Looking into the Mirror

I looked into the mirror this morning and saw myself reflected in the eyes and words of others. Charles Burke of www.bullseye-living.com and Susan of thetomorrowgame.com
wrote about this blog and insights that moved them. I have never had my work reflected back to me before in this way. It was such a rush I was moved to tears.

Susan did let me know she had linked to my blog and I followed her thread. I unexpectedly came across the other. It reminded me of a fall I was harvesting sweet potatoes. No pitch fork for me. I sat on the ground with my legs straddling the 3 foot wide row and combed through the soil with my fingers. Each potato I found was like a ruby. There were great big ones and little fingerlings. Each was a treasure. It was a miracle of nature. I spent hours out there.

The fruits of asking this question is a lot like finding each potato. The fruit was invisible on the surface but deep down there in the soil, magic was happening in various stages of maturity. Many of those spuds had their growth was terminated before they reached my table. Many of my ideas get aborted from lack of attention in my life as well. But some make it and produce the seeds/eyes of another generation.

I few days ago I felt this was a stupid journey. Today I found a ruby! It was the gift of sharing consciousness and growing in the act. This is a magic mirror. Mine is a magic life.

Hundreds of Heart Rocks...

I see my private clients in a variety of locations. One colleague collects heart shaped rocks. She has hundreds, maybe thousands, of them. They line the house, the driveway, and gather around the tree trunks. She has bowls of them. Some are polished. Most are rough, just the way she found them, well after they have had a bath.

My client came in saying, "I wonder where she finds all these heart rocks"? Actually Holly finds them everywhere. She walks down the smae streets others walk, through the same parks, along the same stream beds. She sees them. Others don't. This is such a good example that we find what we are looking for. Just like asking myself why I love my life so much encourages me to notice and appreciate great, even if tiny, things in my life.

I actually asked Holly about the rocks yesterday. Seems she was having a very hard time in life many years back feeling very alone and lonely. She went out for walks and picked up rocks just because she did. Over time she started noticing that a high percentage of rocks she was pulling out of her pockets were heart shaped. She wondered why that was so. One day the thought came to her that is was mother earth's way of saying that she was loved. She wondered if that was the message and that day found the grandest heart rock of all as confirmation. What a great message!

Heart shaped rocks just find her. She finds and loves them. They do get baths. When she moves she takes some and leaves many gathered together. In a way, gathering heart shaped rocks is like the man who planted acorns. Small purposeful acts that ultimately make a difference.

I hope I always make time to act on the small matters and to know that they make a difference.

Whine Time!

I have been struggling of late. It seems the momentum of my question has met the limitations of my belief system of self concept. I found myself complaining, becoming agitated and irritable.

I can trace some of the causative factors like eating sugar again which gives me the sugar blues 24-48 hours later. I am leaving tomorrow for my family reunion. It seems family issues bring up a desire for old comfort foods. I am still eating wheat though it makes me feel slow. But even so, these behaviors result from old patterns that still influence my life more than I would perfer. At least I think more than I would perfer.

I have noticed that my whining and associated moods have been controlling me instead of me controlling them. So I am re-instituting structured "Whine Time". This means I am scheduling 3 minutes a day totally devoted to whining. 5:00-5:03 PM. All of these bad feelings now have a specified space and time for expression. when they come up on the day, they just have to wait for their turn. Expression is then wholehearted and when the time is up, I am done with that for the day.

I do observe that what I resist, persists. But I choose to be in change of my feelings instead of them being in charge of me. At least this is the plan. I'll report back.

Brain On, Brain Off!

I never know what will catch my attention. Today it was an article based on the Time magazine report of Daniel Gilbert and Randy Buckner on time travel in the brain. It turns out that our brains appear to have reciporcal functioning circuitry. By that I mean when concrete problem solving functions are engaged, the daydreaming functions that transcend time turn off and vice versa.

It is not right barin and left brain as I might have suspected but rather the frontal, parietal and medial temporal lobes of the brain that turn off when we focus on specific mental tasks or speculate about specific future events like tomorrow's weather or upcoming political changes. They turn on during daydreaming, which is all the time we are not focused on something outside ourselves.

This makes me think of the difference between goal setting and activity planning and asking the question of why I love my life so much in a nondirective manner. Perhaps they actually stimulate different parts of the brain. I was thinking I would pay attention to brain sensation as part of my study but even this or especially this would influence my results. It would, itself, shift the active circuitry of the brain. Hmmm, how to do this?

I do realize that I am not entirely objective in this reseach project. In fact I am not objective at all. I "feel" this approach is a very good one, but not in the mainstream of current teachings. I am looking for the reasons this might be so. This makes for very skewed observations. I will persist as a phenomenonalogical study none the less and allow you the reader to determine relevance to your life. At the same time I am observing relevance to my life.

Excitement or Relaxation?

Sometime back I wrote about turning up the volume and excitement as I repeated my question, "Why do I love my life so much"? The variation was interesting. I don't know that it produced much change in the nature of life expereinces.

Recently, I happened upon using my question in a deeply relaxed state. Actually, I was doing my 'sit still, do nothing' thing and before beginning my counting I took some deep breaths and focused on a relaxed sensation in my brainstem, the back of my brain. I then found myself repeating my thematic question in this state. It was like my question was being carried along a deep and abiding current within the turbulance of life.

I don't yet observe the differences in outward manifestation to my approach towards asking the question but this approach does give me a profound sense of calm and well being. Maybe I am allowing instead of forcing. I do have the sense that feeling is more important than thinking in influencing life results. Perhaps the "excitement" of turn up the volume was more cerebral than felt, while the feeling of relaxtion was more compelling?

Watching and recording....

Longings of my Soul

I am using my question, "Why do I love my life so much"? to allow, even encourage, the longings of my soul to emerge. This stands in contrast to setting a plan for fulfilling my wants. Perhaps it is naive of me to seek the longings of my soul. I wrestle with this theme in terms of both free will and purpose of life.

What does it mean to use my free will to do God's will? How would I know if I was deluding myself. It sounds more palatable, more personal, to use my free will to seek my soul's longings. It assumes there is a "divine matrix" if you will in which I have an optimum role to play that will give me my greatest satifaction. Whether I could ever choose to do something other than that is open to debate.

There is another perspective that encourages me to seek what I want, and in striving to attain and attaining my goals I become something greater than I was before. It is commonly said that a rich person can contribute more to others than someone without riches. Of course there are counter examples to that like Mother Teresa and the man who planted trees that inspired this portion of my journey.

Am I asking the best question? I am assuming that following my soul's longings increases my love for my life, but one may not automatically follow the other even if they were interchanged. Does loving my life result in the emergence of soul longings? Does following my souls's longings result in my loving my life more? Hmmmm I think I am describing a celtic knot here.

It is a good thing I am not looking for THE RIGHT answer here. I am looking for an approach to life that provides both meaning and joy.

I don't feel like it.

Sometimes I simply am not in the mood. I don't feel like I want to do whatever is before me. It was hard getting back into the swing of things when I got back home. I kept asking myself "why do I love my life so much"? but it was out of desperation more than curiosity. I was pushing not allowing. Maybe it is like digging where I planted a seed to see if it is doing anything yet.

The good thing is this research project has self reflection built into the process. I ask the question, yes, but then I watch to see how it effects me and others around me. So the process raises me up to the observer level as well as being the participant. Shifting positions like this gives me fluidity and perspective. I don't have a single position to defend and curiosity takes away the self-judgment. Well, it reduces the self-judgment.

I don't want to get into psycholgizing the why's of not feeling like it. I am sure I could point to dozen's of outside influences that effect my "feeling like it". However, some behaviors support me and some don't.
While in Seattle: I did not "sit still and do nothing" for 20 minutes a day.
I ate wheat, sugar and ice cream that I know make me fuzzy headed.
I did not exercise unless moving furniture counts.
I did not take my supplements.

None of these things effect me greatly in the short run. Yes, I have more sinus drainage and my brain feels stuck to my skull. But I can function. At least I think I am functioning well. My sugar blues hit 48 hours later. Then I really don't feel like doing whatever unless I have another hit of sugar and on it goes.

So there you have it. I was dry for a few days. No creativity. No motivation.
Now I am back on my fish oil, my diet is cleaned up, I am sitting still and doing nothing at least 20 minutes a day. Exercise is in place. My motivation has returned, or at least my willingness to do things has returned, the creativity fountain is flowing again.

So, loving my life so much includes choosing to act in my best interest with external things that make a difference.

One more thing. Before I left I signed up for yet another of those 15 days- 100 days programs for changing my wealth. So everyday my mailbox has a great message about how to set goals and take their action steps. When am I going to learn that I keep time best with the beat of a different drummer. That would be my own inner drummer that I need to listen to.

There's no place like home!

I've gone home, to my birth home, and returned to my home of choice and I can say there really is no place like home. Either home. My trip was most excellent. What made it so was a minimum of expectations and agenda. My guiding plan was to hold to my question of why I love my life so much and be as present to my dad and step mom as I could. I had no where else to be, nothing else to do. I did bring my photo album to share with my dad.

It is a good thing I am developing a sense of humor towards myself. Picture this. I was driving in the fog and feeling disoriented. I missed one of the turns to my sister's house and thought I would go around the block. Wrong. Street names are almost identical as in 160th sw place and 160th sw street. These are not the same and it is not good to get lost a few blocks from your destination when I really, really have to go to the bathroom because of diarrhea. I finally made my way, got to the door and said I love you and I need your bathroom. I few minutes later I was having another round of sitting on the toilet and then had to throw up. No stress going on for me!

Actually that was the only point of drama, the rest of the trip was good. I had remembered on the plane that I get a backache from the bed at my sister's and decided I could be OK. It was more than ok when she showed me to a different room and a different bed that suited me perfectly. Life is good!

My dad's condition stabilized and he had started doing better in therapy. I read him the letter that I had written a couple of weeks earlier and e-mailed to my sister to read to him in case I din't get there in time to do it myself. When I came to the part about asking for forgiveness for anything that I might have ever done that hurt him he grunted an affirming response. We looked at pictures but he said he couldn't really see them. He didn't recognize a photo of himsef with all of his brothers so I used the pictures to tell him stories. Sometimes he said things that told me he was remembering some things.

I noticed some interesting things about myself on this trip. I resort to old comfort foods and patterns when I go back to Seattle. After 8 months of not eating wheat or ice cream I started up again so as not to be a picky eater. Never mind that I had stopped those things because of their effects on my moods and thinking. I also realized I was not taking my supplements that I had determined really do make me feel better. Why would I stop the behaviors that work for me when I needed clearly of presence and mind the most? Just noticing.

The siblings have decided to hold a family reunion in early March so we can see everyone and do photos while we are all still here rather than meet at a funeral. As one sister observed, nobody knows whose funeral it would be. So we are all mobilizing for the great migration to Seatlle in a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll sit next to you on SouthWest.

the effects of negativity

"If we could grok the effects of negativity on the mind and body we would never be negative again." Groking comes from the novel Stranger in a Stange Land. It is more encompassing than understanding. I think of it as getting it on a cellular level. The sentence leapt off off a comment page.

Focusing on why I love my life so much leaves little time for negativity but negativity is subtle. Earllier this week Matt Furey encouraged his readers to count how many times they say, "I am tired" in a week. How about in a day? This comment does not tend towards creating the energy and vitality I want for my life. It kicked my vigilance up a notch.

I don't want to spend much time on how negativity effects my mind and body but aversion is sometimes more powerful than attraction. I read that potato chip makers have almost no fat to recycle as they treat it chemically to remove some free radials and then use it again and again til it is absorbed. That was enough to get me to stop eating potato chips. Yuck! How toxic is that?

And negativity is even more toxic than treated potato chip oil. Skipping all my logic, I think negativity leads to inflammation which directly or indirectly results in death. How is that for a global statement? If the heart attack doesn't kill you, the bad mood you spread will make others wish someone was dead. Grok my meaning?

I am not advocating a Pollyanna approach to life. The more I ask myself why I Love my Life so much the more I am led to clean up little things in my life that weigh me down, even comments like "I am tired". I'm going to bed now to have a refreshing nights sleep. I hope you have one tonight also.

Where's the Sparkle?

I have been asking myself "Why do I love my life so much" for over a month now, watching what draws my attention, and taking most of the action presented to me. I feel that I have made more progress in my life in this short time than in all of the past couple years.

So far I have been speaking the words to myself in a quiet, pondering kind of voice. Sometimes I was jazzed by the results, sometimes challenged. Last night I felt like it was time to add some sparkle to my question. Ask it like I mean it so they can hear me in the back of the theater.

I practised my question in different voices and tones in my head as I drifted to sleep last night. Today I found myself pumping my arms in the air when I met my desk cleaning goal. That little extra spark of expression added so much more joy and fun to my life. Who knew it was good and fun to make a little noise and tout my own horn.

I think my playing field just got a little it bigger. How fun is that!

WHY DO I LOVE MY LIFE SO MUCH?

Hah! I did It!

Yes indeed! With four seconds to spare I had lassoed the clutter of my desk, thrown it down into appropriate files, and created a place to put frequently used items. I was standing with my arms thrown high in the air when the timer went off! That was easy! I was just like the cowboy who roped and tied his calf in record time.

And it was fun too. After dallying on the task for a couple of days and fussing over it for weeks or longer, it is now done and I feel great. Setting the timer helped me stay focused on this single task and kept some urgency in my step. Tangents got no attention. Project completed! Period. I'm loving my clean and clear desk. I love my "easy button". I'm going to find a timer with a melody instead of a buzzer and I'll love that. I'm loving my life!

Punctuation?!

I am noticing that I often lead my life like it is a run on sentence. No punctuation.
No beginning, no clear end point, and no time to take a breath.

In asking why I love my life so much, I continue to find habits that need tweaking. Adding punctuation adds a lot more ease and focus. Adding punctuation may move me to the top 1% of achievers also.

This insight was clarified for me by a discussion with John, my martial arts instructor. He told the young people he works with that most people never get started on anything, but of those who do get started, 90%+ fail to complete what they start. They get most of the way and quit. John pointed out how that he is assessing who they are just by the way they paint their figurines. He notices if some are painted and some not, if some are half painted, the attention to detail. This tells him which of his young mentees will make an impression in the world.

I thought this is a lot like completing a sentence with the punctuation. It is not that I don't finish my projects as many do get finished, though not all. Instead I allow things to run on and on without boundaries, without clear starting and stopping points.

Take work for example. I have a fantasy of building my business. I have done the research phase enough to make a plan but I keep on amassing input til I am overwhelmed. Then I don't think I have done enough in the day so "work" slides on over into after hours. I can have the illusion of working hard as I put in lots of hours but the quality of my output is poor. I have little to show, I am not rested, my loved ones don't get my full attention.

So today I am getting out my timer and my "easy button". It has worked very well for my sit still do nothing time. 45 minutes to finish clearing my work space. Then I get to hit my button that says, "That was easy"!

My timer is set. Ready.....Begin....

Umbrella Questions

I have decided to call the question "Why do I love my life so much" an umbrella question in the sense that it is broad enough to effect many aspects of a person's life without directly addressing each area separately.

Curiously, I am finding most or many people are more comfortable addressing individual life arenas than life at large. They are more delighted when I propose a question that deals with getting more business or finding a mate than they are when I pose my umbrella question about loving life. Maybe they feel they are doing something more concrete.

I myself, am more intrigued by the umbrella or global questions. I started asking why it is so easy for me to ask the best questions. That is interesting. I get questions like "Why is it so easy for me to remember who I am (at my core)"? and "Why do questions work better for me than affirmations or statements"?

Sometimes I get answers. I have much less resistance to questions so they sneak past my defenses better. And today, in a sparking conversation about this topic, I heard myself wonder if questions set up the brain to act as a antena scanning my inner and outer landscapes for answers. Affirmations, on the other hand, seem to treat my brain as a storage unit that needs reorganizing. If I resist organizing my inner storage as much as I resist organizing my desk then change is going to be tough for me.

More Input, More Input!

What robot or form of artificial intelligence are you most like? Why?

I choose "Number Five" who later renamed himself "Johnny Five" from the movie 'Short Circuit'. The robots were constructed by the military but one of them was on a charging station that got hit by lightning. It became alive, rewired itself and went in search of "Input" from every conceivable source. He even developed a conscience and a sense of humor.

One of the things I really love about my life is sparking ideas. When I have someone to bounce them off, so much the better. I knew this before but it made a bigger impact on me today. I love being creative. I love seeing something in a different way. I love watching how energies interact. I am always in search of more input.

No wonder I had a hard time just setting goals and taking action. It was hard for for "sparking" to occur. The more I ask myself "Why do I love my life so much"? the more I catch an intuition or the spark of an idea. I still need to take action on the input, and the faster I do that the better. I have watched myself get bogged down when I don't take the action. But when I do, one spark can ignite a fire.

If I want to set a goal, I had better build in room for Input that can spark!