ENOUGH

Dimming your light so another's can shine is not leading with love, it's coming from lack because there is enough light for both of you.

ADJUSTMENT

The journey of our life is a series of adjustments.  The truth is we're off track most of the time, the trick is to pay attention and make those tweaks to get you back in the direction you want to go.

FREEDOM

The Buddha often said that wherever you find water, you can tell if it’s

the ocean because the ocean always tastes of salt. By the same token,

anywhere you find enlightenment —whatever improbable or unfamiliar

shape it may have assumed— you can tell it’s enlightenment

because enlightenment always tastes of freedom.

Not comfort. Not ease. Freedom.

~ Martha Beck

What an amazing distinction - comfort is often misunderstood as freedom, ease is often mistaken for freedom, but true freedom is neither comfortable nor easy.  Freedom is an imperative that leaves you no choice but to move toward the cliff and barely braced, compels you to jump off.  

If you’re scared to death because a decision you have to make is taking you like a fast moving train toward a 100 foot drop, then baby hang on, because you’re on the path to freedom.

UNPLUG

The other day a woman with her nose buried in her iPhone walked toward me.  I moved out of her way when I realized she wasn't going to look up.  Just as I was passing her a bus whizzed past and I saw her look up.  She looked annoyed at the bus for having failed to stop for her.  Since she wasn't paying attention she hadn't made it to the bus stop.

A woman preoccupied with texting pushed a stroller down the sidewalk.  Her baby was looking up at her trying to make eye contact.

Sure it's easy to rationalize that those are just an ignorant few but in truth I could fill a book with instances like this because it's the ignorant mass.  It crosses every race, ethnic or socio-economic line.

More than ever we are presented with opportunities to disengage, to abdicate our responsibility to participate in our lives.  Burying our head, whether it's in an iPhone or the sand,  is easier than actually giving a crap.  Giving a crap takes time, it takes energy, it takes risk.  Engaging in our lives means that we actually need to expend emotional energy.  It's so much easier to give into fear.

BRICK WALLS

A brick wall is a person with a mind that dismisses things out of hand.  Before all the facts are in, before anything is even remotely clear, brick walls have already made up their minds that, "whoa there with that idea...where do you think you're going?"

Brick walls are made of fear.  That's it.  There's nothing mysterious about them  They're under the misguided notion that they're dismissing things, saying no to things for their own good.  Nothing is further from the truth.  Bricks walls are solid things with no flexibility.  It's a horrible way to waste a mind.

MAKE IT HAPPEN

When you finally come out from under your blankie, bright and shiny and new, you'll be ready own it once again.

Seth, as usual, says it best:

"If you announce what you want, if you are clear about what's on offer, if you set goals...

• the chances of accomplishing your goal go up, and so does...
• the chance that you will be disappointed

For many people, apparently, it's better to not get what you want than it is to be disappointed. The resistance is powerful indeed.

Every time you use waffle words, back off from a clear statement of values and priorities and most of all, think about what's likely instead of what's possible, you are selling yourself out. Not just selling yourself out, but doing it too cheaply.

Own your dreams. There is no better way to make them happen."

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/10/on-owning-it.html

OWN IT

There are days when the last thing you want to do is own it. Any of it.  When everything just gets on your very last nerve and you just want to curl up under your blankie and whaaaa, whaaaa for your mama.

The thing is, we have to own this more than anything else.  Lean into it and embrace it fully.  This too is you.  It's the other side of the bright shiny you.  

It's part and parcel baby.  It's all of who we are and then some.  If we don't own this, who will?  We are incomplete without both sides.  Surrender to it, it'll actually feel really good.