Seeking and Finding Wholeness

It is sad how people experience stress during the holidays, but things don’t have to be this way!

The shopping, driving, mailing out greeting cards, going to the post office, budgeting, traveling and seeing relatives. Sounds familiar?

I want to tell you now, that you can change this. You do not have to be stressed. In fact, you can be happy and make a bunch of other people happy.

You do not have to navigate crowded malls, get stuck in traffic, drive long distances, deal with airports and air travel, worry what gifts to buy, wrap gifts, mail gifts, send cards… nothing! Yes, you can simply say “no”.

Many alternatives to the commercialized, stressful, costly and polluting norms exist. Consider finding a bunch of friends that are close to your heart and locale (in your same state or region) and spend time with them.

Give people good words, give good wishes, give hugs, give love, give smiles, do good deeds, be extra relaxed, open doors for people, plant trees, etc.. The sky is the limit. You do not have to venture into these pesky malls.

You have the power to save money, save the environment, save yourself from headaches and have a greater more positive impact this season by being a better friend to yourself, to others and to nature.

Yes, YOU have to power to keep things simple. To say no. To start new traditions. To be unique.
Consider giving a donation to non profit organizations, give the Gift of Microfinance , be selfless, serve others, or make some good food and invite people to eat.

Consider spending time alone in meditation, in counting your blessings, in reflection, in prayer, in adoring Nature or a candle’s flame. Take a walk on a trail, go alone or take a loved one, if it’s cold bundle up and go out, adore the snow, adore the sky, adore the trees, spend time with your God or Nature.

Make the new years, Christmas, solstice or Yule a time to be good, truly good to yourself, to nature and to other people.

If you celebrate Christmas, this year remember that Jesus said “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” and “sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Rid yourself of materialism and stress, keep things simple, honest, spiritual; you will be happier and make others happier while saving a bunch of trees, reducing your carbon and waste footprint and feeling better than ever for having done what you KNOW is right, not what you are told is right.

Remember, you are not alone.

Blessings, Love & Wisdom

This is amazing.

Enjoy

Ask yourself what do you need right now:

Do you need to breath deeply?
Do you need close your eyes?
Do you need to drink water?
Do you need to eat?
Do you need stretch?
Do you need to use the bathroom?
Do you need to relax and take a break?
Do you need to plan something?
Do you need to stop?
Do you need look away into the distance from whatever you are doing?
Do you need to stop eating that snack?
Do you need to go on a walk?
Do you need fresh air?
Do you need a nap (to sleep)?
etc …

Now that you’ve asked, will you give yourself what it needs?

The lesson here is to check in with yourself from time to time, listen to the most important person (YOU).

This sounds simple, doesn’t it?

It is, but sometimes when we are at work, studying or working a project and too busy with life, paying attention to others, we forget to pay attention to ourselves.

So,

from time to time,

Ask yourself

“What do I need now?”

&

you will be more present in the now and more alive

Ethan Z

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

- Calvin Coolidge

He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear

Michel de Montaigne

When life throws a rock at you (in the form of opposition, challenges, sickness, ideas, etc) What do you do with this rock? Do you throw it away, perhaps throw it at someone else? Do you keep it and put it on the mantle next to the family photos, or do you shape it with a tool?

A rock can be useful.

Place it on the ground in front of you, fill in pot holes with it, put it in a puddle of water and step on it. Step on it, it’s a rock.

Speak well to yourself because your deep mind is always listening.

By Devin Hasting

I’d like to share with you this phrase

develop the courage to be imperfect

Think about this for a second, is anyone perfect? You can seek perfection all you want but you will never be perfect, will you? do we even know what perfect is, do you ‘really’ know what it means?

Now, that you’ve seen these questions, I ask why do we fear being imperfect?

Isn’t it natural to be imperfect?

Can you seek perfection while finding the courage within you to be imperfect, and be OK with that reality?

Can you develop the courage to be imperfect?

Consider these famous quotes on courage:

Courage, an optimistic attitude, common sense, and a feeling of being at home upon the crust of the earth, will enable (us) to face advantages and disadvantages with equal firmness.

–Alfred Adler

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
~Ambrose Redmoon

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.
~Mary Anne Radmacher

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
~Winston Churchill

Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.
~Edward Vernon Rickenbacker

Fear and courage are brothers.
~Proverb

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
~Raymond Lindquist

Courage is knowing what not to fear.
~Plato

Courage is a kind of salvation.
~Plato

Have the courage to live. Anyone can die.
~Robert Cody

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, but today is a gift, it is called present

By: unknown

I have a story for you:

Once Upon a Time In a Land Far Far Away, there was a young king who suffered from mood swings.

He would be confident of his decisions and his own greatness, until he got depressed and fell into a deep depression. When this king was feeling blue, he would sit and stare, he would sleep for hours on end, he would do nothing, and he would also become convinced that he was worthlessness and unimportant.

If this king lived today, we would have called him bipolar or perhaps manic-depressive; but this was a long time ago, and back then no one had names for these symptoms. The king was left with no real help, he brought the best herb doctors and they gave him special attention only fit for a king, but his mood swings did not improve much.

Read more…

Have you ever day dreamed about not owning a house, not having to pay rent or mortgage or the never ending utility bills? How about living in the jungle or in a small cabin on some serene hill? Have you ever wished you could climb a mountain, finding a cave and converting it into your residence?

How would you like a small tent or a tipi (tepee) as a place to sleep and rest while having the whole wide world and nature as your real home? ….. Have you ever imagined that?

Have you ever wondered how you would fair without modern life amenities such as electricity, hot water, the internet, personal automotive vehicles or huge grocery stores?

Have you wondered why? Why you live in a city, why you have to work and why we use money?

Have you imagined different systems of living than the ones we live in and rely on nowadays? What would it be like to un-institutionalize yourself from all these systems?

Are homeless people homeless for the same reasons? Is it a life choice? Is it your right to make that choice?

Watch this video about Michael, a homeless person living in the hills around Fairfax, California. It has him talk about his experience, why he is homeless, what it is like to be homeless in Fairfax.

In this interview, Michael says “its my choice to be here right now, i wouldn’t trade [this for anything else]“. He also says that living in nature is a “really healing thing”.

If the video above is not working try watching the interview here:  http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-258613 Make sure you read the comments under the video as well.

According to a new report released by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), happiness levels are highest in northern European countries.

Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands rated at the top of the list.

Outside of Europe, New Zealand and Canada also made the top 10. The U.S. did not.

The U.S. ranked the highest for child poverty and obesity among the western nations polled.

Other Very Interesting Findings include:

Adult height: Americans are not getting taller. The United States is the only country in the OECD where men and women aged 45-49 are no taller than those aged 20-24 years old, indicating no improvement in health and social conditions determining gains in height.

Health care: The United States spends the most per capita on health care, but despite their high levels of health spending the Unites States has relatively low life expectancy.

Net National Income: The United States is one of the richest countries in the OECD. In 2006, the United States had a per capita National Net Income in excess of USD 35 000. Only Luxembourg and Norway were higher.

Fertility: The United States has a much higher fertility rate than most other OECD countries of 2.1 children per mother, compared to an OECD average of 1.65.

Child poverty: Child poverty has fallen since the mid-1990s but one in five US children still live in poverty, a rate exceeded only in Poland, Mexico, and Turkey

Social protection: The United States is the fourth lowest in the OECD in terms of income shares of public social spending. However, when tax breaks for social purposes and private social spending are also considered, social spending in the United States rises above the OECD average of 28% to 31% of income.

Eating time: Americans spend around an hour and a quarter eating every day, slightly more than only Canadians and Mexicans but less than half the eating time spent by the French. Despite this limited time spent eating, their obesity rates are the highest in the OECD.

Leisure time of men and women: American men have nearly 40 minutes more leisure time than women per day.
Find the report here: http://www.oecd.org/document/24/0,3343,en_2649_34637_2671576_1_1_1_1,00.html

Let me ask you,

• Are we a nation of Me’s or a nation of We’s?
• How can one justify that it is more important to have a fetus develop into a baby and then be born than to give that new born baby and child health coverage or keep them from poverty?

We may make more money per capita in the US but we spend most of it on health insurance and other ‘fees’ – These are what I call hidden taxes.

These hidden taxes go to corporations not to benefit other citizens; they suck money up the ranks to make the rich richer, making huge profits and paying CEO’s millions of dollars that are basically denied health care reimbursements to you.. In other words, money from your pocket to theirs.

Taxes are used by governments (i.e. we the people) to benefit the population at large, these fees are simply how some corporations (after lobbying congress) dip their hands in your pockets and ’steal’ your money.

Read more…

What you resist persists

By Carl Gustav Jung : Swiss psychiatrist, student of Freud & founder analytic psychology – (1875 – 1961)

This quote is interesting, some claim it relates to the ‘law of attraction’ that if you think of something a lot you will get it, in other words if you obsess about something bad it will happen to you and if you think of something good it would also come to you. Some in the new age movement relate this quote to quantum physics, while others say that Jung’s quote has been miss interpreted by these people.

I am not sure what Jung meant by this quote. To know, I would have to find the whole text and read this quote in context.

It may be that he meant that, say in the case of a young girl who’s parents did not want her with a certain boy, the more the parents try to part them the stronger their bond gets…

What do you think Jung meant?

Carl Gustav Jung was a famous Swiss psychiatrist, a student of Freud & the founder analytic psychology. I find some of his words very interesting and worth thinking about. This is one of the quotes I like:

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become

This one is so true.

I found myself at urgent care having trouble breathing last week. After many hours of tests and waiting, I was admitted in at the hospital and diagnosed with Pulmonary Embolism (a blood clot in the lung with a 30% mortality rate). Luckily, the one I had was small in size and I bounced back on my feet quickly.

If you know me you will know that I’ve always believed that everything in life has positive aspects, even seemingly dangerous, unpleasant or unforeseen situations can still offer glimmers of positiveness, sometimes lots of positiveness. Not only that, but that negative events could be turned around and used as opportunities for improvement. Unfortunately, some people take offense when I mention that ‘bad life events‘ can be positive things.

I am about to share with you actual thoughts I had while I was at urgent care and from the time that followed at the hospital. You will soon notice the majority if not all the thoughts were somewhat silly, somewhat childish, but that doesn’t matter because I know that all of them made me smile.

I am often amused easily by nature and seldom by man made things. I believe that anyone can be as amused as me by what nature has to offer, it’s not difficult; it is also possible to amuse at life events just the same. The way I see it, people and life events are parts of nature.

Now let me share with you my thoughts. Some of these thoughts were vocalized as soon as they materialized in my mind resulting is some chuckles, smiles or laughs by people that were there. In general, finding the positiveness in little things made the whole experience of being at the hospital much more pleasant for me and more tolerable for others.

You may want to read the post about my Pulmonary Embolism (here) to get the time line of events. The thoughts below are organized in chronological order.

Feel free to laugh at my easily amused self

Why am I sharing theses?

To show you that you can find intriguing, exciting, amusing, beautiful, even amazing and positive aspects to everything and every event, including when you are in pain and at the hospital.

Here goes:

On the CT scan

Thought: Wow, my first CT scan, I wonder how different it is from an MRI.

Read more…

Wont you say that the pursuit of happiness is one thing that is programed in most of us?  Not counting mentally unstable individuals, its safe to assume that we all want to be happy. The interesting thing though is how little we know about what it takes to be happy or satisfied. We often seek happiness only to create suffering.

I use the words ‘happy’ and ’satisfied’ interchangeably, the way I see it they are the same. Suffering also needs to be clarified here, suffering encompasses any of these: stress, negative emotions, misery, pain, etc.

Why is the list below so long (80+ topics)? Well, after getting a pulmonary embolism last week, a potentially lethal medical condition, I decided to write down a list of ideas and concepts that are dear to me in one post and to push them out on the Internet. This article is essentially my message to the world; I was planning on writing an article for each of (or a combination of) the topics listed below; as you will notice some article have already been written; however, who knows if I’ll live long enough or if I’ll ever have the time to write articles on all these topics.

The list below is a compilation of things I learned or developed (through thought processes), philosophies, beliefs and ideas that I consider dear to my heart and I do live by.  I do not want to take credit for any of the topics below, these were passed on to me through people, nature and other life events. I only learned them, tried to sincerely live them, and now, wrote them down. I believe that the more of these that you embrace the more satisfied and happy you will become.

Please share your tips for happiness by leaving a comment.

Message to the world, brought to you by Wholeness Blog:

1. Appreciate and delight in the smallest things and the simplest things.
2. Plan the future but don’t get obsessed about it. You can plan so much, but when something unplanned happens, then it is what it is, collect yourself and move on.
3. Many unexpected things may happen, sometimes things are what they are, sometimes they are not. Know which is which.
4. If you are faced with bad news, a bad reality, you will have to first accept it before you can deal with it. Some people go through denial and other moods, but you cannot move forward until you accept reality.
5. Take what you have and go along with it. Make the best with what you have.
6. See the positives and the lessons in everything  you experience.
7. Don’t see the obstacles and the so called ‘negative’ things, you will only pull yourself away from living a better life.
8. When you dream or plan, be free, explore all the possibilities, identify your dream as if no restrictions exist at all. Then, add the restrictions, examine which are real and which are self imposed, then create plans.
9. There is no good or bad. A few things are absolute good or bad, the rest are all in between, they are shades of gray. Even in your life, what you see as bad, may actually be good, your evaluation of something as bad is your own opinion, your own view, and your view is influenced by your mind set. (Read this on the good and bad).
10. Keep your mind OPEN to seeing the good in everything.
11. Stop and notice nature, birds, the wind, beaches, rain, smells, grass, dew drops, plant leaves, etc.. and see the beauty and life in them.. See the good in them.
12. See the good in you, all you’ve done, all you’ve overcome, the past events and challenges you lived through. Appreciate what you’ve managed to do and deal with. See how all these things made you who you are now and how they made you more mature and stronger.
13. Respect yourself. If you don’t no one will.
14. Love yourself. If you don’t no one will.
15. See the good that you have, your healthy blood, brain, eyes, ears, oh so many things that you are fortunate to have.
16. Demand respect of others, BUT give it back.
17. Treat others as you wish to be treated.
18. Make peace not war, in your mind, in your heart, with others, with nature and with everything.
19. Appreciate what you got. Do not take anything for granted. We got countless of things that should not be taken fro granted, for instance: Your house, the roads, the water, sewers, the food, the highway system, having fuel, electricity, the sun, the clean air, the money you have, your job, pets, rain, the night sky, green plants, fruits and on top of them all your health.
20. Remember, so many people are not as blessed as you are.
21. Read more…

I always try to see the positive side of things; it’s a habit of mine. I always tell people that there is ‘A’ positive in every thing, even in the seemingly negative. Pick any event in life and I can argue that it was neither good nor bad, and that it has positive aspects. Some people get offended when I say this; I am not trying to offend you here, but if you are, please keep on reading and let me know if you still feel the same when you’re done.

I often tell people there is something to learn and a chance to grow in every life event even horrible events. Now I am getting the chance to live what I preach in more serious ways than I had expected to. What you might find weird is that I find myself excited about this opportunity, to live what I preach, to see how I will react, how well I will utilize this opportunity to improve my life and to hopefully be an example to the few of you who don’t agree with me.

The badness of bad things, the goodness of good things, and the goodness of bad things, your memories of them and your future, all, depend on your view (attitude and mind set).

In a previous post titled ‘I Could Have Died’ (click here to read it), I explained a recent health situation I had to deal with. I was diagnosed with a blood clot in the lung; things could have ended much worse than they did. I walked away from this alive and (lightly) kicking, with a lot of positive emotions.

I write this at the risk of shocking some, but the truth is I don’t think of this recent situation as a ‘bad’ event, because I know how lucky I was, I could have died and I didn’t, and that’s lucky. I am not labeling it as a ‘good’ event either, whether it is good or bad is something for history to judge based on the outcome, by how my present and future are shaped or changed. What this event really was, is an ‘opportunity’.

There were many elements that made up this event, some more positive than others, some were arguably negative. This does not make the health scare (i.e event) negative or bad.

See, when a person labels something as ‘bad’, so many ‘negative’ things (emotions, memories and future events) are bound to be influenced and changed.  Bad and good are nothing but labels that we apply to otherwise, well, label-free, not good nor bad, events.

This reminds me of what Jesus once said. In Matthew 7:16-17 He said “You will know them by their fruits.” Just as Jesus asked men to judge other men according to their fruits (actions and outcomes) I ask that you judge your events by their fruits.

One should not label an event, but rather judge their outcomes. Outcomes happen in the future; thus one must only judge an event in the future to have an honest judgment otherwise she would be predicting, not judging. As we all know, most predictions are self-fulfilling.

Labeling an event before waiting to see the outcome is pre-judging, it predetermines to a degree the outcome. Thus, if you judge an event as bad, you are actually making it produce bad outcomes.

Since I don’t want to pre-judge this event by labeling it, how then would I describe the event? Let’s look at the facts:

• It was unforeseen.
• It was concerning, sometimes scary.
• It was challenging.
• It was a serious medical event.
• It was not as bad as it could have been.
• It is inconvenient.

Read more…

Did you know that fear and excitement are essentially the same feeling, the only difference is the label we give them and our preconceived perceptions of the label.

Think about it. Both feelings are experienced in the belly. How we think about that feeling in our belly determines whether it has power over us or if we get power from it.

Excitement is energizing. Fear is paralyzing.

Be aware of this when you feel that paralyzing sense of fear and consciously turn it into an empowering exciting feeling.

This is how you can turn paralyzing fear into motivating exciting energy every time you face a life challenge.

Do this and you will discover your inner power to always convert challenges to motivations, hard times into growing opportunities, and as a result have a never ending source of motivating energy and a positive outlook on life.

While in college I started to get obsessed about becoming rich. Being me, I started to research the topic. I was told to find how the rich became rich and to learn from them, so I did that and met with a bank owner and a wealthy local real estate owner in the town I lived in; I asked them how they made it and took notes diligently.

I still have these notes. Today I dug out a good-sized pile of printouts and notes, the cream of my research into becoming rich. I had spent years researching and accumulating these notes. I heard all sorts of advice, I read all sorts of books and articles. Some of the advice was really useful and it works as general life advice.

As I write this, the pile sits on the floor next to me. My pile of papers includes articles titled ‘The top givers’, ‘The 50 most generous philanthropists’, some were printouts of Forbes 400 profiles, articles on strategies to get rich, incorporating, budgeting, investing, stocks, home ownership, real estate investing, credit card terms, personal finance education, protecting my identity, credit reports, credit score info, 401k articles, being self employed etc.

The pile includes many pages of notes I wrote summarizing a couple books written by a couple famous real estate investing authors (I am withholding their names because they don’t deserve free publicity). My notes also include research on renting homes, being a landlord, inspecting homes, purchasing houses along with city research.

As a result of my interest I ended starting a small business, I also purchased a home that I rented out partially. Successively I started another business and researched multiple small business ideas. Some of these businesses involved selling electronics and selling dietary supplements. I eventually learned that you must enter into a business solely to want make money, you need to actually like the field. Do not start a business selling electronics if you yourself do not like electronics, if you do you will be frustrated quickly even if you are making a profit. Your business must align with your values and philosophy on life. First you must have a passion, a calling, and then comes the income. First, you must know your passions.

To say the least, I traversed a road in life that included a lot of learning, but it all seemed to lead me to now. A lot has changed in the last year, for the better.

Now I find myself seeking things other than seeking being rich. In fact, I don’t care about being rich. Don’t miss interpret this; I still want to own a business, I do want to make money of the ads I place in this blog, I do want to make a difference in this world, and I do need to make a living, etc..

But I am doing (and will continue to do) all that in a very different mindset than the one I had when I accumulated that pile of papers, I feel a need to seek wholeness, not to seek money.

I just threw that pile into recycling, poof it’s gone.

Seeking wholeness has been far more enriching than seeking money.

Further, I beleive that if I seek wholeness and my true passions, that I will be happier and more fullfilled, financial success should follow, if it doesn’t it wont be the end of the world. It is the journey that counts, not the destination.

Let me hear from you, leave a comment.

My opinion on the use of drugs to treat mood-related issues has always been less than favorable. I have seen no reasons to alter the state of my mind with any drugs, ever.

I say, if you have anxiety or depression, this means there is a culprit behind it. You need to deal with the cause, and the emotion will become well balanced again. If you cannot deal with your emotions or thoughts alone seek a friend or a counselor.

You should not want to treat (and i use the word treat very loosely here because you are not treating anything with mood drugs) stress or depression and anxiety with mood altering drugs that rob you from your true self and usually get you hooked for life.

If you are experiencing unbalanced emotions or moods, I guarantee you there is a reason for it, whether it is a spiritual, a subconscious, a cognitive or even a physical reason; there is a reason. The reason may be an imbalance in any/or all of the eight dimensions of wellness (read about the eight dimensions of wellness here) All of these dimensions are interconnected so the cause of your lack of balance probably spans over many of these dimensions.

Do you really want to mask the problem, only to re-experience these emotions once the drugs wore off?  If you take mood drugs you are only dealing with a symptom, not the underlying causes. If you go on mood drugs you are likely placing yourself in an endless loop of drug dependency, stuck, dependent on an outside, manufactured, and expensive medications to keep you well. While, what you need is already available for free, inside of you. You need nothing to be well, all you need is yourself (or a person to talk to), certainly not drugs.

Identify the cause, the imbalances and deal with them, if you do this you’ll see your anxiety evaporate into thin air. Further, you will be empowered by your experience, you will gain experience and you will take control of your life. On the other hand, you could seek refuge in drugs and hide from the real problems.

I find meditation to be a great tool to combat emotional and mood issues. I often tell people: “Say no medication and yes to mediation”. Meditation is one weapon you got, for free, that is inside of you. All you have to do is use it.

Make the move now,

“From Medication to Meditation”

Read more…

I listened to a radio interview recently and found some of the aspects that the guest speaker discussed agreeable. I noted quotes below from the interview that I liked and wanted to share with you:

On Remote Viewing, in a radio interview with Coast to Coast with Art Bell, Stephan A. Schwartz said:

[Remote viewing is a] learnable skill, like a kind of modern mental martial art or mental yoga; its an ancient one [found] in the shamanic traditions all over the world.

All over the world, there are traditions of training people to be able to use this use this aspect of consciousness to open themselves to it, its like learning to play tennis basically, there is nothing supernatural or weird about it, it its not anomalous.

All these words [that] people use, anomalous, wired, I don’t even like the word psychic, its just non local consciousness its something we all have by reason of being living organisms.

It’s your birth right as a human being

This ability is always present because it a function of being a living organism

In Stephan’s opinion, phenomena like remote viewing, intuition, telepathy ad others are all basically non local consciousness or non local awareness.

Listen to the whole interview here

Read more…

The Road To Success

Every person experiences failure, it’s a common occurrence. From toddlers learning how to walk to seasoned business owners, we all fail, many times. Would you rather face your fear of failure, fail and then succeed. Or would you rather not face your fear, not fail, and eliminate all your chances for success? Failure is unavoidable, it’s part of life!

Read this collection of quotes on failure, then an inspirational conclusion followed by an invitation for discussion.

Failure? I never encountered it.. All I ever met were temporary setbacks.”

- Dottie Walters

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
- Robert F. Kennedy

The road to success is paved with failures.
- Unknown

Read more…

By Gabriel 1999 ~  Thank you for allowing me to post this here.

Chains by Ethan

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
American Civil Rights Leader

Read these and try to learn how to say I Love You, who knows, you may need this knowledge some day. Let’s start,

Afrikaans – Ek het jou lief
Albanian – Te dua
Arabic – Ana behibak (to male)
Arabic – Ana behibek (to female)
Armenian – Yes kez sirumem
Bambara – M’bi fe
Bengali – Ami tomake bhalobashi (pronounced: Amee toe-ma-kee bhalo-bashee)
Belarusian – Ya tabe kahayu
Bisaya – Nahigugma ako kanimo
Bulgarian – Obicham te
Cambodian – Soro lahn nhee ah

Read more…

Have you ever realized that every person is annoying to someone? You may have many people that love the dirt that you walk on and hold you in high regard, but it also follows that there are people out there that find you annoying, and thus dislike you.

To all of you who loose sleep over being popular or being liked by others, I say Quit It!  Just be who you are because there is no point in trying to be liked by everyone, it is simply impossible.

Rather than living your life trying to be liked by others how about stopping for a sec to ask yourself if YOU like yourself? Are you annoyed by who you are, who you’ve become, who others want you to be?

Yes you are annoying to others, and there is nothing you can do to change that. As long as you are not annoying to people that you deeply care for / live with you and as long as you are not harming others, you should be just fine

Ultimately, as long as you are happy with who you are, that is all that matters. You get closer to being whole when you are well and when you are aware of and understand who you are. With this awareness you also see how seeking others’ approval and admiration is absolutely a waste of energy and time and is not the way to live your life.

not in wf

I used multiple resources and created a comprehensive wellness tracker work sheet that you could use to track everything related to your wellness (physical, mental, intellectual, emotional, etc..). I put this in a PDF format here for anyone to download free of charge. No registration required, simply right click and save the file.

Click here to download the Complete Personal Wellness Tracker

I had a few nutrition classes over the years, I also have a few books that had sheets you could use to track food intake. The problem with these sheets is that they don’t track enough. A person is not just what s/he eats, we are complex (emotional, mental, spiritual, etc..) beings and there are a lot of (inner and outer) environmental variables that effect us.

One day at a physical therapy meeting, the physical therapist suggested I track my food intake to find what is causing my migraines. He suggested using a tracking sheet very similar to the one I am giving away here. He then made a comment that these sheets only track food intake, so they ignore many other things.

It felt as if he read my mind. I took that thought and did the research, comparisons, and came up with this tracker sheet that will help you track way more than just food intake. It tracks many variables that ultimately have an effect on your overall wellness.

You now can keep track of your expectations, emotions, sleep, mood, weather, physical exercise, plus more.

This sheet is self explanatory, I hope that no instructions are needed. My only instruction to you is to remember this sheet is a self-help tool. Use it for your own benefit, no one will read it so don’t worry about spelling and neatness, this is for you only, to help you track variables that may be effecting your wellness. As long as you can make sense of your notes then you’ve been successful in tracking the variables.

There is no such thing as a perfect tracking sheet. This one is a general attempt to facilitate to the needs of many. You now have to take it and personalize it. If you have something you want to track that is not on this sheet, simply write it in, any white space will do, the margins and bottom part of the sheet are god spots for these additional notes.

Once enough data has been collected you could reflect back at the notes, and see patterns, find behavior, thoughts or actions and what effects they produce.

Your feedback is important, this is not the first version, and will not be the last. If you want to ad a variable to track please let me know. I am working on the next version and will publish it once it’s completed.

I give this away to you, asking for nothing, sending you wishes of well being.

Stay well.

Read more…

I was listening to an interview with Eckhard Tolle a few days ago. He mentioned something very simple that, while I knew, I did not practice. He talked about living in the moment, appreciating the present and recognizing that when we seek goals we may be missing on the more satisfying journeys.

Many of us, including myself, are goal oriented individuals. We hop from goal to another and operate our daily lives driven by goals or destinations. When you are like me, it is not unusual to never appreciate where you’ve been or enjoy what you’ve done. When you reach your goal you feel satisfaction and pride, but this doesn’t last long because all you want now is to move on to the next goal.

Seeking goals may get you far in life, but at the same time you risk not being aware of the majority of your life since most of youe life is actually comprised of journeys that you decided to take. Eckhard’s view is that the journey is important, perhaps more important than the destination. My personal view is that both are important, because the journey is part of the quest, part of the destination; they are the “one experience”.

Your life is full of journeys, and destinations. There are some destinations one may never reach, take ‘wholeness’ for example, optimum intelligence, perfection, or even enlightenment. This does not mean that we cannot pursue these goals and partake these journeys; in reality we do seek these unattainable goals. Even if all your goals in life are achievable, most of your life will be journeying. Thus we should use our journeys to enrich and add value to our lives.

I leave you with this question to ponder: Is life all about the journeys, not the goals?

We often seek to accomplish things, reach places, complete tasks. We do this so often that we never ever notice it when we reach a goal, accomplish a task, or reach a destination.

Here’s a simple trick to help you live in the moment. Simple ask yourself “What’s my relationship now to this moment?”

This question enables me to appreciate what I have done, and where I stand. It helps me calm down, and relax as well. When I’m stressed without being consious of the stress this question takes my mind out of the loop and enhaces my conciousness.

Amazing how one question can change your experience, even if for a moment. Give it a try, ask yourself  “What’s my relationship now to this moment?”

Once you’ve tried this, leave your feedback to let us all know what you thought.