What is your proudest accomplishment in life? I’m going to stall here for a moment while you think about your answer to this question. Mighty fine weather we’re having, huh? Doo doo doo—oh, I love this song! Yes-sir-ee, looks like a beautiful day. Okay, and… Time! What did you come up with for your proudest accomplishment?
Continue reading “The Struggle is Real… Important”
Right now, I can feel that my body is coming down with a cold. I’ve been stalling it off for a couple weeks, but I think one of those darn bugs finally broke through and got to me. How do you feel when you’re sick? Other than “lousy,” if you’re like most people when you’re sick, all you want is to return to good health. As we’re blowing our irritated nose for the one-hundredth time this morning, or as we’re launched into a coughing fit in the middle of a conversation, we’re probably thinking, “I just want to be healthy again! Then I will feel so much better!”
The “high” we feel when we return to good health after being sick is pretty significant. A friend once told me it’s one of the greatest feelings he’s experienced——we almost feel like a superhero, being able to breathe through our nose again! But after the initial couple days (if even that long) of being relatively healthy again, we forget about how much better we feel by comparison, and we begin to take our good health for granted again.
Continue reading “The Practice of Gratitude”
How do you feel when one of your co-workers is in a bad mood? How does that one person’s negative attitude affect the social environment?
Does their attitude feel almost contagious? Continue reading “Growing the Right Attitude”
How do you love yourself?
This question might seem familiar. Last year, I wrote an article called For the Love of You, which began with the question, “Do you love yourself?” I wrote about the importance of self-love and how it can change your life to break the internal cycle of self-hatred that we learn to perpetuate. If you haven’t read it, or if you haven’t revisited it since I posted it, I would encourage you to read through it again.
It’s easy to acknowledge, “I should love myself,” but it’s not at all easy to actually start taking the steps towards loving yourself. It’s the how that’s the challenge; when we spend so much of our life forming the habit of self-hatred, it takes a lot of strength and courage to re-route those hard-worn paths in our mind. Continue reading “A Vision of Self-Love”
Even if you’ve never been in a courtroom, you’ve probably seen it portrayed on TV before. There’s usually an audience, maybe a jury, defendants and plaintiffs, and then there’s the person who sits above everyone else, appointed to decide what happens to people who make mistakes through their supreme ability to judge others. That’s what the judge does—-forms an opinion and decrees this is the right order everyone will obey.
Sounds kind of harsh, but sometimes we can be harsh, like the judge, without realizing it.
How many times have you heard the phrase, “Never say never”? The irony of the saying is not lost, although perhaps the meaning of it is.
I used to hear “never say never” and think that it was a facetious way of conveying that anything is possible. There is no instance where something can never happen. There’s always some sliver of possibility. I do believe this is true.
Now though, I also interpret it a little differently. Rather than understanding it as “Anything is possible,” I understand it also as “Do not speak in absolutes.”
Sometimes, as feeling human beings, we feel a significant sadness weighing in our chest, inexplicably. It certainly seems as though some are more prone to this sadness than others, and when frequently visited by it, the clarity of peace is obscured, leading us to dull ourselves.
Although it’s okay to feel sad, when it becomes intense and cumbersome, there are ways to work with yourself in order to overcome the heavy feelings. Continue reading “Conquering the Great Big Sadness”
Hey there, it’s your inner victim speaking, and I was just wondering if we could have a quick word. It’ll only take a moment! I have something I need to get off my chest! Oh, you… You mean you didn’t know you had an inner victim? Funny thing about that, I’ve been kind of living here the past couple decades…
You should probably listen to what he has to say. I mean, whether you wanted to or not, you’ve been subconsciously listening to his whispers all this time. Oh yeah, everyone has an inner victim. Continue reading “Victim Vacancy”
There’s this scene in the Lion King, more than halfway through the movie, where Rafiki and Simba are speaking, and Rafiki randomly whacks Simba upside the head with his stick, and Simba asks, “What was that for?” Rafiki replies, “It doesn’t matter! It’s in the past! …Oh yes, the past can hurt, but the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.”
As a kid, this scene didn’t necessarily speak to me. I considered it “the nighttime scene with the monkey” between all the big action; it wasn’t until I remember my dad quoting it to me during my childhood that I ever considered what Rafiki was saying. As an adult, I see that Rafiki’s message touches on something we all tend to forget.
I often think to myself, If something isn’t working out for you, either change the situation or change your perspective. Let’s say, for example, that I’m a person who loathes my job. I work at a meaningless part-time job, and I begin to resent my work. Every day I show up, I anticipate all the horrible inconveniences I will have to deal with. I know my boss will be in a bad mood, I know the customers will treat me like garbage, and I know that the work I do will have no effect on anyone’s lives. No one will look back on this day and think, “Wow, the way that cashier said, ‘Your total is $4.22’ was really inspiring to me.” So I go into work and–just as I knew would happen–I have a lousy day.
Slanted Spines 