Lost

What the. . .  go here.

Push, Not Pull.

Don't you feel dumb, when you run into a door, trying to push it, and it says "pull?"

Or having the door not open at all, and a sign that clearly says "use other door?"

Its the worst feeling ever. If the door could, it'd be embarrased by you.

Everyone's laughing at you, people are staring.

You keep walking with your head down, disappointed almost.

"Man, if the door moved the way I wanted it do, everything would've been dandy."

But nothing ever moves like you want it to. So after the fact, you avoid the situation altogether.

If the door had feelings, it would be almost be disappointed and hurt too. The door still thinks you can be friends.

And all you can do is walk past it, using the other door that moves.

You'll remember these words for the rest of your life: "push, not pull."

This is going to sound like mummble jumble. Probably because it might just be.

Also, this is not about the movie directly, I haven't seen it, but I really want to.

"My great shame as a writer is that I'm just a suburban kid with good parents."

Happy.

I've been talking to a lot of people about what they want to do.

A jumbled mix of answers jumped, ranging from "Something that makes me money or a steady job,"

"Something that I'm passionate about,""Something that I love to do,"

"Something that makes me happy,"

Happy is a subjective term, but ultimately a universal mood.

People can be happy for different reasons,

but the one thing they have in common with other people is that they are happy.Happy is what you make it out to be. My happy is to be with you. 

Thank you.

A courteous call, a gesture of respect.

Something you that shows appreciation for something or someone.

Two little words with a bigger meaning.

Because every single one of us longs to feel appreciated, words of gratitude make the heart sing.

Thank you, I appreciate you, I’m grateful for you—these words are food for the soul.

More Please.

 More is a positive word, quite literally. 

It adds to whatever you already have.

Please is common courtousy, good manners.

Please is kinda like thank you. It shows graditude and respect.

This phrase, though it sounds selfish and demanding, to me is more of an ambiguous phrase.

More can be anything, anything at all. 

More words, more writing, more time, more sleep

More people, more love, more hate, more me, more you.

HappyThankYouMorePlease.

Everyone is looking for love.

Everyone is looking for happiness

The secret is to say thank you.

And always ask for more.

Go get yourself loved.

Soul Searching

It means delivering yourself to a level or two or three deeper into your thoughts and motivation.

Not just "what should I decide?" 

But rather "Why do I make the decisions I do?" or "Am I happy with that?"

Digging up that much uncertainty and, often, old scar tissue, might be painful to some.

But its just that; the uncertainty makes you doubt, makes you think twice.

The pressure to do something with your life, the pressure to "do whats right" really can eat away at you.

Society set standards that you "have" to live up to.

People set boundaries and draw lines of which you can't cross or break.

But who are they to say that "you can't do this" or "you're not supposed to be like that?" 

Saying "oh, I really messed up" may only mean you are not thinking or

behaving the way they would like you to: the way they do.

Or they may be better than that and genuinely and neutrally concerned.

That's one of the judgments to be made: are they giving good advice or being manipulative?

Am I? Who knows? You can do whatever you want with this, its yours to keep, but not to be guided by.

Soul searching means looking inside yourself and deciding if the person

you are or are becoming is the person you really want to be.

Get a journal, that's always a good start.

Think about your past and your future.

What events and people, both good and bad, have made you who you are?

Who are you, and are you happy with who you are and how your life is going?

Who do you want to become and what do you want to accomplish in life?

Will the life you're leading now lead you to those goals?

If you get lost, or don't have the answers to these questions, don't worry, that's normal.

Think about it as you go about your life.

Examine the things you do and say and your reasons for them, then write these down.

The more you think and write, the more you'll come to understand yourself.

Then you can start making plans.

What things about yourself or your life do you want to change?

What influences do you want to cut out and which ones do you want to increase?

Are there bad habits you want to get rid of and good ones you want to put in their place?

What things do you need to do to reach your goals?

As you go through this process, you may come up against roadblocks,

things you can't seem to change no matter how hard you try.

If this happens, you may need to seek out professional help to get over them;

there's nothing shameful about this, most people need help at some point in their life.

With thought, planning, and action, and some help from your friends, your life will be happier than you can imagine.

Enlighten yourself, break the fetters of what binds you, what concerns you.

Don't hang under the wing of the tutelage set by the people in life.

Give yourself freedom, give yourself some leg room to just breathe.

Once you've been enlightened, you have the freedom to think for yourself.

Do some soul searching if you're stuck. 

More or less, it's like taking a compass to gauge what is the best direction for one's life.

Moments Now

Memories later.

Say you're an adolescent, middle-class.

You have a few close friends, some new, some old.

You're at that point in life where kids are going off to college.

You're being left behind, and people are leaving you behind.

Not saying they're not gonna remember you, its just that there's a distance barrier.

People go left, people go right. 

People move up, people break down.

Your friends meet new friends, and your new friend meet old ones.

Sometimes you get homesick and want to go back to what you knew.

Sometimes you go home, and you can't find what you knew.

Pretty normal stuff, right?

At this point in our lives, you really stop to wonder.

"What happened, we used to be so close?"

or

"What am I going to do next?"

You start going c-c-crazy.

Worrying about whats behind you.

Worrying about whats in front of you.

And you forgot whats happening now.

...You're shoe laces are tied together.

Instead of focusing on what's next or what once was, go back to what's first.

Go back to now. Live in the present.

What does it mean to live fully in the present moment?

It means that your awareness is completely centered on the here and now.

You are not worrying about the future or thinking about the past.

When you live in the present, you are living where life is happening.

The past and future are illusions, they don’t exist.

As the saying goes “tomorrow never comes”.

Tomorrow is only a concept, tomorrow is always waiting to come around the corner, but around that corner are shadows, never to have light shed upon, because time is always now.

If you’re not living in the present, you’re living in illusion.

That seems to a be a pretty good reason to live in the present, doesn’t it?

But how often are we worrying about things that have yet to come?

How often do we beat ourselves up for mistakes that we’ve made, no matter how much time has passed?

The answer is too much.

Not only will living in the present have a dramatic effect on your emotional well-being,

but it can also impact your physical health.

It’s long been known that the amount of mental stress you carry can have a detrimental impact on your health.

If you’re living in the present, you’re living in acceptance.

You’re accepting life as it is now, not as how you wish it would have been.

When you’re living in acceptance, you realize everything is complete as it is.

You can forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, and you can have peace in your heart knowing that everything that should happen will.

The worst part about living in the past or the future is that you’re giving up your personal power.

If you’re not living now, you’re giving up your life.

You’re surrendering your power to create.

If there are changes you’d like to make in life, it’s best to do it now.

If you’re living in the past, you can’t do anything about it, it’s gone.

If you’re worrying about the future, you’re living somewhere that doesn't exist.

It hasn’t happened yet.

If you want to change your life, the only place you can do it is in the present.

But first you need to accept life as it is. When it comes down to it your mind is the only thing keeping you from living in the present.

There are many people that can give you their opinion or their advice on why it is difficult to live in the present.

Some will say it is because we live in abstraction, we live in the world of symbols.

Some might say it is because we have awareness of the passage of time,

or the illusion of time, it produces anxiety because we can look at the past and predict the future.

I think all of these answers are partially true.

Though the biggest reason we don’t live in the present is because we don’t shut the fuck up. 

That is, we constantly talk to ourselves.

If we are talking all of the time, we never hear what anyone else has to say. In the same way, if we are talking to ourselves all the time, we are never listening, we have nothing to think about other than thoughts, and are never in relationship with reality.

As perfectly normal human beings, we love to create stories.

We love to listen to other people stories and compare them with our own.

This is beautiful.

In a way we could say that the entire universe is based on one collection of stories, a cosmic story.

The problem is when we feel the need to create a story about everything, we are living entirely in the world of symbols.

We confuse the world as it is, with the way we think about it, talk about it and describe it.

Reality though, is not a concept. When we realize this we are able to return to a state of peace and stillness.

Don’t try to quiet your mind.

The hardest thing to do when living in the moment is, or trying to simply witness life, is to not have the urge to try to quiet your mind. When we try to quiet the mind, we just disturb it all the more.

Instead, simply witness your thoughts as if they are pure sound.

Don’t try to judge your thoughts, there are no good thoughts or bad thoughts.

Simply witness them as if they were noise.

Breathe, you’re alive!

For a moment I’d like you to stop reading and simply pay attention to your breath. I’ll wait…

As you focus your attention on your breath, you’ll notice that your breath is neither voluntary or involuntary.

It is something that you do, but at the same time something that “does you”.

When you focus your attention on your breath, you come back into relationship with reality, because like breath, reality is both something you do and something that “does you”.

It is co-creative. Practice conscious breathing to bring your mind back to the present.

If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.

Enjoy the Little Things

We have all heard that there is power in the present.

This moment, and the little routines and rituals that make up your daily

existence are where happiness is found and memories created.

But how much do you actually APPLY this knowledge in your life?

If you’re like me, you’re always moving forward, assessing how far you’ve come,

planning your next move,  and caught in an endless spin cycle ofact/think/worry.

You know it’s no way to live - this frenzied movement of mind and body - but you persist anyway.

So often we get caught up in work - putting in the extra hours,

pitching for that extra letter grade, worrying about deadlines.

The hours get sucked away.

Finally, we switch that channel off, only to start thinking about our goals or personal dramas.

We think and strive and worry and complain - stuck on the idea

that if we only had MORE we would be satisfied. 

More time. More achievements. More freedom. More money.

More. More. <span>More</span>. More. More. More.

I know I’m not alone in saying I want to do a lot with my life.

I think I already have.

But there is much more I would like to achieve and experience,

and sometimes I get caught up in that wanting and planning and the need to “make it happen”.

So much so that I lose all sense of time and perspective.

Add to that, my always thinking and plotting writer’s mind, it’s fair to say most days pink elephants could tango across my lawn and I really wouldn’t notice.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving Break. Be safe. Be thankful.

Eat lots of turkey. Or tofurkey. Or if you're not the type, salad.

Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you might realize they were once big things.

No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.

One of the greatest misconceptions in life is that we are

somehow powerless to let go of what’s behind us.

That we have to carry regret, shame, or disappointment,

and that is has to dictate how today will unfold, at least on some level.

It doesn’t.

At any moment, you can let go of who you’ve been and decide to be someone new–to do something differently.

It won’t always be easy, but it is always a choice you can make.

You can either dwell and stay stuck, or let go and feel free.

Give yourself space to fill with good feelings about the beautiful day in front of you–and the beautiful tomorrow you’re now creating.