Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Focusing on the Good

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Focus, Goals, Gratitude, habits, Meditation, spirituality, Thoughts

“Thoughts are things, and it is important to keep our thoughts of a spiritual nature, to put attention on living a life that is a clear step toward growth.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

One of the many benefits of meditation is the ability to focus. We concentrate on our breath or do a body scan. Whenever our attention drifts away from the breath, we gently return to the it. Each day is different, but the process is the same. The daily practice is one that trains the mind to stay where it is, to truly focus the mind on one thing. If you can keep the mind focused on your breath, an object, or a chant, the rest of your reality will fade away.

The calming effects of meditation work well because of this focus. The mind fights it initially by going this way and that, bringing up a torrent of thoughts that appear out of nowhere. Over time, one can rise above the thought stream and just observe. This new state is quite tranquil. Spending as little as 10 minutes in this state brings one to place of peace and calm that will last for the rest of your day.

The practice of meditating trains the mind and allows the real you to begin observing the thoughts that are most beneficial to you. As the quote above says, “Thoughts are things…” They can bring good things to your life and they can bring bad things. As you observe your thoughts, you can discriminate between the good and bad thoughts in your thought stream and only give life to those thoughts that are helpful and serving. The practice of sifting through your thoughts as they float by is a good habit to get into. It takes time to develop the skill, but it will become habit if you focus your efforts on this.

One of the best ways to begin is to formulate your goals. Each goal will require effort on your part and will require your attention each day. If you set a few goals, you’ll have quite a few daily actions that have to be accomplished in order to move yourself toward the goals you have set. These actions can be set to your calendar, a to-do app, or even a hand-written daily planner. Then, as long as you stick to the daily actions you have set up, you will begin to have more good things to focus your mind on throughout the day. This focus on your daily actions and the productive mindset that ensues are the exact combination that will keep your mind focused on productive, good thoughts, and help you avoid bad thoughts—thoughts that will get you into trouble.

If your life is just not going the way you’d like, try some of my suggestions mentioned here. They work. Your mind likes to create things. A mind that is focused on good things will produce more good things. A mind that is focused on good and bad things will produce good and bad things. A mind that is focused on bad things will produce bad things. You are more powerful than you realize.

Stay focused on the good things in life. Express gratitude for even the smallest thing in your life that delivers joy. If you can keep your mind focused on the good, your life will turn around to the good. You are the only one that can do this. I wish you well on your journey.

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

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Consistency, Exercise, Learning, motivation, Patience, perseverence, Persistence, Skills, spirituality

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” Walter Elliot

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/walter_elliot_190719?src=t_motivational

Want to learn a secret? Here’s a secret that will change your life.

You will accomplish whatever you set out to do if you do not quit trying to accomplish it.

I don’t care if you are trying to lose weight, stop smoking, read more, write more, learn more. Say you want to learn a new language. Learning a new language is hard. Quitting a bad habit is hard. Learning how to do something you’ve never done before is hard.

Learn incrementally and continuously. Take a little bit of new information, study it, read it, do something with it in little bite-size chunks on a daily basis and before you know it you’ll own that new knowledge. You’ll build the skill. The challenge with this type of learning is consistency. You have to keep doing it over and over and over and never stop. You must really want the new knowledge or skill.

If you keep pushing forward, keep digging in consistently, keep pushing the envelope, you’ll see some dramatic results over time. Stick with it and you’ll achieve your goal over time. It’s really that simple.

Here’s what I’m up to this week:

• I’m leading a Book discussion class on Past lives, dreams, and Soul travel today at a local library
• I’m still sick but doing some home workouts to get back into my routine of daily exercise
• I’ve read 2 books of the 48 I am goaled for and currently reading 5 books simultaneously. Each month I’m tackling 4 books—one fiction book, one history book, one book on philosophy, and one on self-help. Currently I’m reading book 2 of the 2136 series, book on Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, Unit 731 – Japanese biological warfare unit in WWII, and The One Thing.
• I’m finalizing the initial rough draft of my technical recruiting book.
• I am working through a basic JavaScript programming course on Codecademy.
• I just wrapped up a course on WWII that was offered for free by Hillsdale College (hillsdale.edu).
• I’m watching a course offered by Dr. Jordan Peterson on Personality and transformation on YouTube. He currently teaches at the University of Toronto. All his courses are available on his YouTube channel. The current lecture series is composed of 20 lectures spanning between an hour and two hours each. It is time-consuming but interesting.
• I’m starting to brainstorm my own YouTube channel. I am still thinking about what I would like to do with this. This is probably something I’ll investigate next year but will begin putting together a plan for this by the end of this year.

Well, that’s it for today, folks. I hope all of you are keep pushing forward with your goals.

Have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Experience, Personality, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, spirituality, Uniqueness

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Found at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/pierre_teilhard_de_chardi_160888?src=t_spiritual

Have you ever thought about how different each of us is from one another? We all interpret the world differently. We all experience things differently. These experiences add the ways we interpret and react to the world.

Who are we? Are we this body that will run down and die? Are we the mind that will degrade and lose its elasticity? What makes our personality unique?

I am not going to inject my opinion here. Instead, I’ll just give you something to ponder for the rest of the weekend, should you choose to do so. The clue is in the quote above.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Buddha, Contemplation, Meditation, Prayer, Religion, spirituality

Image Credit: www.brainyquote.com

Regardless of your religious or even non-religious stance, it is one of the critical pieces of our lives. Today is a day to contemplate your relationship with God, the Universe, or whatever you consider beyond yourself. Perhaps philosophical concepts are divine to you.

I am an Eckist (see www.eckankar.org). This has been my religious path since childhood. Like most believers, it is a joy each day to go into contemplation (meditation or prayer are equivalents) and give my love to God. It is a joy to give thanks for the things I have in my life.

The path back to God is a long and hard journey but it is a journey worth taking. Those of us in Eckankar believe that we reincarnate over and over and over again to perfect Soul. Soul is the true “us”. The body we use currently is only for Soul’s use, not the other way around. As Soul learns it becomes more Godlike. It never becomes God. It becomes more refined and grows in awareness. This awareness provides Soul with better insights. These insights allow Soul to avoid past mistakes and this, in turn, allows us to live a better life.

Ultimately, we discover that Soul’s purpose is to continue to learn better ways of giving and receiving love—to be a channel for God’s love, wherever we are. The more we give, the more we get.

Whatever path you follow, give it reverence. Learn the religious books, practice the tenets of these scriptures. Dedicate yourself to improve in conjunction with the teaching your path provides. There is no greater pursuit than God.

I hope each of you is having a terrific weekend so far.

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Buddha Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 6, 2018, from BrainyQuote.com Website: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/buddha_121766

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Brainstorming, Exercise, Persistence, Reading, reflection, spirituality, Thomas Edison, Writing

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas A. Edison

Happy October!!

Here we are again at the beginning of a new week. I use Sundays to reflect on my life, reflect on the weekly goals I set the week before, and examine all my projects to determine where I am at and what I have left to do.

I realize where I made progress, realize where I messed up, and think about new ideas to move my projects and goals forward. I do what many call a weekly review. This allows me to look at my calendar, my mail, my email, my project lists, my to-do lists, my bucket lists, anything that I have some interest in. This one day a week I label my “do nothing day” but this is a misnomer. I really do things on Sunday but do less than I normally would and use the day to re-charge, re-focus, and restart stalled projects.

I think this is what Edison is driving at. If we learn that something we are doing isn’t working—we re-tool. We try again. If we realize we haven’t been doing this or that—we re-tool. We try again. If we catch some inefficiencies, we can re-work the game plan we have for a goal or project. We can try again.

If you are stuck, not motivated, and frustrated, take some time on Saturday or Sunday and re-think what you are doing. You’ll get new ideas, you’ll see potential opportunities to try something different, you’ll find avenues to travel you haven’t been down yet. Try them, explore them, take them.

This week:

Still plugging away at the Kris Gethin 4-week-to-shred workout. Still plugging away at my books and working through a 7-week course on Coursera. I’ll also be working on my non-fiction book. Spiritually, I’ll be meditating daily and reading my Bible and other spiritual works.

Have a great week everyone!

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Thomas A. Edison Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from BrainyQuote.com Website: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_a_edison_149049

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Gratitude, Looking for the Good, Saturday, Self-acceptance, Self-love, spirituality, Weekend

“Begin with the love you have. Love gratefully. This love expands your heart into a greater vessel which can hold yet more love.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

All of us are probably the worst self-critics. I know I am. Did you ever have a conversation with yourself that involve the statements “you should”, “you missed”, or you “screwed up”? The conversations about not being good enough, not looking right, or some other self-inflicted attack?

Give yourself a break. Embrace the failure. The more we realize how mistakes are a part of success and getting things done, the more we will be apt to tackle projects that are big, hairy, and scary. Get yourself out there, write down the things you want to do before you leave this Earth (Bucket List), and start doing them. I think you’ll be amazed by your results.

Love yourself.

The more you can accept and love yourself, the more you’ll be able to accept and love others. It all starts and ends with you.

Challenge:

When you wake up tomorrow, start your day by saying something nice to yourself. Start your day counting your blessings. Try this for the upcoming week. I think you, like me, will be surprised by the results, the change in your demeanor, the change in your mood.

Seriously, give this a shot.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Achievement, Attainment, Exercise, Fun, Goals, Reading, Self-compassion, spirituality, Writing

“The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.” Unknown

Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/unknown_159550?src=t_motivational

We can be our own worst enemy. I don’t know if this is a quote that belongs to someone but it sure is true when I deal with myself. I always tend to beat myself up if I fail to meet an objective, miss a workout, or eat the wrong thing. I’ll tell you this isn’t the healthiest thing to do. It’s ok to be objective when you measure your performance against your goals, but it is not when you begin fixating on what you did wrong or where you messed up.

Give yourself a break. The key to attaining anything is persisting. Who cares if you missed a workout yesterday—go today. Who cares if you ate a piece of pie while on a diet—eat right today. Who cares if you missed reading something you were scheduled to read today—read it tomorrow. If you are like me and more apt to beat up than cheer up, it’s ok. Just don’t fuss too much about yesterday; you’ll end up screwing up another day stewing about yesterday. Every day is a new day—embrace that.

Here’s my schedule for the week:

My workout routine is a two-a-day format. Cardio and weightlifting each session. I designed this workout and looking forward to it. I have found that my attention span wains after about 4 weeks, so I’ll be adjusting this every month, depending on the success I achieve. I typically hit the gym in the morning around 9 am and then again at 6 pm.

What I’m reading:

The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, Paul Twitchell

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

Ethics, Aristotle

Rediscovering Americanism and The Tyranny of Progressivism, Mark R. Levin

Online Courses:

Designing your own weight-loss plan, Case Western University on Coursera

Western Heritage, Hillsdale College (free course on Hillsdale.edu)

Curious.com (a daily collection of interesting mini-courses, puzzles like crosswords, and other tidbits – this one is a monthly fee of $9.99)

Writing:

Technical Recruiting Book (Rough Draft due December 2018)

Blogging (Monday – Saturday and once a month on Sunday)

Journaling throughout the day

Entertainment:

West Wing, Netflix

Black Panther Movie (part way through), Netflix

Jack Ryan (in the queue), Amazon Prime

StarCraft II (online video game), with my buddy a few times a week, we are currently using the map editor to create our own battle maps—great fun.

Big events:

Mom’s birthday today! (She’s 75) – Diet and workout are not happening today—going to get some writing done and eat what I want when we take Mom out for dinner 😊

Religious Retreat Friday-Sunday)

I realize that my schedule is a little over the top but remember I am retired. I do not have kids in the house and I do not have to work anymore. Keep this in mind.

I hope each of you has a terrific week! Remember, don’t worry about yesterday—it’s gone. Tackle the day ahead and do your best—it’s all any of us can do.

Until next time…

Dave

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

Daily Ramblings – Monday Motivation!

Tags

Mental improvement, Motivation Monday, Social activities, spirituality, workout

Well, folks. It’s the beginning of a new week. What do you have planned to accomplish this week? What habits are you trying to establish or maintain?

This week is the beginning of week three of Kris Gethin’ s Hardcore trainer. This week, I’ll be doing two 30-minute cardio sessions, combined with weight training Mon-Fri.

I also have some online classes I’m taking: Udemy course on nonfiction book writing, a Happiness course from Yale on Coursera, and a course on U.S. Presidents offered for free by Hillsdale College.

This week, I’m elevating the game on my exercise routine by documenting my meals, sleep, weight, supplements, and exercise routines. I’ve got a buddy of mine that I will email these to each day to keep myself accountable.

For my spiritual pursuits, I will do two sessions of meditation each day (once in the morning and once in the evening before bed), read my Bible daily, and read a chapter in a religious book each day.

How do you structure your week? What are you doing to improve physically, mentally, spiritually, and socially? Let me know in the comments area if you are comfortable with sharing.

Have a great week everybody!!

Until next time…

Dave

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