Archive for the tag “Definitions”

02 Aug 2012

Starting Is Essential to Winning

As I watch the Olympics this week, and see how many young athletes are working so hard to win, I cannot think about how hard they worked in the process of preparing to win. They had a goal, and they were focused on working for it.

All around me I see people who seem to be waiting. They are wishing to win, waiting for it to arrive . LIke it is luck that is going to knock at their door and come in and say “hi, I am here”…. like it will arrive at your doorstep like a guest long over due.

But that is not how most of the successful people have gotten where they are. Yes they are expecting to win…but through their lives they have been investing in the success. They aren’t shy. They have been willing to compete. Which means they have been equally willing to lose and personally own the loss. They do not blame others for the position they are in, they accept the consequences and make course adjustments to assure that the next time makes a difference.

I have had friends that are always expecting to win… but some of then act like they are looking for divine justice, like there is someone waiting there who is going to hand it to them because ultimately they think they deserve it.

In the end, the true winners seem to know how to be celebrating the win. They are not wallowing in it. They are soaking-in the win and moving on to more, they are not staying in place and seeking constant approval and adoration. They are finding the next step on the path to winning.

Sure, winning isn’t everything – but it isn’t a bad place to be. Feels good.

You have to admire the people who make it all the way to the Olympics. For the most part, who ever makes it deserves it, They worked hard and stayed focused, they earned it. How hard was it to earn the privilege to compete in the Olympics. In some way they have fought to be there. Much like in professional sports, so very few make it to the pinnacle of the sport to be called out to represent the excellence that the sport of choice represents.

So for most of us, individually we win in life when we reach a goal and find ourselves in a position to win. We look for confirmation, and we acknowledge that we are made with the desire to win and succeed. Some times it is our own personal success, and others may not even know we made it so.

In the end you can’t win if you don’t play. I always used to say, “if you want to win the lottery you have to play, if you want to win the race you have to line up for the start.”

How many of us end up wishing we could win, wishing we could succeed in something but really don’t choose to even start to play? Dont wait. Start now. The race is long and success is in your grasp. You have to start to begin.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, Celebrating success, choices, course adjustments, Definitions, Emotion, Fear, Olympic Games, Opinion, Postive Thinking, Self-Awareness, Sprituality, true winners, winning

14 Jul 2012

2 Comments

Time Waits For No One

I have heard it said that “time waits for no one.” Time is ticking away and as far as we know we have no control over it ( we could argue time travel here i imagine). We try to hold on to the special moments in time. We have many yesterdays that we would work hard to hold on to because they are so unique; they signify something that is special that makes a place and time part of what we are. We would love to go back and experience them again, or change things that went askew, because they have seemed to go by so fast, but meant so much.

But time wont wait. Its time that we want to to remember but even time erodes the details of what made it so special. So we move along the linear thing that is what we call time. Holding on to yesterday with the best of intention, but yesterday is gone. It makes up the fabric of today, but it cannot be brought back to be relived again. It can’t be erased to make bad things go away, or reversed to correct a wrong. So that’s the way God planned it, that’s the way He meant it to be. And it becomes a treasure of a time we can cherish in our memory, or be that day or moment that changed everything after it for the rest of your life and perhaps even beyond that. Indelible, Unchangeable.

That is what we have to do with every day. Look at it as that self contained part of the building blocks that make up who you are today and who you will be tomorrow. But then let it go and look forward to what is next, because time waits for no one. No one but you can own that moment you have experienced behind your eyes. All those unrecorded seconds in time are yours alone. Share them with others, but they will never be as unique as your own experience. They are yours until your last breath. And even time has that one figured out as well. Eternity in the end will be what matters.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, Change, cherish, Definitions, Happiness, Memories, People, Reality Check, Time, tracks in the dust

09 Jul 2012

The Passion of Polarity and Meeting in the Middle

Words like “any or all” seem to be used with a lot of freedom these days. They are used with passionate polarity to help place people in their respective ends of an argument or position on a topic. It is frightening to hear people say that “all” of one religion or race are considered to be good or evil. I cringe when a see a person who believes something in particular is wrong because the only right way of thinking is what they believe- statements that hover around the idea that “any one who has an opposite opinion is clearly wrong”

In the fast paced information age of the Internet we reward passion about subjects, then others who feel the same way help send it out in emails or websites to be soaked up and waved around like a flag. It could be passion about conservative views or liberal views, about organized religion or someone elses misdirected religious beliefs. There are so many topics that contain polarity that seem to tear a great number of people apart.

Polarity often is dangerous and can be the very thing that separates brother from brother, creates wars and crime, it can destroy beauty and delay progress. It becomes the fuel for fear, and the fuel for hate. It can tear apart marriages.

Polarity has its places in making our world a better world. Good vs Evil seems to make sense. One God. Sometimes there is only one choice, other times there are no choices- it is a fact of nature itself (which so often has its own polarity). We are all made up of many particles that need to have a positive and negative. But in the center is the core.

So there is something to consider. Polarity can be used to discover the middle or center, for without 2 ends or opposites there is no middle. When two people are so far away from each other… the path to the middle is the hardest path, but is the action that can bring the compromise is a needed which can be part of life itself.

Perhaps polarity is the starting point to a path to compromise, it allows us to be passionate and it can allow us to come together somewhere in the middle and better embrace the outcome. Sure, we can pull hard in the opposite direction, like a tug-of-war. Then watch all the cheers and jeers by supporters and detractors around us, because people are interested in that diversity. Sort of like watching a train wreck or traffic accident. People don’t want to see it but can’t take their eyes off it. So many wallow in the struggle of polarity, like two teams fighting against each other. Not sure when the game should end. But the reality of it all it may appear, is that compromise, the middle – is not very exciting, not very “defining” and desirable. So we just aren’t interested.

Maybe we all desire this polar opposition, we look for the places to stand on it and don’t see the middle as a place to be. We may selfishly want the attention, or are blind to the opportunity, but we work toward being somewhere in the middle. Be keeping your eye out for middle. It’s not that bad. It can be that good. But then I am guessing you may disagree? Hmmmmmm.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Change, Compassion, Definitions, Grace, Opinion, Politics, Reality Check, religion, Self-Awareness

08 Jul 2012

2 Comments

Tell Me About Yourself Award

I suppose there are a lot of “awards” in the blog-world of WordPress.com and that all of them have the root of being kind and thoughtful to fellow bloggers. It seems like there are a several that are meant to get more visitors, or share more sites or something.

But I am flattered that someone considered by blog worthy of any recognition. Tracksinthedust.com has always meant to be a list of things just put together that I always wanted to tell my kids, but now they are “old enough” that they either have formulated their own opinions of things. Maybe some of these posts are things that I told them before, or meant to tell them, or just never got around to telling them. I get along really well with 3 of the 4 of them, and they are turning out to be pretty good people, despite the fact that their mom and I had no owners manual.

I always wondered about that, you need a licence to drive a car or own a gun- you need to apply for a loan and fill out paperwork to adopt children or even attempt a laboratory version of parenthood (perhaps). But there’s no test for a man and woman having a child. God willing you leave the hospital and its all up to you. So here I am tracks in the dust, that overtime will blow away on our travels on Earth. We make the decision where those tracks take us, we have the opportunity to follow others or make our own tracks.

Tell Me About Yourself Award

1. Thank the person who nominated you: Thank you Miss Audrey (In Wonderland). When I started posting in WordPress, yours was one of the first blogs I began to follow. I am always amazed with your perspective on life, and certainly where you are in your journey in a country I am not very familiar with. You are about the same age as my kids and I find it comforting that even though you are on the entire other side of the world from them- there are a lot of similarities.

2. Tell the world 7 things about yourself that you have not yet shared

1) I love musicals. Hollywood, Broadway, local theater, made for TV. I am a sucker for them. Can’t tell you why, just am.

2) I have a beard that I have only entirely shaved off twice in my life since I was eighteen. Some of my closest friends think I was born with it. I wasn’t.

3) I have always wanted to be an artist. I mean a painter. But I am lousy at it. I have a very famous cousin who has been an artist most of her life I think. Her talent amazes me every time I look at her work.

4) I have written over a 1000 lyrics to songs, spanning over decades of writing. Poems if you want to call them that. Some of them have music with them, others have gotten music written to them by many of my musical friends. Some just are terrible, but that’s inspiration.

5) I was on the radio hosting a public service topical show about JFK’s assassination with a famous authority, when John Lennon was shot and killed. I spent the next 8 hours playing his music and taking calls. It sticks in my memory all these decades later. Imagine.

6) I have always owned practical cars, but just once it would be great to have owned a hot sports car that goes really fast. Priorities are for real.

7) Give me a subject and 48 hours, and I can stand up and speak about it. I wasnt that way when I was younger, but public speaking just became part of what I do.

3. Nominate 7 fellow bloggers and let them know

A great group of beautiful people, beautiful words, amazing pictures and stories… thank you.

http://noblogintended.wordpress.com/

http://istopforsuffering.wordpress.com/

http://findingravity.com/

http://thetruthwarrior.wordpress.com/

http://hopethehappyhugger.wordpress.com/

http://m5son.wordpress.com/

http://starsrainsunmoon.com/

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Blog, Blog award, Definitions, Happiness, Memories, moments, Reality Check, tracks in the dust, Truth

22 Jun 2012

2 Comments

Being Authentic

I have always hoped that my kids would grow up understanding the importance of being “authentic”. I think that is a word that may have many meanings to depending on your perspective; genuine, not fake or false, an original/not a copy, something has significance perhaps. Authentic shouldn’t be confused with “original” though, since we all are original, no two exactly alike. We are all God’s people because of that difference.

But to me, people who are authentic have conviction to be who they are because they are aware of themselves. Sure, over the years of growing up and even in adulthood we continue to try to emulate others; like our heroes, our parents, our mentors in living and faith, even our closest and dearest friends and lovers. And we should. Like I said in a previous post, I think we are a mosaic of all the people we have had contact with that have influenced us (good or bad). But we get to decide in the final pass what that means. It is our internal psyche that is going to accept or deny the picture of who we are.

But really didn’t want to take scientific route, I am just expecting my children to continue to be authentic. Be aware of others around them, who they are and what might have brought those people to that moment in time to intersect with our lives. But be genuine then. Be right with yourself. I laugh as I remember when they were growing up how they would desperately need to wear clothes and have their hair like their favorite rock stars. They would wear the latest anti-fashions, say words they could only have heard from other places. They would call others “posers”, when in fact they were themselves. But as they got older things changed outwardly, and hair and clothes changed with them. But always as parents we always asked them to remain true to themselves.

So I keep thinking “be authentic”. Start by being real, start by not lying to yourself about things in your life and how you treat others. Start by depending on your spiritual compass to make positive decisions. Kind of like the accountability scale I posted a while back, you have to be able to admit your mistakes, own your own situation. Then treat others that way. The adage “do onto others…” I think means being genuine to yourself first, and then to the people around you. No matter if those people are only a moment in your life as you travel through it, or family, or intended to be a lifelong dear friends… treat them authentically.