Walking . Thinking . Learning

Yes We Can

Thank you Barack Obama.

Lautrec

50: A number not to be feared

Today is my 50th birthday and I choose to celebrate my own survival and prosperity this day. I claim every good thing for myself. I look forward to a whole new decade of discovery and growth. I thank the universe for helping me to get over my self [self and negative perceptions of my personality and place in the world] and my obsession with failure and poverty. I embrace my new world. I embrace my own personal “new age”.

I thank Louise Hay for helping me to get here. I thank my mother and my father and my entire family for their love and wisdom. I thank my life partner for being here for me and holding my hand for the past year while I walked through the dark valley of my own making in my own despair and self hatred. I am a wonderfully lucky and blessed man. I am grateful for my father’s visit this past summer and his acceptance and love for me. I am grateful for a roof over my head, food in my refrigerator and cupboards, opportunities surrounding me in every direction, for political freedom, the chance to run my own business, the health to be able to walk 5 miles a day, for stopping smoking this year, for wonderful new destinations that I have discovered, and the blessings of technology that make the Internet and this blog possible.

Turning fifty years old is not scary at all. It is the fear of turning fifty that is really scary. It is a fear that can destroy you; It is a fear that can drive you crazy, but only if you let it. Embrace the possibility of this moment and your future. Embrace The Concept and The Reality of Now.

Questions

From B. DeRoes page on test anxiety from Edmund Bourne’s “The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook” I found these Socratic tips on countering negative self talk:

1. What is the evidence for this?
2. Is this always true?
3. Has this been true in the past?
4. What are the odds of this really happening (or being true?)
5. What is the very worst that could happen? What is so bad about that? What would I do if the worst happened?
6. Am I looking at the whole picture?
7. Am I being fully objective?

These are excellent questions to ask yourself when you “get your negative tapes” going in your head.

Mom

I have not always been grateful for my mother and when she died we were not on the best of terms.  Recently my perspective has been changing somewhat as I have been helping a friend whose children keep pushing her away saying they aren’t responsible for taking care of her now that she is getting older and weaker. It has hit me hard how grateful I have to be for my mother and how I want to honor her memory today.

My mother was a wonderfully strange and funny creature. She was very different than any of the women in my family. There was not a woman anywhere in my known universe at the time that was even remotely like this woman. She never had any time for gossip or negative talk about anyone. She never wanted to speak evil of anyone or anything. She loved to read more than any person I have ever met and was always busy with some creative project. She loved working, she loved selling, she loved shopping for her children. She loved people so deeply that when she died it was not just her family that grieved, but her church and her community all felt a deep sense of loss. I miss that woman and today I honor her memory and her hard work to make me the wonderful person that I am today. I am as unique as she was and I am proud of it.

As I help my friend deal with being rejected and abandoned by her children for “being too much trouble” I know now that I must have hurt my own mother deeply at times by not responding when she called out for help. I forgive myself for my own selfishness and I know that my mother in heaven forgives me too.

I affirm for my friend that she will be able to some day be close with her family and have everyone reach out to each other freely without any baggage from the past, without any emotional wounds or resentments and simply love and respect each other in the present moment. I see her with her children and her grandchildren in a warm and happy family gathering of peace and joy.

Abundance in Nature

My Depression preceded the Worldwide Economic Crisis of 2008 by a few months and for that I am grateful. I don’t think I could have taken the entire planet writhing in pain at the same time that I was. It would have made “my world” even darker.

It is interesting to compare my own crisis with the worlds right now because at the base there is a striking similarity. Joe Nocera of the New York Times said of the financial crisis this morning:

Similarly, when times are bad, fear and loathing capture our imagination, and we find it equally impossible to see a glimmer of hope.

It is that same irrational fear and loathing that led to my own downfall. I was afraid of the future and I loathed my present and my past. I had come to absolutely hate myself. It was strange this week to see bankers, traders and big wigs acting out the same self destructive fantasies that I had in the midst of my depression. It seemed at times this week that the whole world had gotten a serious gut wrenching flu that was sending it into cold sweats with waves of nausea and pain.

The only way I had out of my crisis was to begin to respect myself again and to look for hope. In some way, that is what the world has to do now too. It has to learn from the mistakes of the recent past and get up off the floor, screaming at the top of its lungs, writing in pain.

The world is no less abundant than it was a few weeks ago.

The universe is not poorer than it was a few weeks ago.

The universe is just as rich as it ever was. Nothing has changed.

Do you have just one thing to be thankful for today? Is there more?

8 Weeks

Recently a friend of mine has been struggling with unemployment after his company lost its biggest customer and he was forced to go to work for someone else. I have been helping him with his resume and with setting up an email account. One day as he was leaving the house he was telling me about the temporary job that he was starting for the next eight weeks and he said “I just know this is going to be the worst 8 weeks of my life.” To which I responded that with that attitude he was making sure that it would turn out that way. This is just how we screw up the opportunities that life gives us by not being appreciative of what we have now, that just might lead us onto better things. I encouraged him to think about the whole situation a little more positively and it did help him get some money to get to the next step.

Blue Light

I am always checking my stats as I have always been obsessed with numbers and I find it fascinating how people end up finding my personal writings or my business directory pages. The other day I began to notice that many of you were coming to me looking for Louise Hay by punching in Louis Hay in Google. I happened to misspell her name the other day and evidently stumbled upon a common mistake.

Louise Hay is the author of the bestselling self help book, “You Can Heal Your Life”. You can find out more about her books and her work here at LouiseHay.com or at HayHouse.com.

Colored Pencils

I just wanted to share a marvelous artist and illustrator that I found this morning; His name is Chet Phillips. You can see his work here.

Note the photo above is a stock photo from 123rf.com, a stock photo company that I use allot in my work.

Listen . Water . Waves . Light

One of the things that I am learning right now is how to listen.

At times when I listen to friends talk about their problems I am tempted to jump in and try to offer solutions even before they have finished describing the situation. At other times I feel overwhelmed by what they are saying and have a hard time not letting their chaos or despair overtake me and make me feel hopeless.

I know that the best thing for me to do is sit and wait and let them come to a natural stopping point. I know that the best thing is to see the situation they are describing as outside of myself. I guess I can sometimes be so empathetic that I put myself at risk. I also want to maintain a certain openness. I do not want to be clinical and detached. I guess I am seeking balance.

It’s time for my walk.

Stone Heart

I don’t always hold onto the good things and good times. I seem to be attached to some very bad things and horrible times in my life. It is amazing how hard it is for me to let go of these old hurts; those times when I have been rejected or ignored for reaching out to someone. It is important to remember that the hurt is something inside of me and not something that they did to me. I am responsible for my own emotions, my own reactions and my own well being. They may do something that causes me to feel hurt, but they did not place that feeling there. I did. I can choose to let that hurt reside in me and grow and set up residence, or I can choose to let it go. I guess sometimes I have to release some situations, some people, some hurts, over and over again until they disappear or dissolve into nothingness.

I am grateful this day that I am free of all old emotional wounds and that I set myself and others free. I release myself. I release those that “hurt me”. We are all free of my hurt. We are all free to love again. I can let go of my own hurt feelings and my negative emotions so that I can more fully embrace wonderful and great and beautiful things.

Now I am ready for my walk.