Living Life Fully’s Daily Pick-Me-Up

Every once in a while, it just seems appropriate to use someone else’s words when they strike me the right way.  So today, here are some words that are a definite pick-me-up:

For most of life, nothing wonderful happens.  If you don’t enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are you’re not going to be very happy.  If someone bases his happiness or unhappiness on major events like a great new job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn’t going to be happy much of the time.  If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness.

Andy Rooney

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I just saw an episode of an old television show in which some characters had found a fountain of youth, and they were more than willing to compromise their principles and their integrity in order to partake of the liquid that promised them youth that had long before gone away.  It’s funny how every time we see shows like that, there are negative consequences for desiring to work against nature, against the “natural” order of things.  We’re meant to get old, and we should just accept that fact and live with it rather than trying to regain our youth.

But what does it mean to get old?  Does it necessarily mean that we give up things that we enjoy?  I don’t believe so for a minute.  A few years ago, I weighed right around 200 pounds, and the fastest I could run a mile was over seven minutes.  That’s okay, people told me, you’re just growing older.  These things happen.  But I wasn’t willing to accept that explanation–it didn’t feel right to me.  I knew I was gaining weight because I was eating more and exercising less than I was used to, and it didn’t feel at all that it was inevitable to me.  To make the long story short, today I weigh 170 and I can run a mile in less than five and a half minutes.  That’s not such a big deal to most people, but since I love to run, it’s important to me.

I’m not trying to be young again, and I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone.  But this body that I’ve been given is a great gift, and why shouldn’t I try to make it work as well as it can for as long as it can?  Losing my abilities and growing older and heavier and slower would have been a choice for me–the choice to be complacent and not to go through the hard work of losing weight and working on my fitness levels.  I’m not trying to recapture my youth–I’m just trying to keep my body functioning at healthy levels no matter what age I’m at.

There obviously is no fountain of youth, except for the one that’s in our minds.  Our minds can keep us young at heart and young in spirit, but it’s up to us to make decisions if we also want to allow our bodies to age gracefully and to stay healthy.  It’s not a negative thing to desire some of the things of youth, but it can be if we desire those things to come to us from an outside source, like some silly fountain.  Those things come from inside of us, from our hearts, from our spirits.  And only we can access them there.

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Over the last decade or so of my life, I’ve made a major change that I believe has led to more positive results than anything else I’ve ever done.  It was a very simple change, one that anyone can do, but it’s given me more than I ever imagined I could get from something so simple.  I did two things that were very important:  first, I started reading books that encouraged me, that gave me hope, that inspired me, and that taught me important lessons on life and living and myself.  And second, I took the words in those books to heart–I didn’t just read them and put them down, but I read them and pondered their messages and believed what their authors had to say.  I haven’t read blindly, believing everything I’ve read without question, but I have given the writers the benefit of the doubt that they might be right, that what they say may be effective if I just give it a chance.

In choosing my reading material carefully, I’ve given myself a great opportunity to learn a lot of stuff that never is covered in a classroom.  I’ve given myself input into my life from people that I’ll never meet, but who have learned a lot in their lives and have done their best to share what they’ve learned with others.  I’ve been able to learn from people who see the world in completely different ways than I do, and they’ve been able to open my eyes to new perspectives, new thoughts, new ideas.  I’ve felt my mind and my heart and my spirit open up to completely new levels, levels that I never would have reached had I not taken the time and made the effort to read the books that I’ve read.

There are many different reasons for reading.  Reading for entertainment can be a lot of fun.  Reading to learn and to grow and to change our lives can be invigorating and exciting.  Think about it–if you read twenty books during the next year on fishing, you’ll become an expert on fishing, and you’ll be one of the best-read fishers out there.  If you read twenty books over the next year on self-improvement or spiritual growth or the law of attraction or meditation or simply about getting the most out of life, guess what you’ll become an expert in?  That’s right–and how do you think something like that will affect your daily life, the way you feel as you go about being the person you are, living the life you live?

All it takes is a decision and follow-through on that decision.  All it takes is some perseverance and some initiative.  And if you don’t like reading, perhaps listening to audio books would be a good compromise for you.  No matter which way you look at it, though, putting good and positive and encouraging words into your mind and your heart can only do you good, as long as you give the words respect enough to consider them, and to consider their relevance to your life and who you are.  There are many great teachers out there, but they’re not all in the classrooms.  And even if they were, would they be giving classes that we can re-visit whenever we want?  We can when we have the books, and we can remind ourselves of important lessons over and over again.

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We all have centers.  These are places in ourselves at which we’re in balance, at which we feel comfortable with life and living.  We each have a state of being where we feel peaceful, calm, and in control.  These are our centers, and we would do well to try to find this place, this way of being, in order to bring more peace to our lives.

To a dancer, everything comes from the center.  It’s easy to see a new dancer who hasn’t yet found his or her center, for that dancer looks to be out of control, even clumsy.  When the dancer dances from his or her center, though, the rest of the body follows, showing the control and the form that the dancer has worked hard to gain.

When I’m coming from my center, things rarely get out of hand.  When I take a deep breath to center myself, a hectic situation calms down.  When I take a step back from a tense situation to see the bigger picture, I allow myself to access my center and bring a much more effective approach to what’s going on.  My decision-making improves, my trust in myself grows, and my ability to help others improves, also.  Like the dancer, my actions seem more compact, more together, more in control simply because I’ve chosen to access a part of myself that is always there, but not always used.

Some people will call the center “God.”  Others will call it “spirit,” and still other wouldn’t call it anything at all.  But it’s there in each of us, and one of the keys to doing things well and being effective is to be able to access our centers.  When we can do this, the dance of our lives will be simpler and so much more beautiful. . . .

If we locate the kingdom of heaven within, we can experience the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Susan Santucci

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Sometimes I like being out of touch.  In fact, I like it enough that I’ve gotten rid of my cell phone–I wasn’t feeling comfortable any more with the idea of having to be responsive to whoever chose to call whenever they chose to call.  We human beings have gotten by pretty well for a very long time without having the ability to call home to ask what flavor of ice cream we should buy at the store, and I want to keep getting by without having a device that keeps me tied to other people for no real reason.

Now if I or my wife were seriously ill, then I’d have a cell phone.  In a case like that, it seems that the benefits of getting news quickly far exceeds the loss of my ability to be alone when I want to be.  And there are those who would argue that I could just turn the phone off if I wanted to.  But then my question would be why I was paying a company fifty dollars a month for something that I usually turned off anyway?

People are becoming addicted to these devices and the idea of being able to reach other people at any time.  Students at school check their screens every two or three minutes to see if they have any new text messages–keeping their focus far away from the lesson at hand.  It seems to be getting harder and harder for people to spend time alone, either by choice or even not by choice.  For me, though, my time alone is among the most precious time of my life, for it’s then that I do some of my best reflection, some of my best thinking.  It’s then when I feel connections to the world around me, to nature and to life and to God.

I was at a wedding on the west coast once with someone from the east coast.  She had her cell phone with her, and her husband–who tends to be a controlling, insecure person–called her just about every hour.  So every hour her focus shifted from where she was, in a new and completely different environment, back home to her husband.  She didn’t have much of a chance at all to give her undivided attention to experiencing the new place, and she left not knowing much at all about where she’d been, but knowing almost every detail of what her husband had done during her three days away.

Sometimes we just think that we need something.  Especially if we’re paying for it, for then our need justifies the cost.  But do we really need to be able to be in touch with others all the time?  Or do we need to be by ourselves every once in a while to get in touch with the deeper parts of ourselves?  Who knows–it may even be a good thing that you have the chance to choose whatever flavor of ice cream you want.  Making decisions like that help us to develop problem-solving skills and help us to learn to think through things.  People have been buying groceries for years without having a phone to check with someone else, and when all is said and done, they got by just fine, didn’t they?

All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal

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One of the things that’s so fascinating about teaching is the number of people that you meet.  At my school I don’t meet just students; I also meet lots of other teachers, most of whom do things very differently in their classrooms than I ever would or could.  I couldn’t even imagine structuring my classes the ways they approach theirs, or working the ways they do, or managing discipline problems the ways they do.  And there was a time in my life when that would have bothered me, when I would have wondered how they could possibly be so unenlightened that they weren’t doing things the way that I do things.

That’s in my past now, though.  I recognize now that one of the most valuable parts of having so many different people doing things in such different ways is that our students are exposed to a variety of methods for dealing with issues and problems, and they can see that no one method is necessarily better or more effective.  I’ve chosen my methods because they fit who I am as a person, because they feel more genuine to me as a human being.  But other teachers need to find their own methods, and those methods have to fit who they are as human beings.  The world is an incredibly and beautifully diverse place, and that diversity requires us to do things that are true and unique to ourselves, if we’re to honor that diversity.

So when I hear that another person has chosen to deal with problems in a way that I never would choose, I now don’t think of concepts like “right” and “wrong.”  I don’t think that the person should have chosen another way (unless it’s obvious that they’ve harmed someone with their actions).  Now I look for the wisdom in their choice, and I try to keep in mind that just because something doesn’t work for me doesn’t mean that it’s not completely right for someone else.

You are who you are, and I am who I am.  I’ll let you be who you are, and I hope that you’ll let me be who I am.  And just because I like chocolate ice cream doesn’t mean that I’ll expect you to like it, too.  Because you are a beautiful and unique creation of our creator, and you’ve been given your own tastes, your own ways of looking at things.  And when you’re true to who you are, you’re contributing something quite beautiful to our world.  And why would I want to change that?

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I’ve always had doubts about what I’m doing.  Whether it’s been working as a teacher, being in the Army, being a student, or doing any of the other jobs that I’ve done, I often start wondering what life would be like if I were doing something else.  I get tempted by jobs that seem easier, or more rewarding, or that pay better.  I think of what it would be like to lose the stress, to be able to work less and earn more, to have a better schedule that fits my personality and my body’s cycles better.

Since I started teaching high school last year–after many years of teaching college–I’ve found myself wondering more often than ever whether I’m in the right place, or doing the right thing.  The number of frustrations in this particular line of work is incredible, from students who aren’t willing to do any work at all to administrative demands to frustrations with curricula, among many other things.

But on the days I start to get frustrated and I start to wonder, I’ve developed a set of habits that I believe help me to see things more clearly in the midst of my frustration.  The first and most important thing that I do on the down days is to remind myself how I feel on the up days.  Not what happens on the up days, not what I’ve done on the up days, but how I feel on those days.  After all, it’s that feeling that’s important, for it’s that feeling that helps to make those days what they are.  Sometimes we get it backwards and think that nice times make us feel good, rather than seeing how our positive feelings contribute to making those times nice.

Secondly, I remind myself that life and God have a plan for me.  I am where I am for a reason–it’s not a mistake or a coincidence.  I’m not working with the wonderful human beings at my school for no reason at all.  I’m there because I have something important to contribute–possibly many things–and because I have something to learn–probably many things.  And where I am must be the best place for all that to happen, or I wouldn’t be there, now would I?

Finally, I remind myself that this, too, must pass.  These feelings will pass, this frustration will pass.  And probably sooner rather than later, as long as I let it.

Over the last few days I’ve been on ups and downs, feeling completely at home and feeling completely out of place.  But today I got an email reminder that I am where I’m supposed to be, and it’s up to me to recognize that fact, accept it, and appreciate it.  Life and God have some pretty good things in mind for me, and I can find out what they are as long as I’m accepting and willing to allow things to be as they are so that I can add my contribution to the world in which I live, and to the people with whom I’m sharing my life.

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One thing I always encourage my students to do is to write from the heart.  You see, there are ways that they’re expected to write–in certain forms and styles, with a great number of expectations from their teachers.  And that way of writing is a valid form of expression that’s particularly effective across a wide range of circumstances.  But it allows for little heart and spirit.  It allows for little creativity.  It keeps people focused on topics and certain ideas, which is helpful in sharing pure information, but it doesn’t allow for much humanity to come through.

So I encourage my students to allow their hearts and souls to be expressed in much of their writing.  I ask them to explore their ideas, to trust their ideas, to present their ideas with love and passion.  Their writing should be a reflection of who they are as people, not a reflection of what they are as students, yet most students learn writing as a performance art, and they write for grades rather than satisfaction or fulfillment.

I’m not always successful in my efforts.  Many students pay me no mind, and they continue to write in their same styles, never making the effort to spread their wings and soar into uncharted territories.  But that’s okay, I guess–that usually means that they simply haven’t become ready to try something new and different, to trust themselves and their expression.

In what ways do you stick to the tried and true, rather than heeding the voice inside, the voice that tells you that there’s much more to what you’re doing than the straightforward, non-creative expectations of others?  Do you ever strive to create things that aren’t the best you can do, that don’t reflect your heart and soul and spirit, just because it’s easier that way?  Or perhaps no one ever encouraged you to allow your feelings to enter your work, to strive to make your creations a reflection of your unique, one-of-a-kind self. . . .

I know that I don’t always allow myself to put my heart and soul and spirit into everything I create.  Nowadays, at least I don’t create for other people–but I also don’t create as a simple form of expression.  If I can get one student, though, to learn to write as an expression of his or her inner self, then perhaps I’ll have helped to bring something very important into the world, even if I’m not the creator of the expression myself.

Be brave enough to live creatively.  The creative
is the place where no one else has ever been.

Alan Alda

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Sometimes I forget that at the very core of my being, I am a spirit.  I’m not simply this human being on this planet at this particular time–rather, I am a spiritual being here for a limited visit to this planet.  This experience is not the be-all and end-all of who I am.  I have eternal feelings because I’m an eternal being here for an experience in this corporeal form that I’m borrowing for a certain amount of time.

And if this is true (and I’m convinced it is), then it’s important that I not neglect my spirit.  It’s important that I not get so caught up in the non-spiritual things in my life that I make my spirit suffer from a lack of attention and a lack of development.  I need to choose my activities carefully so that I can continue to learn things that will benefit the very core of my being–the spirit that shares in oneness with all the other spirits that are here on this planet with us, in any form that they happen to be in.

It’s also important that I pass on lessons that can be important to those other spirits.  The lessons I teach in a classroom don’t need to be limited to a process or to information–they also can relate to the spirits who are my students.  Perhaps something that I’ve learned in life can help someone else to reach an important point in their existence, and they can learn it only if I pass it on.  There are millions of great people–great spirits–on this planet, and I most certainly can contribute to their well being.

I celebrate my spirit.  I hold it in great regard, for it is exactly I.  There is no difference between the “I” who is sitting at a computer and writing and the spirit who is in touch with the eternal, who is one with all there is.  The only way that spirit is pushed down is through my neglect, through my forgetfulness, and I hope to be much less forgetful and much less neglectful–and much more strongly in touch–with each day that I pass on this beautiful planet that’s been given to us as a wonderful gift to help our development.

Whether you know it or not, one of the most important relationships in your life is with your Soul.  Will you be kind and loving to your Soul, or will you be harsh and difficult?  Many of us unknowingly damage our Souls with our negative attitudes and actions or by simple neglect.  By making the relationship with your Soul an important part of your life, however, by honoring it in your daily routine, you give your life greater meaning and substance.  Use your experiences–all of them–as opportunities to nourish your Soul!

Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross

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How often do you start to focus on things that you want rather than things that you have?  How many times do you see something new that you would love to have, only to start feeling a bit down because you can’t afford it or don’t have room for it?  People in this world are very good at coming up with new things that somehow start us down the path of dissatisfaction once we start to focus on what we don’t have rather than on the things that we have already.

How much do you value all that you have in life right now?  How much do you appreciate the gifts and the people and the things in your life?  How often do you step back and look in an objective way at all of the cool and valuable things that are in your life, seeing them for the great parts of your life that they are?

The goal of marketers and advertisers is to make us lose our satisfaction in what we have so that we’ll go out and buy something that we don’t have.  If they can accomplish this, they can make more money for their companies.  If they get you to want a new car because yours isn’t big enough, then they’ve created dissonance in your life, and you’ll need to act to resolve that feeling if you want it to go away.  Unfortunately, the only way that most of us know how to deal with such dissonance is to buy the thing that we want, to attain the goods or materials that we think will make us more satisfied.  But we can also deal with that dissonance by realizing the source of our new desires or “needs,” and that can help us to stay more centered, more peaceful, in our lives.

If I’m on a diet, I want food.  If I give in to that desire, I put more calories into my body than the diet will stand, and my efforts to lose weight might have been wasted.  If I’m trying to save money and I want something new that I really don’t need, then all of my fiscal discipline will have been for naught once I buy something that ruins my budget, and all the rationalization in the world won’t make any difference.

Yes, we do have needs.  But just how many of our desires are based on needs?  My guess is that it’s a relatively small number.  Once we can start looking at what we have with a strong sense of appreciation and acceptance, then we can look at many of our other wants as simply that–wants.  And we can realize that fulfilling those wants won’t necessarily make us happier or more fulfilled people–rather, they can create other areas of regret in our lives due to having done something that certainly hasn’t helped us, and that may even cause us harm.

I have a great deal in life.  Sometimes, though, my focus shifts to things that I don’t have–but want–and then I lose sight of just how blessed I am to have what I do.  It’s a shame when that happens, but as I grow older I find that it happens much less.  And it’s always up to me to do what I can to continue to make it happen even less as time goes on.

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