Living Life Fully’s Daily Pick-Me-Up

Encourage someone who needs encouragement–or even someone who doesn’t seem to need it.

Make a promise to a young person. . . and keep it!

Not criticize anyone for anything, but instead look for the sense that I may not understand in things that other people do.

Make myself do without something that I may want.

Make it the first day of my new diet, or exercise program, or reading program; or I can register for a course in college or at a community center.

Buy a copy of a song I’ve wanted to hear for ages, and sing along with it.

Start a book that I’ve been meaning to start reading. . . or writing.

Give thanks for the day and all the beauty and wonder that it contains–and try to see all of each that I can.

Recognize that everyone is going through their own trials and realize that I can have no idea at all of what they’re feeling–what kind of pain they’re in, or what kind of sorrow they feel.  And I can feel and show compassion for them all.

Listen to someone else without putting my two cents’ worth in.

Enjoy the day for the truly precious gift that it is, and enjoy the other people in my world for the truly precious gifts that they are, whether I see their gifts or not!

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It used to be pretty common for people to use the term “natural high,” and it seems kind of a shame that we don’t use it much anymore.  It’s a pretty nice term, and it explains well what I feel when I’m in a natural setting.  When I’m in a forest and the air is much more oxygen-rich, when I’m on a mountaintop or mountainside with miles of beautiful landscape before me, when I’m beside an ocean and I can smell the surf and the immensity of the sea, when I can experience the amazing silence of the desert–then I know that I’m experiencing a natural high.

There really is no limit to all that nature offers us.  The only real limits to what we can get from nature are in how much we’ll take–and how much we’ll put ourselves in situations in which we can receive from her.  In nature there’s peace, there’s fascination, there’s excitement, there are innumerable lessons in life and living, there are beauty and wonder.  But how much of that do we allow into our lives as a part of who we are?

Try it sometime–put yourself in a position in which you can get something from nature, even if that position is merely a walk in the park.  And then allow yourself to take it.  Notice things, feel things, see things, experience them.  Only if you allow yourself to feel what nature has to offer can you let nature be one of your best teachers of all.

Sometimes when I find that I need to be reminded of the power of nature, I watch DVD’s with beautiful scenery of mountains and forests and deserts.  The wonderful scenery obviously is no substitute for the real thing, but it does serve as a great reminder of what’s out there, waiting for me, when and if I want to take advantage of it.  Natural highs are a real part of life for me, and I want to do my best always to make them a common experience for me.

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.

Eleonora Duse

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Sometimes I ask myself what I can do today that I haven’t done for a long while.  What can I add to my life, right here and right now?  What can I decide to do to make my life a little brighter, or my self a little happier?

There are lots of things that I can do.  I can dance.  I can sing, listen to music, watch a great movie, or read a great book.  I can read an uplifting article, I can visit a museum, I can walk through a store that I like, I can visit a friend that I like to visit.  I can exercise, I can run, I can drink a glass of cold milk and have a couple cookies with it.

I can write a card to a friend, or I can have a bowl of ice cream.  I can put on a favorite episode of a favorite show, or I can sit quietly and enjoy the silence.  I can visit an uplifting website, I can take a nice long walk, I can take a nice short walk, I can clean a little, I can sit outdoors and enjoy the fresh air.

I can focus on a lovely memory of a special person or special people in my life.  I can read an uplifting self-help book, I can take a nice hot bubble bath, or I can pray quietly and peacefully for as long as I wish.  I can call someone I haven’t talked to for a while, I can go for a bike ride, I can go for a drive in the country, I can take a nap.  I can read some inspiring quotations, I can write down my goals and aspirations for life, or I can write down all that I appreciate in life and about life.

There are many things that I can do to pick myself up, to make my day brighter, to get more out of the present moment.  All it takes is a decision to do something for myself, and once I make that decision, I just need to do it.  Life gives me many opportunities, and I guess it’s a bit of a shame that I take advantage of so few of them.  It’s all up to me whether I do so or not!

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I was thinking about a song yesterday, and it reminded me of another song title that has a lot to offer me in my life.  There was a song about fifteen years ago called “Right Here, Right Now,” a title that didn’t mean nearly as much to me then as it does now, after many years of studying the value of the present moment.

We tend to give the present moment short shrift, taking it for granted and not recognizing the amazing potential that it holds for us.  Most of us don’t realize that our moments aren’t that great sometimes because of what we choose to do with each moment, or choose not to do.  We make our moments or let them slip by, and then all those moments work together to become an hour, a day, a week. . . a life.  And one day we’ll be looking back at our lives, either glad of all that we’ve done with our moments, or disappointed in what we’ve failed to do with those moments.

Right now I can choose to do nothing (and rest is sometimes the best thing we can do with a moment!), I can choose to do something simple for someone else or myself, I can choose to begin a project, I can choose to watch a good piece of entertainment–there are many, many things that I can do with my right now.  I can encourage someone, teach someone, help someone–or even hurt someone.  And while I hope to choose well and create a series of moments that will help me to feel fulfilled and happy with my life, I know that sometimes I’m going to choose unwisely.  And when those times come, I hope to accept them with dignity and move on to the next moment, and do with it something fun, unique, and interesting.  After all, life’s more fun that way!

The past is gone, and I don’t know what’s coming in the future.  It’s obvious that if I want my life to be whole, to resonate with feeling and integrity and value and health, there’s only one way I can influence the future:  by owning the present.  If I can relate to this moment with integrity, and then this moment with integrity, and then this moment with integrity, wakefully, then the sum of that is going to be very different over time, over mind moments that stretch out into what we call a life, than a life that is lived mostly on automatic pilot, where we are reacting and being mechanical and are therefore somewhat numb.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

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It’s kind of cool how a song that came out when I was just a kid can come back to remind me of something very important so many years later.  I was listening to an old Beatles song the other day, and its message struck me very strongly as something that I’ve discovered recently for myself is very true in life:  that sometimes the best thing that we can do is “Let it be.”

“When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom:  Let it be.”

Most people aren’t at all comfortable with the idea of letting things be.  Doing so means that they have to let go of some of their control over situations, some of their idea of being able to make things happen–or prevent them from happening.  Most of us seem to have a tendency to want to deal with our troubles by fixing everything, by making everything better, but sometimes the best thing that we can do is to allow situations to resolve themselves, to allow things and situations run their course.  Often when we do this, we find that the natural resolution to times of trouble is much more positive than we ever could imagine on our own.

“And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me; shine until tomorrow, let it be.”

Our times of trouble will happen, but in every cloudy night there still is a light shining, sometimes many lights, but we close our eyes to them when we focus on our troubles.  If we are able to “let it be,” though, then our minds won’t be so strongly focused on the clouds, for we won’t be trying to make them go away.  We’ll be satisfied to let them be, knowing that they will soon pass, and then we’ll be able to keep our minds on more positive things like the lights that we otherwise wouldn’t see.

“Let it be.”  Seven beautiful letters that make three beautiful words.  Words that if we take them to heart can help us to approach life in much healthier ways, words that can help us to see the beauty and wonder of the processes of life, if we let life be and stop trying to make life what we think life should be.

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The last four or five days of my life have been spent for the most part moving.  Due to circumstances that we didn’t foresee at all, we ended up needing one more bedroom than we had, so we had to find another place to live.  We’ve gone for four days now without Internet or phone service, and we now wake up in a different place than we woke up last week.  It’s not a problem at all, just something we need to deal with.  And it seems to me that that’s how most change is:  not a problem unless we see it as one–rather, just something that we have to deal with as well as we can.

We had no idea six weeks ago when we signed a new lease that we’d be needing another bedroom.  We had no idea two months ago that we’d be moving soon.  But change comes sometimes quite suddenly, almost brutally, and it’s up to us to make that change what we wish it to be, rather than allowing the change to disrupt our lives or make us miserable.

Change can be frightening and intimidating, and once we view it that way, it can have power over us.  Change can make us feel small or insignificant, and guess what happens to us once we feel that way?  Often, we start acting that way.  But then we’re also letting change control our actions and our feelings, and that never can lead to positive things in our lives.

If we simply accept change as an inevitable part of life, then we can allow it to be a part of who we are.  We can allow change to take its course without trying to control the outcomes of change, and in doing so we make ourselves stronger people.  It seems paradoxical that allowing things to happen rather than controlling them can make us stronger, but isn’t it usually the weak person who tries to create outcomes to compensate for feelings of inadequacy or insecurity?

We didn’t necessarily ask for this change, but we’re not going to shrink from it, either.  We’re going to roll with it and see where it takes us, and allow it to take us to places we never might have thought of going.  Change comes about to help us to grow, for the lack of change causes stagnation.  I’d rather flow with the river than stagnate in a pool of water that never changes, never refreshes.  I’m even grateful for change, and the fact that it allows me to become more than I was before change came about.  Fighting it does no good, and often it can do a lot of damage, so it’s important that we let change take us where it wishes, for there are great treasures in many places that we never imagined we’d visit.

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Mohandas Gandhi once said something very interesting:  “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

I think about this statement from time to time, and it resonates very strongly within me–mostly because I don’t follow the advice nearly as much as I wish I could.  Sometimes I see things that I would love to have changed, but I certainly don’t live out the example of that change.  In some things I’m pretty good at it, but by the time I die I hope to be better in many more areas.

For example, do you wish that more people were honest and straightforward in all that they do?  Then it’s up to you to be honest and straightforward in all of your dealings with others.

Do I want to see more friendliness in the world?  Then it’s up to me to be more friendly.

Do we want to experience more compassion and kindness and loving in the world?  Then guess what?  We need to live more compassionate and kind and loving lives.

Do you wish that people you worked with worked harder or better or were more focused on their tasks?  Then it’s up to you to provide the model for them–the change isn’t going to happen without someone to model it.

It’s important to keep in mind that not everything that we model will be followed by others.  If we think it will be, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment and frustration.  But if we truly want a change to come about, we have to be that change, or there’s no real use in hoping for it to come about.  If we don’t live it ourselves, we’re simply depending on others to do something without any sort of motivation or encouragement, and that happens rarely.

Be the change.  Be who you are, and be true to yourself.  These are approaches to life that can give us great rewards if we stay true to them, and if we allow ourselves to live them.

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I just heard of someone who was rejected as a potential contributor to a website because his writing used the personal “I,” and wasn’t objective enough.  This website wants all of its writing to be completely objective, with no personal experience at all–which is another way of saying that it wants the writing to be dry and personality-free.  I’ve been teaching writing at the college level for over fifteen years now, and I know from experience that while there is a certain value in the ability to write completely objectively, that type of writing is useful only when there’s a great need to get facts completely accurate.  And the idea of considering the use of the personal “I” to be poor writing is simply hogwash, for what do any of us really have to share with others that can help them other than our personal experiences?

People can learn from my failures, from your successes, from her trials and errors.  When I read writing that shows insight and intuition and passion, that writing strikes me very deeply, and it affects me on the level of my humanity.  When I read writing that focuses solely on facts and figures and objectivity, it affects me only on the level of my intellect, and that really isn’t very deep at all.  It certainly doesn’t touch me as a human being who’s sharing this world with many other human beings.

Of course, some people share too much.  But far too many people don’t share enough to allow us to see their humanity, their intellect, their personality.  Because they’ve been told so much not to use “I” in their writing, they think that doing so somehow is poor writing.  From experience I know that that’s garbage–writing touches me deeply when someone is sharing their own experiences, hopes, dreams, and passions.

You have a lot of valuable experience inside of you.  Perhaps it’s time for you to start sharing it with others.  Perhaps it’s time for you to trust that your experience is interesting and valuable, and when you do so you just may find that other people find solace and comfort when they realize that they share with you many of the same thoughts, feelings, hopes, frustrations–you name it.  When you share with others, you help to give them a sense of validation for their feelings, and you’re helping them in ways that you probably couldn’t even imagine.

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I don’t think that most of us really consider the importance of this statement.  After all, light is just there, something to be taken for granted, something that we’ve all had, all of our lives, unless we don’t have the gift of sight.  But even the sightless have much to be grateful for in light, for light is the very essence of all that we are–virtually everything that we eat, for example, begins as light making its way to the earth from the sun.  Without that light, we would have no nutrients at all to keep us alive.

But light gives us so much more.  Colors are simply the way that light reflects on different kinds of surfaces, and colors are one of the most important elements of our lives.  They can cheer us up when we’re down, and they can mellow us out when we’re feeling stressed.  Artists use them to create their artwork, and if it weren’t for the light that hits that work, it would mean nothing to any of us.

Light gives us warmth, too.  Not so much in the very far north in the middle of winter, but it does bring higher temperatures that make the cold less intense.   It allows us to function and to go places through difficult terrains, for it’s the light that helps us to see where we’re going.  We’ve even learned how to make light through fire and through the use of electricity, and that allows us to do things during times when previously we wouldn’t have been able to do anything at all.

If there’s something in this world that we all share an incredible debt to, then it’s light.  Without light, none of us would even be alive, and none of us would have the chances to accomplish things with our lives.  “Let there be light,” God said, and one of the most important prerequisites to life was created.  I wish sometimes that we all could appreciate it just a bit more than we do, for then we might see the common thread that light contributes to all of our lives, all the time.

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I think that it’s a shame that so many adults have forgotten how fun it can be to play.  There are lots of advantages to playing, including allowing our creativity to flow freely, keeping ourselves in shape, lowering the levels of stress in our lives, and just plain having fun without having to justify it or quantify it.  Most of the adults that I know, though, have given up on playing, and they pay a pretty hefty price for the loss.

Play can be one of the most therapeutic and healthy activities that we undertake–given, of course that we find something good and fun to play at.  Play allows us simply to be, without having to do anything special or be anyone special.  There are tons of things we can play at, from cars to house to space exploration, or we can use a game of cards or a board game to allow our playful sides to come out.  As long as we don’t take what we’re playing at too seriously and worry about whether we’re winning or losing, we can have a lot of fun at almost anything we do.  And once we start playing, we find that time slows down, life gets easier, and we end up with something fun to look back on.

I used to go to church picnics and be the only adult playing with the kids.  The other adults would sit around and talk about the same things that they talked about at home and in church, while the kids would be over having fun, playing tag or catch or whatever else they could think of.  I always opted for being with the kids.  I had plenty of time to talk over the same things with the same people, but I didn’t always have opportunities for sharing energy with young people who had plenty of energy to spare.  Having fun and playing allow us to use our energy very productively and very wisely–they have a rejuvenating if we only let them.

Do you have a chance to play today?  I hope that you take that chance and make the most of it.  Play can stimulate your mind and your body and your creativity and your self, and it can give you back much, much more than you give to it.  All you have to do is decide that you want to do it, and it will take you places you had forgotten existed, places that you knew very well when you were young and play was a major part of your life.

The real joy of life is in its play.  Play is anything we do for the joy and love of doing it, apart from any profit, compulsion, or sense of duty.  It is the real living of life with the feeling of freedom and self-expression.  Play is the business of childhood, and its continuation in later years is the prolongation of youth.

Walter Rauschenbusch

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