Living Out Loud

Follow your heart

(a Thought for the Week)

"Most people think the heart is mushy and sentimental. But it's not. The heart is intuitve, it's holistic, it's contextual, it's relational. It doesn't have a win-lose orientation. . . At times it may not even seem rational, but the heart has a computing ability that is far more accurate and far more precise than anything within the limits of rational thought." ~ Deepak Chopra

"No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has." ~ Henry Ward Beecher

"Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart." ~ Unknown

"It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see." ~ Thomas Carlyle

"Only do what your heart tells you." ~ Princess Diana

You can view my Thoughts archive here

Dream it, Believe it, Achieve it

(a Thought for the Week)

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." ~ Anatole France

"Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision." ~ V. S. Naipaul

"Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future" ~ Charles F. Kettering

"Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectations unless he or she begins with some wild expectations." ~ Ralph Charell

"If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

You can view my Thoughts archive here

Desiderata

(part of the Happy Friday series)

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others,
even to the dull and ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be
greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career
however humble;
it is a real possession in the
changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you
to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit
to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore, be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham,
drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

by Max Ehrmann

Unleash your imagination

(a Thought for the Week)

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand." ~ Albert Einstein

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will." ~ George Bernard Shaw

"Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless." ~ Jamie Paolinetti

"What is now proved was once only imagined." ~ William Blake

"We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view." ~ Mao Tse- Tung

You can view my Thoughts archive here

Do something different

(a Thought for the Week)

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." ~ Unknown

"Stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities" ~ Terry Josephson

"The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are." ~ Unknown

"Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become." ~ Unknown

"Never follow somebody else's path; it doesn't work the same way twice for anyone...the path follows you and rolls up behind you as you walk, forcing the next person to find their own way." ~ J. Michael Straczynski

You can view my Thoughts archive here

Seize the moment

(a Thought for the Week)

"Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great." ~ Orison Swett Marsden

"If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it!" ~ Jonathan Winters

"If you risk nothing, then you risk everything." ~ Geena Davis

"Opportunities don't knock at all. They don't have to, they're already all around us. It's up to us to see where they are and take advantage of them." ~ Dave Thomas

"May you live all the days of your life." ~ Jonathan Swift

You can view my Thoughts archive here

Mistakes are good

(a Thought for the Week)

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually to be fearing you will make one." ~ Elbert Hubbard

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." ~ George Bernard Shaw

"Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave." ~ Mary Tyler Moore

"The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake - you can't learn anything from being perfect." ~ Adam Osborne

"What would you do if you weren't afraid?" ~ Spencer Johnson

You can view my Thoughts archive here

Take life's knocks on the chin

(a Thought for the Week)

“Disappointment to a noble soul is what cold water is to burning metal; it strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never destroys it.” ~ Eliza Tabor

“When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.” ~ Peter Marshall

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” ~ Martin Luther King

“Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher

“Difficulty need not foreshadow despair or defeat. Rather achievement can be all the more satisfying because of obstacles surmounted.” ~ William Hastie

You can view my Thoughts archive here

Go with the Flow

(part of the Happy Friday series)

Goals are essential for a happy and fulfilling life – right?

Well, that depends on your perspective. Despite being a life coach, I’m a bit dubious on the goal front myself.

Of course goals are great for giving us forward momentum, a drive to keep going. And if you don’t know what you want, chances are you’ll meander somewhat aimlessly through life, not really feeling any major sense of fulfillment or satisfaction.

But I think that when we get too attached to them, goals can actually stop us from being happy.

The thing is, there are loads of wonderful opportunities and possibilities out there to experience, and many of them might never even enter our imagination until they land in our laps out of the blue. Delightful surprises that can change our course and take us in a direction we would never have dreamed of.

But when we fix our sights on specific experiences and outcomes in life – the goals we set ourselves – we can blinker ourselves to some of those unexpected opportunities. Often we don’t even see them, or if we do we might dismiss them because we’re so tunnel visioned about what we think we want.

And often what we think we want turns out to not be the Holy Grail we thought it was.

In actuality, what we really want is usually very different to the specific goal we focus on – which is more likely to be a set of feelings, emotions, or a way of being. What we set as goals are generally the means of achieving those feelings, emotions, that way of being. Those are the things we really want.

The goals aren’t the end result at all. They are merely a means to get us there. They are “How To’s”. And if we focus on them too much, we can lose sight of what is really important to us. And possibly close ourselves off to other opportunities.

My tip is to not put too much emphasis on the goals. Instead, examine what lies beneath them. Ask yourself

• If you had this goal, if you’d achieved this end, what would it give you?
• And in turn, what would that give you?
• And what lies beneath that?

Keep peeling back the layers of what you’d get from achieving your goal until you can go no further. Then you’ve reached the core desire, what it is that you really, really want.

Once you’ve got that the job becomes easy. There’s only two things you need to do.

1. Switch your focus to having the feelings, the emotions, the way of being: what you really want.

2. Then open yourself up to all the possible ways that it could come about, even those that you can’t imagine right now.

Just because you can’t imagine another way to achieve your desire doesn’t mean it’s not out there. Be open to being surprised. You may be delighted with the results.

How does this work for you? Does a focus on your goals help you to be happy, to live out loud? Or do you find that your goals sometimes get in the way of what you really, really want?

Reinvent yourself

When you change yourself you change your world.

You can change how you feel about your world when you change how you look at it and how you react to it. You might not be able to control the external circumstances. But your choices about how to deal with it, your thoughts about it, and consequently your feelings are all absolutely within your control. All you have to do is become aware of this, and consciously choose rather than unconsciously react.

If you're not happy at work, you can change your current job, you can change your entire career, or you can change the person you bring to work every day (that's you).

If you're not happy in your relationship, you can choose to leave, or you can look at the role you've been playing and choose to change it.

If you're not happy with your appearance, you can choose to change your hairstyle, wardrobe, weight or you can choose to love and accept yourself exactly as you are.

I could go on, but you get the idea I'm sure. In each of the above and other examples, you could also choose not to change, but to complain and feel angry, disappointed, sad - in a word, unhappy.

I may risk your wrath and suffer a lot of unsubscribes here, but the truth of the matter is, if you're unhappy about any area of your life, and you're not choosing to make the changes yourself, you are in effect, albeit unconsciously, choosing to keep the status quo. You're choosing to be unhappy.

I've said this before, I'm sure I'll say it countless times in the future. The answer to almost every dilemma in your life lies within you, not without.

Everytime something goes awry in my life I look within. Not always immediately, I have to admit. Oftentimes I indulge myself with an unconscious reaction for a while. But that never helps.

What always helps is when I calm down and ask myself, how have I contributed to this situation or attracted this problem into my life? What thoughts and actions have led me here? And when the answer comes, I acknowledge it and I forgive myself. And then I change my thoughts and actions to be more aligned with how I would like things to be instead.

Works a treat - always.

The external circumstance won't always magically change to suit your desires (although sometimes it will). But how you feel about that situation will change, and that is what really matters.

And when you feel better about a situation, you will be more empowered to make the difficult decisions. The ones you know in your heart and soul you need to make but were previously resisting (like change your career, or leave that relationship, or alter your attitude and behaviour).

The changes to your world that you want and need to make. The changes that begin when you learn to look inside - and reinvent yourself.