How Do You Talk to Yourself?

One of the skills I've learned that has benefitted me incredibly is learning to pay attention to how I talk to myself.  Basically that just means that I notice my thoughts.  When I'm not moving forward toward goals the way I think I should, it's deeply ingrained in me to think things like:  "You'll never make it."  "You always do this - quit before you're finished."  Some part of me thinks that kicking myself will make me a better person.  So far it has never, ever worked.  When I learned to pay attention to how I talk to myself, I also learned to quickly change my thoughts.  I used to believe that my thoughts were just how they were - that there was nothing to do about them.  It turns out that no matter what crappy negative thinking I have, I can always choose my second thought to something positive like:  "No, that's not true.  I have succeeded at a lot of things and I can succeed at this too." 

Our automatic thinking is usually uniformly negative and does not deserve to be listened to.  Let us learn to think better thoughts!

You Are the Best You've Ever Been!

Do you realize that today you know the most that you've ever known?  How could it be otherwise?  You've gathered information every day of your life up to now whether you realized it or not.  So, you're the most prepared you've ever been to create and live the life of your dreams. 

In The Four Agreements, Don Miquel Ruiz says that we are the only living beings that continue to kick ourselves for our mistakes (and let other people kick us too) for years and years and years.  There's a part of our minds (and I don't believe this part of my mind is actually me) that keeps on reminding us of our mistakes.  Today would be a good day to stop listening to it and stop believing it.  Instead let's remind ourselves that today we know the most we've ever known in our lives and put our knowledge to work creating and living the life of our dreams!

Simple Ways to Simplify

One of the first ways to get off track in creating the life of our dreams is to let all the incoming information and requests to distract from our direction.  Take a look at the to-do list and see where the activities that create the life of your dreams are located.  Are they at the bottom or the top?  Of course, they should be at the top.  Make it a game to cross out all the activities that could wait until next week, next year, or never.  Ten of them is a good goal.  Then let's redirect our attention to the life-of-our-dreams activities.

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