Human beings get away with telling each other a lot of nonsense, with reporting a lot of half truths, which will get people into a lot more trouble than no truths.
I was reading the October Vanity Fair with Marilyn Monroe on the cover. I was struck by a quote from Arthur Miller in his observation about Marilyn, which representes some of the courage and innocence she lived by:
“She always sees things as though for the first time.”
How wonderful to use this gift of seeing everything for the first time. We are very jaded, bored and judgemental of the world around us. If we used Marilyn’s method, we would walk around in wonder, enjoying life to the fullest. Finding qualities in others that are positive is something we should look for and add to our emotional, physical and spiritual toolbelt for living a fuller, happier life.
Marilyn had many tragedies in her life, but let us learn from one of her great gifts – the wonder of seeing the world anew. If we could see beauty where no beauty seemed to be, our lives would be much richer for it. I have a feeling Marilyn lived in courage in her own way, as each of us do.
“I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.”
You wake up in the morning feeling great, ready to take on the world. Your feel that your day will be wonderful and then ka-boom, you get pulled out of the happy place and into feelings that make you not so happy. It is wise to stop getting pulled out of your core by going into human reactor mode. To be in “human reactor mode” is constantly reacting to a world of effects that seem to make us smaller, taking us out of our power. We are here to create, to generate, to build. Not to react, but to respond. Responding gives you time to think, to re-evaluate. In this way we can change the direction of our life.
What supports us? Grace & Courage. If you live from the outside in, you are constantly reacting to the stimuli outside that makes you less. Living from the inside out will make you more, a power to reckon with, gifting you with tools to build, to create the life you dream of. Positive self talk helps you build your inner center into a powerful place that you can live your life from.
Let’s talk about grace. Grace gives us the courage to take one mighty step after another. Welcome grace into your life and all your experiences. Wear it, be it, smell it, taste it, see it, live it. Grace will reveal love to you, and lift you above the turmoil of the world. Have you ever really thought about this word. Now might be a good time. Grace opens the door to wisdom, illuminating your mind to guide you in your choices and decisions. We all have free will (a force, a power) that drives every quality, giving us passion, which unfolds into our creative expression. Grace can take everything that opposes the joy of life, and transform it.
What is your relationship with your home, environment, creativity, work and employment, friends, and family? How does grace act when you don’t limit it? I suggest you try living in courage and grace. This experiment and experience my surprise you. Where do you live the center of your life from? This is a big question. When we take ourselves off of automatic pilot and start answering the bigger questions with honesty, then we become expanded, conscious, and powerful.
You wake up in the morning feeling great, ready to take on the world. Your feel that your day will be wonderful and then ka-boom, you get pulled out of the happy place and into feelings that make you not so happy. It is wise to stop getting pulled out of your core by going into human reactor mode. To be in “human reactor mode” is constantly reacting to a world of effects that seem to make us smaller, taking us out of our power. We are here to create, to generate, to build. Not to react, but to respond. Responding gives you time to think, to re-evaluate. In this way we can change the direction of our life.
What supports us? Grace & Courage. If you live from the outside in, you are constantly reacting to the stimuli outside that makes you less. Living from the inside out will make you more, a power to reckon with, gifting you with tools to build, to create the life you dream of. Positive self talk helps you build your inner center into a powerful place that you can live your life from.
Let’s talk about grace. Grace gives us the courage to take one mighty step after another. Welcome grace into your life and all your experiences. Wear it, be it, smell it, taste it, see it, live it. Grace will reveal love to you, and lift you above the turmoil of the world. Have you ever really thought about this word. Now might be a good time. Grace opens the door to wisdom, illuminating your mind to guide you in your choices and decisions. We all have free will (a force, a power) that drives every quality, giving us passion, which unfolds into our creative expression. Grace can take everything that opposes the joy of life, and transform it.
What is your relationship with your home, environment, creativity, work and employment, friends, and family? How does grace act when you don’t limit it? I suggest you try living in courage and grace. This experiment and experience my surprise you. Where do you live the center of your life from? This is a big question. When we take ourselves off of automatic pilot and start answering the bigger questions with honesty, then we become expanded, conscious, and powerful.
Here is another video of Matt, doing his little dance around the world. Please join in. Here at Living in Courage, we love following Matt and the Gratitude Dance.
Debra Oakland @ Living in Courage Online
Dancing is like dreaming with your feet! ~Constanze
Do you have the courage to follow these rules? They can change your life. They are not easy. We walk around on automatic pilot most of the time. Habit is powerful, change is not always easy, but essential to living the life you dream of. It won’t just happen unless you put some effort into changing habits that don’t lead you forward in a positive way. These are simple courageous rules to live life by. I love simple, don’t you?
Watch your thoughts; they lead to attitudes.
Watch your attitudes; they lead to words.
Watch your words; they lead to actions.
Watch your actions; they lead to habits.
Watch your habits; they form your character.
Watch your character; it determines your destiny.
Happy September from Living in Courage. I love this article by Vernon Howard. Every day we have another choice to make powerful decisions about the direction we choose our life to move into. So go out there, gather your courage, strength and resolve to live a powerful life.
Now You Can Enjoy Yourself Every Day
People are often puzzled by the idea of making life more enjoyable by changing their viewpoints. Let’s examine it:
Suppose you are not feeling well one day, yet you accompany some friends on a leisurely drive through the beautiful countryside. Someone calls your attention to a lovely lake, but because of your illness, you cannot give it your attention or interest. Someone else remarks about a magnificent mountain in the distance, but you hardly hear him. You pass one lovely scene after another, yet they have no meaning to you. Because your illness has taken all your energy, you have none to spare in enjoying yourself. It is the same to your mind as if these natural beauties didn’t exist at all. In your present ill state, they have neither existence nor attraction.
But the next day you recover. You feel fine. There is no inward attention to anything; you are outward bound once more. So again you go on a drive; you visit the very same places. But now, everything is completely different. You enjoy the lovely lake and magnificent mountain. You respond to them. You enjoy yourself.
How come? It was the very same scenery both times. But on the second trip you were different. You saw everything in an entirely new way. You had the inner freedom to see and appreciate your outer world. Like magic, your changed mental viewpoint changed the world for you.
It is difficult for people to grasp that the very same principle holds true elsewhere in life. Yet it is absolutely so. When we are inwardly ill at ease we do not really see things as they are; we see them as we are. And there is a world of difference – an actual world of difference – in the two viewpoints.
As we elevate our mental view points we also elevate our world. How is this accomplished? Enjoyment results from discard, not from acquisition. Discard of what? Of the very things we really want to lose – our acquired negative attitudes.
Enjoyment of life is not the presence of something outside ourselves; it is the absence of something within ourselves. Gloom is a state of inner blockage of your True Self; enjoyment is its release. Just as a balloon rises to greater heights by discarding weights, so do we ascend as we toss out negativities.
Declan Galbraith sings “Tell Me Why.” This young boy can sing, and what a message of waking up to using our courage to help change the world. When children send the message it is especially powerful. Please take the time to listen to the words and look at the images portrayed. When we each gather our courage and refuse to let another child die of unnecessary hunger, this world will be a better place for all.
Traditionally, Labor Day is celebrated by most Americans as the symbolic end of the summer.
As quoted by the U.S. Dept of Labor, “Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”
Happy Labor Day and have the Best Day Ever. Enjoy the Sun, Food and Festivities wherever you are today.
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