Spring Goals

Since it's spring again, it's a good time to think about what you want to do in the spring weather.  Why not set some new goals - focused on the joy of the planet earth.  It's so easy to forget to enjoy the planet, but it's where we live and there's a tremendous amount to enjoy.  While creating the life of our dreams - even though we may not be quite there yet - we don't really have to do much to enjoy the planet except notice it, hang out with it.  Where I live the trees are in bloom.  There are lots of spring flowers.  Azaleas are shouting their colors.  It's definitely time to notice and add the joy to the life of my dreams.

What did I do to deserve this?

Sometimes the life of our dreams includes things and events we don't like at all, and we wonder why.  We wonder if we have done something wrong.  One of the tenents of Buddhism is that every day things happen that we don't like - it's the human condition and everyone experiences this - even in the life of our dreams.  Examples:  missed planes, traffic jams, getting sick, not getting a raise - the list could be very long.  We act surprised because we are surprised.  Somehow we got the idea that everything is supposed to go smoothly so we are upset.  This is what causes our suffering - being surprised.  What if instead we responded to these things as though the universe was giving us an opportunity to learn something.  What if we thought to ourselves:  "Well, since everything is going wrong, the universe must be telling me it's time for me to take a break and rest."  Hmmm.  There might be innumerable ways we could respond that would be beneficial instead of being upset.

What If...?

This is my cat, Cisco.  He knows what he wants at all times.  He has never been confused.  First priority for his attention is food, water, and a clean place to eliminate.  He is rather picky about all three and expects me to do a good job at providing exactly what he wants. When I've not done well, he calls my attention to the situation by giving me a whole lot of loving attention and then drawing my attention to the situation.  His very next priority is love and he is as good at giving it as he is at receiving it.  Then comes lots and lots of sleep.  Finally he appears to be on a mission to get people who don't love cats to love him anyway.  It appears to be his mission  in life.  He has never been influenced by his parents or his peers to want anything other than those priorities.  He is impervious to ads on television or any place else.  I have learned a lot from him.  A great deal of my life has been spent in unlearning what I have been taught to want that hasn't benefited me in any way whatsoever.  At almost seventy I find that I am letting go of still more things that I have been taught to believe would make me happy or at least happier.  Manicures, for example, are supposed to make me feel pampered and get me compliments (or at least no criticism) on my well-kept nails.  When I was doing this it got to be a burden.  It cost both money and time but began to cease making me feel pampered.  At my age compliments and criticism don't do much for me anyway.  So I've taken to just cutting my nails short once a week.  I sure hope I'm able to lose everything unnecessary for happiness by the time I leave the planet!

My suggestion to all of us is to spend some time thinking about how we spend our time and money.  There are no right or wrong answers.  But consider the possibility that you were taught some things that don't really contribute to your happiness but just benefit the folks that sell them to you.  In order to find the life of your dreams, you might want to let a lot of those things go so that you can have the time, energy and money to do the things that REALLY make you happy.

Abraham Maslow's Characteristics of a Self-Actualized Person

Cheryl Richardson's newsletter for this week listed these characteristics developed by Maslow who was the originator of humanistic psychology.   He is best known for his hierarchy of human needs.  I'm re-printing this list here because Maslow paints a picture of a person who has achieved a life of his/her dreams.  By using it as a checklist we can see what areas we might want to work on.

Maslow's self-actualizing characteristics:

• See problems in terms of challenges and situations requiring solutions, rather than see problems as personal complaints or excuses.
• Need for privacy and comfortable being alone.
• Reliant on own experiences and judgment - independent - not reliant on culture and environment to form opinions and views.
• Not susceptible to social pressures - non-conformist.
• Democratic, fair and non-discriminating - embracing and enjoying all cultures, races and individual styles.
• Socially compassionate - possessing humanity.
• Accepting others as they are and not trying to change people.
• Comfortable with oneself - despite any unconventional tendencies.
• A few close intimate friends rather than many surface relationships.
• Sense of humor directed at oneself or the human condition, rather than at the expense of others.
• Spontaneous and natural - true to oneself, rather than being how others want.
• Excited and interested in everything, even ordinary things.
*Creative, inventive and original

Ten Commandments of Leadership

I've seen this list attributed to Mother Theresa and a variety of other possible authors including "anonymous."  The one I've got says the author is Howard Ferguson.  I like it because it points out that the life of our dreams is probably not going to be the one where we are popular with every human being we come in contact with, are rich and famous, etc.  Most likely we are going to love the life in which we do the right thing.

1.  People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.  Love them anyway.
2.  If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Do good anyway.
3.  If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.  Succeed anyway.
4.  The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.  Do good anyway.
5.  Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.  Be honest and frank anyway.
6.  The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest
      ideas.  Think big anyway.
7.  People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs.  Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8.  What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.  Build anyway.
9.  People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.  Help them anyway.
10.  Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.  Give the world the best you
       have anyway.

Itty-Bitty Teeny-Tiny, Little, or Even-Smaller-Than-That Steps

I don't know about everybody else, but I am a rebel at heart.  If I dream up something for myself to do; something that will get me closer to the life of my dreams, I immediately think of all the reasons why I don't have to do it and go do something else.  Luckily I am also a stubborn, hard-headed woman who seriously pursues the life of her dreams.  So, I've always fought back against the rebel part of me and as a result come closer to the life of my dreams than I ever could have imagined.

As I've mentioned before, I accidently ran into a blog by Steve Pavlina who has written an immense amount about personal development.  I'm not crazy about his ideas about sex, but his ideas about motivating yourself work like a charm for me.  The one that has had the most impact for me is challenging yourself to take action steps - tiny action steps, for a tiny amount of time.  I do one-day challenges and then assess whether the action step was the right one for me, how I felt about it and whether I want to proceed.  Then I give myself a three-day challenge.  If it still feels right, I go to a seven-day challenge and then to a thirty-day challenge.  By that time taking the action is a comfortable part of my daily life, so if I still feel it's beneficial I can continue it.

By using this method I discovered that the reason I balk at change - even change that will benefit me - is that I'm afraid of failure.  So the itty-bitty, teeny-tiny goals that are so small it's almost impossible to fail to do them in a one-day challenge, gradually get me where I want to go without all the emotional uproar that used to face me as soon as I set a goal.  I have stopped kicking myself and instead, care for myself.
And that is the miracle.

How to Find Out what You REALLY Want

Maybe you are one of those people who was taught that only very unusual, talented people got to have the life of their dreams (and, of course, they told you that you were not one of them).  There's an almost 100% chance that you've been misled.  Even if you have some severe disabilities, you still have a really good chance of having the life of your dreams.  The thing is, the barriers you are meeting that stand in your way actually come from what you learned as a child.  So, the work you will need to do to reach the life of your dreams will have to start (and continue) with working on your own mind and your beliefs about yourself and the world.

Step One - and you can't skip this one - is to make it a habit to watch your thoughts.  This practice begins with taking some time every day to just sit still and observe how your mind constantly races with thoughts about this and that.  You are probably so used to this that you aren't really paying attention most of the time.  But this process totally influences how you feel and what you do.  That's the bad news because most of your thoughts are either going to be inconsequential or negative.  So, I'm sorry to say, a lot of what you and a lot of other people do every day is either inconsequential (having nothing to do with the life of your dreams) or negative.

Then off and on throughout the day, just notice what you are thinking.  You will find that a lot of your thoughts are kicking yourself for mistakes you made, complaints about other people and/or your environment, and worry about the future.  As you notice your thoughts, also notice that none of them are helpful to you in any way whatsoever and that none of them help you get to the life of your dreams.

Step Two - The good news is that all this noticing your thoughts is just a lead in to changing them to better and more helpful thoughts.  Yes, I know, most of us have been taught to believe that our thoughts are out of our control.  But the good news is, as I just said, that's not true - we can definitely make a huge dent in the nonsense our brains churn out on a day to day basis.  The bad news is that it's a lot of work.  So, if you really want what you've envisioned as the life of your dreams, it's going to cost you a lot of work - mental work, that is.

Step Three - Begin to imagine what the life of your dreams would be like.  All the goal-setting gurus say that without this step, you can't possibly have what you want.  Take the time every day to just spend a few minutes imagining what your life will be like when you get to the life you want.  Where will you live?  What will you be doing every day?  Who else will be there?  What will you do for fun?  How much money will you need and how will you spend it?  What will you wear for clothes.  How will your health be?  There are hundreds of questions to ask yourself.

Step Four -  Begin to occupy your thoughts with ideas about the answers to these questions. Trust me, you are going to enjoy your thoughts a lot more when they're focused on what you want.  As part of this process, be sure to ask yourself if these are things you REALLY want.  As you imagine them, see how you feel emotionally and how your body feels.  Do you feel happy and excited or does imagining these things make you feel anxious.  If you feel anxious, ask yourself why.  Maybe you just thought you wanted these things but there are other things you might like better.

Step Five -  As you imagine these things and what it will be like to have them, there would be nothing wrong with also using your creativity to imagine what you would need to do to create them.

With these five steps you can make a terrific start on creating the life of your dreams.  The positive emotions you will have by changing your thought will motivate you to begin taking the steps to a life that is closer and closer to what you REALLY want.