A Little Bit of Effort

One of the hardest aspects of teaching to deal with is watching young people self-sabotage and self-destruct.  It's impossible to remember just how many people I've seen fail courses simply because they didn't want to do the work necessary to learn the material they were assigned to learn.  A grade is simply an indication of how much a student has learned--or at least, it should be--and a failing grade tends to indicate that the student hasn't learned much at all.

If I'm teaching Spanish, for example, the students' grades indicate whether or not the students have reached the level of the language that they're assigned to reach.  If a student reaches the end of the second year and still can't answer the question "How are you?", then of course there's a significant problem, and giving the student a passing grade is definitely the worst thing that I could do.  That passing grade is saying not only that the student has met the requirements of the course (they haven't), but also that the student is ready for the next Spanish course in the sequence (they're not).

Unfortunately, though, I see a lot of teachers making it possible for students to earn a passing grade in their classes without knowing what they're supposed to know or doing the work they're supposed to do.  I can't tell you the number of teachers I've seen who really do nothing but assign students to work on packets as a group, and then the teacher sits at his or her computer for the next hour, answering the odd question or two.  In the meantime, not all the students are doing the work--many members of groups are allowing one person to come up with all the answers, and then they're simply copying those answers on their own worksheets and turning them in.  And getting the same grade as the students who did the work.

I see this in the students' attitudes towards learning.  Much of the time when I'm working with a class and someone raises their hand for help, all they want is for me to come over and give them an answer.  They get upset with me when I come over and refuse to answer the question for them--instead, I point out in the text where they can find the answer themselves.  Most of them don't like that one bit.  But I don't care.  If I'm going to be entrusted with my students' learning, then I'm going to do all I can to help them to learn, and to help them to learn how to learn.

But learning takes effort, and it's much easier to just have someone give you the answer.  After all, these young people have grown up being able to put any question they want into a search engine and get an immediate answer with no effort at all.  They can visit a translation site online and get immediate translations for anything they want to say--though the translations are often quite inaccurate.  They're not used to having to work to get an answer for anything, and teachers don't help a bit when they make their classes nothing more than an effort to find the right answer to questions.  Life is about processes and cycles and depth, while our learning has become shallow and superficial.  We can't learn about the nuances of life until we learn how to learn, until we're able to see a lesson and take from it what it has to teach us.

Some young people are lucky.  They have parents who don't allow them to spend all of their free time on their phones, who expect their kids to read and to do work that helps them to learn and grow.  Of course, many of those kids see their parents as ridiculously out of touch with reality, and extremely unfair.  They don't understand now what they'll know for sure some years from now:  that their parents' refusal to allow their kids to do something just because "everyone else is doing it" is actually the best thing that they can do for their children in the long run.

How often are we willing to make the effort to do something well?  We used to cook for hours and have meals that were truly worth the time and effort.  We used to sit down and write letters by hand, and we came up with some very nice letters, the likes of which we don't see much any more.  All in all, our current tendencies to do things as quickly and easily as possible aren't helping us to grow and develop as human beings, as unique individuals, and they're not helping us to develop our unique skills and talents, either.

How often have I wished that someone who works at a store had taken a bit of extra time to actually learn their job and learn their store?  How often have I wished that a server had learned more about the food and beverages that they were serving?  Over the years I have had some situations in which I've ended up with serious problems because someone else didn't take the time or make the effort to learn their jobs better.

We have control over much of our lives, and much of that control lies in the decisions that we make to better ourselves, to learn and to grow and to develop.  What kinds of decisions will you make?  Will you take the easy course all the time, or will you challenge yourself now and then to do something better than you've done it before?  When we talk about living life fully, it seems pretty obvious that the full life isn't the easy and empty life, but rather the life that has been spent developing quality and getting better at the things we love to do.

My mentor taught me that success is a numbers game and very early he started asking me my numbers.  He asked, "How many books have you read in the last ninety days?" I said, "Zero"; he said, "Not a good number."  He said, "How many classes have you attended in the last six months to improve your skills?"  And I said, "Zero."  He said, "Not a good number."  Then he said, "In the last six years that you've been working, how much money have you saved and invested?"  I said, "Zero" and he said, "Not a good number."  Then here's what he said, "Mr. Rohn, if these numbers don't change your life won't change.  But," he said, "If you'll start improving these numbers then perhaps you'll start to see everything change for you."    -Jim Rohn

The Way Things Seem

I've found in life that the ways that things seem to be very often aren't actually the ways that things are.  We bring so many of our own biases and prejudices and desires into what we see that we tend to see things in the ways that we want to see them, or through a lens that distorts reality so significantly that the view that we have is warped, at best.

As a teacher, I see this constantly.  The young person who seems to be screwing around to get attention is sometimes dealing with trauma at home, and acting out their emotions in a place where it's safe to do so.  The student who seems to not be studying at all may be sleep deprived, or have poor eyesight, or have a learning difference that makes a particular topic almost impossible to learn.  The student who doesn't seem to care at all may be withdrawn because of relationship difficulties in the family, up to and including being abused by a parent.

We've all heard the saying, "Things aren't always what they seem."  From my experience, I would amend that statement to read, "Things are rarely what they seem."

This is Thanksgiving week, and here in the States, we have a beautiful holiday to celebrate on Thursday.  This day's focus on gratitude gives us an opportunity to think more deeply about thankfulness, about appreciation.  It gives us a chance not just to count our blessings, but to ponder them.  Why do we consider them blessings?  Why do we not consider other things blessings?

There are many people who have kept the same job for decades and have fallen into a rut of repetition that makes them miserable.  Is the steady job and the paycheck really a "blessing," then?  Others have been fired from their jobs through no fault of their own and ended up finding something else, something better that inspires them more and rekindles passion for their work.  Was being fired from the job really a "curse," then?  Or was it a bigger blessing than the steady job and pay that would have led to tedium and unhappiness?

Of course, a steady job with good pay can be a huge blessing.  But that isn't always the case, is it?

This Thanksgiving, I'm going to challenge myself to look for the blessings in the supposed curses, the positive in the seeming negative.  I'm going to do my best to find a reason to be thankful for everything in my life, with the knowledge that I have no idea what kinds of benefits my current situations will bring me in the future.  Perhaps I'm not too fond of my job, but the person I meet there three months from now is going to show me how to open some other doors that will be much more beneficial to me than the ones I see now.

This Thanksgiving, I'm going to try to be thankful without condition.  I'm going to try to see the good and the positive in everything, knowing as I do that even things that begin with evil can bear positive outcomes (I'm thinking about the war in the Ukraine now--a war that is inexcusable and that was begun with evil intentions).

I'm going to be thankful for all that I've had in life, all that I do have in life, and all that I shall have later in life.  Because my thankfulness--or lack of it--is completely up to me.

You can visit our page on Thanksgiving by clicking here.

Moment by Moment

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and never will be again.    -Pau Casals
  
  
This truth about the lives we lead is very, very difficult to keep in mind most of the time.  After all, when I go into work today, that same obnoxious person will still be making me uncomfortable; that same problem with my computer will be there; I'll still get along well with certain co-workers.  In my case, I'll still have the same students in my classes, with the same drama and complaining and humor and achievement.  It's hard to distinguish this particular moment in my life--this "right here, right now"--from all the other right heres and right nows that already have passed.
   
But the fact that this is a new and unique moment of the universe means, of course, that I have the power to make changes.  I have the option of doing things differently, of reacting differently to similar situations or actions.  I have the possibility of starting something new or continuing something that I've been at for a while.  I have the opportunity to step onto a new road that may be going somewhere that I've never intended on going to--and making the most of the journey that results.
  
Right here and right now, I have the choice of continuing to type or stopping, of continuing to think of which words to write or to stop thinking about this and start thinking of something else.  I can go back and delete a paragraph or a word or a sentence.  I can do anything I want--it really is my choice.

And it's the same with anything in my life.  I could decide right now never to go back to my job--though I would pay a series of very high prices for making that decision.  In some situations, though, those prices would be worth it.  We tell ourselves so often, "I'll make this change when the time is right" because we're worried about consequences, but sometimes maintaining the status quo can be much more difficult and much more damaging than making a change and facing consequences.

What are we going to do with this moment?  Some of my favorite moments each day are those when I simply close my eyes and breathe deeply and calm myself.  I don't get anything "done" during those moments, of course, but they make other moments during my day much more enjoyable and productive.  I also enjoy practicing awareness during moments when I remember to do so--looking around and actually seeing and appreciating all the things that are around me.

In other moments, I compliment or encourage someone--or both.  I stop and actually listen to music that's being played.  I take out a picture or two that remind me of beautiful moments of my past.  I hug my wife or one of my kids if they're around.

What I find to be the most important use of moments, though, is the decision-making that I'm able to do.  All of my previous moments have led to this present moment somehow, so I have a lot of experience and learning behind me.  This moment right here and right now, I can make a decision that will affect all of my future moments.  That decision can have to do with my job or a relationship or a hobby or education or my body, but our most important decisions happen in a moment, don't they?  A lot builds up to them, of course, but the decision itself is the result of a moment, and hopefully a moment of clarity.

The present moment, right here and right now, offers us much.  Few of us, though, are able even to recognize what's being offered, much less able to take advantage of the offers.  Perhaps by practicing awareness, we can be more aware of what each moment of our lives brings to us.
  
  

Am I Ever Really Mindful?

Sometimes I get perplexed.  I keep living my life and moving from day to day, but I don't seem to be advancing all the time, getting better at the things that I really value.  Instead, I seem to keep falling into the same behaviors and thought patterns, allowing myself to be pulled down or pulled here and there by my emotions and my thoughts, rather than being somewhat in control of what I think.  I get frustrated, only to ask myself, "Why did I get so frustrated?"  I lose my cool, only to ask myself later, "What the heck did I lose my cool for?  It makes no sense!"

Sometimes I start to think that I'm actually progressing, that I'm getting all that I can out of life, and then I suddenly realize that I haven't done anything really fun for the last few days--or anything to help another person, or to encourage a person, or to contribute to the positive energy of the world.  And there are even times when I catch myself being negative, looking on the darker side of things, being childish and vindictive and hurtful.

What does it take?  What does it take to be mindful all the time and working towards our own personal betterment all the time.  I'm not judging myself harshly here--I'm simply observing what happens in my life and pondering it.  Pondering what happens and why it may happen, and what I may not be doing that I should be doing.  I truly do want to be a more mindful, more patient, more compassionate and kind and loving person, but so often I fall short of all that, and I fall into the human traps that I'm well aware of and that I warn other people about, and I feel that I haven't progressed at all, in any way.

I truly want to be mindful, for if I am, I can help other people more--I can love them better and see their needs and do more for them.  If I'm mindful, then those days when I feel crappy can't happen because I'll be mindful of my blessings and allow them to be the dominant influence of my life.  If I'm mindful, then I can live each day with complete awareness of all that is good in the world, and I won't succumb to doubt and despair and discouragement.

Though being mindful, of course, also means being aware of the bad things that go on in life.  We can't pay attention to just the beauty and the blessings, or we face the risk of being overwhelmed by the negative if we don't recognize it in time.  Being mindful of our relationships allows us to recognize changes; being mindful at work allows us to see potential problems earlier; being mindful of our living environments can help us to be aware of things going bad early in the process.

So I want to be mindful--but am I really?  Am I able to see the things I need to see, or do I just go from day to day pretending that I see them?  Do I call myself mindful while I go through life blindly, constantly doing the same things and getting the same results?  Am I mindful enough to be able to help others when I recognize the need for help, or am I just fooling myself into thinking that I'm more mindful than other people are because I've been introduced to the concept of mindfulness?

Good questions.

And at this point in my life, I'm not sure that I can answer them completely accurately.  I know that I want to be mindful, but I often doubt if I truly am.  And this truth leaves me with a seemingly obvious course of action:  I need to keep on working at it.  I don't want to be harshly judgmental of myself if I'm not being mindful, for I am trying.  Constantly.  But I also want to keep in mind that I do need to be true to my desires and my intentions--if I claim that I want to be mindful, then I need to constantly monitor myself to be sure that I'm at least trying to make that my reality.  I don't want to be someone who says, "I'm going to be more mindful," only to just keep on doing what I've been doing forever.  Fooling myself is not a good way to go through life.

What Do We Do with Criticism?

 Do what you feel in your heart to be right--for you'll be criticized
anyway.  You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
-Eleanor Roosevelt


I used to let criticism rule my life, in a way.  Most of what I did, I did to avoid criticism just as much as I did it to accomplish something or get something done.  As with most things, of course, this dynamic resulted from the way that I grew up, but the fear of criticism decided to hang around much longer than my growing-up years.  Or rather, I made room for it and gave it a home in my life rather than banishing it to some remote place where I'd never have to deal with it again.

And it's still her in my life, to be perfectly frank.  I still have the fear of criticism as one of my more dominant motivators.  It isn't nearly as strong as it used to be, but my guess is that it's going to be around until the day I die.  My task at hand, then, is to learn to live with it so that it doesn't affect me in negative ways.

I think that my fear of criticism is strongly related to the fear of not being liked.  Somehow, I learned to associate criticism with people not liking me, probably because I felt that if I didn't meet their expectations, there was no way they could like me.

But of course, the source of my fear isn't nearly as important as what I do with it now.  I still don't like being criticized, but I respond to criticism differently now.  For one thing, I've learned that much of the criticism that we receive has to do more with the person who is criticizing than it does with me.  For some reason, they want to put themselves up higher than me, or consider themselves better than me, even if it's just on a subconscious level.  In order to get that feeling, the only strategy they have is to criticize me or what I do, to put me down in order to build themselves up.  It's a horrible strategy, but one that many, many people employ.

And if their criticism comes as an effort to make them feel better about themselves, then it should mean absolutely nothing to me.  When I recognize this dynamic going on nowadays, I'm able to completely reject whatever they have to say in favor of maintaining my own peace of mind.  (I think that being a teacher has helped me to develop this ability--the number of times I'm criticized because someone didn't get a grade they thought they wanted, for example, is quite significant.  Teachers are among the most-criticized people on the planet, in general.)

But the fact that I've learned how to deal with criticism hasn't changed the fact that I still fear it.  It's not a debilitating fear that causes me to break down or to experience great anxiety, but it is a very real fear that doesn't feel good at all when it raises its head.  I do my best to recognize the fear for what it is--something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's there anyway.  I accept it and let it be, and I do my best to make sure that the fear doesn't change the way I act or the things I do or say.  The most important thing for me is to recognize that the fear is involuntary--it comes on its own--so I shouldn't be upset that I feel it, nor should I let it control me.  It is what it is, and the ways that it affects me are up to me.

You will be criticized.  I will be criticized.  Tons of people on this planet have adopted criticism as one of their main driving forces, so they spread it far and wide in an attempt to make themselves feel somewhat superior to others.  Sometimes, the criticism will be justified, and in those cases we can use it to help us to improve ourselves.  Often, though, it will be empty, and in those cases we can recognize it for what it is and reject it completely, and move on with our lives.  It's not always easy, but it is always possible.

More thoughts and ideas on criticism

Living Simply

If one's life is simple, contentment has to come.  Simplicity is extremely
important for happiness.  Having few desires, feeling satisfied
with what you have, is very vital:  satisfaction with just enough food,
clothing, and shelter to protect yourself from the elements.   -the Dalai Lama


I find that simplicity is very difficult to attain for me personally.  I want to simplify--I want to get rid of the extra things that I have and possess just the bare minimum that I need to get by, but I consistently find it difficult to do so.  I'm pretty sure that much of this trait of mine comes from the ways that I grew up--I find it hard to get rid of things because on a subconscious level, I'm afraid that I'm going to need them someday, and that I won't be able to replace them if I do need them.  I know where this trait comes from and I'm not to thrilled to have it as one of the dominant traits of my life, but it is what it is, right?

Of course it is.  And the main thing for me to keep in mind is that if it is a trait that I have and I'm not fond of that trait, I have to do what I can to change that trait into one that I'm more comfortable with, one that I actually like.  And I strongly believe that I would like my life to be simpler, to not be burdened with so many things, so many possessions that I could easily get rid of without causing any negative effects on my life at all.

What does it mean, though, to "not be burdened" by things?  After all, if I have three cars instead of one, what's the big deal.  I use the cars as a metaphor because they show very well just how dramatic a lack of simplicity can be.  If I own three cars, I have to keep track of three engines, three sets of wheels and tires, three transmissions, and so on.  I have to make sure that I plan for three oil changes from time to time, and I need to keep three tanks full of gas.  It's not the actual having of things that changes our lives--it's the time and energy that it takes to maintain them that makes things different for us.

Very often, we get to a point at which we don't notice just how overwhelming it is to have so many things.  If we've been in the same house for years, it can be easy to just keep putting things in the garage or storage shed.  They seem harmless, but those things can become difficult to manage.  Space becomes scarce, and many of our options can be lost as we possess more and more.  When we buy a dog, we lose the chance to spend weekends away, unless we pay extra for a hotel that allows pets.  Even if we can bring the dog, there are many places that we may want to visit that won't allow pets at all.

Sometimes we lose simplicity when we commit ourselves to too many things to do, and we run ourselves ragged trying to fulfill all of our responsibilities.  If we keep our obligations few, then much of life opens up to allow us in, but when we create new obligations for ourselves, we can shut many doors that might have opened for us.

The Dalai Lama mentions "having few desires," and I think that that's one important element of a simple life.  When we desire things that will complicate our lives, then simplicity is just a pipe dream.  When we allow ourselves to have fewer wants, when we're satisfied with what we have and where we are, then we're setting ourselves up for simpler lives that are easier to deal with in many, many ways.

I'm not that good at simplifying, but I keep trying to get better.  I know that the more I do simplify, the easier my life is going to be, and the more I'll be able to focus more consistently on the things that truly matter to me.


It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

That Sense of Purpose

Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness.  It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.    -Helen Keller

One of the more difficult things that we can do--but by far the most rewarding--is to define our own sense of purpose while we're here on this planet.  We can define it for ourselves, and do our best to accomplish that purpose while we're alive, and it doesn't necessarily take any other input from anyone else for us to do so.

Personally, I've been rather fortunate to have discovered a couple of purposes that I've been able to pursue.  I've been a teacher for most of my life, and that's been a very rewarding purpose for the most part, and I know that it's a purpose that helps me to contribute to the lives of others regularly.  I've also been fortunate enough to be able to write, and I've written an awful lot over the years--and hopefully that, too, has given me the chance to contribute to other people's lives.

One of the most difficult aspects of the quest for purpose is knowing which purpose is actually the right one.  I would have loved to have been a musician, and I did spend some time trying to learn the piano and the guitar.  With both I got to a point at which I could read music and actually play some songs, but I wasn't very good at it at all.  I left both of those pursuits behind because no matter how much I wished that playing music could have been my purpose, it very obviously wasn't.  The same with singing--my voice is not a singer's voice, pure and simple.

And that's okay.  Not everyone is meant to be a singer or a musician.  I tried, and that's enough.

It's also rather difficult to be strong when other people are trying to define our purpose for us.  History is full of lives that were dedicated to certain professions because parents forced children into them--the idea of having a child become a doctor is a famous trope in many novels and films.  The children are forced into a life with a purpose that isn't their own, but rather one that their fathers or mothers chose for them.  That can be a recipe for a very unhappy life, indeed.

What is your major purpose in life?  It may be that you haven't found it yet, and that's okay.  It takes more time for some people to understand and embrace their purpose than for others.  What isn't okay, though, it seems to me, is that we never actually try to find that purpose, that we flow along with life doing things that other people tell us to do rather than finding our own way.  Yes, other people can have wonderful advice, and sometimes their advice to us may be extremely important.  After all, another person observes us and our lives from a different perspective than we see ourselves, and from their more objective perspective, they may see something that we don't (or something about ourselves that we deny, such as having a true gift in some area).  If they see that something, they may be able to point us in a direction that's truly worthwhile for us.

When we do try to define our purpose, though, I believe that it's important that it have two very important elements in it.  First, it must allow us to help other people in their lives, by teaching them or encouraging them or providing them with resources they need or giving them opportunities to grow.  If I make owning a small store my main purpose, I can also have the purpose of providing my employees with opportunities to learn and grow and develop self-confidence, for example.  And another purpose can be to fulfill a true need in my community.  And still another can be to learn as much as I can about business and pass that knowledge on to others.

Having a purpose in life can help us to have a life of purpose.  Many people really don't pursue any purpose at all.  They go to work and do what they need to do in order to get a paycheck.  They come home and sit on the couch watching TV all evening.  They go to bed.  Tomorrow, they get up and do the same thing all over again.  They haven't defined for themselves anything that they truly want to accomplish while they're alive, and that's a shame, for the gift of life that they have isn't being used to better anything or anyone else while they're here--and they're not even making an effort to better themselves.  And the lack of purpose then manifests itself in frustration, anger, hostility, and a host of other traits and issues.

If you define for yourself a purpose in life, you can define for yourself a life well lived rather than a life spent existing.  It really is up to you, though, to figure out just what you love to do, just what you're good at, and just how you can best serve others.  Life will go on without us having a purpose, but finding and pursuing a worthy purpose will get us into the mainstream of a happy and healthy and fulfilling life.


No one can tell you how to find your purpose.  It can only be found, slowly,
in your own dark sky, in whatever is sacred to you, be that church or woods.
It can't be found by searching around for a role model or learning how cultural
heroes handled their difficulties.  It is seldom found by following anyone
else's rules.  It lives in the rest in the place where music is born, the fertile
void, the silence between notes.  It is simple and basic.  It emerges slowly
as a sunrise, as we search through our gifts, our darkness, our losses and loves.
Your job and mine is to be quiet and alone from time to time.  To be present to
ourselves and the natural world, and to be in conversation with what is hidden
in us in such a way that we can explore what brings us more alive.   -Dawna Markova

Our Relationships with Money

If people get their attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area of their lives.

-Billy Graham

It makes me sad to see so often the ways that we don't try to foster healthy relationships with money--neither as a society nor as individuals.  So many of us have a negative relationship with money, never having "enough" of it, considering it something terribly powerful in its absence in our lives.  Others of us use it to try to impress other people or to buy things to make up for ethical, moral, or emotional shortcomings.  People blame it for their problems, and they use it to show off to others.  When we look at the concept of money objectively, though, we see that it's nothing more than a method of exchange--we exchange our work doing or creating things for the money that people give us, and then we exchange the money for goods or services that other people offer.  It's very much like electronics have become, though--a tool that should serve us has become a god that controls us, when we allow it to do so.

Just the other day I went to a ticket-selling website to look at the prices that are being charged for tickets to Bruce Springsteen concerts that will happen next year.  I found two decent seats next to each other that were being sold for over $4600 each--and they weren't the most expensive ones.

Why would anyone spend that much money for a two- or three-hour concert?  For most of us, this makes no sense at all.  Personally, when I think of all the good that I could do with that amount of money, rather than put it into the pockets of a singer and a ticket agency, it makes me kind of sad to think that the money is going for something so fleeting, so unenduring.  This is especially true today, when so many people are having a hard time just meeting basic needs like paying for rent or food or diapers for their babies.

As members of our society, though, we've been conditioned since we were able to comprehend messages to spend our money, to buy things that we don't really need, to "contribute" to the cycle of capitalism (which has become a bastardized version of itself in our country, favoring the very wealthy and those who are already affluent, and penalizing most of those who aren't wealthy).  We've been told that buying that more expensive bike helps our economy, even though the bike was built in another country.  We've been told that we "deserve" the most expensive things for ourselves, that we should always buy the $4.00 cup of coffee instead of the $1.00 cup of coffee, even when there's no difference at all between the quality of the two.  We need to buy the more expensive things because of the ways that other people will look at us and admire us when they see us wearing a $400 dress instead of a $75 dress.  Yes, sometimes the higher price is an indication of higher quality and it makes sense to pay extra, but that's actually rarely the case.

So what are we supposed to do?  Of course, there is no easy answer to this question, but there are some definite rules that do seem to come close to being laws of dealing with money.  For example, money is meant to circulate--when we have it, one of our goals should be to spend it.  When we do this, we help our entire community to thrive.  When you eat at the local restaurant, you're helping to support a local business and you're helping the owners to pay their bills and send their kids to college and take vacations and prepare themselves for retirement.  That tip you gave to the guy who helped you with your luggage helps him to pay his rent or his electric bill or his student loan payment.  When we hide our money away, we're contributing little to our own communities.

And this is one of the hard parts--our society has made it a norm for chain stores and restaurants to come into our communities.  Yes, they do provide some employment for local people, but most of the money that we spend there leaves our communities rather quickly, so that money benefits our community very little.  But we still need to buy things, right?  Of course we do--we need to eat and wear clothes, and our homes and cars need upkeep.  One of the hardest decisions we can make, then, is to spend ten dollars more for the same product or service at a local store rather than at a chain store, for then our contribution can make a bigger difference when the people who now have our money then spend it locally, also.

The main point, though, is that money is meant to be shared, and it's meant to be circulated.  And when we do circulate it, we need to be discerning about where and how we spend it.  I don't go to restaurants, for example, that end up costing over $50 a meal for each person.  I don't have enough money for that kind of price not to be an issue for me.  I don't buy the $6 bag of cookies when the $2 bag tastes just as good--but if the latter bag tastes crappy and I really like the cookies, then sometimes I will splurge for the good package, and I'll never buy the crappy ones just because they're cheap.  Decisions like this tend to define our relationship with money, and it's important that we take those decisions seriously.

One of the biggest problems that I witness is the idea that money exists just for me to fulfill my every wish.  That's not why we have money, and if we think it is, we're bound to spend our lives with "money problems," which often could be better called "decision problems."  If you're having problems paying your rent or car payment, then perhaps now isn't the time for that $400 concert ticket.  Another problem is not understanding the value of money, which we see constantly when people pay $5 for a bottle of water that they could just as easily get from the tap.  Advertisers have convinced these people that the water really is worth that amount of money, when the simple truth is that it's not--the water in that bottle is no better than the water in a $1 bottle, or even, as in most communities, water from a tap.

How do you and money get along?  Are you okay sharing it when you see situations in which it really should be shared?  Do you respect its value, and try to make sure that the exchanges you make for it make sense?  Your relationship with your money is yours alone, and when you can develop a balanced relationship that's based on common sense and a desire to help others, then you can be pretty sure that your relationship is going to be a healthy one that will benefit you and those you love.

Let money be a positive part of your life, and it will do so.  Share it, and more will come back to you.  The avenues of supply are much more common and easy to access than most of us think, and they'll open up when we develop that strong relationship.

More thoughts and ideas on money.

The Strength of the Gentle

I grew up thinking that strength meant being strong, showing strength in physical and emotional ways.  It meant being unyielding, and it always implied pushing beyond limits and pushing others to push themselves beyond their personal limits.  It was an ideal that everyone was supposed to live up to:  always being strong and never giving in.

Gentleness, on the other hand, was seen as weakness in many cases.  A gentle response to a problem was lame and ineffective.  A gentle approach to a problem made no sense, because we surely can't "overcome" problems with a gentle approach.

But what if most problems don't need to be overcome?  What if, instead, they need to be understood and worked through?  What if gentleness is an approach that works more effectively in the long run, long past the time that the short-term fix that's based on strength or force ceases to be effective any more?  Many people never will find out the effectiveness of gentleness because they'll always be convinced that they have to be strong in order to get things done.

Gentleness means recognizing that the world around us is fragile, especially
other people. It is recognizing our own capacity to do harm and choosing 
to be tender, soft-spoken, soft-hearted, and careful. When we are gentle
we touch the world in ways that protect and preserve it.  Being gentle
doesn't mean being weak; gentleness can be firm, even powerful.
-unattributed, Wisdom Commons

I was fortunate as a teacher to discover that the vast majority of my students responded much, much better to my gentleness than they did to my strength.  They had enough "strong" teachers--they didn't need any more criticism, harshness, inflexibility, or punishment.  The vast majority of them were doing the best they could, and they really appreciated it when I treated them gently rather than harshly.

Sometimes we feel pressure to be "in control" of things, and many of our so-called "teachers" in life--parents, relatives, bosses, and anyone else who has influence over us--try to convince us that being "in control" means that other people will bend to our will and act in ways we want them to.  The kid who's making noise will shut up; the subordinate at work will do what they're told; nobody will argue with you for any reason at all.

But the gentle approach isn't concerned with directly controlling situations.  Rather, the gentle person understands that often, things don't go right because someone doesn't understand something and needs to be taught, or someone is doing something wrong because they're hurting in an important and painful way, or a person doesn't respond well to suggestions or requests because they simply don't understand the importance of doing something in a certain way.  In these cases--and many others--gently helping the person involved is generally much more effective than trying to "force" things to happen our way.

Don't judge the gentle; their gentleness is stronger than your fears and angers.
Don't judge those who have lost their gentleness; you haven't lived their lives.
In all people, hope for the gentleness to return and see gentleness
for the beauty that it is.
-C. JoyBell C.

One of the most important things that we can do in our lives is to adopt gentleness as an approach to the rest of life.  When we're gentle, we allow others to be themselves rather than trying to force them to be something else.  When we're gentle, we become an ally to other people rather than an enemy.  When we're gentle, we show others their worth and value rather than trying to convince them that they're worthless if they don't do things our way.  When we're gentle, we help people to heal rather than opening up new wounds.

Yes, there are times when a strong and unyielding approach is more effective, even necessary.  But these times represent the exception rather than the rule.

A gentle approach to the world shows respect and allows others to keep their dignity.  It shows the world that we're not so insecure that we must dominate and control others.  It allows us to be an ally of life rather than a foe of life.  And for ourselves, it gives us peace of mind and peace of heart when we focus on a gentle understanding rather than stressful conflict.  Gentleness allows us to be in touch with our higher selves, that part of who we are that is able to share love, compassion, understanding, and hope with our fellow human beings.

In the broad picture of life, let me always be a person who chooses a gentle approach whenever I can.

Read more on gentleness here.

Common Sense: An Endangered Quality?

I truly love common sense, and I really like being with people who show it regularly.  Common sense is one of the most important traits that human beings can show, I believe, for it allows us to avoid stupid mistakes and to do things that make sense, no matter what the circumstances.

The problem seems to be that common sense often contradicts the wants and needs of other people who have influence over us.  It can even contradict our own wants and needs--if something goes wrong with our plumbing but I have no expertise or experience with plumbing, common sense tells us to hire someone who does.  But what if we don't have enough money to pay a plumber to come out and fix things?  Then we make the decision to do it ourselves even though we're not quite sure what we're doing, and that's a decision that can end up costing us tons more money if we make mistakes that need even more professional help.

I think that some people simply never have learned about common sense.  They're not able to look at a situation and figure out what the clearest, most common-sensical approach to dealing with it would be.  If a child is having a bad day and being a pain, we'll often see parents get upset with the kid, telling them to knock it off and to act better.  Common sense would tell us, though, that the most important thing that we can do is to find out what's wrong--especially if the behavior isn't normal for that person.

Everybody gets so much information all day long
that they lose their common sense.
-Gertrude Stein

It's rather easy to lose track of common sense in a world that pressures us to know everything, and to do everything quickly.  Sometimes we lose common sense because of our tendency to hurry--we ask ourselves, "What would be the quickest solution to this problem?" rather than "Which solution makes the most sense and has the best chance of being effective?"  Our desire to get things done and move on to the next thing can hurt us rather significantly if we're not careful, and it's hard to be careful if we're constantly focused on time.

We also lose our ability to practice common sense when we overthink.  We tend to overanalyze so much of what we do because we've been taught that logic and reason are the most important traits that we can exercise when dealing with any sort of problem.  After all, the human being has been gifted with reason, so we should use our reason in every situation, right?  But things don't always work out that way.  One of the most common stereotypes of men is that we tend not to stop and ask for directions, even though common sense tells us that someone who lives in the area would be a very good source of information if we're looking for something.  But we convince ourselves that we can "figure it out," and we keep looking even though we've never been in this particular place ourselves.  Of course, all locals aren't going to be able to give us effective directions, but the chances of them knowing how to get somewhere in their own town are much better than the chances of us being able to find something that we haven't found yet.

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without
education than to have education without common sense.
-Robert Green Ingersoll

Our tendency to rely upon technology has been a disaster for common sense.  Once my wife and I were driving with another couple, and the man driving was relying on his GPS device for directions.  We were very hungry, and we were looking for a place to eat.  As we passed through a town, we passed a sign that told us that the next junction was straight ahead, while the downtown area was to the right.  I fully expected him to take a right so that we could find a restaurant in the downtown area, but just then his device "spoke" to him and told him to go straight--it was telling him how to reach his destination by the shortest route possible.  Even though we were extremely hungry, he followed the spoken directions of his GPS, and we ended up bypassing the downtown area, and any chance we had of finding a restaurant in that town.

When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated,
and opaque, it is usually a sign that he or she is attempting to prove
as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.
-Edward Abbey

We truly should not put logic and rational thought and information on the pedestals upon which so many of us put them.  Common sense, I believe, should always be our first goal when deciding upon any course of action.  Sometimes there will be other needs involved that will force us to not follow the most common-sensical approach and to look for longer-lasting solutions to problems, but in my experience, common sense will help us out far more often in far more many ways than anything else.  It can help us in our relationships, in our jobs, in our recreation, with our possessions and our homes and our dreams and goals and desires--but only if we make the effort to recognize it, and make the decision to follow it.

You'll find more thoughts and ideas on common sense here.

It Is What It Is: Accepting Life Fully

 "Acceptance" is one of those words that many of us seem to have problems with.  We like to "accept" on condition, which really isn't acceptance at all.  It's kind of like love in that way--we give our love freely to those who meet our standards or conditions, but we hold it back from people who don't.  We like to say that we accept life as it is, accept people as they are, accept situations as they are, but putting acceptance into practice is much, much different than truly accepting anything.

If I want to accept a person exactly as they are, then I can't impose conditions on that acceptance at all.  I can't say, "I like him, but I don't want to get together with him because of who he voted for."  We can't say, "You're a great person--once you learn some better manners, I'll be interested in seeing more of you."  We can't accept life as it is if we constantly look for the problems in life.  "I like living here, but it rains too much."  If we lose our jobs for some reason, the very first step that we have to make is too accept the loss, for nothing else can come of the situation until we do accept it.  Even if we were fired for unfair reasons, we can't fight the firing until we actually accept the fact that we have been fired.

Acceptance is a letting-go process.  You let go of your wishes
and demands that life can be different.  It's a conscious choice.
-Gary Emery

When we accept things as they are, we contribute greatly to our own peace of mind and peace of heart, for our acceptance frees us--we have no need or desire to have to make changes to anything.  It is what it is, and it's not our responsibility to improve or fix it.  And since most of our efforts to change things or people or situations to meet our personal criteria end up failing, anyway, that freedom is very welcome to us.  We're free to enjoy things as they are rather than spending our time wishing they were something else.

It's very important that we remind ourselves constantly that we weren't placed on this planet in order to change other things and people in order to make them what we think they should be.  We cannot learn from other people unless we accept them as they are.  We cannot be at peace with situations unless we accept them as they are.  We cannot reach our full potential until we accept ourselves as we are.

Acceptance of one's life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not
mean running away from the struggle.  On the contrary it means accepting
it as it comes. . . .  To accept is to say yes to life in its entirety.
-Paul Tournier

Of course, acceptance of the way things are doesn't necessarily imply approval.  I may accept someone's drug addiction because the person simply is a drug addict, and I can do nothing to help that person until I acknowledge and accept that fact.  When I accept that truth, I can act accordingly--this is not a person I would put in charge of anything important or have babysit my kids.  And it's not until that person accepts his or her own addiction that any true change can be made.

Accepting life doesn't ever mean that I refuse to try to change things for the better.  It means that I've done my best to see things as they are, and I'm willing to let life and other people do their own things without interference or help from me.  It's a freeing tendency, one that allows us to go on with making our lives the best they can be without feeling obligated to fix things for everyone else.  You are as you are, and that's just fine.  I may not want to spend much time with you because of the way you swear or the way you tend to insult other people, but that's fine.  I can tell you that straight out:  "I like you, but I try to avoid that type of talk because it offends me," and then let you choose whether or not it's worth it to you to tone down the language in order to spend more time with me.  I've made my choices based on accepting who you are, and now you have a chance to make your own choices.  I'm not trying to change you, but my acceptance of you shouldn't make me have to endure behaviors that make me feel awful.

I truly do believe that accepting life as it is and people as they are is one of the most important keys to living life fully.  When we do learn to accept life, accept others, and accept ourselves fully and unconditionally, we lose a lot of self-created stress that comes about because we think we need to control life and control people and control situations--and that's a thought that dooms us to failure and extra stress, because we weren't put here to control things--we're here to learn from things as they are, and to get to know them and love them as they are.

I accept life unconditionally.  Most people ask for happiness on condition.
Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.
-Artur Rubinstein

Visit our pages on acceptance here!