Tag Archives: Ego

21

Fight the Dark Side

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Focus On the Force

Each of us has a power that we either use to help move us toward our goals or provide an excuse for not achieving what we want.  I think it is much more similar to life in the Star Wars franchise than we would probably admit. All people contain within themselves a duality. These two sides have a high potential to do things perceived as an excellent good or something representing evil.

All people contain this power within them, and that is the force of life.  It is not by magic that people end up living an authentic life. It is by conscious decision.  The choices we make in every moment dictate the nature of the force within us.  These choices are a refreshing combination of how we think about ourselves, the world, and everything in it.  Focus honestly on how you feel about things and your conscious thoughts today.  Notice the emotions that arise in you because of an idea. Then see the words and actions that come from that.  This process determines the power and nature of the force in you.  It all starts with thoughts.

Operating on the Light Side

We would all like to think of ourselves as being the hero and doing what is right always. That is not a human experience. It is a constant struggle between our two sides. Here is the simple formula for working with the forces of light.  Put others before yourself, be kind in thought and deed, accept the differences of others, feel joy, peace, serenity, love, hope, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.  All of these exist within us, and it is our choice to practice them or not.

What a world we would have if all people were able to function in this part of themselves.  If you look at how you like to be treated, all of these things are probably on the list. Choosing these things and meaning allows the force within you to help others. It isn’t always easy to think this way when you see someone doing something say to someone else or you. It is human nature to want to fight back and take an eye for an eye. When we are hurt, we want to cut back. To put that instinct aside and treat a situation with love will allow the force in you to do great good in the world.

Welcome to The Dark Side

Welcome to the dark side, which needs no introduction, I am sure because we all have one of these.  Our darkness exists by our insecurities, pains, and fears of our lives.  Anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, superiority, and ego contribute to our dark side. These are thoughts that lead to words and actions that will directly or indirectly harm others somehow.  But the person who is hurt the most is you. The dark side of the force does contain the power, but it is corrupting, painful and takes away the good in the world for selfish gain.

Many people I have known can harm someone by directly consciously speaking words that exploit the insecurity of someone.  Then fear is generated, or selfishness, and that person has been infected.  Look at the people in your life and how they speak to you and others. Where on the scale of the force does their intention come from in each moment?  The allure of the dark side is that you will not have to suffer again. But the truth is, of course, your actions are causing you to experience. These thoughts and emotions wear you down and hurt you. To feel these things is the dark side.

Your Force is Always there.

Inside of each of us, this force I am trying to define is always available to you.  It is there to call on when you need strength to face a challenge.  Even in the most desperate times in life, remember the force in you will be there to push back the adversity and allow you to thrive if you let it.  You may have to make a course adjustment, learn a new skill, create a new goal, or start over.  Whatever the task ahead of you, the power to move toward it every day is the force inside you.

Be conscious of how you can help yourself and help others see the good in the world through you.  Take advantage of opportunities to show this. Consciously practice kindness even when there is no apparent gain for you.  Create hope for someone in the world.  Don’t let mindless anger brought on by fear control you. It solves nothing but creates pain in the world. Pain and suffering are the calling cards of the dark side of the force within you.

Where does your force lie?

Every day, you have a choice to cause pain and suffering to others or create joy and kindness.  These choices develop in the thoughts you choose to entertain.  Are they from the dark side, or are they from the light?  The force in you will always be there working on the side that you choose.  So choose your thoughts wisely.  The world depends on it.  And it all starts with your thoughts, the corresponding emotions they lead to, the tenor of the words you speak, and the actions you take.  All things will affect the force in you and the effect that energy has on the world.  Which side of the line do you fall on here?

“We must wake.” -Yoda

“Always pass on what you have learned.”- Yoda

“The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.”- Yoda

 

 

 

21

Authentic

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real meHow much of your time is spent being an authentic you? How much is spent acting like you feel our culture determines you to be?   How is that identity even established? What difference does it make?  So much of our time is spent developing this persona, which, when examined closely, isn’t very real at all.  We create this imposter ourselves by trying to fit into the roles our culture demands.  Go to college, get married, have a career for thirty years, retire and wait to die.  If it isn’t time to let go of that false now, then it never will be.

False Self

Each day there is an image of myself that I imagine the world sees.  What precisely the idea entails is a mystery. I certainly hope that intelligence, kindness, and caring are a part of the picture.  It is not the substance that concerns me, and it is the inability to ask for help or even appear vulnerable that is bothersome. There are times when people get lost, down, and dangerously sad, but still put on a convincing smile and hide the pain and suffering you are feeling.

The pain and suffering are what they are. Each person has found their own story of this anguish. Although nobody would call pain and suffering good companions,  they can supply a sufficient education and help develop a depth of character that didn’t exist before. Kindness is no longer a word but an action. Understanding someone’s actions comes far before judgment because of my education in this area. Recognizing the false self isn’t who you are but who you think you should be to fit in.  Put all the thoughts of others aside and start to listen to your intuition about what will make you happy.

I Let It Go

letting go 2It has become time for me to let go of what others think and what I feel about myself because of the fear that others might contemplate my choices, decisions, and thoughts. For the first time in my life, I have to embrace who I am, faults and shortcomings included.

I feel that only by doing this can I move forward, away from the falseness of the past and toward a future that includes an honest reckoning of what I want to accomplish in life.  Time to let go of the expectations that I feel others have built up in my life, embracing the contribution that I can make that matters is only as myself. Not a prefabricated idea of a person that is only an illusion of living.

The True X Marks the Spot

In all of the greatest stories about treasure, there is

What treasure is located at your X?
What glory is located at your X?

Always a map, and at the location of the great treasure, there is a giant X.  There are many twists and turns on the path to get to this place, and often danger exists. I think that my true self is a lot like that. There is a valuable treasure of gold if you can reach the X, but getting there has been a tough road, sometimes fraught with danger and difficulty.  Inside there were more profound struggles than anyone on the outside could know.  I feel like slowly, but surely the X is coming into view for me.

Have you found yours?

21

Sorry

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Sorry- feeling distressed, especially through sympathy with someone else’s misfortune.

sorry
In the game we played as kids, some never learn the value of the word sorry.

Life is a continual path of choices. Each person will make many choices every day, from when to get up in the morning to what they eat that day.  As we move along that path, there will be opportunities to do good things or bad things. To choose to be kind and considerate of others or to make decisions with our own self-interest at heart. All people are going to make decisions they are not proud of at some point. It is part of being human.  Recognizing the wrong you perceive is difficult, but we all have the power to make it right. Say, “I’m sorry.”  This is the first step in making things right for you.  It all starts with a conscious awareness of the things you have done and do which actually cause harm to others.  Your thoughts will reveal your emotions about the things you have done, the words you have or have not used because of them, and the actions you have or have not taken.  I’m sorry is an important place to start when building understanding.

Sorry About My Pride

Pride is a feeling we all have, and it can be a positive thing, but sometimes we let it get in the way.  There are people out there with such fragile egos Im sorrythat admitting they made even the tiniest of mistakes is a threat to their whole identity.  Don’t be one of these people.  It is your ego, or your false self, speaking these words.  Never be too proud to say you are sorry.

Good people make bad choices all the time. That is a part of the process of life called learning.  Be conscious of your choices and the way they affect other people.  Seeing that your decision hurts someone else isn’t an indictment of you and your character. It is a recognition of humanity in someone else.  I’m sorry is a way to state express your understanding of the pain in another person.  You see them, understand them, and will try to help them.  It is a simple matter of putting someone else’s well-being ahead of your own.  It costs nothing, so don’t be too proud to use this phrase.

How Can I Make It Right

Along with the honest sentiment of being sorry for your choice or action, the question should be; How can I make it right?  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and we learn this from physics. It is true in other Sorryparts of life too.  Hopefully, when you have hurt someone or made a poor choice, there is a way to make it right. Even the worst of behaviors can be atoned for in some way.  It starts by taking responsibility for yourself and your behavior and working toward doing what is right.

Most often, the thing to do is to stop doing the thing that is hurting someone else. That is the moment of choice because either you will put someone else ahead of yourself or are not.  I’m sorry it loses its power if clearly, you are not sorry enough to change your behavior. If you are the source of someone’s misfortune, then show your contrition by stopping that behavior. Stop making the same mistake over and over again. Use them to discover how to live a better life.

Sorry Doesn’t Fix Everything.

Simply saying that you are sorry doesn’t fix everything, and even bargaining a manner to make things right might not do the trick. Having feelings about remorse in the way you treated someone is the first step in your humanity.  And who says it is your job to fix everything.  We can do the only thing to try to become a little bit better a person than we were yesterday. To leave a little more joy in the world and less anger and pain.  To understand where you were wrong, the mistakes you made, intentional or unintentional, and sorry for them.  You can’t control the reactions of others, and who is to say what their emotional state is?  You are responsible for your actions and the footprint that leaves in the world.  This mark begins by being more conscious of your thoughts, emotions, words, and actions today and taking responsibility for feeling and saying you are sorry when you are wrong.

“If we have made an error, done a wrong, been unjust to another or ourselves, or, like the Pharisee, passed by some opportunity for good, we should have the courage to face our mistake squarely, to call it boldly by its right name, to acknowledge it frankly and to put in no flimsy alibis of an excuse to protect an anemic self-esteem.” – William George Jordan.

“An apology is a good way to have the last word.”-Unknown

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”-Paul Boese 

 

21

Silence

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There are a precious few moments that are truly silent and fewer still in life people are aware of. All of our moments seem to be spoken for with a wide variety of visual entertainment available, intensive video game experiences, and the constant attention on our phones. Few moments are free to be silent. But still, the silence is there waiting for us if we take the time and make an effort to hear it. You must do this because it will benefit you in your mental health and help you become the best at whatever you want to accomplish.  Listening to the available silence is good for your mood, too, because it is an easy way to bring you into the present moment and out of negatively charged thoughts of the past or the future.  So let’s take a moment and start finding the silence.

Listen to Silence

Even though our life experience is probably something else, silence is always available to us. Many are afraid of the quiet because there is only you when you are not distracted by something else. That can be intimidating, scary, and even seem lonely, which creates an uncomfortable feeling that people want to avoid.  It doesn’t have to be that way because once you ease into this silence and become more comfortable with yourself, you will recognize the strength in yourself.  There is always a silence existing underneath the noise and activity, and it is waiting there for you to access it and experience its power and strength.

Listening to the silence immediately creates a stillness in you. This stillness is like a pond in the early morning with no wind, and it is a soft reflective pool where the best of your possible ideas can go to develop.  The stillness in you is rare to find and has been difficult for me to maintain, but the time I do get to spend listening to the silence revitalizes thoughts and allows me to feel what it is I am seeking in my life. A chance to separate the thoughts of value from the thoughts of foolishness. It is also a chance to deal with your emotions and where they come from.

Your Reflecting Pool

You are more than the physical body you travel around in each day. You are more than the job you have or the things you own. Those are just things you have accumulated. Some people are better at accumulation than others. That doesn’t make them great people. Great people understand who they are, and that person is accessible through the silence. We are all trained from childhood to identify with the mind and treat it and the thoughts it creates as if that is us. It isn’t. When you ask a question with your mind, someone answers. Who is that? You can pull back and watch your thoughts come to you, and if you are watching the thoughts, you can’t possibly be the thoughts.

When you are identifying with your mind, you are being cut off from who you really are. If your whole sense of self is identified with thinking and you can’t access and live from the space of who you really are.  This leads to underlying feelings of unhappiness, longing for something that you can’t quite put your finger on. That is the true self, struggling to send you a message. The silence allows the message to get through. Becoming conscious of this being is done by reclaiming your consciousness from the mind, and people can do that by allowing all things to be silent and exist in the cool, calm, reflecting pool of your existence.

How to Focus on What You are doing

The focus starts when a person stops Identifying with their thoughts all the time. Our minds are great tools we should use to solve problems, help create things, and weigh our decisions’ value. It is not who we are, and neither are the thoughts we think. Drawback and look at your thoughts. Take five minutes and without a filter, write down everything you think. How many of your thoughts are repeated, or useless, or both. Notice the tenor of your thoughts. Are they kind? Helpful? Mean? Judgmental? Let your thoughts slide by you without reacting to them and their power. Choose to pay attention to the thoughts that honor you and represent what you want them to.  Once you let them go, you can find the silence.

Silence is found in between thoughts and emotions. Take time and see how you feel about things. What are you avoiding, denying, or resisting in life? When you see yourself feeling unease or nervous about something, that is something you should deal with. Search your soul, search your mind in the quiet spaces, and it is at this point your journey to self-discovery and personal growth. It all begins with the silence. Take time to find the calm and silence in your everyday life and see what secrets it holds for your life.

“Silence is a source of great strength.”- Lao Tzu.

“He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.”- Elbert Hubbard.

“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenements halls and whispered in the sounds of silence.”- Paul Simon.

21

Our Battle

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Winning The Battle In Each Of Us

Winning the Inner Battle

Inside every person in the world, there exists a conflict between your two selves.

Students of psychology have several different names for these “voices.” Some refer to them as your ego, or perhaps your superego, but I will address these two voices as False–Self and True-Self for my purposes.

These two entities are constantly battling for control of our thoughts and actions.  If you don’t believe it, who answers you in your head when you ask the simplest question?  One voice asks the other one answers.  It happens all of the time.  Now let’s get to meet your two voices.

Sometimes You’re Hard On Yourself

Too-much-EgoSelf I(ego, primitive self, jerk, whatever you want to call it.) is your stern voice. It is a know-it who does nothing but issue commands and judges every result.

This is the voice that will tell you that you are stupid for trying, or that will never work, or call you an idiot when things don’t quite turn out the way that you hoped.  This voice has been building inside you since you were born to protect you from disappointment, to keep you safe.

It doesn’t mean to stagnate your growth or cause you to carry around an impossibly negative attitude towards everything and everybody.  You will see this voice in evidence in people who continually judge others and always believe that their way is the best.

Now their way maybe, in fact, the best way, but if this voice dominates someone, they will never seek anything outside of their experience because to do so would put at risk the status quo, and that would be too scary for them to deal with.

Fear of the unknown can make many individuals cling to their old ways and habits, simply because although they may be bad, they are a known entity, and better to feel bad continually by something that you know than to risk something new.

Raising your level of hope that things can get better only to be disappointed is just too scary for most people.  It is much safer never to try and not know how you would fare than to try and fail.  Failure is only one more step to success, and without taking steps, you may never find it.

Say Hello to your true self.

Self II is the voice of your subconscious mind, the absolutely human part of your mind that subconscious-mind-powerwill create creative scenarios and ideas for you to follow.

This voice will urge you to pursue your talents and try to create something great, ignoring the critical “Self I” voice and all of its defense-minded musings.  This voice will tell you about all of your natural potentials and inform you about the skills and capabilities that you possess that will enable you to act and achieve almost anything that you have put your mind to accomplishing.

This ability to rely on ourselves and continue to develop and release our potential, I think, is what most people are looking for in life.  We have the skills and talents to achieve most things we set our minds toward doing if we allow our true talents to shine through the naturally negative expectations of ourselves and others.

People who have achieved greatness in any field, to some degree, and at some point in their life were able to find, listen to and follow this positive inner voice.

Simple Path to Success

success-sketch
I love this picture! Thank you, Google Images!

The simple path to success involves recognizing your own limiting voice and choosing to ignore it and listen to your inner positive voice, allowing you to succeed in the path you should follow.

Finding your ability to hear your own positive voice will enable you to continue to grow as a person and release your nearly unlimited potential to do whatever it is you set your mind to.

Ignoring the negative voice in you that says nothing but negative and judgmental things will allow your positive attitude to bloom into whatever you dream for it to be.  Being the best that you can be is within you.

All people have the ability within themselves to be great and powerful person including both you and me.

The following song is for all of the “Boxing” we do with ourselves.  We all do it, and it is unnecessary we are all on the same team.