Archive for the ‘awareness’ Tag
You choose your friends. They don’t choose you.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Accountability, awareness, choice, empowerment, friendship, relationships
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One can sink you. Another can keep you anchored in place, and still another can keep you safely near the shore. The last one will fill your sails to send you to new places.
Each kind of person is out there.
It’s your choice which to bring into your life.
Who are you voting for?
Filed under: Accountability, apathy, change, Community power, empowerment, fear, leadership | Tags: awareness, election, mindful, Obama, president, Romney, third party, vote, vote for change
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When someone speaks reasonably about unreasonable things, they are either a genius, or a madman. Cast your vote carefully. If a person talks about spending money they don’t have, putting value in something that has no inherent value, taking away your liberties to fight an unseen enemy to protect your liberties, find another person to vote for. Gridlock ends when we elect people, from president to state rep, who will do the right thing, not follow what was done before because that’s the way things were always done.
Remember: There are many who are thinking just as you are.
How to fix most all relationship problems
Filed under: love, Relationships | Tags: awareness, living in the now, Love, presence, relationships
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If I can’t live in the present, then I can’t love. Love is NOW. Living in a future of wants prevents me from sustaining love for anything, or anyone. And expecting love from someone who looks ahead, dissatisfied with himself or herself, is a losing proposition. And sure to make you unhappy in the process.
Taking off the blinders requires learning how to ignore
Filed under: Accountability, change, empowerment, Happiness, Independence, leadership, Mastery, productivity, Uncategorized | Tags: Accountability, awareness, distraction, happiness, productivity, Self-awarenes
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I have trouble sitting down to work sometimes. My focus is on many things, and so it is on nothing. Then I realized how to let go. And it was more than simplifying and prioritizing. It was the realization that I needed to acknowledge and then ignore many things. In order to get stuff done, I needed to ask myself throughout the day, day after day, week after week: “What do you want? What are you doing?”
The other day, I was returning from the bathroom to continue my writing and saw the new handheld vacuum I had purchased recently. I like tools, and this was a bright, shiny new one. Soon, I was unplugging it, having just swept the kitchen. I stopped suddenly and thought, “What am I doing? Why am I not writing?”
Vigilance is key
Neil Gaiman has a great analogy for making tough decisions in life. If your goal is a mountain, make sure your decisions are taking you towards that mountain, not away. The mountaintop is far so it’s ok if it takes you a long time to get there, as long you’re making your way to it.
My experience would make me add this to his analogy, “Make sure you’re not circling that mountain, neither going towards it or away from it.” To this end, I think it’s vastly important to reiterate to ourselves, “What do I want? What am I doing?”
The day I started ignoring things was ironically the day I took the blinders off. I looked up from the solid foundation I was laying and noticed all the options that were open to me, from professional to social, and then I decided to stop and ask, “What do I want?” It is overwhelming, but the possibilities appear around you, and it is the first step towards accomplishing what you want.
The saying that ‘ignorance is bliss’ isn’t true. We’re not animals. To achieve bliss we must be conscious of our surroundings and taking a stand and making choices and adapting. And this requires taking the blinders off and asking ourselves repeatedly, “What am I doing? What do I want?”
TED Talk Tuesday: Hiding behind the God-complex
Filed under: TED talk | Tags: Acclimating, awareness, confidence, experimentation, God-complex, TED talk
Leave a Comment In a complicated society, we give up to the God-complex, listening to the authorities who have all the answers, instead of facing the task of fixing the problem. Tim Harford tells us that when a problem persists, the method to fix it is simple: Trial and error.
Experimenting helped me find my perfect running gait. Maybe we can use this method to improve bigger systems, on the scale of societies. Communities can be different and each type needs the leadership and experience of its citizens. If only we can use our humility to admit that we don’t have the answers and our strength to face our problems, fail, and try again. And the confidence to challenge the authorities who tell us they have the answers. By acclimating, we can continue to exist. By reasoning and experimentation, we will thrive.
