Archive for the tag “Reality Check”

31 Jul 2012

Control of Your State Of Mind

Who has control of your state of mind? Doesn’t it really come down to you?

If we have anything to learn in our lives around how we live it, one that thing that truly seems to escape some people is “how one looks at their life and all that surrounds it.” There seems to be so many sad or angry people who are stuck in one place- looking through a single vision. Some people walk through life sharing their state of mind with anyone who crosses their path. “Would you like to get angry with me?” they seem to say. Or “I am sad- can I share my sadness with you-” wishing that perhaps you can be sad too. In fact if you share their mood they may even start to feel better about themselves.

But then don’t we all have control over our own view of the world around us? It is OUR view after all. Sure. We can choose to be the victim of the circumstances that have brought us to this particular point in time. We can ignore the opportunity to make things better, expelling the chance to change things perhaps because of the uncomfortable feeling that can come with change. Even in our deepest state of “blues” we relish the feeling, even as we lament about escaping it. No doubt it is great to experience to help put things in perspective.

Others may go searching for the more positive path ahead. But that can take time. I have met friends and family who say that “life is a journey” but they choose to travel that journey with little direction. They wander along “looking for themselves” – Change for change sake…can result chasing after something they may never find. “Finding themselves” can create a reason to not go forward, rather than working harder to “create yourself”. Searching can mean waiting for someone else to define who you are, it can create boundaries.

So what do I tell my kids? Regardless of today, the next direction is based on your a state-of-mind I think. It starts there. Don’t let the anger and sadness consume you, don’t let it send you to places that can smother the reasons to change. Your state of mind is yours to choose. Okay, so we all need to have the downs to better appreciate the up’s; but we cannot wallow in it. Take some time to have the blues/ but then take the time to change your direction and create that journey with a positive direction. Choose to deal with it and move forward.

“Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, Anger, choices, Emotion, Happiness, Postive Thinking, Reality Check, relationships, Sadness, Self-Awareness, Self-Help, Sprituality

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

10 Jul 2012

1 Comment

What Will Other People Think?

Growing up, I remember my adolescent days of wanting to be part of the “in group” – the group that was leading the trends, the people who were at the front of the room in school and popular. I thought if I pleased everyone, I too could be accepted into the popular groups. At that time it seemed like I was always preoccupied with the idea of what other people were thinking.

One of the things I have noticed lately is that even as we all grow up, what others think appears to be many adults preoccupation. So many of the professional people around me seem to want acceptance of others beyond all else. Even in my family there have been struggles over the years on being “people pleasing”. It causes them to twist and turn their lives into places that aren’t really who they genuinely are.

When you constantly worry about what other people think, you can easily get caught in an emotional trap. In reality, you don’t have to please everybody any more than your ability to please everybody allows. It’s that false sense of panic to think that in order to be happy, you must be loved and validated by everyone you meet. Inside you know it’s just not how it works, but you do it anyway.

If you feel controlled or manipulated, its likely that you’re allowing yourself to be controlled or manipulated. It’s good to stand up for what’s right, but no one can pressure you unless you allow them to. Perhaps you don’t see it, or you ignore it, but it can happen easily. Inside your head you want acceptance, and you may be willing to color things to feel like you are not being controlled, but it can happen anyway.

It’s OK to be strong and center yourself on who you really are. How often do we fool ourselves to think it is more spiritual centered to just be quiet and put up with it all. But God doesn’t expect you to be run over by everyone you meet, you are made to be strong and be yourself.

How often are there missed opportunities in our lives that we let pass by? Do we find ourselves burying our talents, our sensibility and throwing them aside in order to please others, to be accepted. Then ironically, we get angry at our circumstances and allow even more control to be sacrificed to others for the sake of being accepted. We wonder how we got where we are.

In the end, it’s good to be ourselves, let the “people pleasing” efforts come out as a result of being ourselves. Don’t let it rule your life. We can allow our spiritual life to guide us to the relationships that are around us, and we will be accepted. Centering yourself on being who you are and not what others want you to be. You will find your goals will change and what you want out of life will be refreshing and personal. You know what other people will think?… won’t you?

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Acceptance, Advice, Faith, Fear, Grace, life is precious, Postive Thinking, Reality Check, Self-Awareness, Sprituality, Who Are You

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/