Overwhelmed!

We were having dinner with some friends and the comment came from one of them that they were "stressed out". Now there's nothing peculiar about being stressed out, but looking at their life, it's actaully quite similar to our own, yet we aren't stressed out about ours.

So it made me think about why they are and we aren't. what are we doing differently. And there was really only one thing... we finish something or become finished with something and move on.

They will complete tasks 80% and leave them, so in the end there are many many incomplete tasks that piule up and become overwhelming. And not only is the task incomplete, but the object that is a part of that task sits around incomplete and with little use.

So in the end they have a situations where they are surrounded by useless things that are a part of a project that is incomplete and they can't derive any pleasure from. Do this for a few years and suddenly you have an overwhelming amount of "stuff" and the problem becomes insurmountable.

Therefore the need to break it all down into smaller tasks that can be completed in an hour, or a few hours, or a weekend. Whatever it is, focus on a small part of the total issue and get it solved, then move on to the next.

My wife and I purge every few months. We find that the change of the season is an appropriate time because that's when you need to make decisions about clothes, like is it worth hanging on to them for anotehr year or is it time to consign or donate them. So it's at these regular occasions as well as other times throughout the year that we will go through stuff, evaluate whether we need it and usually we'll eliminate 10 to 20%.

This comes back to my experience travelling in Europe. I had no fixed address for around 18 months, and could pack up everything I had with a few hours notice. It was a very freeing time becasue I realized then, that everything I need I already have, and everything I own is more to carry. Which comes back to my blog from yesterday which refers to everything I see having no meaning.

We all fill our lives with meaningless clutter (both physical and mental) and attach meaning to it. Some deal with the clutter better than others, which basically means that some people can discard the clutter easier than others. Today being December 29th is a perfect day to set some goals, look at life and decide which clutter can be discarded and by starting with baby steps anything can be accomplished.

This table does not mean anything...

Over the past few months I have been reading a number of books on spirituality, getting the most from life etc. One text that was often quoted in these books is A Course In Miracles. So I thought, after reading about this book so many times I ought to see what it's all about. I've borrowed it from the library, and realized quickly, it's not the sort of book one reads in a few evenings. In fact there's a section which has a lesson for every day of the year. It will be a book I will purchase and read over an extended period of time.
For more information, please visit- http://www.fipdata.org/index.html

Anyway, I was reading a few of the lessons and I was thinking about the first lesson, which is printed in full below, essentially, "nothing I see means anything".

Since I read it over a week ago it has resonated with me, and I began to think about this world, and how we have attached meaning to things. The world of marketing is about attching value to brands, labels, material goods, experiences... anything that can be sold for a profit. And as a race, we all buy into it. Whether or not we do buy Nike or BMW or McDonald's we have all become victims of marketing. Indeed those who decide to go against the flow and boycott certain brands for whatever reasons create their own sub-culture, which in fact is a culture of its own, with its own "membership criteria and status".

So, no matter what we own, if we see that ownership of it adds something to ourselves we have ascribed some value to it, and have fallen into the marketers trap. That's why this lesson is so interesting. When you say out loud that nothing you see has any meaning, it seems logical, yet it goes against our own subconscious thoughts about it. It goes against what we perceive to be true.

We live in a world of perception - the world of time, of change, of beginnings and endings. It is based on interpretation, not on facts. It is the world of birth and death, founded on the belief in scarcity, loss, separation, and death. It is learned rather than given, selective in its perceptual emphases, unstable in its functioning, and inaccurate in its interpretations.

A Course in Miracles says "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."

LESSON 1

Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything.

Now look slowly around you, and practice applying this idea very specifically to whatever you see:

This table does not mean anything.
This chair does not mean anything.
This hand does not mean anything.
This foot does not mean anything.
This foot does not mean anything.
This pen does not mean anything.

Then look farther away from your immediate area, and apply the idea to a wider range:

That door does not mean anything.
This body does not mean anything.
This lamp does not mean anything.
This sign does not mean anything.
This shadow does not mean anything.

Notice that these statements are not arranged in any order, and make no allowance for differences in the kinds of things to which they are applied. That is the purpose of the exercise. The statement should merely be applied to anything you see. As you practice the idea for the day, use it totally indiscriminately. Do not attempt to apply it to everything you see, for these exercises should not become ritualistic. Only be sure that nothing you see is specifically excluded. One thing is like another as far as the application of the idea is concerned.

Each of the first three lessons should not be done more than twice a day each, preferably morning and evening. Nor should they be attempted for more than a minute or so, unless that entails a sense of hurry. A comfortable sense of leisure is essential.

Values

I've been thinking over the past few days as we've approached Christmas about the value of money, and the value we have decided to place on certain goods and services.

For example we've decided that an old car like this classic...

1980 BUICK LE SABRE LIMITED, an excellent classic car, ready for restoration or daily use, 4 door, beige exterior, 350 4 BBL engine, automatic transmission, air conditioning, am/fm, cassette, cruise control, intermittent wipers, power brakes, power door locks, power mirrors, power seat, power steering, power windows, rear wheel drive, tilt steering, 235,000 kms.

...is only $1,500 o.b.o.!!

I took this directly off www.trader.ca

We have determined that this 1980 classic has the same value as this two piece lounge suite, currently on sale at The Brick in Calgary for $1699 plus GST, children not included.

So how did we come up with this value? Indeed who determined that a can of Coca-Cola has the same value as a basic calculator with a solar panel?

Why is a woollen sweater worth the same as a meal cooked for you by someone?

And it always amazes me how cheap goods like mousetraps are. For whatever they cost... thirty... forty... ninety cents each there are many people making money - the retailer, the freight company, the manufacturing company, and the worker who put it all together, not to mention the companies who supplied the raw materials!

Then on the other hand, you go out for a nice meal and have a beer or a glass of wine, and suddenly the bill for two people is $100. One hundred dollars to feed two people once, seems extravagant when you compare that to what a mousetrap builder earns.

Looking at a different extreme, how can an average school teacher earn sixty times less than the average major league baseballer? I'm not going to go on a communist rant about everyone getting paid equally. Hell, if someone wants to pay a steriod junkie $3 million to play catch, all the power to them.

It seems as though there's an apparent inequality in the way the world is paid for services, but it's obvious that if you want to get paid more, you work in a field that is televised or sponsored by corporations, since mass media advertising pays the big bills.

Yes, when our children, and indeed many adults worship attractive women with dysfunctional relationships, or young men with excellent hand-eye co-ordination and a long criminal record, you know that we've got our heads screwed on straight!

Yup. Sometimes I think that it's a funny world we live in.

Christmas Time

It's Christmas time and every year the consumerism that is Christmas makes me more and more sick. Everywhere you turn there are more commercials for buying presents, justifying hundreds of dollars to be spent on "your loved one". And this comes from someone who works in marketing!

Since when did Christmas become about spending inordinate amounts of money on gifts? Ever since retailers could make a profit I guess. But really this phenomena has only sprouted in the age of mass media. And we've lost sight of the real point of Christmas.

You can argue that the point of Christmas from a retailer's point of view is to maximize profit, and that is a valid argument. I used to work in marketing for a large retailer in Australia, and the profitability of a store for its whole year is determined by how successful a Christmas campaign they have. Sad isn't it?

This year my wife and I agreed to a $20 limit on the gift we would give each other. We have friends who are astounded when they hear that, wondering what's wrong with us. How can we keep the marriage together without expensive gifts? Where's our Christmas spirit?

Well for twenty dollars you need to be creative. You need to think and consider carefully to get the right gift. It's the thought that counts. It's not a matter of going through the store flyers and circling requests. What's the point in that? Why not go and get that yourself? Why wait for Christmas?

Christmas is a time to be with family. A time for giving and sharing. A time for kindness and love. It doesn't just have to be about spending money.

I'm getting exhibited!

One of my new habits for January will be to make at least one effort a day to get my art either exhibited or sold. But today I got that off to a flying start by getting my art exhibited at the Oolong Tea House in Kensington for the month of January!

This is the third time I've been exhibited. The first was at the Artpoint Gallery in Inglewood, the second at Higher Ground Cafe in Kensington.

No regrets...

I am a firm believer in no regrets, and that there are no such things as mistakes, only undesired outcomes to situations, which become learning experiences. Often we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes. I rememeber a television commercial from Nike, where Michael Jordan talks about how many times he failed. The monologue in the ad goes like this...

I've missed over 9000 shots in my career.
I've lost almost 300 games.
26 times I've been trusted with the game-winning shot... and missed.
I've failed over and over and over again in my life.
And that is why I succeed.

Life can be a struggle sometimes, and there are many times where things don't seem to go our way. Those are precisely the times when we need to take a step back and look at what is happening and find the lesson. I find these times the most enlightening, and right now I feel a little frustrated that everything is just a little too easy. There's nothing that is jolting me out of my comfort zone that I am not quite happy to be in. That's why I started the three new habits for the month, which I've kept up with... and I'll have three new habits for next month, all designed to propel me forward.

However, when I look back on some of the more significant choices in my life they came out of situations that did not necessarily require such radical decisions. I however took the opportunity to take a bigger chance and what turned out to be a more rewarding path that I could have. And I know that on my life's journey there have been times when I wondered whether I had made the right decision.

In 2000 I left Australia with AU$12,000 savings bound for the U.K. with a two-year working holiday visa. After a few weeks I found getting a job not quite as easy as I had expected and I was unhappy with the room I was renting from a very weird landlady, who kept making unscheduled appearances to move the furniture around. I was feeling low, and I remember sitting on my own in Starbucks. Surrounded by 16 million people in London, I knew none of them, which made it an even lonelier place than being isolated on a desert island. Then suddenly the phone rang and I had a job interview. I started the following week. A month later I had moved to a new place and life was on the up and up. I was making friends and had a social calendar, albeit a meagre one. Moving to London was the right decision after all.

When my three-month job contract ran out, I had another job lined up as European Marketing Manager of an international media company. Could it get much better?

After two days I lost the job, because of my visa restrictions.

So I immediately called all the hiring agencies that had been so impressed with my credentials. "Sorry, there are no contracts right now. It's the end of the fiscal year and there's a federal election in two months."

Could it get much worse?

My AU$12,000 which bought me a little under 3,000 pounds had dwindled, and with rent and utilities totalling 500 pounds per month, plus food, travel and other miscellaneous expenses, I had about two months before the funds would dry up.

For two weeks I rang and re-rang all the employment agencies, making calls every day, and I waited for the phone to call me back. It didn't.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas A. Edison, US inventor (1847 - 1931)

So that's when I made the decision. I decided I would apply for any job, that might look like fun... to work on a cruise ship, as a tour manager on African safaris, a tour manager on European coach tours... anything that would be an experience of a lifetime.

I kept calling the employment agencies and looked to different ones which hired for non-marketing roles.

Then the phone rang! I had an interview with Contiki for the Tour Manager position taking tours around western Europe.

At the same time I went for an interview for a position as National Franchise Manager for a chain of Aussie style pubs in the U.K.

Suddenly I was offered both positions. The National Franchise Manager role came with a car, a laptop, great pay and perks, and the best opportunity to spread my wings in the U.K. The Tour Manager position was an experience that came with no frills.

The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity. - Helen Rowland (1876 - 1950)

The safe bet was the marketing job. But I figured that this was my first and last chance to be a tour manager of western Europe, and if I wanted the marketing role in a few years time then I could work at that later.

I worked as a Tour Manager for almost six months and it was the best time of my life. I made many friends and saw many sights, but the most enduring reminder from that time is my wife, whom I met while working with Contiki. I've ended up living the last four and a half years in Canada on a path determined by my decision to change the course my life was taking and step into the unknown.

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes." - Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

If you don't take a chance to make something happen in life, maybe it never will. Make small change, or a large one. In general we fail to try because we are afraid of the outcome and doubt ourselves.

The ups and downs are part of the journey that is our life. You cannot live your life's calling if you never act on the opportunities presented to you.

Julius

Autumn Rain

Live Each Day Like It's Your Last

It's funny you know, it doesn't matter what I read the theme is always the same. Complete happiness come from living in the now... staying in the present.

Most of us spend our whole lives living in the future or the past. We're either so focused on future goals and events, that we wait for life to be over... waiting for the weekend, or the next holiday, the next job.

Conversely if we spend our lives dwelling on the past, on missed opportunities, regretting life situations or our "cruel fate" that led us to our current situation, we have no hope of enjoying what we have.

Life is about the journey, not arriving at the destination.

When I was at the gym on Sunday I looked around at the other people working out. Mostly on a Sunday evening, it's the dedicated gym-goers, the very regulars. I had seen most of them many times before, and judging by the outstanding physiques (which I wish I had) they spend a lot of their time at the gym.

Now I'm not going to say that exercise is a bad thing, because it isn't, but it's obvious that the people I observed took exercise way past what is required for good health. Ignoring the fact that many of the guys were injecting or consuming something to make their muscles disproportionately large, these people were obsessed with their fitness and physique.

And I wondered... how many of those people with awesome bodies are happy with the way they look? How many of them want to shed a few more pounds of fat and gain a few more pounds of muscle? Looking at the amount of sweat being produced, I'd say most of them.

Which brings me to an interesting question. If any of them suddenly had a nasty accident and had a major disfigurement to one of their prominent and well-shaped body parts, how devasted would they be? Would they suddenly look back on what they used to have and appreciate it more? Would they wish for the disfigurement to be returned to what it was, and happily live in their 'old' body? Yes?

So why can't they live happily with what they already have?

Make the commitment to live each day like it's your last. Laugh, be happy and be in the present.

Worthy of Receiving

Christmas is only just around the corner and we've been conditioned since childhood to expect stuff. We get ourselves into a panic to buy presents for our friends and loved ones, and put in our requests for what we want.

Sometimes we get what we want, sometimes we don't.

But whether or not we get the newest toy we're looking for, that pales into comparison for what we really want.

"What do we really want?" You ask.

Isn't that obvious? We all want happiness in whatever package that comes. Whether it's a husband or wife, or a successful pregnancy, or fulfillment at work it doesn't really matter. We're looking for that elusive something that will make us happy.

Have you noticed that somehow it seems we usually don't get what will make us happy?

For all the gifts we receive, they feel like a band-aid over the cancer in our soul that keeps us unsatisfied. We can search outside of ourselves for ever to find something that will make us happy, but it never will.

The first step to receiving what it is we really want is to allow ourselves to accept it. That sounds simple but people will toil their whole lives searching for something... searching for meaning, all the while not realizing that all they had to was stop looking in places it will never be and just start accepting it in their lives.

What do I mean by this?

Allow yourself to be happy with what you have and who you are, and you're well on your way. Certainly, there may be circumstances in life that are less than pleasing, and there's no reason to be content with them. Take action to change a situation that doesn't work for you, but allow yourself to be emotionally detached from outcomes.

Know that true happiness, true strength and true love all exist within us everyday, and only we can take it away from ourselves by choosing to ignore it.

The more you see greatness in yourself, the more you'll receive.

So don't be concerned about whether you receive what you want for Christmas, you already have everything you could ever need.

We affect others

Today I received an email from a friend of mine in Australia, someone I did catch up with on my recent trip. It was flattering because she commented how she thinks of me often and doesn't miss me as much because she is reminded of me often as she sees my personality or traits in other people.

I only tend to think of people in my immediate vicinity as the ones I affect, but with these words, an occasional phone conversation, a Christmas card or whatever it is, there are positive messages that get passed on and stick with people.

The email showed me that we affect other people's lives even when we don't think about it. In this instance I was positively affecting my friend's life, but it's possible that we affect others in a negative way, without even knowing it, sometimes for many many years.

We all have a responsibility to our friends, family and neighbours to be kind and loving towards them. I read somewhere that we should treat everyone as though they are hurting, because the reality is that 95% of them are in some way.

Immaculee Ilibagiza - An Inspirational Person

The other day I was watching the television, and Wayne Dyer was on talking to a live audience on the theme of Inspiration. He was talking about some of the people who inspire him, and one of them was Immaculee Ilibigiza.

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee's family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the local pastor's cramped bathroom, measuring three feet by four feet, while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman's journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss. 'Left To Tell' is Immaculee's first book.

Wayne Dyer brought Immaculee up on stage and she spoke for a few minutes about her ordeal, and how she learned that it's important to forgive in spite of horrific actions like those in the Rwandan Holocaust. This isn't a book I have read, but after I'm finished with my current book it will be next.

What I also thought about was the fact that this lady inspired an inspirational man in Wayne Dyer, and it made me re-think about how I should begin living my life to be an inspiration to others. If I could inspire those who inspire others, then I'm really beginning to spread some good in the world.

It's always about taking small steps, and I'm taking those. Somewhere along the line I will take a big step, maybe that will be today... maybe tomorrow.

A Great Book - Divine Guidance

I'm always reading books these days, which is very funny if you could listen to me talk up to the age of about 25. I used to hate reading. In fact I chose my university degree and my subjects in high school based on the amount of reading required - less was better. As a result I studied a lot of subject that had numbers - Maths, Chemistry, Physics, Economics etc.

It's only been in the last few years that I've learned to appreciate the value of reading. I don't often get to story books, and mostly I read something non-fiction. Occasionally I'll pick up a story book... for myself of course, I don't just read Dr Seuss to my daughter!

I'm currently reading 'Divine Guidance', by Doreen Virtue, the second book of hers that I've read.

This book is a very helpful book for those looking to learn more about tapping into intuition and psychic information. It's actually the best book I've read on the topic and I would highly recommend it.

From the publisher:
In this text Dr Virtue explains how people are equally gifted in the ability and potential to communicate with God and angels. Through meditation, simple lifestyle changes, and understanding how to phrase questions, people can learn to break down the communication barriers, and learn how to listen.

Divine Guidance tells you how to have a dialogue with God and your guardian angels. Her central tenet is that everyone has the ability to talk with God and the angels; everyone has the ability to solve their problems with the help of these Divine powers. If you have financial problems, this book will tell you how to get out of jeopardy. If you're in a bad relationship, this book will guide you to something better. If a loved one has just passed away, this book will help you through those trying times. All of your most intimate questions can be answered by knowing who to ask and how to phrase the questions. Find the simplest, most effective, and life-affirming advice around-read Divine Guidance

A New Way of Thinking.

I'm tracking well with my three new habits. I've slept 23 hours in three nights, but that's over the weekend. I'm drinking the water, and my desk is tidy.

What I've noticed is how my thoughts have changed. Things that were "I ought to's" have now become conscious thoughts. I've never planned my sleep before, but I was thinking that with some Christmas parties coming up, I need to get some extra hours in to make sure I reach my quota. It's a totally new way of thinking.

And I feel a lot better now that I'm drinking more water, and come in to start the work day with a clean desk. You'll certainly hear more about this.

I just read a quote from Wayne Dyer that sums up my observations of what happens when you begin to change:

"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

The Kiss

So far so good!

It's noon on December 1st. I got 7.5 hours sleep last night, (but that doesn't count towards the habit, although my body notices), I'm half way through my 1.5L of water and my desk is a mess.

So far so good!