Looking Up

“He who likes cherries soon learns to climb.” ~ German proverb


My friend Julie and I have one thing in common – we both don’t like heights. In all truth, I don’t really mind heights if I know I am completely safe -- and I thoroughly enjoy a panoramic view from behind a protective window -- but you will not catch me alive on a tall ladder.

The other day, time came for my friend to face that tall demon, when she was commissioned by a local mall to take photographs of a firework display. Excited and terrified at the same time, she worried not just at the prospect of going all the way up, but also at the terrifying thought of climbing all the way down.

Here I was, the pot calling the kettle back, encouraging her to continue her ascent and never look down; even as I wrote that, my mind spun at the mere thought of being in her place. Yet, my friend was counting on me for support, and support I was going to give. “Keep looking up,” I said sounding more assured than I felt, “even when you are climbing down.”

In the end, not only did Julie make it back down safely, but she also had a blast!

As we were writing back and forth the night before, Julie and I speculated on the possibility that our fear of heights reflects our fear of moving forward in our lives. Both of us are standing at a professional crossroads right now, where every turn can either hide a mind-blowing surprise, or a heart-breaking disappointment. As long as we lay low and close to earth, we can only get hurt a little if we stumble, but how bad could we possibly get injured, if we climb too high, too fast, and suddenly fall? Someone once said that if you have nothing you never have to worry about losing anything; similarly, if you never go up, you never have to worry about falling down; because of that, we often postpone our ascent, knowing that while we might not achieve much by remaining stuck in our safe place, we won’t lose much either.

Our problem is that as we approach our ‘ladder’, our thoughts are focused on our descent, rather than centering on what we will see when we make it up to the top. We invest so much energy worrying about what might happen if we fall that we often end up self-sabotaging in the desperate attempt of creating a safety net.

Julie went up and loved the view, felt proud of having finally conquered her fear and had no problems climbing back down; when it was time to descend, she allowed her body to follow the motions, but her eyes remained focused on what was above her, rather than giving in to the temptation of looking down.

Kudos to you, Julie, for setting your eyes on the stars. Why look down at how far we could fall, when we can look up and see how far we can reach?

The Power of Choice

“Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind.” ~ Alice Meynell


When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to take me to ride my bike at a park near my house. One day, I fell and scraped both knees. After helping me get up, and brushing off the dirt of my bloody legs, my grandmother smiled and said: “Well, aren’t you the lucky one?” I looked at her in disbelief…here I was, one scratch away from needing stitches, and the woman was telling me I was lucky! Could she be mentally ill? Even at that young age, I remember wondering if she was going mad. Noticing my confused frown, she explained: “Look at it this way, young lady, you could have fallen and busted your head instead. I think you were pretty lucky.” Although I still had a few doubts about her sanity, those words appealed to my young mind.

She was right after all – no matter how desperate the situation seemed at the moment, it could have been worse. From that day on, my glass was most always half full. Yes, bad stuff continued to happen on occasion, but was it the absolute worst it could be? That newfound attitude saved me a lot of heartache while going through the teen years, and it truly helped me see that events are only as bad as we paint them in our minds.

To this day, every morning, I pray for one thing: to keep my inner balance alive, and see every obstacle as an opportunity. It doesn’t matter what kind of day I’ve had – at the end of it, I always feel it was a day worth living. True power is not in dominating events unfolding around us, but rather is the ability of not allowing those events to affect our core of emotions.

One of the best tricks to balance the scale is to focus our attention on a happy memory. For me, as an example, thinking of the when my younger son caught a big fish on his first fishing trip really does wonders. He was so happy! That image will forever be forged in my mind. If I think of that, and really try to concentrate on the intensity of the feeling and the brightness of his smile, I can immediately feel tension melt away. Once I have a grip on my emotions again, I continue to focus on positive thoughts, and my day magically shifts.

Hanging on to resentment or negative thoughts feeds our illusion of needing to remain angry in order to punctuate the magnitude of the event, but it is really not necessary. Dangling on the brink of a precipice has never helped anyone find solutions.

We feel inclined to change the décor of our environment if the style no longer suits us, or makes us feel uncomfortable. We remove an object and replace it with one we like more – why not do the same with our thoughts?

The Sun and the Watery Tower

"Keep your mind on the things you want and off the things you don't want." ~ Hannah Whitall Smith


A few months ago I had a recurring dream. In the dream, my family and I were driving somewhere near the beach, and suddenly a wall of water rose from the ocean and formed an extremely tall and terrifying tower of water. In one dream, we were on the higher level of a parking deck when the first wave came down, and although panic was quickly spreading all around us, we knew we were safe.

After that, I had similar version of the same dream on different occasion, but one of them in particular really caught my attention. Unlike the majority of dreams which are nothing more than snippets of unrelated debris from the previous day, this dream was as clear as a film; if I close my eyes right now, I can still see it.

In the dream, my family and I were once again driving parallel to the coast, looking at crashing waves while we pleasantly cruised along. Unexpectedly, the sky turned dark toward the southeast and the wind began to blow. Suddenly, the water started receding, and it pulled itself up in a tower ever higher and scarier than the one in preceding dreams. I stood in front of it, knowing that it was only a matter of time before it would fall back down. Standing in front of the powerful mass of water - so high up in the sky I couldn’t even see the top – panic seized my entire being. I looked up at the dark water ready to swallow me in its fluid bite and then closed my eyes, hoping to savor the last few moments on this earth.

A thought flashed through my mind. Without wasting any time on rationalizing whether it would work or not, I opened my eyes, and turned to look toward the west, where the sun was still shining. I tried my best to detach from the feeling of fear gripping my very soul, and focused on the healing power of the sun. As I kept my concentration centered on the sun, I could see with the corner of my eye that the tower of water was getting smaller. Without questioning what was happening I continued doing just that – I ignored the fear and focused on the one thing that, I felt in my heart, could neutralize the killer wave. The mass of water continued shrinking, until, finally, it disappeared.

I don’t remember much about the rest of the dream, aside from the fact that we were back in the car and driving to some other location.

When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t shake the dream, and continued to think about it for the next several days. I still occasionally do, although I no longer feel a sense of dread when I think of the wall of water looming over us. I believe this dream contained a powerful lesson, for it highlighted our ability to fight adversities by focusing our energy on their opposites.

We might be powerless in front of some seemingly insurmountable threats in our path, but something exists which can neutralize each of them. There is no ill in the world without an antidote; to find it we need to understand the nature of what is looming in front of us and beam our energy in the opposite direction. Some monsters can be big and scary, but it is comforting to know their opposites pack just as powerful a punch.

Choices

In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt


One of the most intriguing things about listening to people describe news events is their tendency to remember – and their preference to discuss – the most gruesome segments. I once heard someone say that the newscast he had just watched was not very interesting because nothing really catastrophic had been reported. Of course, this person was probably joking, but as legends always have a bottom of truth, so do jokes.

For whatever twisted reasons tied to human nature, our attention is quickly captured by drama and negative news. This little psychological secret is the bread and butter of political campaigns and mental control; although people complain about the verbal attacks and blows below the belt they witness, their attention is piqued quickly, and the goal of the campaign strategists is attained.

This phenomenon can be observed in literally everything; in novels, a dark knight is always more charming and dream-worthy than a white knight; talk shows thrive on human drama; soap operas are parodies of human inadequacy; positive blogs get limited attention, while bashing, offensive posts draw opinions and readers.

Why are we so entertained by doom and human drama? Are we secretly entertained by the tragedies befalling others because it gives us an edge, and we feel better about our own precarious situation when witnessing others suffer? Could it be that negative news are a vehicle of connection to other people? After all, people like to come together and talk about something bad that happened; the tragedy becomes their link to others, and talking about the event opens the door to feeling united by a common denominator.

We approach life in approximately the same fashion. If we were to catalog all our thoughts in a day, three quarters of them are focused on what we don’t want in our lives, rather than being directed at what we want. If someone loses their spouse, for example, they become consumed with insecurity and bitterness, and a huge percentage of their thoughts focus on what the person has done to them. That will not bring their spouse back, nor will it help in finding another companion, as nobody wants to be around someone who’s a prisoner of their past. At this point, the question should be: Have we not been hurt enough by others that we feel the need to continue the beating with our very own hands?

Regardless of what some think, thoughts have power over our realities, and what we choose to think has a hand in forging the future ahead. Thinking positively about what we want triggers a series of chemical reactions in our bodies, and produce subliminal changes that become our business card in the outside world, thus triggering reactions in others.

Focusing on what we want allows us the opportunity of creating a clear mental picture of what we need to recharge for, and fuels our innate drives toward achieving that goal. Would you not want to fuel your car with premium gasoline, if you have that choice? Our lives should deserve no less.

When Opposites No Longer Attract

“The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.” ~ Randall Jarrell


Yesterday morning I received a call from a friend who’s traveling through Mississippi and stopped by a restaurant in Jackson. As she related her impressions of this restaurant and of the people working there, my friend was obviously quite impressed. As it turns out, this restaurant is part of a chain, even if one would never know it from the atmosphere it offers – friendly, proud, and happy to serve a good meal made even tastier by the nearly-forgotten charm of southern hospitality at its best.

“I remember when Raleigh was like this,” my friend said, “and now people seem to have forgotten what a true welcome is all about. I think it’s because of the influence of all the northern folks moving south; they move down because they like the weather and the attitude of the southern states, but as soon as they get here they try to change the very same things that attracted them to the place to start with.”

While my friend talked, my mind started racing. Was my friend right? As nice as it is to have a cup of Espresso on a sleepy morning, who wants to live in the south without ice tea? And what about our famous – or infamous, according to some – fried chicken? Nothing against the great benefits of a healthy meal, but I doubt anyone will argue that chicken tastes better fried than baked. We are not even going to touch the issue of tobacco…North Carolina is a tobacco state, yet smoking is banned mostly everywhere, with the result of our state wealth dissipating quickly. Crazy stuff to think about, some of it sad and some of it inevitable.

Our conversation led me to think of something else altogether; more specifically about how often we turn against the very things that attracted us to situations and people. For example, we can be attracted by the independent streak detected in a person of interest; once the relationship forges and familiarity sets in, the same quality which served as a magnet in the beginning is suddenly converted into an annoying trait we can’t stand in our companion.

We often approach other people and situation with mixed intentions – on one end, we are curious and attracted by the differences, and find dealing with an opposite mentally stimulating. On the other end, we wonder how much we can influence people and circumstances, and dive into situations we are not comfortable with for the sake of proving our personal power. In truth, people and situations can’t be changed that easily, and most of what is born out of the shuffle is long-felt resentment on both sides.

A change of approach – as ironic as those words sound in this context – is in order if we hope to find a middle ground. When we feel unhappy with our present circumstances, it would be helpful if we could remember what attracted us to those circumstances to start with, and try to shift the focus back to what we loved about the person, the place or the arrangement. If, upon reflection, we can instead no longer find the magic behind the process of the original attraction, we can safely know that chapter of our lives has run its course and it is time to move on.

People and situations don’t have the power to make us unhappy, unless we give that power to them; we can’t always change others, or alter the situations in our lives, but we can change the way we look at them, and maybe rediscover the good things we have forgotten. Sometimes our own focus is what can make all the difference.

Keeping Focused -- Lessons Learned from a Game of Darts

“All you have to do is know where you're going. The answers will come to you of their own accord.” ~ Earl Nightingale

Several years ago, my husband and his family were part of a dart team, and they met every Wednesday evening to compete against other people. Having just arrived to the US from Italy where darts are pretty much un unknown sport, I was intrigued by the accuracy of their game; the few times I tried to throw darts myself, I was relieved that no living being was around – one would have thought I had disjointed arms and aimed the darts at everything but the board.

One day, while we were at his parents’ house and the whole family was practicing for the next tournament, I asked my husband if he could share the secret of his success. “Just fix your eyes on the bullseye,” he said, “and you can’t go wrong.”

Ha! Maybe that worked for him, but in my case I think my eyes and my hands were going through a bit of a cold war and were not talking to one another. I fixed my gaze on the red spot intensely enough that I could have burned a hole into it, but my darts were still all over the place. Angry at myself for my lack of skill, I thought about giving up, but something bigger than that – pride, I think they call it – refused to lift the white flag, and here I was again the next weekend - alone this time to at least save my dignity – shooting darts like a toddler playing with a new water gun. With time my ability to at least hit the board improved, and I even managed to score decently a few times, although I never gained the level of skill the rest of the family had achieved over the years. I wasn’t good enough to play at tournaments, but I could hold my own in a match played at home with the family.

Through the years I realized that approaching new challenges is no different than learning how to shoot darts. You set your eyes on the goal and move through the motions, allowing your mind to evaluate and adjust each time you obtain a less than desirable result. In the end, you might not become an expert, but you will have learned that nothing is unachievable if you continue to try.

The greatest problem with meeting challenges is that many times we don’t focus in the right direction. If rather than staring at the small, red spot in the middle of the board I stared instead at the picture frame hung nearby, sooner rather than later I would have shot a dart in the forehead of the hound in the picture. Focusing on the challenge and assimilating it through our senses is what enables us to send the right data to our higher mind. Once we have a clear picture of what we plan to achieve, our inner mind gets to work to figure out ways to bypass obstacles and deliver us at the doorstep of success.

Clarity is the first step to going somewhere and achieving anything. If a mother wants a more challenging job which will pay her more but will require her to work longer hours, she might find herself in a pickle of a situation trying to figure out how to meet the demands of childcare, so although she doesn’t do it intentionally, she will self-sabotage to give herself more time to work out the details. If she decides the job is what she truly wants, and childcare is the only obstacle in the way, then she can give her mind something well defined to work toward. When I have asked a few people what they want out of life, many of them have replied that they just want to be happy, but what does that exactly mean? Each person is wired to find happiness at different levels, so by saying they want to be happy, they leave the spectrum of possibilities too wide open for the mind to come up with a plan.

Building a beautiful house is not too difficult a job, if one has taken the time to draw a good model plan.

On the Path to Success

"Visualize this thing you want. See it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint and begin." Robert Collier


Focus oriented in the right direction is one of the fundamental tools necessary to overcome. If you think it sounds too easy and simple to be true, think again. Many people loudly broadcast their wishes, but their words rarely match their thoughts, beliefs and expectations. While one minute is spent wishing for something, the other 23 hours and 59 minutes of their day are intensely spent visualizing the impossibility of the wish.

Given the right impetus and desire, every wish can become reality. The only blocks are the lack of emotional charge necessary to propel our wishes forward, the mental image we implant into our subconscious, and whether we feel we deserve the blessing. The fuel is provided by emotions; without emotions behind them, thoughts are quickly discarded as unimportant. The Universal mind only works on images we create in our conscious minds, which get deposited into our subconscious minds. Once an image is perceived by our Higher Self, if fueled properly, it will manifest in our realities. So, if for one minute we claim to wish for something, but then we repeatedly saturate our subconscious with images of poverty, disease, fear and lack of love, our Higher-Self assimilates that poverty, disease, fear and lack of love are just what we want. Like actions, images speak louder than words. The last block is usually caused by misplaced guilt; if we feel guilty of something – even if we didn’t initiate the action – we believe we shouldn’t be rewarded.

When we wish for something but then expect to see its opposite manifest, our focus is centered on what we don’t want. As we think of what we don’t want, we form mental images of the misery that will come, and we bring those images to life by feeding them with our emotions. In order to be successful in attaining our wishes, we need to re-program our conscious minds, since that’s where the process starts. Our free will allows us to choose what to focus on, and once we make a choice, we need to concentrate every emotion we feel toward our goal, rather than toward the obstacles on our path.

Very often, our realities are impacted by old images buried deep into our subconscious. By allowing painful memories to rise up at a time when we can give them our full attention, we take away their power of being in charge of us. When we choose to face them, we can feel them, hear them, see them and even feed them emotions for a brief period of time, and then make a conscious effort to release them before shifting our focus toward the goals we wish to conquer. One thing is certain – those old wounds will not go away until we consciously decide to meet them face to face, honor them for their purpose in our lives and ask them to rest in peace. Once we are aware of their existence, it is imperative that don’t linger on their effects. We are in control of how long we will allow ourselves to think about them.

Changing our realities is possible, as long as our thoughts go hand in hand with our words. And if, by force of habit, we go down the wrong thinking path at any given time, we always have the option to stop, turn around and walk in a different direction.

In Plain Sight

“We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.” ~ Author unknown


Early mornings at my house are easily the craziest moments of each day. With two boys - already groggy and irritable from getting up before dawn - having to get ready and out of the door before six-thirty, my house is, in the best of days, the proverbial zoo. Books are stuffed in school bags at the last minute, coats become invisible, and at least one of four shoes is always seemingly stolen by a hungry troll in the middle of the night.


Yesterday morning was one of those mornings. No matter how many sermons I preach the night before, rare is the day when everything is in place and ready to go. At six twenty-five, less than five minutes before the bus was ready to show up at the bus stop, my younger son announced that the shoe troll had visited again. The mad search against time began, and we spent the next few minutes running from room to room, our eyes robotically scanning all floor surfaces for a pair of white sneakers.


The kids searched downstairs and I covered the two floors upstairs, all the while tuning everything else out that wasn’t white or shaped like a shoe. By the time the two boys made it up the stairs to the third floor, I was fuming and darting my eyes from one end to the other of the floor like a mad woman. The moment Michael popped his head into the door, I turned my head and spat out that his shoes weren’t upstairs, venom dripping from the fangs I was about to sink into his not-so-innocent head.


Michael looked at me with big blue eyes, and as he passed me on the stairs he said: “Sure they are mom, they are right there.” I followed him up, and there they were – two big white sneakers sitting in perfect view on a shelf in the bonus room. How had I missed those big old white boats in the middle of an otherwise bold-colored room?


After the boys left and I was able to sit down with a cup of coffee, I thought back about the shoes. They were right in front of me, but I was so blinded by my own irritation and panic at the thought of not finding them on time, that I simply couldn’t see them.


Quite often, what we need is within reach, yet we fail to spot it because rather than focusing on the solution we focus on the problem. In this case, my energy was directed toward barking at the kids for not being organized, and by not seeing the shoes I validated my own irritation. Had I taken a deep breath and looked at the room in its entirety, I wouldn’t have missed them, but instead, I allowed my own perception of where shoes should normally be to dictate the scope of my search. The fact that I could use the repeat offense to make a point was definitely an added bonus.


If we could detach from the problem for just a moment, instead than clinging to it to validate or prove a point, we could fine tune our focus and direct it toward a possible solution.



There is no reason why we should look for hard ways to fix something simple.