For many years in my short life I felt I had to measure up to the expectations of others.  I have run my life largely in the shadow of what others thought I should be and live in the expectations of other people’s feelings.  Can I say that I think that’s a fairly crappy way to live?  If you spend time thinking and worrying about what others think I can assure you that they don’t care as much as you think they do.  Herein lies the paradox:

You think they care and they don’t because they only care when they are so shallow they have nothing else to do but backstab you!

Even then you get a passing mention in the conversation.  So what am I saying?  Be yourself because the mask you put on will end up owning you.  Be you.  All the time.  I learned recently that it doesn’t matter what other people think if I don’t care what other people think.  So, we need to cultivate thinking patterns that are built on models of personal acceptance.  Self-hatred only means misery… and life is too short to give a damn about stupid things like that.

I did this recently and it’s finally beginning to work

People where paying out on me for something and I was getting mad.  The next day after I had blown up and thrown stuff and broken things… it hit me.  If I can begin to accept myself, with all my limitations and say I am happy with that… then I will no longer care what others think because I know I am good enough.

My new saying is…

I’m adequate!  I am adequate, good enough and filled with flaws.  Why is this such a good way to be?  Well, I  know I have limitations and I need help in this area.  I know where to go when I need help in certain areas and I take it because I know I need it.  Also, embracing your flaws means you recognise weakness and strength in yourself.  You can learn to love those weaknesses as much as your strengths because it’s you.  I think we were made with flaws to remind us we need other people and God in our lives.  This is a good thing for when you are weak then you are strong.

When it comes to you… you need to be happy with yourself.  So you are flawed… who isn’t?  You have problems… who doesn’t?  What does it matter that you have failed… everybody fails at something.  Nobody I have ever met past or present is a model of perfection.  I know many fractured people who I accept have flaws and limitations just like me.   I think when you begin to accept yourself and make a habit of thinking how adequate you are (even if you are not) it begins the road to development.  It allows you to begin ton build better inner images of yourself and not built on the expectations of others who really don’t know you like you know you. 

* This picture comes courtesy of  the you say blog

I was reading the bible the other day when something I hadn’t seen before smacked me in the chops. Jesus was talking to his disciples about unforgiveness in Luke 17. Jesus told them that if a brother comes to you seven times in day and sins against then asks for forgiveness you should forgive him each time. The disciples were amazed by this because they asked for more faith. What Jesus says next always bothered me. He said that if you had faith as a mustard seed you would say to this mulberry tree be uprooted and be planted in the sea and it would obey you.  I had glossed over that many times.  This time however I read the bit about being a servant underneath and was even more perplexed.  Then it struck me.  Jesus is saying that faith (or an expressed belief) needs to be replaced by another expressed belief in order for the previous belief to be ‘removed and cast into the sea.  I would one belief dissolves the other and removes it’s potency because it stops the previous one from existing.   That is, you get rid of old beliefs by replacing them with new ones that are more powerful.

As you find ways to remove old beliefs about your life, circumstances and so on… it’s like the old beliefs were never there.  Indeed you can make yourself believe anything if you lie to yourself often enough can’t you?  You can change memories, change habits, change how you feel… by having your beliefs changed.  Yet the how is the part we want isn’t it?  How and/or can we change our beliefs?  What I think Jesus might have been saying was this: You can forgive if you believe you can because that belief will enable you to act.  Love is a powerful emotion… use it!  Use what you have and you might just be surprised at what follows.  

In life sometimes you find yourself facing failure. You may have tried your hand at something, had really high expectations and it just didn’t work out. It may be a marriage, a job, a business venture a partnership … you just never know what life can throw you sometimes. You can however begin to move forward out of the darkness by making some tough choices.

If nobody cares about you… care about yourself

Hating yourself for your mistakes is not helpful. As a matter of fact it’s dangerous. When you decide to take responsibility for your failure and own up to it… then yes it’s a time for understanding the failure and dealing with it. However, you don’t dwell on it and remind yourself of it. When through poor decisions or just bad circumstances you wind up in a ditch the first thing you must do is recognise that you may have been a dumbass but that does not exclude you from the race. It doesn’t mean you will win next time either. What it does mean is that you have to accept the fact that you tried. As I have said before… the problem with society is that we place such a high premium on success that we deride people who fail. As I have heard Edward Debono say, “There is no word in the English language which says perfectly acceptable venture that for reasons outside of the control of the individual went poorly!” Accept that you made a mistake but don’t hate yourself for it. Learn the day to day activity of forgiving yourself by remembering all the good things you have.

Look for the good in your situation

I know of people who have had kidney failure and lost everything during the recovery process. People have lost children and spouses. Is there any good to be gained out of that horrible situation? No there isn’t. What you can do over time however is begin to build an inner picture of your life that is worth something. When that cloud begins to settle in, why not think about the wonderful times you had with this person. When people die we miss them terribly and this is good because we should. However, as our heart begins to heal we need to fill our lives once again with positives and focus on what’s good. You may be having problems with money… you may not have a home. Are you breathing with the aid of a machine? How about your legs… do they still work? When you begin to focus on what you have instead of what you have lost… the good things you carry around with you that you take for granted have a new weight of importance.

Darkness breeds even more darkness

When the cloud settles in you begin to think a certain way. After a little while you begin to act that way. Soon, you are saying and doing things you didn’t think you would ever do. Darkness comes to all of us in one way or another. If we allow it to settle in our soul it will make a castle that fortifies and begins to rule our lives. We cannot be like that can we? Dark thoughts are the root system of the tree that poisons your soul. You must take those thoughts captive and replace them with more positive intentions. Easier said than done? Yes in the beginning. However, as you begin to practice you will find it easier. It’s so easy to be a critic. To pick on the efforts of others and drag them down. The internet is rife with examples of people picking on others from the safe proximity of the screenface (Thanks Alison ). What’s hard is to encourage people, to set them on their way and be a light to them.

Tragedy comes to all of us at some point. We should feel the pain of it and yes it should effect us. If it doesn’t then we are not humans. It’s what we do about that pain over time that counts. It’s the day to day thinking and acting that helps us to be what we eventually become. Remember, dark clouds are for a season, yet when the rain passes they disappear. Don’t let the dark clouds hang around you … for too long.

At the time of writing this post I am over committed. So I thought I would share with you 5 signs that I have discovered that let you know you are over committed. In true problem solving blog style… I will also present solutions to get you back on track.

You wake up in the morning feeling tired

This can be the symptoms of many things… however when you are over committed you simply feel tired all the time. You sleep 10 hours and you are tired… you sleep 24 hours and you are tired. Personally, when this happens to me (as it is now) it’ s time to think about what I am doing. When you have a big commitment you can’t escape (i.e. work) then it’s difficult to bail out as I will discuss later. You can however, wind back over time which will gradually release the pressure.

You find it difficult to get in the car/bus/train and go to work?

As you walk to bus (for example) or go to the car you feeling a sinking feeling at the realisation of the day you have ahead of yourself. As the day drags on you find yourself becoming more and more lethargic. No matter what you do, you keep getting more slower and feel less like working than you did before. One of the main reasons you feel this way is because you have too much on your plate. I find that if I have too much to do it overwhelms me and I get almost nothing done. Getting stuff done is important but so is quality of time. You may secretly love your job but hate doing so much of it.

Sudden bursts of anger

For no apparent reason you find yourself randomly angry. This can be another symptom of working too much and being over committed. There are a billion reasons why you are angry with life and I am in no wise saying that over commitment is the only one. It is however, one of the things that drives us to anger because we have to work so hard to achieve so little. Just thinking about that right now makes me mad!

You feel a burning pressure

As pressure and stress take hold of you, you will feel it. The stuff I mentioned above, other things like loss or increased appetite, a desire to ‘break free’ of the corporate sausage maker and more than likely the feeling that you just have to work this hard are symptom of pressure. After all… if you don’t do it who will? I mean they are paying you the big money aren’t they? No!

Your body begins to tell you

You might get sudden backaches, rashes, itchiness, headaches, tension pain and so on because of over commitment. This is usually the last thing that happens before you fall over and die. There comes a point where your mind, body and soul start to take over your desire to do a million things at once. We call this burnout. Don’t let it get to the point where this happens. Here are some of the things I do to keep it at bay:

Don’t say yes to things you have no time to do

I am spanking myself here as well. There are times when you think you will have the time to do something but in reality you don’t. If you say yes… you will have to trade something off (like family time) in order to get there. Here is the lie that I almost always fall for:

If I do this it will give me more money to spend on my kids

In a word that’s nonsense because if your kids care more about money than they do you… you have a problem. Sure a good education is nice as is a flashly house… but what price are you willing to pay to have those things… your soul? Next time something comes along and you want to do it remember something has to move out of the way so you can do it. That’s life.

Working smarter

Work can be hard and you may be in a position where you can’t change. One thing you can do is begin to think about ways of streamlining your work. Put it this way: What can I do now that I could faster if I had the right tools? This may mean an investment in software, delegation or outsourcing (if you can). The alternative you keep going until you burnout. Once you go there… it’s gets pretty hard to come back.

Making life choices

A non-materialist way of looking at this is to say: I don’t have to own a house, Jaguar or BMW to be happy. I can however have peace and joy from those that love me. Sorry allow me to come back to reality for the moment and address the heading. You can work in jobs where the pressure is reduced and there isn’t as much asked of you. You can find vocations that pay less for less responsibility… you could also win lotto or fly to the moon in a self-propelled raft! There are choices (jokes aside) that you can make on a daily basis to make your life better. You can build a strategy to improve things over time. Decide to leave at 5pm instead 10. If you are asked to do something ‘extra’ for someone and you don’t have the time… don’t do it. Begin to make these kinds of choices on a daily basis… it will make the world of difference to you.

At the end of the day there are really two kinds of variables life throws us. Those which we can control (minimal) and those we can’t (everything else). The key thing is to learn about those you can control and do something and leave everything else up to God. One of these things you can control is the choices you make about your life and the direction it’s going in. If you are over commited can I encourage you today to begin to wind back? Getting up the ladder lickity split is not what life is about. Make the right choices for you and you will find a great deal more peace flowing into your life.

I went to see a movie today Be Kind Rewind. I thought the movie wasn’t too bad but over all I felt it was too real. Now I am a fan of true stories and things of that nature but who wants to be reminded of reality when you are watching a movie? Film buffs and cinefiles put down your rocks.

I think I have spent too much time reading theory or something. When I see a movie I want entertainment or something that’s going to make me forget reality. Reality can be your best friend but for some of us it’s annoying. It’s just always there to remind you that there is this bigger social structure out there that tells you what you can and can’t achieve.

A challenge to my readers and all who read this post

Forget reality! Let’s experiment for a while and see what happens. I am going to dream like I did when I was teenager (no not about boobs!). I mean the deep seated heart level BS that won’t leave me alone. This is the stuff that’s lodged inside of me and wants to rip out of me like a bout of bad curry. Dreams? Why on earth do we dream about things that are so impossible? Why do these things grip us and may us miserable if we don’t take steps to fulfill them? It’s like having an itch in yer guts that you can’t scratch. EVER!

So now that I am looking to develop potential I am now looking at my dreams. I will NOT let reality get in my way!

Imagine you have just reached your dream. What would that feel like? Think for a moment what is it you really dream about? Say it was to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. If that was your burning desire what on earth would stop you from doing it? Money? Time? What about if you had two legs amputated below the knee? Warren Macdonald suffered a horrible fate of losing both legs below the knee after being crushed by a rock on a trek in Hinchinbrook Island, Australia. Yet he managed to reach his goal and climb Mount Kilimanjaro. So what’s your impossible dream?

Dreams are meant to be impossible

The fact is when we were formed dreams were formed in us. I don’t care what your friends told you or what you think… you have some deep down burning desire in you that wants to form itself into an actual reality. As I have said before there are two kinds of reality that we need to be concerned with.  That which is active and that which is passive.  The passive kind are the dreams we have and the things we entertain in our heart.    These things are what I am talking about today.  What is it that you deeply dream about?   What are the things you have in your heart to do?  Write them down.

The main goal of having a dream

The major thing you need to do when you have a dream is to think about it.  Don’t shuffle it under the carpet and pretend like it’s not there.  Your dream is that thing that keeps you up at night, that niggle in the back of your mind.  It’s the thing you would do if you could do anything.  It’s meant to be impossible because it will take miracles, action and much faith to get the thing off the ground.  If it didn’t why would you dream about it?  If it was possible there would be no need to dream about it.  You would just do it.

So what can I do about my dream?

The thing I have maintained having reached a dream or two in my life (getting a post graduate degree and a PhD… almost there) I can say that there are several things you need to know.  The most important for this post is this: hold on to it.  Don’t let it go.   There are many things I want to achieve before I go home but that doesn’t mean I am a failure.  The only failures I have met are people who fail to try.  So what’s your dream?  The first and most important thing you need to do is work that out and hold on to it no matter what.   Never give up.

People often make me wonder. The things we do and don’t even realise we are following the group or being part of a herd. One day I was driving north on the freeway when again I was stuck in traffic. Frustrated I began to think: what the hell is wrong here? A few minutes later we began to speed up and slow down. Up and down and up and down. Finally some 45 minutes later when I got to the cause of problem I noticed a man standing behind a car someone had torched days earlier that was off the side of the road and nowhere near the traffic. I learned something from this: people are the same as ants in many ways. We stop. We think in discernible group patterns and we act accordingly. Here are some examples that I have also noticed.

Social Networks

People can whine about Myspace, Facebook or Friendster all they like. You know what, those sites are only popular because people forms groups around them and share common interests. They ‘hive’ around concepts. People who have mastered the art of being creaters of social networks have become the stuff of web legend. Popular language calls them mavens, sneezers, influencers and the like. I prefer the term pioneer because I think there is always that person out of the front of the group who can discern ahead of time what it likely to be popular and yes they usually pay the price for it.

Communication in groups

Ants have a knowing that allows them to build great things as part of a huge chain of communication. How do they do it? I don’t know and if you are reading this I am not sure I care to know. All I know is that I see them build huge nests. That is a team effort therefore they somehow communicate information to each other to make that happen. Consider Digg. A source of joy and frustration for bloggers. Digg is a hive. Sure, it’s moderated and has a hierarchy to it which surprises people. Still, it’s built by group communication, clicking and just enough manipulation to make it work. Ants!

Group perceptions and thoughts

We like similar things. I really like CSI, Torchwood, Doctor Who yet for me to enjoy these fine programs there has to be other people who enjoy them. In fact there has to be enough people to enjoy them and spread them around through group communication. Stephen King said it this way in On Writing… we can communicate using our minds. I can say tree and you have already seen what I am thinking in your mind. That’s telekinesis right there. You are seeing what I am saying when I say tree. It’s probably not the same tree but you get my point. Group perceptions are the same. We believe things in groups and build our identities around it.

In this video we have liberal (Australian Conservatives) and the Labour (the opposite). Notice how the comedy trio make light of the situation by playing on group perceptions. They use various political ideas and the way the recent Australian election was promoted as a way to share with us different ideas. The media do this in many many ways. People respond in a typical either/or logic box. Thus we are forced to take sides with two idiots.

Queens and Kings

In some ant societies there are head honchos which we call Queens. So it is in society we elect officials, make things popular and so on. We give people like Paris Hilton attention. We make Harry Potter a legend, we give precedence and through our group activity support and maintain the status quo. Over and over again. These things are made popular through interacting group perceptions, ideas and notions. Our queens and kinds are those we give ‘royal’ status through our constant conversations.

The chain gang mentality

Ants work in a straight line one after the other. I was watching them climb the wall at my house the other day and I wondered why do they do that. The know to go one after the other and form a line. As I thought about this I thought about work and how we do much the same thing. We work, never really questioning why this is the way things are and become part of a chain in a really long line. Day in and day out… nothing really changes.

Strategic Thinking and Action

Ants are great at thinking bigger picture.   They are fantastic and making small things grow into big things.  So are we.  When we work together that is.   In my family, as I imagine it is in yours, there is a lot of feuding.  Being the ‘peacemaker’ in the family I often find myself in the middle of it.  More times than I can count people make ideas they think are important which are really not.   We hold our ground when we could work together to make peace.  The amount of times I have seen great projects or research destroyed because people could not push aside their egos to work together.  Alas, it’s no wonder the world is in such a mess.

Moving heavy objects

Okay so this is where we part company with ants… we can’t move eight times our own weight.  AND we don’t have eight legs either.

In this observation we must remember that comparisons of us with insects is interesting but ultimately there is one thing that separates us from them.  Our ability to destroy things.  Humans have an uncanny ability to form ideological perceptions that destroy nations, spread evil and hate each other.  Do ants hate?  I have no idea.  I am not an expert in insects.  I can say that I admire their team spirit and willingness to work together to form complex wholes… something I rarely see humans do.