How to Be Emotionally Independent

Being emotionally independent and resilient is an integral part of being happy. When we depend on others for our sense of self, we never truly know who we are. Fortunately, by accepting ourselves, modifying our thinking, and taking active strides to be true to who we are and who we feel, we can find that inner sense of peace and independence we’ve been looking for. And it all starts with Step 1 below.

Step 1. Accepting Yourself

Reframe the past.

Let’s take parents: most of them aren’t that great. Are they not that great because they don’t love us or we don’t deserve affection? No. Though as children, that’s hard to see. They’re not that great because they have no idea what they’re doing – they’re trying, but they’re only human. Instead of blaming them (or an ex, for example) for your pain, reframe it. See that they don’t deserve anger, hate, or resentment. At worst they deserve pity; at best, compassion.

Whether you’re 7 or 70, you’ve probably had relationships that have left you a little worse for the wear. We, humans, have a tendency to take every failure/argument/disappointment/rejection personally and tally it up in our own mental notebooks, coming up with a number to equate to just how valuable we are. First things first, that’s gotta stop. The past is in the past and it’s going to stay there. It has little significance.

Forgive and forget.

This is an integral step in the accepting yourself and reframing the past idea. When you don’t hold grudges and stop taking things personally, you’re left with an organic, untainted version of you – an emotionally independent and resilient you. And you’ll be happier, too!

The next time you catch yourself being upset with someone, realize that it has nothing to do with you. It’s them making their own decisions, and you have no control over that, which is fine. This is one trivial moment in the scheme of your life that in short order will be completely forgotten about.

That being said, this doesn’t mean that some people should be let off the hook. Forgive them, forget the behavior, but modify your expectations. Was your friend an hour late to your lunch date? Noted. Next time (if there is a next time), you’ll know how to handle it.

Spend time with yourself.

When’s the last time you had some free time to kill and didn’t whip out your phone or otherwise distract yourself? In today’s day and age, we’re constantly bombarded with stimuli, which ultimately removes us from introspection and getting to know our own minds. Starting now, take 20 minutes or so a day for some “me-time.” Who’s better company than you, anyway?

In this time, watch your mind wander. Where does it go to? How does it think? Take note of just how fascinating this thing inside your head really is. What can you learn about yourself?

Know who you are.

Kind of like asking an ant to look in a mirror and say, “I’m an ant,” isn’t it? Well, in addition to the steps above and below, there are a few sticking points that apply to everyone:

• You are just as worthy as everyone else you know. There are not “better” humans; we all have good and bad qualities.

• You have talents and interests. What are they?

• You have thoughts and opinions. You have things you like and dislike. What are those?

• You have values. You have beliefs. What things/concepts/ideas do you hold as true?

Step 2. Changing Your Thinking

Test yourself.

There are a handful of ways one can be emotionally dependent. The most common way is in a romantic relationship. We learn to depend on our significant other for affection, sex, approval, you name it. When it doesn’t come, we feel we’ve done something wrong or we’re somehow less valuable. How are you emotionally dependent? Romantically? With friends? Coworkers or your boss? With every person you meet? Think about a few of the following things to pinpoint what areas you need to work on:

• Do you get jealous easily? Do you compare yourself to others so much that it can ruin your day?

• Do people often fail to meet your expectations? Who does this most often?

• When you’re alone, do you seek out others just to feel okay? Does a void spring up when you’re not with others?

• Does your partner or the idea of a partner mean happiness to you?

Take responsibility.

When we blame others, they’re at fault. Therefore, they become the only ones who can fix the problem. Terrible. In order to take control of your thinking and emotions, you’ve got to take responsibility.

This forces you to become reliant on yourself for a solution. Instead of wallowing in misery, you think about what options you have at your disposal to improve the situation. This gets rid of those negative emotions that well up, too, forcing you to be more logical and feel more in control.

The next time you get offended, stop.

Just for a moment. Why get all worked up? This is just a person who is passing judgment and criticism. It is not the end of the world, nor is it even particularly remarkable, likely. Everyone does it. Why give them the satisfaction of caring? It’s just not worth it.

Remind yourself that you don’t have to react the way you feel inclined to. It may seem as if the natural, human way to respond is by being upset, but that’s hardly your only option. You could be angry, you could be sad – or you could note it and move on. After all, there’s no benefit to being angry or sad, is there? What’ll it get you?

Realize that happiness is only inside you.

Quite literally. Serotonin and dopamine are what you really enjoy. If you wanted to condition yourself to feel ecstatic at the sight of brown carpet, you could. Brains are funny little creatures like that. In other words, you decide what makes you happy and it has nothing to do with the outside world. It comes from within – you can’t find it out there.

In case it wasn’t clear, this is very, very, very good news. You have control over all your feelings! You are at the whim of no one! Every emotion you want to feel, you can. Every emotion you don’t want to feel, you don’t have to. Happiness is just a decision away.

Do your best not to overcompensate.

There is a fine line between being emotionally independent, and well, a jerk. Some people get so caught up in “being true to them” that they step all over others in an effort to assert themselves. Keep in mind that this is not an excuse to be a bully and to always get your way. You can be kind and considerate while still being true to you.

Most people who stomp all over others are trying to thwart their inner feelings inadequacy or unimportance. They don’t feel of any value on the inside, so they force their “value” on others in an effort to convince themselves. This isn’t being emotionally independent – it’s straight up being rude.

Step 3. Living Independently

Decide for yourself.

The next time your friends are sitting around the table badmouthing the latest movie or complaining about pseudo-liberals or even gossiping about a friend, instead of letting them shape your opinions, decide for yourself. How do you feel? Why should their opinions have any weight on yours?

Try this in tiny ways, too. The next time you want to check out a cafe or a movie or a shop, etc., and you’ve heard pretty mediocre things, go anyway! Other people sometimes just don’t know what they’re talking about.

When you have decided for yourself, work up to speaking out about it. It’s possible other people feel similarly but are too shy to say anything! You may also bring up a good point that no one else considered.

Say “no.“

The next time you have an opportunity to do something that you just don’t feel like doing, say no. Not only do you not want to partake in this activity, but it’s totally fine if you don’t live up to others’ expectations because it doesn’t bother you. Listen to your gut – it’s often right.

There’s a fine line here, however. Should you skip your best friend’s wedding because you don’t feel like it? Probably not. Should you avoid the mandatory work meeting because you’re feeling lazy? Nope. In other words, know how to pick your battles.

Learn to fix your own problems.

Nowadays, we live in cultures of millions. We have so many resources at our disposal that we don’t have to do a thing ourselves. We get our cars fixed, our plumbing fixed, our computers fixed, our health fixed – the list goes on and on. Unfortunately, that takes away from our resourcefulness and our sense of responsibility. In order to not depend on others, we’ve got to fix our own problems.

So the next time you’re feeling down in the dumps, take it on your own shoulders to do something about it. Spend the night doing something you really enjoy, treat yourself to retail therapy, or, heck, just relax. When you’re successful, this can show you that you have the power to make everything better, not other people.

Expect little from others.

There’s a line from a James Bond theme that says, “Arm yourself because no one else will save you.” It’s a little cynical, but the idea is true: we’re all humans and at the end of the day, we have to be selfish and put ourselves first to be happy. Everyone else does it, so you can, too – without feeling any guilt.

Keeping this in mind can help you from getting your hopes up and then being let down. When you have few expectations of people, it’s easier for others to meet them. And it’ll be easier to notice who still struggles meeting your lack of expectation and who consistently rises to the top.

Hang out with different groups of people.

When our entire lives revolve around a small group of people, it’s hard not to think that their opinions couldn’t move mountains. To widen your world and take the importance off their opinions, hang out with more people! Having a wide social network is good in fair and foul weather, too.

All humans have to attach themselves to things. It can stink because it means our emotions are at the whim of other people and other things. The key here is to not over-attach yourself. It’s a fine line that only you can find. The best way to do this is to spread yourself between different people and divvy up your time accordingly.

Do your own thing.

This is what it comes down to. You are your own person and therefore you’re going to do your own thing, whatever that means. When you find who you are and stick to it, no one can stop that inner sense of happiness that’ll prevail as a result.

People who genuinely stick to who they are are a rare breed. It shouldn’t cause judgment – it should inspire. People will see that you are your own fountain of happiness and wish they were the same! While some won’t be able to handle it, they’re not the ones you want to be around anyway!.

 

 

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Source: The above story is based on materials originally published on wikihow.com. The original article was written by several unspecified authors.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

9 Signs You’re In A Relationship With A Con-Artist

I resolve to publish this short list as I found it on powerofpositivity.com because in my life experience I faced this situation. And I can say that the sooner you recognize that you are staying with a con artist the easier will be to come out. Consequences are often incredibly heavy. This happened to me since I had a trusted con-artist partner for a very long time. Thank heaven, this is gone now. Be careful and look at signals.

By the way, a con artist is a person who cheats or tricks others by persuading them to believe something that is not true to get benefits and personal advantages.

Manipulation is the name of the game when you’re in a relationship with a con-artist. A con-artist is what we now call someone who used to be called a confidence artist. Let’s look at 9 telling signs that you’re in a relationship with a con-artist.

1. YOU HAVE LOW SELF-ESTEEM

A con artist often looks for an easy target. Someone who already has low self-esteem is an easy mark for them. They will use your low self-esteem to their advantage by telling you that they would love you more if ___. Do yourself a favor and leave this person immediately. True love is not conditional.

2. YOUR ROMANCE SWEPT YOU OFF YOUR FEET AT FIRST

Because they needed your undying devotion to them in order to rip you off, your con artist was a great romancer at the beginning of your relationship. However, things have changed now and there has been very little romantic action lately.

3. YOUR GUT INSTINCT IS TRYING TO SEND YOU A SIGNAL

That ‘Hmm, that was weird’ gut feeling happens more often to you in your relationship with a con artist than it ever did otherwise. Pay attention to that feeling because it’s sending you a signal that something’s wrong.

4. THE CON-ARTIST KEEPS YOU FROM SEEING YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY

Someone rational who is removed form the relationship has the power to open your eyes to what is really happening with the con-artist’s behavior. As a result, the con-artist in your life will try to keep you from seeing these people who are a threat to their game. Do not let someone tell you who you can and cannot spend time with.

5. YOUR RELATIONSHIP IS ONE-SIDED

You are probably giving more to your partner than you are receiving. This can be in the form of love, emotional support, gifts, money, or time. If your partner does not reciprocate as often as you’d like them to, it could be a sign that you’re in a relationship with a con-artist.

6. YOU LACK CONTROL OVER YOUR LIFE

If your con-artist has done a good job, they will take power away from you. You do not control the money, vehicles or power in the relationship. If you have to ask permission to go anywhere or buy anything, it is a warning sign that you’re in a relationship with a con artist.

7. YOU ARE A GIVER BY NATURE

The types of victims that con-artists look for are those in healing, nurturing, and socially responsible people. You want to help your fellow man and your con-artist is going to claim to need your help. They have targeted you based on your generous personality.

8. CONFLICTING STORIES DON’T ADD UP

Catching a con-artist in a lie means that they have to create another lie to cover their tracks. A con-artist is basically a narcissist and a sociopath; they only care about themselves and they do not feel sorry for their actions that hurt someone else.
In fact, a good con-artist is so good at avoiding feelings of guilt that they will often blame the victim for making them act this way. Author Tamar Frankel who wrote The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle: A History and Analysis of Con Artists and Victims says of con-artists: ‘They have an ego that can’t afford to be repentant, so they blame others. They blame the government, they blame the law, and they blame the victims. They also justify what they do as a protective measure’if they don’t cheat others, others will cheat them first.’

9. YOU HAVE TROUBLE REMEMBERING THE LAST TIME YOU FELT AT PEACE

All of the drama created by living with a con artist can wreck havoc on your emotional state. You likely have been feeling feel fear, anger and sadness more often than you feel moments of joy. Your con artist likes keeping you in an unhappy emotional state because you can be more easily manipulated that way.
According to fraudaid.com, only about 7% of scam victims report the crime. If you believe that your con-artist has stolen from you, do not be afraid to contact police to report the crime. A police trail may be one of the only ways to prevent other people from falling victim to this person’s games.

Want to Be Happier? Ask Yourself This Question Every Morning

Albert Einstein called this “the most important decision” we make in our lives.

When you first wake up, what pops into your mind?

Do you start thinking about all the work you have to do? The emails you have to reply to, the pile of paperwork on your desk that has to be completed, or maybe it’s the housework that still needs to get done?

Or…

Do you think about the things that make you happy? The kiss your little boy or girl is going to give you before heading out to school, the hug your partner will greet you with when you come home, or the fact that, even though you may not have everything you want, you’re doing just fine?

Albert Einstein once said,

“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or a hostile universe.”

Is the world you live in hostile or friendly? How do you look at it? It’s up to you to decide.

Every single day I make that decision.

I wake up and ask myself: “Do I live in a good world or a bad world?”

Whether you view your world as good or bad impacts your attitude as you go about your day. Remez Sasson puts it another way by saying that positive thinking “…brings brightness to the eyes, more energy, and happiness.”

It makes you more understanding when things happen that you didn’t necessarily expect.

Someone cuts you off in traffic? It’s okay. At least they didn’t hit you, causing you to be late for your appointment and forcing you to deal with your insurance company, starting the lengthy and often frustrating process of getting your vehicle repaired.

Tourist walking slowly in front of you on the streets of New York City? Have patience! Take in the sights and smells and enjoy your “extra” time. (I had to add this one to remind myself.)

By starting your day with a conscious decision that the world is good, you’re less likely to react in a negative way when things happen that you didn’t plan. You have a little more patience. A little more hope.

Good begets good.

Plus, how you view your day right at its onset also affects how many good things will happen to you as the day progresses.

Susan Reynolds, co-author of Train Your Brain to Get Happy, says that “feeling pleasure can be so stimulating for your brain that it is primed to respond to pleasure in a way that reinforces that pleasure.”

In other words, the more good you search out in this world, the more good you’ll receive in return.

When you wake up and choose (consciously or unconsciously) to live in a “bad” world, you go through your day much differently. You feel frustrated when you wind up behind somebody who’s walking super slowly or if you get stuck in traffic. Standing in line at the store feels like an eternity and everything you do seems ten times harder.

Nothing works out like it should and you’re constantly waiting for things to go wrong (which they usually will) — things that “prove” that the world is a hostile place.

It’s good for you physically, too.

Choosing to think positively provides a lot of great health benefits as well.

It reduces your risk of depression, decreases your anxiety, and even makes you more resilient against whatever bug is going around. People who look at the bright side of life tend to live longer, and they have an easier time coping with the stressors that ordinary life has to offer.

Look, I know it’s really easy to get stuck and stay stuck in negativity, especially with everything going on in the world. You can’t go through your social media feeds without seeing quite a few posts of all of the things that are “wrong.”

But feeling that way keeps you from being happy. It keeps you from reaching higher levels of success because negative thinking has been linked with a reduced ability to think, be creative, and even respond to life in an emotionally healthy way.

If you want to be your own personal best, thinking positive first thing in the morning is the way to get there.

How to start your day more positively.

If you’re new to this whole “positivity” thing, here are some tips to help you focus more on the good than the bad:

Choose words and statements that reflect a positive attitude: “I will have a good day” or “I’m excited about what lies ahead today.”
Focus on things that make you happy:”I look forward to seeing my kid’s school play tonight” or “I can’t wait to see where this project at work takes me!”
Appreciate the good things in your world: “I’m thankful for my health, the fact that I can pay the bills, and that I have such a wonderful family!”
Spend more time with positive people, making it easier to be positive yourself!
It’s never going to be 100 percent, but if you focus on the good just a bit more than the bad, you’re making progress. It’s all about baby steps.

So when you wake up tomorrow, ask yourself this question:

“Do I live in a good world or a bad world?”

And I want you to remember that you have a choice. Do yourself a favor and choose the good. It will make you happier and healthier.

“When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It’s all a matter of perspective.”
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Story Source: The above story is based on materials originally published on inc.com. The original article was written by Chris Winfield. This story was originally published online on 20 April 2016. Image credit Getty Images. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

How To Forgive Someone Who Has Hurt You: In 15 Steps

Even When Forgiveness Feels Impossible

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Forgiving others is essential for spiritual growth.  Your experience of someone who has hurt you, while painful, is now nothing more that a thought or feeling that you carry around. These thoughts of resentment, anger, and hatred represent slow, debilitating energies that will dis-empower you if you continue to let these thoughts occupy space in your head. If you could release them, you would know more peace.

Below I share how to forgive someone who has hurt you in 15 steps:

Step 1: Move On to the Next Act

Your past history and all of your hurts are no longer here in your physical reality. Don’t allow them to be here in your mind, muddying your present moments. Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the play.Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Step 2: Reconnect to Spirit

Make a new agreement with yourself to always stay connected to Spirit even when it seems to be the most difficult thing to do. If you do this, you will allow whatever degree of perfect harmony that your body was designed for to proliferate. Turn your hurts over to God, and allow Spirit to flow through you.

Your new agreement with reality in which you’ve blended your physical self and your personality with your spiritual God-connected self will begin to radiate a higher energy of love and light. Wherever you go, others will experience the glow of your God consciousness, and disharmony and disorder and all manner of problems simply will not flourish in your presence. Become “an instrument of thy peace,” as St. Francis desires in the first line of his famous prayer.

Step 3: Don’t Go to Sleep Angry

Each night as I drift off to sleep, I adamantly refuse to use this precious time to review anything that I do not want to be reinforced in the hours of being immersed in my subconscious mind. I choose to impress upon my subconscious mind my conception of myself as a Divine creator in alignment with the one mind. I reiterate my I ams, which I have placed in my  imagination, and I remember that my slumber will be dominated by my last waking concept of myself. I am peaceful, I am content, I am love, and I attract only to myself those who are in alignment with my highest ideals of myself.

This is my nightly ritual, always eschewing any temptation to go over any fear of unpleasantness that my ego might be asking me to review. I assume the feeling in my body of those I am statements already fulfilled, and I know that I’m allowing myself to be programmed while asleep, for the next day I rise knowing that I am a free agent.

In sleep man impresses the subconscious mind with his conception of himself. — Neville Goddard

Step 4: Switch the Focus from Blaming Others to Understanding Yourself

Whenever you’re upset over the conduct of others, take the focus off those you’re holding responsible for your inner distress. Shift your mental energy to allowing yourself to be with whatever you’re feeling — let the experience be as it may, without blaming others for your feelings. Don’t blame yourself either! Just allow the experience to unfold and tell yourself that no one has the power to make you uneasy without your consent, and that you’re unwilling to grant that authority to this person right now.

Tell yourself that you are willing to freely experience your emotions without calling them “wrong” or needing to chase them away. In this way, you’ve made a shift to self-mastery. It’s important to bypass blame, and even to bypass your desire to understand the other person; instead, focus on understanding yourself.
By taking responsibility for how you choose to respond to anything or anyone, you’re aligning yourself with the beautiful dance of life. By changing the way you choose to perceive the power that others have over you and you will see a bright new world of unlimited potential for yourself and you will know instantly how to forgive and let go of anything.

Step 5: Avoid Telling People What to Do

Avoid thoughts and activities that involve telling people who are perfectly capable of making their own choices what to do. In your family, remember that you do not own anyone. The poet Kahlil Gibran reminds you:

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you . . .

This is always true. In fact, disregard any inclination to dominate in all of your relationships. Listen rather than expound. Pay attention to yourself when you’re having judgmental opinions and see where self-attention takes you. When you replace an ownership mentality with one of allowing, you’ll begin to see the true unfolding of the Tao in yourself and other people. From that moment on, you’ll be free of frustration with those who don’t behave according to your ego-dominated expectations.

Step 6: Learn to Let Go and Be Like Water

Rather than attempting to dominate with your forcefulness, be like water: flow everywhere there’s an opening. Soften your hard edges by being more tolerant of contrary opinions. Interfere less, and substitute listening for directing and telling. When someone offers you their viewpoint, try responding with: “I’ve never considered that before—thank you. I’ll give it some thought.”

When you give up interfering, and opt instead to stream like water—gently, softly, and unobtrusively— you become forgiveness itself.

Picture yourself as having the same qualities as water. Allow your soft, weak, yielding, fluid self to enter places where you previously were excluded because of your inclination to be solid and hard. Flow softly into the lives of those with whom you feel conflicted: Picture yourself entering their private inner selves, seeing perhaps for the first time what they’re experiencing. Keep this image of yourself as gently coursing water, and watch how your relationships change.

Step 7: Take Responsibility for Your Part

Removing blame means never assigning responsibility to anyone else for what you’re experiencing. It means that you’re willing to say, “I may not understand why I feel this way, why I have this illness, why I’ve been victimized, or why I had this accident, but I’m willing to say without any guilt or resentment that I own it. I live with, and I am responsible for, having it in my life.”

If you take responsibility for having the experience, then at least you have a chance to also take responsibility for removing it or learning from it. If you’re in some small (perhaps unknown) way responsible for that migraine headache or that depressed feeling, then you can go to work to remove it or discover what its message is for you. If, on the other hand, someone or something else is responsible in your mind, then of course you’ll have to wait until they change for you to get better. And that is unlikely to occur. So you go home with nothing and are left with nothing when peace is really on the other side of the coin.

Step 8: Let Go of Resentments

What causes annoyance and anger after a dispute? The generic response would be a laundry list detailing why the other person was wrong and how illogically and unreasonably they behaved, concluding with something like, “I have a right to be upset when my [daughter, mother-in-law, ex-husband, boss, or whomever you’re thinking of] speaks to  me that way!”

But if you’re interested in living a Tao-filled life, it’s imperative that you reverse this kind of thinking. Resentments don’t come from the conduct of the other party in an altercation—no, they survive and thrive because you’re unwilling to end that altercation with an offering of kindness, love, and authentic forgiveness. As Lao-Tzu says:

Someone must risk returning injury with kindness, or hostility will never turn to goodwill. — Lao-Tzu

So when all of the yelling, screaming, and threatening words have been expressed, the time for calm has arrived. Remember that no storm lasts forever, and that hidden within are always seeds of tranquility. There is a time for hostility and a time for peace.

Step 9: Be Kind Instead of Right

There is a Chinese proverb, If you’re going to pursue revenge, you’d better dig two graves, which is saying to me: your resentments will destroy you.

The world is just the way it is. The people who are behaving “badly” in the world are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. You can process it in any way that you choose. If you’re filled with anger about all of those “problems,” you are one more person who contributes to the pollution of anger.  Instead, remember that you have no need to make others wrong or to retaliate when you’ve been wronged.

Imagine if someone says something to you that you find offensive, and rather than opting for resentment, you learn to depersonalize what you’ve just heard and respond with kindness. You are willing to freely send the higher, faster energies of love, peace, joy, forgiveness, and kindness as your response to whatever comes your way. You do this for yourself. You would rather be kind than right.

Step 10: Practice Giving

In the midst of arguments or disagreements, practice giving rather than taking before you exit. Giving involves leaving the ego behind. While it wants to win and show its superiority by being contrary and disrespectful, your Tao nature wants to be at peace and live in harmony. You can reduce your quarreling time to almost zero if you practice this procedure:

Wherever you are, whenever you feel strong emotions stirring in you and you notice yourself  feeling the need to “be right,” silently recite the following words from the Prayer of Saint Francis:

Where there is injury, [let me bring] pardon.

Be a giver of forgiveness as he teaches: Bring love to hate, light to darkness, and pardon to injury. Read these words daily, for they’ll help you overcome your ego’s demands and know the fullness of life.

Step 11: Stop Looking for Occasions to Be Offended

When you live at or below ordinary levels of awareness, you spend a great deal of time and energy finding opportunities to be offended. A news report,  a rude stranger,  someone cursing, a sneeze, a black cloud —just about anything will do if you’re looking for an occasion to be offended. Become a person who refuses to be offended by any one, any thing, or any set of circumstances.

If you have enough faith in your own beliefs, you’ll find that it’s impossible to be offended by the beliefs and conduct of others.

Not being offended is a way of saying, “I have control over how I’m going to feel, and I choose to feel peaceful regardless of what I observe going on. When you feel offended, you’re practicing judgment. You judge someone else to be stupid, insensitive, rude, arrogant, inconsiderate, or foolish, and then you find yourself upset and offended by their conduct. What you may not realize is that when you judge another person, you do not define them. You define yourself as someone who needs to judge others.

Step 12: Don’t Live In the Past – Be Present

When we find it difficult to forgive, often it is because we are not living in the present, and instead, we assign more importance to the past. We assign a good portion of our energy and attention lamenting the good old days that are gone forever as the reason why we can’t be happy and fulfilled today. “Everything has changed,” “No one respects anyone else like they used to…” This is assigning responsibility to the past for why you can’t be happy today.

It’s doubtful that other creatures waste the present moment in thoughts of past and future. A beaver only does beaver, and he does it right in the moment. He doesn’t spend his days  ruminating over the fact that his beaver siblings received more attention, or his father beaver ran off with a younger beaver when he was growing up. He’s always in the now. We can learn much from God’s creatures about enjoying the present moment rather than using it up consumed with anger over the past or worry about the future. Practice living in the moment by appreciating the beauty around you now.

Step 13:  Embrace Your Dark Times

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did. Every spiritual advance that you will make in your life will very likely be preceded by some kind of fall or seeming disaster. Those dark times, accidents, tough episodes, break ups, periods of impoverishment, illnesses, abuses, and broken dreams were all in order. They happened, so you can assume they had to and you can’t unhappen them.

Embrace them from that perspective, and then understand them, accept them, honor them, and finally transform them.

Step 14: Refrain from Judgement

When you stop judging and simply become an observer, you will know  inner peace. With that sense of inner peace, you’ll find yourself happier and free of the negative energy of resentment. A bonus is that you’ll find that others are much more attracted to you. A peaceful person attracts peaceful energy.

If I’m to be a being of love living from my highest self, that means that love is all I have inside of me and all that I have to give away. If someone I love chooses to be something other than what my ego would prefer, I must send them the ingredients of my highest self, which is God, and God is love.

My criticism and condemnation of the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of others—regardless of how right and moral my human self convinces me it is—is a step away from God-realization. And it is God-consciousness that allows for my wishes to be fulfilled, as long as they are aligned with my Source of being. I can come up with a long list of reasons why I should be judgmental and condemnatory toward another of God’s children and why, damn it, I am right. Yet if I want to perfect my own world—and I so want to do so—then I must substitute love for these judgments.

Step 15: Send Love

I spent years studying the teachings of Patanjali, and he reminded us several thousand years ago that when we are steadfast—which means that we never slip in our abstention of thoughts of harm directed toward others—then all living creatures cease to feel enmity in our presence.

Now I know that we are all human: you, me, all of us. We do occasionally slip and retreat from our highest self into judgment, criticism, and condemnation, but this is not a rationale for choosing to practice that kind of interaction. I can only tell you that when I finally got it, and I sent only love to another of God’s children whom I had been judging and criticizing, I got the immediate result of inner contentment.

I urge you to send love in place of those judgments and criticisms to others when you feel they impede your joy and happiness, and hold them in that place of love. Notice that if you stay steadfast, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

A Meditation to End on Love

Picture yourself at the termination of a quarrel or major dispute. Rather than reacting with old patterns of residual anger, revenge, and hurt, visualize offering kindness, love, and forgiveness.

Do this right now by sending out these “true virtue” thoughts to any resentments you’re currently carrying. Make this your standard response to any future altercations: I end on love, no matter what!

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Source: The above story is based on materials found on drwaynedyer.com in the blog section. The original article was written by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. Image credit unknown (found on website). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

The Most Proven Technique For Increasing Long Term Happiness

Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep.Write down three things that went well today and why they went well.

You may use a journal or your computer to write about the events, but it is important that you have a physical record of what you wrote. The three things need not be earthshaking in importance (“My husband picked up my favorite ice cream for dessert on the way home from work today”), but they can be important (“My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy”).

Next to each positive event, answer the question “Why did this happen?”

For example, if you wrote that your husband picked up ice cream, write “because my husband is really thoughtful sometimes” or “because I remembered to call him from work and remind him to stop by the grocery store.” Or if you wrote, “My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy,” you might pick as the cause “God was looking out for her” or “She did everything right during her pregnancy.”

Writing about why the positive events in your life happened may seem awkward at first, but please stick with it for one week. It will get easier. The odds are that you will be less depressed, happier, and addicted to this exercise six months from now.

Found here http://time.com/3709747/increasing-long-term-happiness/

Fearful symmetry: Roger Penrose’s tiling

The Penrose tiling’s almost-perfect “forbidden symmetry”

Roger Penrose makes his own rules. He is one of the world’s most distinguished mathematical physicists and most inventive thinkers. Penrose’s work on the theory of general relativity in the 1960s led to the discovery that the gravity of collapsing stars can produce black-hole “singularities” in space-time. This, in turn, set Stephen Hawking on his course to rewrite black-hole physics. The research established Penrose’s name in science, but his thought continued to range much further. In The Emperor’s New Mind (1989) he proposed that the human mind can handle problems that are “non-computable,” which is to say that any computer trying to solve them by executing a set of logical rules (as all computers do) would chunter away forever without reaching a conclusion. This property of the mind, Penrose argued, might stem from the brain’s use of a quantum-mechanical principle, perhaps involving quantum gravity. In collaboration with anaesthetist Stuart Hameroff, he suggested in Shadows of the Mind (1994) what that principle might be, involving quantum behaviour in protein filaments called microtubules in neurons. Neuroscientists scoffed, glazed over, or muttered “Oh, physicists…”

So when I remarked that he is known for ideas that most others couldn’t even imagine, let alone dare voice, introducing a talk by Penrose yesterday, I didn’t expect that I would hear new ones that evening. Penrose was speaking about the discovery for which he is perhaps best known among the public: the so-called Penrose tiling, a pair of rhombus-shaped tiles that can be used to tile a flat surface ad infinitum without the pattern ever repeating itself. It turns out that this pattern is peppered with objects that have five- or ten-fold symmetry; like a pentagon, they superimpose on themselves when rotated a fifth of a full turn. That is very strange, because fivefold symmetry is known to be rigorously forbidden for any two-dimensional packing of shapes. (Try it with ordinary pentagons and you quickly find that you get lots of gaps). The Penrose tiling doesn’t have this “forbidden symmetry” in a perfect form, but it almost does.

These tilings – there are other shapes that have an equivalent result – are strikingly beautiful, with a mixture of regularity and disorder that is somehow pleasing to the eye. This is doubtless why, as Penrose explained, many architects have made use of them. But they also have a deeper significance. After Penrose described the tiling in the 1970s, the crystallographer Alan Mackay – one of the unsung polymathic savants of British science – showed in 1981 that if you imagine putting atoms at the corners of the tiles and bouncing X-rays off them, you can get a pattern of reflections that looks like that of a perfect crystal with the forbidden five- and tenfold symmetries. Four years later, such a material was found in the real world by the Israeli materials scientist Daniel Shechtman and his coworkers. This was dubbed a quasicrystal, and the discovery won Shechtman the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Penrose tilings can explain how quasicrystals attain their “impossible” structure.

Roger Penrose on his tiling in the foyer of the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University

In his talk Penrose explained the richness of these tilings, manipulating transparencies like a prestidigitator in ways that elicited several gasps of delight as new patterns suddenly came into view. But it was in the Q&A session that we got a glimpse of Penrose’s wildly lateral thinking. Assembling a tiling is a very delicate business, because if you add a tile in the wrong place or orientation, somewhere further down the line the pattern fouls up. But how could atoms in a quasicrystal know that they have to come together in a certain way here to avoid a problem right over there? Maybe, Penrose said, they make use of entanglement, the bizarre quantum-mechanical property that foxed Einstein, in which two particles can affect one another instantaneously over any distance. Crikey.

In Penrose’s mind it all links up: quasicrystals, non-computable problems, the universe… You can use these tiles, he said, to represent the rules of how things interact in a hypothetical universe in which everything is non-computable: the rules are well defined, but you can never use them to predict what is going to happen until it actually happens. But my favourite anecdote is of Penrose inspecting a new tiling being laid out on the concourse of some university. Looking it over, he felt uneasy. Eventually he saw why: the builders, seeing an empty space at the edge of the tiling, had stuck another tile there that didn’t respect the proper rules for their assembly. No one else would have noticed, but Penrose saw that what it meant was that “the tiling would go wrong somewhere in the middle of the lawn.” Not that it was ever going to reach that far – but it was a flaw in that hypothetical continuation, that imaginary universe, and for a mathematician that wouldn’t do.

From an article of Mr Philip Ball you can find here http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ball/fearful-symmetry-roger-penroses-tiling

Why settle for ordinary?

Be aware of all that you are.

Two of today’s most sought-out spiritual teachers met in Maui in November, 2011, to talk about the nature of consciousness. Dr. Wayne Dyer and Eckhart Tolle give us their views on the importance of moving beyond an ordinary view of ourselves, reconnecting with our divine origins, and rediscovering our role in the well-being of the world.

Wayne: Most of us were raised to believe we are ordinary. We aren’t raised to believe in our extraordinariness, our divinity. This ordinary part of us, the ego, is the part that insists that we are what we have, what we do, what other people think of us. It tries to convince us we are separate. In truth, we are born perfect and then snatched out of that perfection and programmed into accumulating and achieving. We never get back to the extraordinary part of ourselves because the ordinary part thinks we are having a successful life. But beyond ordinary is the extraordinary—what we call the “soul.” That formless, invisible, birthless, deathless, infinite part of us only wants to expand and grow. We need to address this infinite, no-limits part of ourselves.

Eckhart:  This brings us to the ideas of “being” and “doing.” As human beings, we are called upon to act, to create. We are part of this universe’s love of creating form. But the universe also wants to know its own essence through us and that is realized by our drive to be totally content and at peace in the present moment, to seek that state of absolute, beautiful, deep peace. The outgoing movement of the universe is wanting to create and the return movement is the universe wanting to know itself through the human.  Yes, we want to do things, but not to lose being while we do them, not to lose ourselves in the doing. Can we remain rooted in being and act from there rather than acting from the needs of the ego? The essence that is timeless and infinite in everyone is “being.” Conscious union with that can lead to “awakened doing.”

Wayne: The great saint in India, Muktananda, was asked, “What is real?” He replied, “What is real is that which never changes.” When looking for what is real and unchanging about ourselves, we can apply this definition. Who are we? We certainly aren’t our bodies because those are changing constantly. So the real you is that which keeps occupying new bodies—from infant to toddler to teen to adult. There is an unchanging spark from the Creator in each of us, our highest self, a piece of God. And we are all connected. Eckhart, when I saw you in conversation with Oprah recently, I realized how important it is for all of us to be “aware” and living from an “awakened” state. We have an impact on every person we encounter.

Eckhart: All the people you encounter will be impacted. Your state of consciousness gets transmitted to others. One negative person can create a chain reaction of negativity in others. In the same way, a conscious person can dissolve streams of negativity. You affect the underlying collective field of human consciousness. I feel sure that you affect countless others that you never even meet, the collective consciousness of humanity.

Wayne: All life is connected so the whole universe can be impacted. The poet T.S. Eliot said, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” He may have been talking about death, but I think we can arrive at knowing our divine nature without having to die.

Eckhart: This reminds me of the parable of the Prodigal Son, from the Bible and other ancient sources. The son demands his inheritance and leaves home only to become destitute. This is the story of humanity, humanity losing itself in externals, losing connectedness with the Source of all being. Not totally losing the connection, but becoming unaware of it. So we become beggars looking for scraps, seeking fulfillment in houses, cars, new partners. This is the condition of the person who has lost awareness of the Source and our oneness with all beings. When the prodigal son returns to his father’s home, he appreciates at a deeper level something he had lost.

Wayne: Speaking of the Prodigal Son, Eckhart, I don’t know if it’s your story but it is mine. I’ve gotten lost several times and each one has been a way for me to recognize that all spiritual advances are preceded by a fall of some kind or another. The storms of my life have brought me back to God.

Found here http://www.healyourlife.com/author-dr-wayne-w-dyer/2013/02/lifeshelp/success-and-abundance/why-settle-for-ordinary

The Conscious Lifestyle: Short-Term Desires (Part 2)

The following article and its first part have been written by one of the most inspired and inspirational people: Dr. Deepak Chopra. I read the article and resolved I needed to share it with you.

I therefore integrally report the article as it has been issued by the author, as it inspired me.

– * – * –

We’ve been discussing the obstacles to living a conscious lifestyle by focusing on the torrent of small things that will fill your day unless you consciously free yourself. The future unfolds one day at a time, so unless you make time for the future before it arrives, a year from now you will be doing basically the same as what you’re doing today.

Making time for the future comes down to five steps. Let me repeat them since they lay the groundwork for fulfilling long-range goals.

1. Write down a single vision, project, or mission.
2. Set time aside to work on it every day.
3. Work consists of doing research, making connections, investigating your target audience or market, learning from projects similar to yours, challenging your assumptions, writing a proposal, seeking a mentor, partner, or confidant to bounce your ideas off, and raising capital if needed.
4. Set interim deadlines that you can reasonably meet every month.
5. Be adaptable about changing your project as it unfolds.

As you see, some real commitment is involved. It’s important therefore to think about what your vision or mission should be. Let me propose an idea that runs counter to a certain school of thought. That school focuses on the pursuit of excellence, climbing from “good to great,” or adopting the habits of highly successful achievers. In other words, you are urged to concentrate on external goals and the means to achieve them.

In my experience teaching high achievers in business school courses, the one thing they point to as the cause of their achievement is luck. They look back and realize that they were in the right place at the right time. A vision that can only succeed on the basis of luck only works for the tiniest sliver of the work force. Behind every CEO who makes the cover of Fortune magazine there is a trail of frustration littered with everyone who didn’t make it to the top. Luck is the exact opposite of consciousness.

The most fulfilled people in any profession, regardless of who climbs to the top, are those who followed an inner vision. They consciously shaped their futures from the inside, which is the only place you have any real control.  A large percentage of these people had highly successful careers, but that was secondary. First and foremost came the freedom to write their own scenario. The externals of your life fall in line with your internal values and the atmosphere you create around yourself.

So when you sit down to write your long-range vision or mission, consider these criteria.

1.  I will be satisfied with the work at every stage.
2.  I will benefit everyone around me.
3.  The effect on my family will be positive.
4.  I will feel creative.
5.  I will take pride in my accomplishment.
6.  I will be smarter, better, and wiser the more I pursue my vision.
7.  I will head into the unknown, a place I want to discover and explore.

Every vision brings setbacks and frustrations; there is inherent stress whenever you step out to accomplish something no one else has tried before.  No amount of self-discipline can control the stress. Only if you are centered, self-confident, and secure in the values you are sacrificing for will the journey become conscious.

In the current environment, inner visions are celebrated only after someone has struggled to reach the top. Along the way, there is more competition than collaboration, and if you don’t enter the dog-eat-dog fray, people will call you weak.  We live in the midst of huge abundance.  Ruthless, soul-killing tactics are rewarded, but so is moving upward through consciousness. Sit down with yourself, your family, your closest confidants, and work through the seven criteria I’ve outlined. They will serve you well if you truly dedicate yourself to inner fulfillment ahead of material rewards.

Written by

Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 65 books with numerous New York Times bestsellers and co-author with Rudolph Tanzi of Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-being. (Harmony)

Found here
The Conscious Lifestyle: Short-Term Desires (Part 2) | LinkedIn

The Conscious Lifestyle: Short-Term Desires (Part 1)

Deepak Chopra

The following article and its second part have been written by one of the most inspired and inspirational people: Dr. Deepak Chopra.
I read the article and resolved I needed to share it with you.
I therefore integrally report the article as it has been issued by the author, as it inspired me.

– * – * –

To fashion a conscious life for yourself, you must address the unconscious way that most people spend their days.  Activity automatically fills the time you devote to it.  Unconscious living is the same as having constricted awareness.  Conscious living is a process of expanding your mind instead.  This may sound a bit lofty, but in reality you can make great progress by examining how you fill your day, as we’ve seen in the last few posts.

We started out with three activities that are universally used to fill time:
1. Following a set routine
2. Coping with challenges as they come up
3. Fulfilling short-term desire.

The first two have been covered in some detail, so now let’s address the third.

In everyone’s life short-term desires compete with long-term desires, and whoever finds the right balance will reap the greatest success.  If you focus too much on short-term gratification, the following things become too important: eating, drinking, running errands, keeping everything neat and tidy, micro-managing others, perfectionism, gossip, and trivial distractions.  Experts in time management point out that all of these are inefficient and wasteful, which is certainly true.

But the larger point is that none of these activities challenges your mind. They require a short attention span, and in place of long-term gratification, you are settling for tiny hits of pleasure.  A stream of short-term gratification is like eating a candy bar every half hour instead of cooking and enjoying a banquet.

Long-term desires are emotionally more mature, because they delay gratification in the service of a bigger reward.  People realize this, which is why they plan for their retirement. Years of hard work lead to a payoff down the road. But too often those years are not gratifying. They are more like putting in your time at the salt mines. The trick is to derive the right kind of short-term fulfillment.  The right kind isn’t hard to define. It consists of what you do today to make next year better.

Think of it like writing a book. If you write a page every day, your manuscript will be done next year. A page doesn’t sound like much, but the catch is that it must fit into the final product. Ernest Hemingway set himself a daily goal of half a page only.  If you can do anything today that consciously goes toward fulfilling a long-range vision, plan, project, or mission, you will become the Hemingway of your own life.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Set down a single vision, project, or mission.
2. Set time aside to work on it every day.
3. Work consists of doing research, making connections, investigating your target audience or market, learning from projects similar to yours, challenging your assumptions, writing a proposal, seeking a mentor, partner, or confidant to bounce your ideas off, and raising capital if needed.
4. Set interim deadlines that you can reasonably meet every month.
5. Be adaptable about changing your project as it unfolds.

Each of these steps should be interesting and, one hopes, exciting to you.  Consciousness expands whenever a person feels creative, passionate, and joyful.  If you don’t have these qualities, you won’t wake up every morning eager to fulfill your long-range goal.  The value of following the five steps I’ve suggested is that you become action oriented; your goal doesn’t drift or become an empty dream.

In the next post we’ll discuss the most productive and valuable long-range goals. Hint: they begin on the inside and work outward.

(To be cont.)

written by

Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 65 books with numerous New York Times bestsellers and co-author with Rudolph Tanzi of Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-being. (Harmony)

Found here
The Conscious Lifestyle: Short-Term Desires | LinkedIn

How to Make Mindfulness a Habit With Only a Tiny Commitment

When you sit back and reminisce about your life, it’s almost a given that the most enjoyable and memorable moments are the ones in which you were completely present. Do you look back with fondness all the times you spent thinking about work while you drove home, or pondered dinner while you wheeled down the frozen aisle?

Unfortunately most of life passes that way for most of us. We’re in one place doing one thing, thinking of things we aren’t doing and places we aren’t at.

The bottom line of almost all self-help, spiritual, or religious literature is that our ability to be happy is determined by our ability to stay in the present moment. The Buddhists, the Toltecs, the Bible, Eckhart Tolle, Ram Dass, Emerson, Thoreau — anyone at all who is known for having found a path to consistent, recurring joy — cites staying present as the essential teaching.

Only when we’re present do we see beauty, enjoy gratitude, and experience happiness. It’s the moments we’re present for that make life good, so it only stands to reason that being present is something we’d do well to get better at.

We all know this already. Yet most of us — normal people with errands, work and to-do lists — spend most of our time considering the past and future rather than the present. Why doesn’t it click?

The problem is most of us are extremely habituated to living in our thoughts. The remembered past and the imagined future steal our attention most of the time. Whywe are so strongly predisposed this way is a huge discussion involving culture, biology, psychology and a host of other factors that we don’t need to get into right now. Suffice it to say that most of us have a serious habit of being mentally absent from the present moment most of the time.

Unless you make a serious commitment to taking on the biggest of human dilemmas — taming the rowdy mind once and for all — mindfulness will probably not establish itself as a habit for you. Some people do make a life’s work of it with daily meditation or monastery life, but if you’re unwilling to do that, can you still cultivate mindfulness on a consistent basis?

The rule about habits is that whatever you do most takes over. If you want to be a daily runner, and you miss more days than you actually go running, you’ve only made a habit of skipping running, and you’re back at square one.

To suddenly “go mindful” and try to be present all the time is about as easy as running a marathon when you’ve never even run around the block. Since most of us are not present the vast majority of the time, occasional stabs at “being in the moment” are quickly overrun by the colossal momentum of a lifetime of being lost in thought.

Baby steps seem to be in order. And many of us do try it this way. We make repeated resolutions to “notice the little things more” or “live in the now,” but these are too vague to be helpful in any practical sense. You may find yourself being present when you’ve just read an inspirational book or when someone mentions mindfulness, but in the long run it won’t take. The habit of preoccupation is so unbelievably strong that mindfulness just won’t be on your mind for long. It’s too subtle, too delicate — too light and vulnerable to withstand the swirling winds of the preoccupied mind.

Establishing a Foothold

First of all, forget about staying mindful 24-7. That’s an extremely tall order, and it isn’t necessary to be present all the time in order to experience great benefits from it.

What we want to do is get familiar with the sensation of becoming present, and do it on a regular basis. Since the preoccupied mind is never going to remind you to be mindful — that would be like a french fry vendor reminding you to buy spinach — we need something else to remind us.

So instead of trying to Be Here Now all the time, just commit to becoming mindful every time you find yourself doing one of these two simple actions:

• Opening a door

• Sitting down in a chair

That’s it. You’re off the hook for everything else.

Let the rest of the things you do slip away to the restless mind if you want. Let your mind glaze over during meetings at work. Fantasize about winning Powerball while you wait for the bus. But do give your attention wholeheartedly to these two simple actions. You owe yourself that much.

When you open a door, drop your train of thought outright (you can pick it up again shortly) and watch your hand grasp the doorknob. Pull the door open with purpose and patience. Feel its weight. Watch as a new scene is revealed. Feel the new air of the room you are entering. Listen to the sound of the first room give way to the sound of the new room. Feel this transition with undivided attention.

Then your work is done. You can go back to pondering dinner or thinking of what you should have said to that guy who cut you in line in the cafeteria last Friday. If you want.

When you sit down in a chair, lower yourself down, don’t just drop in it. Listen to any creaks or in the wood or upholstery. Feel as it takes on the weight of your body and relieves your legs of their duties for the moment. Pay attention to the sensation of being parked on this new perch. Wherever the chair is, let yourself become comfortable in it. Survey the room from your new angle.

After you’ve paid diligent attention to the sitting experience for the five or ten seconds it takes, you’re off duty again. You can resume whatever train of thought you had going before it came time to sit — wishing you had worn different shoes, or quietly disapproving of the state of today’s pop music or whatever.

Most of the time we don’t put our attention anywhere specific, so it gets sucked into our incessant mind-chatter, not unlike a kid who can’t help staring at the television. You can actually put your attention somewhere on purpose, it just doesn’t often occur to us. Pay it to the door or the chair.

If you can commit to giving your undivided attention to these two things, you will begin to see the incredible clarity that is available to you when your mind isn’t wrapped up in thoughts.

After doing this on purpose a few times, it will start to become automatic. The mere feel of a doorknob, or sensation of moving to sit will remind you to pay attention. It will be nearly impossible to open a door or sit down without snapping back into the present moment.

I must reiterate how small a commitment you have to actually make here. The dividends it pays are incredible. We’re talking maybe five seconds at a time, a handful of times a day, to plant one foot firmly in the realm of greater ease, happiness and gratitude. If you’ve been looking for an easy and powerful way to love yourself, there it is.

You will soon find that the trains of thought you have to interrupt to be mindful are seldom interesting or useful. Most of it is just noise, perpetuating itself only because you’re not putting your intention anywhere on purpose. Junk food for your mind. With these simple rituals, mindfulness — and the bliss that comes with it — will establish a sturdy foothold in your behavior, which you can expand as far as you want to take it.

You’ll begin to notice what it feels like to catch yourself mind-blathering about irrelevant things, and soon you’ll be bringing yourself back to the moment more often, and not just when you encounter a door or a chair. You probably won’t want to let yourself off the hook for everything else.

But you do have to actually do it, not just nod your head as you read this post and think it will happen by itself. These are easy, minuscule amounts of work which yield great rewards over time. But they don’t pay off if you don’t do them.

When you open a door, open the door.

When you sit, take your seat.

You’re going to do it anyway. Make it count.

Found here
How to Make Mindfulness a Habit With Only a Tiny Commitment