Wealthy Minds

Destroy What You Know

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We are held back from creating the life we want, from our highest purpose, from our greatest growth and learning … by what we know.

Destroy what you know.

Once we feel like we’re a little good at something, we cling to that. We cling to wanting others to think we know things and are good at things. We cling to the feeling of knowing what we’re doing.

This clinging gives us the gift of fear of changing the status quo, because that comes with the possibility of failure. The gift of wanting to look like we know something, of wanting to feel certainty. Of waiting until we feel we’re ready — which we never will.

If we want to take our learning and our lives to the next level, we have to let go of that clinging to what we know.

Let yourself dive into the fear of change. Be willing to change everything. Be willing to embrace not knowing, a new view, being a beginner.

Be willing to embrace failure as a part of the process of learning and growing. Redefine failure, not knowing, so that you can’t wait to step into the unknown.

Seek out exposure to uncertainty. Seek to do things where you don’t know what you’re doing. Be open and public about your messiness, your commitments and your failures.

Obliterate what you know, to make room for what you might learn.

-AG

The Illusion of Control

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‘The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets the Tao speak for itself.’
~Laozi

When you think you control something, you’re wrong.

It’s amazing how often we think we’re in control of something when really we aren’t.

Control is an illusion, as I’ve said many times before.

We constantly make plans that never actually turn out the way we envisioned. ‘If you want to make God laugh, make a plan,’ an old saying goes.

We have been trained to set goals, and then work on the actions that lead to those goals … and yet how often do those goals fail? How often are we trying to control a future that we cannot predict?

Did you know five years ago that the world would turn out as it has — that Obama would be president, that the stock markets would have crashed, that we’d be deep into a recession, that earthquakes and tsunamis would hit, that you’d be doing exactly what you’re doing today?

Of course not. We don’t know the future, much less control it. We like to think we do, but that never turns out to be true.

And yet we continue to believe in the illusion of control. We face a chaotic and complex world, and seek to control it however we can.

Our attempts to control the world can be seen through:

  • Trying to control how our children turn out, as if we can shape them like blocks of clay, as if humans aren’t more complex than we can possibly understand.

  • Tracking every little thing, from spending to exercise to what we eat to what tasks we do to how many visitors are on our site to how many steps we’ve taken today and how many miles we’ve run. As if our selective tracking can possibly include the many, complex factors that influence outcomes.

  • Trying to control employees — again, complex human beings with many motivations and whims and habits that we don’t understand.

  • Obsessively planning projects, trips, days, parties, as if the outcomes of events are things we can control with our powers of manipulation of the world.

If we can let go of this illusion, what are we left with? How can we live among this chaos?

Consider the fish. A fish swims in a chaotic sea that it cannot possibly control — much as we all do. The fish, unlike us, is under no illusion that it controls the sea, or other fish in the sea. The fish doesn’t even try to control where it ends up — it just swims, either going with the flow or dealing with the flow as it comes. It eats, and hides, and mates, but does not try to control a thing.

We are no better than that fish, yet our thinking creates the need for an illusion.

Let go of that thinking. Learn to be the fish.

When we are in the midst of chaos, let go of the need to control it. Be awash in it, experience it in that moment, try not to control the outcome but deal with the flow as it comes.

How do we live our lives like this? It’s a completely different way of living, once we let go of the illusion:

  • We stop setting goals, and instead do what excites us.

  • We stop planning, and just do.

  • We stop looking at the future, and live in the moment.

  • We stop trying to control others, and focus instead on being kind to them.

  • We learn that trusting our values is more important to taking action than desiring and striving for certain outcomes.

  • We take each step lightly, with balance, in the moment, guided by those values and what we’re passionate about … rather than trying to plan the next 1,000 steps and where we’ll end up.

  • We learn to accept the world as it is, rather than being annoyed with it, stressed by it, mad at it, despaired by it, or trying to change it into what we want it to be.

  • We are never disappointed with how things turn out, because we never expected anything — we just accept what comes.

This might seem like a passive way of living to some, and it’s against our aggressive, productive, goal-oriented cultural nature. If you can’t accept this way of living, that’s OK — many people live their lives with the illusion of control, and not realizing what it is that makes them unhappy or frustrated isn’t the worst thing ever.

But if you can learn to live this way … it’s the most freeing thing in the world.

-AG

Simplifying Our Mental View

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I’ve found that nearly all of us make things harder and more complicated, by adding a mental layer of difficulty.

We make simple things complicated:

  • Overwhelm: Doing one task at a time is pretty simple, but we get overwhelmed by all the things. We think about an entire list of things that we haven’t done yet, and we feel stressed about it, and end up feeling like we can’t do any of it.

  • Beating ourselves up: If we didn’t do what we thought we should do, we feel like we did things wrong, and we chastise ourselves for not doing things right. This discourages us from just simply starting again.

  • Frustration with another person: If people don’t behave the way we want them to, we can get frustrated … and then it can derail us from our intentions.

  • Fear about what might happen: Let’s say you need to have a conversation with someone, but you’re afraid of how they might react … you might put off that conversation because of that fear, instead of simply talking to them.

There is nothing wrong with doing all of this — it’s human. This is how our minds work.

However … if we bring awareness to our added mental layer, we can simplify it by letting go of that extra layer. 

It’s about doing things as simply as possible.

For example:

  • Decluttering: Most people overcomplicate it, because they feel overwhelmed by how much there is to declutter in their house or office. What would it be like to let go of this layer of “there’s so much!” and just start with one small area? Pick up one thing at a time in that area. Ask yourself if you use/love it or want to get rid of it, and put it in one of two piles. Repeat.

  • Email & messages: Like clutter, the idea of “there’s so much!” can overwhelm us and stop us from simply acting. Instead, what if we let go of that mental layer, and just spent 20 minutes taking messages/emails one at a time? Deal with each message before moving on. Repeat.

  • Tasks: Same idea — we have so many things to do that it overwhelms us and stresses us out, makes acting on things more difficult. Letting go of the idea of “there’s too much,” we can simply pick the most important thing to work on right now, and focus only on that.

  • Habits like exercise or meditation: We have lots of ideas about how hard the exercise is or how we haven’t been meditating as much as we “should” have been … and it creates extra stress and obstacles to just doing the exercise or meditation. What if we let all of that go, and simply went out for a walk or did some pushups? What if we let all of that go and simply sat down to meditate for a few minutes? Habits can be that simple, without all the extra mental layers.

I know it’s not as simple as that, because letting go of the mental layers isn’t always easy. But the point is that it could be simple. It could be much easier, if we could let go of those layers.

So then the practice is to repeatedly let go of the layers. Do things as simply as possible, not worrying about all the usual thoughts about “shoulds” and “too much” and “it shouldn’t be this way.” Removing these extra mental layers, we can simplify our lives greatly.

-AG

A Guide to Beating the Fears That Are Holding You Back

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Once lived, the past has very little value. And yet we carry its lifeless body into all future moments, allowing it to crush us with its weight, to identify us, and to speak for us. – Don Miguel Ruiz

We’ve all been in a place of fear of something or being hurt again… but what does all of these mean? I’m a firm believer that whatever has happened to you, either a breakup, lost your career/job, lost a loved one, YOU have this feeling of being hurt, devastation, and not wanting to be hurt again… However, I believe that this is what makes us human.

For example, animals might fear an immediate danger, that is happening right now, but only we fear something that might happen, that isn’t happening now, that isn’t even showing its ugly face at the moment.

This fear, some might say, is necessary … it stops us from doing something stupid. But I’ve found most of these fears to be unnecessary, to be baseless, to be holding us back from achieving something and basically blocking what could be potentially a blessing in your life or even from moving forward.

“What fear is holding you back?”

  • intimacy/breakups

  • being hurt again

  • abandonment/rejection

  • failure or too much success

  • being broke

  • not being good enough

I think the last one — not being good enough — is actually at the root of all the others. We fear we’ll fail because we’re not good enough or being hurt again. We fear we’ll lose our relationships, friendships, families that we’ll be abandoned, that we’ll be rejected … because we’re not good enough. We fear intimacy for the very same reason — we might get rejected because we’re not good enough. Even the fear of success is based on the worry that we’re not good enough.

Do you have this fear? That you’re not good enough? I have, from a little part of my life many years ago.

I was mentally and physically abused by someone that “should" be a person that’ll care about me. And ever since then I’ve had this “fear” of being bullied again and being taken advantage of… so I took action and worked on my personal growth and learned to NEVER let anyone bully me or abuse me mentally or physically.

But here’s the thing: having the fear or being hurt is natural. Letting it stop you from going after your dreams and towards someone that truly cares about you is a tragedy.

I did this, for well over a 4 years of my teenage life. I let the fear of not being good enough stop me from even trying, from even daring to dream. But it turned out that my fears were baseless.That I AM GOOD ENOUGH. I’m not perfect, but who is?

When I was able to overcome this fear of not being good enough, this fear of failure and rejection, and put myself out there in the world, I succeeded. I found out that I was good enough.

“Accept your past without regret, handle your present with confidence, and face your future without fear.” ~Unknown

How to Beat Your Fears

  1. First, acknowledge your fear. This is a huge first step. If you do just this today, you’ve done something great. Many of us have these fears, but they are at the back of our mind, unnoticed, unacknowledged, as we try to ignore them and pretend they’re not there. But they are there. And they affect us, every day, all our lives. So acknowledge the fear.

  2. Be in the moment. Fear of failure and fear of being hurt again (and other similar fears) are fears of the future. We get caught up in worrying about what might happen. Instead, banish all thoughts of the future. Banish even thoughts of past mistakes and failures. Now focus on right now. Do something right now to beat your fears, to pursue your dreams, and forget about what might happen. Just do it, now, in the moment. When you find yourself thinking about the past or future, bring yourself back in the moment and focus on what you’re doing right at this moment.

  3. Feel the fear. You’ve acknowledged it, but you’re still afraid of it. You’re reluctant to even have this fear, perhaps even embarrassed about it. Well, no more. Recognize that you’re not alone, that we ALL have these fears, that we all think we might not be good enough. Please try this experiment with me: Repeat after me… “there’s nothing wrong with having this fear.” Now allow yourself to feel it. Experience it fully. Bask in this fear. It isn’t as bad as you think. It’s a part of you, but it doesn’t control you. “Feel the fear & do it anyway.”

  4. Just do it. To repeat: feel the fear and do it anyway. To beat the fear, you have to just do it. See below for some tips on doing this, but what works for me is not thinking, just acting. Like when you want to jump off a waterfalls into the pool below: don’t think about it. Just jump! It’s an exhilarating feeling. I fear public speaking, but when I get up and just do it, I feel great.

  5. Small steps. Conquering fear and pursuing a life goal can be overwhelming, intimidating. So start small. Just take one little baby step. Something you know you can do. Something you’re sure to succeed at. Then feel good about that (see below) and take another small baby step. Keep doing this, and soon you’ll have conquered a mountain.

  6. Celebrate every success! Every single thing you do right, celebrate! Even the smallest little thing. And use this feeling of success, of victory, to propel yourself forward and take the next step.

Assuming responsibility for your unpleasant circumstances is a way to regain control of your life and to learn.

Ask yourself how your thoughts and behaviors might have contributed to what happened to you. The past won’t repeat itself if you learn from the difficulty and assume control of your thoughts about the situation.

And even if you feel that you didn’t play a role in the challenge you experienced, you can still take responsibility for your attitudes and feelings about what happened.

See, if we live in fear or being hurt again, YOU ARE BLOCKING what could be a blessing in your life. So, go live life every day with open arms, and accept and learn from everything that you will experience.

-AG

Everything is a Practice

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One of the next most powerful things I have been creating for myself is the view that Everything is a Practice.

Man, what a ridiculously valuable way to frame our lives!

Every difficulty that comes up is simply something to practice with.

Every frustration with another person is a practice ground, and the other person becomes your teacher. Bow to them with gratitude! Or even with things and events.

Normally, we think of these difficulties and frustrations as something wrong with us, the other person, or the world. With this kind of view, every failure is another reason to feel bad about ourselves. Every frustration with someone else is a reason to shut down to them or lash out at them. Everything wrong with the world is another reason to feel discouraged.

But what if, instead, we just took it as something to practice with?

Some examples:

  • My work is overwhelming: OK great, let’s bring awareness to the feeling of overwhelm, be with it mindfully, and examine the view that has you creating this feeling of overwhelm. Can we practice shifting the view? Getting in touch with our inner peace? With this kind of practice, every time we feel overwhelmed is an opportunity to get in touch with our inner peace.

  • Other people can be so frustrating! Absolutely … and also, can we practice being with this feeling of frustration (even expressing it fully as an emotion), noticing what view we have of others that creates our frustration, and maybe finding a more expansive view that lets us feel compassion for the other people? Maybe even seeing them with love and wonder? Then every frustration with others becomes a way to practice compassion and wonder and expansiveness.

  • This task is too hard, I don’t wanna do it: Yep, I have that too! So can we practice being with our resistance, noticing the view that has us think of it as a burden, and instead find a more open and joyful view of the task? Can it become a place of play and curiosity and adventure?

Every challenge, problem, frustration, failure becomes a place of beautiful practice.

Life becomes a playground and place of exploration.

What a magical place this world is!

-AG

Master Your Relationship to Time

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The truth is, most of us have a pretty adversarial relationship to time.

There’s never enough. We’re always behind. It goes by too fast. We can’t do important things because we don’t have enough time.

None of it is helpful. Most of it is bullshit.

Let’s take the first one: there’s never enough time. This is powerful because there’s some truth to it: time is limited and precious. We will die, and while we don’t know how much time we have left in this life, we do know that it’s limited. It’s helpful to remember that we must make the most of our limited time!

But time is also abundant. Think of the past few years — it might seem like they passed really quickly, but actually we had so many hours we can’t count them. We had a huge abundance of hours. Maybe we didn’t spend them wisely (I know I misspent quite a few hours), but we had plenty of time. We still do, today and this month and this year.

The key is to see this abundance, and feel it in your body. It’s like the abundance of oxygen in the air all around us: it’s limited and precious, but we have plenty of it and can breathe freely and with joy. In some situations, oxygen is so limited that it can be life-threatening … but most of the time, we have more than enough for our needs.

That’s true of time. We have more than enough for our needs. We can do amazing things with the time we have — look at da Vinci and Gandhi and Rosa Parks and Tolstoy and Curie. It’s not about how much time we have, but how we use it, how we experience it.

With that said, I’d like to propose a handful of ways we can shift so that we can master our relationship with time.

  1. See the gift in the time that we have. Every day that we have is a huge gift. We get to have this time! We get to use it to make something, to love, to feel joy and laughter, to listen to music, to see nature, to move, to read, to feel. This is incredible! Instead of looking at how little time we have, we can appreciate the time we have as an incredible, powerful gift. Every hour is a tremendous gift. Every moment. Can we see the gift in the time that we have, and appreciate it fully? How would this shift how you feel about your day?

  2. Use the time intentionally & joyfully. If every hour is a gift, are we going to waste it? Or can we use it intentionally, for something that is important and meaningful to us? (Btw, rest is important. Self-care is meaningful.) Can we use this gift as best we can? And can we experience it with joy, with full appreciation? How might this shift how we use our time?

  3. Be honest about your priorities. A lot of time we use time as an excuse of why we’re not doing something, or as a reason to say no. We all do it: “Sorry, I don’t have the time.” This is a way to honor our boundaries, but it’s not fully honest. We all have the time — we just need to prioritize it, because the time isn’t unlimited. We choose to spend our time based on what is important to us. If we’re not out helping the homeless or saving orphans … it’s not because we don’t have the time. It’s because we’ve chosen to prioritize earning money, taking care of our family, taking care of ourselves, or doing something else meaningful. If we’re honest to ourselves about our priorities, then we don’t need to use time as an excuse. We can just say it’s not my priority right now, and then see the things we’ve chosen as priorities as the way we’d like to spend our time.

  4. Create space in your day. If you have some clear priorities, why not create the time to make them happen? We often feel that we want to prioritize something, but don’t have the time. Then we need to make the time. If we can’t, then we just have to admit that it’s not a priority right now. If it is a priority, let’s see if we can create the space.

  5. Don’t let things get familiar. Most of us have experienced the feeling that time is flying by faster and faster every year. This is likely because of a phenomenon where we don’t notice things when they get really familiar. It’s like driving past your neighborhood on the way home, without seeing any of it. It’s all familiar and you’re on autopilot. That’s how we experience much of our days — things get really familiar and we don’t notice it. What if we stop letting things get too familiar? What if we look at everything as if it were the first time we were seeing it? Time would all of a sudden become less blurry, and we’d be fully in the moment.

  6. Imagine you’re going to die in a year. This might sound gruesome to some, or too dark … but contemplating our death is a way to shift our relationship to life. To shift how we relate to time. So if you imagined, for example, that you were going to die soon … you might spend the time you have left more intentionally. And here’s something that’s fairly certain: if you know you only have a short time to live, that time suddenly slows down and becomes much more vivid. That’s what happens when we contemplate death — time becomes vivid, slower, real.

  7. Savor & be fully present to slow down time. If we think of time as a treat to be savored, we can become fully present with it. Think of the hours of your day as a delicious beverage, waiting to be sipped and fully tasted. How delicious! How wonderful it is to be alive. Time isn’t just sands slipping through our fingers, but pleasure being sipped into our mouths.

Try each of these, and practice them by fully inhabiting each practice. Give yourself fully to the practice, and see what shifts. Your relationship to time might never be the same.

-AG

When Your Task List is Overwhelmingly Long

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I’ve talked with several people lately who have tasks lists from the floor to the ceiling, and it just overwhelms them. They’re not alone — I can relate, and lots of people have this problem.

If we’re fairly organized, our task list has everything we could possibly want to do on it, and it’ll get longer and longer.

That’s the good scenario — most people don’t have everything on the list, and the tasks are scattered across different systems and lists, in email inboxes and messaging apps, in browser tabs and pieces of paper, and in their heads.

Either way, it eventually gets so overwhelming that many people will give up whatever system they’re doing and start afresh, because the old system wasn’t working. In truth, they just didn’t have a way to deal with the overwhelm.

So what can we do?

It turns out, several key things.

Get Clear on Priorities

Let’s call this Step 0 — if you’re already clear on what matters to you, you’re ahead of the game.

But think about this: if you don’t know what matters, how can you focus on anything? Everything will seem urgent and important, and you’ll be scattered in lots of directions.

If you know what is most important, you can focus on that. The rest can wait. It’s like if you’re a doctor in a hospital, and one person needs a life-saving heart operation, and a hundred people have ankle sprains. You’ll focus on the heart operation, and let the ankle sprains wait for a few minutes.

Get clear on what matters to you. Make a list. Write out why. It’s worth spending 30 minutes on this.

Get clear on what’s important this week. And what you need to focus on today.

If you can get clarity on what matters & what to focus on, it will make you so much more effective than jumping around from task to task as if you were putting out a thousand small fires.

Change How You Relate to Your Tasks

Think about your list of tasks right now — does it feel stressful? This is a sign that you think of them as burdens, as something stressful, or as a potential way that you’re going to let people down or fail or look stupid. Or maybe all of the above.

How I’ve often related to my tasks is something like, “If I don’t do this task, I will be deficient and let people down.” If I have a list of tasks that’s full of these kinds of potential failures … of course it will be stressful!

How do you relate to your tasks?

Is there a more empowered relationship you can create?

Some examples:

  • I’m fully committed to this task because it’s incredibly important to me, so I’m going to create a sacred space of 30 minutes today to be fully present with it.

  • This task is an opportunity for me to serve someone I care deeply about, with love.

  • These tasks are training ground for me to practice presence, devotion, getting comfortable with uncertainty.

  • These tasks are an adventure! An exploration of new ground, a learning space, a way to grow and discover and create and be curious.

  • This task list is a huge playground, full of ways for me to play today!

These are some examples from my life, but they don’t have to be your relationship — what empowered way would you like to relate to your tasks?

Find that, and practice it daily.

A Short List

I find it helpful to have a long list of tasks, separated by area (work, personal, finances, etc.) and project, if applicable. But this long list can’t be done today.

So I create a short list, of just stuff I’m going to do today. I call it  “Today’s Joy List”. I try to keep it to 5-6 things, though often I give in to the temptation to add more joy opportunities than I actually have time for. :)

If I have meetings, those are on the list, and the more meetings I have, the fewer tasks I allow myself to put on the list.

What things have to be done today?

What things would be a really powerful use of your day?

Just focus on those. The rest can come later.

Full Focus

With a short list of high priority tasks, and an empowered relationship to those tasks … the world is yours!

The final thing I would say is to focus on one thing at a time. If you can practice this regularly, the overwhelm starts to lessen.

The opposite of this is constant switching between tasks. Doing quick emails, working on a task, but 30 seconds into that task you go check your favorite website or messages, etc.

Full focus is picking something important to work on, and then clearing everything else away. Make this the only thing in front of you. Notice the urge to go do something else, breathe, then bring focus back to the task.

Let it be your whole world. Be grateful to have this task in front of you, this opportunity to serve people you care about, this opportunity to play and be curious, this opportunity to learn and find joy and delight.

Now that I’ve shared these ideas of working with an overwhelming task list … how would you like to practice?

-AG

Wake Up: A Guide to Living Your Life Consciously

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A life lived of choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived of chance is a life of unconscious creation.
– Neale Donald Walsch

As much as possible, I try to live my life by bringing to my consciousness what is bubbling up from my unconsciousness.

I try to clear the fog through which we often drift, to see where I’m going, to make conscious choices instead of automatic ones.

Do you ever have a feeling that you’re drifting through life, and not going where you want to go? Or that you don’t know how you got where you are today?

Living consciously is about taking control of your life, about thinking about your decisions rather than making them without thought, about having a life that we want rather than settling for the one that befalls us.

If you’re drifting through life, or feel out of control, or don’t know how you got here … deciding to live consciously could be the single most important thing you do.

Are you living unconsciously now?
Ask yourself the following questions … if you find yourself saying yes to many of them, you might want to consider trying conscious living:

1. Are you in a job that you fell into rather than the job you want?

2. Are you doing things that are given to you rather than what you love to do?

3. Are you spending your time doing busy work rather than what you want to do with your days?

4. Do you wish you could spend more time with loved ones?

5. Do you find yourself living from paycheck to paycheck or in debt, not knowing where your money goes?

6. Do you find yourself wasting your time doing things that aren’t important rather than focusing on completing the things that are very important?

7. Do you go through your days not thinking about what you want out of life and how to get it?

If you answered “no” to all of these questions, you’re probably already living consciously, and you don’t need this blog post at all. For those who would like to live more consciously, read on.

How to Live Life Consciously
It’s not something you can change overnight. Living consciously is a lifestyle, a skill, an art. It’s not something you do just once, but a habit that you can form for the rest of your life.

But it is deceptively simple: Be conscious, and think about, everything you do. Make conscious choices rather than doing things without thinkings. That’s all.

It sounds simple, but it’s amazing how few people actually do this, and it’s amazing how easy it is to live life on autopilot, and just do what we always do because that’s what we’re used to doing. And it’s easier that way, even if our lives are difficult.

It’s not easy to changes our lives, to break out of our routines, to begin to live the lives we want.

It takes willful effort, energy and constant vigilance to think about our choices … all of them.

Here are some key tips that have worked for me:

1. Make reflecting on your life a regular routine. Whether you keep a journal, or make reflecting on your day part of your evening routine, or have a weekly session where you review your life or take some time away from the office to reflect on everything … it’s important that you give things some thought. Regularly.

2. At least once a year, set or review your life’s goals. What do you want to do in life? What is important to you? What do you want your life to be like? And how will you get there? Write it down, and keep it somewhere you will see it often, and take action.

3. Also review your relationships. The people we love are among the most important things in our lives, if not the only important things. You need to think about your relationships. Do you spend enough time with them? Do you show your appreciation for them? Is there a way you can improve your relationship? Do you need to forgive or apologize about anything? Are there barriers that can be removed? Communication that can be improved?

4. Consider your impact on the world. How does what you do, what you consume, and how you live, impact the environment? How does it impact poor people in Third World countries? How does it impact the poor, the powerless, the voiceless? How does it impact your community? Your life has an impact, whether you think about it or not. Being conscious of how your decisions affect others is important.

5. Consider the real costs of the things in your life. Our lives are filled with stuff … our houses, our offices … and beyond just the cost of buying the stuff, this stuff takes a toll on us. The stuff in our life must be arranged, cleaned, moved, taken with us when we move … it takes up the space in our life, it is visual stress. Later, we’ll have to get rid of it, sort through all of it, take time to throw it away or recycle it or donate it. If having the stuff is not worth all of that, then get rid of it.

6. Review how you spend your time. Until we do a time audit, and keep a log of our day, even if it’s just for one or two days, we don’t really know how we spend our time. And if we do audit our time, it can be very surprising. And if we know how we’re spending our time now, we can make conscious decisions to change how we spend our time in the future.

7. Explore yourself. Not in a dirty way. Take some time to think about what kind of person you are. What your values are. Whether you live your life according to those values. How you treat people. How you treat yourself. Think about this: what do you want people to say about you when you die? 

-AG

The Wisdom of Allowing Things to Happen

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The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.
~The Daodejing

I have never been one to be passive, to let things happen instead of making them happen, to let go of control of things.

But here’s what I’ve been learning:

  1. This control we think we have over our lives and our destinies … it’s an illusion. As the guy who had his life turned upside down by a heart break, car accident and totaled his car; a woman who lost her father to death and had to drop everything, the family who lost their home to a hurricane, the entrepreneur that was doing well until the economy collapsed and no one was spending, the hard-working employee who was laid off when the economy tanked, the cyclist who was hit by a car, the car that skid because someone ran onto the road who had been obscured, the mom whose son has autism despite her doing everything right during pregnancy … it happens every day, where we think we’re in control but we’re really not. Do we control all the people around us who affect our lives so intimately? Do we control the overwhelming power of nature? There’s so much out of our control that what we think is control is really an illusion.

  2. To control your cow, give it a bigger pasture. This is a great quote from Zen Master Suzuki Roshi, talking about controlling your mind. I see the cow and her pasture as a form of allowing things to happen — instead of tightly controlling something, you’re opening up, giving it more room, a bigger pasture. The cow will be happier, will roam around, will do as she pleases, and yet your needs will also be met. The same is true of anything else — stepping back and allowing things to happen means things will take care of themselves, and your needs will also be met. And you’ve done no work.

  3. You have less stress, less to worry about. Imagine allowing things to happen naturally, and things work out, and all you did was smile and watch. You don’t have to worry about shaping things, about controlling something that doesn’t want to be controlled. You don’t have to push, and fix leaks, and put out fires. You just let things work on their own. They happen.

  4. Things will surprise you. Let’s say you’re allowing something to happen. You might want it to go a certain way, to a certain outcome. That’s your goal. But what if you let go of this idea? What if you say, “I don’t know what will happen.” (Btw, you really don’t.) What if you say, “Let’s see what happens.” Then things will happen, but not the way you planned. The outcome might be completely different than what you’d hoped for. But it can still be great, just different. It might even be wonderful, and surprising. Surprises are good, if we accept that things always change and that change is good.

  5. You learn how things work. Instead of trying to make things work the way you want them to work, just watch them work. You’ll learn much more about human nature, about the nature of the world, as you see things work without you controlling it. It might change you.

Remember, it is not what happens to us that determines our reality it is how we interpret it. We have control over our perceptions, decisions and actions not so much outer events. What we may initially see as a challenge, a setback, or a pain, or terrible can later turn out to be a turning point in our lives. Even in that moment opportunity emerges for those that look.

But why have the wisdom of the ages with the aging process when we can look at our challenge with new eyes and discover the other side of the perceptual equation and discover a meaning at first missed without the aging process. I have taken thousands of students through their crises and helped them see the equal and opposite blessings.

If you never look and you just keep running the story of being a victim of outer circumstances you delay the discovery of the opportunity to be a master. Every event has two sides.

Wisdom is discovering the whole and objective not the part and subjective only. Our resilience and adaptability is remarkable once we ask the wise questions and extract our a deeper meaning out of our apparent chaos. So too in turn our terrific experiences too have another side and the wise individual does not become carried away by outer appearances and recenters themselves with poise.

Just because we have not looked for and seen the two sides of the equation does not mean they are not synchronously there for our learning and growth.

-AG

A Guide to Being in Action

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Commit to Possibility

When we are not feeling motivated to take action, and we’re feeling burdened or bleh about a task … it’s because we aren’t connected to some possibility in our lives.

What is it that you want to create in the world? What do you want to change in your life, or in the lives of others?

If you get clear on that possibility, and feel connected to it, you’re going to feel much more energized and inspired to tackle your tasks.

Some examples of possibility:

  • Create an income with my new business to support me and my family

  • Help people overcome their feelings of inadequacy

  • Help my team feel more energized and connected to meaning

  • Help keep my family safe and happy

  • Help thousands or even maybe millions of people change their lives one day

There are lots of other possibilities, but the important thing is to connect to yours, before you even take on a task. And reconnect when you’re feeling like not doing it.

Then commit to creating that possibility, even if it feels difficult or scary.

Create Daily Structure

Once you’re connected and committed to that possibility, it’s important to have some structure. Some examples:

  • A schedule with blocks for your meaningful tasks

  • Accountability with a group of people

  • A session at 10am every day where you write for an hour

  • A video call every day at 8am with an accountability partner, where you do 2 hours of focused work on the call together

  • A commitment to check in with a coach, and a consequence for not doing your commitment

What structure will help you be in action? Create it for yourself, and then train.

Train Your Action Muscle

This is the important part: you can connect to possibility and be committed, create a structure … but then you have to actually put it into action. Nothing else matters but this.

So train yourself for a week, and each day be in action. Be doing stuff. Get shit done.

Take on the hard tasks, in small chunks. Check things off your list, while feeling the meaning and possibility you’re creating.

Be in action, over and over, and you’ll train the action muscle.

After a week, review: how did it go? What needs to be adjusted? What did you learn? How can you keep the training going?

So with this in mind: what would you like to commit to today?

-AG

"We are just human beings"

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"When we are born, we have no idea of nationality or religious faith. We are just human beings who want to be happy. We are social creatures who need to live together as friends. An affectionate response brings a smile, which leads to trust that can grow into friendship and so bring us together. Genuine friends are those who continue to support you when things get difficult."
~ Dalai Lama

Falling in Love With Ourselves

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While many of us look for love from a partner and mate, we often miss out on the person who has some amazing love to give, and who is amazing: the person looking back at us from the mirror.

If we fall in love with ourselves — not in a selfish way, but in an appreciative way — we will discover a source of love that doesn’t run out.

I’ve heard the question, “How can we expect others to love us if we can’t love ourselves?” And while there’s truth to this, it’s also true that often others do love us even if we don’t love ourselves — they see the awesome within us, even if we don’t.

The problem is that if we don’t love ourselves, this leads to problems: a lack of self-confidence, insecurities and jealousies, self-dislike, unhappiness, and so on. If we allow this cycle of negativity to continue, we might behave in ways that push others away — and then that love from others that we crave might not be around for long.

So loving ourselves is important from that angle. But it’s also important even if we take others out of the equation: who are we with the most? Ourselves. And if we’re the person who keeps us company all the time, isn’t it important that we appreciate the beauty within, if we want to be happy? How can we be happy if the person we’re always with doesn’t really like us?

In contrast, if we learn to love ourselves, then we’ll always be around someone who loves us, and be happier … we’ll be more confident, secure, positive, fun. Let’s look at how to do that.

*SIDE STORY*

I’ve known this girl for about 2-3 years now. In the beginning we were just a couple of co-workers that just says “hi” and “hello” with each other; until a week or two ago we had a powerful conversation after work. She had shared and opened up some insights about her and her life which was really courageous from her end.

Fast forward… her and I went to get dinner the other night and the girl that I’ve known for years I got to know within 2-6 hours. It was an amazing night. She has the best smile, gorgeous eyes, and ecstatic energy (insider.) LOL

Any who, always remember to keep your doors open because you never know who will walk into your life that shares the same beliefs and the same mindset as you. And I tell you it’s a BEAUTIFUL thing!

So, if “YOU” are reading this, you are amazing, you are gorgeous, you are valuable, and last but not least, YOU ARE LOVED!

Understanding Each Other’s World(s)

So what happens when we fall in love with someone else or meeting someone that understands you world? There’s no single right answer to that question, perhaps, but here’s a rough outline of what might happen:

  • We meet someone interesting. They might be interesting for physical reasons (attractiveness), but it can also be that they have a sharp mind, a great sense of humor, a great attitude towards life, a wide variety of skills or experiences, common interests, a kind heart, etc.

  • We get to know them. We start to learn more about the person, beyond the initial physical impression, beyond what we can see from a first meeting. The more we know, the more we might want to find out more.

  • We appreciate the little things. This person might not be “perfect” but even the little imperfections seem perfect. We accept this person, greatness and flaws alike, and appreciate all of it.

  • We start to trust. As we get to know this person, we learn that he or she is trustworthy, not someone who will easily hurt us. This trust-building is an important process, and takes time — we trust a little, then the other person trusts a little too … then we trust a little more, and the other person does too.

  • We get love from them, and return it. Giving and receiving love is a part of the falling in love process, obviously — we tend to love someone if they love us.

This is a general process that’s not set in stone, but I think these elements are in most relationships where people fall in love with each other. And they can be used consciously to fall in love with ourselves.

How to Start

So how do we start falling in love with ourselves? It seems unlikely to many people, and possibly a little silly. It’s not silly, though: it’s simply a process of introspection and appreciation, and it’s very possible.

Start with the first step in the process above — meet someone interesting! That person is you, of course, but how often do we stop to look at what’s interesting about ourselves?

So take some time this week to do these things:

  1. Meet the interesting person within you. Close your eyes for a few minutes and look within — what are you like? What is good about you? What do you like to do, to eat, to play? What music do you like? What are your interests, your passions, your accomplishments? Don’t be critical at this point — find the interesting in you. It’s there, if you look.

  2. Get to know this cool person. It’s possible you don’t know the answers to some of the questions in the previous step — so find out! Over the next few days (and weeks), explore yourself. Find out what you like, what music you like, what your passions are. Look within and find out your desires, dreams, fears, strengths, weaknesses, and all that’s good within you.

  3. Appreciate the little things. You might not be “perfect” but even the little imperfections can be perfect. Start to learn to accept this interesting person, greatness and flaws alike, and appreciate all of it. This might mean putting aside the judgments of yourself, and saying, “This is what makes you … you. And because of that, it is perfect and great.”

An Ongoing Romance

The three steps above are a great start, and in fact you can keep doing them for weeks, and months, and for the rest of your life. They’re always good things to do, always.

But there’s more. You should also explore these steps:

  1. Start to trust. As you get to know this cool person within, start to see that you are trustworthy. You will not hurt yourself, or abandon yourself. This trust-building process takes time — trust a little, see that the trust is warranted, trust a little more. Seek to be worthy of that trust.

  2. Give love. Give yourself love just as fully as you would give love to a lover, a child, a parent or sibling. You are capable of great love, and you are worthy of that great love. Do seemingly silly things like hug yourself, tell yourself daily that you love yourself, that you’re beautiful and strong and great.

This process doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s important.

You can do all kinds of things with yourself to learn more about what’s within, to begin to trust and appreciate and love yourself. Go on dates with yourself, exercise, explore hobbies and interests, do things for yourself, choose things that you like.

In this process, have fun, and get to know the lovable person within. That person is great, and worthy of every ounce of your love.

-AG

How to Let Go of Obsessive Overthinking

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Sometimes, our heads won’t stop thinking about something. Our thoughts will spin around and around, not willing to let go, obsessing. It might be about another person, a big event coming up, or about ourselves. It might be overthinking a decision, big or small.

There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s a human thing to do, to overthink or obsess about something we’re worried or frustrated about. It’s a sign that we’re feeling fear and uncertainty, and our brains are trying to solve it.

Sometimes, though, it can be liberating to let go of that kind of thinking. It can lead to better sleep, peace of mind, and a simplicity of living. So how can we do that?

I’ll share a process for that briefly here:

  1. Notice. Often when we’re caught up in a loop or overthinking, we aren’t aware of it. It seems like the right thing to do, to keep thinking about this thing that’s worrying us. But to break out of the loop, we have to notice we’re in it. What signs have you noticed will point out to you that you’re in a loop? For many people, it’s a rising amount of anxiety or worry, an inability to sleep, an inability to focus. For others, it might be a desire to lash out at someone, or to plan or otherwise get control. The key is just to notice you’re in it.

  2. Turn toward the underlying fear. Once you’ve noticed, the magic trick is to look beyond the thing you think needs to be solved … to the fear underneath. It’s like not looking at the hand the magician is trying to direct your attention to, but to their other hand that is hiding the coin. Don’t look at the object of your thoughts or the problem you need to solve … but the fear that’s having you want to obsess and overthink. What are you feeling right now, in your body?

  3. Be with the fear. Before we let go of the overthinking, we have to be with the feeling of fear that’s in our body. Otherwise it’s like trying to calm a freaked out child by ignoring them. What if instead we could be with the fear and relax with it, so it can relax? Can you feel the fear, as sensation, and stay with it? Can you breathe deeply and slowly, so you can slow your heartbeat and relax with the fear? Can you bring curiosity towards it? If it’s challenging, you might think of it as being with your heart.

  4. Ask what’s needed. Ask what your fear could use right now — some compassion, some music, a nice cup of tea, journaling or a walk? Then ask what’s needed in the situation you’re overthinking — what’s the simplest thing that you could do here, what’s the simplest way you could speak from the heart? Then trust that, breathe, and move to the present moment.

  5. Turn toward something right in front of you. What’s something right in front of you that you could focus on? For me, it might be the light in the room, nature, another person. Or it might be answering an email or writing a blog post. Something simple, right in front of me. I trust that what I’ve chosen from the heart will suffice, and then I focus on something in the here and now.

This isn’t about getting this perfect, or never overthinking or obsessing. I still get caught up in loops all the time. But I accept that as a part of my humanity, and love the fear that’s creating it. Then I practice.

-AG

One of my favorite poems: The Dash by Linda Ellis

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THE DASH

the poem by Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning… to the end.

He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke of the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time they spent alive on earth and now only those who loved them know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we own, the cars… the house… the cash. What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard; are there things you’d like to change? For you never know how much time is left that still can be rearranged.

To be less quick to anger and show appreciation more and love the people in our lives like we’ve never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile… remembering that this special dash might only last a little while.

So when your eulogy is being read, with your life’s actions to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say about how you lived your dash?

LIVE YOUR DASH MEANING

Be Slow to Anger : Anger can become like a cancer and eat away at your ability to be joyful and kind. Life is too short – choose forgiveness and let it go. As William Ward says: “Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the handcuffs of hate.”

Say Thank You: Those two little words hold incredible power. Think about how you feel when someone thanks you. You feel validated and appreciated. When you do the same for other people, you pass along that positive energy. It may be just what they needed at that moment.

Love People: Our Dash moves with lightning speed. It seems like only yesterday the kids were just toddlers learning to walk, and now they’ve got children of their own! As they say, “the days are long, but the years are short.” Never miss an opportunity to show love and say “I love you.”

Treat Others with Respect: You have opportunities every day to spend your dash through simple acts of kindness and respect. This quote by George Washington Carver says it best:  “How far you go in your life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”

Wear a Smile: Our dash may be short, but it can be wide. Often a simple smile will break through tension and stress. A smile will not only affect those around you, but it will change your attitude and outlook on life. Try it right now – just smile!

Remember Life is Short – make every moment matter: It’s been said that “we don’t remember days; we remember moments.” Being present and in the moment provides some of life’s greatest joys — A crackling fire on a cold winter night, reading a love note from your spouse, watching a beautiful sunset, or having coffee with a friend. It’s moments like these that make life worth living.

Think about your life. What are some moments you cherish and hold most dear? Who are the people in your life that you need to say “thank you” to? Is there someone in your life who could use some love and attention…a smile or a hug?

Examine your heart and think about what is true and real. Now is the time to rearrange the things that need to be changed. As Suzanne Chapin says, “All that is worth cherishing in this world begins in the heart, not in the head.”

-AG

How to Be More Present & Alive in the Moment

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Going through this tough times that I’ve been going through from this past few weeks, this is one of the things that I had to reflect on and really thought about and had to really dig deep in.

So how do we become more present and alive in each moment? I have some ideas, based on my experience(s).

  1. Practice fully pouring yourself into every act. This is a personal development practice — being fully in every task you do, every act. If you’re sitting in meditation, be fully in your seat, not have your mind be somewhere else. If you’re brushing your teeth, just brush your teeth — and be completely immersed in that. This is a practice, of course, which means we’ll forget to do it most of the time, but it’s an incredibly rich practice. Fully express yourself in everything you do.

  2. See the divinity in the person in front of you or in this moment. When I say “divinity,” it might mean God if you believe in God … but if you don’t, it’s seeing the incredible gift of the world, of each person. Seeing the profound beauty in everything. Seeing the sacredness of the ordinary. When you’re talking with someone, can you fully appreciate their divinity? Can you feel wonder at the world around you, no matter where you are? This is an incredible practice that will help you feel more alive, each time you do it.

  3. Open your damn heart! Most of us move through our days with our hearts closed. We do our tasks, go through the motions, but we aren’t connected to our hearts. (Some people, of course, are able to live in their hearts much of the time — let them be our role models!) What would it be like to be open-hearted today, feel loving toward every person you see, loving and tender toward the world around you?

See, what I’ve learned from my heartbreaking process was that I know that I had the passion of helping others, BUT I wasn’t giving enough love for me, which caused my stubbornness and selfishness acts.

But as you can see, these are not things that you’ll be able to get perfect, immediately or even ever. They are things to practice.

But I can tell you, in my experience, this kind of practice of being fully immersed in each activity, with your heart open, your emotions fully expressed, seeing the good in everything and everyone around you — this will help us be fully alive in each moment.

-AG

How to Thrive in the Midst of Personal Turbulence

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It’s tough when you’re going through heartbreaks, difficulties, struggles, turbulence… it can feel like your world is falling apart, or you can feel hopeless. My heart is with you if you’re feeling this way.

But I’ve been practicing these three things from the past week:

  1. It will pass!

  2. It is also your path to spiritual and growth transformation.

  3. It happened for a reason (A.K.A you gotta learn from all of your mistakes, recognize those mistakes and firmly tell yourself that you’re willing to improve that area for YOU first and then for the person or the thing you’re anxious and stressing about.)

The second part is the key. If you see your turbulence as an opportunity for incredible growth, you are about to experience some amazing things.

Many of us just want to get out of the turbulence and pain, want to be free of it, want to find a place of peace. That’s natural, but that’s a rejection of your experience right now, and it’s a huge missed opportunity.

Use Pain, Heartbreaks, Sadness, Chaos for Growth

In Zen, there’s a saying, “Let everything be your teacher.” It sounds overused, but if you practice it, it’s very great.

Imagine if every single person you met were your teacher — you could see each of them as an opportunity to practice, each as an opportunity to connect your open hearts, each as a way to see your interconnectedness. Each person becomes an opportunity to practice compassion, presence, consciousness.

Imagine if everything around you were teaching you about the preciousness and overwhelming beauty of life.

Imagine if every turbulent, painful time in your life were your teacher — showing you how to stay present in the midst of fear and pain, how to open your heart to the experience, how to be fearless in the midst of wanting to shut down.

In this way, pain and fear become your path to transformation — if you can find the courage to touch them, to feel them fully, to open to them with love.

Here’s a practice I’m personally doing for myself; if you want to use your turbulent time as a teacher and path to transformation:

  1. Notice what you’re experiencing right now. Not the story about it in your head, but the sensations in your body. Just be curious about what it feels like to be alive right now, inclusive of any pain, sadness, fear or groundlessness in you. Just explore, and stay with it.

  2. Allow yourself to fully feel it. Touch the pain or fear. That means allow your awareness to land gently on the sensation of pain or fear, to feel it. Now open your heart to feeling it fully, with its full power, letting go of fears that you can’t handle it. You can. This might be allowing yourself to yell in rage, to cry in anguish, to run around in a state of nervous excitement, to shake with fear. Fully feel it, instead of hiding from it.

  3. Let your tender heart feel the pain, joy, sadness … and let yourself feel the heartbreak of it all. This is what it’s like to be fully alive — you’re open to the heartbreak of the world, not afraid to feel the joy and sadness at the same time.

  4. Let yourself fall in love with this experience. This moment, filled with pain and sadness and beauty, is heartbreakingly gorgeous. It is filled with life, energy, light and joyful sweetness. Fall in love with it, opening your heart to the experience, no matter how much sadness or pain the moment contains. It’s all worthy of your love, just as it is, without needing to change.

Imagine practicing this throughout your time of chaos and sadness, turbulence and pain. Fully feeling, fully opening, fully falling in love with each moment.

It would change your life.

You would thrive.

-AG