (or don’t do) in the gym. This should be done while you’re there, so you don’t miss any weights you are using, or any special things you learned that day. Your body is a terrific teacher. It will tell you when it is stronger, weaker, or just plain tired. It will tell you that it’s ready to go and will also tell you to take one more minute of rest.

The only way to truly hold yourself accountable is to document what you do. You pretty much track the things you eat and the weights you use for each exercise, along with the number of reps you complete. If you do this, it will be very easy to pick up right where you left off.

Setting Goals

Realize the body will do what the body will do. You need to be careful when setting goals because if you push yourself too hard, you will burn out and stop going to the gym. On the other hand, you don’t want to set your goals too low either. This will only result in you doing what I call as “sandbagging”. Sandbagging is doing less weight that you need to be doing. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap.

The only way you gain muscle mass is by increasing the loads you work with or the number of reps or a combination of both. If you are not pushing your limits each time you go to the gym, even if it’s only a 2.5lb increase in weight or maybe one or two more reps, you will not see the improvements you seek, but I digress.

Let’s talk about the goals you have. My goal is simple. I want to remain healthy, increase my muscle mass, maintain my bone density, and have good endurance. Muscle mass is gained very slowly. The changes in your muscle mass and body composition are so minute that you will not see them instantly. They improve over time. The easiest way to gauge yourself is to take a photo of yourself at the beginning of every routine you begin and one at the end. You can also track your weights. The more weight you are pushing, the bigger that muscle is getting, even though you cannot see it yet.

I’ll get into more specifics tomorrow. Hope everyone has a great Thursday!!

See you tomorrow…

 

Daily Ramblings – Bonus – Ted Talk – 12 Truths by Anne Lamott

Tags

12 Truths, Anne Lamott, Death, Life, wisdom

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote

Tags

Experience, Good times, Life, Quote, trouble, Victoria Holt

Happy Saturday Readers!

Today’s quote:

“Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.” – Victoria Holt

I really like this quote because it speaks to life. Our life is a series of experiences. Our attitudes, values, norms, and beliefs are what dictate whether an experience is good or bad. Imagine taking a stance where all experience was good because of its contribution to our learning.

We learn when we mess up right? We really do not learn anything when we get things right. We really do not learn anything when we are having an easy time of it. When things are easy we tend to sit back and enjoy it. It’s the hard times that truly benefit us, even though we wished they didn’t happen. Who likes to get hurt, sick, lose a loved one, or run into financial troubles? How do we react to these situations?

At first, we’re in shock. No one ever expects a loved one to die or leave us for another. No one ever expects to lose their job without notice. No one ever expects to be told they have a new condition or disease to worry about and no one purposely goes out of their way to sprain an ankle or break an arm.

What do we do? We deal with these things. We learn to compensate, we learn to be happy without someone being around, and we learn how to pick up the pieces and find a new job. All of this takes time, mind you, but we all adapt to our misfortunes and climb our way out of the hole we’ve dug. Interestingly, if we pay attention, our situations, after we’ve overcome hardships, tend to get better.

We end up with someone that is better for us. We end up with a new job that is better tailored to our circumstances. We end up compensating physically to an illness, disease, or condition, and learn new skills or find new alternatives. Ultimately, we become stronger, better, and more resilient, only to be hit by another challenge in the future.

Pay attention.

Learn.

Experience.

After a while, the ebbs and flows of life won’t matter. You’ll be strong enough to handle anything and take it in stride. You’ll enjoy the good times more deeply and you’ll deal with future problems with grace and love. After all, what are we here to do in this life? We are here to learn how to give and receive love.

I hope you have a terrific Saturday!

See you tomorrow…

Daily Ramblings – Turning Points

Tags

change, decisions, fate, future, improvement, Life, new

My life has been one, long, on-going adventure. It started in the early 80s when I enlisted in the US Army and began a 20-year career. What I’ve discovered over the years, particularly when I reflect on my life, is that there are turning points. These turning points are those actions that cause a move from one place, one person, or one attitude for another. This change, in my experience, has always been better for myself and those around me at the time.

Once such turning point came in August of 2003. One morning, I awoke and complained to my wife at the time that it felt like I had dislocated my hip. She got up and immediately called a doctor and I was set up for a meeting on a Monday morning. When I went to the doctor, he mentioned that I had been in for numerous visits concerning my lower back. In light of this, he recommended that I get an MRI and have it analyzed by a neurologist.

A few weeks later I got the results. They felt it was a herniated disc. The doctor upon receiving the results felt it might be a little more and sent me on my way to a neurosurgeon, who, in his opinion, would have a better idea of what might be going on. I met with this neurosurgeon about a week or so after that.

When I met with the neurosurgeon, I was surprised by the small office. I figured a neurosurgeon had to make a lot of money and would have all kinds of staff running around, a large office with all kinds of books, and a large desk with all of his degrees on the wall behind him. This wasn’t the case. To my surprise, his office was small, because he was never in it. He was one of many doctors in this office complex who split their time between this small little office and an operating room in the nearby hospital.

When I settled into my chair, the doc showed me a model of a human spine. He showed me what discs were affected and what he proposed to do, to alleviate me from the pain I had been experiencing for over a month. He also had me take a look at the pictures of my MRI, showing me what a normal disc looked like, compared to the distorted pictures of my discs in the MRI pictures. Obviously, I agreed to surgery. I was in a lot of pain, and my discs, the two largest discs in my back, were ruptured, with fragments of them drifting about. The doc told me the key problem is the lower disc, which has been rubbing on the nerve bundle that runs down the left leg, called the Sciatic nerve.

After my surgery, the pain was gone, but I had lost some feeling in my left leg. This was caused by the nerve damage the disc had done to that nerve bundle. It rubbed a hole in this bundle of nerves and did damage to them that would take a long time to heal. In light of this surgery and the result, my Army career was over. I opted to retire and put in my retirement paperwork when I hit my 20 years in October of 2004.

This turn of events also motivated me to go to school to get a degree before I retired. I was laid up for some time and had plenty of time on my hands. I earned a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree before I left the Army and got a great job with a prestigious firm in Los Angeles. Because of this move, so many things have unfolded.

This turn of events motivated me to get a degree, motivated me to retire, and motivated me to work in a field that was highly lucrative, which is why today at the young age of 53 I was able to retire and truly pursue what I love—writing. There are many more of these turning points throughout the last 12 years since my Army retirement. Interestingly, when the decision was made to leave the Army and go to work in the civilian sector, a calmness overtook my life, like a recognition that I had done the right thing. Have you ever experienced a turning point like this? A point which resulted in a major change in your life where the situation you found yourself was monumentally better than the situation you were in previously? If so, comment here. I’d love to hear your story.

Until next time…

Happiness…

Tags

Grateful, Gratitude, Happiness, Happy, Life

Are you happy? If you do a Google Search, you’ll see thousands of articles, websites, research studies on this thing called happiness. What makes us happy? To some, it is a new car, a new gadget, or a larger home. To others, happiness is the feeling of achievement one attains when they accomplish one of their goals. How do you define happiness and when will you be happy?

I would argue that happiness is not a destination but an attitude. I would argue that all of us are happy right now, but don’t recognize that those folks that are striving for happiness, wealth, or success, will always be doing one thing – striving. Happiness is derived from being grateful. Grateful for the life we’ve been given. Grateful for the people who have graced us with their presence. Grateful for our very existence and the ability to experience life in the moment.

Have you ever been around someone who is never happy? They complain, grumble, argue, and are never satisfied. Happiness seems to be just out of their reach. If only I had, If only I were, If only I did, if only, if only, if only. Why not be happy with what you have right now? If you are reading this you are alive. That very fact is a miracle. That very fact is something to be grateful for.

What did you eat today? I had a bowl of oatmeal. A very simple bowl of oatmeal. When you take the time to just eat and not think of anything else, the experience of eating that bowl of oatmeal takes on a whole new meaning. When I write, that’s all I do. I have my pad of paper and begin writing. I enjoy the act of creating pictures in my reader’s mind, making an argument, or inspiring my readers to perhaps re-think their lives.

When I listen to music, I close my eyes and let the music go through me, enjoying the images and feelings that come into my mind that the music brings. When I read, I enjoy the process of visualizing what another author has painstakingly created for my enjoyment. The ability to travel to another universe or places, imagining the smells, the temperature, the feelings, and all of the other intangibles a good author makes you feel when you read their works.

I’m looking out the window of my home office. The sky is blue, the temperature is a cool 24 degrees in Michigan, and there is a family of squirrels who frolic in the trees in our front yard, enjoying the corn we put out for them all winter. Sometimes I just observe these squirrels running about. They are so funny to watch and they are real acrobats. The trees we have in our front yard are a collection of Pine, Elm, and Oak. Their branches intertwine toward the top and provide a network of trails for these squirrels to navigate back and forth. Watching them jump from tree to tree, or stabilize themselves on a limb, while they chew on the food we provide is a real treat.

I am happy. I am contented. I am grateful for my life and the time I have had to experience all of the things I’ve experienced, the women I’ve loved, the folks I have called friends, my family, my collection of pets over the years, the food I eat, the books I’ve read, and all the rest. Each day I wake up is a great day, filled with the unknown adventures yet to come.

I challenge each of you to take a look at your definition of happiness. Happiness is here, now. All you have to do is recognize that you have all you need right now to be happy. It’s been here waiting for you all along.

Until next time…