Recent events remind me of the supreme importance of mental attitude. Attitude trumps all. So what is attitude, really? It’s a set of thoughts (and the accompanying emotions) about a certain person, thing, or situation. We usually think of attitude in emotional terms, as in a mood, yet there’s always an explanation (a why) that goes with it: Our mental attitude affects everything it focuses on. Norman Vincent Peale’s famous self-help classic “The Power of Positive Thinking” was basically all about mental attitude. Recently I got reminded of the importance…
Category: Personal Growth
Day 233: Doing It For the Right Reasons
I have learned over and over again, usually the hard way, why it is important to do things for the right reasons. Many times in the past I made choices for what seemed like good, sound reasons, and yet the experience sucked. Thinking it through afterward, my reasoning for those choices was always screwy. Garbage in, garbage out. If you do something for sucky reasons, expect the experience to suck! Tonight I was thinking about signing up for a half marathon that is coming up later in the year. It…
Day 232: The Wonderful World of Humanity
One of the benefits of years of personal work is that I seem to be lightening up. Bit by bit, as I soothe myself with a self-accepting attitude, I’m learning not to take everything so darn seriously. It also translates into a sense of ease, power, and freedom 🙂 Recently I’m noticing this in relationship to interacting with groups. Although I have had many great experiences in groups, there were times in the past where I lost sight of my own needs and desires.* In fact, I was completely clueless…
Day 231: Fostering a Lightness of Being
Being alive, being human, can be such a strange, fluctuating experience. Like a radio antenna that sometimes gets a clear signal, sometimes doesn’t seem to be getting anything, my signal fluctuates. Sometimes, I admit it, it sucks… at least initially. I do not like feeling disconnected! At those times, I soothe myself as best I can. I am getting better at this. As a result, I am quicker to pinpoint the problem, change the subject, or distract myself to get into a better place. Or I take a nap. It…
Day 228: Inner Guidance Never Gets it Wrong
Recently I have been thinking about how easy it is for us to get hooked on actions and routines in our lives, especially when those actions bring pleasure and satisfaction. I personally have experienced being attached to behaviors that brought me joy in the past but no longer do. My mind overrode my actual experience. Instead of paying attention, I let the “tail” of habit “wag the dog” of my behavior. This happened with marathoning. I needed a break, but I was attached to the idea of training. This attachment…
Day 225: Generate Beyond Your Circumstances
Sometimes it isn’t so easy to generate the sense of empowerment and joy you may feel you deserve. Sometimes it isn’t instaneous. You might have conditions in your life that are distracting, confusing, or discouraging. It is easy to be at the effect of these conditions. In fact, it is quite normal. But then again, it is normal for human beings to suffer and complain. It is more uncommon to generate who you are, by focusing on what you want, to rise above the fray of sufferers and become like…
Day 215: A Happier Life
I have this notion, or maybe it’s an expectation, a hope, of being happier over time. I guess it’s the idea of “making progress” in my happiness journey. Yet when it comes to happiness, I’m not sure the idea of progress is the best analogy. I’m not sure happiness proceeds in a forward-moving, linear way. It’s not like building a house or running a marathon, in which you can tell where you are at any moment towards completing the goal. Maybe happiness is more like an “on-off” switch. After all,…
Day 213: Soothing Is Solving
“Soothing is solving.” This is something Abraham said when we see them a few weeks ago. I did not remember hearing this expression before. I wrote it numerous times in my notebook as I sat in the event room at the hotel. “Soothing is solving.” I like this, I thought to myself. As Abraham explains, we humans have such a tendency to try to “solve” everything with action. This is fine when the action is inspired. All too often it is not. Instead, it’s okay not to try so hard.…
Day 211: Still Worthy
I’m going to share a breakthrough I got this week. It is this: “No matter what happens ever, you are still worthy.” Let me elaborate. First of all, when I get this breakthrough, I applied it to myself. But it is a universal truth, so I feel that putting it in the form of “you” is better. So anyway, no matter what happens you are still worthy. Do you feel bad today? Okay, sorry to hear that. You are still worthy! Did you mess up something last week and now…
Day 209: Practicing Ease and Effortlessness (Revisited)
Awhile ago I wrote a blog post called “Practicing Ease and Effortlessness.” In it I talked about how I am learning to take “the path of least resistance” in life, which is to say, not work so hard, not effort* so much. Over two years later, this message is still relevant for me. I am going to list the items I put in the original post, with updated notes on how I handle this area (spoiler alert: the basics haven’t changed!): *Abraham-Hicks uses “effort” as a verb to refer to…