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Don't
believe the dream stealers |
Take the Humble Path 
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Both pics below are from Sarah Pohl yoga!
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Steve Jobs: Stanford Commencement Address
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
"You've got to find what you love," Jobs says
This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.
"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much."
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
"You've got to find what you love," Jobs says
This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.
"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much."
Learning to Find Peace in the Confusion and Uncertainty
By Michael Eisen
2013 has certainly been an interesting ride for me so far. Coming into the beginning of the year, I was riding a big high! My first book had just been published..., my business was flourishing, opportunities to empower youth and parents were abundantly flowing into my life, I had absolute clarity on my life purpose (or so I thought), and I was in the most heart-opening and love-filled relationship I had ever been in. I felt like I had finally “made it” and was truly content in all areas of my life!
And just as I started to get comfortable, everything began unraveling before my eyes.
It started with my relationship ending the first week of the year, and before I could even take the time to heal, my business slowed down to a halt. Doors began closing instead of opening, and for the first time in a long time, I was incredibly confused about who I was and what I was here for. For someone who takes great pride in being so open and clear, this was new, unusual, and very uncomfortable territory for me!
I decided that the universe was clearly creating space for me to do some deep healing and growing. But instead of embracing this state of confusion, sorrow, and uncertainty, I spent two weeks resisting it all, unconsciously choosing not to see what was really going on.
Finally, after realizing that it was not serving me any longer, I came face to face with the uncertainty that had all of sudden surrounded all areas of my life.
Now, before I continue on with how I made my way through this, I want to share with you a bit about my childhood so you can understand why this whole process was so challenging for me.
All throughout my childhood, my biggest fear was change and uncertainty. I had a very tough time coping with things when they did not go according to how I wanted. One example of this was when we used to go out to eat at restaurants as a family; I always had to order the same thing every time. This way, I could prepare myself ahead of time for what to expect. Unfortunately, for my family and everyone in the restaurant, there were some times that the chicken fingers I ordered looked more like nuggets than fingers, and as a result, I would throw a massive temper tantrum. It often felt like I was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. Change and uncertainty was the primary cause of all the pain and suffering I felt and experienced as a child.
I can happily say that over the past eight years, I have done A LOT of work on myself and healed many old wounds from my childhood, but, clearly, after recently coming face to face once again with my greatest fear, I realized there was still some work to do. But I was committed to healing and letting go of this fear once and for all.
Thanks to a coaching session with my father, I had a massive shift, which changed my whole perception on uncertainty and confusion. In the past, whenever I didn’t know the answer to something, I would ask my question to the universe and expect an answer and rather quickly. But when the answer didn’t come, I would seek and search for it with a sense of urgency and even had the tendency to try and figure it all out in my head.
This was because I was truly uncomfortable in the state of confusion and uncertainty and didn’t want to be there very long. The shift in perception came when I realized that confusion was actually not something bad and, without it, there would be no growth.
Think about it, if we have absolute clarity about everything in our lives, how would we ever evolve? When we try to resist confusion, we are actually resisting growth.
In order to move through this particular patch of confusion, I began the process of questioning everything in my life. But this time, instead of seeking and searching for the answers, I was comfortable and content with just asking the questions.
The reality is, without questions there can be no answers. But when we are asking the questions and attached to getting a response, instead of just asking for the sake of curiosity, the answers rarely actually come and can create even more confusion. This is where we can get caught up in the downward spiral.
So the solution was to truly embrace the confusion and see it as a blessing not a curse!
At the end of my coaching session with my father, he shared an excerpt from one of his recent journal entries that summed up this lesson beautifully.
“What if you began to believe that you need not be responsible to both ask and answer your questions? What if you merely asked them and waited patiently for the universe to send you the answers. You would have to surrender the need to come up with your own answers. You would have to let go of the need to know. You would have to relax and allow the answers to come forth in their own time. You would have to trust. Yes, trust in the universe to bring you the answers. What if that was an easier way to live life, to allow life to expand.”
When 2013 began, I definitely did not expect any of these challenges to happen, but I can honestly say that the past couple of months, although painful at times, have allowed me to grow and evolve enormously!
Do I have all the answers I was looking for? Absolutely NOT!
Am I as crystal clear about everything now? No way!
But one thing I know for sure is I am SO much more comfortable and at peace with not having to know.
When we stop resisting what we don’t want to feel and embrace the state that we are in, we move through whatever it is SO much faster and find our way back to truth and clarity.
By Michael Eisen
2013 has certainly been an interesting ride for me so far. Coming into the beginning of the year, I was riding a big high! My first book had just been published..., my business was flourishing, opportunities to empower youth and parents were abundantly flowing into my life, I had absolute clarity on my life purpose (or so I thought), and I was in the most heart-opening and love-filled relationship I had ever been in. I felt like I had finally “made it” and was truly content in all areas of my life!
And just as I started to get comfortable, everything began unraveling before my eyes.
It started with my relationship ending the first week of the year, and before I could even take the time to heal, my business slowed down to a halt. Doors began closing instead of opening, and for the first time in a long time, I was incredibly confused about who I was and what I was here for. For someone who takes great pride in being so open and clear, this was new, unusual, and very uncomfortable territory for me!
I decided that the universe was clearly creating space for me to do some deep healing and growing. But instead of embracing this state of confusion, sorrow, and uncertainty, I spent two weeks resisting it all, unconsciously choosing not to see what was really going on.
Finally, after realizing that it was not serving me any longer, I came face to face with the uncertainty that had all of sudden surrounded all areas of my life.
Now, before I continue on with how I made my way through this, I want to share with you a bit about my childhood so you can understand why this whole process was so challenging for me.
All throughout my childhood, my biggest fear was change and uncertainty. I had a very tough time coping with things when they did not go according to how I wanted. One example of this was when we used to go out to eat at restaurants as a family; I always had to order the same thing every time. This way, I could prepare myself ahead of time for what to expect. Unfortunately, for my family and everyone in the restaurant, there were some times that the chicken fingers I ordered looked more like nuggets than fingers, and as a result, I would throw a massive temper tantrum. It often felt like I was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. Change and uncertainty was the primary cause of all the pain and suffering I felt and experienced as a child.
I can happily say that over the past eight years, I have done A LOT of work on myself and healed many old wounds from my childhood, but, clearly, after recently coming face to face once again with my greatest fear, I realized there was still some work to do. But I was committed to healing and letting go of this fear once and for all.
Thanks to a coaching session with my father, I had a massive shift, which changed my whole perception on uncertainty and confusion. In the past, whenever I didn’t know the answer to something, I would ask my question to the universe and expect an answer and rather quickly. But when the answer didn’t come, I would seek and search for it with a sense of urgency and even had the tendency to try and figure it all out in my head.
This was because I was truly uncomfortable in the state of confusion and uncertainty and didn’t want to be there very long. The shift in perception came when I realized that confusion was actually not something bad and, without it, there would be no growth.
Think about it, if we have absolute clarity about everything in our lives, how would we ever evolve? When we try to resist confusion, we are actually resisting growth.
In order to move through this particular patch of confusion, I began the process of questioning everything in my life. But this time, instead of seeking and searching for the answers, I was comfortable and content with just asking the questions.
The reality is, without questions there can be no answers. But when we are asking the questions and attached to getting a response, instead of just asking for the sake of curiosity, the answers rarely actually come and can create even more confusion. This is where we can get caught up in the downward spiral.
So the solution was to truly embrace the confusion and see it as a blessing not a curse!
At the end of my coaching session with my father, he shared an excerpt from one of his recent journal entries that summed up this lesson beautifully.
“What if you began to believe that you need not be responsible to both ask and answer your questions? What if you merely asked them and waited patiently for the universe to send you the answers. You would have to surrender the need to come up with your own answers. You would have to let go of the need to know. You would have to relax and allow the answers to come forth in their own time. You would have to trust. Yes, trust in the universe to bring you the answers. What if that was an easier way to live life, to allow life to expand.”
When 2013 began, I definitely did not expect any of these challenges to happen, but I can honestly say that the past couple of months, although painful at times, have allowed me to grow and evolve enormously!
Do I have all the answers I was looking for? Absolutely NOT!
Am I as crystal clear about everything now? No way!
But one thing I know for sure is I am SO much more comfortable and at peace with not having to know.
When we stop resisting what we don’t want to feel and embrace the state that we are in, we move through whatever it is SO much faster and find our way back to truth and clarity.
Uncertainty and Faith
By Rev Jim Robinson
There are very few things in life that are certain. As the old proverb goes: “There are only two things in life that are certain: death and taxes.” We live each day, not be certainty, but by probability. We will probably wake up tomorrow morning. We will probably still have our job. Our children will probably be healthy. But one day all probabilities fail. Nothing is forever – except change.
This high level of uncertainty makes life messy. Unexpected things go wrong and our careful plans fall apart. Two years ago our grown daughter became partially paralyzed for three weeks, due to a muscular virus. She is now 80% back to her former health. It made her life very messy and our lives anxious. Bad things happen to good people. Often there is no one to blame – just the probabilities of bad luck and good luck. And it happens to all of us. So we human beings feel anxious. We want safety, yet there are no guarantees – only probabilities.
We humans have trouble dealing constructively with this uncertainty. We try to avoid its harsh reality by negative coping strategies. Here are a few of them:
+We often feel shame. We think: “Other people don’t seem anxious, and they seem to have their act together. I must be less than them.”
+We try to sedate our self. When life seems too uncertain, and we start to panic, we grab for alcohol, drugs, over working, too much television, sex, too much or too little food, or whatever. We are all tempted by an addiction to one thing or another. We blame other people for our own unhappiness. We cannot tolerate feeling uncertain and anxious, so we project our frustration onto someone else. “If they would only change, then I would be happy.”
+We adopt a rigid set of beliefs, either religious or secular, to give us an illusion of certainty. Yet, as Cliff Reed wrote: “The most dangerous thing in religion is certainty. It is certainty that causes you to despise people with beliefs different from your own.” These are all strategies which, in the long run, cause more human misery. In the short run, they are a sedation (alleviating our anxiety), but in the long run they are damaging to human dignity. Any repressed anxiety will resurface later, often with greater force.
So, my friends, let’s face reality. In this world of impermanence, it is impossible to eradicate uncertainty.
Uncertainty, messiness, and anxiety are part of the human condition, and instead of resisting them, we need to work with them in a positive manner. To begin with, it seems to me, that there are two types of anxiety about uncertainty. One is realistic and one is not. Imagine that after chapel, a friend offers you a ride in her/his new sports car. She/he says: “Watch me hit sixty miles per hour in ten seconds along this crowded boulevard.” In this case, anxiety is realistic. The probabilities of having an accident are too high to tolerate. The uncertainty is too great, and we can do something about it. In this situation, anxiety is our friend - it causes us to act in a safer manner.
But often anxiety about uncertainty is not realistic. We are at a social gathering, and worry that people will find us boring. We are at the airport, and become terribly anxious that our plane will crash. We feel an ache in our body and immediately think we must have cancer. Now in the great uncertainty of life, it is possible that someone may find you boring, your plane might crash, and you could get cancer. But to be paralyzed because life is uncertain is not helpful to us or anyone else. However, there is a gift in this unrealistic anxiety. The noted psychiatrist, Harry Stack Sullivan, wrote: “The areas in our personality marked by anxiety often become the areas of most significant growth when…the individual can deal with his or her underlying anxiety constructively.” In short, anxiety is an opportunity to grow into a deeper human being. Instead of saying: “I must not feel this – it makes me a bad person,” we can say: “Here is my anxiety inviting me to grow.” At the social gathering, we can feel the anxiety and still reach out in conversation. At the airport, we can feel the anxiety and still get on the plane. If we can tolerate the uncertainty and anxiety of life, then we have greater flexibility to make positive choices. Doing this, we grow into a fuller human being.
To meet anxiety and uncertainty with an open heart and open mind, and to respond in a constructive manner, requires a mature faith.... Faith is not the absence of anxiety. Faith is not a desperate attempt to control life and end all uncertainty. Faith is not having a “stiff upper lip” while we forge ahead in life, trampling on other people’s feeling, and our own as well. Faith is not a rigid belief system to hide behind or judge others with. Faith is the inner knowing that no matter what happens in life, we are loved and can grow into a fuller human being. Faith is the inner knowing that no matter what happens, we can always reach out to help another human being. Faith is the inner knowing that no matter what happens, there is a Power greater than human here to guide us and comfort us. There is a larger spiritual context in which we place our little life.
Life is uncertain - we cannot change that. But we can change our response to it. No matter what happens, down to our final breath, we can love and be loved, serve and be served, being grateful for the miracle of life.
Faith...is not a creed or dogma. It is a way of living in the world....Faith gives us a spiritual centre. The centre of a healthy faith is not in controlling behavior. It is not in being rigid or judgmental. A healthy faith is expressed in loving kindness. As the Dalai Lama once said: “My religion is loving kindness”. And Jesus kept on loving whether he got good luck or bad luck. A flexible spiritual faith is not about easy or hard, good luck or bad luck – it is about love, humility, kindness. When we meet someone with such a faith it inspires us. I received word this week about the death of a man named Alan, who was a member of my former church. He lived a long life, but I want to tell you just about the last five years of it. His wife had died, his children were grown, and he was aged. So Alan went into a nursing home. He did not have significant memory loss, but he was frail and needed a wheel chair. First he decorated his room. He made it a room about hope and beauty, not despair. He was wheeled every morning to the day care centre next door, where he read stories to children. He became known as “Uncle Alan”. He did not complain about his condition. When his grown children visited, he enjoyed them but did not burden them. I am not sure if Alan was a theist or humanist or both, but he was a person of faith. He did not need to argue about religion or profess his beliefs. Instead, he quietly lived them. In the uncertainty of life, in his final years of aged disability, he knew: “I am loved and will love others, I will serve and be served, I will be grateful for the miracle of life.”
How do we learn such a faith? It comes to us from the examples of other people, famous like Mother Theresa or unknown like Alan, but most of all...it comes from our own experience. We see colors in a flower – and we know there is beauty; We see the bus driver patiently doing his job – and we know there is integrity; We listen to a beautiful piece of music – and we know there is inspiration; We hold a hand – and we know there is love; We visit someone in the hospital – and we know there is compassion; We apologize – and we know there is forgiveness; We sit in chapel – and we know there is community; We attend an AA meeting – and we know there is redemption; We see a child – and we know there is hope; Faith is a way of living. It is loving kindness, which accepts uncertainty as a friend.
By Rev Jim Robinson
There are very few things in life that are certain. As the old proverb goes: “There are only two things in life that are certain: death and taxes.” We live each day, not be certainty, but by probability. We will probably wake up tomorrow morning. We will probably still have our job. Our children will probably be healthy. But one day all probabilities fail. Nothing is forever – except change.
This high level of uncertainty makes life messy. Unexpected things go wrong and our careful plans fall apart. Two years ago our grown daughter became partially paralyzed for three weeks, due to a muscular virus. She is now 80% back to her former health. It made her life very messy and our lives anxious. Bad things happen to good people. Often there is no one to blame – just the probabilities of bad luck and good luck. And it happens to all of us. So we human beings feel anxious. We want safety, yet there are no guarantees – only probabilities.
We humans have trouble dealing constructively with this uncertainty. We try to avoid its harsh reality by negative coping strategies. Here are a few of them:
+We often feel shame. We think: “Other people don’t seem anxious, and they seem to have their act together. I must be less than them.”
+We try to sedate our self. When life seems too uncertain, and we start to panic, we grab for alcohol, drugs, over working, too much television, sex, too much or too little food, or whatever. We are all tempted by an addiction to one thing or another. We blame other people for our own unhappiness. We cannot tolerate feeling uncertain and anxious, so we project our frustration onto someone else. “If they would only change, then I would be happy.”
+We adopt a rigid set of beliefs, either religious or secular, to give us an illusion of certainty. Yet, as Cliff Reed wrote: “The most dangerous thing in religion is certainty. It is certainty that causes you to despise people with beliefs different from your own.” These are all strategies which, in the long run, cause more human misery. In the short run, they are a sedation (alleviating our anxiety), but in the long run they are damaging to human dignity. Any repressed anxiety will resurface later, often with greater force.
So, my friends, let’s face reality. In this world of impermanence, it is impossible to eradicate uncertainty.
Uncertainty, messiness, and anxiety are part of the human condition, and instead of resisting them, we need to work with them in a positive manner. To begin with, it seems to me, that there are two types of anxiety about uncertainty. One is realistic and one is not. Imagine that after chapel, a friend offers you a ride in her/his new sports car. She/he says: “Watch me hit sixty miles per hour in ten seconds along this crowded boulevard.” In this case, anxiety is realistic. The probabilities of having an accident are too high to tolerate. The uncertainty is too great, and we can do something about it. In this situation, anxiety is our friend - it causes us to act in a safer manner.
But often anxiety about uncertainty is not realistic. We are at a social gathering, and worry that people will find us boring. We are at the airport, and become terribly anxious that our plane will crash. We feel an ache in our body and immediately think we must have cancer. Now in the great uncertainty of life, it is possible that someone may find you boring, your plane might crash, and you could get cancer. But to be paralyzed because life is uncertain is not helpful to us or anyone else. However, there is a gift in this unrealistic anxiety. The noted psychiatrist, Harry Stack Sullivan, wrote: “The areas in our personality marked by anxiety often become the areas of most significant growth when…the individual can deal with his or her underlying anxiety constructively.” In short, anxiety is an opportunity to grow into a deeper human being. Instead of saying: “I must not feel this – it makes me a bad person,” we can say: “Here is my anxiety inviting me to grow.” At the social gathering, we can feel the anxiety and still reach out in conversation. At the airport, we can feel the anxiety and still get on the plane. If we can tolerate the uncertainty and anxiety of life, then we have greater flexibility to make positive choices. Doing this, we grow into a fuller human being.
To meet anxiety and uncertainty with an open heart and open mind, and to respond in a constructive manner, requires a mature faith.... Faith is not the absence of anxiety. Faith is not a desperate attempt to control life and end all uncertainty. Faith is not having a “stiff upper lip” while we forge ahead in life, trampling on other people’s feeling, and our own as well. Faith is not a rigid belief system to hide behind or judge others with. Faith is the inner knowing that no matter what happens in life, we are loved and can grow into a fuller human being. Faith is the inner knowing that no matter what happens, we can always reach out to help another human being. Faith is the inner knowing that no matter what happens, there is a Power greater than human here to guide us and comfort us. There is a larger spiritual context in which we place our little life.
Life is uncertain - we cannot change that. But we can change our response to it. No matter what happens, down to our final breath, we can love and be loved, serve and be served, being grateful for the miracle of life.
Faith...is not a creed or dogma. It is a way of living in the world....Faith gives us a spiritual centre. The centre of a healthy faith is not in controlling behavior. It is not in being rigid or judgmental. A healthy faith is expressed in loving kindness. As the Dalai Lama once said: “My religion is loving kindness”. And Jesus kept on loving whether he got good luck or bad luck. A flexible spiritual faith is not about easy or hard, good luck or bad luck – it is about love, humility, kindness. When we meet someone with such a faith it inspires us. I received word this week about the death of a man named Alan, who was a member of my former church. He lived a long life, but I want to tell you just about the last five years of it. His wife had died, his children were grown, and he was aged. So Alan went into a nursing home. He did not have significant memory loss, but he was frail and needed a wheel chair. First he decorated his room. He made it a room about hope and beauty, not despair. He was wheeled every morning to the day care centre next door, where he read stories to children. He became known as “Uncle Alan”. He did not complain about his condition. When his grown children visited, he enjoyed them but did not burden them. I am not sure if Alan was a theist or humanist or both, but he was a person of faith. He did not need to argue about religion or profess his beliefs. Instead, he quietly lived them. In the uncertainty of life, in his final years of aged disability, he knew: “I am loved and will love others, I will serve and be served, I will be grateful for the miracle of life.”
How do we learn such a faith? It comes to us from the examples of other people, famous like Mother Theresa or unknown like Alan, but most of all...it comes from our own experience. We see colors in a flower – and we know there is beauty; We see the bus driver patiently doing his job – and we know there is integrity; We listen to a beautiful piece of music – and we know there is inspiration; We hold a hand – and we know there is love; We visit someone in the hospital – and we know there is compassion; We apologize – and we know there is forgiveness; We sit in chapel – and we know there is community; We attend an AA meeting – and we know there is redemption; We see a child – and we know there is hope; Faith is a way of living. It is loving kindness, which accepts uncertainty as a friend.
If things aren't going the way you want them to - CELEBRATE!
By Mastin, The Daily Love
The theme in a lot of my mentoring calls and incoming emails this week has been about frustration coming from things not happening as quickly as folks want them to or the way folks want them to.
Here's the thing: we are on a spiritual path, connecting with the SOURCE OF ALL LIFE, and we think we should be telling IT how and when to make things happen in our lives.
In this age of tweeting, texting, instagramming, facebooking, googling, pinning, pining, longing and emailing, we've gotten lost in the outer technology. We've forgotten our inner technology. We've somehow begun to think that The Uni-verse should be working on OUR SCHEDULE, instead of taking the humble Path and allowing the Wisdom of the Ages that fuels the Sun, beats your heart and breathes life into you in every moment, the chance to chime in.
Spiritual growth doesn't happen on your schedule. That's WHY it's spiritual growth. It's not about The Uni-verse giving you what you want; it's about The Uni-verse training you to be who you really are, tapped into Source, being a vessel of Grace and knowing the only thing you really need is the connection to your Source, and all physical manifestations that are in your best interest will follow.
Sometimes, all the things you have put your faith in will be taken away, not as punishment, but as a way of teaching you that trusting The Uni-verse is all you really need to do. And then you think you have many problems, but the only real problem you have is that you are disconnected from your Source.
It's like the drop of water that wants to surf a huge wave - it has to connect back with the ocean in order to do big things. It can try and try on its own, and it won't be able to move a damn thing. But when it's connected to its Source, it can be a TIDAL WAVE and it's PUSHED, instead of needing to PUSH.
So if things aren't happening how and when you want them to – CELEBRATE. The Master's Hand is at work trying to show you a better way. Even if your mind doesn't think so right away, there is a better way coming towards you. Stay open, stay available, stay in humble patience that the answer will be revealed and most likely in a way that you haven't yet considered.
Live the mystery of life with gratitude instead of an entitled attitude. This is the Path of Grace. The Uni-verse will bring us to our knees, not as punishment, but to show us a better way.
A delay is not a denial - remember that and live the mystery!
By Mastin, The Daily Love
The theme in a lot of my mentoring calls and incoming emails this week has been about frustration coming from things not happening as quickly as folks want them to or the way folks want them to.
Here's the thing: we are on a spiritual path, connecting with the SOURCE OF ALL LIFE, and we think we should be telling IT how and when to make things happen in our lives.
In this age of tweeting, texting, instagramming, facebooking, googling, pinning, pining, longing and emailing, we've gotten lost in the outer technology. We've forgotten our inner technology. We've somehow begun to think that The Uni-verse should be working on OUR SCHEDULE, instead of taking the humble Path and allowing the Wisdom of the Ages that fuels the Sun, beats your heart and breathes life into you in every moment, the chance to chime in.
Spiritual growth doesn't happen on your schedule. That's WHY it's spiritual growth. It's not about The Uni-verse giving you what you want; it's about The Uni-verse training you to be who you really are, tapped into Source, being a vessel of Grace and knowing the only thing you really need is the connection to your Source, and all physical manifestations that are in your best interest will follow.
Sometimes, all the things you have put your faith in will be taken away, not as punishment, but as a way of teaching you that trusting The Uni-verse is all you really need to do. And then you think you have many problems, but the only real problem you have is that you are disconnected from your Source.
It's like the drop of water that wants to surf a huge wave - it has to connect back with the ocean in order to do big things. It can try and try on its own, and it won't be able to move a damn thing. But when it's connected to its Source, it can be a TIDAL WAVE and it's PUSHED, instead of needing to PUSH.
So if things aren't happening how and when you want them to – CELEBRATE. The Master's Hand is at work trying to show you a better way. Even if your mind doesn't think so right away, there is a better way coming towards you. Stay open, stay available, stay in humble patience that the answer will be revealed and most likely in a way that you haven't yet considered.
Live the mystery of life with gratitude instead of an entitled attitude. This is the Path of Grace. The Uni-verse will bring us to our knees, not as punishment, but to show us a better way.
A delay is not a denial - remember that and live the mystery!
Are You Surrounding Yourself with Emotional Vampires?
By Mastin, The Daily Love
A lot of people come to me with a similar situation: they just figured out that they don't want to be in a relationship with someone (it could be a someone they're dating, a friend or even their spouse).
Then they ask me how long should they wait to leave.
I always answer their question with a question: "How long do you want to keep suffering?"
You see, there is this idea out there that if we truly love someone that we will sacrifice and suffer for them to "prove" our love. And that if we take a stand and no longer accept or tolerate negative behavior, we are somehow "selfish" or "unloving".
Finding this balance is one of the key mastery's of life. As my parents, who have been married for 32 years, will tell you - a relationship is never 50/50, many times its 90/10 or 10/90. They will tell you that the average is 50/50, but in any given moment it's not totally equal.
So I am not suggesting that you split the second things get hard. No, no, no. Please do not get that impression. I am suggesting, however, that if things are always 90/10 and one person is giving and giving and the other person is only receiving, or worse, that there is some kind of physical abuse going on... It is not a testament to how much you love someone if you are constantly giving to them and never receiving love back.
Remember: in order to be able to give love, we have to be full of love. The way to be full of love is to do things that love and honor ourselves, so we feel full, free and have more love to give away. Within a relationship, part of being able to create an environment where you are full is choosing someone who loves you in your power, rather than in your weakness. It's also about choosing someone who doesn't make you their Higher Power, but has their own relationship with The Uni-verse and their calling. This way you are not in a relationship with someone who is an emotional vampire; both of you are getting filled from other sources and then showing up for each other from a place of fullness rather than emptiness.
This is a much different situation than constantly giving to someone with no return. That isn't Love - that's being in a relationship with an emotional vampire and there is nothing wrong with picking up and walking away, now. Don't prove your Love to someone by showing how much you are willing to suffer for them; instead prove your Love by showing how much you are willing to Live and be Full WITH them!
By Mastin, The Daily Love
A lot of people come to me with a similar situation: they just figured out that they don't want to be in a relationship with someone (it could be a someone they're dating, a friend or even their spouse).
Then they ask me how long should they wait to leave.
I always answer their question with a question: "How long do you want to keep suffering?"
You see, there is this idea out there that if we truly love someone that we will sacrifice and suffer for them to "prove" our love. And that if we take a stand and no longer accept or tolerate negative behavior, we are somehow "selfish" or "unloving".
Finding this balance is one of the key mastery's of life. As my parents, who have been married for 32 years, will tell you - a relationship is never 50/50, many times its 90/10 or 10/90. They will tell you that the average is 50/50, but in any given moment it's not totally equal.
So I am not suggesting that you split the second things get hard. No, no, no. Please do not get that impression. I am suggesting, however, that if things are always 90/10 and one person is giving and giving and the other person is only receiving, or worse, that there is some kind of physical abuse going on... It is not a testament to how much you love someone if you are constantly giving to them and never receiving love back.
Remember: in order to be able to give love, we have to be full of love. The way to be full of love is to do things that love and honor ourselves, so we feel full, free and have more love to give away. Within a relationship, part of being able to create an environment where you are full is choosing someone who loves you in your power, rather than in your weakness. It's also about choosing someone who doesn't make you their Higher Power, but has their own relationship with The Uni-verse and their calling. This way you are not in a relationship with someone who is an emotional vampire; both of you are getting filled from other sources and then showing up for each other from a place of fullness rather than emptiness.
This is a much different situation than constantly giving to someone with no return. That isn't Love - that's being in a relationship with an emotional vampire and there is nothing wrong with picking up and walking away, now. Don't prove your Love to someone by showing how much you are willing to suffer for them; instead prove your Love by showing how much you are willing to Live and be Full WITH them!
Feed Your Soul, It’s Starving: 3 Tips on Growing a Spiritual Practice
By Gabrielle Bernstein
.....When I’m led by my soul voice, I am faithful, kind, and patient. But when I’m disconnected from my soul voice, I am fearful, mistrusting, and controlling....
If you feel disconnected from your soul voice, now is the time to reconnect. Here are my three must-do tips for feeding your soul.
Engage in Silent Contemplation
The key exercise for feeding your soul is to have a dedicated practice of silent contemplation. It is in stillness that we can access the voice of our truth. When we’re running around trying to make things happen, trying to control outcomes or manipulate our life, we block that voice from coming through. But when we sit in stillness, we awaken the connection. I suggest you begin a daily meditation practice. Sit in stillness and silently say, “I welcome the voice of my soul to come forward.” Then sit for five minutes and listen. If you feel you need additional guidance, visit my website for free guided meditations.
Practice Non-Judgment
When we judge others or ourselves, we immediately disconnect from that loving presence within. Judgment is a sure sign we’re leading from our head and not from our heart. One day this week, practice non-judgment toward everyone, including yourself. This practice will help you feel more connected to love and clear more space for your soul to come forward.
Be Honest with Yourself and the World
Remember, your soul is your truth. The best way to access your truth isn’t difficult or tricky: Just be truthful. Start to get honest about how you feel, what you need, and what you want. Be unapologetic about your truth. Speak it loud and clear and trust that all the world wants from you is your authenticity. Your truth will set you free and connect you to the world.
Take these three steps into your life and trust that you’ll feel more connected, inspired, and empowered. We’re all starving for more authenticity and love—start feeding your soul.
By Gabrielle Bernstein
.....When I’m led by my soul voice, I am faithful, kind, and patient. But when I’m disconnected from my soul voice, I am fearful, mistrusting, and controlling....
If you feel disconnected from your soul voice, now is the time to reconnect. Here are my three must-do tips for feeding your soul.
Engage in Silent Contemplation
The key exercise for feeding your soul is to have a dedicated practice of silent contemplation. It is in stillness that we can access the voice of our truth. When we’re running around trying to make things happen, trying to control outcomes or manipulate our life, we block that voice from coming through. But when we sit in stillness, we awaken the connection. I suggest you begin a daily meditation practice. Sit in stillness and silently say, “I welcome the voice of my soul to come forward.” Then sit for five minutes and listen. If you feel you need additional guidance, visit my website for free guided meditations.
Practice Non-Judgment
When we judge others or ourselves, we immediately disconnect from that loving presence within. Judgment is a sure sign we’re leading from our head and not from our heart. One day this week, practice non-judgment toward everyone, including yourself. This practice will help you feel more connected to love and clear more space for your soul to come forward.
Be Honest with Yourself and the World
Remember, your soul is your truth. The best way to access your truth isn’t difficult or tricky: Just be truthful. Start to get honest about how you feel, what you need, and what you want. Be unapologetic about your truth. Speak it loud and clear and trust that all the world wants from you is your authenticity. Your truth will set you free and connect you to the world.
Take these three steps into your life and trust that you’ll feel more connected, inspired, and empowered. We’re all starving for more authenticity and love—start feeding your soul.
..."the greatest contribution we make to humanity is our commitment to grow and evolve - to raise our level of consciousness." - By Cheryl Richardson
Do this before setting a goal!
By Mastin from The Daily Love
Faith first, mindset second, goals third, action fourth, persistence always.
I was on a call the other day with a client who wanted to talk about goals. She wanted to set goals to be a success and wanted me to take her through a goal setting process.
And I told her that was total BS to set goals until we actually knew what was currently blocking her from achieving her goals.
Because, quite frankly, you could set all the goals in the world, but if you don’t BELIEVE that you are worth it, or at least acting as if you are worth it, until you believe you are, there’s no way you are actually going to achieve your goal.
Think about it like this: Your desire has a certain amount of energy. And your inner resistance and inner stories about why you can’t/shouldn’t have or don’t deserve to have something have a certain amount of energy. And if the energy of resistance is greater than the energy of desire, your goal won’t happen.
This is why so many people set goals and nothing happens.
This is why making vision boards is not enough. I didn’t get the call from Oprah’s producers or get invited to speak at a Hay House event because I made a vision board alone. That came from my first act of FAITH that it was possible, followed up with a MINDSET that believed it was (even when circumstances showed otherwise) and I ADDED so much VALUE to other people’s lives that they spread the word to others.
Vision boards and GOALS aren’t enough. We must have FAITH; we must have a PURPOSE (aka a kick ass reason WHY we want to do something); we must have tenacity and a mindset that triumphs over circumstances and we must be PERSISTENT and try UNTIL it happens (and not shorter than that).
But we have an inner story that is stronger than our inner desire. The power of that story (no matter how real it may seem) is strong enough to hold us back. And when we hold ourselves back, we produce the result of the limiting story, which then backs it up.
And if we set goals without looking at why we believe they are impossible, we are not setting goals - we are hoping or wishing at best.
Goal setting starts with beginning to tell a new story about what’s possible for you and WHY it’s possible and why living this way is no longer suitable or tolerable for you.
That emotional connection to the PURPOSE of your goal setting is the ENERGY you will need to BREAK THROUGH THE RESISTANCE. And, like anything else in life, the more you apply it, the more you practice it, the better you will get at it.
And to do this, you are going to need to tell a new story and surround yourself with people who will support that story. We get side tracked in life by so many people who squash our dreams, but in reality it’s not them squashing our dreams, it’s US squashing our dreams by accepting their opinion and assessment of the situation, instead of making our opinion and self-approval what matters most.
So – what goals do you want to set in your life? And I mean BIG GOALS! And what are the limiting stories that are holding you back? And who are the people in your life who are telling you it can’t be done? And what new story do you want to tell and whom can you surround yourself with to help make your dreams come true?
By Mastin from The Daily Love
Faith first, mindset second, goals third, action fourth, persistence always.
I was on a call the other day with a client who wanted to talk about goals. She wanted to set goals to be a success and wanted me to take her through a goal setting process.
And I told her that was total BS to set goals until we actually knew what was currently blocking her from achieving her goals.
Because, quite frankly, you could set all the goals in the world, but if you don’t BELIEVE that you are worth it, or at least acting as if you are worth it, until you believe you are, there’s no way you are actually going to achieve your goal.
Think about it like this: Your desire has a certain amount of energy. And your inner resistance and inner stories about why you can’t/shouldn’t have or don’t deserve to have something have a certain amount of energy. And if the energy of resistance is greater than the energy of desire, your goal won’t happen.
This is why so many people set goals and nothing happens.
This is why making vision boards is not enough. I didn’t get the call from Oprah’s producers or get invited to speak at a Hay House event because I made a vision board alone. That came from my first act of FAITH that it was possible, followed up with a MINDSET that believed it was (even when circumstances showed otherwise) and I ADDED so much VALUE to other people’s lives that they spread the word to others.
Vision boards and GOALS aren’t enough. We must have FAITH; we must have a PURPOSE (aka a kick ass reason WHY we want to do something); we must have tenacity and a mindset that triumphs over circumstances and we must be PERSISTENT and try UNTIL it happens (and not shorter than that).
But we have an inner story that is stronger than our inner desire. The power of that story (no matter how real it may seem) is strong enough to hold us back. And when we hold ourselves back, we produce the result of the limiting story, which then backs it up.
And if we set goals without looking at why we believe they are impossible, we are not setting goals - we are hoping or wishing at best.
Goal setting starts with beginning to tell a new story about what’s possible for you and WHY it’s possible and why living this way is no longer suitable or tolerable for you.
That emotional connection to the PURPOSE of your goal setting is the ENERGY you will need to BREAK THROUGH THE RESISTANCE. And, like anything else in life, the more you apply it, the more you practice it, the better you will get at it.
And to do this, you are going to need to tell a new story and surround yourself with people who will support that story. We get side tracked in life by so many people who squash our dreams, but in reality it’s not them squashing our dreams, it’s US squashing our dreams by accepting their opinion and assessment of the situation, instead of making our opinion and self-approval what matters most.
So – what goals do you want to set in your life? And I mean BIG GOALS! And what are the limiting stories that are holding you back? And who are the people in your life who are telling you it can’t be done? And what new story do you want to tell and whom can you surround yourself with to help make your dreams come true?
This is why you're not getting what you want!
By Mastin from The Daily Love
Plain and simple, we get what we ask for.
Not just with our words, but also with our actions. In fact, our actions will show us what we are asking for far more than our words. We only take action on what we truly believe, so if we want to see what we are really asking for, let us look towards our actions.
If you say you want to lose weight, but your actions are to eat high calorie food and stay inactive, you aren’t really asking for health.
If you say you have faith but your actions are faithless, then you don’t really have faith.
If you say you love someone and your actions are unloving, then you don’t really love that person.
Let us be mindful of our actions.
The precursor to action is thought. Sometimes it can be VERY hard to be aware of what we are actually thinking, especially because many of our actions come from unconscious thoughts. If we want to tap into what’s really running us, but are having a hard time, let us see what actions we are taking.
We want love, but we run away when it shows up. There is a misalignment there of desire and thought.
We want weight loss and a healthy body, but we don’t get off our ass and exercise. There is a misalignment there, too.
In this literal Uni-verse, we can LITERALLY create (from the inside out) any type of experience we wish to choose. It is when our desires, our thoughts and our actions are in alignment that this kind of life begins to emerge.
The seed of a desire for something greater lives within all of us, but our lack of action prevents that kind of life from unfolding.
Imagine if a farmer had seeds and land to plant his seeds, but doubted that the seeds would grow if he planted them. So if this doubt were strong enough, the seeds would never get planted. Or, they get planted, but then the farmer becomes too impatient and digs up the seeds the next day or the next week because the crop hasn’t come yet.
The farmer still has no harvest. Then a second farmer comes by at harvest time with a full crop of harvest, and the first farmer gets jealous and angry at the second farmer for having abundance. The first farmer may blame The Uni-verse or say, “People like me aren’t supposed to have this harvest,” but in reality, it is the farmer's own doubt and impatience that prevents him from reaping his harvest.
We are many times like the first farmer. Our seeds are our desires. Our fields are our daily actions. We must plant our desires in actions and then be patient. If weeds of doubt creep in, we must clear them out. And in perfect time we will be able to harvest the fruit of our faith.
This is how life is. We need to nurture the fertile soil of our actions with faith and patience.
So, today, are you not getting what you want? Look at your desires. Look at your actions. Where is there a disconnect? How can you adjust your actions to sync up with your desires? And, if that feels weird, how can you change your MENTAL habits to allow yourself to take the proper action that is in alignment with your desires?
The answers to the lack you may be temporarily experiencing are all within you. Show up, let go and trust The Uni-verse one day at a time. Get your desires, thoughts and actions in alignment and then let your patience and faith shower down on the fertile soil of your actions.
Your harvest WILL come.
How can you make this change today?
By Mastin from The Daily Love
Plain and simple, we get what we ask for.
Not just with our words, but also with our actions. In fact, our actions will show us what we are asking for far more than our words. We only take action on what we truly believe, so if we want to see what we are really asking for, let us look towards our actions.
If you say you want to lose weight, but your actions are to eat high calorie food and stay inactive, you aren’t really asking for health.
If you say you have faith but your actions are faithless, then you don’t really have faith.
If you say you love someone and your actions are unloving, then you don’t really love that person.
Let us be mindful of our actions.
The precursor to action is thought. Sometimes it can be VERY hard to be aware of what we are actually thinking, especially because many of our actions come from unconscious thoughts. If we want to tap into what’s really running us, but are having a hard time, let us see what actions we are taking.
We want love, but we run away when it shows up. There is a misalignment there of desire and thought.
We want weight loss and a healthy body, but we don’t get off our ass and exercise. There is a misalignment there, too.
In this literal Uni-verse, we can LITERALLY create (from the inside out) any type of experience we wish to choose. It is when our desires, our thoughts and our actions are in alignment that this kind of life begins to emerge.
The seed of a desire for something greater lives within all of us, but our lack of action prevents that kind of life from unfolding.
Imagine if a farmer had seeds and land to plant his seeds, but doubted that the seeds would grow if he planted them. So if this doubt were strong enough, the seeds would never get planted. Or, they get planted, but then the farmer becomes too impatient and digs up the seeds the next day or the next week because the crop hasn’t come yet.
The farmer still has no harvest. Then a second farmer comes by at harvest time with a full crop of harvest, and the first farmer gets jealous and angry at the second farmer for having abundance. The first farmer may blame The Uni-verse or say, “People like me aren’t supposed to have this harvest,” but in reality, it is the farmer's own doubt and impatience that prevents him from reaping his harvest.
We are many times like the first farmer. Our seeds are our desires. Our fields are our daily actions. We must plant our desires in actions and then be patient. If weeds of doubt creep in, we must clear them out. And in perfect time we will be able to harvest the fruit of our faith.
This is how life is. We need to nurture the fertile soil of our actions with faith and patience.
So, today, are you not getting what you want? Look at your desires. Look at your actions. Where is there a disconnect? How can you adjust your actions to sync up with your desires? And, if that feels weird, how can you change your MENTAL habits to allow yourself to take the proper action that is in alignment with your desires?
The answers to the lack you may be temporarily experiencing are all within you. Show up, let go and trust The Uni-verse one day at a time. Get your desires, thoughts and actions in alignment and then let your patience and faith shower down on the fertile soil of your actions.
Your harvest WILL come.
How can you make this change today?
"....You can create any kind of life you want. The magic happens with an open mind, humble attitude, and persistent effort. Trust yourself and you'll be amazed at what IS possible." - By Jackson Kiddard, author & polymath
"....Your level of consciousness basically just means a measure of how much you care. Do you care about only yourself, do you only care about people similar to you, or do you care about everyone, no matter what their race, creed, gender or political affiliation?...."
- By Mastin, The Daily Love
- By Mastin, The Daily Love
"....Let us remember Grace. Grace is the YES of the Uni-verse on our lives. But we have a limited perspective, so many times the things we think we want aren't what we want at all. So getting a "no" from someone or something that we REALLY REALLY REALLY want is always a part of a larger YES from The Uni-verse (though we can't always see it).
The key is this: to interpret rejection and not getting what you want as GRACE. See it as a part of a larger YES from The Uni-verse that is still unfolding. Don't let the opinion of one person become your opinion of yourself - that is ridiculous.
Remember: a delay is not a denial. We are being groomed, prepared and polished so that when we do get what our heart's desire, we have the capacity to not only see that this is what we've been asking for, but that we have the capacity, courage and humility to RECEIVE and SAY YES to what we've been asking for.....
So, interpret the no's from people in your life as a part of a larger YES from The Uni-verse. Detach from the form it comes in and be receptive to the subtle messages and guidance you receive daily. CHOOSE to interpret those rejection moments as GRACE , instead of the end of the world.
As one of my favorite poet's Rumi says, "If you're bothered by every rub, how will you ever be polished?"
- Mastin Kipp
The key is this: to interpret rejection and not getting what you want as GRACE. See it as a part of a larger YES from The Uni-verse that is still unfolding. Don't let the opinion of one person become your opinion of yourself - that is ridiculous.
Remember: a delay is not a denial. We are being groomed, prepared and polished so that when we do get what our heart's desire, we have the capacity to not only see that this is what we've been asking for, but that we have the capacity, courage and humility to RECEIVE and SAY YES to what we've been asking for.....
So, interpret the no's from people in your life as a part of a larger YES from The Uni-verse. Detach from the form it comes in and be receptive to the subtle messages and guidance you receive daily. CHOOSE to interpret those rejection moments as GRACE , instead of the end of the world.
As one of my favorite poet's Rumi says, "If you're bothered by every rub, how will you ever be polished?"
- Mastin Kipp
"....Just because you are spiritual, doesn’t mean you get it easy. It’s BECAUSE you are spiritual that you get even MORE crap thrown on you, ‘cuz The Divine knows you can handle it.
We don’t get a finely tuned body by being lazy. We get it by LITERALLY ripping our muscles apart and allowing them to heal back together, stronger.
I’ve come to believe that resistance is the force that keeps us alive. Without resistance, without friction we do not and cannot live to the fullest.
It is AGAINST the wind that the airplane flies. It is FRICTION that allows us to walk the earth. It is getting uncomfortable that allows us to grow beyond the discomfort.
Yes, my friends, GRACE is real. GRACE HAPPENS. You are SURROUNDED by GRACE, but it doesn’t mean you get an easy lot in life. Hear me - you think you do, but you actually DON’T want it easy. An easy life is BORING. In an easy life, there is NO GROWTH, NO VARIETY, nothing to be earned. In an easy life, you die in your comfort zone with unrealized dreams.
So how are you showing up to life? Are you showing up entitled because it’s “so hard”? Or are you looking the friction, the resistance and the hard times dead in the face with GRATITUDE and PRAISE shouting OUT LOUD, “THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME BETTER, STRONGER and showing me HOW POWERFUL I TRULY AM”?
Hear me my friends, how you MEET and DEAL and GIVE MEANING to resistance is how successful you will be in life. If you resent it, or are entitled and bratty and think it shouldn’t be this way – enjoy being an observer of life. BUT – if you meet RESISTANCE with the KNOWING and the CERTAINTY that YOU and THE DIVINE got this, and instead of saying “WHY ME?” you say “TRY ME!” – you can count that eventually you will be welcomed into the realm of those who have the PRIVILEGE to live their dreams."
- By Mastin Kipp
We don’t get a finely tuned body by being lazy. We get it by LITERALLY ripping our muscles apart and allowing them to heal back together, stronger.
I’ve come to believe that resistance is the force that keeps us alive. Without resistance, without friction we do not and cannot live to the fullest.
It is AGAINST the wind that the airplane flies. It is FRICTION that allows us to walk the earth. It is getting uncomfortable that allows us to grow beyond the discomfort.
Yes, my friends, GRACE is real. GRACE HAPPENS. You are SURROUNDED by GRACE, but it doesn’t mean you get an easy lot in life. Hear me - you think you do, but you actually DON’T want it easy. An easy life is BORING. In an easy life, there is NO GROWTH, NO VARIETY, nothing to be earned. In an easy life, you die in your comfort zone with unrealized dreams.
So how are you showing up to life? Are you showing up entitled because it’s “so hard”? Or are you looking the friction, the resistance and the hard times dead in the face with GRATITUDE and PRAISE shouting OUT LOUD, “THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME BETTER, STRONGER and showing me HOW POWERFUL I TRULY AM”?
Hear me my friends, how you MEET and DEAL and GIVE MEANING to resistance is how successful you will be in life. If you resent it, or are entitled and bratty and think it shouldn’t be this way – enjoy being an observer of life. BUT – if you meet RESISTANCE with the KNOWING and the CERTAINTY that YOU and THE DIVINE got this, and instead of saying “WHY ME?” you say “TRY ME!” – you can count that eventually you will be welcomed into the realm of those who have the PRIVILEGE to live their dreams."
- By Mastin Kipp
"....If your goal is to trust The Uni-verse, to live Its will for your life and to be used up by Love so at the end of your life you have FULLY expressed and given every last DROP of your purpose, then everything that has your power that is NOT in alignment with that Path must be challenged and uprooted. There is no other way.
So if you want to live your purpose with Faith, everything that is not your purpose will begin to shift away and leave your life – that is, unless you resist, and then life gets stagnant.
My aim, my goal is to stay fixed on the experiences I desire (feeling inspired, joyful, happy, scared to step out of my comfort zone, etc.) and detach from the physical form of how they show up.
When we detach from the form, we give The Uni-verse room to work to create the EXPERIENCES we truly desire.
Living your purpose and being nestled in the arms of The Uni-verse doesn’t mean that you are going to live a boring life.
It means you will get to a point where you are filled up, happy and feeling alive most of the time. But it takes constant risk, constant tenacity and the ability to step outside of your comfort zone daily and allow your ego to be humbled in the process.
Where we are going as a human race is more connected to each other. So the more you can tell on yourself, the more honest you can be and the more that you can see the Divine in everyone you meet, the greater amount of success and fulfillment you will have.
When we use our free will to connect to the energy of Love and allow The Uni-verse to work through it, the form of our life will begin to change. It’s scary at first, but what’s scariest of all is getting to the end of our life with fear and regret.
If you choose to connect to Love, you will be challenged. You will be asked to face your fears. You will be asked to be humbled...."
- By Mastin Kipp
So if you want to live your purpose with Faith, everything that is not your purpose will begin to shift away and leave your life – that is, unless you resist, and then life gets stagnant.
My aim, my goal is to stay fixed on the experiences I desire (feeling inspired, joyful, happy, scared to step out of my comfort zone, etc.) and detach from the physical form of how they show up.
When we detach from the form, we give The Uni-verse room to work to create the EXPERIENCES we truly desire.
Living your purpose and being nestled in the arms of The Uni-verse doesn’t mean that you are going to live a boring life.
It means you will get to a point where you are filled up, happy and feeling alive most of the time. But it takes constant risk, constant tenacity and the ability to step outside of your comfort zone daily and allow your ego to be humbled in the process.
Where we are going as a human race is more connected to each other. So the more you can tell on yourself, the more honest you can be and the more that you can see the Divine in everyone you meet, the greater amount of success and fulfillment you will have.
When we use our free will to connect to the energy of Love and allow The Uni-verse to work through it, the form of our life will begin to change. It’s scary at first, but what’s scariest of all is getting to the end of our life with fear and regret.
If you choose to connect to Love, you will be challenged. You will be asked to face your fears. You will be asked to be humbled...."
- By Mastin Kipp
"When religious leaders leverage our fear and need for more certainty by extracting vulnerability from spirituality and turning faith into 'compliance and consequences' rather than teaching and modeling how to wrestle with the unknown and how to embrace mystery, the entire concept of faith is bankrupt on its own terms."
- By Brene Brown
"Also, it's important to mention that even the dance between good and bad is perfect. We need opposite to learn, to grow and to evolve through.
I would love for you to consider that the worst things in your life, seen from a new perspective, are actually your greatest gift!
I know it sounds impossible, but what if you were sent major pain, not only to learn from it, but to help others, too?
Through the lens of human reason, horrible things happen. Through the lens of Uni-versal understanding, horrible things happen as a path for us to collectively wake up, one person, one light bulb, at a time.
....the story you tell about your life is what you get to experience. Choose wisely."
"The Heart loves service, humility, hard work, dedication, self-approval and self-trust, listening to Divine Guidance from The Uni-verse which Whispers to us, taking action even though we don’t feel like it, getting up and trying again, not blaming but taking responsibility for the outcome of our lives, empathy, and having the willingness to dig in and get our hands dirty instead of leaving our dreams up to someone else.
This is the path of Greatness. Not blame. Not entitlement. Not separation. But REAL leadership, by example, not through entitlement or ego.
Basically, our dreams need us to get over ourselves. Our dreams need us to take responsibility for them. Our dreams need us to SHOW UP even when we don’t feel like it. They are fragile and need tender Loving care. Dreams take time and are often tests of Faith. Let’s meet the test!
This is why, in a world where we can download an app and have the perfect food delivered to us in less than 20 minutes from the time we downloaded the app, or we can Tweet/Facebook the world in moments or we can send a text and get an immediate response - all this immediacy doesn’t apply to our dreams."
"......If you're still reading this with me, really consider the vision you have for your future. What's it look like? Do you know what your purpose is and why you were born? Do you have the emotional drive to overcome and transcend ALL the blocks that are sure to come up on the path? Do you see breakdown moments as breakthrough moments? Do you see breakups as an opportunity to trade up? Do you feel that no matter what happens, you can overcome, transcend and move through ANYTHING that comes your way?
Can you see in your mind's eye the compelling and inspiring future for yourself that is FULL of LOVE, JOY, ABUNDANCE, PERSONAL POWER, PASSION, FUN, VARIETY, GROWTH and CONTRIBUTION?.....
The vision we hold about the future will determine our actions in the present. And our actions in the present will determine the life we live in the future.
Between you and your ideal scene and vision are the limiting beliefs, stories and meanings that are within you, holding you back. And usually all the things we want to create are outside our comfort zone. This means that for us to live a fulfilled life, to have purpose, passion, personal power and love, we must work daily at breaking down old beliefs that no longer serve us.
I joke that my goal in life is to upgrade my internal software as often as iTunes upgrades its software! I mean, think about it, how many times does iTunes upgrade its software? It seems like almost daily! And why does Apple do this? Because they are constantly improving their product so that it's better for us to use.
And that is what we must do. Accept who we are, know that where we are is perfect. And then from that place step into constant personal growth, busting through old stories and patterns and upgrading our internal software so that we can be used by The Uni-verse better.
The future is bright. Many people think when times are good that they will always be good, and that when times are tough they will always be tough - instead of remembering that the nature of life is constant change. It's usually never as awesome as we think it is, nor is it as bad as we think it is.
And when we have a vision for a future that we want to create, we can use that vision as a navigation system when times are awesome or when times are tough. Coming back to your vision and taking action towards it REGARDLESS of what is happening in the outside world - that is what separates people."
- Mastin Kipp
"Why you need to stop settling for crumbs.....Use your voice. Speak up. Tell your truth. Stop settling for...I saw myself, many years ago - a woman committed to keeping the peace at any cost, a young girl in an adult body desperately trying to get her needs met without making any trouble. I never rocked the boat, never raised my voice, and rarely asked for what I wanted. Instead, I settled for crumbs when everything inside me screamed for a whole meal."
- Cheryl Richardson
"Before I gained some insight into the inside-out nature of experience, I used to assume that conditions and circumstances had inherent emotional feelings attached to them. Trading in volatile financial markets or working in an ER were inherently high-pressure, high-stress jobs. Getting what you want would always make you happy. Being rich and thin meant you would be confident. Because the creative power of Thought was largely invisible to me, I attributed my feelings (and everyone else’s) to what I could see around me. And that innocent and seemingly innocuous misunderstanding is what actually lies beneath almost every problem we have in our life.
Because we think our happiness comes from getting what we want, we pursue our goals at the cost of our relationships, our health, and our spiritual well-being. When we get what we want and we’re still not happy, we assume the problem is that we’re still not doing enough, so we push even harder and end up even further away from the experience of happiness we actually want.
Because we think that our sadness comes from being on our own, we make ill-founded choices about the people we get into relationships with. Then, when we think our anger and frustration are coming from our partner, we try to change them or swap them for a different model instead of looking to Thought as the source of our experience.
Because we think that our fear is causally linked to certain life circumstances, we do everything we can to avoid and/or protect ourselves from those circumstances. Yet the moment we see that every feeling is just the shadow of a thought, we stop being scared of our feelings and just feel them.
We begin to value ‘negative’ feelings as much as positive ones for the insights they give us into our state of mind and how real our reality is looking to us at any given moment. And because life doesn’t look so scary, we don’t work so hard to make it fit the idealized pictures in our head. We relax and begin to enjoy ourselves more. We’re free to express more of our natural creativity and well-being.
This is why one of the biggest shifts that people make when they begin seeing the inside-out nature of experience is from being primarily results oriented to being more inner directed. It’s not that results no longer matter – it’s just that those results stop validating or invalidating our value and worth in the world. Ironically, this ‘take it or leave it’ attitude toward results makes it easier than ever to create them.
When we take the pressure off ourselves to produce results at any cost and instead rest in our innate well-being, enjoying our life, following our wisdom, and looking within for a deeper understanding of how it all works, things often seems to unfold more beautifully than we could ever have imagined. We start to notice all sorts of synchronicities and serendipities, and outcomes that may have eluded us for years begin to happen seemingly ‘all by themselves.’
Yet the moment the results we’ve been waiting for start to show up, we become tempted to throw ourselves right back into the outside-in, action-oriented paradigm that makes creating specific results seem to matter more than our overall experience of being alive. If we succumb to the illusion, we take ourselves out of the foundational, formless space from which those results have been effortlessly created.
And this raises a very interesting question:
In a world where getting what we want may or may not lead to happiness, losing the big game doesn’t have to hurt, and other people don’t have the power to make us happy or miserable (even if they’re related to us), how do we know what course to set in life?
Since ‘there’ isn’t inherently better than ‘here,’ the direction we head in becomes almost as arbitrary as how long we give ourselves to get there.
Similarly, the idea of putting pressure on ourselves to strive for our goals now so that we can feel the rush of reaching them later is as bizarre and misguided a life strategy as hitting ourselves in the face because it feels good when we stop.
This points to what is perhaps our society’s most unproductive and ill-founded bias: the notion that happiness can only come via success and at the cost of struggle, stress, and sacrifice.
In other words, according to this poorly conceived mathematical equation:
Struggle + Stress + Sacrifice = Success = Happiness
or, to simplify it even further:
Unhappiness = Success = Happiness
which ultimately leaves us with the oxymoronic formula:
Unhappiness = Happiness
But when we begin to see that we’re the ones making up the conditions for our own success and happiness and then doing our best to fulfill them, it opens up the possibility of playing the game in a brand new way."
- Michael Niell
"Triggers happen.
They do.
There’s nothing we can do to stop them – because it is through our triggers that we learn about ourselves.
I still get triggered. Someone says something. Someone does something. Something happens.
BOOM – nice Mastin is GONE and triggered Mastin is there.
It’s inevitable.
I’ve come to believe that the journey is really about seeking the peace within the chaos - the Truth within the trigger.
Life is not about NOT being triggered. Life is about bringing LOVE and AWARENESS to our triggers and moments when our emotions come up.
You see, a lot of people I know make the mistake of shooting for a “spiritual bypass” – where they try to deny their humanness – they try to deny their emotions, they try to put their negativity and triggers in a box – and then pretend they don’t exist.
And then – over time – they stack up – and BOOM – you have a breakdown, an emotional explosion or other expression.
Having these doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means you are human.
Here at TDL we advocate a full acceptance and expression of your human nature. This lets us be fully alive. From there, we also believe in tapping into the higher awareness that is your Soul, that is the observer of the human mind and emotions.
We are part spirit, part human. To deny either is to deny who you are.
We can’t sit around and just justify our negativity as “being human”. And we also can’t not express ourselves because we are “spiritual”. We need both.
This is the beautiful balance that we get to walk as spiritual beings having a human experience.
I have found that when I let myself express, when I allow myself to be who I am – without any judgment – amazing things happen.
And once I express myself – without judgment, I do my best to bring my awareness, my Soul perspective into the moment.
My aim is to have my Soul awareness be there as I am being triggered, so that I catch myself faster.
We all have triggers. We all have intense emotions, both dark and light. These are not good or bad – they are just information.
We must allow ourselves to express ourselves; we must allow ourselves to be FULLY human and FULLY spirit.
This dance is the dance that allows the greatest version of life to be lived.
How can you allow yourself to be both human and spirit?"
- Mastin Kipp
"Once you have a start, the rest is inevitable."
- Anonymous
Psycho-Cybernetics
- By Maxwell Maltz
How you see your self-image affects you
Your self-image sets the limit for what you can and cannot achieve
Expand your self-image, expand the limits of your talents and capabilities...it’s that simple!
How to change your self-image and program your “Success Mechanism”
Takes on average 6 weeks to make a change.
“Cybernetics” comes from the Greek word meaning “the art of steering”
CRAFT Method
C-cancel old, negative data
R-replace it with new, positive data
A-affirm your new self-image
F-focus on an image of success
T-train yourself in your new attitudes and behavior
Write your own script and choose goals
Goals guide you like a missile: Most of the time you are off course and if you don’t have an end goal, you will continue off course.
Don’t let others set your goals for you
Make up a dream- whatever comes to mind is your subconscious mind talking to you which can lead you to “your goals.”
Start right NOW on working toward achieving your set goals, not tomorrow or next week or next month
NOW you can do something small to get the ball rolling
De-stress yourself
SEEDS Method
S-see the situation as fundamentally neutral
E-evaluate the situation: who owns the problem?
E-Emotionally shift to fit your evaluation
D-do something about the situation
S-self-esteem will follow
Stress is formed by your reactions to events, not the events themselves.
"Definition for enlightenment is: the quiet acceptance of what is—and an open mind to embrace"
- Unknown
"Aristotle was a big believer that it’s worth it to be a good person—even in a bad world—because being a good person—with good character values—is what aims you down that happy path to the best kind of love (Relationship of Shared Virtue) and the best kind of happiness (becoming your Mightiest Human Being Self)....a person of virtue: kind, considerate, generous, good listener..."
- Karen Salmansohn
"Sometimes we have to experience pain, discomfort, hurt, sadness, and take risks in order to find the lesson of our soul. In this moment of unease, unfamiliarity and fear, you are learning more about yourself. Place yourself in the moment and allow those feelings to move through you, FEEL them, they will pass. There sometimes is only ONE way to learn, grow and experience your life. It may challenge us beyond our control, but what an achievement to have this unique universal lesson just for you!"
- ♥ Mel
"Smooth road never makes good drivers!
Smooth sea never makes good sailors!
Clear skies never make good pilots!
Problem free life never makes a strong and good person
Be Strong enough to accept the challenges of life
Don't ask life "Why me!"
Instead say "Try me!"
- Unknown
"You are responsible for you! For where you are in life is not anyone else's doing but your own.........do not look for others to rescue you, to blame or feel sorry for you. You are where you are because of only one person and one person only....... YOU! Once you take responsibility for your life and start making the changes necessary, then you will move one step closer to happiness. Choose to live, choose to step up and step forward."
- Unknown
Do You Want Your Life to Serve as a Warning or an Example?
- By Stephenie Zamora
“Our lives serve as either a warning or an example to others.” Tony Robbins
You have a choice.
You can choose to be an example of what’s possible. Of what a passion-filled life looks like. To be a poster child for healthy, vibrant and JOYFUL. Living a life around your purpose and making a difference.
Or, you can choose to serve as a warning for what happens when you don’t take responsibility for your life and instead allow yourself to be a “victim” to circumstance, the economy or other people’s behavior. Frustrated, lacking fulfilment, depressed and stressed out.
Choose to make your life an EXAMPLE!
This is NOT about being “picture perfect” or fitting into some kind of society driven image of successful. It’s about taking responsibility for your life and living to the fullest. Would you rather be fit, energetic and healthy, inspiring others to do the same, or would you rather develop a serious illness that reminds everyone around you that life is short? Would you rather take risks and live life to the fullest, enjoying every single chaotic moment you have, or be that old woman on her death bed warning her grand-children not to waste their life being “safe” and cautious?
Related: Don't Let the Past Dictate Your Future
The truth is, it’s about YOU, not anyone else.
It’s about you getting honest with yourself and living a life you can be proud of. One that you can look back on one day and say, “I rocked the sh*t out of it and enjoyed every single moment!”
Let’s look at some ways you can do just that…
Stop “just getting through” your life.
Working for the weekend? For that summer vacation? For something else, that’s sometime in the future? Stop it. Live for NOW. Make this moment the best moment of your life! Bring more pleasure into everything, stay present and engaged, and don’t waste your time daydreaming about the future. That’s the best way to allow life to slip right on by.
How can you make your job more enjoyable? Should you be doing more fulfilling work? Is this job really worth wasting 40 hours of YOUR LIFE every single week? Take a look at the things you do in your life that require you to “get through” them. Where can you make changes so that you’re living a more fulfilling, joyful and memorable life?
Related: Yes, You DO Have a Purpose
Take better care of yourself.
I get it, donuts, pizza, soda… they taste good. They bring temporary pleasure into your life… but it’s not lasting and it’s not worth it. You get ONE BODY. Just one. So take better care of it! If you want to live a life that is memorable, exciting, filled with passion and joy, you need to be nourishing your body, not poisoning it.
If you don’t want to end up with disease, then take responsibility for your health RIGHT NOW. Not later on… down the road. NOW. Bring in more veggies, whole fruits and water. Stop drinking soda and alcohol. Stop eating processed crap. Get rid of the coffee and give green smoothies and juices a try.
Stop hiding.
“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” Nelson Mandela
Stop trying to fit in, instead embrace all that is weird and quirky about you. Own up to your preferences and opinions. Do the things YOU want to do, not just what your friends or family wants to do. Choose your work based on your passions, not what society or anyone else says is a better fit. Wear what you want to wear, do what you want to do and say what you want to say.
Stop hiding your uniquely beautiful self from the world.
Related: It's Not the Destination, It's the Journey
That’s another sure-fire way to waste GOBS of time and energy. In relationships you don’t belong in, at jobs that don’t fulfill you and with people that don’t get you. What’s the point?
Make a difference.
Whether it’s recycling, volunteering or donating to a cause, be of service! Living a life of service is one of the best things you can do FOR YOURSELF, as well as for others and our world. Seriously, the fastest way to feeling fulfilled, happy and filled with love is to give back. Pick a cause that’s close to your heart and find a way to support it.
You don’t have to give hours and hours or tons of money… maybe you just volunteer occasionally, spread their message across social media or donate when you have extra money to give. Or, find a way to incorporate your cause into your every day life! Eat less meat, work somewhere that sponsors non-profits or shop at environmentally friendly stores.
Take Action NOW!
Where are you playing small, treating yourself poorly or wasting precious time and energy? What steps can you take TODAY, this week or this month to remedy it? How can you bring more pleasure into your life and make it more memorable?
"Any change, any loss, does not make us victims. Others can shake you, surprise you, disappoint you, but they can’t prevent you from acting, from taking the situation you’re presented with and moving on. No matter where you are in life, no matter what your situation, you can always do something. You always have a choice and the choice can be power."
- Blaine Lee
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”
“When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.
“It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.”
- Mary Oliver
"....the message a lot of the media and the advertisers are sending to us is, "Unless you are perfectly,
perfectly perfect, never have anything happen to you, are always happy, never emotional in a negative way, have the perfect body, perfect outfit and perfect relationship, then you need to buy something...."
- Mastin Kipp
"You can't fear or hate anything that you truly understand. Always seek the truth, even if it might be hard to hear. It's better to fully understand a person or situation than to be left with your own assumptions, fearful thoughts or stories."
- Stephenie Zamora
"Whatever you admire, Love or look up to in someone is a part of yourself that you have not yet cultivated that is asking to be called forth. Basically – what you see in someone else is yourself seeing itself – and wanting to be cultivated....
So – if we do not cultivate the parts of ourselves that we admire in others, we can start to build resentment and anger towards them. This explains why in the beginning of a relationship we Love certain qualities about someone, but later on, we end up resenting the same qualities.
They go from being so “artistic” to “crazy and never on time” or they go from having a great “work ethic” to “never having enough time for me.” This isn’t a blanket statement though. It’s something to check in with your intuition about.
What do you, or DID you Love/admire and adore in your partner that now really pisses you off, or gets under your skin? This doesn’t have to be for just a relationship; this could be for a business partnership or a friendship, too.
What did you admire about them in the beginning? Or is there a role model or celebrity out in the world that you Love – what about them is so awesome? What qualities about them make you come alive? Realize that it is the SAME quality in you that is asking to be expressed...."
- Mastin Kipp
"Are you willing to get uncomfortable?
To speak your truth to the people in your life?
To not just cry, but probably sob uncontrollably at times as you release things?
To get honest with yourself about what’s not working?
To ask for help when you’re feeling stuck?
To admit where you messed up AND forgive yourself completely?
Releasing limiting beliefs can be hard and feel pretty yucky. I’m not going to lie to you… it’s hard work. It’s been some of the hardest work I’ve ever done.
But I can also tell you, it is oh-so-worth it my friend.
Change your story.
'I’m not good enough, I don’t have enough money, people don’t like me…' etc. These are stories that you tell yourself in your head, start making note of what you tell yourself and how it effects you. Then, change it up! Don’t lie to yourself with fluffy affirmations such as 'I’m rich and can afford anything I want.' That doesn’t work. Simply speak your truth… 'I’m working towards creating a sustainable income and creating the means to live the life I want.'”
- Stephenie Zamora
"Complaining continues to create the vibration of what you don't want. Today, take your focus off of what is wrong and focus on what is right and how you desire things to be. Put all your love, energy, mental power and decision making towards what you want and do not entertain thoughts that are to the contrary. You are MORE responsible for the way you feel than your environment, circumstances or relationships. Step towards Love today, step towards the solution."
- Jackson Kiddard, author & polymath
"....Whatever you want to become, know this: you ALREADY ARE.
So stop trying to become it. Instead, act as if you already are it and watch how magically life unfolds.
Instead of pining or buying into doubt - start TAKING ACTION as if you already are what you want to become.
In other words - BE WHAT YOU SEEK!
Start putting yourself in places and environments that are in alignment with your dreams. Want to be an actor? Get your ass to LA or NY and start doing what actors do. What to be a writer? Start taking actions that writers do (like WRITE) and be in environments that writers are in. What to get in shape? Put yourself in health and fitness environments. Stop hanging out at McDonald's and start hanging out at the gym. Don’t bring unhealthy food into the house.
Our environment, far greater than anything else, dictates the quality AND trajectory of our life. If you want to be a painter, go be with painters and start creating rituals that a painter would have. If you want to start a business, be around other entrepreneurs, absorb news on entrepreneurs and get busy taking risks like entrepreneurs do.
Also, and this is VERY important - surround yourself with people who already have what you want. If you hang out with people who have never achieved the dream you’re dreaming - they are probably going to give you bad advice. Most people aren’t living their dream - most people are living their nightmare and so they will give you advice on how to live your nightmare, too.
Environment plays a major role in how your life will turn out - so does the types of people you are hanging with. If you want your dreams to come true, start hanging in places where they already are and with people who can help guide your way. It’s possible to achieve your dreams; you just gotta make sure you are on the side of making them come true, instead of doubting that they exist. Show people who are living their nightmare that it’s totally possible to live their dreams by showing them yours. Be a light.
Know that you already are the dream and start taking action until you produce the result in real life. Keep going. Try until it happens and don’t stop until then."
- Mastin Kipp
"You must constantly ask yourself these questions: Who am I around? What are they doing to me? What have they got me reading? What have they got me saying? Where do they have me going? What do they have me thinking? And most important, what do they have me becoming? Then ask yourself the big question: Is that okay? Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change."
- Jim Rohn
"RELATIONSHIPS ARE CONTAINERS FOR GROWTH! :o)
So what happens is that we meet our partner at a certain level of growth and we are with them, we change, we evolve, we grow and at some point, we have a choice – we can grow together or we can grow apart. Most couples do not consciously make this choice. Most couples “slide” into this place and all of a sudden a relationship crisis blooms. And then we ask ourselves the famous lyrics from The Clash, “Should I stay or should I go?”
This is a tough question to answer. And there isn’t a cookie cutter answer, either. But what I can say is, ask yourself these questions if you are considering leaving a relationship – “Is this relationship serving my empowerment?” and “Am I serving the empowerment of my partner?”
The answer to these two questions, if you are REALLY honest, will get you far. Oh and here is one more: “Am I in this relationship for LOVE or for comfort?” A lot of people stay in relationships that don’t serve their empowerment because it’s comfortable. But, as we have learned (and preach) at TDL, choosing the comfortable path isn’t always what’s best for us and it’s rarely what our SOUL is calling us to do. Our SOUL is calling us out toward adventure to learn, to risk, to dare and to find a relationship where we bond over our power rather than just our wounds.
Of course we must Love each other, and that includes each other’s dark side. BUT – can you see how bonding over your wounds, over your fears creates a certain type of relationship? You have wounds in common. This is called woundology.
When you focus on and bond over your wounds you are playing small IF you support each other in staying wounded. Can you see the conflict that comes when people bond over their wounds, support each other in staying wounded and then all of a sudden one person wants to grow? All of a sudden the relationship dynamic isn’t the same. One person is growing, no longer the victim, taking responsibility for their life – and the other person is still stuck in the pain of their wounds.
This is what creates many relationship crises. So, if you are in this place either in a personal or professional way – ask yourself:
“Was this relationship created because we bonded over and supported each others wounds? Did we support each other to stay wounded?”
“Is this relationship now serving my empowerment?”
“Am I serving my partner’s empowerment?”
If you were TOTALLY honest with yourself, what would you say? And knowing this, what would you DO?"
- Mastin Kipp
"....One way to start taking more responsibility is to begin responding differently to the events that occur in your life....E + R = O
Event + Response = Outcome"
- Jack Canfield
"We date at the level of our self-esteem. Your relationship is a direct reflection of your own self-love and self-worth. A lot of TDL Seekers have written in saying that they are in a relationship (dating, marriage, etc.) with someone who they really are into, but they are not getting their needs met. They keep asking me how they have to change to keep the relationship going.
Pause.
Let me be clear - the only way we should have to change is to be more authentically ourselves. This means compromise, of course, but this also means not abandoning ourselves to please another.
The common question seems to be: "How can I change myself so this will work?"
and the response is "Don't change yourself - BE YOURSELF!"
Many Seekers are terrified of being alone and of the unknown. And I understand, it can be hellishly uncomfortable in there. But if your needs aren't being met in a relationship, it's not the other persons fault. The responsibility is on you to communicate your needs and to choose someone who honors you, cherishes you and loves you.
If you don't love, honor and cherish yourself, you will settle and your needs won't get met.
To be a Seeker we must get comfortable with the unknown and with letting go of toxic relationships. We must step into the Faith that we can create the life we truly desire, not as we change to please others, but as we step more into our own authentic selves. This means communicating our needs, having higher standards around the people we are dating and stepping into our own self-love and self-care.
Of course in any relationship we have to compromise and find a middle ground. This is part of being in relationship. But this blog is aimed at the thousands of folks who have written in asking how they can change to please other people. Please yourself first and then you will attract someone who is pleased with you.
This means embracing the unknown and being okay with letting go of something or someone that isn't meeting your needs.
Ask yourself this question: "If I REALLY loved myself, what would I do?"
- Mastin Kipp
This is Water: Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005
(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.
Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."
It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.
As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.
By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.
But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck.
- David Foster Wallace
"We have Faith, not that life will calm down and be orderly; we have Faith BECAUSE life is chaotic and by meeting the chaos with Faith we see the higher order of Life. We see how The Uni-verse makes us stumble in order to prevent a fall, we see that losing something or someone we love dearly is sad, yet it comes with tremendous Grace. We see that not having what we want gives us the fuel, thoughts and motivation we need to go out there and happen to life!
If we look at life with the eyes of Faith we can see that we are protected, guarded and guided to a better and better outcome.
It takes seeing life this way to be able to ride this wave. We have to be willing to look at death, letting go, heartbreak and chaos with the eyes of celebration, for all these things are a part of the dance of creation that keeps Life moving.
There is something to be found in what we have lost. And there is a part of us to be let go of when we find a greater Truth. This is why staying detached from material objects and things is vital. Love will remain, but the face and shape of Love changes.
If life is confusing right now, if you feel like you don’t know what’s next, if you feel totally lost – this is a moment to celebrate! It means you are out beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone and that you are GROWING! You are expanding and you are starting to live a new kind of life that requires a new mindset – one of Faith that the future will be better than the past, because you will create it. A mindset that says no matter WHAT comes you are strong enough to handle it! A mindset that says to The Uni-verse not “Why me?” but “TRY ME!”
This is what it takes to live a life on The Path – to not ask for life to be easier, but to become more emotionally and spiritually fit. The potential for greatness lies within you waiting to be watered with emotional fitness and planted in spiritual fitness. To get out of your own way and face your fears is what it takes. And if you do this… my question for you is… How good are you willing to have it? And how much of your own pain are you willing to let go of in order for all the greatness to arrive and be revealed?"
- Mastin Kipp
"Learning is why we are here and how we can grow. But the key is to not get stuck on ONE event from the past that may have caused us a lot of pain.
So, do you want to get out of it?
Here are some tips:
1. Choose to see The Uni-verse as inherently friendly instead of hostile.
2. Instead of asking “Why did this happen to me?” ask, “What am I learning?”
3. Know that the answer to “What am I learning” is why the event happened.
4. Take action from the point of view that The Uni-verse is friendly and lessons you have learned.
Many traumas run deep. But this slight shift in our perception can have a MASSIVE difference in our lives.
- Mastin Kipp
"Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for creativity: be intensely yourself. Don't try to be outstanding; don't try to be a success; don't try to do pictures for others to look at – just please yourself."
- Ralph Steiner
"This is The Path, get on and fall off, get back up and fall off again.
I used to go months and months to holding onto being right; this time it was about 8 hours. Haha... Definitely an improvement, but also a major sign that shows me how much more room I have to grow."
- Mastin Kipp
"So, my question for you today is this: are the relationships in your life relationships that support your power or discourage your power? Have you bonded over your wounds only, or have you bonded over each other being in your mutual power? Is your relationship set up so both of you can thrive? Or do the relationships in your life hold you back?"
- Mastin Kipp
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open....”
- Martha Graham
"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."
- Clementine Paddleford
"If you're looking for a truly Loving relationship, it is very difficult to be in a relationship with someone who isn't on the path to self-love. We don't have to love ourselves perfectly to find awesome love, but we have to be on the path to self-love.
This also means that whomever we choose to be in a relationship with should be on that path, too.
There will never be a perfect moment where we love ourselves perfectly and then we can be in a relationship. It's a constant process of discovery with no end. But for a relationship to thrive and for intimacy to emerge, each person must be dedicated to growth; otherwise, you will hit a wall.
A huge revelation for me recently has been that nobody, including myself, is perfect. It sounds obvious when I write it, but for many years I would meet people and project this expectation of perfection on to them. And I would get mad, angry and hurt when they wouldn't meet that expectation. So, I've recently decided that from the beginning of any relationships I start, that I want to acknowledge my own imperfection as well as the imperfection of the other person and consciously choose to enter into a relationship not seeking perfection, but rather loving each other's imperfections. And instead of looking to the other person to meet all our needs perfectly, to take our eyes off of ourselves and put them on The Uni-verse.
I believe that the only perfect Love is the Love of The Uni-verse. We are constantly nurtured by it: with oxygen, with sun, with community and with free will. We are fully supported in this life by The Uni-verse. It is the thoughts of lack, of fear and of neediness that make us feel as if we are not. When we remember this, we can remember our true essence and start to be at peace. When we realize that the only perfect love is the Love of The Uni-verse, we can no longer have the insane expectations that other people are perfect and expect perfect love from them.
We then step into the reality of imperfection that is the human condition. This is a humble place and it is from this humble place that we acknowledge that we need to grow, to work on ourselves and to walk the Path of self-love. To be in relationship with someone who isn't on this path makes Love very difficult.
So, are you willing to step out into self-love? Are you willing to set a high standard to let people into your life who have the same commitment?"
- Mastin Kipp
"In relationship, we either grow together or we grow apart. The Uni-verse is constantly guiding us to greater and greater awareness or ourselves and as a result our Highest Potential. Relationships are containers for growth, not containers for proving how much pain you can endure for someone else."
- Mastin Kipp
"If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It's very important to be aware of them every time they come up."
- Deepak Chopra
"As Seekers, the last thing we want to do is put our head in the sand when there is a problem and just “positive think” our way into denial and more pain. So, instead of just always being positive and that positivity being fake, we must also embrace the negative.
In fact, it is when we give voice and healing to the negative thoughts, emotions and situations in our lives that we transform. When we choose to stare at negativity and pain and embrace them as lessons, we begin to shift and change."
- Mastin Kipp
"God hides hidden in the hearts of all."
- Hindu Saying
"Community is everything.
If you want to see a preview of your future, look to who you are hanging out with. This isn’t some moral statement about your peer group, it’s more of a vibrational or elevational statement.
You see, we live in a literal Uni-verse.
That means that we become what we think and what we think is greatly determined by who we spend the most amount of time with."
- Mastin Kipp
- By Brene Brown
"Also, it's important to mention that even the dance between good and bad is perfect. We need opposite to learn, to grow and to evolve through.
I would love for you to consider that the worst things in your life, seen from a new perspective, are actually your greatest gift!
I know it sounds impossible, but what if you were sent major pain, not only to learn from it, but to help others, too?
Through the lens of human reason, horrible things happen. Through the lens of Uni-versal understanding, horrible things happen as a path for us to collectively wake up, one person, one light bulb, at a time.
....the story you tell about your life is what you get to experience. Choose wisely."
"The Heart loves service, humility, hard work, dedication, self-approval and self-trust, listening to Divine Guidance from The Uni-verse which Whispers to us, taking action even though we don’t feel like it, getting up and trying again, not blaming but taking responsibility for the outcome of our lives, empathy, and having the willingness to dig in and get our hands dirty instead of leaving our dreams up to someone else.
This is the path of Greatness. Not blame. Not entitlement. Not separation. But REAL leadership, by example, not through entitlement or ego.
Basically, our dreams need us to get over ourselves. Our dreams need us to take responsibility for them. Our dreams need us to SHOW UP even when we don’t feel like it. They are fragile and need tender Loving care. Dreams take time and are often tests of Faith. Let’s meet the test!
This is why, in a world where we can download an app and have the perfect food delivered to us in less than 20 minutes from the time we downloaded the app, or we can Tweet/Facebook the world in moments or we can send a text and get an immediate response - all this immediacy doesn’t apply to our dreams."
"......If you're still reading this with me, really consider the vision you have for your future. What's it look like? Do you know what your purpose is and why you were born? Do you have the emotional drive to overcome and transcend ALL the blocks that are sure to come up on the path? Do you see breakdown moments as breakthrough moments? Do you see breakups as an opportunity to trade up? Do you feel that no matter what happens, you can overcome, transcend and move through ANYTHING that comes your way?
Can you see in your mind's eye the compelling and inspiring future for yourself that is FULL of LOVE, JOY, ABUNDANCE, PERSONAL POWER, PASSION, FUN, VARIETY, GROWTH and CONTRIBUTION?.....
The vision we hold about the future will determine our actions in the present. And our actions in the present will determine the life we live in the future.
Between you and your ideal scene and vision are the limiting beliefs, stories and meanings that are within you, holding you back. And usually all the things we want to create are outside our comfort zone. This means that for us to live a fulfilled life, to have purpose, passion, personal power and love, we must work daily at breaking down old beliefs that no longer serve us.
I joke that my goal in life is to upgrade my internal software as often as iTunes upgrades its software! I mean, think about it, how many times does iTunes upgrade its software? It seems like almost daily! And why does Apple do this? Because they are constantly improving their product so that it's better for us to use.
And that is what we must do. Accept who we are, know that where we are is perfect. And then from that place step into constant personal growth, busting through old stories and patterns and upgrading our internal software so that we can be used by The Uni-verse better.
The future is bright. Many people think when times are good that they will always be good, and that when times are tough they will always be tough - instead of remembering that the nature of life is constant change. It's usually never as awesome as we think it is, nor is it as bad as we think it is.
And when we have a vision for a future that we want to create, we can use that vision as a navigation system when times are awesome or when times are tough. Coming back to your vision and taking action towards it REGARDLESS of what is happening in the outside world - that is what separates people."
- Mastin Kipp
"Why you need to stop settling for crumbs.....Use your voice. Speak up. Tell your truth. Stop settling for...I saw myself, many years ago - a woman committed to keeping the peace at any cost, a young girl in an adult body desperately trying to get her needs met without making any trouble. I never rocked the boat, never raised my voice, and rarely asked for what I wanted. Instead, I settled for crumbs when everything inside me screamed for a whole meal."
- Cheryl Richardson
"Before I gained some insight into the inside-out nature of experience, I used to assume that conditions and circumstances had inherent emotional feelings attached to them. Trading in volatile financial markets or working in an ER were inherently high-pressure, high-stress jobs. Getting what you want would always make you happy. Being rich and thin meant you would be confident. Because the creative power of Thought was largely invisible to me, I attributed my feelings (and everyone else’s) to what I could see around me. And that innocent and seemingly innocuous misunderstanding is what actually lies beneath almost every problem we have in our life.
Because we think our happiness comes from getting what we want, we pursue our goals at the cost of our relationships, our health, and our spiritual well-being. When we get what we want and we’re still not happy, we assume the problem is that we’re still not doing enough, so we push even harder and end up even further away from the experience of happiness we actually want.
Because we think that our sadness comes from being on our own, we make ill-founded choices about the people we get into relationships with. Then, when we think our anger and frustration are coming from our partner, we try to change them or swap them for a different model instead of looking to Thought as the source of our experience.
Because we think that our fear is causally linked to certain life circumstances, we do everything we can to avoid and/or protect ourselves from those circumstances. Yet the moment we see that every feeling is just the shadow of a thought, we stop being scared of our feelings and just feel them.
We begin to value ‘negative’ feelings as much as positive ones for the insights they give us into our state of mind and how real our reality is looking to us at any given moment. And because life doesn’t look so scary, we don’t work so hard to make it fit the idealized pictures in our head. We relax and begin to enjoy ourselves more. We’re free to express more of our natural creativity and well-being.
This is why one of the biggest shifts that people make when they begin seeing the inside-out nature of experience is from being primarily results oriented to being more inner directed. It’s not that results no longer matter – it’s just that those results stop validating or invalidating our value and worth in the world. Ironically, this ‘take it or leave it’ attitude toward results makes it easier than ever to create them.
When we take the pressure off ourselves to produce results at any cost and instead rest in our innate well-being, enjoying our life, following our wisdom, and looking within for a deeper understanding of how it all works, things often seems to unfold more beautifully than we could ever have imagined. We start to notice all sorts of synchronicities and serendipities, and outcomes that may have eluded us for years begin to happen seemingly ‘all by themselves.’
Yet the moment the results we’ve been waiting for start to show up, we become tempted to throw ourselves right back into the outside-in, action-oriented paradigm that makes creating specific results seem to matter more than our overall experience of being alive. If we succumb to the illusion, we take ourselves out of the foundational, formless space from which those results have been effortlessly created.
And this raises a very interesting question:
In a world where getting what we want may or may not lead to happiness, losing the big game doesn’t have to hurt, and other people don’t have the power to make us happy or miserable (even if they’re related to us), how do we know what course to set in life?
Since ‘there’ isn’t inherently better than ‘here,’ the direction we head in becomes almost as arbitrary as how long we give ourselves to get there.
Similarly, the idea of putting pressure on ourselves to strive for our goals now so that we can feel the rush of reaching them later is as bizarre and misguided a life strategy as hitting ourselves in the face because it feels good when we stop.
This points to what is perhaps our society’s most unproductive and ill-founded bias: the notion that happiness can only come via success and at the cost of struggle, stress, and sacrifice.
In other words, according to this poorly conceived mathematical equation:
Struggle + Stress + Sacrifice = Success = Happiness
or, to simplify it even further:
Unhappiness = Success = Happiness
which ultimately leaves us with the oxymoronic formula:
Unhappiness = Happiness
But when we begin to see that we’re the ones making up the conditions for our own success and happiness and then doing our best to fulfill them, it opens up the possibility of playing the game in a brand new way."
- Michael Niell
"Triggers happen.
They do.
There’s nothing we can do to stop them – because it is through our triggers that we learn about ourselves.
I still get triggered. Someone says something. Someone does something. Something happens.
BOOM – nice Mastin is GONE and triggered Mastin is there.
It’s inevitable.
I’ve come to believe that the journey is really about seeking the peace within the chaos - the Truth within the trigger.
Life is not about NOT being triggered. Life is about bringing LOVE and AWARENESS to our triggers and moments when our emotions come up.
You see, a lot of people I know make the mistake of shooting for a “spiritual bypass” – where they try to deny their humanness – they try to deny their emotions, they try to put their negativity and triggers in a box – and then pretend they don’t exist.
And then – over time – they stack up – and BOOM – you have a breakdown, an emotional explosion or other expression.
Having these doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means you are human.
Here at TDL we advocate a full acceptance and expression of your human nature. This lets us be fully alive. From there, we also believe in tapping into the higher awareness that is your Soul, that is the observer of the human mind and emotions.
We are part spirit, part human. To deny either is to deny who you are.
We can’t sit around and just justify our negativity as “being human”. And we also can’t not express ourselves because we are “spiritual”. We need both.
This is the beautiful balance that we get to walk as spiritual beings having a human experience.
I have found that when I let myself express, when I allow myself to be who I am – without any judgment – amazing things happen.
And once I express myself – without judgment, I do my best to bring my awareness, my Soul perspective into the moment.
My aim is to have my Soul awareness be there as I am being triggered, so that I catch myself faster.
We all have triggers. We all have intense emotions, both dark and light. These are not good or bad – they are just information.
We must allow ourselves to express ourselves; we must allow ourselves to be FULLY human and FULLY spirit.
This dance is the dance that allows the greatest version of life to be lived.
How can you allow yourself to be both human and spirit?"
- Mastin Kipp
"Once you have a start, the rest is inevitable."
- Anonymous
Psycho-Cybernetics
- By Maxwell Maltz
How you see your self-image affects you
Your self-image sets the limit for what you can and cannot achieve
Expand your self-image, expand the limits of your talents and capabilities...it’s that simple!
How to change your self-image and program your “Success Mechanism”
Takes on average 6 weeks to make a change.
“Cybernetics” comes from the Greek word meaning “the art of steering”
CRAFT Method
C-cancel old, negative data
R-replace it with new, positive data
A-affirm your new self-image
F-focus on an image of success
T-train yourself in your new attitudes and behavior
Write your own script and choose goals
Goals guide you like a missile: Most of the time you are off course and if you don’t have an end goal, you will continue off course.
Don’t let others set your goals for you
Make up a dream- whatever comes to mind is your subconscious mind talking to you which can lead you to “your goals.”
Start right NOW on working toward achieving your set goals, not tomorrow or next week or next month
NOW you can do something small to get the ball rolling
De-stress yourself
SEEDS Method
S-see the situation as fundamentally neutral
E-evaluate the situation: who owns the problem?
E-Emotionally shift to fit your evaluation
D-do something about the situation
S-self-esteem will follow
Stress is formed by your reactions to events, not the events themselves.
"Definition for enlightenment is: the quiet acceptance of what is—and an open mind to embrace"
- Unknown
"Aristotle was a big believer that it’s worth it to be a good person—even in a bad world—because being a good person—with good character values—is what aims you down that happy path to the best kind of love (Relationship of Shared Virtue) and the best kind of happiness (becoming your Mightiest Human Being Self)....a person of virtue: kind, considerate, generous, good listener..."
- Karen Salmansohn
"Sometimes we have to experience pain, discomfort, hurt, sadness, and take risks in order to find the lesson of our soul. In this moment of unease, unfamiliarity and fear, you are learning more about yourself. Place yourself in the moment and allow those feelings to move through you, FEEL them, they will pass. There sometimes is only ONE way to learn, grow and experience your life. It may challenge us beyond our control, but what an achievement to have this unique universal lesson just for you!"
- ♥ Mel
"Smooth road never makes good drivers!
Smooth sea never makes good sailors!
Clear skies never make good pilots!
Problem free life never makes a strong and good person
Be Strong enough to accept the challenges of life
Don't ask life "Why me!"
Instead say "Try me!"
- Unknown
"You are responsible for you! For where you are in life is not anyone else's doing but your own.........do not look for others to rescue you, to blame or feel sorry for you. You are where you are because of only one person and one person only....... YOU! Once you take responsibility for your life and start making the changes necessary, then you will move one step closer to happiness. Choose to live, choose to step up and step forward."
- Unknown
Do You Want Your Life to Serve as a Warning or an Example?
- By Stephenie Zamora
“Our lives serve as either a warning or an example to others.” Tony Robbins
You have a choice.
You can choose to be an example of what’s possible. Of what a passion-filled life looks like. To be a poster child for healthy, vibrant and JOYFUL. Living a life around your purpose and making a difference.
Or, you can choose to serve as a warning for what happens when you don’t take responsibility for your life and instead allow yourself to be a “victim” to circumstance, the economy or other people’s behavior. Frustrated, lacking fulfilment, depressed and stressed out.
Choose to make your life an EXAMPLE!
This is NOT about being “picture perfect” or fitting into some kind of society driven image of successful. It’s about taking responsibility for your life and living to the fullest. Would you rather be fit, energetic and healthy, inspiring others to do the same, or would you rather develop a serious illness that reminds everyone around you that life is short? Would you rather take risks and live life to the fullest, enjoying every single chaotic moment you have, or be that old woman on her death bed warning her grand-children not to waste their life being “safe” and cautious?
Related: Don't Let the Past Dictate Your Future
The truth is, it’s about YOU, not anyone else.
It’s about you getting honest with yourself and living a life you can be proud of. One that you can look back on one day and say, “I rocked the sh*t out of it and enjoyed every single moment!”
Let’s look at some ways you can do just that…
Stop “just getting through” your life.
Working for the weekend? For that summer vacation? For something else, that’s sometime in the future? Stop it. Live for NOW. Make this moment the best moment of your life! Bring more pleasure into everything, stay present and engaged, and don’t waste your time daydreaming about the future. That’s the best way to allow life to slip right on by.
How can you make your job more enjoyable? Should you be doing more fulfilling work? Is this job really worth wasting 40 hours of YOUR LIFE every single week? Take a look at the things you do in your life that require you to “get through” them. Where can you make changes so that you’re living a more fulfilling, joyful and memorable life?
Related: Yes, You DO Have a Purpose
Take better care of yourself.
I get it, donuts, pizza, soda… they taste good. They bring temporary pleasure into your life… but it’s not lasting and it’s not worth it. You get ONE BODY. Just one. So take better care of it! If you want to live a life that is memorable, exciting, filled with passion and joy, you need to be nourishing your body, not poisoning it.
If you don’t want to end up with disease, then take responsibility for your health RIGHT NOW. Not later on… down the road. NOW. Bring in more veggies, whole fruits and water. Stop drinking soda and alcohol. Stop eating processed crap. Get rid of the coffee and give green smoothies and juices a try.
Stop hiding.
“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” Nelson Mandela
Stop trying to fit in, instead embrace all that is weird and quirky about you. Own up to your preferences and opinions. Do the things YOU want to do, not just what your friends or family wants to do. Choose your work based on your passions, not what society or anyone else says is a better fit. Wear what you want to wear, do what you want to do and say what you want to say.
Stop hiding your uniquely beautiful self from the world.
Related: It's Not the Destination, It's the Journey
That’s another sure-fire way to waste GOBS of time and energy. In relationships you don’t belong in, at jobs that don’t fulfill you and with people that don’t get you. What’s the point?
Make a difference.
Whether it’s recycling, volunteering or donating to a cause, be of service! Living a life of service is one of the best things you can do FOR YOURSELF, as well as for others and our world. Seriously, the fastest way to feeling fulfilled, happy and filled with love is to give back. Pick a cause that’s close to your heart and find a way to support it.
You don’t have to give hours and hours or tons of money… maybe you just volunteer occasionally, spread their message across social media or donate when you have extra money to give. Or, find a way to incorporate your cause into your every day life! Eat less meat, work somewhere that sponsors non-profits or shop at environmentally friendly stores.
Take Action NOW!
Where are you playing small, treating yourself poorly or wasting precious time and energy? What steps can you take TODAY, this week or this month to remedy it? How can you bring more pleasure into your life and make it more memorable?
"Any change, any loss, does not make us victims. Others can shake you, surprise you, disappoint you, but they can’t prevent you from acting, from taking the situation you’re presented with and moving on. No matter where you are in life, no matter what your situation, you can always do something. You always have a choice and the choice can be power."
- Blaine Lee
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”
“When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.
“It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.”
- Mary Oliver
"....the message a lot of the media and the advertisers are sending to us is, "Unless you are perfectly,
perfectly perfect, never have anything happen to you, are always happy, never emotional in a negative way, have the perfect body, perfect outfit and perfect relationship, then you need to buy something...."
- Mastin Kipp
"You can't fear or hate anything that you truly understand. Always seek the truth, even if it might be hard to hear. It's better to fully understand a person or situation than to be left with your own assumptions, fearful thoughts or stories."
- Stephenie Zamora
"Whatever you admire, Love or look up to in someone is a part of yourself that you have not yet cultivated that is asking to be called forth. Basically – what you see in someone else is yourself seeing itself – and wanting to be cultivated....
So – if we do not cultivate the parts of ourselves that we admire in others, we can start to build resentment and anger towards them. This explains why in the beginning of a relationship we Love certain qualities about someone, but later on, we end up resenting the same qualities.
They go from being so “artistic” to “crazy and never on time” or they go from having a great “work ethic” to “never having enough time for me.” This isn’t a blanket statement though. It’s something to check in with your intuition about.
What do you, or DID you Love/admire and adore in your partner that now really pisses you off, or gets under your skin? This doesn’t have to be for just a relationship; this could be for a business partnership or a friendship, too.
What did you admire about them in the beginning? Or is there a role model or celebrity out in the world that you Love – what about them is so awesome? What qualities about them make you come alive? Realize that it is the SAME quality in you that is asking to be expressed...."
- Mastin Kipp
"Are you willing to get uncomfortable?
To speak your truth to the people in your life?
To not just cry, but probably sob uncontrollably at times as you release things?
To get honest with yourself about what’s not working?
To ask for help when you’re feeling stuck?
To admit where you messed up AND forgive yourself completely?
Releasing limiting beliefs can be hard and feel pretty yucky. I’m not going to lie to you… it’s hard work. It’s been some of the hardest work I’ve ever done.
But I can also tell you, it is oh-so-worth it my friend.
Change your story.
'I’m not good enough, I don’t have enough money, people don’t like me…' etc. These are stories that you tell yourself in your head, start making note of what you tell yourself and how it effects you. Then, change it up! Don’t lie to yourself with fluffy affirmations such as 'I’m rich and can afford anything I want.' That doesn’t work. Simply speak your truth… 'I’m working towards creating a sustainable income and creating the means to live the life I want.'”
- Stephenie Zamora
"Complaining continues to create the vibration of what you don't want. Today, take your focus off of what is wrong and focus on what is right and how you desire things to be. Put all your love, energy, mental power and decision making towards what you want and do not entertain thoughts that are to the contrary. You are MORE responsible for the way you feel than your environment, circumstances or relationships. Step towards Love today, step towards the solution."
- Jackson Kiddard, author & polymath
"....Whatever you want to become, know this: you ALREADY ARE.
So stop trying to become it. Instead, act as if you already are it and watch how magically life unfolds.
Instead of pining or buying into doubt - start TAKING ACTION as if you already are what you want to become.
In other words - BE WHAT YOU SEEK!
Start putting yourself in places and environments that are in alignment with your dreams. Want to be an actor? Get your ass to LA or NY and start doing what actors do. What to be a writer? Start taking actions that writers do (like WRITE) and be in environments that writers are in. What to get in shape? Put yourself in health and fitness environments. Stop hanging out at McDonald's and start hanging out at the gym. Don’t bring unhealthy food into the house.
Our environment, far greater than anything else, dictates the quality AND trajectory of our life. If you want to be a painter, go be with painters and start creating rituals that a painter would have. If you want to start a business, be around other entrepreneurs, absorb news on entrepreneurs and get busy taking risks like entrepreneurs do.
Also, and this is VERY important - surround yourself with people who already have what you want. If you hang out with people who have never achieved the dream you’re dreaming - they are probably going to give you bad advice. Most people aren’t living their dream - most people are living their nightmare and so they will give you advice on how to live your nightmare, too.
Environment plays a major role in how your life will turn out - so does the types of people you are hanging with. If you want your dreams to come true, start hanging in places where they already are and with people who can help guide your way. It’s possible to achieve your dreams; you just gotta make sure you are on the side of making them come true, instead of doubting that they exist. Show people who are living their nightmare that it’s totally possible to live their dreams by showing them yours. Be a light.
Know that you already are the dream and start taking action until you produce the result in real life. Keep going. Try until it happens and don’t stop until then."
- Mastin Kipp
"You must constantly ask yourself these questions: Who am I around? What are they doing to me? What have they got me reading? What have they got me saying? Where do they have me going? What do they have me thinking? And most important, what do they have me becoming? Then ask yourself the big question: Is that okay? Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change."
- Jim Rohn
"RELATIONSHIPS ARE CONTAINERS FOR GROWTH! :o)
So what happens is that we meet our partner at a certain level of growth and we are with them, we change, we evolve, we grow and at some point, we have a choice – we can grow together or we can grow apart. Most couples do not consciously make this choice. Most couples “slide” into this place and all of a sudden a relationship crisis blooms. And then we ask ourselves the famous lyrics from The Clash, “Should I stay or should I go?”
This is a tough question to answer. And there isn’t a cookie cutter answer, either. But what I can say is, ask yourself these questions if you are considering leaving a relationship – “Is this relationship serving my empowerment?” and “Am I serving the empowerment of my partner?”
The answer to these two questions, if you are REALLY honest, will get you far. Oh and here is one more: “Am I in this relationship for LOVE or for comfort?” A lot of people stay in relationships that don’t serve their empowerment because it’s comfortable. But, as we have learned (and preach) at TDL, choosing the comfortable path isn’t always what’s best for us and it’s rarely what our SOUL is calling us to do. Our SOUL is calling us out toward adventure to learn, to risk, to dare and to find a relationship where we bond over our power rather than just our wounds.
Of course we must Love each other, and that includes each other’s dark side. BUT – can you see how bonding over your wounds, over your fears creates a certain type of relationship? You have wounds in common. This is called woundology.
When you focus on and bond over your wounds you are playing small IF you support each other in staying wounded. Can you see the conflict that comes when people bond over their wounds, support each other in staying wounded and then all of a sudden one person wants to grow? All of a sudden the relationship dynamic isn’t the same. One person is growing, no longer the victim, taking responsibility for their life – and the other person is still stuck in the pain of their wounds.
This is what creates many relationship crises. So, if you are in this place either in a personal or professional way – ask yourself:
“Was this relationship created because we bonded over and supported each others wounds? Did we support each other to stay wounded?”
“Is this relationship now serving my empowerment?”
“Am I serving my partner’s empowerment?”
If you were TOTALLY honest with yourself, what would you say? And knowing this, what would you DO?"
- Mastin Kipp
"....One way to start taking more responsibility is to begin responding differently to the events that occur in your life....E + R = O
Event + Response = Outcome"
- Jack Canfield
"We date at the level of our self-esteem. Your relationship is a direct reflection of your own self-love and self-worth. A lot of TDL Seekers have written in saying that they are in a relationship (dating, marriage, etc.) with someone who they really are into, but they are not getting their needs met. They keep asking me how they have to change to keep the relationship going.
Pause.
Let me be clear - the only way we should have to change is to be more authentically ourselves. This means compromise, of course, but this also means not abandoning ourselves to please another.
The common question seems to be: "How can I change myself so this will work?"
and the response is "Don't change yourself - BE YOURSELF!"
Many Seekers are terrified of being alone and of the unknown. And I understand, it can be hellishly uncomfortable in there. But if your needs aren't being met in a relationship, it's not the other persons fault. The responsibility is on you to communicate your needs and to choose someone who honors you, cherishes you and loves you.
If you don't love, honor and cherish yourself, you will settle and your needs won't get met.
To be a Seeker we must get comfortable with the unknown and with letting go of toxic relationships. We must step into the Faith that we can create the life we truly desire, not as we change to please others, but as we step more into our own authentic selves. This means communicating our needs, having higher standards around the people we are dating and stepping into our own self-love and self-care.
Of course in any relationship we have to compromise and find a middle ground. This is part of being in relationship. But this blog is aimed at the thousands of folks who have written in asking how they can change to please other people. Please yourself first and then you will attract someone who is pleased with you.
This means embracing the unknown and being okay with letting go of something or someone that isn't meeting your needs.
Ask yourself this question: "If I REALLY loved myself, what would I do?"
- Mastin Kipp
This is Water: Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005
(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.
Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."
It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.
As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.
By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.
Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.
You get the idea.
If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.
But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck.
- David Foster Wallace
"We have Faith, not that life will calm down and be orderly; we have Faith BECAUSE life is chaotic and by meeting the chaos with Faith we see the higher order of Life. We see how The Uni-verse makes us stumble in order to prevent a fall, we see that losing something or someone we love dearly is sad, yet it comes with tremendous Grace. We see that not having what we want gives us the fuel, thoughts and motivation we need to go out there and happen to life!
If we look at life with the eyes of Faith we can see that we are protected, guarded and guided to a better and better outcome.
It takes seeing life this way to be able to ride this wave. We have to be willing to look at death, letting go, heartbreak and chaos with the eyes of celebration, for all these things are a part of the dance of creation that keeps Life moving.
There is something to be found in what we have lost. And there is a part of us to be let go of when we find a greater Truth. This is why staying detached from material objects and things is vital. Love will remain, but the face and shape of Love changes.
If life is confusing right now, if you feel like you don’t know what’s next, if you feel totally lost – this is a moment to celebrate! It means you are out beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone and that you are GROWING! You are expanding and you are starting to live a new kind of life that requires a new mindset – one of Faith that the future will be better than the past, because you will create it. A mindset that says no matter WHAT comes you are strong enough to handle it! A mindset that says to The Uni-verse not “Why me?” but “TRY ME!”
This is what it takes to live a life on The Path – to not ask for life to be easier, but to become more emotionally and spiritually fit. The potential for greatness lies within you waiting to be watered with emotional fitness and planted in spiritual fitness. To get out of your own way and face your fears is what it takes. And if you do this… my question for you is… How good are you willing to have it? And how much of your own pain are you willing to let go of in order for all the greatness to arrive and be revealed?"
- Mastin Kipp
"Learning is why we are here and how we can grow. But the key is to not get stuck on ONE event from the past that may have caused us a lot of pain.
So, do you want to get out of it?
Here are some tips:
1. Choose to see The Uni-verse as inherently friendly instead of hostile.
2. Instead of asking “Why did this happen to me?” ask, “What am I learning?”
3. Know that the answer to “What am I learning” is why the event happened.
4. Take action from the point of view that The Uni-verse is friendly and lessons you have learned.
Many traumas run deep. But this slight shift in our perception can have a MASSIVE difference in our lives.
- Mastin Kipp
"Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for creativity: be intensely yourself. Don't try to be outstanding; don't try to be a success; don't try to do pictures for others to look at – just please yourself."
- Ralph Steiner
"This is The Path, get on and fall off, get back up and fall off again.
I used to go months and months to holding onto being right; this time it was about 8 hours. Haha... Definitely an improvement, but also a major sign that shows me how much more room I have to grow."
- Mastin Kipp
"So, my question for you today is this: are the relationships in your life relationships that support your power or discourage your power? Have you bonded over your wounds only, or have you bonded over each other being in your mutual power? Is your relationship set up so both of you can thrive? Or do the relationships in your life hold you back?"
- Mastin Kipp
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open....”
- Martha Graham
"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."
- Clementine Paddleford
"If you're looking for a truly Loving relationship, it is very difficult to be in a relationship with someone who isn't on the path to self-love. We don't have to love ourselves perfectly to find awesome love, but we have to be on the path to self-love.
This also means that whomever we choose to be in a relationship with should be on that path, too.
There will never be a perfect moment where we love ourselves perfectly and then we can be in a relationship. It's a constant process of discovery with no end. But for a relationship to thrive and for intimacy to emerge, each person must be dedicated to growth; otherwise, you will hit a wall.
A huge revelation for me recently has been that nobody, including myself, is perfect. It sounds obvious when I write it, but for many years I would meet people and project this expectation of perfection on to them. And I would get mad, angry and hurt when they wouldn't meet that expectation. So, I've recently decided that from the beginning of any relationships I start, that I want to acknowledge my own imperfection as well as the imperfection of the other person and consciously choose to enter into a relationship not seeking perfection, but rather loving each other's imperfections. And instead of looking to the other person to meet all our needs perfectly, to take our eyes off of ourselves and put them on The Uni-verse.
I believe that the only perfect Love is the Love of The Uni-verse. We are constantly nurtured by it: with oxygen, with sun, with community and with free will. We are fully supported in this life by The Uni-verse. It is the thoughts of lack, of fear and of neediness that make us feel as if we are not. When we remember this, we can remember our true essence and start to be at peace. When we realize that the only perfect love is the Love of The Uni-verse, we can no longer have the insane expectations that other people are perfect and expect perfect love from them.
We then step into the reality of imperfection that is the human condition. This is a humble place and it is from this humble place that we acknowledge that we need to grow, to work on ourselves and to walk the Path of self-love. To be in relationship with someone who isn't on this path makes Love very difficult.
So, are you willing to step out into self-love? Are you willing to set a high standard to let people into your life who have the same commitment?"
- Mastin Kipp
"In relationship, we either grow together or we grow apart. The Uni-verse is constantly guiding us to greater and greater awareness or ourselves and as a result our Highest Potential. Relationships are containers for growth, not containers for proving how much pain you can endure for someone else."
- Mastin Kipp
"If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It's very important to be aware of them every time they come up."
- Deepak Chopra
"As Seekers, the last thing we want to do is put our head in the sand when there is a problem and just “positive think” our way into denial and more pain. So, instead of just always being positive and that positivity being fake, we must also embrace the negative.
In fact, it is when we give voice and healing to the negative thoughts, emotions and situations in our lives that we transform. When we choose to stare at negativity and pain and embrace them as lessons, we begin to shift and change."
- Mastin Kipp
"God hides hidden in the hearts of all."
- Hindu Saying
"Community is everything.
If you want to see a preview of your future, look to who you are hanging out with. This isn’t some moral statement about your peer group, it’s more of a vibrational or elevational statement.
You see, we live in a literal Uni-verse.
That means that we become what we think and what we think is greatly determined by who we spend the most amount of time with."
- Mastin Kipp
"What's difficult in life is to stay centered when somebody does or says something that tempts us to close our hearts because their heart was closed. That is hard. But that is also how we grow. We go through those circumstances in order to evolve into people who can hold to our loving center no matter what the world throws us."
- Marianne Williamson
"You cannot get sick enough to help sick people get better. You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive. It is only in your thriving that you have anything to offer anyone. If you're wanting to be of an advantage to others, be as tapped in, turned in, turned on as you can possibly be."
- Esther Abraham-Hicks
"Abundance is something that many of us do not have a proper perspective on. We are on The Path; we desire abundance, yet it eludes us. Many of you have heard that money is the root of all evil.
The actual translation from the original text is, “The worship of money is the root of all evil.”
That’s a big difference.
Money is just energy in physical form. Energy is what all of creation is made of. To hate money is to hate energy and to hate energy is to hate existence.
We just need to get our priorities straight. Money is not a cause; money is an effect. The cause of money in a spiritual life is The Uni-verse.
A MAJOR shift happens when we take our eyes off of the current situation of “limited finances” and focus on the abundance of the Source. I know that in this moment that doesn’t pay your bills.
But, over time, if you keep it up, your life will change.
I went from a guy with a dream to inspire people with NO idea of how or what to do and just took direction from The Uni-verse, one day at a time. Plus, I don’t do what I do for the money. Sure, I like making a living, but I have and would do what I do for free. I did TDL for almost 4 years EVERYDAY before making a dime from it. Now, thankfully, it sustains me and I am beyond grateful. But that wasn’t always the case.
But what I can tell you is that from the beginning of this journey I have placed all my problems, desires and needs at the feet of The Uni-verse and turned it all over.
It was scary as hell, but I never went without. I had to make some very gnarly sacrifices, like living in an 8x8 room for a year that was only big enough for my bed (lol). But, I had belief and passion and most importantly – TRUST.
I believed and trusted that no problem or bill was too big for The Uni-verse. I also followed my own intuition above what ANYONE else told me. I also still hold the belief that the nature of The Uni-verse is abundance and so that is my natural birthright, I just have to allow it.
Money is not evil, but loving money more than you love The Uni-verse and yourself sets you up for an insane ride. Money comes and goes like the tide, but you will always have you and the Love of the Uni-verse.
When we take our love off of money and place it where it should be, we begin to thrive in ways we never knew possible. It may be scary at first, but over time this will and does work.
The Path is a leap of faith. We must have faith that as we are walking our Path that even our bills will be taken care of, sometimes through effort and hard work and sometimes through Grace.
Let us take our self-worth and feelings of security off of something that always changes (how much money we have at the moment in cash or in stock) and put our faith in something that never changes, the Love of the Living Uni-verse that we came from and live within.
Money is a tool. Money is energy in physical form. The highest form of energy in The Uni-verse is Love; put your faith and eyes towards that, take actions towards that, and money will follow in perfect time.
Your job is to trust and make the first move. I’m excited to be living a kind of life that defies the “economy” and “the markets”. I’ve put in my time and my faith - do you want to join me? It’s fun over here."
- Mastin Kipp
You May Ask Yourself,
Well, How Did I Get Here?
"So there's this married guy on this secluded beach. And there's this attractive, young woman--not his wife--sitting behind him on a blanket rubbing coconut scented suntan oil into his back. He's talking to her about how much he loves his wife and how great their two young children are. She's talking to him about how much she loves living in the islands and what fun it is to meet traveling businessmen.
Being a gentleman, the married guy walks the attractive young woman back to her apartment. As the sun sets over the rhythmically swaying palm trees, the married guy turns to face the woman with whom he has been spending every minute that he hasn't been in meetings for the past three days of his trip. He has a decision to make: He has to decide whether or not to accept her invitation to come inside her apartment for a drink. Then he will have to decide whether or not to kiss the attractive young woman.
What should he do? Should he accept her invitation to come inside her apartment for a drink? Should the married guy kiss the attractive young woman?
As a happily married father of four, I'm rooting for no. I'm hoping for the following scenario: the married guy turns around, maybe runs into the ocean to cool off, then returns alone to his hotel room. I'm into commitment. Infidelity seldom leads anywhere good. Indiscretions--such a gentle word--harm more marriages than they help.
But first let's back up. Our married guy didn't appear "ad ovo" on the door of the attractive young woman's apartment like Minerva born fully grown out of the brain of Zeus. Nor did Scotty beam down the attractive young woman from the USS Enterprise. They both came from somewhere. Ignoring the singularity of the Big Bang where-to my knowledge there were no beaches and less coconut scented suntan oil-every moment has a moment before it.
This affair started with a glance and a nod followed by a casual conversation subsequent to an invitation to lunch then a suggestion of a walk on the beach. From the blanket and the sunset, it wasn't a long way geographically or metaphorically to the doorway of the apartment.
So this issue is not what the married guy should do now, but--if you'll forgive the twisted grammar--what he should not have done before.
Contrast the married guy on the beach with my recently married friend, Mary who, on the first day of graduate school responds to a conversation from a classmate as they wait for the professor to arrive. It turns out that she and the classmate have a lot in common, shared program, shared research interests, a thousand things to talk about. Mary and her fellow graduate student feel a connection, a feeling similar to what Mary feels for her husband. So what does Mary do for the next class?
She sits across the room and doesn't respond to her pleasant classmate's subsequent attempts to engage her in conversation.
I'm not arguing that Mary is morally superior to the married guy.
I am arguing that she's smarter.
Because she doesn't have to make a difficult decision about whether or not to commit marital infidelity.
Because it is so much easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of trouble.
Envision a snarky teenager-for many of my gracious readers, little imagination will be required-who interrupts the natural flow of discourse in her home to demand breakfast in a loud, grouchy voice. What is to be done? How should the child be addressed? Should she be denied breakfast? Should she be taken aside and reprimanded? Should her mother scream back that at 15 years of age, any competent person should be capable of preparing her own breakfast and besides, they are going to be late for school? Again.
Or is this horse out of the proverbial barn? Has something gone desperately wrong along the way?
Like smoking cigarettes, the best way to stop is not to start. This child should never have been allowed to become demanding and rude.
Or the man who, having jumped off the roof of a 30 story building, whizzes past the 20th floor exulting, "So far, so good!" (In this story, the sidewalk is what is sometimes termed "the natural consequence.")
The time to dig a well is before you get thirsty. The time to decide what kind of home you want to live in is long before the kids are in their teens. The time to decide whether or not the married guy should kiss that attractive girl is long before they are alone on her doorstep."
- David Altshuler
"We are funny creatures sometimes; we’re afraid to live and afraid to die. So many times we find ourselves stuck in the middle with no way out. If we decide to live and follow our intuition, we get so wrapped up in what “COULD” happen and all the fears associated with taking risks, we become afraid.
On some subconscious level we think that by living we will die.
In our fear-based thoughts, risk equals death. At the root of not moving forward, a lot of my clients admit they think they will just spontaneously combust if they take too many risks - like The Uni-verse will destroy them if they take too many risks.
So in this way it is the fear of death that prevents us from living. And when we stop living we invite a certain kind of death into our experience.
Being afraid to live and afraid to die is a wonderful trick: fear-based ego thinking keeps us in our comfort zone.
There is an evolutionary reason for this. Fear helps us survive.
But today we are about more than just surviving - we are about thriving. Thriving means more than just existing. It means living at our own unique Highest Potential, which requires us to take a step outside of our comfort zone daily.
We are grateful for fear, but allow ourselves to make a choice from a higher place, from a place of trust. The ironic thing is that once we die to our fears, we can live.
So living does require that we die, that we die to our fears, our doubts and our old ways of thinking. We must let our fears die and be reborn of the spirit. We must take that first scary step out with trust that we will either know how to fly or that we will be caught.
The irony is that by playing it safe we are actually slowly dying day by day, and by risking death, we are actually taking a step towards life. I live my life everyday conscious of the question, “When you get to the end of your life, will you die wondering ‘what if?’” If the answer is yes, then I always do the thing I’m afraid of doing. I am also conscious of the fact that I may be blessed to live to be 100 or more, but I may also not make it through the day. So I also try my best to live in a way that doesn’t delay the things I want to do. If there is a risk to take, I want to take it now. I don’t take blind risks. I take calculated risks, I think things through, but at the end of the day the risks I still take are scary as hell.
Let us step into the knowing that is it by dying to our fears that we live. Let us take action on this and realize the only way to die to our fears is to face them. Let us face them with the solid faith that The Uni-verse has got our back.
It’s kind of fun to live life not knowing what’s going to happen next. What fears can you die to today?"
- Mastin Kipp
“Do I abandon myself to keep someone or do I risk losing someone if I choose to keep myself?”
This is an interesting question, indeed.
So many people have created relationships from a place that lacks personal integrity and self-esteem. The major issue isn’t that they aren’t with the right person, that is a secondary issue all together. The main issue is that from the beginning of their relationship they abandoned themselves or made themselves small in order to get something that they thought they were lacking.
And what does this kind of relationship usually manifest? Lack - a lack of love and self-love.
Many times a betrayal in a relationship first starts months or years before another person “betrays” us. When we betray ourselves and our own intuition, we set off down a path that will eventually manifest our own betrayal to ourselves.
So, if you are abandoning yourself to keep someone, why?
If you aren’t willing to risk losing someone to keep yourself, why?"
- Mastin Kipp
"Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering.
There's a hole in everything,
That's how the light comes through."
- Leonard Cohen
"....they think that for them to be able to be worthy of love, they have to be successful, beautiful and achieve something.
Basically, they are outsourcing their self-worth and ability to love themselves and be loved by others to outer circumstances and form. They also become attracted to a man’s success, rather than his heart. So, what’s running deep down in the subconscious mind is success and power = love.
Again, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to be successful or to have power or influence in the world. On some level we all want and desire that. But where we get tripped up is when our self-value and ability to love is tied to these things. Love and outward success and achievement are two different things.
So I have some questions for you. Do you feel loved when you are successful? Or are you successful because you already are worthy of love, right now? Do you need outer circumstances to define your self-worth? Or does your self-worth now help you create and mold the outer circumstances you desire? Do you feel like the only way you will be worthy of love is by becoming successful in the world? Or do you believe that you are loveable right now, flaws, mistakes and not having achieved the “ultimate” success you desire?
See, when we feel like we get love from being successful, we set ourselves up for a lot of pain. If we flip it around and instead feel successful BECAUSE we are loving and already whole – a completely different world starts to emerge.
The type of person we are attracted to starts to change. Relationships are no longer power struggles, but instead growing opportunities. We no longer seek to take from other people what we secretly feel we lack within ourselves.
Since our life circumstances, bank account size, success level and all the other things of the outer world are changing, when we define ourselves and our ability to be loved by what we have “out there”, we forget what’s important and never changing – Love. Love is what powers The Uni-verse and it’s what we’re born with – we just forgot.
So if you want to take your power back, if you want to make the ULTIMATE power move in your life, don’t define your self-worth or your ability to feel worthy of love by outside circumstances or success. Get rooted in the true wholeness of who you really are in this moment and then manifest from that place.
When you remember and feel that you are already whole, you bring about a completely different kind of life. You line up with what The Uni-verse already knows about you and no longer cling from a place of lack. The power struggles in relationships fade and you welcome a brand new reality, one of already being that which you thought you were lacking. And when you know and are in alignment with this Truth, that you lack nothing – all things become possible.
What would you say if you were already whole?"
- Mastin Kipp
"....Fear and the ego are funny things. They like to keep us pining for Love when we don't seem to have it, and then afraid when we seem to have it. It's a zero sum game. We can't win. We either feel empty because we don't feel like we have Love or we feel terrified because we feel like we are at risk of losing Love.
So, what is the solution? To remember, time and time again, that other people are not the source of our Love. The Uni-verse fills us from within. We fill ourselves by loving ourselves. We fill ourselves by taking care of ourselves. We fill ourselves by choosing to surround ourselves with loving people and keeping high standards around who we give the privilege of our time to. We also fill ourselves by getting our eyes off of ourselves and being of service to others. We reach out a helping hand to those in need with no expectation of return. We fill ourselves by doing yoga, through meditation and through eating a healthy and alkaline diet.
A relationship does not guarantee happiness and being single doesn't mean you're miserable. To find happiness either being single or being with someone, we must remember that we are imperfect people. And anyone we choose as our partner is also imperfect. When we let go of the illusion that we need to be perfect before we are worthy of being in a relationship and also let go of the illusion that whoever we are in relationship is perfect, we take a step towards happiness.
We begin to realize that relationships are opportunities for us to not only have a partner, but to grow Spiritually. It's a container built for us to face our fears, to let down our guard and to realize our own imperfection, and as a result, cultivate humility. Relationships also teach us about our own self-loathing. And when we can come face to face with our self-loathing, we have the opportunity through our awareness and self-love to recognize it, learn from it and then let it go. By doing this we grow closer to Love, both self-love and Love between ourselves and our partner.
So, knowing this, do you have the courage to let Love in?"
- Mastin Kipp
Five Laws for Our Times:
1. Recognize that the other person is you.
2. There is a way through every block.
3. When the time is on you, start, and the pressure will be off.
4. Understand through compassion or you will misunderstand the times.
5. Vibrate the Cosmos, the Cosmos shall clear the Path.
- Yogi Bhajan
"We have two choices: the pain of staying the same, or the pain of growth. If we stay the same, we will have subtle pain our whole lives until we die wondering "what if?" Or we can choose the pain of growth, which can be intense, but it is temporary. On the other side is the goal, result and life we desire."
- Mastin Kipp
"....So today, I would like to invite us to practice radical self-love. Love your love handles, love your tallness, love your shortness, love your flaws, love your imperfections, love your quirks, love your grey hair, love your no hair, love your pimples, love your creases, love your everything.
....You are worthy of this kind of love, from yourself and from others.
It’s scary to let ourselves be loved this way because we have to let go of the limiting beliefs that have been holding us back. We have to step into a new awareness of ourselves and face the pain of growth.
It’s worth it.
Radically loving ourselves means accepting only the best and leaving behind the rest. Not because we are selfish or judgmental, but because we have become discerning enough to know what and who is good for us and what and who isn’t.
So, if you were going to radically love yourself today, who would you let go of, who would you invite in, what would you start saying to yourself and what would you start saying to others?"
- Mastin Kipp
"....I’ve come to believe that it is our response to the uncertainty of life that greatly determines the outcome of our lives.
When you get uncertain – do you run or do you press on? Do you run to alcohol, drugs, sugar, sex or food? Or do you drop down on your yoga mat or meditation pillow and do some inner work?
Are you afraid of the storms and the bugs of your life (because we all have them) – or do you welcome them all as teachers?
I’m not afraid of bugs or storms; my uncertainty trigger is not having enough money to get by. When that gets triggered for me, it’s very hard to see it as a lesson, because I’m fearful that my survival will be challenged.
But, I drop down, go within and surrender to my higher power, all my fears, all my doubts and all my worries. And then I begin to take action. Action towards my dreams, action towards serving others and action towards fixing the problem...."
- Mastin Kipp
"Ask how you'd live your life differently if you knew you were going to die soon, then ask yourself who those people you admire are and why you admire them, and then ask yourself what was the most fun time in your life. The answers to these questions, when seen, heard, and felt, provide us with an open doorway into our mission, our destiny, our purpose."
- Thom Hartmann
"....When we choose to only love someone when they meet our expectations, we are letting our ego run the show. We have no idea what The Uni-verse is calling this person to do or become.
If we simply put them in the box of our expectations, we are limiting their growth and closing down intimacy in our relationship with this person. A person doesn't feel loved if they are constantly being judged and weighed and measured.
We are not here to judge and value the people in our lives, we are here to be a loving mirror, to show up and to support them in their growth and journey. A person feels loved when they are seen and understood for who they are RIGHT NOW. Sure, we all have growth points, but that's not the point.
The point is, when we talk about creating rich, fulfilling and loving relationships, when expectations and judgments creep in, we have gone down the path of the ego.
Let us release our expectations of others and let us release the expectations on ourselves. Let us love ourselves and the people in our lives right where we are.
We are growing daily; let us love the process instead of trying to only love a specific outcome that may or may not be for our greatest good."
- Mastin Kipp
"....Do not make success or failure the criteria by which you live..."
- Neil Simon
"Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude."
- William James
"The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let it spring from love. Born out of concern for all beings."
- Buddha
"....The answer is simple, but not easy: be radically yourself.....
The bottom line: don't close down, shut off or tone yourself down because you think the other person will reject you. If they aren't attracted to who you really are, then good, time saved and you can move on. Lingering in a false identity to get the approval of someone else is the ultimate betrayal of your personal integrity.....
The answer is simple, but not easy: be radically yourself.
Be you out loud today. I dare you....."
- Mastin Kipp
"Giving People Space to Experience Life on Their Own and Expressing Who You Are and What You Do vs. What You Say"
"It's great to [share moments with your family and friends]. It's even better if we can keep quiet and let them enjoy and interpret the experience on their own.....[Our friends and families'] encounter [with life] will resonate more soundly for [them] if it isn't processed first by [us]....[People] will learn from what you are and from what you do more than from what you say.....[we are] not being helpful by communicating [our] extreme anxiety....Your job as a [friend] is to encourage [others] to be who they are, not who you want them to be. A good way to help accomplish these goals is to allow [them] to feel their feelings [and to give them the space to do this].
- Excerpted from David Altshuler
"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age."
- Sophia Loren
"Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
"Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future."
- Johann von Goethe
"Love is letting go.
Period.
It’s the Energy of Love that binds The Uni-verse together. Love is what breathes life into us and gives all living things this chance to be alive.
One of the most Loving things that we’ve been given from our Creator is the gift of choice. Choice is a fundamental part of life. Free will is one of our Creator’s greatest gifts to us.
Free will boils down to this: you can choose to connect to Love, or not.
Since we’ve been given the privilege to choose for ourselves, that means if you Love someone, you must give him or her that privilege. Trying to force or manipulate Love never works – it’ll only backfire.
If you say you Love someone because of what they can give you, that’s not Love, that’s selfishness. When you Love someone, it’s always from a place of overflow rather than lack.
Respecting someone’s free will can be both devastating AND truly rewarding.
When you let people go to decide for themselves, they may choose things that don’t match up with your desires. There have been many times in my own life where this has happened, both in business and in my personal life.
But every time this shattering of illusion has happened, it’s brought me closer to the Truth. AND it’s brought me closer to Love.
At the same time, when you let go and honor someone’s free will there is also the possibility that they will choose you; and when that happens you have begun to plant very strong roots for a relationship.
Love is letting go because no one feels Loved when they are controlled or manipulated. No one really feels Loved when they can sense that someone is trying to take from them instead of give.
There is a difference between taking and receiving. It’s sooooo important to be able to receive Love. But to try to drain others of their Love isn’t Loving – it’s being an emotional vampire.
All this can be flipped and applies to YOU, too. You deserve to be with someone who Loves you right where you are. You deserve someone who is so connected to Love that they have the confidence to let you choose for yourself. You deserve to be in relationships where people are sharing from overflow rather than trying to be emotional vampires.
Choose to hang with people who give you the respect to let you decide. And at the same time give those you Love this same respect.
Remember, you are always provided for. The Uni-verse and The Energy of Love are always with you. Ask to feel Love’s presence and you will be filled – not by someone else, but by The Uni-verse.
Tell yourself, “Love is letting go. I am ok. Love is letting go. I am full as I am. Love is letting go. The perfect Love will find me. Love is letting go, so I let go and let Love decide.”
- Mastin Kipp
"All is well. You did not come here to fix a broken world. The world is not broken. You came here to live a wonderful life. And if you can learn to relax a little and let it all in, you will begin to see the universe present you with all that you have asked for."
- Esther Hicks
"The thought that "something is wrong with me" can be one of the biggest roadblocks to success that I know of.
I'm not talking about the kind of "something is wrong with me" in the being sick and needing to go to the doctor kind of way; in this case, there is an imbalance in your system and it must be corrected.
I'm talking about in the "I need to be fixed to be successful and happy" kind of way.
I believe that the thought "I need to be fixed" is one of the only things you need corrected in order to be happy and successful.
If it were true that you did not need to be fixed- that as you are, you are enough, that you have everything you need, right now, then everything in your life would change.
The chase would stop. The need to "fix" yourself would stop. The need for outward approval would cease.
Instead of needing to be fixed, from a place of wholeness, you would simply see that your only real need is for who you really are to be revealed.
If you could switch this one thought, this one perception, from the need to "be fixed" to the desire to "be revealed," it would make living your life at your Highest Potential much more achievable.
Instead of thinking you need to "fix" the part of yourself that is addicted, take the stance that the healthy and vibrant part of your true nature needs to be revealed.
Instead of thinking that you aren't enough or aren't lovable, see that all you have to do is reveal your enough-ness and loveable nature by trusting The Uni-verse and knowing that you can handle whatever it throws your way. Instead of playing the broken victim, step into being a powerful co-creator of your life.
Who you really are is a Spiritual being living in human form. The energy of your Soul has called forth and asked for a body to inhabit to experience life in human form. That deeper part of you that is not flesh and bone, who you are on a Soul level, is perfect, HUGE and a child of The Uni-verse.
You don't need to be fixed my friend; all you need is for the Love and Presence of your Soul to be revealed in your life.
When this revelation happens, all types of lack and dis-ease will vanish from your life and the miracle of who you really are will be revealed.
Do you have the courage to reveal yourself today?"
- Mastin Kipp
"Project positivity, be aware of negativity and reside in the neutrality of a calm mind."
- Mastin Kipp
"What if you didn’t really need another book or blog, what if what you needed was to act?"
______________
"If you let it – your negative mind can run you. And, what’s worse – your negative mind can link up with all the other negative minds out there and use them as proof that it’s right.
The negative mind has a purpose – to keep us safe. But, we can spend so much time dwelling on what’s wrong and what’s negative – that we forget all else.
To much safety is bad for the spirit.
All the thoughts of “I’m not good enough” and “I’m wrong or bad” or “this will never work out“ can overrun us.
Especially when we take risks with things that mean the most to us.
When we get vulnerable and put ourselves out there, boy oh boy, can the negative voices rise up.
It’s almost as if they tend to scream the loudest when you have the most on the line. The more vulnerable, the louder the inner critic and negative voice.
It’s there to keep us alive, but what’s living without being yourself out loud?
One of the hardest things for me to do is to really put myself out there, give something my all and put my whole heart into it and all the while I have these negative voices saying what they say.
And then when I put it out there, even if there is lots of amazing positive response, my negative mind latches onto the negative stuff of some of the few others – and then it screams “See, I told you so!”
But – that is not how we step into greatness. That is not how we make our lives mean something. That is now how we build a life of meaning and service.
I’ve learned it’s about honoring the negative voice and heeding it when you are in mortal danger – but otherwise thanking it and moving along.
Every time I’ve taken a big risk – those negative voices rear their head – but now I just thank them for sharing and move along. And when other people voice to me what my own negative mind says to me, instead of using it as a reason to prove my negativity right, I see it as an opportunity to believe in myself and my mission even more.
It’s hard. But it’s a lesson worth learning.
So – where in your life have you let the voices of your own negativity and the negativity of the outside world become your actions and beliefs about yourself?
And how are you going to turn it around now?"
_____________________
"In movies and dramas – our heroes and heroines have giant epiphany moments when they realize life is slipping away from them.
There is some major announcement, some obvious thing that let our characters know they are making a big mistake – but that’s not how it works off screen.
Most of the time we just slide into a complacent life. And then wake up one day wondering, “How did I get here?”
And that’s a day that creeps up on us – and usually by the time it hits us, we’ve wasted so much time, we can’t begin to understand where it all went.
Dreams don’t die upon an announcement – they slide into death, one subtle moment, choice, and day at a time.
There’s no big wake up call, just a slow dimming of our internal passion, enthusiasm, and joy. We sell our dreams for certainty. We are terrified of our freedom. We let the fear of dying stop us from fully living.
And when it goes unexamined – we can blame others, the environment, the government, our friends, family or even our favorite food.
We didn’t notice that each day, we had given our dreams permission to drift away. That each step towards the boring comfort that we took, we leaped away from the thrill of seeing what we’re really made of.
Why does this happen? Because we got hurt, things didn’t work out the way that we wanted them too, or we just don’t think it’s possible. And then we lower our standards so that we don’t get our hopes up.
And somewhere inside all of this is a small whisper that is dying to be born. A part of us that knows we were meant for greatness. Not to be a celebrity or to be admired, but greatness in the form of changing the world, making it a better place, adding value, helping others – really making a positive mark.
But, it’s scary. It’s not easy. It’s too risky.
So, we let our dreams die a little bit each day.
Then – if we are lucky, we get a wake up call. But it’s too subtle. We don’t listen. And then a louder one, and a louder one, and a louder one, until finally it’s like the Uni-verse is screaming at us to wake up – but we don’t pay attention, we just complain that life isn’t fair or that life sucks – all the while missing the wake up call.
Dreams don’t have to die. But your fear of death must be challenged.
Dreams are earned through consistent effort.
Dreams are earned through becoming the person it takes to make them real.
Dreams are earned when new standards are setup.
Dreams are earned when you get ok with disappointment and use it as fuel to make life better, instead of giving up like an amateur.
Dreams are earned when you go all in and act on your faith.
The Uni-verse will support you in making your dreams come true, that’s why it made you.
Are you supporting yourself?"
- Mastin Kipp
- Marianne Williamson
"You cannot get sick enough to help sick people get better. You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive. It is only in your thriving that you have anything to offer anyone. If you're wanting to be of an advantage to others, be as tapped in, turned in, turned on as you can possibly be."
- Esther Abraham-Hicks
"Abundance is something that many of us do not have a proper perspective on. We are on The Path; we desire abundance, yet it eludes us. Many of you have heard that money is the root of all evil.
The actual translation from the original text is, “The worship of money is the root of all evil.”
That’s a big difference.
Money is just energy in physical form. Energy is what all of creation is made of. To hate money is to hate energy and to hate energy is to hate existence.
We just need to get our priorities straight. Money is not a cause; money is an effect. The cause of money in a spiritual life is The Uni-verse.
A MAJOR shift happens when we take our eyes off of the current situation of “limited finances” and focus on the abundance of the Source. I know that in this moment that doesn’t pay your bills.
But, over time, if you keep it up, your life will change.
I went from a guy with a dream to inspire people with NO idea of how or what to do and just took direction from The Uni-verse, one day at a time. Plus, I don’t do what I do for the money. Sure, I like making a living, but I have and would do what I do for free. I did TDL for almost 4 years EVERYDAY before making a dime from it. Now, thankfully, it sustains me and I am beyond grateful. But that wasn’t always the case.
But what I can tell you is that from the beginning of this journey I have placed all my problems, desires and needs at the feet of The Uni-verse and turned it all over.
It was scary as hell, but I never went without. I had to make some very gnarly sacrifices, like living in an 8x8 room for a year that was only big enough for my bed (lol). But, I had belief and passion and most importantly – TRUST.
I believed and trusted that no problem or bill was too big for The Uni-verse. I also followed my own intuition above what ANYONE else told me. I also still hold the belief that the nature of The Uni-verse is abundance and so that is my natural birthright, I just have to allow it.
Money is not evil, but loving money more than you love The Uni-verse and yourself sets you up for an insane ride. Money comes and goes like the tide, but you will always have you and the Love of the Uni-verse.
When we take our love off of money and place it where it should be, we begin to thrive in ways we never knew possible. It may be scary at first, but over time this will and does work.
The Path is a leap of faith. We must have faith that as we are walking our Path that even our bills will be taken care of, sometimes through effort and hard work and sometimes through Grace.
Let us take our self-worth and feelings of security off of something that always changes (how much money we have at the moment in cash or in stock) and put our faith in something that never changes, the Love of the Living Uni-verse that we came from and live within.
Money is a tool. Money is energy in physical form. The highest form of energy in The Uni-verse is Love; put your faith and eyes towards that, take actions towards that, and money will follow in perfect time.
Your job is to trust and make the first move. I’m excited to be living a kind of life that defies the “economy” and “the markets”. I’ve put in my time and my faith - do you want to join me? It’s fun over here."
- Mastin Kipp
You May Ask Yourself,
Well, How Did I Get Here?
"So there's this married guy on this secluded beach. And there's this attractive, young woman--not his wife--sitting behind him on a blanket rubbing coconut scented suntan oil into his back. He's talking to her about how much he loves his wife and how great their two young children are. She's talking to him about how much she loves living in the islands and what fun it is to meet traveling businessmen.
Being a gentleman, the married guy walks the attractive young woman back to her apartment. As the sun sets over the rhythmically swaying palm trees, the married guy turns to face the woman with whom he has been spending every minute that he hasn't been in meetings for the past three days of his trip. He has a decision to make: He has to decide whether or not to accept her invitation to come inside her apartment for a drink. Then he will have to decide whether or not to kiss the attractive young woman.
What should he do? Should he accept her invitation to come inside her apartment for a drink? Should the married guy kiss the attractive young woman?
As a happily married father of four, I'm rooting for no. I'm hoping for the following scenario: the married guy turns around, maybe runs into the ocean to cool off, then returns alone to his hotel room. I'm into commitment. Infidelity seldom leads anywhere good. Indiscretions--such a gentle word--harm more marriages than they help.
But first let's back up. Our married guy didn't appear "ad ovo" on the door of the attractive young woman's apartment like Minerva born fully grown out of the brain of Zeus. Nor did Scotty beam down the attractive young woman from the USS Enterprise. They both came from somewhere. Ignoring the singularity of the Big Bang where-to my knowledge there were no beaches and less coconut scented suntan oil-every moment has a moment before it.
This affair started with a glance and a nod followed by a casual conversation subsequent to an invitation to lunch then a suggestion of a walk on the beach. From the blanket and the sunset, it wasn't a long way geographically or metaphorically to the doorway of the apartment.
So this issue is not what the married guy should do now, but--if you'll forgive the twisted grammar--what he should not have done before.
Contrast the married guy on the beach with my recently married friend, Mary who, on the first day of graduate school responds to a conversation from a classmate as they wait for the professor to arrive. It turns out that she and the classmate have a lot in common, shared program, shared research interests, a thousand things to talk about. Mary and her fellow graduate student feel a connection, a feeling similar to what Mary feels for her husband. So what does Mary do for the next class?
She sits across the room and doesn't respond to her pleasant classmate's subsequent attempts to engage her in conversation.
I'm not arguing that Mary is morally superior to the married guy.
I am arguing that she's smarter.
Because she doesn't have to make a difficult decision about whether or not to commit marital infidelity.
Because it is so much easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of trouble.
Envision a snarky teenager-for many of my gracious readers, little imagination will be required-who interrupts the natural flow of discourse in her home to demand breakfast in a loud, grouchy voice. What is to be done? How should the child be addressed? Should she be denied breakfast? Should she be taken aside and reprimanded? Should her mother scream back that at 15 years of age, any competent person should be capable of preparing her own breakfast and besides, they are going to be late for school? Again.
Or is this horse out of the proverbial barn? Has something gone desperately wrong along the way?
Like smoking cigarettes, the best way to stop is not to start. This child should never have been allowed to become demanding and rude.
Or the man who, having jumped off the roof of a 30 story building, whizzes past the 20th floor exulting, "So far, so good!" (In this story, the sidewalk is what is sometimes termed "the natural consequence.")
The time to dig a well is before you get thirsty. The time to decide what kind of home you want to live in is long before the kids are in their teens. The time to decide whether or not the married guy should kiss that attractive girl is long before they are alone on her doorstep."
- David Altshuler
"We are funny creatures sometimes; we’re afraid to live and afraid to die. So many times we find ourselves stuck in the middle with no way out. If we decide to live and follow our intuition, we get so wrapped up in what “COULD” happen and all the fears associated with taking risks, we become afraid.
On some subconscious level we think that by living we will die.
In our fear-based thoughts, risk equals death. At the root of not moving forward, a lot of my clients admit they think they will just spontaneously combust if they take too many risks - like The Uni-verse will destroy them if they take too many risks.
So in this way it is the fear of death that prevents us from living. And when we stop living we invite a certain kind of death into our experience.
Being afraid to live and afraid to die is a wonderful trick: fear-based ego thinking keeps us in our comfort zone.
There is an evolutionary reason for this. Fear helps us survive.
But today we are about more than just surviving - we are about thriving. Thriving means more than just existing. It means living at our own unique Highest Potential, which requires us to take a step outside of our comfort zone daily.
We are grateful for fear, but allow ourselves to make a choice from a higher place, from a place of trust. The ironic thing is that once we die to our fears, we can live.
So living does require that we die, that we die to our fears, our doubts and our old ways of thinking. We must let our fears die and be reborn of the spirit. We must take that first scary step out with trust that we will either know how to fly or that we will be caught.
The irony is that by playing it safe we are actually slowly dying day by day, and by risking death, we are actually taking a step towards life. I live my life everyday conscious of the question, “When you get to the end of your life, will you die wondering ‘what if?’” If the answer is yes, then I always do the thing I’m afraid of doing. I am also conscious of the fact that I may be blessed to live to be 100 or more, but I may also not make it through the day. So I also try my best to live in a way that doesn’t delay the things I want to do. If there is a risk to take, I want to take it now. I don’t take blind risks. I take calculated risks, I think things through, but at the end of the day the risks I still take are scary as hell.
Let us step into the knowing that is it by dying to our fears that we live. Let us take action on this and realize the only way to die to our fears is to face them. Let us face them with the solid faith that The Uni-verse has got our back.
It’s kind of fun to live life not knowing what’s going to happen next. What fears can you die to today?"
- Mastin Kipp
“Do I abandon myself to keep someone or do I risk losing someone if I choose to keep myself?”
This is an interesting question, indeed.
So many people have created relationships from a place that lacks personal integrity and self-esteem. The major issue isn’t that they aren’t with the right person, that is a secondary issue all together. The main issue is that from the beginning of their relationship they abandoned themselves or made themselves small in order to get something that they thought they were lacking.
And what does this kind of relationship usually manifest? Lack - a lack of love and self-love.
Many times a betrayal in a relationship first starts months or years before another person “betrays” us. When we betray ourselves and our own intuition, we set off down a path that will eventually manifest our own betrayal to ourselves.
So, if you are abandoning yourself to keep someone, why?
If you aren’t willing to risk losing someone to keep yourself, why?"
- Mastin Kipp
"Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering.
There's a hole in everything,
That's how the light comes through."
- Leonard Cohen
"....they think that for them to be able to be worthy of love, they have to be successful, beautiful and achieve something.
Basically, they are outsourcing their self-worth and ability to love themselves and be loved by others to outer circumstances and form. They also become attracted to a man’s success, rather than his heart. So, what’s running deep down in the subconscious mind is success and power = love.
Again, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to be successful or to have power or influence in the world. On some level we all want and desire that. But where we get tripped up is when our self-value and ability to love is tied to these things. Love and outward success and achievement are two different things.
So I have some questions for you. Do you feel loved when you are successful? Or are you successful because you already are worthy of love, right now? Do you need outer circumstances to define your self-worth? Or does your self-worth now help you create and mold the outer circumstances you desire? Do you feel like the only way you will be worthy of love is by becoming successful in the world? Or do you believe that you are loveable right now, flaws, mistakes and not having achieved the “ultimate” success you desire?
See, when we feel like we get love from being successful, we set ourselves up for a lot of pain. If we flip it around and instead feel successful BECAUSE we are loving and already whole – a completely different world starts to emerge.
The type of person we are attracted to starts to change. Relationships are no longer power struggles, but instead growing opportunities. We no longer seek to take from other people what we secretly feel we lack within ourselves.
Since our life circumstances, bank account size, success level and all the other things of the outer world are changing, when we define ourselves and our ability to be loved by what we have “out there”, we forget what’s important and never changing – Love. Love is what powers The Uni-verse and it’s what we’re born with – we just forgot.
So if you want to take your power back, if you want to make the ULTIMATE power move in your life, don’t define your self-worth or your ability to feel worthy of love by outside circumstances or success. Get rooted in the true wholeness of who you really are in this moment and then manifest from that place.
When you remember and feel that you are already whole, you bring about a completely different kind of life. You line up with what The Uni-verse already knows about you and no longer cling from a place of lack. The power struggles in relationships fade and you welcome a brand new reality, one of already being that which you thought you were lacking. And when you know and are in alignment with this Truth, that you lack nothing – all things become possible.
What would you say if you were already whole?"
- Mastin Kipp
"....Fear and the ego are funny things. They like to keep us pining for Love when we don't seem to have it, and then afraid when we seem to have it. It's a zero sum game. We can't win. We either feel empty because we don't feel like we have Love or we feel terrified because we feel like we are at risk of losing Love.
So, what is the solution? To remember, time and time again, that other people are not the source of our Love. The Uni-verse fills us from within. We fill ourselves by loving ourselves. We fill ourselves by taking care of ourselves. We fill ourselves by choosing to surround ourselves with loving people and keeping high standards around who we give the privilege of our time to. We also fill ourselves by getting our eyes off of ourselves and being of service to others. We reach out a helping hand to those in need with no expectation of return. We fill ourselves by doing yoga, through meditation and through eating a healthy and alkaline diet.
A relationship does not guarantee happiness and being single doesn't mean you're miserable. To find happiness either being single or being with someone, we must remember that we are imperfect people. And anyone we choose as our partner is also imperfect. When we let go of the illusion that we need to be perfect before we are worthy of being in a relationship and also let go of the illusion that whoever we are in relationship is perfect, we take a step towards happiness.
We begin to realize that relationships are opportunities for us to not only have a partner, but to grow Spiritually. It's a container built for us to face our fears, to let down our guard and to realize our own imperfection, and as a result, cultivate humility. Relationships also teach us about our own self-loathing. And when we can come face to face with our self-loathing, we have the opportunity through our awareness and self-love to recognize it, learn from it and then let it go. By doing this we grow closer to Love, both self-love and Love between ourselves and our partner.
So, knowing this, do you have the courage to let Love in?"
- Mastin Kipp
Five Laws for Our Times:
1. Recognize that the other person is you.
2. There is a way through every block.
3. When the time is on you, start, and the pressure will be off.
4. Understand through compassion or you will misunderstand the times.
5. Vibrate the Cosmos, the Cosmos shall clear the Path.
- Yogi Bhajan
"We have two choices: the pain of staying the same, or the pain of growth. If we stay the same, we will have subtle pain our whole lives until we die wondering "what if?" Or we can choose the pain of growth, which can be intense, but it is temporary. On the other side is the goal, result and life we desire."
- Mastin Kipp
"....So today, I would like to invite us to practice radical self-love. Love your love handles, love your tallness, love your shortness, love your flaws, love your imperfections, love your quirks, love your grey hair, love your no hair, love your pimples, love your creases, love your everything.
....You are worthy of this kind of love, from yourself and from others.
It’s scary to let ourselves be loved this way because we have to let go of the limiting beliefs that have been holding us back. We have to step into a new awareness of ourselves and face the pain of growth.
It’s worth it.
Radically loving ourselves means accepting only the best and leaving behind the rest. Not because we are selfish or judgmental, but because we have become discerning enough to know what and who is good for us and what and who isn’t.
So, if you were going to radically love yourself today, who would you let go of, who would you invite in, what would you start saying to yourself and what would you start saying to others?"
- Mastin Kipp
"....I’ve come to believe that it is our response to the uncertainty of life that greatly determines the outcome of our lives.
When you get uncertain – do you run or do you press on? Do you run to alcohol, drugs, sugar, sex or food? Or do you drop down on your yoga mat or meditation pillow and do some inner work?
Are you afraid of the storms and the bugs of your life (because we all have them) – or do you welcome them all as teachers?
I’m not afraid of bugs or storms; my uncertainty trigger is not having enough money to get by. When that gets triggered for me, it’s very hard to see it as a lesson, because I’m fearful that my survival will be challenged.
But, I drop down, go within and surrender to my higher power, all my fears, all my doubts and all my worries. And then I begin to take action. Action towards my dreams, action towards serving others and action towards fixing the problem...."
- Mastin Kipp
"Ask how you'd live your life differently if you knew you were going to die soon, then ask yourself who those people you admire are and why you admire them, and then ask yourself what was the most fun time in your life. The answers to these questions, when seen, heard, and felt, provide us with an open doorway into our mission, our destiny, our purpose."
- Thom Hartmann
"....When we choose to only love someone when they meet our expectations, we are letting our ego run the show. We have no idea what The Uni-verse is calling this person to do or become.
If we simply put them in the box of our expectations, we are limiting their growth and closing down intimacy in our relationship with this person. A person doesn't feel loved if they are constantly being judged and weighed and measured.
We are not here to judge and value the people in our lives, we are here to be a loving mirror, to show up and to support them in their growth and journey. A person feels loved when they are seen and understood for who they are RIGHT NOW. Sure, we all have growth points, but that's not the point.
The point is, when we talk about creating rich, fulfilling and loving relationships, when expectations and judgments creep in, we have gone down the path of the ego.
Let us release our expectations of others and let us release the expectations on ourselves. Let us love ourselves and the people in our lives right where we are.
We are growing daily; let us love the process instead of trying to only love a specific outcome that may or may not be for our greatest good."
- Mastin Kipp
"....Do not make success or failure the criteria by which you live..."
- Neil Simon
"Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude."
- William James
"The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let it spring from love. Born out of concern for all beings."
- Buddha
"....The answer is simple, but not easy: be radically yourself.....
The bottom line: don't close down, shut off or tone yourself down because you think the other person will reject you. If they aren't attracted to who you really are, then good, time saved and you can move on. Lingering in a false identity to get the approval of someone else is the ultimate betrayal of your personal integrity.....
The answer is simple, but not easy: be radically yourself.
Be you out loud today. I dare you....."
- Mastin Kipp
"Giving People Space to Experience Life on Their Own and Expressing Who You Are and What You Do vs. What You Say"
"It's great to [share moments with your family and friends]. It's even better if we can keep quiet and let them enjoy and interpret the experience on their own.....[Our friends and families'] encounter [with life] will resonate more soundly for [them] if it isn't processed first by [us]....[People] will learn from what you are and from what you do more than from what you say.....[we are] not being helpful by communicating [our] extreme anxiety....Your job as a [friend] is to encourage [others] to be who they are, not who you want them to be. A good way to help accomplish these goals is to allow [them] to feel their feelings [and to give them the space to do this].
- Excerpted from David Altshuler
"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age."
- Sophia Loren
"Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
"Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future."
- Johann von Goethe
"Love is letting go.
Period.
It’s the Energy of Love that binds The Uni-verse together. Love is what breathes life into us and gives all living things this chance to be alive.
One of the most Loving things that we’ve been given from our Creator is the gift of choice. Choice is a fundamental part of life. Free will is one of our Creator’s greatest gifts to us.
Free will boils down to this: you can choose to connect to Love, or not.
Since we’ve been given the privilege to choose for ourselves, that means if you Love someone, you must give him or her that privilege. Trying to force or manipulate Love never works – it’ll only backfire.
If you say you Love someone because of what they can give you, that’s not Love, that’s selfishness. When you Love someone, it’s always from a place of overflow rather than lack.
Respecting someone’s free will can be both devastating AND truly rewarding.
When you let people go to decide for themselves, they may choose things that don’t match up with your desires. There have been many times in my own life where this has happened, both in business and in my personal life.
But every time this shattering of illusion has happened, it’s brought me closer to the Truth. AND it’s brought me closer to Love.
At the same time, when you let go and honor someone’s free will there is also the possibility that they will choose you; and when that happens you have begun to plant very strong roots for a relationship.
Love is letting go because no one feels Loved when they are controlled or manipulated. No one really feels Loved when they can sense that someone is trying to take from them instead of give.
There is a difference between taking and receiving. It’s sooooo important to be able to receive Love. But to try to drain others of their Love isn’t Loving – it’s being an emotional vampire.
All this can be flipped and applies to YOU, too. You deserve to be with someone who Loves you right where you are. You deserve someone who is so connected to Love that they have the confidence to let you choose for yourself. You deserve to be in relationships where people are sharing from overflow rather than trying to be emotional vampires.
Choose to hang with people who give you the respect to let you decide. And at the same time give those you Love this same respect.
Remember, you are always provided for. The Uni-verse and The Energy of Love are always with you. Ask to feel Love’s presence and you will be filled – not by someone else, but by The Uni-verse.
Tell yourself, “Love is letting go. I am ok. Love is letting go. I am full as I am. Love is letting go. The perfect Love will find me. Love is letting go, so I let go and let Love decide.”
- Mastin Kipp
"All is well. You did not come here to fix a broken world. The world is not broken. You came here to live a wonderful life. And if you can learn to relax a little and let it all in, you will begin to see the universe present you with all that you have asked for."
- Esther Hicks
"The thought that "something is wrong with me" can be one of the biggest roadblocks to success that I know of.
I'm not talking about the kind of "something is wrong with me" in the being sick and needing to go to the doctor kind of way; in this case, there is an imbalance in your system and it must be corrected.
I'm talking about in the "I need to be fixed to be successful and happy" kind of way.
I believe that the thought "I need to be fixed" is one of the only things you need corrected in order to be happy and successful.
If it were true that you did not need to be fixed- that as you are, you are enough, that you have everything you need, right now, then everything in your life would change.
The chase would stop. The need to "fix" yourself would stop. The need for outward approval would cease.
Instead of needing to be fixed, from a place of wholeness, you would simply see that your only real need is for who you really are to be revealed.
If you could switch this one thought, this one perception, from the need to "be fixed" to the desire to "be revealed," it would make living your life at your Highest Potential much more achievable.
Instead of thinking you need to "fix" the part of yourself that is addicted, take the stance that the healthy and vibrant part of your true nature needs to be revealed.
Instead of thinking that you aren't enough or aren't lovable, see that all you have to do is reveal your enough-ness and loveable nature by trusting The Uni-verse and knowing that you can handle whatever it throws your way. Instead of playing the broken victim, step into being a powerful co-creator of your life.
Who you really are is a Spiritual being living in human form. The energy of your Soul has called forth and asked for a body to inhabit to experience life in human form. That deeper part of you that is not flesh and bone, who you are on a Soul level, is perfect, HUGE and a child of The Uni-verse.
You don't need to be fixed my friend; all you need is for the Love and Presence of your Soul to be revealed in your life.
When this revelation happens, all types of lack and dis-ease will vanish from your life and the miracle of who you really are will be revealed.
Do you have the courage to reveal yourself today?"
- Mastin Kipp
"Project positivity, be aware of negativity and reside in the neutrality of a calm mind."
- Mastin Kipp
"What if you didn’t really need another book or blog, what if what you needed was to act?"
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"If you let it – your negative mind can run you. And, what’s worse – your negative mind can link up with all the other negative minds out there and use them as proof that it’s right.
The negative mind has a purpose – to keep us safe. But, we can spend so much time dwelling on what’s wrong and what’s negative – that we forget all else.
To much safety is bad for the spirit.
All the thoughts of “I’m not good enough” and “I’m wrong or bad” or “this will never work out“ can overrun us.
Especially when we take risks with things that mean the most to us.
When we get vulnerable and put ourselves out there, boy oh boy, can the negative voices rise up.
It’s almost as if they tend to scream the loudest when you have the most on the line. The more vulnerable, the louder the inner critic and negative voice.
It’s there to keep us alive, but what’s living without being yourself out loud?
One of the hardest things for me to do is to really put myself out there, give something my all and put my whole heart into it and all the while I have these negative voices saying what they say.
And then when I put it out there, even if there is lots of amazing positive response, my negative mind latches onto the negative stuff of some of the few others – and then it screams “See, I told you so!”
But – that is not how we step into greatness. That is not how we make our lives mean something. That is now how we build a life of meaning and service.
I’ve learned it’s about honoring the negative voice and heeding it when you are in mortal danger – but otherwise thanking it and moving along.
Every time I’ve taken a big risk – those negative voices rear their head – but now I just thank them for sharing and move along. And when other people voice to me what my own negative mind says to me, instead of using it as a reason to prove my negativity right, I see it as an opportunity to believe in myself and my mission even more.
It’s hard. But it’s a lesson worth learning.
So – where in your life have you let the voices of your own negativity and the negativity of the outside world become your actions and beliefs about yourself?
And how are you going to turn it around now?"
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"In movies and dramas – our heroes and heroines have giant epiphany moments when they realize life is slipping away from them.
There is some major announcement, some obvious thing that let our characters know they are making a big mistake – but that’s not how it works off screen.
Most of the time we just slide into a complacent life. And then wake up one day wondering, “How did I get here?”
And that’s a day that creeps up on us – and usually by the time it hits us, we’ve wasted so much time, we can’t begin to understand where it all went.
Dreams don’t die upon an announcement – they slide into death, one subtle moment, choice, and day at a time.
There’s no big wake up call, just a slow dimming of our internal passion, enthusiasm, and joy. We sell our dreams for certainty. We are terrified of our freedom. We let the fear of dying stop us from fully living.
And when it goes unexamined – we can blame others, the environment, the government, our friends, family or even our favorite food.
We didn’t notice that each day, we had given our dreams permission to drift away. That each step towards the boring comfort that we took, we leaped away from the thrill of seeing what we’re really made of.
Why does this happen? Because we got hurt, things didn’t work out the way that we wanted them too, or we just don’t think it’s possible. And then we lower our standards so that we don’t get our hopes up.
And somewhere inside all of this is a small whisper that is dying to be born. A part of us that knows we were meant for greatness. Not to be a celebrity or to be admired, but greatness in the form of changing the world, making it a better place, adding value, helping others – really making a positive mark.
But, it’s scary. It’s not easy. It’s too risky.
So, we let our dreams die a little bit each day.
Then – if we are lucky, we get a wake up call. But it’s too subtle. We don’t listen. And then a louder one, and a louder one, and a louder one, until finally it’s like the Uni-verse is screaming at us to wake up – but we don’t pay attention, we just complain that life isn’t fair or that life sucks – all the while missing the wake up call.
Dreams don’t have to die. But your fear of death must be challenged.
Dreams are earned through consistent effort.
Dreams are earned through becoming the person it takes to make them real.
Dreams are earned when new standards are setup.
Dreams are earned when you get ok with disappointment and use it as fuel to make life better, instead of giving up like an amateur.
Dreams are earned when you go all in and act on your faith.
The Uni-verse will support you in making your dreams come true, that’s why it made you.
Are you supporting yourself?"
- Mastin Kipp
