Attitudes

Often our attitudes play a more important part in our lives than we realize...
It is our attitude that determines how we approach life in general, but also how we enter into any given situation.

Our attitudes may range from ‘a positive attitude’ to ‘having a chip on your shoulder’ or ‘a negative attitude’; and anything in between. Looking at attitudes, there are a few things that are truly interesting to me:
Where did the particular attitude come from, in other words, what previous experience has sparked the attitude?
Is the attitude productive in living my life?
Do I want to change the attitude, and if so, how do I go about doing that?

Attitudes can stem from any variety of sources or experiences. Some attitudes we may have ‘inherited’ from our upbringing, while we have adopted other attitudes because of experiences we have had in life. Knowing where a particular attitude has come from, can help us becoming aware of how the attitude works in our lives.

From this premise, all our attitudes are valid; there are no ‘bad’ attitudes. It is a good idea though to examine whether an attitude is productive in our lives or not.
When we approach life with an attitude that the whole world wants the very best for us, chances are pretty good that we run in to situations that help us on our path. When our attitude is that everybody ‘out there’ is trying to hurt us, we may find ourselves running into people that have a mindset to take advantage of us...

Either way, looking at these perspectives gives us the insight needed to determine if we want to change an attitude, or not.

There is hardly ever a nice sharp line that marks when you want to change an attitude, or when you want to keep it ‘as is’. Working with our attitudes almost always involves sliding scales.
For instance, I have an attitude that people are trustworthy. And most of the time they are. But that doesn’t mean that I leave the doors unlocked, or the windows open, when I go run errands. For me, the balance I have found with this attitude works well in day-to-day life.
On the other hand, I can have a tendency to down-play my abilities, and to not realize the proper value of my property, or even myself. That is an attitude which doesn’t work well for me; one that I am working on changing.

I use affirmations to change an attitude ~ repeating the affirmation whenever it comes to mind during the day (independent from the actual attitude) for a number of weeks. And, certainly where it concerns property, I may ask friends how they gauge its value, as this gives me a ‘reality check’.

Changing an attitude doesn’t usually happen overnight, it takes dedication and persistence.
But the reward is that we can start attracting more positive, productive situations into our lives!

Borders, boundaries and limitations

Any journey we undertake has the ability to make us more aware of our boundaries, and in a sense of our limitations. This awareness then can help us to re-evaluate where we stand, and how we create and protect our boundaries. Without the limitations.

When our travels take us away from our daily lives, yet within relatively familiar surroundings ~ for instance a trip to a different part of the country you live in ~ this is a process that takes place pretty much inside ourselves. Even though it is instigated by the different, new surroundings we may find ourselves in; the new people we meet.

As our travels take us to an altogether different country, all of a sudden we are confronted with borders. Borders between the country we call our home and that other country. And also borders between our values; the rules that we live by in our daily lives and the rules and regulations of that other country that we are traveling to...
And so the process of becoming aware of our own boundaries is not just an inner journey anymore ~ it now has an outer aspect to it as well. In other words, it is not just about our reactions to the new environment, the new people we meet ~ it is perhaps even more about the circumstances we encounter, and how our values and the values of that other person (or country) can work together. Or can clash.

Either way the process of gaining awareness about our boundaries and limitations can take place. We can broaden our horizons in a fun and exciting way as we get to know new perspectives, new ways of doing things that we might not have thought of living in our own familiar area.
Yet when something happens that perhaps even gets you in a position where the border you desire to cross becomes a line in the sand ~ we are likely to feel limited by that experience, rather than feeling the expansion we were expecting...

In a sense, a lot of the borders have become ‘lines in the sand’. Where they used to be the demarkation between ‘here and there’ ~ they are now also the boundaries that we need to protect against unwanted influences, undesired actions ~ and not in the least that which we fear may put us and our environment in danger... So we limit access to that which we call our own. We limit how we behave, as well as how the other person is permitted to behave. And as we put limitations on ourselves and the new people we meet ~ we protect what is our own.

And this too, is a process that takes place on an outer, as well as on an inner level...

New Things

We all have things we wish we could have in our lives that up to now we haven’t had... Whether it is something on our ‘birthday wish list’, or something that we have been working toward for some time ~ every once in a while it is time for something new.

Often this ‘something new’ brings changes with it.
If we would like to redecorate the house ~ before we can bring in the new furniture, we need to take out the old furniture. And this can bring along an interesting process of decision-making. The easiest possibility is when the old furniture is really on its last legs, broken, or otherwise without any worth whatsoever. In that case it is just a matter of discarding it. Although if we feel it is still worth selling ~ we need to decide how to go about it. Through Ebay? Or a garage sale? Graigslist? Then, applying a value to each piece we are putting up for sale, there is always a chance that we feel this tingle that wants to back out of the whole thing. After all, if it is still worth that amount of money, should we just keep it a while longer? And even if we are happy to sell it, how long are we willing to be involved in getting rid of the old ~ even if it would bring in some money?
But then, when everything is finally cleared out ~ there is the excitement of the new being brought in!

It is easy to see how the process works when talking about furniture.
Yet the process is the same for pretty much anything new we want to bring into our lives. Whether it is something physical, something material ~ or a new perspective, a new attitude.

If we want to perceive life in a new way, it is necessary to let go of the way we have looked upon life up to now. If we want to do different things, we need to organize an opening in our calendars ~ literally create an opening in which we can plan this new activity...
And like with the furniture ~ this takes us through a series of decisions on how to go about it to create the space for the new things to fit into. And it gives us an opportunity to observe how this brings changes into our lives that make our lives better.

Desired changes. New things we have been wishing ~ and sometimes waiting for...
Every once in a while it is a good thing to look at what new things can make our lives better!

Grass Roots

According to the dictionary grass roots refer to the most basic level of an activity or organization. And, looking at the actual roots of grass ~ one can’t get closer to the ground...

The other thing that happens with the roots of grasses is that they have this tendency to multiply underground... So where at first just a few blades of grass peek their heads up; pretty soon more and more will follow!

Of course this is how nature works. Most seeds of that one tree that actually find themselves touching the soil in one way or another, eventually will germinate and grow into yet another tree. It is this very principle that is responsible for the growth of groves of trees...

Yet ‘grass roots’ has gotten this specific meaning of a community or group of people that come together in order to instigate changes that seem natural and spontaneous. As opposed to changes orchestrated by a (political) organization or a government.

The interesting thing is that while a number of years ago people were talking about changes they desired in their lives, their environments and the world in general ~ more often than not no real action was taken in order to affect these desired changes. The prevailing attitude seemed to be one of “live and let live” ~ allowing only for individual and private changes.

In the past couple of years more and more people have come together supporting an idea ~ or perhaps even an ideal ~ and having specific views on how this idea not only can make for a better world, but also how this idea can be implemented in the world...
Often those ideas or ideals are relatively simple, not costing a whole lot of money ~ on the other hand not having the potential to make a lot of money either. Yet they would influence the lives of many in a beneficial way.

And that is where the problem lies...

In a society where success is measured in amounts of money ~ where success therefore is looked upon as ‘financial success’ ~ these grass roots ideas often are not viable. Why spend time, money and effort on something that has a close to zero chance of receiving that big bonus at the end of the year?

The fact that more and more grass roots movements exist and actually make the news in one way or another, suggests that in this day and age change is needed. Not just any change ~ a change that touches the core of our societies; and yes one that touches the core of our selves: a change in values.
A change in exactly those things that we have held near and dear for over a century!

And although we may resist this mightily ~ just like the blade of grass will multiply once it has peeked its head up ~ so too will the grass roots call for these changes to multiply...

Past and future

When we think about it, it is surprising how much of our lives we live in our past and future. Reminiscing about the things that we have done, have experienced. Perhaps about things we now wish we had done differently, things that were hard (but we survived). Re-living our past victories and succes stories. While on the other hand we make plans for our future. For the things we want to do next week, next month; on our next vacation. All the things we still wish to experience, trips we want to make this year or the next…

And yet most of us will agree that the best way to live our life and experience everything it has to offer to the fullest is to live ‘now’. In this point in time. Without weighing our experiences against what has happened last month or last year, or continuously looking at how it could have been better.

It seems that living in this very moment is harder than it looks, as we all too often feel weighted down by our past, or find ourselves worrying about our future.

The solution ~ although by no means easy ~ is to every one in a while take some time to take an honest look at whatever it is we are carrying along on our paths through life. If we would do so, we may find that there are a handful of things that we feel are truly essential for living our lives the way we want to. Then there can be quite a pile of things we have learned in our youth, some of which have proven to be helpful, while other things ~ even then ~ were not. And perhaps the third pile of things are those things we were told by others. The opinions of others as to how we present ourselves, what we do, how we act; even how we choose to dress.

Having made this division, it becomes clear which parts of our past we have no loner an need for in our lives, and consequently we can leave those behind.
The things that are not ~ or never were ~ helping us. And the opinions of other people. Of course everybody has the right to their opinion; and we can even listen to other people’s opinions. However, that doesn’t mean that we should also act on those opinions other people may have. Especially if we cannot perceive any manner in which they would actually help us on our paths through life.

If we do take the time and effort to lighten our loads this way, something wonderful tends to happen! Not only does it enable us to let the past be the past, chances are that now that we are no longer carrying too much of a load already, we are not quite so worried about what the future may hold in store for us.
And those two things make it a lot easier for us to live our lives in full awareness, right now.

Regrets

Most of us regret something every once in a while.
Whether it is something we said without thinking of the consequences, or something we did or didn’t do for whatever the reason. And truth be told, more often than not the reasons we have are good reasons to do or not do something ~ even to say something, or not...
Hence most of those regrets are what I would call ‘small regrets’ that fall into the category of making choices. We all have to make choices, and sometimes even if we have chosen wisely ~ we still would have wished things had been different.
And looking back at what happened, we often just come to one conclusion: Life happened...

In other words, some regrets may just come with the choices we have to make in our lives.

But then there are the regrets that are the ‘big regrets’.
Those are usually the things related to opportunities we let pass us by. Sometimes because we didn’t believe enough in ourselves. Sometimes because it didn’t seem as good a deal as it turned out to be for the person who did grab hold of that particular opportunity.

Yet the most common reason to not do the things that are really important to us is that we react from what we believe other people expect of us rather than the way we truly are.
And when we look back at a period of time in our lives only to see that we didn’t do things we wanted to do while we got the chance to do them ~ that brings us into the realm of the ‘big regrets’.

The things is that a lot of the time they aren’t the things you might think ~ like ‘climbing Mount Everest’, or ‘walking to Santiago de Compostela’.
They are the things like not working so hard that there was never time to enjoy life; to see the children grow up, or investing time into your relationships with friends.

The regret that while you were busy doing a lot of things ~ there was never really any time for ‘being’.

That may well be the biggest regret of our time: to not having taken the time to be yourself. To do the things that were important to you at the time. To not fulfill your heart’s desires when you had the chance.

Wouldn’t it have been nice to look back and say ‘I have done that!’?
Then perhaps it is time to think about how you can go about being true to yourself. To enjoy the things you were dreaming about when you were a kid...

To answer the question: “What would it take for me to look back at my life without any ‘big regrets’?”

If what we are doing doesn’t work...

At some point in our life we may find that for all our efforts, what we are doing isn’t getting us where we want to go. It usually takes a while to come to that realization, but then something happens that makes us fully aware of the fact that the situation we find ourselves in is (no longer) working for us.

The big question then becomes: “Well, if this doesn’t work, what can I do that will work for me?”
And so we find ourselves on a quest to find what we need to change, what we need to do different, and where we can apply our energy more productively.

As soon as we start looking at these things, a number of things are likely to happen:
We may become aware that our old patterns have different sources and are harder to break than we held possible.
When we break those old patterns, change the old tapes in our minds, the solutions we now see may be vastly different than we ever thought they would be.
We may discover that, once we start talking about our new-found direction ~ in any other field but the metaphysical or spiritual, making that change is applauded. Yet especially when there is money (yes, making money...) involved ~ when your path is a spiritual one, the reactions are more likely to be: “Uh-oh; her/his ego is taking over! Now it is all over, that is such a shame...”

Now, the first two are relatively easy to deal with. There are books on the how-to; there is the internet where processes can be found to handle things like this; motivational speakers, coaches, therapists ~ in other words, if you really want to change, help is out there.

The last point, however, seems to have to do with an ‘old tape’ that is more cultural. It is a message that when we are walking a spiritual path, we will be provided for.
For me, the first thing that comes to mind are holy men from pretty much all over the world, who are holding out a beggar’s bowl. And I am thinking, ‘They are clearly spiritual, if they are to be provided for, then why are they begging?’

In our modern-day lives it doesn’t work that way anymore.

Even when we are walking a spiritual path, we have bills to pay! We may have families to care for. And we probably like to eat a good meal at regular times.
At this point in time, not only is it okay to make money while on a spiritual path ~ the process of doing so is what helps us in our personal growth! And from that perspective, it makes us even more ‘spiritual’!