Tag: feelings

Feeling Grateful

For some time now I have been keeping a grateful journal, maybe a couple years or so. In this journal I write down 4 or 5 things I am grateful for and then I read them again to myself. While I figured I was heading the in the right direction, this journaling didn’t seem to make me more grateful. In fact I was still the same pain in the ass that I was two years prior to adopting this practice, but then one day it happened. I actually started to feel grateful; I mean a full on sense of gratitude for everything in my life.

The funny thing is I don’t know exactly why, but what was different is I was feeling it, not rationally thinking about stuff I should be grateful for, but instead deeply feeling grateful. It was all about the feeling not some method of convincing myself that I need to be grateful. Maybe my previous attempts at writing down what I was grateful for were too mechanical and laden with some kind of expectation that I should be grateful. Once I started feeling grateful the journaling on gratitude become more specific and insightful. The previous journaling would be things like:

  • I’m grateful for my family
  • My home
  • My work
  • My investments……

This was like trying to brainwash myself, repeating the same old worn out shit day after day, and it didn’t work. Real felt gratitude results in deeper insights into what you are grateful for and seems to be self perpetuating, where as making up super high level stuff like I was results in nothing. You can’t brain wash yourself into being grateful, but it seems you need to feel grateful or the journaling becomes a waste of time.

So where does this leave us when it comes to journaling? These are a few insights I’ve had over the past couple of days:

  • When you do feel grateful by all means write something in your journal and be specific.
  • You don’t have to feel grateful for everything, so if you only have one or two things that you feel truly grateful for then write them down, but don’t feel compelled to write down 4 or 5. It seems like you kill the magic feeling when the whole thing becomes some kind of stupid writing exercise.
  • Don’t time box yourself, if you get up in the morning to write in your grateful journal, take a few minutes to think about it and feel it. Forcing yourself to write something down doesn’t move the ball forward. It’s not about using up paper and filling a page. It is about discovering and feeling real gratitude.
  • Accept that there may be days where you write nothing at all. Maybe you just don’t feel all that grateful today; that’s alright your not a gratitude machine.

I would love to hear about your gratitude journaling experiences and what works for you.

Namaste

 

 

 

The Happiness Illusion (updated)

 

happiness is not good enough

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

You are constantly bombarded by self help gurus that preach the mantra that happiness is the primary goal for you life. Take some time to observe your own life and calculate the amount of time each day or week where you feel truly happy. I’m not talking about the times you feel content, challenged, or at peace, but instead the emotion of feeling very happy or elated. If you are forever chasing some state of happiness where the majority of the hours of the day are filled with happiness, then you are setting yourself up to experience yet another emotion, which will be a feeling of disappointment. You immediately jump to the conclusion that there is something wrong with me. I must be doing something wrong or I would be happy all the time, instead of the brief forays into happiness I am currently experiencing.

I’m guessing your day is filled with time spent in some or all of the following emotions:

  • Feeling anxious.
  • Frustration with yourself, others, or some man made process or rule.
  • Feeling challenged by your work and/or people you work with.
  • Loving others or feeling loved.
  • Feeling the fear of the unknown or known.
  • Anger or being pissed off about something or someone.
  • Self loathing for not living up to your own expectations or the expectations of others.
  • Envy for things or envious of what others have.
  • Fleeting moments of bliss or happiness.
  • Satisfaction with accomplishing something or learning something new.
  • Feeling uninspired or tired.
  • Feeling appreciated or unappreciated.
  • Desiring stuff, money, sex, or some mind altering drugs or alcohol.

I could go on and on with this list of emotions we experience often on a daily basis. We are filled with all these thoughts that affect our well being and all the yoga and mediation in the world will not eradicate them from your mind, believe me I’ve tried. Give yourself a fucking break, you are an emotional bundle of somewhat uncontrollable thoughts and you know it. Don’t and I mean do not let some dumb ass on YouTube tell you that if you buy this, or practice this, all of this will go away, and your life will become one big vacation. You can’t exist in some state of continuous bliss; you are not the Dali Lama. Sure you can seek enlightenment and end all this suffering and discontent, and I hope you achieve it someday, but on the off chance you don’t then you are going to have to learn to live in the world you currently inhabit.

I think happiness is overrated, there are many other emotional states that should occupy your mind; those that are more valuable to you and to others. I’m not saying you should live in some state or misery, but chasing a state of happiness is an illusion. Replace that quest with these feelings or life goals:

  • Taking responsibility for you life, your work, and your decisions.
  • Feeling challenged by your work and the fulfillment you feel when you step up to take on the challenge, win or lose.
  • Feeling good about yourself because you are working at being more disciplined.
  • Being grateful for all the shit you have; just look around you and notice the type of life that many are merely existing in, and you will see you have a lot to be grateful for.
  • Developing an appreciation for the people in your life, family, friends, co-workers, and customers.
  • The quiet satisfaction you feel from learning that came from reading, studying, experimenting, watching, and listening.
  • Desiring more from yourself or desiring more from life than you are currently getting. Desiring more for your life is not a bad thing. A lot of great things have been done by people with a burning desire to accomplish something.

Suffering builds character

In fact I would challenge you to consider that happiness as your constant state of mind would put you at a big disadvantage in life when it comes to achieving what you want. You need to experience difficult times, challenges, and a certain amount of pain to grow as a person. Maybe you can be satisfied by all the obstacles you have overcome to be where you are today, instead of wishing for a life of ease and self gratification. If the totality of life consisted of sitting on a beach in the Caribbean and drinking one Margarita after another how happy would you be then?

Think back on all the things you have accomplished, the events in your life that bring back good memories. What about the time you landed that job you wanted, or met that special person, or obtained that degree or certification you worked so hard for. I’ll bet you weren’t sitting around bullshitting yourself in some blissful state of euphoria; instead you got off your ass and took action. Quit wishing for happiness and start doing something constructive; in the long run you will feel a whole lot better about yourself.

I used to watch all this motivational shit on YouTube from Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Eric Thomas, Les Brown, and Bob Proctor, but instead of motivating me it made me feel dissatisfied with my work and my life in general. To tell you the truth these people have some good ideas, but ultimately they are trying to sell you one of their books or have you come to their seminar. Meanwhile they make you feel unfulfilled about your life so they can generate more sales and then you just feel like shit when you could have been enjoying the life you have.

You already know what you need to change in your life to progress. You certainly don’t need someone else to tell you the areas of your life that are pretty fucked up.

Let me leave you with this quote from Gary John Bishop that comes from his book UNFU*K Yourself:

I expect nothing and accept everything!

Try living your life for a while expecting nothing and accepting everything that happens to you. If you expect to be happy all the time and can’t accept it when life sucker punches you then you are doomed my friend. Drop the stupid expectations and take life as it is served up to you, then you can at least control the suffering and enjoy the good stuff.

Namaste

The Law of Attraction #3

 

law of attraction 21

In my previous posts The Law of Attraction #1 and The Law of Attraction #2 I attempted to explain some fundamental concepts and ways you can start using the law of attraction in your own life. I have been reading The Secret and I thought it might be useful to provide a summary of some of the things I have been learning. I really encourage you to acquire the book, it is incredible, and contains some great quotes interspersed between the writing of the author Rhonda Bryne. Not only is this an excellent book, but it is so well made, printed, and illustrated. I have the hardcover version, which I highly recommend. I can’t speak to the quality of the paperback version.

The second chapter of The Secret is “The Secret Made Simple”, some of the key concepts shared in that chapter include:

  • The law of attraction is a law of nature and as such is always working. It is not something you need to invoke.
  • It is very important to know how you are feeling. If you want to understand what you are thinking you must ask yourself what am I feeling. If I am feeling good it would be impossible to be thinking bad thoughts.
  • Thoughts determine what frequency you are on. If you are feeling bad you are on  frequency that is attracting more bad things into your life, conversely if you are feeling good then you are on a frequency that will attract more good things.
  • There is this concept of secret shifters, which is merely a set of thoughts or activities that you can use to break the pattern of bad thoughts. These can be personal experiences, nature, music, or maybe even a form of exercise that can be used to break the pattern of bad thoughts. Try as we may we will all slip into a negative thinking pattern from time to time and need to have some ready ways to shift our thoughts back in a positive direction.
  • When it comes to frequency the feeling of love is the strongest frequency you can possess. Strive to embrace the feeling of love as much as possible, because it will enhance your results.

The real takeaway here is that the way you feel is critically important. The way you feel will guide you to change your thoughts, because the thoughts you are thinking are making you feel good or bad. Pay attention to how you feel as it is a key indicator of what is going on in your mind, and will help you stay on course or make a correction.

In my next post I will share more of what I am learning from The Secret and how to use the law of attraction.

Namaste

 

 

 

Law of Attraction #1

law-of-attraction-6

Over the past 6 months or so, I have been spending a good amount of time studying the Law of Attraction, including reading The Secret and watching countless Abraham Hicks videos on YouTube. I’m not sure why it took me so long to discover this theory, but it did. Put in the simplest of forms you can think of the law of attraction as:

What you think about you attract!

There is more to it than this, but let’s start here with whatever you are thinking about you are attracting. Maybe this is just simple psychology in the sense that if I am worried about something it is self-perpetuating and I worry about it more, or conversely if I am focused on something positive I become more positive. It is undeniable that if you are depressed you just get more of the same and if you are happy you feel this happiness, until you shift your emotions in another direction. According to the law of attraction that which I focus on is attracted to me.

Another way to look at the law of attraction is that if you want something, but wanting it may be the opposite of something you really dislike; you are in effect emitting both a positive and negative emotions. It is unlikely you will attract what you really want if you are focused on why you don’t want something else. You might view this as a one way street, your emotions and focus including how you feel must be on what you want, not on what you don’t want.

Have you ever had a job, where you are so focused on what you hate about it, that you can’t sleep at night, and you struggle to maintain any semblance of a positive attitude because you are so focused on what you dislike? This is the law of attraction working just as it should, giving you more of what you think about. I think the Buddha understood the law of attraction.

Buddha - What you think you become.png

In the next post, I would like to spend a little time talking about how you make the law of attraction work for you as it beginning to work for me.

Namaste

 

 

 

How does Yoga make you feel?

How does Yoga make you feel?

There are times that I get up around 5:00 a.m. and think should I skip my yoga practice this morning, somewhat dreading those first couple of Sun Salutations as my back is stiff from laying in bed. Instead I finish my cup of coffee, let the dogs out and back in then take my socks off, unroll the mat and here we go. The funny thing is just like many forms of physical activity, once you get started all those thoughts about skipping it just fade away. You start to remember why you like yoga so much as you go from pose to pose and work to control your breathing, and 30 or 40 minutes later you are done.

yoga-inspiration

So how do you feel after your practice?

For me I feel:

  • relaxed
  • loose in the hamstrings, back, and hips
  • calm
  • happy
  • like I achieved something
  • alive
  • focused on the present
  • ready to do it again tomorrow

 

Namaste