Tag Archives: strength

21

Inner Calm

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In any 24 hours, if you venture out into the world, there will be challenges you will face. The battleground for most of these things is going to be in our heads. I often face challenges to maintain a positive attitude or not to be overwhelmed by a poor perspective of things. Anger is an emotion designed as a warning for us. To make sure we know when something isn’t right, or more precisely, that you are afraid. Afraid that your needs aren’t going to be met by a loss of one form or another. Most often, anger is a waste of time. Moving beyond unhealthy emotions of anger, judgment, greed, or cruelty smoothly, quickly, and healthily can make your life a much more pleasant experience. One of the best things we can do is to create a positive space in our mind; it is a skill that anyone can master if they want to.

Be a Reader, Not a Reactor to Thoughts

Thoughts are occurring in our minds at a rapid pace all day long. You have a choice of which ones you listen to and which ones you let pass you by. It is good practice to start to pay attention to the thoughts you allow to affect you positively and negatively. As humans, we are capable of keeping only one thing in our focus at a time. If you choose to focus on a negative, that will trigger negative emotional responses physically in your body. Once you start to drop down a negative chute of thought, it will focus on itself.

Read the negative thought and notice it, and then let it go and choose a more positive view to focus on. Once accomplished, your body will react, and you will move down a more positive chute. Thoughts build on each other, and a focus develops. Read your thoughts and know where they are taking you. The alternative is to let your dreams run wild and spend your time merely reacting at the mercy of whatever your mind creates. That is how many people live their lives. It leads to wild swings or emotions and unpredictable behavior. Focus on your thoughts and dismiss those that aren’t an accurate representation of who you are and who you want to be. Let them slide by you like flies in the darkness.

Real Focus Develops

One of the best methods to develop a focus on positive thoughts is meditation. Most people picture incense, candles, and chanting when they think of meditating, but that is just a stereotype. Many people practice meditation without knowing it. Whenever you calm your mind and notice your thoughts, you are contemplating. It can be through intense concentration on a task or a conscious effort to notice your breathing. There is a calmness that will take over your mind and body if you stop the mind from running wild and focus on something other than your thought. Thoughts then come to you but are very noticeable as something outside of you.

The peaceful calm that will move over you when you seek calmness will allow you to look deep inside yourself and get to know your true self. Some say that is where your real power exists. Once the thoughts are quiet, a real focus can develop on what you want in your life and what you don’t. Clear goals can materialize, and actual plans for achieving them come into your reality. Focus on the calmness of mediation and see what you can accomplish.

Calmness is a power

There is an ability to bring your inner strength to bear against any challenge you will face the ability to calm your mind at will allows those without this asset to can’t. Inside us all, there is a strength hidden most of the time but can be channeled and used to enable you to thrive and survive when it seems doubtful. Much of our suffering occurs because we desire things to come to us a certain way. Without it, we are in trouble.

But there is the self-confidence that we develop, left to our own devices as children we have it, but time, experience, and the will of others push it down deep. Challenges come in life as a chance to bring them out. Sometimes we fail, are overwhelmed, and never get there. But ………sometimes we do not fail, and we remember the fact that we are strong enough t0 handle what life is throwing our way. Whatever that is, addiction, poverty, or loss. Inside of us is the strength to take it. Finding that strength is helped by developing a calmness about you.

Focus on methods to see the tone and tenor of your thoughts. Look for the ones that make your life a better experience and leave the negative behind. Learning to focus your mind and see what it is doing can allow you to find success and overcome any challenge you face.

“Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so that’s very important for good health.” -Dalai Lama

“Getting stress out of your life takes more than prayer alone. You must take action to make changes and stop doing whatever is causing the stress. You can learn to calm down in the way you handle things.”-Joyce Meyer

“You don’t have to control your thoughts. You have to stop letting them control you.”-Dan Millman

 

21

Seasons

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Seasons-  each of the four divisions of the year (spring, summer, autumn, and winter) marked by particular weather patterns and daylight hours, resulting from the earth’s changing position concerning the sun.

It is a fortunate thing, to be experiencing the spring of the year! A wise person once said there is no way to stop the seasons from changing. That is true in nature, and it is true for your life as well, just like the planet rolls around each year, inevitably bringing an awakening, a vibrant life, and slowly a return to a darker cold slumber. So do our lives move as well. The sad part is that there are over 7 billion people globally, and a tiny fraction ever evaluates their existence in any thoughtful manner at all. The seasons provide us with a natural lesson on how to appreciate things.  Do you pay attention? Or are you caught in your own thoughts?  Look at the seasons of life, and you will appreciate the experience more.  This begins with really looking at the thoughts you entertain, the words you speak, and the actions in life you take because of all of these things.

Season of Eyes Shut

It seems like people live their lives and flow through the seasons with their eyes closed to the change that is coming to them. Each year the seasons move by and with them a lesson. Still, the young person is too involved in the physical world and what other people think of them to pay real attention to the knowledge the world offers—a chance to love, enjoy, and find experiences that color our lives.  Very rarely do young men and women remove their conscious thought from what they want to accomplish to imagine how it all fits into the big picture.

Worrying about your relationships, jobs, and living arrangements dominates thoughts. Life passes you by, and all you try to do is collect as many things as possible. The value of things is temporary, but the value of experience stands the test of time. Youth is wasted on the young, and the spring is wasted on selfish, individualistic behavior.  As you get older and time becomes shorter, you realize there is a reason for this, and you become envious of the time you had that is now gone. Unfortunately, others are frittering it away with their eyes tightly shut, looking at themselves and ignoring the world.

Enjoy the Seasons

It is common in the area I live to look ahead to spring during the winter.  It gets dark early, there are major snow events, and the temperature is frigid. But it provides a unique experience people in areas which are warm all year don’t get.  There are cold hard moments that come in winter. If you pay attention, they will wake you up to the soft, warm moments that will come as the calendar moves toward spring and summer. We all need to appreciate more warm, soft moments.  Winter creates this appreciation.

Spring brings hope and renewal, and summer brings vitality, fall brings sober acceptance of change, and then we are back to winter again. The seasons mimic the experience of our lives. As we age, we go through seasons, but most don’t notice these things are happening.  We are young in the spring, and our summers are spent doing, going, collecting, competing. Fall is the time you realize there is an end in sight, and winter is that end, like it or not. We all hope our winter is a long way away, but………………we never know.

Be in the Moment of the Season

There is nothing as inevitable as the passing of time, and the human experience is a finite thing. Our seasons are flying by, and all you have to ask yourself is, are you making the most of it, or are you wasting your time?  It really doesn’t matter what you do.  The human experience is a gift.  Think of the magic of experiencing a snowfall or a warm summer day with a cool breeze blowing.  Or the fall when the leaves are changing, and the crisp weather is a harbinger of things to come.  The wonderful hope of spring that revives us.

Please pay attention to your life and the people in it.  Spend your time and money accumulating experiences rather than things. Things are finite and provide joy for a short minute.  Experiences lead to growth and sharing and a life to be remembered.

So spend a little time in your day to be a little more conscious of the seasons occurring inevitably on your calendar and life. It all starts where you focus your thoughts and what you appreciate about life in every season—the words you use to express this appreciation to others and the actions which result. So look at your seasons and take a moment to enjoy them all.

“Nature gives to every time and season unique beauty; from morning to night, as  from the cradle to the grave, it’s just a succession of changes so soft and comfortable that we hardly notice the progress.” ~ Charles Dickens

Wherever in the world you may find yourself right now, we are about to enter a new season.

“The beat of drums and the blustering of summer fade away. Everything becomes quiet, more introspective, sad. Autumn always comes with such beauty.” ~ Jaak Drees