Personal Responsibility

How do we know how to make the right choices in our lives?

No matter what, we opt, always, for that which we think will be the most fulfilling choice for us, no matter how it looks to others.  We come up with justifications as to why we choose one thing over another, but, bottom line, feeling good is our motivator.

Even choosing chocolate chip cookies when you know they're not on your diet feels great at the time.  It's a kind of declaration of independence from the rules and expectations we impose on ourselves.  When when we make choices that feel good in the short run and bad in the long it's a clear sign that we're not feeling free.  So how can we set ourselves free so we won't rebel against ourselves when the (chocolate) chips are down?

We can decide to look at our goals clearly.

When we are faced with a choice, and we know it's a stepping stone on our way toward our goal, we know exactly where to step next to get closer to what we say we want. Following the diet analogy, let's say our goal is to lose weight.  Eating that chocolate won't help.  Why then, do we succumb to our overpowering urge to eat it?

Perhaps because that goal is a false one.  Do we want to lose weight for ourselves, or so we'll look a specific way in the eyes of others?  If we're doing it for societal approval, we're following a false goal.  Our teenage self recognizes the bullshit and goes for the chocolate (I'll show YOU!)

When we choose our goals based on the expectations or constraints of our culture, we will feel the opposite of free.We will only feel free when we choose what we want simply because we want it, no excuses, no justifications, and no reason other than our own needs.

How wonderful it feels to choose our own path, to go for a goal without regard to its "rightness or wrongness". It's a wind-in-your-hair sort of feeling that will make your heart sing.  Choosing an inner directed goal will always set you free.

Your inner teenager will be happy, and so will you!

Our Imperfect Perfection

Perhaps our flaws are gifts in disguise, and complete acceptance of who and what we are is a key element in ridding ourselves of the tyranny of our history.  It could be that what makes our history such a sticky part of the present is the painful remembrance of times when, in being ourselves, we were rejected and/or rebuked.  We go forward into our future trying to avoid similar pain by acts of self rejection, self improvement, self hatred, and self denial.  Perhaps if we practice total self acceptance it will help us integrate the parts of us we abandoned in the past when someone undermined our value and worthiness by telling us we were not as we should be.

We are and have always been exactly as we should be. 

Some Borrowed Wisdom about Choosing Wisely

Today I was once again struck by how often "Ask and it is given." actually works in the "real" world.  After a dispiriting day I realized I needed a little guidance. I found myself idly looking through an old notebook.  Inside were some ideas I had jotted down from a seminar with a wonderful teacher named Cheryl Malakoff.  I will paraphrase:

Our ego is the portal through which we manage our energy.  We interpret our present through the lens of our history.  Personal perception defines our world.  What is going on inside of us is reflected in the world around us. We can see where we are energy deficient by what freaks us out, or by what makes us suffer.  Suffering is like an energetic bio feedback machine. Therefore:

Do only the things that strengthen you, and eliminate that which weakens you. 

You can discern what to do in every case by using these principals.

Happiness Is Easy

When You Eliminate "Trying". 

After all, why do we strive for anything? Because we think it will make us happy.  What might happen if we eliminated the striving?  What if we could just be happy without having to attach our happiness to a person, place, activity, accomplishment, job, income, etc.?  What a relief that would be.  

Eliminate the middle man of trying.  He's a trying guy anyway.  When we fall short, he beats us up, and when we accomplish our goals, he says it's not enough.  He's just never happy, so we aren't either.  Let's stop trying to please some arbitrary judge that relies on bench marks. .

As Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, "there is no "try" young Skywalker; there is only DO."

Let's do this thing.  .  Let's leave "trying" behind.  Let's just be happy

Anger

 Anger has a lot of power.  

We hate to have it directed against us.  It has the power to frighten, and we often feel diminished by its sting.  Feeling the wrath of another can be a blow to self esteem.  It can take time to piece together an ego shattered by anger.

Our own anger is equally powerful.  We feel it build within us until it bursts like a bomb on the target of our ire. Sometimes our anger stirs us to the point where everything we come in contact with feels our frenzied energy.  If we cling to our anger for too long it starts to draw towards us similar energy, like annoyed drivers, angry, whining people, or unpleasant experiences.  We lock our keys in the car or spill our coffee.  We get angrier.  It can be satisfying to let our anger out, but that has consequences. 

In Aikido we're taught that an attacker attacks because they are out of balance.  We, too, are out of balance when our anger causes us to attack another, kick a chair that got in the way, or get down on ourselves. We're not perfect, we're human, we get angry;  but being out of balance is one of the quickest ways to fall down. Remembering that can often be helpful in restoring ourselves to a more comfortable frame of mind. 

Be angry, let it out, and let it go.  

Breath.

 

BOP

In some business site I read about BOP: Basic Operating Procedure or something like that.  The idea is that you figure out what you want your business to be about.  This isn't a mission statement or a vision statement.  The way I interpreted it is it's a statement that identifies what YOU want to get out of your business.  For example, Apple's BOP is "we make really cool interesting stuff that make us a lot of money."  Now that's a BOP that would wake me up in the morning and send me happily to work.  I wondered what my BOP is, not just in my business, but in my life.  It's worth pondering. 

Cross Purposes

When someone is cross with us, it can make us rethink who we are.  We start from feeling cross ourselves,  justifying ourselves for the annoyance we caused.  We defend our actions and we defame the person who objected to them. 

Then we turn our thoughts to wanting to fix whatever we did.  We begin to regret our actions and start feeling bad about ourselves. How can we make up for our shortcomings?

Now, instead of being cross, we discover that our upset is our cross to bear.  We can learn alot from the discomfort of being cross.

When you consider what a real cross looks like, you can see what I mean.  Two pieces of board nailed together, the four ends going in four different directions, just like our thoughts.  One board symbolizes our negativity, one symbolizes our positive impulses. Where the boards intersect is a place of no extreems and no judgements: our center 

There's a center in every situation. It is where commonality and balance live. It remains the center, no matter how far our angry thoughts diverge from that still sure point. You're made up of your pluses and minuses, and the intersection of the two is the truth of you.  You can always find your way back to YOU, no matter how cross you are.