Inner Wisdom

Which of your strengths do you really enjoy using?

As a high-school teacher, one of the most consistent sources of frustration for me is watching kids being put in situations that focus on their weaknesses rather than their strengths.  A kid who is an exceptional writer but poor at science still has to go through several challenging science courses just to graduate, and if he or she has troubles with the material, that student tends to spend an inordinate amount of time on science, which keeps him or her from actively strengthening the talents that will probably be much more important years down the road.

We live in cultures that tend to think that everyone should be able to do everything, and we force people to live up to that expectation.  But at what cost?

Imagine this:  the kid who's really good at math and poor at writing is allowed to focus strongly on math, while learning the basic writing skills, not having to pass silly standardized tests in writing, but being expected to reach high levels in his or her area of focus, math.  That student would leave high school as an expert in the field of math, not as someone who has become a jack of all trades, but a master of none.

Students who are really interested in writing could focus on writing and reading, while taking basic math and science courses.  We do not need every student who goes through our schools to be strong in math and science, especially those who never again will use math and science in their lives.

Somehow we've grown to think that we have to beat other countries at the test-score game; our students have to score better across the board than students from other countries if we're to be seen as "successful."  But that's just silly--who cares if Amber scored high in math in high school if she goes on to be a counselor?  Who cares if David was able to write a perfect essay in high school if he goes on to be a pharmacist?

And what about you?  How well do you nourish your strengths?  And how much time do you spend focusing on "areas of improvement," all the while neglecting your strongest points?

I tried playing the guitar for a while because I love music.  I was okay at it, but I quickly realized that if I wanted to get good at it, I would have to devote far too much time than I wanted to.  I didn't want to devote a lot of time because that was time that I could use developing my two strongest areas--writing and teaching.  Once I made the decision to drop the guitar, I freed up a lot of time for those areas in which I could excel, and which I really loved.  I think I would have liked playing the guitar, but I'm pretty sure I never would have gotten very good at it, and my coordination between my left hand on the frets and my right hand strumming or plucking just isn't very good.

Which of your strengths do you really enjoy using?  How often do you exercise that strength?  Perhaps you're really good at giving encouragement or advice; perhaps you're really good at baking; maybe organizing time or space is your calling.  Whatever you're really good at and you love doing, stick with it, and try to let other things not distract you from developing those strengths.  You have a lot to give to the world, but your greatest gifts are going to come when you give something other than a half-hearted effort, which almost always comes when we do something that isn't a strong point, or even that's a strong point that hasn't been developed.

You don't have to be good at everything.  As a parent, I was good at teaching and helping, but not so good at discipline, so I usually deferred to my wife unless she asked me to take care of something.  She was much more fair at it than I was.  As a teacher, my strengths are instruction and grading, while I'm not so good at organization and planning ahead.  So I've found ways to compensate for these weaknesses without spending inordinate amounts of time trying to get really good at them, for that's time that I can use to get even better at instruction and grading.

You have strengths that are unique to you.  Use them.  Enjoy them.  Excel at them.  The world and the people in it will appreciate it when your contribution comes from your areas of expertise and ability rather than from areas in which you don't shine.  There will always be others to shine in those areas, and you can complement each other really well if you work at it, instead of everyone trying to be good at everything.

Tom Walsh

When We Share...

When We Share
  
The impossible becomes possible.

When we share laughter,
There's twice the fun;
When we share success,
We've surpassed what we've done.

When we share problems,
There's half the pain;
When we share tears,
A rainbow follows rain.

When we share dreams,
They become more real;
When we share secrets,
It's our hearts we reveal.

If we share a smile,
That's when our love shows;
If we share a hug,
That's when our love grows.

If we share with someone
On whom we depend,
That person is always
Family or friend.

And what draws us closer
And makes us all care,
Is not what we have,
But the things that we share.

Author Unknown

You are not accidental. Existence needs you.

You are not accidental. Existence needs you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it. Thats what gives you dignity, that the whole existence will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth - everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant which cannot be filled by anybody except you. This gives you a tremendous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all dimensions.

Osho

Your gifts can make great things happen in your life!

The issue you face, when you don’t realize all of the wonderful gifts you have, is that it can be incredibly overwhelming! When you focus far too much on your problems, perceived shortcomings or other obstacles you get yourself STUCK. If all you see is growing debt, lack of money, fleeting dreams or a dismal future, you are stopping your momentum before it even has a chance to start.  If you’re one of those telling yourself you can’t afford a bigger life, or that you don’t have enough time to do everything you need to do, or you’re too tired, overworked, and have a lackluster life – stop! It’s time to shift your mindset and take action to create positive results!

Focus on the good things you do have, not on what you don’t have. Change the conversation in your head. Be good to yourself when you talk to yourself!  Change the people you associate with, if you need to. Get positive support. Reach out for what you want. Bring together those you need to help you succeed in creating a bigger life.  You have the potential, the capability. It is within you. Once you tap into it, you will see immediate results and great rewards come to you. When we use, share, and value our gifts properly, we receive rewards in the form of positive, regenerating energy and optimism.  If we give away our value, even literally, by extending our skills and talents without getting paid or recognized, it depletes energy and creates a negative attitude. 

Gifts can make you feel like you have superpowers!

Your inner strengths, your natural abilities and everyday skills are the gateway to a brighter future. Here’s an exercise which will help you reset your mindset and help you access all of the wonderful gifts you have. 

Sit down and write out everything you’re grateful for, everything you’re able to do and everything you even wish you could do. Get in the habit of thinking positively about yourself and what you’re capable of.  When you change that conversation with yourself, something miraculous happens! You are filled with Yes! Energy and before long, it will seem like anything you can dream of or want to do in your life will be possible. 

By eliminating that negativity, you will crush small thoughts, small actions and a small life.  Living small is a crime against you!  A positive attitude opens doors and invites opportunity.

Open those doors and let the opportunity flood in and fill your life with success.

Loral Langemeier.

What steps are you taking to assure healthy peaceful thoughts?

We begin this journey of life unaware that we are on a journey. However, as time passes, experiences mold us, challenges confront us, and we discover the path in front of us is about much more than seeking happiness. The trials and tribulations, the pain and glory, the endless thoughts that we control and control us, all demonstrate that life is so much bigger than us and not always heading in the direction we had planned.

To seek happiness is not enough, we must have courage and strength to address our problems, face our pain, even when it feels like an unfair game. Then we can see clearly that much of life still remains magical and wondrous.

A major key to living a peaceful successful life is the realization that our thoughts don’t control us—we control our thoughts. What steps are you taking to assure healthy peaceful thoughts? Have you reflected on the anger in your life; how loneliness can be a curse and a blessing? Have you explored how you relate in your relationships, what role your ego plays and how much easier love can unfold when we step out of our own way? Have you found the courage to head straight toward your problems, achieve staying calm and say no to drama? Are you aware of the negative self-talk that plays in your head? Have you considered why you spend time thinking about people who have hurt you?

If it is more love you want in your life, then it is more love you must give. If you wish your problems to go away, then it is your problems that you must head toward. By simply implementing small steps in your everyday life, you can live a more fulfilled, less anxious life.

Wishing you the strength and courage you need to face your hardships and see the wonder before you.

Wishing you the sanctuary of your mind.

Wishing you better living with thoughts and inspiration for everyday life.

Tricia Lavoice.

Your destiny is in your hands.

We are never fully in control of the circumstances that surround us, but we are in control of our responses, and therefore have more power over our destinies than we think.

Too many people feel they are at the mercy of fate. Too many others think all they have to do is wish for things to get better. But our lives only improve when we take action based on a grounded understanding of what it is we really want.

I use two different words to describe this “want” thing: think about the difference between them. The first is desire. Desire is part of our nature. But a desire is often an unformed thing, and just because we desire something it doesn’t follow that we are prepared to make the required effort to obtain it.

I define ambition somewhat differently: as a desire you are prepared to work for. You might desire to be a great musician, but that won’t happen unless you make that desire an ambition into which you pour your energy and your soul. Ambition still isn’t enough to ensure success. Millions of people get to the ambition stage and flounder because they don’t get to the next vital part of the success process: turning ambition into strategy.

But what is strategy? Don’t be intimidated by the term. Strategy is just a description of where it is you intend to go: a description of an achievement point on your life journey.Strategy is about the big destinations in life. 

Once your strategy is decided upon you can move to making plans, which is the bit where you decide when, who, how and so on.

Consider the consequences of not sorting out your strategy first. If you take substantial action without having a strategy, then whatever action you take and no matter how bold, skillful or indeed effective you are as an individual, it will be at best a matter of luck as to whether that action achieves results that are right for you.  Let me stress that: if you take action without establishing strategy you are relying on luck!

In order to achieve substantive change in your life you need to consider “why” you are taking certain actions. The very act of asking “why am I doing this particular thing?” is a strategic act in itself. To act without asking the question is most probably not going to help you.

Simon Middleton.

You do not attract what you want; you attract what you are. So make compassion be what you are.

Suggestions for Living from Compassion 

• Upon awakening, let the words Thank you flow from your lips, for this will remind you to begin your day with gratitude and compassion. Make it a practice to begin each day by thinking first of someone else and then making a decision to actively do something, anything, that will bring a smile to his or her face. When you become conscious of wanting to do something kind for another human being, you move into a higher way of being. It takes your thoughts off yourself and What’s in it for me? and puts them on How may I serve? which is precisely how the universal mind we call the Tao or God is always operating. When you’re aligned with a compassionate outlook, your entire day will reflect this kind of awareness.
• If you believe as Martin Luther King, Jr. did that our culture needs restructuring and that compassion is the way, I urge you to work toward electing people to public office—at all levels—who relate sensitivity and kindness in their messages to the public. Look for the compassionate heart, rather than the one that excludes, punishes, seeks revenge, or manipulates with government power. The more our institutions reflect this humane attitude, the fewer collective excuses we will call upon to explain why we haven’t been able to create the heaven on earth that is our true calling. 
• As I’ve frequently stated, the active repetition of an inner mantra reinforces and creates exactly what you’re saying to yourself. Therefore, repeat the following to yourself for at least five minutes: I am a being of compassion. I extend love outward everywhere because this is my nature. Affirm this to yourself continually, and post it in a prominent place in your home, your office, or even your car.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us the ultimate words of compassion. If our world today would put them into practice, we’d all be living in peace. But even if the rest of the world hasn’t yet caught on, you can. I urge you to put these words to work in your life today; if you do, all excuses will most certainly vanish:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. (Matthew 5:43-44)

This is compassion in action!

www.DrWayneDyer.com

If I Had My Life. . . .

Of course, you can't unfry an egg, but there is no law against thinking about it.

If I had my life to live over, I would try to make more mistakes.  I would relax.  I would be sillier than I have been this trip.  I know of very few things that I would take seriously.  I would be less hygienic.  I would go more places.  I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.  I would eat more ice cream and less bran.

I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary troubles.  You see, I have been one of those fellows who live prudently and sanely, hour after hour, day after day.  Oh, I have had my moments.  But if I had it to do over again, I would have more of them - a lot more.  I never go anywhere without a thermometer, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.  If I had it to do over, I would travel lighter.

It may be too late to unteach an old dog old tricks, but perhaps a word from the unwise may be of benefit to a coming generation.  It may help them to fall into some of the pitfalls I have avoided.

If I had my life to live over, I would pay less attention to people who teach tension.  In a world of specialization we naturally have a superabundance of individuals who cry at us to be serious about their individual specialty.  They tell us we must learn Latin or History; otherwise we will be disgraced and ruined and flunked and failed.  After a dozen or so of these protagonists have worked on a young mind, they are apt to leave it in hard knots for life.  I wish they had sold me Latin and History as a lark.

I would seek out more teachers who inspire relaxation and fun.  I had a few of them, fortunately, and I figure it was they who kept me from going entirely to the dogs.  From them I learned how to gather what few scraggly daisies I have gathered along life's cindery pathway.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefooted a little earlier in the spring and stay that way a little later in the fall.  I would play hooky more. I would shoot more paper wads at my teachers.  I would have more dogs.  I would keep later hours.  I'd have more sweethearts.  I would fish more.  I would go to more circuses.  I would go to more dances.  I would ride on more merry-go-rounds.  I would be carefree as long as I could, or at least until I got some care--instead of having my cares in advance.

More errors are made solemnly than in fun.  The rubs of family life come in moments of intense seriousness rather that in moments of light-heartedness.  If nations -- to magnify my point -- declared international carnivals instead of international war, how much better that would be!

G.K. Chesterton once said, "A characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity.  Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.  One 'settles down' into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness.  A person falls into a 'brown study,' and reaches up at a blue sky."

In a world in which practically everybody else seems to be consecrated to the gravity of the situation, I would rise to glorify the levity of the situation.  For I agree with Will Durant that "gaiety is wiser than wisdom."

I doubt, however, that I'll do much damage with my creed.  The opposition is too strong.  There are too many serious people trying to get everybody else to be too darned serious.

Don Herold (1953)

The Key to Making Life Unique and Worthwhile.

Now the key to make life really unique and worthwhile is to share.  Sharing has a certain unique magic of its own.

The caterpillar one day says, "I think I was made for more than this crawling on the ground."  So the caterpillar climbs the tree, attaches himself to a leaf and spins the cocoon.  Who knows what disciplined effort it takes to spin a cocoon.  But something inside the caterpillar says, "I was designed for something more than being just a caterpillar."

And then when the cocoon is ready and it opens up, out comes a butterfly that flies away, maybe singing, "I believe I can fly!  I believe I can touch the sky!  I used to be a caterpillar on the ground, now I fly."

I'm asking you to go through such a metamorphosis.  I'm asking you often to go through a period where you say, "New skills, new things are waiting for me," and part of this will come if you'll translate for other people what you feel in your heart and in your soul.  As awkward as your language might be at first, don't hesitate to do it.

Here's what sharing does--it makes room for more.  Key question, if this glass is full of water can it hold any more?  If the glass is full of water, can it hold any more?  And the answer is yes, yes, if you pour some out.  So jot that down.  If you want more, you've got to pour out what you've got, then you have the opportunity to receive more.

Now, unlike the glass that remains the same size when you pour some out; not so in consciousness human beings.  Your capacity will increase the more you share.  You'll get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Now why the self-interest wish to be bigger?  Here's why:  to hold more of the next experience.  Some people can't hold much happiness because they're too small, their thinking is too small, their activity is too small, they're too small in their ability to share, they're just too small.  Can't hold much, they're too small.

But the bigger you get, the more you will receive.  When happiness is poured out, you'll get more.  When joy is poured out on the nation, you'll get more.  When bounty is poured out from the economy, you will get more, if you share what you've got and become bigger and bigger and bigger.

Now some people are not only small, they have their glass turned upside down.  It's hard to get anything in.  But if you come to every situation with an open mind, an open consciousness, ready to receive, I promise you will find the people that will share with you, and that will accept what you share with them.

To Your Success,
Jim Rohn