Inner-U

"The hope of a secure and livable world lies with the disciplined non-conformists who are dedicated to Justice, Peace and Brotherhood"

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

1. With Yourself

Patience with yourself is personal loyalty. It's respect - the foundation of every worthwhile relationship.

Being impatient with yourself is always self-defeating.

Worse, when you are not patient with yourself, social relationships don’t last.

People who are impatient with themselves make narrow-minded choices in social situations that appear to be selfish or arrogant, and alienate others. That's why 'things' don't work out.

Find patience for your heart and mind. If you don't give it to yourself, nobody will.

2. With Timing

Patience with timing is a sign of confidence in choices and faith in goals. Sure, it’s a disappointment and a drag to not have an answer, a meeting or a trip when you want it. Reality is: we all march to our own beat and we're not always in step with others. Sometimes this means waiting.

The surprise of extra time gives you space to prepare the response for an unwanted answer. Time always catches up with us.

Extra time means you can have unexpected insights to fine-tune content for the meeting.

Postponing a trip puts you somewhere else you need to be.

If you are perfect, LOL, then the time of ‘waiting’ will reveal an opportunity or responsibility you need to address or reposition before your answer, meeting or trip.

Whenever you are patient with delays, you will find something new that helps you succeed. Time brings opportunity.

3. With others

Patience with others has its priorities. These include dignity, self-respect and compassion. People who do this well are our heroes, like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. These patient fighters used patience as personal power. So can you.

This is not about what you do; it's about how you do it.

Patience with other means acknowledging differences. No and yes are equally important for staying in tune with patience and your goals.

It is not ‘turning the other cheek” while someone hits you. You can be angry and be dignified.

If someone pushes your buttons and is disrespectful, sometimes it's best to just say, good-bye. The only person you can change is yourself. Stand tall, talk softly and use eye contact to make your point.

By : Jane Bernard

Source:- http://intuitivescribe.blogspot.com/2014/10/three-ways-of-patience.html?spref=tw

Sit on the front steps of right NOW, aging gracefully and gratefully, smoking a peace pipe with what is.  You and this moment are a perfect match, deeply in love, with nothing to prove or fear.  Give thanks for all you’ve been, seen and loved.  Breathe in the acceptance.

Source:- http://www.soulseeds.com

When hit by wild storms and personal loss...

Remember that you are not alone!

May you have deep calm before, during and after the storm.

Beneath the storm, keep a quiet optimism and a deep peace...

Because after the rain; there’s a rainbow,

After the night --morning,

And after endings; there are amazing new beginnings....

Source:- soulseeds.com

“A brain that thinks too much misdirects energy away from the heart.

Thinking too much is simply another form of worrying.

Worrying is simply a way for manifesting that which we ‘do not want’ more into our lives.”

~ Brandon A. Trean

“I find hope in the darkest of days,

And focus in the brightest.

I do not judge the universe.”

~ Dalai Lama

Ramakrishna was asked, "Is there God?"

He said, "Yes."

He was asked, "Then prove it."

He said, "There is no need. I know. To me, there is no need.

To you there is a need, so you search.

Nobody Could prove it for me, just as I can not prove it for you.

I had to seek; I had to find.

And I have found. God! "

--OSHO

This ad was posted on Craig’s List- “Broken guitar for sale – no strings attached.”

I’ve heard of giving with no strings attached, but strumming with no strings attached …… unless you’re playing Guitar Hero, it’s going to be a challenge.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to live with no strings attached; giving yourself fully to each moment with no expectation that your efforts are going to be rewarded, or even noticed, planning your next steps with no certainty of the outcomes, pouring yourself into a cause without knowing where it will take you or if it’s going to be effective.

Human character and ingenuity are incredible. There are so many strings on the bow of your resourcefulness. You can pluck at the heart strings of change with the flair of a maestro, weaving your way through the score of life. And yet a great deal of what takes place is beyond your control, and it’s in the moments when a string breaks that your true character is revealed. It’s in these times that you discover how attached you are to your strings and stories, and how flexible you are to play on anyway.

There is a famous story, untrue according to Snopes, but powerful in any case, about the Israeli violinist Itzhak Perlman.

Itzhak hobbled on stage and performed his nightly ritual of adjusting his leg braces, reminders of a childhood bout of polio, placing his crutches on the floor, positioning the violin under his chin and cueing the conductor. The first couple of bars went according to plan, but soon it was clear that he had broken one of his four strings. The audience imagined that he would now have to reattach his braces and hobble off stage, but instead Itzhak closed his eyes for a moment, prepared himself and nodded the conductor to continue. He played beautifully, mesmerizing the audience, recomposing the piece in his mind, defying the assumption that it’s not possible to play a violin with three strings.

Acceptance defies the assumption that things have to be perfect in order for you to participate. Acceptance gives you the freedom to be all you can be and do your best in any situation. Make beautiful music with what you’ve got. Use the words you can find. Live with all the skill you can muster. Throw yourself into the concerto of change with no strings attached, and maybe even with a broken string or two. It’s more than enough. You are more than enough. Like Itzhak Perlman, your passion and perseverance will carry their own inspiration beyond the purity of your performance.

Try this visualization to build the sort of flexibility that can only come with the gift of acceptance.

Picture yourself as a beautiful harp. Your shapely beauty is matched by your ancient, healing wisdom. You have an incredible blend of gentleness and strength. Your subtle sounds are held in a frame that is robust and commanding. Hands near your heart, play yourself like a harp. Let the reverberations of the strings run through your body, from head to toe. Let them fill every part of you, waking places that may have gone to sleep from long years of disconnect. Spreading healing energy throughout your body, shake your fingers out and feel the tingle of stale energy leaving your body.

When you are ready, become aware of the thoughts in your mind and feelings in your body. Just sit with them, with no judgment. Picture each thought, feeling, assumption, memory and story swirling in and around you. Some pass right through the space between the strings of the harp, and glide on by. Notice what passes you by but don’t chase it. You have no need for them right now. Other thoughts and feelings hit the strings, striking a chord that sounds way back to your past, bringing up old hurts and unresolved pain. You don’t even know where some of the hurt is coming from. Don’t strain. Just notice what’s sticking. Rather than battle against it, let it be, integrate it, and let it become part of your unique music.

Your mind, body and spirit have healing power in the same way that some musicians play by ear. You only need to listen, and the answers are all there. Accept all that arises without judgment. It’s all a gift as you improvise your way through change. It’s all making you wiser and stronger. Accept it all.

You have the inner acceptance to live your harp’s desire. Give thanks for your unique music which is unfolding in just the right beat and time, broken strings, wrong notes, and all. You’ve got the world on a string, sitting on a rainbow. You’ve got the string around your finger. What a world. What a life. You’re in love.

By : Ian Lawton

Visit him at : soulseeds.com

Embrace your dark side and bring dark and light back together....

Embrace sadness, and find compassion.

Embrace fear and find courage.

Embrace hate and find passion.

Let the light of acceptance heal you and make you whole again....  Like the moon, you often only see one side at a time.  But it’s all one.  Love it all.

Source:- soulseeds.com

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

~Viktor Frankl

I first got wind of this transformative concept when I was a teenager reading Man’s Search For Meaning.

It has played beautifully into what has become my life theme: how people transcend their adversities. I’ve forever been inspired by how (some) people can go through so much and yet be able to rise above and live well. I call it living well despite…

It seems to boil down to something beyond circumstance and external situations. Because, as we all know, there are so many people who have gone through terrible situations and yet manage to be upbeat and strong, and push forward in their lives; and yet others who sink into perpetual disappointment and despair. It seems to be a natural tendency to go one way or the other.

When I went through some of my darkest times—having a child born with disabilities and having the same child go through a year-long near-fatal medical crisis, whose outcome was nothing short of miraculous—it was Viktor Frankl’s concept of “man’s inner strength raising him above his outward fate” that I kept going back to, and that definitely helped me stay afloat and cope well.

With my former dark time, I fell pretty deep into despair, and only with the intense help of a gifted therapist was I able to get through the initial grief and grow into my new reality.

With the latter situation, I incorporated specific actions and thought patterns to help me along the terrifying year of my daughter’s life-threatening illness.

What makes some become better and some bitter?

I now have a new piece of fascinating information that ties in to my life theme.

I recently completed a certificate program in positive psychology. There is much proven research on just how much we can do to give ourselves that meaningful and joyful life we all naturally want; or I should say, that happiness we are all after.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, psychologist and researcher in the field of happiness and well-being, came up with a pie chart representation showing the three determinants of happiness. Lo and behold, circumstance is the smallest piece of the pie, at only a 10 percent contributor to our happiness.

Our genes make up 50 percent. And here’s the most powerful and influential piece of the pie: our behavior, our intentional activities, make up 40 percent of our happiness. This can really be the make-or-break part.

This means there’s a lot we can do to increase our life satisfaction, above and beyond our circumstances, negative as they may be.

So yes, we can rise above our difficult situations and we can become better, by first and foremost recognizing and acknowledging that we are not victims but rather active players and creators of our playing field, and then by intentionally reconstructing our views.

Purpose:-

As Nietzsche wrote, “He who has why to live can bear almost any how.” We always need a reason to go on, especially when the road is slippery under our feet. It’s all too easy to fall and succumb. But just having this stick to hold onto to guide us can keep us on the path.

When my daughter was in a rehab hospital for nine months, what got me up each and every morning was the explicit purpose of being by her side as a cheerleader, encouraging her on her tough fight and climb up the mountain of human functions—from lifting her finger to walking again. It was a very steep ascent, one that entailed lots of grueling work.

Benefit-Finder:-

It seems to be human nature to have a slant toward the negative. It’s very easy to spot the faults and issues in things. The good news is that even if we weren’t born a glass-half-full person, we can train ourselves to see more of the positive.

It’s about what we focus on. What do you hone in on—the rose or the thorn? When we take in the beauty of the rose, we start to notice other beauty around us. More comes into our purview.

Positive psychology professor, Tal Ben-Shahar states, “When you appreciate the good, the good appreciates.”

Permission to be Human:-

This means allowing ourselves to feel the gamut of emotions—the unpleasant ones that sometimes drive us to suppress them by numbing means, and the good ones.

Restricting the flow of painful feelings impedes the flow of the positive ones, for human emotions all flow through the same pipeline. We are blessed with a rich emotional make-up. We need to give ourselves permission to feel. This helps create a rich, authentic life.

Once we are aware of our feelings, we can then choose how we act and respond.

Choose to Choose:-

At every moment we have a choice. Are we even aware of this? We can choose to take things for granted or appreciate the good; we can choose to view failure as a catastrophe or as a learning opportunity; we can choose to succumb or make the best of what happens.

We can walk in the street with our head down (in our phones) or look up and smile at people, which sends in and out positivity.

So, when the rough times come or the bad things happen, are we able to find or make some good? Can we find the silver lining? Can we look to make lemonade out of lemons?

When adversity hits, we can become better; we can rise above; we can even grow beyond and do things we never thought we could. We now know it’s more in our power than we may like to believe.

It may sometimes feel easier to be a victim, but it’s certainly not a role that leads to a fulfilling, satisfying, and meaningful life.

Our choices, both concrete and attitudinal, make up this 40 percent of the pie, and this can make us better above and beyond the other half.

“Things don’t necessarily happen for the best, but some people are able to make the best of things that happen.”  ~Tal Ben-Shahar

By : Harriet Cabelly

Visit her at : http://rebuildlifenow.com/

Whose mind remains unperturbed in sorrow,

Who is not delighted by pleasure,

And who is free from passion,

Fear and anger,

Is called stable of mind.

---Srimad Bhagwat Gita

“Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.”

~Chuang-Tse

Everywhere we turn these days we seem to be bombarded by it.  TV commercials try to lure you into buying their products on the promise they will give you it. Magazines scream it from the front pages via sultry images and sexy block titles. Gossip magazines practically have a mission statement that fame will guarantee it. Corporations equate money with it.

So what exactly is it? What’s this one common denominator that seems to be a worldwide obsession? Happiness!

There are thousands upon thousands of articles, seminars, webinars, TV shows, and more that try to teach us how to achieve it. How to be a happier you. How to make your family happy. And, not forgetting our furry friends: How to make your pet happier.

It’s as if happiness is some salient commodity that will come to us if we just. Try. Hard. Enough.

We are repeatedly told that it’s floating around out there in the world and that it can be ours. Just look at the model on the front cover of that magazine practically flaunting it with her beaming pearly white smile. Even Pharrell is in on the game and wants us to be HAPPY (and maybe do a little happy jig).

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing these types of juicy promises for years and, quite literally, bought right into it. Sure, if I just [insert the blank] enough, I will be happy. Surely this begs the question, have we pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon?

Think about it, the purpose of all these happiness-promisers, when you scratch behind the surface, is more likely the pursuit of profit rather than the pursuit of happiness. There’s usually a reason they keep touting the wonders of this magic commodity—it sells!

People love to read about quick fixes, how-to’s, and how not-to’s and willingly part with their hard earned cash to learn these supposed secrets. Spoiler alert…there are no secrets!

If we choose to believe that what we as a collective species yearn for is just out of our grasp then will we keep hunting forever. Perhaps we need to take a fresh look at what happiness actually is and whether it really is attainable by following steps one, two, or three.

Is it even designed to be a constant state of being? Who really walks around all day with a huge grin plastered on their face without the aid of narcotic substances or a seriously deranged mindset?

The first mistake is in believing that happiness is outside of us, and something that needs to be attained. It’s not. It’s a state of being, an emotion that can pass through us when we least expect it, usually when we aren’t paying it any attention.

It can creep up silently sometimes for just a few minutes at a time before it skulks away from whence it came. As humans, we have a myriad of emotions and as women, add a few hundred more on top of that.

In just one day we can feel a sense of love, pain, loss, betrayal, jealousy, anger, or laughter. I don’t think that as humans we are designed to have one singular constant emotion; we are complicated creatures.

So why don’t you see the media touting other less fun emotions? Why don’t we see articles titled “20 Ways to Feel Sadder,” “How to Cultivate More Rage into Your Life,” or “How Not to Ugly Cry”? No one would buy it! So why should we buy into the idea that we should be happy all the time?

Some of my happiest moments have been unexpected. I find it’s usually when my brain is engaged in the flow of another activity I really enjoy that I feel a sudden sense of complete happiness.

Another happiness inducer for me is being out in nature. That makes me feel really happy.

There is no one-size-fits-all happiness inducer. It can vary from hanging out with your kids or your pets to a simple walk on the beach to cooking a family meal.

My point is that it is not something that you have to work toward in the future, for it is not obtained through external effort. It is within us and we carry the possibility of it within us at all times whether we realize it or not.

Once we understand that happiness is not something that we can buy, sell, trade, or exchange, we don’t need to worry so much when we have a bad day.

However, do pay attention when it’s a great day, a positive day. Be thankful for it and acknowledge it. That way, when the smiley face pops up again (and it will, for nothing accelerates the good stuff in life like gratitude does) you are aware of it, again and again.

It can even be a feeling that you start to look forward to, like a best friend popping over for a cup of tea and a chat. Understand and accept that the feeling is temporary but will return. After all, if you’re best friend popped over and announced she was going to be saying a while, like the rest-of-your-life-awhile you might not be so happy about that.

If we didn’t have the sad, cry-on-your-way-home days, how could we learn to really appreciate the fun, exciting days?

So, stop reaching, searching, and trying to buy your slice of happiness, as it’s not something that is out of your reach.

Know that, and next time you’re standing in line at the grocery store, don’t reach for the magazine promising you the Disney fairy tale happy ending. It doesn’t exist—it’s a fairy tale!

Instead, smile at the cashier and wish her a lovely day. You will make her day a little happier and in doing so, maybe some of that magic will rub off on you.

By : Victoria Cox