Living Life Fully’s Daily Pick-Me-Up

My wife and I just visited a town in which we used to live for over eight years.  It was nice being back and seeing a lot of familiar things, but we felt very clearly that the town no longer was ours–we’ve moved on to other things, and we’re living different lives now.  We had absolutely no feelings of regret for having left or of desire to try to pick up our lives in that place.  The experience reminded me that once we have moved on in life, it’s important to let go of the things and places that belong in our past because they’re not a part of our present.

I know a man who tried to go back.  He had moved on and studied new things and developed new ideas and new abilities and talents, but he started to miss what he had left behind.  So he returned to what he thought was going to be the same life he had left behind.  What he hadn’t counted on was the fact that the people who had been his friends had developed new tastes and new habits; the places he had visited regularly had new customers and products; he had changed in the things he liked to do and see and feel.  He wasn’t the same person he had been, yet he expected the relationships with others to be exactly the same as they had been before.  He was truly wanting to start over, as if life were a movie and he could put it in the DVD player, hit play, and experience exactly what he had experienced before.  Life’s not like that, obviously.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with going back.  The problem arises when we go back with certain beliefs and expectations–in that case, our beliefs and expectations about a person or a place usually are out of date.  If we try to make our experience fit to those beliefs and expectations, we’re bound to be disappointed, and we’re bound to spend time trying to make things the way they used to be, and even trying to make people act and believe and think in ways that they used to.

Of course, we’ve all heard the saying “You can’t go home again.”  I believe that the gist of these words is that we can’t go back to the way things were with expectations of our experiences being similar to what they used to be.  But we can go home, even if home has evolved into being something different than what we used to know.  As long as we let home be what it is now and don’t try to make it what we want it to be, then home will welcome us and invite us to be a part of what it is.  Now.

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What would you do if you had uninvited guests in your house?  I’m not talking about friends who drop by unexpectedly, or about someone you know who’s having hard times and who needed a hand.  I’m talking about guests who are there in your house whom you don’t want in your house–guests that you wouldn’t invite into your home for any reason whatsoever.  But there they are.  Wouldn’t you get rid of them?  After all, it is your home, and you want to keep it in the shape that you want it to be in.  You want to have control over the people who make their way into your home, and who stay there.  So if someone is rude and insulting, if they damage your furniture or decorations, if they make your life miserable there in your own home, wouldn’t you get rid of them, get them out of your home?  It’s only logical that we do so.

Why is it, then, that we allow something like unwelcome thoughts to take up residence in our heads?  How can it be that we allow negative thoughts about ourselves, thoughts that are damaging and unpleasant, to live on in our heads, never doing anything to get them out of our minds?  If we were to see our minds and thoughts as homes, how long would we put up with abusive guests?  Or even more importantly, why would we allow the negative influences to hang around longer than the positive ones?

I’m thinking about this because I just had a talk with a friend who told me that she always thinks that the worst is going to happen.  She says that she can’t help it, that the thoughts just come into her mind and stay there.  As we talked, we both started to think about just how one would go about getting rid of such thoughts, and what we can do to evict them from the premises of our minds.  The most important things we can do, of course, is to recognize those thoughts for what they are–just thoughts, and not reality.  Then we have to redirect our thoughts, finding something else to focus on so that our minds can be occupied with more positive things.  It takes effort, just like everything else in life–real mental effort that may be difficult to direct in the appropriate directions.

Our minds are ours, yet we far too often give them over to invaders, to uninvited guests who tend to make us miserable.  Until we recognize those guests, though, and do something about their presence, we put ourselves at their mercy.  Yet when we free ourselves from their influence, we find that our lives become brighter and more enjoyable, all because of a decision we’ve made to keep our minds clear of unwanted thoughts and worries.

Don Juan assured me that in order to accomplish the feat of making myself miserable I had to work in the most intense fashion, and that it was absurd.  I had now realized I could work just the same in making myself complete and strong.  “The trick is in what one emphasizes,” he said.  “We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong.  The amount of work is the same.”

Carlos Castaneda

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Being in Germany once more helps me to remember many of the things that I had once learned about community when I lived here many years ago.  The Germans have a very strong sense of responsibility towards their communities, and they’re willing to enforce laws to maintain their strong communities.  For example, the shops here close fairly early, usually by 6:30, though some now are allowed to stay open until eight p.m.  While Americans find this to be inconvenient at best, this is a system that does have some strong benefits for the community.  For example, since the stores close early, people can get home to their families earlier.  Also, since there’s no late-night commerce, there simply aren’t as many possibilities for second evening jobs that many people tend to get to help pay their bills, so the German people learn to budget their money better.  After all, if you know that you’re going to live on a certain amount of money, then you have to do so, don’t you?  So people tend to spend more time with their families and make their income stretch to fit their lives–two very positive concepts, don’t you think?

I also see a huge difference in the ways that Germans treat their neighbors.  The laws governing noise, litter, the maintenance of houses, traffic, and so on tend to be much stronger here, helping people to live their lives quite pleasantly without worrying about being bothered by their neighbors.  It isn’t a Utopia, of course, but people are able to go about their days and nights without worrying about what their neighbors may do to disturb them; they know that the law is on their side, and that people aren’t afraid to enforce the laws.

It all makes me think about our responsibilities to our own communities, to the people who live around and about us.  Do we live up to those responsibilities?  What exactly are those responsibilities?  Can we be living our lives fully if we’re disturbing other people when we’re trying to do so?  After all, if we truly are living our lives fully, doesn’t that necessarily include the idea of making the lives of others as pleasant as we can?

Contributing to community doesn’t always mean working on the school board or volunteering time to community efforts or serving in public office.  Usually, contributing to a community means keeping our yards clean, not making noise and disturbing others, not littering, or even picking up litter when we see it.  It means making an effort to be a positive member of the community, it means trying to solve community problems in ways that benefit the entire community, not just ourselves.  It means finding our where we fit in, and learning which of our own gifts–when used–can help to benefit the communities in which we live and work.  Communities exist and thrive due to the efforts of all their members, not just a few, and when we keep in mind that our efforts, too, are important, then we can truly give all we can to the other people who share our worlds with us.

Unless we give part of ourselves away, unless we can live with other people and understand them and help them, we are missing the most essential part of our own lives.

Harold Taylor

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I’m getting a pretty good education right now about the value of vacations. We’re in Germany now, in a small town in the Alps, in a Guesthouse where there’s no Internet access at all. This keeps me from checking email, checking website statistics, and all that other stuff that’s part of my “daily” life. I’m loving it. If I had an Internet connection, I know that I’d feel obligated to be checking things and adding things, working as much as I could while on vacation. But that’s not what vacations are for, is it? Vacations are for taking a break, short or long, but definitely leaving behind the things that keep me busy all the time. Sometimes, though, it’s difficult to leave things behind. We want to continue producing, continue working, continue with the things that keep us busy during our work days.

Why do we feel that not doing anything productive is “wrong”? Why is it so difficult for us to relax and not get something “done”? Why do we keep our cell phones on, not daring to cut contact with the workplace or the other people with whom we share our lives at home?

After all, isn’t one of the purposes of taking a vacation to break contact with our normal daily lives? Isn’t one of the goals of traveling to see new things and to focus strongly on them, giving them our full attention while we see them? Don’t we lose that ability as soon as we pull our daily life into the new world we’re supposed to be exploring while on vacation? Right now I’m writing this entry, but I see it more as an entry in a journal than as work. I’m trying to keep as much of the positive in the vacation, and keep out the negative. And sometimes I have the tendency to allow some of the negative stuff in. I don’t want to do that.

A vacation doesn’t have to be in a different country or somewhere we’ve never been. A vacation can be at home, as long as we try to keep the daily stuff out of our vacation days. We choose what we let into our lives, on a daily, even momentary basis. We choose the obligations we make or don’t make, we choose the people we talk to or not, we choose whether we’re on vacation or whether we’re just doing the same old stuff in a different place. New stuff in a new place makes for a great vacation, but new stuff in an old place also can provide us with the rest and relaxation that we so dearly need if we’re going to get the rest that we need from our routines. So I want to enjoy the Alps, focusing on them and enjoying them. That’s the only way that I’m going to make this vacation worthwhile.

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Today, some words on a very important topic:

To “let go” does not mean to stop caring.  It means I can’t do it for someone else.

To “let go” is not to cut myself off.  It’s the realization that I can’t control another.

To “let go” is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To “let go” is not to try to change or blame another.  It’s to make the most of myself.

To “let go” is not to care for, but to care about.

To “let go” is not to fix, but to be supportive.

To “let go” is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.

To “let go” is not to be in the middle, arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own destinies.

To “let go” is not to deny, but to accept.

To “let go” is not to nag, scold, or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.

To “let go” is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.

To “let go” is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.

To “let go” is to fear less and to love more.

author unknown

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I’m always impressed when I see people forgive others, especially when I see that the forgiveness is sincere and unconditional.  Most of us aren’t often in the position to be able to forgive others for dramatic or egregious wrongs, because most of the time people are pretty cool to each other.  When we are in a position in which we have to decide whether to forgive someone else or not, it’s important that we ask ourselves just who will benefit from our forgiveness.  Do we forgive in order to make the other person feel better, or do we forgive because our forgiveness raises the quality of our own lives?

Since I brought up the question, it’s probably pretty obvious that I would choose the latter answer as the correct one.  I would say that the most important reason for forgiving someone is to bring our own minds and spirits to peace, for holding on to resentment and anger is one of the most common and destructive reasons for not having peace.  And when we don’t have peace, we affect our entire being–mind, body, and spirit–in very negative ways.  Our stress levels go up, often causing physical problems like headaches or poor digestion or even higher blood pressure, depending on how long we hold on to the negative feelings.  And as long as we’re focusing on the negative aspects of what’s happened, our spirits and our minds can’t be free to soar and to enjoy life because the negative feelings drag our spirits down into the dirt, where there isn’t a whole lot of soaring going on.

Forgiveness can be a great boon to the people being forgiven, especially if they sincerely regret something that they’ve done, mistakes that they’ve made.  But there comes a point at which even the most contrite person will say, “Forget it–if you’re too stubborn to forgive me, then I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”  How many relationships have been ruined not by a careless action or a grave mistake, but by someone’s unwillingness to forgive that action or error?  It’s an incredible waste of human energy to bear a grudge.

Is there someone in your life who could use your unconditional forgiveness?  Then forgive them, now.  You’ll be doing a great thing for that other person or those other people, but more importantly you’ll be doing something very important for yourself.

The vital importance of forgiveness  may not be obvious at first sight, but you may be sure that it is not by chance that every great spiritual teacher from Jesus Christ downward has insisted so strongly upon it.  You must forgive injuries, not just in words, or as a matter of form, but in your heart — and that is the long and the short of it.  You do this, not for the other person’s sake, but for your own sake.  Resentment, condemnation, anger, desire to see someone punished are things that rot your soul.  Such things fasten your troubles to you with rivets.  They fetter you to many other problems that actually have nothing to do with the original grievances themselves.

Emmet Fox

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One of the gifts that I’ve been given in life is the ability to see things in the long term, as opposed to seeing simply short-term aspects of things that I do.  I was thinking about this yesterday when I was running.  It was a pretty difficult workout–I would run five minutes at nearly my fastest pace, then five minutes slow, then five minutes fast again, then five slow. . . and this went on for fifty minutes, or over seven and a half miles.  The feeling in my legs obviously was not a pleasant one, yet each time I was due to speed back up again, I was able to do so.  You see, I wasn’t focusing on the feeling in my legs as I was running; rather, I was focusing on the facts that first, this was just one workout of a much larger plan and if I didn’t complete it, the larger plan would be compromised; and second, I knew that after I finished the workout, I would feel really good about myself and the fact that I had stuck to the workout even when it was presenting me with a difficult challenge.

The temptation to quit was incredibly strong.  I could have stopped running fast for those intervals and simply finished the run at an easy pace at any time, yet I was able to keep going with the plan.  For this ability, I consider myself very fortunate.

Too often we react only to the immediate circumstances and feelings, quitting something before we really give ourselves a chance to work through difficulties, giving up on something before we give ourselves the opportunity to make ourselves feel good about ourselves by overcoming challenges and obstacles.  If we’re able to look more closely at the long-term effects of our actions, perhaps we’ll be able to persevere more easily and accomplish some things that we never think we’ll be able to accomplish.

When I coach track and field, I see some athletes give up during workouts because they’re starting to feel the strain of the workout.  I see others fight their ways through the negative feelings, and these are the athletes who end up improving greatly by the end of the season.

When I’m at work, I see people quit new jobs because they’re getting a bit difficult and the people are afraid they won’t be able to deal with the job if it gets any harder.  They simply don’t see that any trial that they go through makes them stronger, if only they’re willing to take the necessary lessons from the trial.  They don’t look at the long-term benefits of working through difficulties; they see only the short-term discomfort and inconvenience.

I hope that I’m always able to see the long-term benefits of anything that I do, for keeping my mind on the bigger picture always helps me through the smaller parts of that bigger picture, no matter how hard they may be to get through.  After all, any long-term goals that we have consist of completing a series of shorter-term goals, and if we give up on those, we give up on ourselves, don’t we?

When I look at the kids training today. . . I can tell which ones are going to do well.  It’s not necessarily the ones who have the most natural talent or who fall the least.  Sometimes it’s the kids who fall the most, and keep pulling themselves up and trying again.

Michelle Kwan

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I like a lot of words that start with the letter “P.”  Over the last decade or so, though, two words that have come to mean the most to me are “possibility” and “potential.”  They’re great words to focus on throughout the day, as the meanings behind them are so much more positive than words like “impossibility” and “limitation.”  I find that the more I keep these words in mind, the easier it is for me to accomplish just about anything I put my mind to.  If a challenge faces me, I simply remind myself that many things are possible that we sometimes think are impossible, and that each of us has the potential to do many things that we originally think we can’t.

I know that the way that I think about something contributes a great deal to how I approach that something.  If my thoughts are on the downside, if I’m feeling negative about my chances or my abilities, then the chances are that I’m going to have a much harder time accomplishing something, if I do so at all.  If, on the other hand, my mind is on the ideas of possibilities and potential, then my chances of doing what I set out to do are greatly enhanced.  Our thoughts go incredibly far towards creating situations and improving them, and if we keep the positive (another “p” word!) in mind, then we can create situations that end up in the best ways possible.

Much of the power (another one!) that we experience in our lives comes from our attitudes towards what we set out to do.  It really is our choice–do we keep our minds on the possibilities, or do we say that something’s impossible before we even start?  I’ve known plenty of students who simply haven’t written papers for class because they’ve determined that it’s impossible for them.  And guess what?  Their focus on the impossible becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when they get a failing grade on the paper and in the class.  When our minds are on the impossible, that simply becomes our reality.

They’re great words, words that I would recommend for anyone to keep in focus.  Possibility.  Potential.  Our lives are filled to overflowing with both, yet our perspectives sometimes keep us thinking that they’re qualities that are reserved only for other people.  When we invite them into our lives, though, we find that they become words that define who we are, what we do, and how we act.  And I’d much rather act from a position of seeing the potential and possibilities in this beautiful world of ours than act from a focus on limitations.  My life is much brighter when I do!

We are, in a certain way, defined as much by our potential as by its expression.  There is a great difference between an acorn and a little bit of wood carved into an acorn shape, a difference not always readily apparent to the naked eye.  The difference is there even if the acorn never have the opportunity to plant itself and become an oak.  Remembering its potential changes the way in which we think of the acorn and react to it.  How we value it.  If an acorn were conscious, knowing its potential would change the way that it might think and feel about itself.

Rachel Naomi Remen

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I find it fascinating the things that some people take issue with.  They can get upset by so many things that seem trivial and unimportant, issues that when all is said and done really mean almost nothing to anyone.  I recently saw someone get so upset with a desk that someone had thrown away at an apartment complex that he pushed it over rather violently and broke it to pieces, even though someone had left it there near the trash can so that someone else might be able to use it.  But this man found it somehow necessary to get upset about the fact that there was a desk there, not in a trash can like it was “supposed” to be.  He felt an undue amount of stress for little to no reason, taking issue with something that truly wasn’t an issue at all.

I think that most of us could take lessons in learning what to walk by and ignore and what to truly take issue with.  I know I could.  I sometimes take issue with things that twenty or thirty minutes later seem incredibly trivial, and definitely not worth the time and energy I had spent stressing out about it.  I might take issue with the fact that a neighbor is being loud, only to realize in a while that they really aren’t being all that loud–just a bit louder than normal, or a bit louder than I’m used to.  I might take issue with a person’s comments about someone or something, only to figure out later that that person had every right in the world to make the comments.

Sometimes, of course, people do things that we must take issue with–things that harm other people, or have the potential to harm others.  But most of the time I find that the things I take issue with really aren’t issues at all, and I’d be conserving my energy and feeling much better in general if I just let them slide right by me, focusing instead on getting the most out of all the positive things that I do have in my life.

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 A friend of mine with whom I worked at a college told me a few years ago that she wanted to switch to teaching high school.  I smiled.  “I could never do that,” I told her.  “I’m not patient enough.”  Three years later, I’m just finishing up my first year of teaching high school, and for the most part, I’ve loved the experience.  The year has been exhilarating, frustrating, eye-opening, educational, fun, and challenging.  And I find myself in the situation despite the fact that I would have sworn years ago that I never would have taught high school.

The situation has come about because my wife and I decided a couple of years ago to live our lives differently.  We wanted to let life push us in the directions that it had in mind for us–not necessarily the directions that we felt would be best for ourselves.  And if things worked out so that we would have stayed in the same place for twenty years, that would have been fine with us.  That wasn’t the case, though.  The first thing that we did was buy an RV and move to the Grand Canyon, where we worked for almost a year, first at the South Rim and then at the North Rim.  We did a lot of hiking and exploring, and we’ve seen some absolutely amazing landscapes and scenery.

Last summer I started feeling the push to get back into the classroom.  I looked into colleges, but there weren’t all that many jobs available in places where we’d like to live.  For some reason I felt the urge to look at the job listings at high schools, and I sent a couple of emails to schools that listed available jobs.  Within four days I had been contacted, interviewed and hired over the phone for the job I currently hold.  My wife was almost as amazed as I was, for the ob demanded that I move to my current location within three days.  But both of us knew that this was something that life had in store for us, so we decided to go with the flow and see where it took us.  It led us to one of the most fulfilling years of my life, and it led my wife to a wonderful job in a field that she never had worked in before.

Do you ever feel life pushing you along a bit?  Do you feel receptive to the push, or do you resist it with all your might in order to maintain the status quo?  Even though both my wife and I are still open to the idea of life pushing us where it needs and wants us, we both feel that where we’re at right now is where we’re supposed to be.  We don’t know if we’re here for another year or two, or if we’re here for twenty.  As long as we trust God and life, though, either option will be just fine with us.  Our journey here isn’t mapped out from start to finish–the road is long, and sometimes we discover the greatest treasures on the roads we didn’t plan to travel.

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