Appreciating Impermanence

I saw a cartoon in a recent New Yorker magazine in which two people were finishing their dinners at a Chinese restaurant and had just opened their fortune cookies. One fortune read, “You are going to die.”

If you let this fact sink in — that life is short, and we all die — it can actually act as a powerful motivating force to help maintain focus and priorities. Everything changes and is impermanent, so are we fully present and making the most of this fleeting moment? Are we fully aware of what we are doing? Appreciating impermanence clarifies priorities, and it helps us identify any frenetic, shallow and ineffective activities we’re being distracted by. We see clearly the things that exhaust us and distract us from experiencing the blessing and opportunity of each particular day.

In Zen practice it is often said that the span of our lives is like a dew drop on a leaf — beautiful, precious, and extremely short-lived. Life is remarkably unpredictable. Whatever you want to accomplish, whatever is important to you, do it, and do it now — with as much grace, intensity, and sense of ease as you can muster.

None of us knows what life will bring. In any moment everything we take for granted can change. We must be careful not to dwell on impermanence constantly, to the point that we become paralyzed with fear of loss, but we can use an awareness of change on a deep and wise level to focus our priorities and increase our appreciation of the sheer beauty of existence.

As life seems to be moving at an ever increasing pace, I believe it's important to schedule think/reflection time at the beginning or end of each day. This could be no more than silent, focused thoughtfulness over a cup of coffee, during a walk, or even while lying in bed.

In any case, commit to giving yourself this daily gift of a few moments to sit quietly and gather your thoughts. These can be some of the most pleasurable, precious, and practical moments of the day. They can help to reframe your focus and energy in unexpected ways.

Personal Power

	Lao Tzu, famous Chinese philosopher living over 2500 years ago, stated that the biggest problem in the world is that individuals experience themselves as powerless. Powerless individuals feel helpless, negative, lethargic, frustrated, resentful, and often live in fear, enslaved by circumstances they perceive as beyond their control.
	The opposite of powerless is an inner awareness, an internal state of being , referred to as "personal power" in the emotional intelligence field.
	People with a highly developed sense of personal power have a quiet self-confidence that they can set the direction of their lives, and they do. They are able to distinguish among circumstances over which they have some control and those they do not. They define themselves from the inside out (for example, their internal self-talk includes messages like "I am a capable person, I can manage this setback, I'm good at managing conflict, I'm creative")
	The biggest barrier to success in almost any endeavor is powerlessness, negativity, helplessness and inertia. Mahatma Gandhi had no army, never held or accepted political office, never used violence. He was a small, frail man, yet he defeated the armed might of the British Empire, driving the British out of India without firing a single shot! ** Laura Besten** It's possible to gain personal power through doing a lot of reading and applying (practice, practice, practice!) learned principles to daily life. Most of us, however, benefit greatly from working with a coach....better, yet, a series of coaches throughout one's life. This person might be a coaching professional or it could be simply a person who inspires you and is willing to share his/her knowledge with you.

How Do You Want To Feel?

How do you want to feel today? You can create whatever feeling you choose, with your actions.

Your feelings are not imposed on you from the outside. They occur because you exercise strategies to make them occur. Yes, some of those strategies may include the way you choose to respond to events beyond your control. Yet it is the response, the chosen response within you, that creates the feeling, not the outside situation.

So how exactly do you wish to feel today? Then act like it. The actions you take will create the feelings you seek. If you want to feel happy, and empowered, and fulfilled, then go through the physical motions of being happy, empowered and fulfilled. It really is as simple as that. When you act like it, you are. (Ralph Marston) -

All Choices Count

Every choice we make today, no matter how casually, will affect the choices available to us in the future, in, perhaps, far more pressing times. All of our choices count!

-An Excerpt from
The Butterfly Effect
by Andy Andrews

Not long ago, I finally told the story of when, at the age of twenty-three, homeless and scared, I was given guidance in a most unusual fashion by an old man named Jones. What the old man told me did nothing less than change my life and my future. He said..."With a little perspective you can live a life of permanent purpose."

When I asked what he meant, the old man answered with a question. "Do you sometimes find yourself unconsciously judging your actions by level of importance?" I frowned a bit, not certain I understood. "For instance, "he continued, "the time you spend with friends is important, but the time you spend with family, is more important. You might rank an hour fishing as very important, thirty minutes visiting a sick friend in the hospital much more important than the fishing, and a sixty second conversation with a convenience store clerk as not very important at all."

"When you know that everything matters - that every move counts as much as any other - you will begin living a life of permanent purpose. A life of permanent purpose will make you a better parent, a better spouse, and a more valuable friend. Your productivity and financial success will soar to new heights while the old days of uncertainty, doubt, and depression fade into the past."

Simply put, when we understand that every action matters, every result of our actions immediately improves!

Just Say YES

When we say yes to the universe, we enter into a state of trust that whatever our situation is, we can work with it. We express confidence in ourselves, and the universe, and we also express a willingness to learn from whatever comes our way, rather than running and hiding when we don’t like what we see.

The question we might ask ourselves is what it will take for us to get to the point of saying yes. For some of us, it takes coming up against something we can’t ignore, escape, or deny, and so we are left no choice but to say yes. For others, it just seems a natural progression of events that leads us to making the decision to say yes to life. The first step to saying yes is realizing that in the end it is so much easier than the alternative.

Once we understand this, we can begin examining the moments when we resist what is happening, and experiment with occasionally saying yes instead. It might be scary at first, and even painful at times, but if we continue to say yes to every moment through the process, we will discover the joy of being in a positive conversation with a force much bigger than ourselves. from *The Daily OM"


To paraphrase Byron Katie, "It hurts too much when we argue with what IS, rather than accepting it." Since I had been taught to change what I didn't like, this concept used to confuse me. Now I know that we must fully see and accept what IS before we can set about living life differently.

Happy Relationships

The Law of Attraction Assembles Happy Relationships...

Asking your relationship with any other to be the basis of buoying you up is never a good idea, because the Law of Attraction cannot bring to you something different from the way you feel. The Law of Attraction cannot bring you a well-balanced, happy person if you are not yourself already that.

The Law of Attraction, no matter what you do or say, will bring to you those who predominantly match the person who you predominantly are. Everything that everyone desires is for one reason only: they believe they will feel better in the having of it. We just want you to understand that you must feel better before it can come to you. **Abraham-Hicks**

Control

You can find yourself in an endless loop where you explain that you feel negative because of the negative behavior of someone else. But if, instead, you take control of your own emotions and you think an improved thought because it feels better to do so, you will discover that no matter how the negative trend got started, you can turn it around. You have no real control of what anyone else is doing with their Vibration (or with their actions, for that matter), but you have complete control over your own thoughts, Vibrations, emotions, and point of attraction.

--- Abraham

The fastest, surest way to peace and joy is to give up the idea that we have, or should have, control over others.