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Love the life you have, Get the life you want

What if you lived your life believing that you had already accomplished your dreams? How might that change your mental state? What would you do if you weren’t worried about where you were headed because you had already arrived at your destination? Would you take more time to smell the roses? Would you find yourself feeling more peaceful? Would you be more appreciative of the journey and how you got to where you are?

My bet is that you would. So my question for you is, what are you waiting for? Why are you waiting to get somewhere else to be grateful for where you’re at. The world has conditioned us to believe that the journey is something to be endured only to arrive at our destination. But really, isn’t life meant to be lived, felt, experienced? And shouldn’t we feel grateful for those experiences we encounter on the journey of getting where we are going? So why are you missing it? Why are you belittling all that you are right now for a belief that what is coming will be, has to be, needs to be better?

I have a feeling your answer to that question is that you aren’t happy where you are? So what is there to relish? What is there to be grateful for when you’re working a horrible job while going to school in order to forge a better future? What if I told you that it is that very desperate and debilitating mindset that is actually generating that miserable experience you are feeling?

I know that we as humans do not generally like to accept responsibility for our misfortunes, but indulge me here. What if I told you that learning to find gratitude in where you are can transform your current experience and the negative vicious cycle you are generating begins to shift into a journey full of potential, opportunities and growth?

What would change by shifting that perspective? I am telling you everything would change. The reasoning here is two-fold. First, the most rewarding feeling you can have is to learn to appreciate where you are at. I mean, let’s face it. None of us are actually promised a tomorrow. And we can never truly be anywhere other than where we are at any present moment. So why are we waiting for tomorrow to find value in our lives? All we are ever guaranteed is where we are and what we have right now. The second reason living your life with gratitude for where you are, not just where you are going, impacts how you are communicating with the world about who you are and what you are attracting to yourself. When you focus on all that you do not have, you are sending a message to the universe that you are lacking in your life.

I know what you are probably thinking, Well I am? So why wouldn’t the world respond by giving me what I want? But that just isn’t how it works. It is sort of like the notion of misery loving company. The more you complain, the more you attract others who complain. Meanwhile, those who are trying to look at the more positive side of life tend to distance themselves from the complainer because it is hard to remain positive in the presence of negativity. And by distancing themselves from that negativity, they become more in tune with themselves and all that is good in their lives. They, in turn, tend to start noticing other things that are good around them. Other opportunities seem to present themselves that may have always been there, but they may have been too busy being negative to notice them. Perhaps others weren’t interested in sharing the opportunities with them on the assumption that they simply wouldn’t be interested since nothing seems to make them happy.

The ideology behind this is that when you live your life longing for what you do not have, you are coming from a place of lack. It actually affects how you make decisions and interact in the world. Now, of course, I am not suggesting that you spend money you do not have or anything of that nature. However, if you approach your life grateful for what you already have, you tend to make different choices, better choices that may lead you to your “better life”.

Maybe you are going through something challenging right now like changing careers or finishing school. If you are constantly focused on the struggle that change and starting over often tend to bring, then you are going to make more defeated choices. This could cause you to miss an extraordinary opportunity because you were so focused on your despair.

What if you imagined that you were already where you wanted to be? What if you recognized that where you are is setting you up for the future, not the waiting room for your future?  How would that change your interaction with others? You would likely be a more pleasant person to be around. You would maybe make a new connection that might lead you to that big break. I really cannot promise you what would change, but things would change. Because you are now CHOOSING to be grateful for who you are and where you are in your life. And Gratitude is a powerful thing!

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You think You Can and the World Does Too

I recall an experience from my childhood, where I was angry about something. For the life of me, I cannot recall what I was angry about, but I know I was really angry. And I was telling my dad about how angry I was and he just replied, “Who’s angry?” I agitatedly responded, “Me!”

“Who?”

“Me!!!” I yelled, even more irritated.

“Who’s me?” he replied with an annoying calmness.

“Your daughter!” I exclaimed.

This went on for a few more back and forth exchanges until finally, I realized I was now laughing, and what I was previously so angry about now seemed inconsequential. It completely diffused the situation. I didn’t really understand at the time what he was trying to teach me at the time, however, my dad is a philosopher, so I was accustomed to these sorts of exchanges.

What I understand now was that he was showing me that I was only angry because I was attached to my perspective of the situation. I could only see my view, and I was holding on to it. When he questioned me, I forgot about my viewpoint and just like that, the anger was gone.

So what does that say about the power of our thoughts? What if we paid attention to them? What would change? Just the other day, I was meeting with my coach and she pointed out that, while discussing my frustration with life getting in the way of my writing and such, that I was using language like, I have to and I need to. I didn’t even realize I was doing it! But that feels different from I want to work on my blog, or I can’t wait to be able to start writing again.

Have you ever focused on how you are talking to yourself and how you are talking about your hopes and dreams? I bet you have never given it a second thought. But the truth is our thoughts are vibrational messages that we are releasing out into the universe telling it how to treat us. So it really does merit our attention. Think about it. If someone makes a rude comment to you, you internalize it. It bothers you, even if ever so slightly. But why don’t we pay any attention to how we treat ourselves. That should be the person we care about most. Now I bet you’re I saying, no, my kids come first, my husband, my dogs, whoever it may be. But the reality is that, if we do not care for ourselves, we cannot be there for the ones that mean the most to us. So we really do need to pay attention to our thoughts. They have a huge impact on the way we see our lives and the world. Our thoughts even have an impact on how we treat the very ones we value most in our lives.

Imagine, if you think that there is no possible way for you to get through a difficult situation, odds are you either won’t or you will, but it will be far more excruciating than it had to be. But if you learn to control your thinking, you have the ability to hone in on what you can control and let go of what you cannot. It is empowering to think that we could have so much power over our own lives. All we have to do is change how we are thinking. It sounds so simple, yet it is actually quite a challenge to shift your established thought patterns. The truth is that you have likely not ever given your think pattern much focus. It is even more likely that you have not ever analyzed why you may think the way you do, i.e. your upbringing, your experiences, etc. After that, the next step is to then shift your thinking into thoughts that are more in line with your desires. It certainly is a process and a practice that you have to continually work on. But once you start to embrace it, you begin to see the results of your dedication fairly quickly. You start noticing that you are in a better mood, that something that you know would have bothered you didn’t. After a week or so, you start to notice opportunities that either were not there before, or you didn’t see because you were too busy complaining about everything else that was wrong.

It is really quite exhilarating to become the master of your own ship. It can also feel somewhat daunting because you are now admitting that you cannot blame anyone for your misfortune. It is all on you. So if you don’t like what you are attracting, it’s not your boss’s fault, it’s not your spouse’s fault, it’s no one’s fault except for your own. It is your thought pattern that you are communicating with the world about how to treat you. Perhaps you have heard the expression, You teach people how to treat you, meaning that how you allow others to treat you determines how people will continue to treat you. Well, this is similar. If you continue to send the vibrational thought messages out into the world about complaints, anger, injustice, the world perceives this as if this is the stuff you enjoy dealing with since you are focusing so much attention on them. But if you send thoughts of joy, love, compassion, understanding, the world also understands that is what you enjoy feeling and so draws that to you. It truly is a fascinating thing to try out and then witness it begin to work. I challenge you to take reins in your life. If you don’t like what you are getting, thoughtfully change the direction you’re heading. Happy navigating!

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Embracing Your Truth: Learning To Do You

In my previous post about Embracing Your Truth, I shared with you a personal story that inspired a revelation in my life. I would like to continue to build upon this notion however, to further discuss the concept of learning to focus on who you are, what you believe, and what you want. We spend a substantial amount of our lives focusing on others, what they think, how they react, and how their actions make us feel. It feels like we are being incredibly caring by letting them know how we believe they are getting it wrong for us.

While sharing your thoughts and feelings with those you love is an incredibly important aspect in developing a mutually sustaining relationship, it is also important to understand that harboring a belief that you have the power to control or change another’s behavior serves as an invitation to personal disappointment. What I mean is, you will likely be disappointed if they do not react or behave in the way that you desire. But it is simply a delusion we have been duped into believing; this notion that we have the power to control and change another’s thinking in order to make ourselves feel better. But what we can control is our way of thinking about their behavior and, in turn, we can modify our thoughts and behavior about the situation or the person. We can only control our portion of the relationship or the situation.

My dad, Dennis Miller, a philosopher, and retired philosophy professor, introduced me to this concept by calling it “The 50/50 Rule”. You are only responsible for “Your 50%” of the relationship. The other 50% is the responsibility of the other person. You might not like how they handle their 50%, but you have no control over that. So being upset about it is inevitable due to that lack of control. Not unlike what I discussed in Great Expectations, you are setting yourself up to expect something that you simply cannot alter or change in any way.

Here is an excerpt from some of the writing Dennis Miller has done on this topic:

The 50/50 Rule of relationships is a “mindfulness training” or practice designed to enhance our awareness of the nature of relationships and a deeper understanding of our role and function within the relationship. Attention to the Rule can change the way in which we relate to our partner which suggests that the only thing we can change in our relationship is our Self and the way we relate to our partner. [..]

The seed idea of the 50/50 Rule came from my own experience and I was facing divorce in a  marriage of 27 years. Through much meditation and mindfulness practice, I discovered that I had failed to understand something about love and relationships, which presented an opportunity for self-growth and greater awareness of love as a mindfulness practice.

I discovered that I had not understood the 50/50 Rule of relationships because no one bothers to teach us the practice of learning to be in a relationship and so we often simply repeat the patterns and habits we absorbed from our environment. The Mantra that began to change my perspective about relationships was: “It’s never about that …” but rather the problem was always in my relation to “that”.    This changed my perspective in realizing that problems in relationships arise when we step across the “/ mark” into our partner’s space. We blame, accuse, etc. our partner for making us feel this or that and declare that we would not be or feel this way as if our partner is the cause and we are powerless and incapable of relating in any other way to the situation.

The 50/50 Rule reminds us that we are responsible only for “our half” of the relationship, not that of our partner. When we cross the line we transgress the boundaries that define us as separate individuals and disrespect the space of our partner who is likewise responsible for only for his or her half. We can be responsible and change something only in our self and our relationship to our partner; we cannot and should not try to change something in our partner which intrudes upon his or her space and freedom also to choose to be responsible and change something within his or her self. This is respect for the one we love.

In this excerpt, Miller fleshes out the general premise of the 50/50 Rule and his personal experience of discovering it. I think his story beautifully illustrates the impact a lack of understanding of the 50/50 Rule can have on our lives and our personal well-being. Perhaps you are questioning why a discussion of how you interact in a relationship is relevant to your individual well-being. But the reality is that, as humans, we are social beings by nature. A simple anonymous interaction with another individual inhabits the same dynamics of a relationship despite its brevity. Imagine that, when you are buying coffee, the clerk insults you. You are likely to spend the remainder of the day complaining of their behavior and soliciting others to affirm your opinion on the interaction. Now imagine that the clerk compliments you. You will conduct yourself in a similar manner, telling others how kind the clerk was this morning. You don’t even know this person, but they have fully impacted your day!

Let’s look at this interaction under the scope of the 50/50 rule. In this scenario, as it has currently been depicted, the actions of “their 50%” have full control over your emotional state. They insult you, you’re upset. They compliment you, you’re elated. Now let’s locate “your 50%”. They insulted you, did you do anything to them? Let me interject here as I feel the anger rising, this is not about blaming you and indicating you “deserve” anything. The truth is, that is not how the universe works. That is part of the myth. No one deserves anything, including happiness. Our personal state of mind is earned and created only by our own interaction with “our 50%”. What I mean is, if you review all of your behavior and you believe that you interacted appropriately and they insulted you, then let it go. It simply does not matter. You have no control over their behavior. You are pointlessly rallying an army to make yourself feel better when all you had to do was determine within yourself that it was not merited and therefore disregard their comment and go on with your life. If you determine that your actions may have been less than desirable by your own standards, you have discovered an opportunity to learn, grow and move forward more the wiser.

So why does our 50% matter if they compliment us? That’s simple. While their personal choice to compliment you reflects well on “their 50%”, it still has little to do with you. How do you think about yourself? If you were down on yourself and needed to hear that, why were you down on yourself? I hear your point, why do that matter? It matters because you are not guaranteed to receive a compliment from someone else’s 50%. So were you just going to have a bad day if they hadn’t complimented you? This is why your focus on your 50%, defined by your actions and your thoughts, is all that really matters to bring you peace of mind.

I say peace of mind because, while happiness is typically what we seek, you cannot be happy all the time. The universe also works on 50%’s: Happiness and Sadness, Joy and Anger,  Yin and Yang. We can discuss this further in another entry. I bring it up now simply to highlight that, in focusing on your 50%, I am not promising happiness. I am promising clarity about how you feel, how you can understand it, and how you can control it. I am giving you the key to understanding your feelings and how to gain control over something that we were told was controlled by everyone else. I am introducing you to your power over you. Learning to master this concept is the key to learning to attract what you want into your life and not latch onto the things that you do not want to by lending them your attention.

I would like to end this piece with another anecdote from Dennis Miller that further demonstrates the game-changing power of the 50/50 Rule:

Driving a school bus for many years in addition to teaching philosophy at the university a young 12 year old schoolboy, I will call him Tom, before he was about to get off the bus at his stop said to me, “Hippy, [that’s what the kids called me] I’m afraid to go home!” I asked him why? He told me that he got into some trouble at school that day and was afraid when his Dad found out and had to sign the “form” to take back to school the next day, that as he said, “my Dad will kill me and I am afraid” [not literally, of course, it was an emotional fear].

So I asked Tom what usually happens at home when you get in trouble at school? He said that since he is afraid of his Dad he usually goes to his Mom first and tells her. In response, his Mom sends him to his room and gives him some romantic novel to read as punishment and then quizzes him later to make sure he read it.

Having heard the usual routine, I challenged Tom to “change the conditions of his usual behavior”. He didn’t understand what I meant (he’s only 12 years old) so I explained to him. I told him that I see his Dad’s truck in the driveway and that his Dad is home now so instead of avoiding his Dad (and running from his fear, as usual) I challenged him to change the conditions and instead go straight to his Dad and tell him what happened at school. His first response was “I can’t do this, he will be so angry at me!”

The challenge for Tom was to change his usual routine and habit of avoiding his fears and instead face his fear and go to his Dad and explain. I told him he to apologize to his Dad and tell him that he got into trouble at school today and that he knows he disappointed his Dad and feels disappointed in himself for his behavior. He then got off the bus saying “I can’t do this!”

It was a Friday and on Monday morning when he got on the bus I asked him what happened when he got home on Friday? With a look of amazement he said in an exuberant voice, “Hippy, I can’t believe it, nothing happened to me. I did what you said. I was so scared. I told my Dad what you suggested and you know what he said to me? He said, thank you for being honest with me. I see you understand your misbehavior so I do not see any need to punish you.”. He was elated and shocked not realizing that the whole time he had within himself the power to change his relationship with his Dad by changing something within himself. He took responsibility for his half (50%) of the relationship and changed the dynamics of his relationship with his Dad.

I hope you have enjoyed this entry! I encourage you to give it a try! Remember, this is a complex concept that is meant to be practiced and the truth discovered, not an overnight revelation. I promise it will bring you closer to becoming your best self and living your best life! Until next time my friends!

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Finding Your Pathway

I was talking with a friend the other day about my Dream Big post and they mentioned that they don’t know what they want to do. So I thought I would do a post about finding your own way, listening to your inner voice and how to connect deeply with your wants and dreams.

The truth is, the universe has a way of pointing us in the right direction. However, we as humans tend to be too busy running our own lives to pay attention to the subtle messages happening all around us. If you are trying to get in touch with your life’s passion, I would start in the rational place of making a list of activities, hobbies, events, everything you enjoy. Can any of those be occupations? Maybe you just want to do it as a hobby? Can you love it even when you hate it? As my mom would say:

Does it thrill your soul?

Once you have honed in on your various interests, that’s where I believe the real magic starts. This is the part where you start to pay attention to everything happening around you. Did your friend just mention something that you never would have expected? Did you accidentally attend an event that related to your interest? These are subtle ways of the world nudging you in the right direction. They were always there, but you were not always looking. Be warned, the world is patient. It will let you take as much time as it takes for you to get it.

I had an experience where this occurred just the other day. We recently changed seating arrangements at my place of employment. I was chatting with my new neighbor co-workers trying to get to know them and I shared that I used to teach French and was working toward being a French professor. We all chatted and shared our different experiences as one had previously been a teacher and another had a relative that was a teacher. But that was the extent of the conversation. A few days later, I’m sitting at my desk and one of the people I was chatting with before spouted out a statement in French. I was completely stunned. It caught me off guard. The truth is I love French and speaking French, but I’m severely out of practice. However, it is something I would love to mess around with and be able to bring back into my life. So where is the universal connection in this? We just changed seating and she sits right next to me! And, to be honest, French is not the most common major or language that people tend to study in the area where I live. Subtle, but the message was received.

Now, again, I can hear the skepticism. It’s all just a coincidence. First, I do not personally believe in coincidences. Second, I would challenge the critic to simply give it a shot. Start noticing the things that are going on around you. Within a short time, I assure you, you will be taken aback by the results. I challenge you to try it out and share your thoughts and experiences either way! I welcome the conversation!

As I stated before, the world is always throwing opportunities your way. The problem is that we are usually too engrossed in our “issues” to notice them. When you can quiet the mind and really focus on what you want and what is going on around you, it is truly miraculous what can appear. To learn to quiet your mind, you must learn to understand and take control of your thoughts. I hope you are starting to notice a trend here:

EVERYTHING we Feel, Do and Experience starts with our THOUGHTS!

So let’s discuss addressing our thinking patterns in a little further detail. This part is essential to learning to connect to your true passion(s) in life. Most of us just let our thoughts run rampant like an unattended toddler. We believe we have no control of them. But if you stop and notice them, if you begin to question them, and if you challenge yourself to change them, you begin to realize that we have far more control of over our thoughts and emotions than we once believed. Mastering this skill is the key to tapping into communicating to the universe what we truly desire to attract into our lives.

I’m going to keep the Power of Thought discussion high-level for now, as it merits a full posting or several in and of itself. It can be a challenge to Master. And truly, it is really more of a practice that you get better at, but that you always have to work at. Learning how our thoughts dictate our feelings and actions and how they communicate with the universe is a subject that I find truly fascinating and I’m excited to begin sharing this amazing discovery with you.

So let this posting be the first in a series to follow on how to begin to connect with your inner self, your passion, and how you can draw it to you. I will be sure to link them as I post them so you can follow along on this journey of self discovery!