Wealthy Minds
Be content, and surround yourself with ONLY good energy that your soul craves.
Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don't wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now. Self-love is the highest frequency that attracts everything you want. The people we surround ourselves with either raise or lower our standards. They either help us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves or encourage us to become lesser versions of ourselves. We become like our friends. No man or woman becomes great on his own. The people around them help to make them great. We all need people in our lives who raise our standards, remind us of our essential purpose, and challenge us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves.
To: Pam
Thank you for being an amazing friend throughout my chaotic journey from the past couple of months. You are an amazing soul. Know that you are truly appreciated. I LOVE YOU DUDE!
How To Forgive Someone Who Has Hurt You
Forgiving others is essential for spiritual growth. Your experience of someone who has hurt you, while painful, is now nothing more that a thought or feeling that you carry around. These thoughts of resentment, anger, and hatred represent slow, debilitating energies that will dis-empower you if you continue to let these thoughts occupy space in your head. If you could release them, you would know more peace.
Here are some practices I’ve been applying in my life, and I’m hoping that these could help you through:
Step 1: Move On to the Next Act
Your past history and all of your hurts are no longer here in your physical reality. Don’t allow them to be here in your mind, muddying your present moments. Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the play.Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.
Step 2: Reconnect to Spirit
Make a new agreement with yourself to always stay connected to Spirit even when it seems to be the most difficult thing to do. If you do this, you will allow whatever degree of perfect harmony that your body was designed for to proliferate. Turn your hurts over to God, and allow Spirit to flow through you.
Your new agreement with reality in which you’ve blended your physical self and your personality with your spiritual God-connected self will begin to radiate a higher energy of love and light. Wherever you go, others will experience the glow of your God consciousness, and disharmony and disorder and all manner of problems simply will not flourish in your presence. Become “an instrument of thy peace,” as St. Francis desires in the first line of his famous prayer.
Step 3: Don’t Go to Sleep Angry
Each night as I drift off to sleep, I adamantly refuse to use this precious time to review anything that I do not want to be reinforced in the hours of being immersed in my subconscious mind. I choose to impress upon my subconscious mind my conception of myself as a Divine creator in alignment with the one mind. I reiterate my I ams, which I have placed in my imagination, and I remember that my slumber will be dominated by my last waking concept of myself. I am peaceful, I am content, I am love, and I attract only to myself those who are in alignment with my highest ideals of myself.
Step 4: Switch the Focus from Blaming Others to Understanding Yourself
Whenever you’re upset over the conduct of others, take the focus off those you’re holding responsible for your inner distress. Shift your mental energy to allowing yourself to be with whatever you’re feeling — let the experience be as it may, without blaming others for your feelings. Don’t blame yourself either! Just allow the experience to unfold and tell yourself that no one has the power to make you uneasy without your consent, and that you’re unwilling to grant that authority to this person right now.
Tell yourself that you are willing to freely experience your emotions without calling them “wrong” or needing to chase them away. In this way, you’ve made a shift to self-mastery. It’s important to bypass blame, and even to bypass your desire to understand the other person; instead, focus on understanding yourself.
By taking responsibility for how you choose to respond to anything or anyone, you’re aligning yourself with the beautiful dance of life. By changing the way you choose to perceive the power that others have over you and you will see a bright new world of unlimited potential for yourself and you will know instantly how to forgive and let go of anything.
Step 5: Avoid Telling People What to Do
Avoid thoughts and activities that involve telling people who are perfectly capable of making their own choices what to do. In your family, remember that you do not own anyone. This is always true. In fact, disregard any inclination to dominate in all of your relationships. Listen rather than expound. Pay attention to yourself when you’re having judgmental opinions and see where self-attention takes you. When you replace an ownership mentality with one of allowing, you’ll begin to see the true unfolding of the Tao in yourself and other people. From that moment on, you’ll be free of frustration with those who don’t behave according to your ego-dominated expectations.
Step 6: Learn to Let Go and Be Like Water
Rather than attempting to dominate with your forcefulness, be like water: flow everywhere there’s an opening. Soften your hard edges by being more tolerant of contrary opinions. Interfere less, and substitute listening for directing and telling. When someone offers you their viewpoint, try responding with: “I’ve never considered that before—thank you. I’ll give it some thought.”
Picture yourself as having the same qualities as water. Allow your soft, weak, yielding, fluid self to enter places where you previously were excluded because of your inclination to be solid and hard. Flow softly into the lives of those with whom you feel conflicted: Picture yourself entering their private inner selves, seeing perhaps for the first time what they’re experiencing. Keep this image of yourself as gently coursing water, and watch how your relationships change.
Step 7: Take Responsibility for Your Part
Removing blame means never assigning responsibility to anyone else for what you’re experiencing. It means that you’re willing to say, “I may not understand why I feel this way, why I have this illness, why I’ve been victimized, or why I had this accident, but I’m willing to say without any guilt or resentment that I own it. I live with, and I am responsible for, having it in my life.”
If you take responsibility for having the experience, then at least you have a chance to also take responsibility for removing it or learning from it. If you’re in some small (perhaps unknown) way responsible for that migraine headache or that depressed feeling, then you can go to work to remove it or discover what its message is for you. If, on the other hand, someone or something else is responsible in your mind, then of course you’ll have to wait until they change for you to get better. And that is unlikely to occur. So you go home with nothing and are left with nothing when peace is really on the other side of the coin.
Step 8: Let Go of Resentments
What causes annoyance and anger after a dispute? The generic response would be a laundry list detailing why the other person was wrong and how illogically and unreasonably they behaved, concluding with something like, “I have a right to be upset when my [mother-in-law, ex-husband, boss, or whomever you’re thinking of] speaks to me that way!”
But if you’re interested in living a Tao-filled life, it’s imperative that you reverse this kind of thinking. Resentments don’t come from the conduct of the other party in an altercation—no, they survive and thrive because you’re unwilling to end that altercation with an offering of kindness, love, and authentic forgiveness. As Lao-Tzu says:
Someone must risk returning injury with kindness, or hostility will never turn to goodwill.
— Lao-Tzu
So when all of the yelling, screaming, and threatening words have been expressed, the time for calm has arrived. Remember that no storm lasts forever, and that hidden within are always seeds of tranquility. There is a time for hostility and a time for peace.
Step 9: Be Kind Instead of Being Right
There is a Chinese proverb, If you’re going to pursue revenge, you’d better dig two graves, which is saying to me: your resentments will destroy you.
The world is just the way it is. The people who are behaving “badly” in the world are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. You can process it in any way that you choose. If you’re filled with anger about all of those “problems,” you are one more person who contributes to the pollution of anger. Instead, remember that you have no need to make others wrong or to retaliate when you’ve been wronged.
Imagine if someone says something to you that you find offensive, and rather than opting for resentment, you learn to depersonalize what you’ve just heard and respond with kindness. You are willing to freely send the higher, faster energies of love, peace, joy, forgiveness, and kindness as your response to whatever comes your way. You do this for yourself. You would rather be kind than right.
Step 10: Send Love
I spent a couple of weeks studying the teachings of Patanjali, and he reminded us several thousand years ago that when we are steadfast—which means that we never slip in our abstention of thoughts of harm directed toward others—then all living creatures cease to feel enmity in our presence.
Now I know that we are all human: you, me, all of us. We do occasionally slip and retreat from our highest self into judgment, criticism, and condemnation, but this is not a rationale for choosing to practice that kind of interaction. I can only tell you that when I finally got it, and I sent only love to another of God’s children whom I had been judging and criticizing, I got the immediate result of inner contentment.
I urge you to send love in place of those judgments and criticisms to others when you feel they impede your joy and happiness, and hold them in that place of love. Notice that if you stay steadfast, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
A Meditation to End on Love:
Picture yourself at the termination of a quarrel or major dispute. Rather than reacting with old patterns of residual anger, revenge, and hurt, visualize offering kindness, love, and forgiveness.
Do this right now by sending out these “true virtue” thoughts to any resentments you’re currently carrying. Make this your standard response to any future altercations: I end on love, no matter what!
Simplicity as Spiritual Practice: Declutter for Deep Personal Growth
When we begin to declutter our lives, often it’s because we long for some kind of peace, some space, some relief from the chaos… or perhaps it’s to start to lead a more intentional, beautiful life.
But something magical happens when we dive into the decluttering process.
We start to learn about ourselves.
And if we keep at it, decluttering can become a place of deep growth.
I’ve seen this in my own life and in the lives of people I’ve worked with, countless times.
Decluttering causes us to confront some key relationships we have to our stuff, and to the world around us:
We learn that clutter often represents our procrastination and avoidance patterns, and if we are to address the clutter, we must shift those patterns.
We realize that we place a lot of power in objects: the power to give us identity, a sense of value, a sense of who we are; the power to give use security, hopes for the future, memories, love, comfort.
But then we realize that this power is within us all along, not outside of us. This takes work, to start to see this in an experiential (not just intellectual) way.
We learn about our attachments to things, and how to let go. This takes a lot of mindfulness, and some realization that we have happiness within us, and letting go of objects is simply a practice of that realization.
We start to pay attention to what is truly important to us, and that will shift over the course of this inquiry. When we ask this question of what’s important, we can start to live intentionally, and once we start living in line with those values, we evolve our understanding of what we really value. It changes as we take action.
We start to deal with the shame and guilt that come up from our clutter, from our procrastination and avoidance, from our years of mindless shopping. The shame and guilt get in the way, but they can also spur us to reconsider our patterns, to start the process of shifting them. In the end, one of the most powerful shifts is to let go of the shame and guilt while also embracing the truth of not avoiding.
These are some of the things we might explore while we declutter — many more possibilities exists, and I think you’ll find your own realizations and growth that are unique to you.
Let’s talk about just a couple of these.
LOCATION: Newport Beach, CA
The Power We Give to Objects is Really Inside Us
As we declutter, it’s amazing to ask exactly why we acquired all this stuff, and why we hold on to it with attachment.
And then we realize how much power we give to all these objects.
Imagine what would happen if we could realize that the power isn’t outside of us, but is in us all along.
Some common cases:
Security: Buying a lot of stuff makes a lot of people feel secure. If everything crashes, at least we have all this stuff, right? This is the idea that my grandparents’ generation, who were raised in the Great Depression, once had. But while I’m all for having an emergency fund savings account for security, possessions the best way to get security. Actually, security is within: being mindful of fear and meditating on it without being reactive to it, learning skills and developing options so that we can survive in many situations, staying lean so we aren’t deeply in debt or overburdened with bills, and in the end, developing the trust that we’ll be OK just as we are.
Approval: Lots of us try to buy nice things to impress other people — we don’t usually admit that to ourselves, but in the end, we want the approval of others. Maybe you buy a nice house with beautiful furniture, maybe it’s a hip old-school record player or an impressive sound system, maybe it’s a huge TV or the latest gadgets, maybe it’s minimalism that is more minimal than anyone else. In the end, it’s all about wanting others to approve. What if we just approved ourselves? Easier said than done, but the power to approve us is within us, if we stop looking for outside approval. Declutter to take care of yourself, for your own personal growth, not to get the approval of others. Do good things for yourself, and start to love yourself exactly as you are.
Comfort: Just the act of buying things can be a way of comforting ourselves, like eating comfort food when we’re stressed. But lots of times, we buy possessions to give ourselves comfort: a nicer mattress or sofa, a plush carpet or convenient kitchen gadgets. There is nothing wrong with these things, but it’s also useful to note that we’re giving these things the power to comfort us. We need to realize that we have the power to comfort ourselves from within: by meditating, by going for a walk in nature, by giving ourselves love, by resting when we’re tired or stressed, by creating and finding joy in living, by loving others and loving life.
Identity & Value: Possessions can often give us a sense of identity and value — a trophy makes us feel accomplished, having nice ski equipment or a surfboard makes us feel outdoorsy, having lots of books can make us feel smart or intellectually accomplished. But the truth is, the way we feel about ourselves doesn’t really come from the objects — it’s an internal process, all coming from within. Want to feel amazing? Appreciate the amazingness that’s already within you. Demonstrate it to yourself daily with 20 minutes of meditation and 100 pushups. Even just watching your mind, you can find an sense of awe about yourself!
Memories and Love: We can’t bear to get rid of things because they represent amazing memories, and the love of the people who gave them to us. But the memories aren’t in the objects! They’re in our heads, and a simple digital photo can remind us of the memories, especially if we remind ourselves to browse through the digital photo album regularly. And the love from these people aren’t in the objects! It’s in our hearts. We only need to feel that love from within, and no object can actually give us that.
Hope and Aspiration: We hold onto exercise or sports equipment we never use because we have hopes that we’ll do them in the future. We hold onto 100 books because we have aspirations to read them in the future. There are dozens of objects in our lives that represent our hopes and aspirations for ourselves (mine: magic tricks, juggling, chess, Go, hiking, camping, books for learning, literature). But what if we realized that we don’t need all of those hopes for our future selves? That we have greatness in us, right now, without needing to do any of that? We are exactly enough, right this moment, and while sure, it’s possible we’ll do some of that later, we don’t need it. We can let go of it. And just be content right now. Leaving open incredible possibilities for the future, but being realistic that we’ll only be able to focus on what’s truly important in the near future.
Happiness: In the end, most of the objects are intended to give us happiness — a new smoothie blender will make us healthy and fit, a new outfit will make us feel gorgeous and confident, a new bag will make us feel cooler, a new book will give us joy or insight. Those things might happen. But the happiness that results doesn’t really come from the things. It comes from our own connection to our loving, open hearts. The stuff might facilitate that, but mostly it’s just getting in the way.
There is some great power in realizing the things we think our objects do for us. And there is even more incredible power in realizing that we have that power inside us, no objects required.
Knowing that, we can let go of anything not giving us true utility.
Living Life in Alignment with What’s Important, with Intention
One of the magical things about decluttering is that it forces you to ask a wonderful question:
What is important to me in my life?
As you tackle a pile of clothes, a cluttered countertop, a shelf overflowing with books, there’s no way to get rid of clutter without answering that question.
To toss anything out, you have to consider what you feel is essential, and what isn’t.
Simplicity is simply identifying what’s essential, and letting go of the rest.
When you start decluttering, you might not really know what’s important. You look at some clothes and decide that you have’t worn something in a couple years, so probably it’s not that important, right?
But as you peel back the first layer or two, you start hitting against a harder layer. Is this something I should keep or not? Does it really matter to me? What do I consider important in my life? What kind of life do I want to live? What do I truly value?
For me, this has started to boil down to a few key things. What I value the most:
Meaningful work: helping people push into the uncertainty of their missions and their own meaningful work, shifting their habitual patterns using mindfulness techniques. This is what I care deeply about.
Living a mindful, healthy and compassionate life: This means being active, meditating, playing with my my little cousins. It means being compassionate as much as I’m able. It means growing, evolving, loving.
That’s all that matters to me. I like to travel, but it’s no longer one of my top priorities unless it’s in service of one of the above priorities. I like to read, but unless it serves something above, it’s taken a bit of a back seat (I still love it!). I love good films, television, music, art. I feel it’s important to understand the issues that affect us all, like politics and the environment and racism, sexism and the like. But for me, I have evolved my priorities into those items above. In short, my deepest priority is love.
But those are just my answers. You’ll find yours, as you continue this inquiry into what’s important.
When you start to figure that out, something awesome happens: you start to live in alignment with those priorities. You start to live your values. You start to live consciously, with intention.
When you start to uncover your priorities … then you can start to let go of everything that doesn’t serve those priorities. What’s clutter becomes clearer, and it becomes easier to let go of these.
You can start your days with intention. Who will you serve? What priorities will you hold in front of yourself? How will you show up? How fully can you love?
Do every act of your life as if it were your last
There’s something so powerfully simple, profoundly beautiful, about the Dalai Lama’s quote: “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
It’s a philosophy I’ve been exploring for awhile, and though I don’t claim to have even come close to mastering it, it turns out this is a single word that can become the central tenet of your life, if you let it: “kindness”.
Kindness can guide every interaction you have with others, can guide your life’s work, can give meaning to your life, can even guide your eating, parenting, marriage, and more.
All else will melt away, if you let go of it, and leave only kindness.
Doing to others IS doing to yourself
The Golden Rule goes something along the lines of, “Treat others as you’d want to be treated (in their place)”, but in another conception, how you treat others is how your treat yourself.
Consider: when you react to others with anger or meanness, you are putting yourself in an angry mindset, a bad mood. You’ll likely feel pretty crappy for at least an hour, if not all day.
When you are uncaring or indifferent to others, you also create an empty, blank feeling in yourself, a void that cannot be filled with gadgets, social networking, shopping, food, or possessions.
When instead you are kind, you build a good feeling within yourself, you make yourself happy. In effect, you are being kind to yourself.
Other outward-facing actions have a similar inward effect: if you want to learn, teach. If you need inspiration, inspire others. If you’re sad, cheer someone up.
Mindfulness + Kindfulness
It is near impossible, in my experience, to transition towards kindness without being mindful. Thoughtlessness leads to unkindnesses.
You must be mindful of every interaction with another human being. Approach each person mindfully, with your full attention, smiling, seeking to understand them, trying to interact with gentleness, warmth, compassion.
When someone comes to talk to you, when your kid tugs on your pant leg for attention, when your spouse or best friend starts speaking, turn to them without distraction, putting everything else away, and give your full attention. Listen.
Here’s something beautiful: by treating others with kindness, you will create a happy feeling within yourself, effectively creating a positive feedback loop for your mindfulness. This will encourage you to be more mindful throughout your day, which will help you to treat others with yet more kindness, and so on.
Mindfulness and kindfulness feed on each other in a wonderful cycle.
Practicing the religion of kindness
This all, of course, takes careful practice, and the more you practice, the better you’ll get at it.
There’s an evolution in kindness, a process in which I’m still only near the middle (more likely in the beginning and just don’t know it), where kindness can slowly infuse your life, transform everything you do.
Relationships: Your interactions and eventually your relationships with others, including friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, will slowly grow more positive, stronger.
Parenting: If you are a disciplinarian parent, learning to make every interaction with your child one centered on kindness will create a new type of relationship, and will teach your child how to be kind to others, by your example. Your actions are a much better teacher than your words.
Work: It might seem unrealistic, but it is possible to center your work around kindness. Gradually and purposefully make your work a living expression of your kindness, your love, in your interaction with your customers, co-workers, colleagues, the world … in what you produce and put out there.
Eating: A vegan diet is perhaps the kindest diet, all things being equal. This is from the belief that animals suffer when we put them in miserable living conditions, maim and shock them, kill them, for our pleasure. I’m not saying this to be self-righteous, or to make anyone feel guilty, but only for your kind consideration — to consider the animals as you eat. Consider also, as you are contemplating kindness, your eating’s effects on farmers and workers, on your health and the health of your family, and on the environment.
“Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for kindness.” ~Seneca
Conclusions
It isn’t easy to be kind on every possible human transaction, on every interaction we have throughout the day. It’s far easier to be thoughtless. It can feel better to get back at someone when they are unkind to you (at least, it feels better at first). It takes less effort to not care.
But when we touch another person’s life, our lives are being touched as well. What shape do you want your life to take? That will be completely determined by the effort you take to be mindful, and to be kindful.
-AG
Falling in Love With Ourselves
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.
What is Falling in Love?
What happens when we fall in love with someone else? 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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
A Guide to Habit Resilience
Habit resilience is the ability to bounce back when things don’t go as you planned, to stay positive, to encourage yourself, to forgive yourself, to be loving and compassionate with yourself, to shake it off and start again afresh. To learn and grow from struggles.
The opposite of habit resilience is getting discouraged when things don’t go as planned, beating yourself up, trying not to think about it when you mess up, ignoring problems, complaining, blaming others, deciding you can’t change, hardening your low or harsh opinion of yourself.
So how do we develop habit resilience? Let’s take a look.
Developing Habit Resilience
The good news is that you can develop this marvelous quality or skill of habit resilience. Actually, it’s a set of skills, but they can be developed with some practice.
Here’s how to develop habit resilience:
Loosen your hold on expectations. When we start to make changes in our lives, we often have unrealistic expectations. Six-pack abs in four weeks! But when we actually try to hit those expectations, we usually fall short. At least, at first. Over the long run, we can often make greater changes than we think we can. But over the short term, the changes are small, and not very orderly either. Change is messy. So just expect things to go less than ideally. Don’t be too attached to how you expect things to go, so that when your expectations aren’t met, you can just take it in stride.
Learn the skill of adjusting. If your diet plan doesn’t go as planned, it’s not necessarily a fault of yours — it’s the fault of the method or plan. How can you make it better to accommodate your life? Maybe you can get some accountability, set up some reminders, get rid of junk food from you house, and so on. There are a thousand ways to adjust a plan or method. When things go wrong, look for a way to adjust, don’t just give up.
Practice self-compassion and forgiveness. This is so important, but most people have the opposite habit — when things go wrong, we often beat ourselves up, are critical and harsh. Those kinds of reactions are unhelpful and can keep us stuck in old habits for years. Instead, we need to learn to be kinder to ourselves when we don’t measure up to what we hope we’ll be. When we let ourselves down, it’s important to forgive ourselves. Be compassionate, seeing our own suffering and wishing for relief from that suffering. Wishing for peace for ourselves. Being loving to ourselves, no matter what we do.
Don’t ignore problems, face them with kindness and empathy. That said, being forgiving is very different than just pretending it didn’t happen. If we’ve gone off our exercise plan, or stopped meditating … don’t just ignore the problem, not wanting to face it. Instead, turn towards the problem, and look at it with kindness. It’s like if you have a crying child — is it better to ignore the child and just hope that they’ll shut up? That will just lead to more pain for both of you. Instead, give them a hug. Acknowledge their pain. Give them love. Be there for them. And do the same for yourself when you’re having difficulties.
Learn to encourage yourself. I wrote recently about the importance of encouragement vs. discouragement … we need to practice this regularly. When you falter, can you be encouraging to yourself? Can you stay positive in the face of failure? Can you look at it as another step in your growth, instead of failure?
Find encouragement from others. In the same way, we can get encouragement from other people. Ask for help from friends and family. Find a good friend who will help you get back on track, with love. We are not alone — lots of others know what it’s like to struggle, and are willing to support us when we’re struggling.
Learn perseverance — keep coming back. Stay positive when things go astray, and just keep coming back to the habit you want to change. Want to quit smoking but you backtracked when your father died? Get back on it as soon as you’re able. Come back with even more resolve. Commit yourself even deeper.
Can you feel that if you practice these skills, you’ll handle any difficulty that comes your way? That your path to change might be bumpy, filled with obstacles, but nothing will stop you if you keep a positive attitude, keep coming back, keep being loving and compassionate with yourself?
This is habit resilience. And it will change your entire life, if you practice.
How to Thrive in the Midst of Personal Turbulence
IT HAS BEEN A YEARRRRRR FOR ME… It’s tough when you’re going through difficulty, struggle, turbulence … it can feel like your world is falling apart, or you can feel hopeless. But my heart is with you if you’re feeling this way.
But I firmly believe two things:
It will pass!
It is also your path to spiritual transformation.
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.
Let’s dive in and find out more.
Use Pain, 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 quite profound.
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, if you want to use your turbulent time as a teacher and path to transformation:
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.
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 tizzy, to shake with fear. Fully feel it, instead of hiding from it.
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.
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
A Well-Lived Life of Purpose
Most of the people I know and work with want a life of meaning and purpose, not a life where we just get by …
A well-lived life, that feels meaningful.
But this isn’t taught in schools, and most of us feel completely unsure of how to move towards this.
I’m not going to fully answer how to live a life of purpose in this blog post … but I’d love to talk about how to move in that direction from my own personal experiences.
Commitment
The first thing you might consider is committing yourself to finding a life of purpose. How important is that to you? Are you willing to move into uncertainty for this, or is comfort and safety more important to you at the moment?
To commit, you have to commit in the gut. To tell yourself that this is important enough to devote yourself to, to dedicate time, to practice with the uncertainty. Commit to yourself, on paper. Then to others.
Exploration
The second thing to consider is embarking on an adventure of exploring your purpose, if you don’t already have a good sense of it. It’s not as simple as asking, “What would I like to do?” or doing a web search for the answer. You have to explore it, and bringing a sense of adventure might be just the right approach.
Here’s how I usually recommend exploring purpose:
Make a list of things that you think might be meaningful to you — helping children in need, helping people reduce stress, traveling to help communities in need, etc. Put anything on the list that’s even remotely possible or interesting, don’t limit yourself here. Hint: I’ve found that the most meaningful things are when you’re helping other people with something you care about.
Ask yourself which 3-5 of these would be most meaningful. If one really stands out — maybe it’s the thing you’ve been wanting to do for years — then that’s where to start. But maybe you’re not sure, so pick 3-5. This is your short list.
Of those, let your gut choose the top one. If you absolutely don’t know, either choose randomly, or ask a friend. This isn’t your final answer, but just the one you’re going to start with.
Choose a 2-week version of this top possibility. For example, if you want to help people with stress, could you help 1 person over video calls and email for 2 weeks? This is the mini-version of your possible purpose. Explore this for 2 weeks, really pouring yourself into it.
If this really resonates, make a one-month version of it and continue to explore. If it doesn’t, pick the next thing on your short list. Do a 2-week version of that. Repeat until you find something to explore for a month or longer.
This is the iterative method of purpose exploration. You try a mini-version of something for a couple weeks. Maybe longer. And keep doing this until you hit on something.
Notice if you feel like avoiding this process, or a part of the process. This is your uncertainty showing up as fear. That’s completely OK, but you might ask whether you’d like to get support with that uncertainty, so you don’t have to be stopped.
A Well-Lived Life
There are an infinite number of possibilities for living a well lived life. You might meditate on a mountain for years, or enjoy the simple things. You might enjoy time with loved ones, or explore culinary pleasures. You might read all day, or listen to music. You might get your work done, and come home satisfied from a job well done.
For me, one of the biggest components of a well lived life — other than loved ones and a profound appreciation of life — is doing something that feels meaningful. And that has usually been helping others with something that’s meaningful to them.
If you can serve others, make their lives better in some small way (or a big way) … it feels incredibly meaningful. Much more than simply traveling or building up wealth or enjoying good food or having fun. Those are all great, but they don’t feel as meaningful to me.
If you can hit on something like that, that feels meaningful … then a well lived life becomes simple:
Spend quality time with loved ones.
Take care of yourself.
Find profound appreciation for the joy of life.
And serve others in a meaningful way.
It’s simple, but not always easy. And that makes it even richer.
A couple of techniques for Self-Acceptance that I have learned from the past couple of months.
Happiness is determined by our level of self-acceptance. That’s something I’ve been learning and believe more and more, and as I’ve learned, it affects everything in our lives.
But the question is: how do you actually learn self-acceptance?
I’m going to share some techniques that will help you learn how to accept all of yourself — the “good” and the “bad”. A couple of notes, though:
You don’t need to do all of these techniques all the time. Try one or two out, see if they help, then perhaps try another one or two, etc. Find what works for you. These are variations on a theme. Some of these may seem repetitive, like they’re very similar to others on the list. That’s OK. They are just slightly different ways of approaching things, and doing one for a week and then another similar one next week can help round out your understanding.
The Techniques
Practice relaxed awareness. What is relaxed awareness? As opposed to constant distraction, or concentrated focus, relaxed awareness is a soft consciousness of our thoughts, feelings, pain, self-rating and judgment, etc. It’s an awareness of our existence, and the stream of phenomena that is occurring at this moment, including thoughts and emotions and outside stimuli. To practice: close your eyes for a minute, and instead of pushing thoughts away or trying to focus on your breath, just softly notice your thoughts and feelings and body. You might see negative thoughts or emotions — that’s OK. Just notice them, watch them. Don’t try to turn them into positive thoughts or push them away. You can do this practice for 5 minutes a day, or up to 30 minutes if you find it useful.
Welcome what you notice. When you practice relaxed awareness, you’ll notice things — negative thoughts, fears, happy thoughts, self-judgments, etc. We tend to want to stop the negative thoughts and feelings, but this is just a suppression, an avoidance, a negating of the negative. Instead, welcome these phenomena, invite them in for a cup of tea, give them a hug. They are a part of your life, and they are OK. If you feel bad about how you’ve been doing with exercise, that’s OK. Hug the bad feeling, comfort it, let it hang around for awhile. They are not bad, but are opportunities to learn things about ourselves. When we run from these “bad” feelings, we create more pain. Instead, see the good in them, and find the opportunity. Be OK with them.
Let go of rating yourself. Another thing you’ll notice, once you start to pay attention, is self-rating. We rate ourselves compared to others, or rate ourselves as “good” or “bad” at different things, or rate ourselves as flabby or too skinny or ugly. This is not a very useful activity. That doesn’t mean to let it go, but just to notice it, and see what results from it. After realizing that self-rating repeatedly causes you pain, you’ll be happy to let it go, in time.
Gratitude sessions. Wake up in the morning and think about what you’re grateful for. Include things about yourself. If you failed at something, what about that failure are you grateful for? If you aren’t perfect, what about your imperfection can you be grateful for? Feel free to journal about these things each day, or once a week if that helps.
Compassion & forgiveness for yourself. As you notice judgments and self-rating, see if you can turn them into forgiveness and compassion. If you judge yourself for not doing well at something, or not being good enough at something, can you forgive yourself for this, just as you might forgive someone else? Can you learn to understand why you did it, and see that ultimately you don’t even need forgiveness? If we really seek to understand, we realize that we did the best we could, given our human-ness, environment, what we’ve learned and practiced, etc. And so we don’t need to forgive, but instead to understand, and seek to do things that might relieve the pain.
Learn from all parts. We tend to try to see our successes as good, and the failures as bad, but what if we see that everything is something to learn from? Even the dark parts — they are parts of us, and we can find interesting and useful things in them too.
Separate from your emotions. When you are feeling negative emotions, see them as a separate event, not a part of you, and watch them. Remove their power over you by thinking of them not as commandments you must follow or believe in, but rather passing objects, like a leaf floating past you in the wind. The leaf doesn’t control you, and neither do negative emotions.
Find a support system. This is one of my favorite techniques. We get so in our heads that it’s difficult to separate our thoughts and emotions, to see things clearly. Talking through these issues with another person — a friend, spouse, co-worker — can help you to understand yourself better. Use the talking technique together with one of the above techniques.
As you learn self-acceptance, realize that it is always available to you, and you can have it no matter what you do. You can learn, create interesting things, make connections with others, with self-acceptance at the center of that. I really feel that it can change everything you do, if you practice.
"To all that come to this happy place, welcome...." FEELS SOOOOO GOOD TO BE BACK HOME... are you crying? cuz I'AM!
Just a little reminder. Happy Hump Day!
Accept your OWN reality.
Dear me,
Don’t compare your actual self to a hypothetical self. Don’t drown in a sea of “what if’s.” Don’t clutter your mind by imagining other versions of you, in parallel universes, where you made different decisions. YOU.ARE.YOU! The past is the past. The only way to make a better life is from inside the present, the moment. To focus on regret does nothing but turn that very present into another thing you will wish you did differently. It doesn’t matter who you used to be; what matters is who you decide to be today. You are not your mistakes. You are not your mishaps. You are not your past. You can decide differently today and at every moment. Remember that. You are offered a new opportunity with each breath you take, decide and act differently in a way that supports you in being all that you are capable of being.
Fear and doubts. You can’t let these two invisible forces scare you and let you stop from enjoying a potential intimate relationship and life in general. You can’t go your whole life trying to please everyone else. You can’t go through life worried about what everyone else is going to think. Because if you do, you are no longer you. You’re someone everyone else wants you to be. Commit yourself to your own magnificence. Every time you look into a mirror, remind yourself that what stares back at you is not an every-changing body, but an invisibleness that is truly your highest self. Affirm: I’am loved, I’am worthy, I’am infinite, silently and out loud. Do this frequently so that it eventually becomes your inner mantra. This will help you abandon old patterns you’ve carried that have injured your personal or intimate relationship to the universe and all of the inherent beauty and perfection it holds. You will awaken to the incredible miracle that you are.
As for “love”, it shouldn’t be exhausting. It shouldn’t leave you feeling stressed out, less than, and unappreciated. Love is supposed to be free, natural, and almost a complete release from the tedious repetition and routines of life. Real love won’t leave you drained, it won’t leave you depressed, lost, or distraught. Love is a healer love is a friend, and love is a protector. Loving isn’t easy, it’s a challenge, but when it’s good, it’s a treasure. Wait for someone that will commit to you and the relationship by WILLINGLY accepting your flaws and all of your needs. See, REAL LOVE won’t break you, it will build you and it will bring out the best in you and your partner.
So, ACCEPT your own reality. Be human enough to make mistakes. Be human enough not to dread the future. Be human enough to be, well, ENOUGH. Accepting where you are in life makes it so much easier to be happy for other people without feeling terrible about yourself.
With love,
AG
How to have a "perfect" relationship?
The 4 Agreement by Don Miguel Ruiz
Vulnerability and Loss
Sending my condolences to my man, my mentor, and another father figure to me, Ron Myers with the loss of his mother. I’ll always be here for you no matter what, and know that my love for you will always be 100!
Love you sir!
What this year has been for me, so far… a lot of reflection and reevaluation.
As I write this post about my bday weekend with my fam I just wanna share what this year has been for me...
January: The person I thought that would be “the one” broke up with me, and it broke me into pieces... because of that I went through some shit and was diagnosed and suffered from anxiety FOR THE FIRST TIME in my life, dealt with it for at least a month and didn’t know how to handle it. Came to a point that I wanted to do SO MUCH “BAD” things to myself... but snapped out of it.
February/March: Got in a car accident (hit and run) and just found out on Friday while my car is in the body shop that the estimated repair value exceeded the car value and my car insurance declared my car totaled... the car that I’ve WORKED SOOOOOO HARD FOR from the past 5 years that is ALMOST paid off...
Why am I writing this? Not to make myself look like a victim. BUT to show that NO MATTER what you’re going through or will go through, as long as you’re still breathing, your life still has a PURPOSE. I’m a firm believer that we are meant to fail, to be broken, experience hardships, experience heartbreaks, because why? Because this is what makes us GROW and so we have something we can GIVE to the world. With everything that has happened to me thus far in my life, I can either feel sorry for myself, or treat what has happened to me as a gift. See, everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. But YOU get to choose. When you can’t control what’s happening, challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what’s happening. That’s where the power is.
In conclusion, as I reflect and reevaluate my life thus far, there’s no question that this has been THE MOST lowest point of my life. But what switched my mind from being a victim and become the “superhero” of my own story? LIFE. Life period. I know that I’m not going to have this opportunity again once everything is all set and done with this journey that we call “life.” So I might as well ENJOY every single experience of it, whether if they are going to bring me to my knees or jump all the way to the sky because of joy and excitement. It is ALL part of the experience that we have to participate in because the purpose of life is to experience everything and enjoy them with the best of your ability.
As I wrap up this post, I just wanna thank all of the peeps that has been supporting me, including my family that has been supporting me since day 1. Know that I appreciate all of you, and know that I recognize the unconditional love and support. I love all y’all! That’s foreal.
With love,
What's the difference between "It'll Do Relationship?" vs "Dream Relationship?"
Allowing Ourselves to Feel Joy During the Day
I’ve come to the realization that most of us don’t allow ourselves to feel joy most days. Sure, maybe on some kind of big occasion, we’ll let ourselves run around whooping with joy … but mostly not.
Think about you past week: have they been joyful and wondrous? Or routine, full of busyness and stress and doing doing doing?
If you felt a daily amount of joy and wonder, you’re likely the exception. Most people don’t seem to feel joy regularly, or even realize that that’s the case.
Let’s change that.
Joy and wonder are two emotions we shut down, for so many reasons: it’s safe, it’s not allowed, we’re worried about ourselves, we’re stressed. But wouldn’t we like to live a life that has joy every day? That feels wonder at the incredibleness of this world and the richness of humanity?
We can still get shit done, still function in society, while having a greater degree of joy and wonder. In fact, I’d argue that the people around us will benefit, our work will benefit, the world will benefit, if we allow joy into our lives. If we start seeing everything with wonder, at least some of the time. Not to mention the personal benefits of this as well — life can start to come alive again. It’s like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when things go from black and white to color!
So how do we allow this into our lives? It starts by simply recognizing that we want this. That it’s allowed. Give ourselves some freaking permission to feel alive and joyous!
Then we can make it a daily practice. Not a daily chore to add to our task lists, another thing that we should do. NO! This is something we GET to do!
OK, I’ll stop yelling now. I’m just excited dammit! OK now I’ll stop. :)
Here are two practices you might try:
Go outside and see the wonder of the world around you. Let yourself feel alive! Feel the joy that you get to be alive in this freaking amazing world. Run or dance or skip around like a kid, in joy. See the open and vibrant nature of the universe. When you see other people, delight in their humanity! If you feel like it, whoop around joyously, do handstands or something. Whatever you feel like, whatever would be joyful.
Every day, ask yourself a simple question: “Where did I see God today?” If you don’t believe in God, as I don’t, you can take that to mean, “Where did I see the divine or sacred today?” or “Where did I see the wonder in the world?” This practice is simply thinking back to the parts of your day when you allowed yourself to see wonder and the divine. It could be in the face of a loved one, or a wonderful person outside. It could be in the joy you felt in winning a game or watching an incredible creation online.
These can be daily practices. They can be anytime practices! Would you like to feel joy and wonder today?
What is the purpose of our life?
HAPPY MONDAY Y’ALL!
Here’s something I’ve gotten asked or just a convo I’d be having with others most of the time. But the question is… “What is the purpose of our life?”
Thinking about the meaning of life, the purpose of existence can be quite overwhelming. Realizing the fact that we are just a tiny speck in the unimaginably vast universe can freak anyone out. But we are here. We can experience all of this. And that's the beauty of it. The meaning of life can be found in the appreciation of life itself. It's not so much about making sense of everything, but rather simply giving meaning to the moment you are experiencing. You have to stop obsessing about the ultimate meaning, and just be in the moment fully. The present moment is all you ever have.
I hope this gives you guys a little meaning of what our “purpose” is here on this little tiny planet in the milk way.