Overcoming Obstacles
Morning Routine
You can make up your bed,
make up your face
but before you leave the house
make up your mind.
As you have made your bed
“As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it;” which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again.
~Gilbert K Chesterton
If you want to change the world…
Our Rise and Shine project begins bright and early tomorrow morning, and I thought this would be a good time to review the amazing speech that triggered this project.
United States Navy admiral William H. McRaven delivers a powerful speech about the importance of doing the little things and embracing fear in life. Here’s the video:
Here’s A Transcript Of The Speech:
If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right. If, by chance, you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made. That you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.
To pass SEAL training, there are a series of long swims that must be completed. One is the night swim. Before the swim, the instructors joyfully brief the students on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters off San Clemente. They assure you, however, that no student has ever been eaten by a shark. At least not that they can remember. But you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position, stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid. If the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you, then summon up all your strength and punch him in the snout, and he will turn and swim away. There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim, you will have to deal with them. If you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.
Over a few weeks of difficult training, my SEAL class, which started with 150 men, was down to just 42. There are now six boat crews of seven men each. I was in the boat with a tall guys, but the best boat crew we had was made up of little guys, the munchkin crew, we called them. No one was over five foot five. The munchkin boat crew had one American Indian, one African American, one Polish American, one Greek American, one Italian American, and two tough kids from the Midwest. The out-paddled, out-ran, and out-swam all the other boat crews. The big men in the other boat crews would always make good natured fun of the tiny, little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny, little feet prior to every swim. But somehow these little guys, from every corner of the nation in the world, always had the last laugh, swimming faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us.
SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education, not your social status. If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not by the size of their flippers.
The ninth week of training is referred to as Hell Week. Is it six days of no sleep, constant mental and physical harassment, and one special day at the mud flats. The mud flats are an area between San Diego and Tijuana, where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana sloughs, a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.
It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold, the howling wind, and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors. As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some egregious infraction of the rules, was ordered into the mud. The mud consumed each man until there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit. Only five men. Just five men and we could get out of the oppressive cold. Looking around the mud flat, it was apparent that some students were about to give up. There were still over eight hours until the sun came up. Eight more hours of bone-chilling cold. The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud, it was hard to hear anything.
Then one voice began to echo through the night. One voice raised in song. The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm. One voice became two. And two became three. And before long, everyone in the class was singing. The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing, but the singing persisted. And somehow, the mud seemed a little warmer, and the wind a little tamer, and the dawn not so far away.
If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person. A Washington, a Lincoln, King, Mandela, and even the young girl from Pakistan, Malala. One person can change the world by giving people hope. So if you want to change the world, start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone. Know that life is not fair, that you will fail often. But if you take some risks, step up when the times are the toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden, and never, ever give up, if you do these things, the next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today. And what started here will, indeed, have changed the world for the better.
A Few Simple Tips
If you are having trouble finding a focus, or if it seems hard to focus your energy with any intensity, here area a few simple tips that I found at Moksha Mantra.
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Yoga asana:
The traditional Indian techniques of Yoga asana can help you focus more. The researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign proved this, after their study on 30 participants. Those who took a single, 20-minute yoga asana session were considerably faster and more accurate on their tests on working memory and inhibitory control, when compared to participants who walked or jogged on a treadmill for 20 minutes. Working memory and inhibitory control are the measures of brain function associated with the ability to concentrate, recollect and use new information.
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Drink water:
Staying hydrated will improve your level of concentration. Researchers from the University of Connecticut’s Human Performance Laboratory found out that even mild dehydration affects mental functioning.
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Sleep:
Improper sleep patterns can make one easily distracted. If you’re facing problems to focus of late, please ascertain whether you are sleeping for at least 6 to 7 hours every night. Dr Vatsal G Thakkar of the New York University School of Medicine believes that a lack of delta sleep often leads to concentration issues. Delta sleep is the deep stage of sleep, which is important for efficient cognitive functioning.
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Meditation:
Find time to meditate, even it is for half an hour every day. A study by the University of Washington found out that meditation helped workers to concentrate better. A study by the University of California on 48 undergraduate students also found out that meditation decreases distraction and increases working memory.
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Reduce stress and anxiety:
Proper management of stress and anxiety is essential to maintain your focus over a long period of time. If you’re feeling overtly anxious and stressful, a consultation with a psychologist or a counselor might do a world of good for you.
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Food:
What we eat determines how our brain is. The food we eat significantly affects our cognitive functions. Try eating adequate quantities of nutritious food at regular intervals. Have at least three wholesome meals every day.
Adding Fuel to the Fire
Yesterday, I had this realization that simply thinking about something doesn’t necessarily make it happen. You have to be willing to commit time, energy and effort as well. It is a little bit like starting a fire using a magnifying glass and sunlight. The magnifying glass is your focused thought, the sunlight is the energy that flows to where your attention goes. And the tinder, those tiny bits of dry leaves and fluff, is the the beginnings of the effort you are willing to put into the project.
So, today I am thinking about tinder, and fuel for the flame and all the things that help a fire get started, and all those other things that will put it out faster than you can say “boo!”
Here are some examples:
- A wet blanket… do you have one of those in your life? Are you the wet blanket that gets dropped on your fiery little ideas just starting to “catch?”
- Rain… you know that old saying, “Did someone rain on your parade?” Are there people, ideas, or influences that bring you down and ruin your plans?
- Too much too soon… when making a baby fire, too much kindling too soon will quickly smother the tiny flame. Do you get ahead of yourself? Bury yourself with ideas, plans, or tasks before you even get a good start?
- More than you can chew… a nice big piece of firewood is great, once the fire is established, but when it’s a tiny baby of a flame, a big piece of firewood is almost as effective as a wet blanket when it comes to putting a fire out. Suddenly the task is overwhelming, and you just give up… ever had that happen?
- A gust of wind… poof, the tinder scatters in the wind, and you have to start over. Usually when that happens, it means that you didn’t protect your little fire well enough. A baby fire needs shelter from the wind, just as beginning projects and budding ideas need shelter from the winds of change and chance.
- Timing is everything… you can’t start a fire with a magnifying glass if you are sitting in the shade, or it’s after dark. Some ideas, some projects and plans, while they are great and good, just aren’t quite ready to flame into reality. You might have to wait until daylight, or plan for a change in location.
One last thought:
Patience… it takes time and patience to light a fire with a magnifying glass. It doesn’t just happen immediately. The energy has to build. First there is a tiny wisp of smoke, sometimes it doesn’t quite take hold and you have to try again, and then gently you feed it, and nourish it, and help it grow.
Finding Beauty in Every Freakin’ Moment
I found this article in Zen Habits, and thought it might be worth sharing. Particularly since I’ve had a pretty tough week, and was finding it really hard to focus on anything other than the shit hitting the fan. So, here it is, in its entirety. Enjoy!
Finding Beauty in Every Freakin’ Moment, No Matter What
~By Leo Babauta
How often are we anxious, frustrated, looking forward to something coming up, unhappy with ourselves, unhappy with others?
How often are we not happy with what’s going on in this present moment?
What if we could, instead, be completely in love with this moment?
What if, no matter what happened, we could find the beauty, joy, and gratitude in the moment as it happens?
Let’s make it so.
Rejecting the Experience
There are lots of very good reasons to reject our current experience:
- We have too much to do, and it is overwhelming.
- We have been hurt by someone else.
- We have deep doubts about ourselves, and wish we could be different.
- The situation is filled with uncertainty and fear.
- Someone is being inconsiderate and rude.
- There is injustice in the world.
- We are faced with discrimination, racism, sexism, prejudice, ignorance.
- We are poor, deeply in debt, struggling.
- We are lonely, alone, with no prospects of finding a partner.
- We are in pain.
- We have chronic pain or a terminal illness.
- Those are hard things. In fact, if we contemplate some of these horrible situations, it doesn’t take much to see that the smaller problems of our daily lives don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Given these kinds of difficulties (and more), how can I talk about finding beauty in the present moment?
The problem isn’t the situation. We’ll always face difficult situations in life, some dire and drastic, others small and irritating, but we can’t rid our lives of difficulty, pain and struggle.
The problem is that we reject whatever we face. It’s not good enough, it’s not wanted, it’s not welcome. I don’t want it that way … I want it that way.
That’s the problem: we reject the parts of our experience we don’t like, and wish for ideals instead.
Again … we can’t rid our lives of pain and difficulty. The problem isn’t the external situation, which will always be less than ideal. If we wish for an ideal life, free of our problems, we’ll be wishing until we die.
Given that we’ll never have the ideal situation … can we make the most of what we’ve been given?
Can we stop rejecting the gift of the life we’ve been given, and find beauty in it instead?
Let’s see how.
Finding Beauty in Pain
What good is there in someone angry with us, and us angry with them? How can we find joy in something as sucky as that?
Try this:
- Pause, and notice how your body is feeling.
- Stay with the feeling in your body with curiosity.
- Welcome the feeling. Invite it to tea.
- See that you are both suffering through pain, difficulty, fear, and tenderness in this moment. See that you’re connected through your pain and tenderness.
Make a wish for relief of difficulty:
“May I find peace. May they also find peace.” In this way, you are finding compassion for yourself, which is beautiful … and compassion for the other human being, which is also beautiful. It shifts you from worried about your self-concern, to wanting to ease the pain of the both of you.
Find gratitude for what you do have:
You are alive, you are connected with other human beings, you can love and appreciate flowers, music, the clouds and the gentle breeze and sunlight.
Every moment, even the most painful, have some kind of beauty, even if it is the simple fact that you are connected to all others who are in pain. You can feel the tenderness of your heart under your fear frustration and pain, and this tenderness is connected to all other human hearts. Everyone, around the world, has this good, tender heart too. This connection to human lives is beautiful.
Every moment is filled with learning, with strength, with love underneath the fear.
Yes, if you are unsafe, get yourself to safety as an act of love for yourself. But you don’t have to have hatred in your heart for the sonofabitch who has hurt you. They are suffering too, and though you don’t have to put up with their abuse, you can wish them peace, for the sake of the peace of your own heart. Take care of yourself, and that includes moving from fear and hatred to love and compassion.
Yes, if you are in constant pain, this is not easy. No one is claiming pain is easy. Who signed up for an easy life? By taking on your pain with patience, forbearance and strength, you are a shining example of love for all others. By taking on this pain, you are developing a capacity to help others with their pain. By taking in pain, you can find a place of joy in the midst of pain, a place of joy you can share with others.
Take the pain and turn it into art, into caring for others, into a heartrending song of life.
The Commitment to Live Fully
When we reject pain, sorrow, anger and loss … we are saying we don’t want all of our lives. We only want the good parts.
What I’m suggesting is that we fully engage with each and every moment. We don’t run, reject or avoid.
We embrace life fully.
We live fully in the groundlessness of our uncertainty and loss, the groundlessness of our anger and sorrow, the groundlessness of our pain. Instead of wishing for a stable, perfect moment … we learn to love the groundlessness and uncertainty of the moment we actually have.
We allow ourselves to fully feel whatever we’re feeling, without rejecting it, seeing this groundless tenderness as the enlightened energy of our lives.
We see this tenderness in our heart, in the midst of groundlessness, as goodness that is in us and everything around us.
We become fully present with an open heart, in full surrender to everything we experience. We reject nothing, and embrace everything.
We see everything as the path to joy and beauty. Everything is filled with goodness, if only we learn to see it as such. If we don’t see it, we only need to look closer.
We see every difficulty as our teacher. Every struggle has a lesson, every loss is a master class in becoming open and letting go of attachment, every pain is a way to touch our tender hearts. Any struggle and any difficult person is a teacher, if we embrace them as such.
Whenever we find ourselves wishing something were different … we use this as a touchstone to coming back to the moment and being fully with it, not rejecting it. Coming back and finding the beauty and goodness. Coming back and seeing this as our teacher.
When we begin to live each moment fully, we start to open up to a vast spacious awareness and beauty. It’s as if we wake up out of a dream to see the incredible mountains that have been in front of us the entire time.
It’s love, this thing in front of us. We just need to step fully into it, and feel the heart-breaking beauty of this love that we call life.
Something To Focus On
I talked to Go Daddy today, and they think the website will be completely migrated by tomorrow noon… So let’s all focus on how great it is that shirleytwofeathers.com will be a secure site, and how awesome it is to get back to business as usual… I definitely need some help with this, because I’ve been obsessing about how inconvenient it is … and bla bla bla… so… maybe if we all focus some good vibes they’ll get it done.
On a side note:
The site is apparently complicated and unusual, and they are having to do the entire migration by hand… and then they have to check all the gazillion links… manually as well, I think… so… hey, those guys need some good vibes !
Update:
The migration is now complete, but there are still some minor issues that need to be resolved. Thankfully, the site is up and running and I can post on it again!
Resistance
What you resist persists! What are you resisting?
What you focus on grows! What are you growing?
I have been resisting this whole having to put posts on Facebook instead of the blog because it’s still being migrated … I wonder if I am prolonging the agony with all my resistance… What about you? What are you resisting? Is it persisting?
A Simple Game
Sometimes, it isn’t that simple to just change your thinking, especially if it’s something you are in the habit of obsessing about, or a thought pattern or a focus that you’ve been engaging in for a super long time. This easy exercise can help to interrupt the pattern, giving you a chance to step away for a minute or two and refocus.
Try a simple game.
Simplicity can ground you and bring you right back to a sense of who you are and where you’re headed. It will also help clear what seems complex and put it in a simpler context. The purpose of this exercise is to distract your mind and give it something else to focus on. This is particularly useful when you find yourself in an obsessive loop of negative mind chatter.
Here’s how it works:
- Write a number of different shapes and an equal number of different colors on slips of paper.
- Pick one at random.
- Look around the room and look for everything that is either that color or that shape.
- Do this for a few minutes.
- Now, pick a different slip of paper.
- Close your eyes and try to remember everything that is either that shape or color.
Note:
You could make the slips of paper in advance, and have them on hand for when you have a really strong need to distract yourself.
Cause and Effect
This is track 3 of 7 from Miraculii Abundance Rap, titled Cause and Effect. I really like it. He talks more about it on a different video, Cause and Effect, The Law of Necessity. One thing he said about it that I thought was interesting was this:
Of everything that is contained within this entire book, this was the first thing that I wrote at age 22. From that moment, I saw the vision for my whole life and felt a Power that tenderly rocked my world!
If you’d prefer to watch it on YouTube, here’s a direct link: Cause and Effect Track 3 of 7
The Lyrics and the Chant:
That which is, is necessary
That which is necessary shall be
There is no escape
From the fulfillment of necessity
To make a vain attempt
Will find one
In the spider web of cyclicity
Around and around a constant revolution
Not learning the lesson or receiving the message
That would afford one a Divine Solution
But as for every experience, yours or mine
We are the creators of necessity
In thought and word and deed you see
Never an element of chance, not for you or for me
Because we project the causes
The effects become necessary
We create action circumstance and destiny
And now we know exactly what to expect
Through the Universal Law of Cause and Effect
But during the times
When something negative would happen to us
Our burden seemed so heavy, and oh how unjust
And we cursed and cried
How could this happen to us
But the seeming negative thing
Was a lesson and a message too
That could be highly beneficial to me and to you
The lesson and the message were like a door marked pull
But our head was so hard and we were as stubborn as a bull
For there we were pushing on a door marked pull
What are we doing, no wonder all the strife
Let us pass through the door of experience
And it will serve us in life
So we open up the door, we stand tall and we face it
Our cup is somewhat bitter, but we receptively embrace it
Oh it’s a very wise decision, for we cannot escape it
Yes this effect was reaped
From a cause we did sow
And now is simply the time
To pay the debt that we owe
So with calm assurance
We now walk through the door
To be tormented by this experience no more
For the lesson we have learned
And the message we did hear it
Oh how it expanded our mind
And quickened our spirit
Yes that circumstance was no element of chance
We were only receiving our own
And that’s why we embraced it
Behold the things of greater brilliance
On the other side of the door
That now dutifully and gracefully fulfill and replace it
To think we foolishly thought it was a disadvantage
What a blessing to realize
That every seeming negative thing
Must always have an equal positive advantage
And now that all negative thoughts
Have been divinely released
Our countenance is filled with that Heavenly Peace
A Peace firm in the supreme spirit of eternal standing
I mean that unshakeable peace, that passeth understanding
And now whatever our fate, let us not be disturbed
It did not happen to hurt us, but to humbly serve
Despite the seeming pain, and apparent distress
All situations are to uplift our consciousness
And now we deny the influence of anything distressing
For there is a lesson that is teaching
And a message wisely expressing
To please study us closely, for we are really a blessing
And now the knowledge has been bestowed
Upon you and upon me
That whatever comes into being, is born of necessity
No more will we be caught in the web of cyclicity
We’re now Empowered by the dance
Of cause and effect
Audio Only:
Links:
- His website: Astarius.com
- YouTube channel: Astarius Miraculii
- Facebook page: Astarius Miraculii
- Radical Self Care Project Overview by shirleytwofeathers - No Comment
- Radical Self Care Image Gallery by shirleytwofeathers - No Comment
- It’s A Wrap by shirleytwofeathers - 3 Comments
- Something To Consider by shirleytwofeathers - 1 Comment
- Nurturing Your Precious Self by shirleytwofeathers - 3 Comments
me: Make Your Own Violet Fire
Abdulrahman: Money Chant – Very Fast
Shirley Twofeathers: It’s A Wrap
Daniel Knirs: It’s A Wrap
Our current project began on July 4. We are exploring the concept and practice of Radical Self Care . Feel free to join in at any time!
Interested? You can visit our current project page, or you can take a look at the About The Project page if you are curious about the concept.
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Please feel free to join in at any time! No experience necessary.
- Money Chant - Fast
- Money Chant - Slow
- Prosperity Plan
- Amazing Creator
- Cause and Effect
- I Am That I Am
- Spirit Rap
- Lakshmi Spirit Rap
- PowWow Spirit Rap
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I think it's time to go shopping... maybe even buy some really cool stuff at my online shops!!
