Starting Each Day

These last few weeks have been pretty impressive times.  Many little lessons with some very big outcomes.  One I would very much like to share is an idea of how to start each day. This comes, in part, from Wayne Dyer’s amazing special the other night and follows along with thoughts and ideas from every one of the philosophers and counselors that I have encountered recently.  Basically, we are what we think.  We manifest our thoughts into the realities that we experience in our life.  If you feel you are inferior and say you are inferior—then you will live a life that is inferior.  Conversely, if you believe you are extraordinary—which you are—and you say you are extraordinary—you will live a live that is extraordinary.  I have done a great deal of paraphrasing, but in essence it is the lesson from all of them, Jesus on down.  I have seen it in my own life.  When I believed that the words of my detractors were right, when I believed that I wasn’t attractive enough to find a partner in NYC, when I believed that my writing skills were not up to some imagined ideal, or that I would not be able to excel at photography—well that’s what happened. 

I have known success—I have experienced it.  But over time, as I lost my vigilance, the naysayers and haters wore my spirit down.  I let them inside my private world and took their beliefs as my own.  I even managed to say their thoughts back out as my own—until a chain of events over the last seventeen months led me to see what I had done.  Like a swimming pool with oil—it only takes one drop of that oil to contaminate a vast amount of crystal clear water.  Our souls are the same way.  It only takes letting one failed friend, one less than supportive manager, one bad date to pollute a soul that is magical—capable—and wonderful.  And that is not just me but all of us.  Not because we are born of any special thing about just us that makes us capable—but rather because all of us are equally and forever divine—born of whatever creator you wish to acknowledge.  By the product of our humanity and our spirit we are given so many skills- abilities- traits—dreams—and desires—and with the ability to make every single one of them come to fruition.

Sadly, we loose sight of that—as we let the doubt in.  We listen to it, think about it, roll it over in our minds and repeat it—until the one place of sanctuary comes to believe not the best about ourselves—but the worst about ourselves. 

There is a reason we are so often (in our memories) happiest when we are children.  It is quite simply because, as children, we did not think to occupy our minds with the thoughts of negativity.  Rain and its puddles were just as much fun as sunny days.  Two feet of snow meant not an aching back from shoveling the driveway—but a sled and a hill and, hopefully a snow day.  We did not learn to look through the negative lens until we were old enough… “To know better?!”  How silly is that phrase?

Here and now, beginning to at last be awake again, I wish to share with you a simple suggestion.  Focus not on what you are not.  Focus not on the black hole on the page (thanks Bernie) but on the positive—the snow day of fun, rather than the snow blower of doom. 

A great way to begin is to focus each day with simple concepts, of who you are—so that your mind will not forget.  I don’t mean who you are in a role sense—this has nothing to do with occupation.  It has everything to do with the deep down part that doesn’t get a paycheck in the literal sense—but that provides you worth in the real sense.  Start with this at the end of your day, before you go to sleep, instead of rolling over the failures of the day in your mind—focus on the good that you are and the good you want to bring into your life.  At the beginning too—before your drown your spirit with the day’s news—or the frustration of a morning commute—visualize and then put to words the beauty and the potential and the wonder that you are and that your life is—at that very moment. 

I am Loved

I am Creative

I am a Student

I am a Teacher

I am a Child

I am Beautiful

I am Prosperous

I am Happy

I am Content

That’s my list.  I encourage you to develop your own.  And I wish you Love. 

And thank you to my teachers— just some of whom are:

Wyane, Eckhart, Joel, Bernie, River, Dawn, Ginny, Will, Kevin, Doug, Joleen, Alan, John, Jack, Shirley, Holly, Natalie, Dee, David, Paul, Ron, Ron, Eric, Tommy, Te, Eric, Kevin, Alex, Steven, Anthony, Frans, Toby, and so very many more than I can not list here.