Sunday Story…The Man in the Mirror

Wants to make a change, has to start with himself.

I have been obsessed with the evolution of the soul. Mine. And yours. This is a big project. Evolving in such a way that all the hurts and suffering of this human existence can be the entrance ticket to something bigger next time. But that evolution is such a huge step and such a big project, maybe we should tackle something a little less daunting…

Have you ever had someone say something to you that wasn’t very nice and you kept hearing those words all day? Even if the person was not even connected to you? Or maybe something happened that wasn’t very nice and you have played the incident for days in your mind? All the things you could have/ should have said in response that would be the perfect words to shut the jerk down. Why do you let this happen to you? I mean you know better intellectually. In your conscious mind you know that the person who said what they said was just being a jerk. And you really don’t look like a man/woman. Or you really aren’t death warmed over. Or your hair isn’t _____ (fill in the blank). So if you know all this why or how can any of these little barbs, these poisonous little darts, hurt you?

They penetrate because you let them. Because somewhere in your self talk you have said the same thing to yourself. Maybe you didn’t look in the mirror and say it but in the back of your mind you have allowed yourself t o talk like that. You have said mean and nasty things to yourself. You got up this morning and said “I’m tired. I hate Mondays. My job sucks. My life sucks. I suck.” Guess what? All those things are true --- after all you said them didn’t you? Then when some stranger walks up and says something rude about the outfit you are wearing…well that is just a validation about how you are already feeling about yourself. After all, now someone you don’t even know can see that you suck. Now it really is true. There is no where good for this to go. It is just going to spiral downward until it crashes and burns like a fouled parachute spinning faster and faster until splat!! The spinning stops.

So you started it with your poisonous little barbs directed at yourself. You took your self image and your self esteem and used them like a pin cushion or a voodoo doll just poking and putting those sharp little digs right where they count. And you are really good at it too. If you think your parents or siblings know how to push your buttons, well they have nothing on you. You really know how to tear yourself down don’t you? And you have had lots of practice too.

Every week I sit down to write this story. I often don’t know what I am going to write until the words start pouring out of my heart and my fingers onto the screen. This would not be possible if I sat down and said “No one wants to read this stuff. I have nothing to say. I can’t do this again. It’s too hard.” No, I don’t say any of that. I know there are people out there who read this story. Maybe even people who look forward to reading it. Grab a cup of coffee on Sunday morning and read the Sunday Story. But even if there weren’t people waiting I would still be writing it. Because I need to say what I have to say.

You need to change your self talk. Building a strong self image is simple really. You have to start with the things you say to yourself. What the man in the mirror says is more important than what anyone else can say to you. Do you get up and say it’s going to be a great day? There are people who live in great places with great lives who are miserable. And there are people who live in the most miserable places and conditions imaginable who are happy. How is this possible? Are some people just wired for happiness? And other are wired to be lonely miserable and unhappy? It seems that way sometime. The fact of the matter is that you decide how you are going to react to what happens to you.

Life is not what happens to you. What happens is what happens…you may not have a lot of control over that part of the equation. Life is what you do with what happens to you. Life is what you decide to make of it. You are beautiful. You are wonderful. You are super good and getting better. You really are. And you need to tell yourself that every day. This sort of self talk is a habit. Getting up in the morning and deciding it is a great day is a habit. Remember the make your bed thing? The thing where I say you should make your bed every day? Here is a little secret (double top secret here!)…when my bed is made, I feel better about myself. I did something, I created a little order in my space today and that feels really good. So after you are done stop for a second and appreciate the small slice of beauty and joy you have created. This is a habit…the stopping and appreciating part. Every day, if you are mindful, there are parts of the day where everything is just right…and if you can take that split second to appreciate it then your life will begin to change. You will look at the man in the mirror and smile and guess what…

He will smile right back at you.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Hotel California

Sunday Story…Hotel California


You can check out but you will never leave...

Ever wonder about why you are where you are?? I mean why are you living where you are living right now? Maybe you grew up here. Maybe your parents decided you should live here. Maybe your car broke down here and you never left. Maybe you came here to die. Maybe you came here to heal. Or maybe you are hiding out. I am not sure it matters why you are here…unless it is part of your master plan for your life. Maybe this is the paradise you have always dreamed of when you retire. Maybe you really like the climate and the people here. Who knows….you are here now.

Unless this is part of your master plan the next question is why are you staying? Are you still healing? What is it going to take to “get better”? How will you know when you get there? Is your car fixed yet? Your children grown? Maybe you are grown? Not dead yet? Maybe the heat is off and you can stop hiding out and go back into the world? Are you looking at any of that? Do you care? Or are you stuck?

Let’s make a plan to get unstuck…to get out of here…to get moving again. Silly you …did you think I was talking geography? Where you are in the world is relatively unimportant. It might not be you ideal place. It might be an uncomfortable place. The fact is …we live in one of the most mobile societies in history. If you really wanted to you could pack up and move almost anywhere in the world in a pretty short period of time. I read about a guy and his wife and their 14 month old baby who are backpacking around the world. I know of people who have left this country for another and another. It isn’t impossible and it’s really not all that hard. And if we are talking just a few hundred miles or so, it really isn’t that big a deal.

No, what I am talking about is changing the geography of your mind, the position of your attitude, or your spiritual landscape. This process may be a little more daunting. This is going to take effort. This is going to make you uncomfortable. You are going to have to practice some radical honesty and radical responsibility with yourself. You will need to look under some big and small rocks and uncover some dark little secret slimy things before you can move on.


You see we get comfortable with those nasty little creatures hiding under those rocks. In many ways they are reassuring and cozy. If we move we might have to take them with us, leave them behind or stamp them out. Any of these choices is harder than doing nothing. Maintaining the status quo is your way of staying stuck.

Step one is actually pretty easy…decide to start moving. Decide to start the process. Notice I did not say to start the process, but rather decide to start the process.
Step two is relatively easy…start some research into what the process might have to look like. Don’t DO anything. Just some reading and talking about what the process might look like if you wanted to shift or transform some of your stuck elements.
After you have decided to start moving and you have done a little research into what the moving process is going to look like you are ready to begin in earnest.

Step 3 Pick a date to jump off the cliff.

Step 4 Jump.

See…simple. Not easy, simple.

This is the process for so many things…decide to make a change, figure out what it is going to take to make that change, and get started. In this case the process for making the shift that will have you living the life you always wanted…one of abundance and strength, a life full of purpose and meaning, and a life that has you getting up in the morning with your hair on fire.

The gap between where we are and where we want to be is the one that needs to get filled. This is our route. This is the path we will be taking to get where it is we really want to be. There are many roads here. I am not here to tell you the one right true way to getting what you really want. It is going to require you to look hard at what you are doing. Jettison those things that will not serve you on your journey. Things like watching TV for hours every day. Things like eating unnatural foods and drinks. Things like not exercising. Many of these things will be difficult. You will want to turn back, like Columbus’ men on the way to the new world. Stay the course you set. Make the adjustments for the unknowns on the route but keep your eyes on the life you want to lead. Keep all eyes on the prize.

You can never leave but let’s get checked back in and get to work shall we?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story…In My Room

Everything is perfect. It is all exactly as it should be in my room. My room is light and bright populated with friends and lovers. My room is a sunny happy room that serves me exactly what I need when I need it. Except when it is not. Then my room is a dark and ugly little place, full of shadows and nasty, naughty little creatures that bite and sting in ways and places hard to mention. Then my room is a scary room steaming and teeming with all sorts of interesting pitfalls and traps for the unsuspecting traveler.

I live in my room. Just as you live in your room. We don’t have any choice. The room we create is where we live. I live in my head. Absent any outside influences the thoughts in my head create my reality. What would happen to you if I put you n a room with no windows, no color, and no furniture. Just 4 blank walls, no noise, and no other input other than the noise you can create in your head. Would you go stark raving mad? What would your mind create? What kind of world would you be living in?

Guess what? All the distractions around you are just things designed to keep you from discovering the world you have created. If you were to live in the mythical room with no input you would create an entire landscape in your mind. A whole new world to entertain you. It might be a dream, or it might be a nightmare. Could be heaven, could be hell, could be a little bit of both. I don’t know what you will create. I know you will create something. Humans are designed to do this. We are designed to create. And the first thing we create is a reality from our thoughts.

So what kind of reality have you created so far? What kind of world are you making up? The landscape of your room is your doing, your conception of what reality should look like based on your experiences so far. This is why small children invent the most wonderful magical worlds---they have no perception that those things are not possible. As we grow up and grow older we start shutting out and down the possible outcomes we might be able to create. Why? Why would you limit the walls of your room? Don’t you want a wonderful magical room to live in?

Your world looks the way it looks because you created it to look like this. We all have this consensual reality we are living in. What about the parts of the world we have all agreed not to see? The parts of the world that are running under the surface just waiting for you to bring it forward. Can you see the energetic signature we all walk around with? You know the one…you have seen it, felt it…especially after a particularly angry or confrontational exchange. You walk in the room and you can cut the energy with a knife. This dimension is there waiting for you to see it and explore it. Space is not the final frontier. The final frontier is the dimensions here on this world we are ignoring.

So here I am living in my head. Creating a reality that exists for me. Great love affairs. Heart aches and heart breaks. All designed by me, for me, created for the one purpose of making my reality the one of my choosing. In the blink of an eye I can create everlasting happiness quickly followed by a drama of soap opera proportions. Like picking the petals from a daisy…she loves me, she loves me not, she loves… And each petal carries the complete story…a soaring tale of love and transcendent happiness or a story of crushing soul wrenching devastation. Either. Both. Your room. Your mind. Your reality.

Can you take control of this process? How are you going to force your thoughts down any particular rabbit hole? Practice. Focus. Where your attention goes, your world grows. Focus on pain and unhappiness, discord and disease and guess what your world will look like? Here in our culture we have “the war on Poverty, Cancer, Diabetes, etc, etc, etc”. Our attention is on the conflict, the battle, the winners and the losers. The creation of this tension guarantees the continued existence of these things. They won’t go away as long as we are concentrating on the battle. In Aikido the practitioner is considered undefeatable because if you attack him you are attacking the universe and you can never defeat the universe. I am the universe when I stand as one, completely at peace and in harmony with the energy that flows around us all. When I sow peace, love, happiness, and laughter I reap the fruits of those things.

As we grow up we start limiting our world. We make it smaller and smaller. When we are little we our world is huge. When we are big our world gets little. What if you consciously created a bigger and bigger world? One populated by as many different people and places as you could ever imagine. And some you can’t. And a place where you want to spend lots of time. A not scary place, a not dark ugly little room.

So…How ARE things in your room?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story…Every time We Say Good Bye
I die just a little.

Our modern culture is littered with images like this…when the ONE walks into your world it is shattered and transmuted. And when the ONE walks out your world is shattered and transmuted. We see it in film…”Of all the gin joints in the world she had to walk into this one…” (Casa Blanca), song writers write about it…”Every time we say good bye…” (Cole Porter), and novelists and poets go on about it...That last great love that walks into your life and then walks outs, your heart in their hand. Shattered and transmuted your life is never the same.

This is happening to you all the time. Every person comes into your sphere for a reason. Some of them are there for the really big stuff…the lifetime stuff…some of them are there for a while…the cycle sort of thing…some of them are there for a particular purpose…the specific lesson you need to be shown…and still others are just tour guides pointing out directions, mileposts, or sights to be seen.

The trick is to recognize all these different people, and to recognize where they fit in the universe of your life. For those of you who have not met me I am here as a sign post, pointing out some things of interest, or those things you might have missed. Perhaps we will meet someday and then our connection will shift in some way. When we say Good-Bye there are very few repercussions.

There are some of you reading this who know me in some official or professional capacity, Martial Arts instructor, training partner, crazy guy with the garden, Rotarian, or some other label or pigeonhole you have placed me into. For you, I may be here to help guide you on to some lesson you are supposed to learn, provide some learning or teaching that has been previously unfulfilled. When that capacity has been fulfilled we will probably part ways, or I may drift back into the peripheral category of tour guide. When we say Good-Bye there will be at least a satisfaction of the lessons learned.

There are others of you who know me much more intimately…friends over years, lovers, former lovers, people we can say when this happened it was marked by the presence of this person…for you and I our lives have intersected and joined together and stayed together and drifted apart and may drift back together…we have learned lessons together, laughed, cried, shared triumphs, disappointments, and energy. We may or may not do so again but when we come together we re-meet with a familiarity that doesn’t exist except in this kind of relationship. There are many of you who have fueled the content of these stories…who have provided the lessons I have learned that I now share with the world. Thank You. Our Good Byes cut deeply into the fabric of life, leaving a hole to be patched and mended, never to be forgotten.

Then there are those of you who have been here forever and will continue to be here forever. Parents, children, siblings, all my relations, the mothers of my children, spouses, and the lifelong friends that have been here decade after decade creates a group that is just there. This is the group that stays through the lessons, providing some of them, interpreting other lessons, and sometimes just holding space for us to learn the lessons we need to learn. This is often the easiest group to identify, the easiest group to deal with. Our Good Byes in this group don’t exist until the lights are turned out.

When you meet someone, when you say hello, do you wonder where they fit into the lexicon of your life? When you look across the room at that particular person, the one that is lighting up your energetic lamps, do you wonder what it is that they are going to be bringing you? Or what you are supposed to bring them? Because it is not always what you think…often that little zing of attraction is the universe telling you to sit up and pay attention. This person is here for a reason, has walked into this particular gin joint for a particular purpose. Your job is to discover what that reason may be. And to be open to it changing as your knowledge grows.

When we say Good Bye to some people we are done and over with them, there wasn’t much to be it. With others that Good Bye is a see you later. Still others, a fare thee well on your journey, our meeting is over and finished, thank you. With some lesson learned and Good Bye. And with the soul group, Good Bye for the here and now, see you on the other side.

So whichever it may be…
Every time We Say Goodbye
I wonder why a little.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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