What You Pay For – (Linking Thinking #6)

Leave a comment August 26, 2022 debreen

Are you getting what you want? From your relationships? Your health? Your fitness or physical training? From your occupation or employment? Are you more content or happier today, this week, this month than you were six months ago? A year ago? You might think these are rather self-absorbed types of questions, but I have a point in mind for your consideration.

Today’s post is a continuation of the theme behind all the Linking-Thinking blog posts this year. I hope you’ll read or revisit the previous posts if you haven’t read them yet. You may find them helpful reminders in applying the principles of purposeful awareness to our thought life. Namely, the posts reiterate in one way or another the value of recognizing the patterns of our thinking. Why is this skill so vitally essential? Because the thoughts we curate (pay attention to or attach our beliefs to) are the thoughts that run and create our every day reality. There are no exceptions or work-arounds to this universal truth. Thoughts are energy, and as such the energy they generate is relayed through the brain into the body. Thoughts in motion create energy too, as emotion. The body responds to this emotional energy without bias; this is the nature of human physiology. The autonomic responses to sensory energies are working on our behalf and in our subconscious psyche, 24/7. The physical body is designed specifically to collect and interpret sensory data received from the outside environment on behalf of our biological operating system. Our sensory system has served humans well through the eons. However, these systems have not evolved much though the eon. In this respect, our base instinct nature is similar to that found in all of the animal kingdom.

“Remember, the goal right now is to gradually change your response to what you can’t control. To grow stronger on the inside day by day, so that in the long run almost nothing on the outside can affect your inner peace and wellness without your conscious permission.“
marcandangel

So when you ask yourself the above questions and if the answers come back with negatives, you might want to seriously assess your thinking thoughts. Are the majority of your thoughts in any given day about the things you want or don’t want in your life? This is an important point to note! If you treated your thoughts as dollars and cents in your bank account, what sort of experiences are you paying for with all the minutes, of all your days?

Energy is the currency of the universe. When you ‘pay’ attention to something, you buy that experience. So when you allow your consciousness to focus on someone or something that annoys you, you feed it your energy, and it reciprocates the experience of being annoyed. Be selective in your focus because your attention feeds the energy of it and keeps it alive. Not just within you, but in the collective consciousness as well.
Emily Maroutian

Seriously, your best life is literally held within the confines of your own mind (not to be confused with your brain)! You create your reality over and again with each and every thing you choose to think (and believe). Might you decide, on purpose, whenever you realize you’ve slipped into unconscious patterns, to spend your attention, on the things you want? It is my hope for you today, as I finish this last series post, that you will task yourself to spend your thinking thoughts wisely. Choose as often as you want, and make deposits rather than withdrawals into your best-life account. Because to think about what you don’t want, simply invites the economy of compounding interest to give you more of what you don’t want or need.

“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.” — James Baldwin

Blowin in the Wind

Pack Up Your Sorrows

For Nothing

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Three Words

Leave a comment February 26, 2017 debreen

Resistance…Is…Futile…
When uttered by the fictional Borg of the famed Star Trek movie series, those three words were meant to conjure submission, hopelessness and resignation upon the unfortunate individuals to be assimilated into the collective Borg consciousness. Those three words declared power and superiority upon them who would hear and believe.

All of us skirmish against our internal Borg voices, especially when we struggle to reach new health and fitness goals. This is the voice which comes to us as reason, and it so often sounds reasonable to our tired mind. It says: Don’t be so hard on yourself. You set your sights to high. Lower your standard. Reduce your expectations. You are older now, you should slow down, sit down, recuperate. Perhaps a new hobby is in order for you, the Borg voice says: take up knitting, painting, reading, writing, there is nothing to gain by your constant striving to be fit, to be strong. You deserve to rest, relax, retire!

Don’t let your attitude toward change or your own predisposition to avoid it create detrimental hindrances to your own personal success. John C Maxwell

In rebuttal, I say this: THOSE ARE FIGHTING WORDS! Now let me be clear. I am not suggesting that resistance is always right. There is a time to resist and there is a time to rest from doing. But what I am proposing is this: Be attentive to your inner Borg voice. Consider the goal of the Borg: to conquer and assimilate!

Resistance is the first step towards change. Louise Hay

Rather than acquiesce when your journey towards wellness becomes a thing of work for you, instead do this: Remind yourself often and always of the beauty of that goal you have set before yourself. Fight for it! Rest if you must, but do not be your own worst enemy and stop trying. Never give up on yourself…ever!

You are worth the effort. Thank you, thank you for believing in yourself! We, the world, your country, your community, your family, all of us need you to become the very best you. That is what you deserve…to be the very best version of you…today and all the days which follow!

Now let me give you three words to move you onward and upward: JUST…DO…IT!

Take Time for Change

Leave a comment January 21, 2017 debreen

In resistance and strength training, sets of weight bearing repetitions are used to improve muscle endurance, power and size. Repetition, doing the same exercise again and again, is the foundation of every physical fitness and training philosophy. Changing an exercise or the amount of weight used in the exercise is not required, until the desired physical outcome (change) in the muscles and/or body has been achieved.

At the beginning of every new thing we pursue: new year’s resolution, new relationship, new job, new hobby or body-improving project, we expect to exert ourselves in novel activity(s) to obtain the ‘new’ object(s) of our desire. In regards to improving our bodies, we understand change occurs only after muscles have moved against resistance by many repetitions.

If you want to experience a year of new things, you must choose to live not in the repetition of the natural, but in the newness of the supernatural.
The Book of Mysteries ~ Jonathan Cohn

We are beings who thrive on change…even when we don’t. Change is part and parcel to existence in the natural world. The swirling atoms of this world and of our bodies are in constant flux of change. As we live and breathe, change is our destiny. And change we will for better or worse. To change or effect change is our greatest opportunity every day and perhaps also our greatest difficulty.

Time is valuable. Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. M. Scott Peck, Psychiatrist

Change is a dynamic force (law) of the natural world. And it works in conjunction with another dynamic force of the natural world: time. These two forces, if you will, depending on our perspective, become either an ally or an enemy. Like a runaway freight train, change and time impact our lives whether we perceive their existence or passage within or upon us.

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

In 2017, let’s take time for change…every day. Because time is the currency paid out to us in minutes. Our future self, our future world is created in the realm of how we spend those minutes. Therefore, let us take time to make time change…today…tomorrow and thereafter.

Change…You Gotta Love It

Beginning Again…Mindful Transformation

Leave a comment October 20, 2015 debreen

Transformation: change in form, appearance, nature, or character.
A form resulting from any such change; a metamorphosis.

With the advent of the autumn season, my senses are on full alert. This is my favorite time of year, when the cooler daytime temps move in synchrony with the shortening day light hours. These autumn days are greatly anticipated after the intensity of the summer season in the southwestern desert. And yet there is always a foreshadowing sadness with the arrival of the shortening days; because what comes with all the exterior, seasonal changes, naturally motivates me to move inward ~ physically and emotionally; to curtail outdoor activities in favor of indoor pursuits. This prompting, this inward wrapping around and into, seems to be preparing all creatures, great and small, for the coming season of rest and renewal. The crispness of the air on the wind foretells that wintertide is near.

I well know this pull towards the interior; it comes naturally to me, an introvert by nature; and like all introverts, I flourish in the solitary, inward pursuits of the mind and body. So even though I highly favor this season, with its inward draw, I struggle with this transition more than any other time of year. This is the time of year when the holidays and celebrations typically require an outward extension: into our families…into our communities…into our finances…into excesses of every kind it seems. I think perhaps this is why I often struggle to transition happily into the wintertime, because it so often brings requirements to expand, to get outside of myself. That is not a comfortable ‘transformation’ for this introvert to make.

The journey of living requires us not just to understand, but to enter. Transformation begins when we stop watching.
The Endless Practice ~ Mark Nepo

But what does comfort have to do with growth and change and transformation? Nothing! Comfort has nothing to do or associate with change! Maybe this is why I feel compelled to write about this time of year so that I may remind myself to stay vigilant…especially in regards to my interior, to stay open and not closed down. I want to remind myself to stay on guard, to be aware of those situations, and those stressors, which may trigger me to excuse myself from the very opportunities which could trigger growth and renewal.

I have a hunch that I am not alone in this end-of-year struggle. It seems that once the days grow cooler and shorter, the desire to huddle and linger indoors is as natural as the changing colors of autumn leaves. And the activities that center and quiet me…the walks and runs out of doors, become more challenging to keep on my calendar. As a personal trainer, I have noticed that many of my clients likewise struggle to keep their health and fitness goals on track during this season. Surely there must be a better way to transition into year’s end, especially if we have positively progressed in the months leading up to this juncture.

“To strengthen what is possible, we can imagine and spend equal time with what might go right as with what might go wrong.” Mark Nepo

But is it possible or even reasonable to actually plan, and act, and expect that this year could end on a positive note rather than on a negative, back sliding one? Or is that just wishful thinking? No, this season can be different; but I recognize that it must begin with an intention; my intention; my over-arching purposeful act to make a change. I will begin again by entering…via this record…my intention to depart from the habitual ‘turning in’ (closing down) and instead use that habit to prompt myself to open outward, to soften. Even as I write these words I can hear that other voice within, full of complaint and denunciation. I have struck a chord, I must be on the right track!

Yes, it is my privilege to choose what I will believe and hold as truth; And I believe that what I think, ultimately propels me in one direction or another. My beliefs have the power to alter (transform) my behaviors and actions. So begin again, I will; it only requires a disposition and a readiness to move, to activate: body…mind…spirit.

Go Outside…For a Change

An Invitation to Revolution

1 Comment February 22, 2015 debreen

Definition: revolution (n.) a sudden, complete or marked change in something

Whether or not we like it, growth (physical, mental, social, spiritual) requires revolution; a change in direction or movement or thought. There can be no progress, no creative flow, no gains in health or fitness without change. It is notable too, that all of creation, both visible and invisible, is designed to thrive in the realm of change. The seasons and their regular permeations support the growth cycles of all living things in the seas and on the land. Our bodies are best nourished when we eat those foods that grow in season; a diet limited in variation is a diet destined to promote disease and ill health.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Socrates

In the realm of education, business, and fine arts, the finest programs mosaic curriculums across a spectrum of specialties and fields of concentration to promote students who are flexible in thought and process. A similar approach is used when designing a comprehensive exercise program. The best plans are those that integrate a mixture of activities that encourage the building of strength, cardio-respiratory endurance, flexibility, and balance into our physical bodies.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight. Marcus Aurelius

If change is so central to how the world turns, then why do we so resist it? Why do we insist on becoming set in our ways? If change is integral to growth, and growth is the essence of vitality, then surely we must revise our perspective on this inevitability or suffer stagnation and regression in every area of our life. If we have breath to breathe, then it’s not too late to adopt a positive mindset towards the changes we face in life.

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
Wayne Dyer

Simple things like choosing a new genre in regards to the types of books, movies and activities in which we engage can prime and supercharge us for new areas of learning and creativity. One thing is for certain in life, that change visits us all with alarming regularity. While some may say that all change is not necessary to growth, I would rather submit that all change is our invitation to choose growth and even perhaps a small revolution!