Living Life Fully’s Daily Pick-Me-Up

I’m in the process of reading a book called If It’s Going to Be It’s up to Me by Robert Schuller.  He starts his introduction out in a very interesting way, with over a page of questions.  And they’re good questions that got me thinking about some very important things.  Questions like, “Where are you headed?” and “What are your hopes and what are your hurts?” and “Your emotions–are they your friends?  Or foes?”  As I read through the list, I could feel my mind starting to work on some of the questions almost immediately, and I recognized some good topics that it would do me well to focus on for a bit.

When I think of the best teachers I’ve had, I realize that the best ones for me were the ones that asked the best questions.  I realize that the important changes in my life have come when I’ve asked myself questions such as, “Do I really want to be doing this for a very long time?”  Whenever we ask a question, there’s an answer implied in it somewhere, and as long as we’re honest in our question-asking–and we don’t ask questions that already have our own desired answers as part of them–then we can make a great impact on our lives by learning to ask ourselves really, really good questions.

Rainer Maria Rilke said that we must learn to love the questions themselves.  In his Letters to a Young Poet, he writes, “Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

I want to ask myself the good questions, not the ones with judgment built into them, not the ones that point fingers or imply wrong or that are leading or misleading.  Because I know that in my life, one of my greatest strengths is pondering questions and coming up with several different answers for each question.  And I can choose among the answers to find the ones that are most likely to contribute greatly to my happiness, my peace of mind, and my joy.  It’s important for me always to find questions that I love, and then live them.

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I read a fascinating sentence from a man named Stephen C. Paul.  It’s pretty simple:  “Every time you let go of something limiting, you create space for something better.”  I love the sentence for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I’ve spent a lot of time and effort in my life holding on to fears and things like anger and resentment.  This strategy, believe it or not, never has helped me to improve my life or to be any happier.  And second, as life goes on and I get older I’m starting to realize the amazing importance of letting go of things that serve no real purpose for me or for anyone else, whether I’m letting go of anger or blame or expectations.  Learning to let go of things has been one of the most freeing strategies I’ve ever encountered, and I’m very grateful that I’ve been exposed to the concept.

But I never had seen the results of letting go as a displacement.  Something better comes into my life when I let go of something negative.  When I’m not angry, I can think of peaceful thoughts.  When I have no artificial expectations, I can appreciate what I see and hear without judgment.  When I let go of someone’s unfair criticism of me, I then have room in my thoughts for hearing a beautiful song or writing a nice little poem.

There are better things in the world than the things we hold on to.  But when we occupy our minds with the negative things, we don’t leave much room for the positive things, do we?  So it’s up to us to take charge of our lives and allow ourselves to let go of the things that are taking up precious room in our minds and thoughts.  It may feel somehow gratifying to see ourselves as martyrs and obsess about someone’s unfair judgment of us, but just what does that get us other than a false gratification?  Absolutely nothing, you may say, and you’re right!

We seem to assume that anything that’s supposed to come into our lives can do so, just because.  But how often do we consider the possibility that we’re keeping out some of the best things by occupying ourselves with some of the worst?  After all, if I spend the next ten minutes being angry at someone, just how much of those ten minutes are going to be spent thinking about positive, hopeful things?

I want to make room.  I want to leave room for anything new that’s positive, anything positive that’s new.  And I don’t want that space to be filled with the negative stuff that we tend to call “baggage,” that stuff that by its very nature keeps us down when we wish to move up.  And it’s up to me to make that space by letting go, isn’t it?

We must learn to let go, to give up, to make room for the things we have prayed for and desired.

Charles Fillmore

Living Life Fully’s page on “letting go.”

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I know a few girls on a sports team who carry around with them a pretty huge burden.  As the best players on the team, they find that there are huge expectations for them to perform at extremely high levels all the time.  And if the team happens to lose, pretty much all of the responsibility for the loss–as well as the coach’s dissatisfaction–falls on their shoulders.  Add to this burden all of the things that happen at home, with family, with friends, at school, etc., and it becomes pretty clear that there’s a lot of pressure on these girls.

I was talking to one of them the other day when I got an idea.  I walked over to a bookcase and pulled out several very heavy textbooks and brought them back to her.

“Will you do me a favor?” I asked her.  “I’d like you to carry these books around all day, and never put them down for any reason, not even for a second.”

“Are you crazy?” she asked me, laughing.  “No way!”

“Well,” I told her, “these books present you with a pretty clear choice.  They’re extremely heavy, and they’re visible and you can hold them.  But the emotional and mental burdens that we carry around aren’t physical things, so we often don’t realize when we’re carrying them around.  But we still have a choice–we still can choose not to carry around something that someone else tries to burden us with.  We have to be aware of what’s going on, and we have to be willing to make a conscious decision, but that decision certainly isn’t impossible to make.”

And as I spoke, I realized that I often need to take my own advice.  I think that next time someone wants to burden me with a problem or issue that really isn’t mine to be burdened with, I’m going to think about some very heavy textbooks.  And then I’m going to decide not to carry that burden with me, and in the process make my life much more pleasant.

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I’m completely convinced that many people are stressed out, unhappy, and even ill because they don’t allow themselves to rest enough.  They don’t give themselves enough down days during which they don’t do anything at all other than putter around the house or read a good book or watch a couple of good movies or go for a long walk or two without any thought of work or their other commitments.  They allow themselves to live stressful lives without giving themselves hope for downtime, and they force themselves to endure continuous strife without giving themselves much-needed rest in order to re-energize themselves.

I’ve driven most of the way across our country quite a few times, and all the way across a few times, too.  One of the things that I most like about our highway system is the rest stop, that place where we can get out of our cars and experience something different.  We get fresh air, we stretch our legs, we get our blood flowing after sitting in one place for a long time, and in general we make ourselves much more fit for going on; we create the conditions to make the next part of our journey more pleasant and much less tedious.

But I know people who tell others with pride just how many days of vacation they have saved up because they never take any.  I know people who in addition to the jobs they do also volunteer for all sorts of other activities, creating a life in which they never have downtime.  I know people who are edgy and finicky and grumpy all the time, yet who insist that they don’t need to take a vacation or even take a few days off from work.

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that a rest area doesn’t just help us to make our trip more pleasant; it also makes the highway a safer place for everyone else on the road.  By making ourselves more fit for driving, we create the conditions that make it less likely for us to fall asleep at the wheel or to allow the road to lull us into a trance.  We give ourselves the chance to pay better attention and to drive better and more safely.  Research indicates that up to 20% of all accidents and 10% of all road fatalities are caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel–and of course, that number of fatalities also includes people who didn’t fall asleep at the wheel who were hit by someone who did.  So while we might say that our grumpiness is “just the way we are,” just how are we affecting other people in our lives–our children and spouses and grandchildren and co-workers and everyone else–just because we’re unwilling to rest and make ourselves more pleasant through a bit of rest?

So how many miles ahead is your next rest stop?  When will you give your self a chance to experience recreation (”re-creation”)?  When will you give your mind and body a chance to re-energize and re-invigorate themselves either by focusing on something completely new and different or by not focusing on anything at all?  On the highway, other people have done us the service of creating rest areas for us.  In our own lives, though, that responsibility lies with us, ourselves, and with no one else.  If we don’t make the effort to make rest a significant part of our lives, then we can be sure that we’re setting ourselves up for much more stress and disease (”dis-ease”) as we try to force our way through life rather than making our way in peace and good health.

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when
you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.
Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller
and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack
of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.

Leonardo Da Vinci

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I’ve been thinking recently about the idea of life as a journey.  It’s a metaphor that seems very appropriate when we think of what we go through in our short times here on this planet.  I’ve also been thinking about ways that we live our lives and things that we do in the process.  So much of what we do in life is very similar to the choices we make and actions we take while on a journey.  Don’t we stop regularly for refueling?  For rest?  Don’t we see all sorts of scenery, beautiful and magnificent as well as tedious and somewhat boring?  Don’t we meet different types of people and learn new and different things from new situations, people, and locations?

I’d like to think that if we can look at life as a journey, then we also can learn the value of the metaphor and take some of the lessons that we learn on the road to help us to live our lives in the best ways that we can.  For example, when I think of what we need to do before we take off on a journey, I know that the first thing that we need to do is prepare.  And we need to be completely aware of what kinds of preparations each type of journey requires.  If I want to travel spontaneously without any plans, then I need very little preparation other than getting my clothes and toothbrush packed, to arrange for transportation, and to make sure I had enough money.  On the other hand, I may want to get from one point to another as quickly as possible; in that case I’d need to plan the roads to take as well as taking care of some of the other basics.

My life’s journey is starting right this moment.  The past already is gone; the future awaits.  The beginning of this journey truly is in every moment I live, if I wish it to be.  So how am I going to prepare for the journey?  Do I need to plan a lot and made sure that everything is ordered and ready to go for me?  Or do I want to go with the flow of life for a while and allow each moment to bring me what it will, and then make the best I can of what each moment brings?  These are just two ways to approach the life I’m about to live, and today I can make the decision about how I’m going to approach my future.  This awareness of the need to make such a decision can be one of the most important things that I have in my life, for only this awareness of the need will cause me to make life decisions that can bring more value to who I am and the life I live.

This is a metaphor that I shall take further, for it’s one that’s close to my heart–one that is very important to me.  Now that I’ve realized that awareness of the need to decide how to approach the journey, as well as awareness of many of the choices available to me, is a vital element of making my life all that it may be, I can look at the options and my decisions much more clearly and make great contributions to my life as well as the lives of others who are within my world.

Find your true path.  It’s so easy to become someone we don’t want
to be, without even realizing it’s happening.  We are created by
the choices we make every day.

Bernie Siegel

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One of my students and I had a short talk about decisions today.  She wants this new semester to be much more positive for her, with much higher grades and much better work and far fewer cut classes.  Basically what she wants to do is make better decisions in her life, and to see better results because of her better decisions.

I can relate to where she’s coming from.  I watched her sabotage herself all last semester by choosing to do things that didn’t help her at all, and that ended up hurting her pretty constantly.  When I watch kids do things like that, I can see myself in many different times in my life, making decision after decision that were more harmful than helpful to me.  I would decide to say certain things that ended up hurting others, I would decide not to go to certain events and end up losing a chance to meet other people, or I would decide not to take risks and end up missing out on some pretty cool things.  I could decide to buy something on credit even though I knew I wouldn’t have the money.  I sometimes decided to put off important things in favor of doing something else that was much less beneficial to me.

I don’t say these things to chastise myself, but just to help myself to keep in mind the importance of the decisions that we make.  In my case, it became very important to me to develop some guidelines for my decisions–and once those guidelines were in place, many decisions became much easier.  Some guidelines are very simple.  If something will be harmful to someone else, then I can’t do it.  If I would need to compromise my principles just for some sort of gain for myself, I won’t do it.  Other guidelines are more complicated–and almost impossible to describe in words.

The bottom line for me is that I’m coming closer to not making any decisions without being conscious of two things: first, that I definitely have a decision to make, and second, that my decisions will cause results.  This awareness has helped me to make my decisions more carefully rather than just automatically–almost by rote–deciding things arbitrarily or capriciously.  And it has improved my quality of life as well as the lives of those people who are affected by my decisions.  I just have to look at my students who are still making bad decisions because they’re still unaware of the concept of decisions having consequences, and I realize that I’m very fortunate to be conscious of most of the decisions that I make.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

Napoleon Bonaparte

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I suppose that if I could choose to be any sort of inanimate object, I might choose to be a lighthouse.  I say that simply because I was just sitting here thinking about a topic to write about and glanced at a calendar I have of lighthouses all over the country.  What a great metaphor the lighthouse is, though–something that provides guidance for others constantly, keeping them safe and sound, just by doing quite simply what it was made to do.  A lighthouse helps sailors find safe passage, and as it does so it’s providing a valuable service to the families of the sailors, the owners of the ships, the people who benefit from the safe passage of the ship. . . all sorts of people in all sorts of situations.

I’d like to think that tomorrow I can shine just as a lighthouse shines, that I can provide guidance and safe passage to people whom I influence in life.  I’d like to think that I have a light that shines for others, a light that they can see and trust and know that it’s there for them whenever they may need it in the future.

A lot of companies and schools use the lighthouse as a symbol, though I’m not quite sure that it symbolizes what they want it to.  After all, doesn’t the fact that a lighthouse is on land mean to the people on the ships “Avoid this place!”?  To me, though, it isn’t the message of the lighthouse that’s important–it’s the light and the trustworthiness of such an important object.

As the song goes, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”  In one version of the song, there’s a verse that goes, “I’m not gonna make it shine, I’m gonna let it shine.”  What a wonderful image this is–there’s no need to try to force things to happen how we think they should through our efforts; rather, just being who we are is providing the world with a very valuable asset.  We all have light, but do we let it shine?  Do other people see that light shining in us?  Is it a beacon for others to see and to respect and to be grateful for?  Or do we keep our light covered out of fear of someone else putting it out somehow?

All I know is that when I see a picture of a lighthouse, I see a picture of something that I’d like to be, even if I’m speaking just metaphorically.  I have light and I want others to see it.  Perhaps when they see my light shining, they’ll find the strength to let their own light shine as bright as it possibly can.

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Over the last few years I’ve read more and more about people in prison being released because new DNA testing procedures have proved their innocence of the charges for which they were imprisoned.  The latest man I read about had been in prison for 26 years, but he’s now a free man.  And while I do see the negative aspect of these situations–this man had spent 26 years of his life in prison for someone else’s crime–I also see an amazing positive side to this phenomenon.  Specifically, I find it very encouraging to see that there are people out there who care enough about other human beings to take the time to develop and administer tests that can be used to vindicate other people, whom they’ll probably never meet, and get them released from prison.

There are lots of great people out there, doing great things that benefit other members of the human race.  The human race isn’t all about greed and selfishness and violence and fanaticism; rather, it’s about giving and sharing and doing things for other people.  It’s about serving and helping.  We human beings get along best when we’re doing things for others, hopefully in a field in which we really enjoy working.  There are doctors who love being doctors who do great things for people, and teachers who love being teachers who also contribute great things to their fellow human beings.  We tend to see more of the unhappy people in the news, though–the teachers- or artists-to-be who live frustrating lives because they’ve chosen a different career in order to make more money and pay more bills.

It gives me a lot of hope to see that people are developing these DNA tests.  It gives me a lot of hope to read about doctors and lawyers who contribute their time and effort to other people who normally wouldn’t be able to afford their services.  I’m hopeful when I see people holding doors open, picking up trash, helping someone else carry something.  We humans have a wonderful ability to help others, and there are plenty of us out there who are making just that their most important goal.  I only hope that I’m able to live up to my potential when it comes to contributing something positive to the lives of others–and I think that if I make that a major focus of mine, then I most certainly will live up to that potential.

 You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Khalil Gibran

Visit our page on giving.

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“Abundance” is a word that always has been pretty foreign to me.  The way I grew up, we didn’t have a whole lot of anything.  As a matter of fact, one of my favorite dinners when I was a kid was noodles and ketchup–and it still is.  I never realized when I was young, though, that we had noodles and ketchup when we didn’t have any money with which to buy “real” food.  So what was our out-of-money meal became one of my favorite dishes of all.

But when you grow up in a family that focuses so much on lack–lack of money, lack of food, lack of clothing (but never a lack of cigarettes!)–it’s easy to stay focused on lack for an entire lifetime.  What a shame this is when the world has given us so much abundance for which we can be very grateful, if only we’ll make the effort and take the time to recognize and appreciate all that’s there!

In my life, I have some great abundances.  Friends, family, co-workers, food, health, gadgets, technological devices, movies, music, books, students, information, opportunities for education and work. . . and the list can go on and on.  And what do I do sometimes?  I focus on the very few things that I don’t have in abundance, such as money.  And I do this even though I firmly believe that God and life will take care of us, all the time.  I’ve gone through times of trials and tribulations, just as everyone has, but the point is that I’ve gone through them.  And everything has turned out okay, usually even better that I would have dared to hope.  The blessings that I can truly count as mine represent an abundance that is deeper and richer than most kings and queens that ever have been in the world could have counted as theirs.  I have more than the vast majority of people on the planet, yet I can still focus on what I lack.  Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

I hope not just to recognize the abundance in my life, but also to appreciate all that I have, all the time.  It’s a lot.  And I hope to keep my focus on that abundance rather than on whatever I may perceive as lacking.  If I can do these things–and it’s only a matter of changing my perspective and keeping track of my thoughts–then I can make my life truly rich indeed!  It already is rich, but if I’m not living like it is, then I’m doing a great disservice to life!
 

Where one sees lack, lack manifests.
Where one sees abundance, abundance is supplied.

Darwin Gross

Visit Living Life Fully’s page on abundance.

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