Thoughts for a New Year

(borrowed from Express Tire Inc.)

Each New Year many of us think about ways to improve our lives. It’s like pruning a tree to make it grow bigger and stronger. The pruning is painful the growth is tremendous.

Be grown-up and take responsibility for yourself. Don’t let others steal your dreams. Set goals and hold yourself accountable. Educate yourself, read books that are uplifting, nurture your spirit with positive influences.

Live healthy, your body and brain need exercise. Eating right and exercising give you more energy so that you can persevere in reaching your goals.

Deal with truth in your life so that you can make better choices and decisions. When getting advice, consider the source. Learn from your mistakes. Be willing to forgive yourself and others. Carrying around anger, hatred, or disappointment is toxic to your spirit. You aren’t hurting others when you hold in hatred or anger you hurt yourself.

Quit using no actions alibi, we are guilty from time to time of using convenient alibis for not persevering to our goals. Be honest recognize the alibi for what it is and not make alibis a way of life.

Identify counter productive habits or thoughts you would like to discontinue then dump them. Focus on what you can do, not what you cannot do.

Don’t let others bring you down. Remember you can’t change anyone except yourself and that life always rewards positive actions. Invest in yourself, you are your best investment. Surround yourself with others that are positive and never give up.

We can’t avoid problems we all have them. How and when we deal with them will determine your success and happiness. Keep your dreams real. Stand up and be accountable. Make your life grow. Work on it each and every day. It’s easy to fall in the feels good if I do this mode. (Drinking, doing drugs, gambling, etc)

That is why perseverance is the common denominator for success. So powerful is perseverance that failure cannot exist in its presence.

Have a great 2007!

The Affectation of Love

Merry Christmas to my friends!!!

Untitled

The Question is

I love questions. I love that they usually are more interesting than the answer. They hold so much possibility. They can be whatever you want them to be. When asking a question you don't have to be worried about being right or wrong. You can just ask, send out your inquisitive thought to the world. And in my experience I have often found that my answer eventually gets back to me. Sometimes it is immediate, sometimes it takes an extremely long time, and sometimes it's somewhere in between.

I have a lot of questions in my life right now...always. Questions about essays and interpretive claims. Questions about future and life. Questions about friends and questions about relationships, love, pain, and all else in between.

One downside about questions is that they can be pretty darn annoying. Especially those ones that don't go away. The worst questions are the ones that you think about everyday right when you wake up. Like "How am I ever going to write my essay?" or "Why am I so hung up on this guy?" I've been carrying these two questions around with me for awhile. The former of the two will be answered at the latest on this Thursday at 12 noon. The latter...well it's hard to say when I'll get to answer that question.

I think the problem lies in how I should go about answering these questions. I'm not really sure what to write about in my essay, and the situation with the guy is so ambiguous and awkward that it's hard for me to get close enough to it to really explore what happened.

It's always unfortunate, you know, when situations are pushed so far to one extreme and a hole has been dug so deep that now no one knows how to deal with it. Usually when it gets like that, I just stop worrying about social appropriateness and rules of relationships and just take everything head on. I'm like a blunt instrument, a bull in a china shop, I just say what I think and throw all decorum out the window. Because there comes a time when my patience and decency just wears out and I am so desperate for some peace that I'll force it if I have to. But in this current situation I'm avoiding doing any of that at all costs. It is my experience that being a blunt instrument doesn't generally give you desirable results. Sure you may get answers but they are forced answers and they generally come out on the negative side. So I'm trying to teach myself patience. Eternal, infinite, un-ending patience. The answer will come, guaranteed. No matter how long it takes I know, I KNOW, that the answer will come as long as I am ready to receive it.

Conversations With God, Bk 1

Chapter 2, page 58, God says:

Let Me explain something to you. You have this idea that God shows up in only one way in life. That's a very dangerous idea.

It stops you from seeing God all over. If you think God looks only one way or sounds only one way or is only one way, you're going to look right past Me night and day. You'll spend your whole life looking for God and not finding Her. Because you're looking for a Him. I use this as an example.

It has been said that if you don't see God in the profane and the profound, you're missing half the story. That is a great Truth.

God is in the sadness and the laughter, in the bitter and the sweet. There is a divine purpose behind everything -- and therefore a divine presence in everything.

by Neale Donald Walsch

However difficult it may be for you to accept the idea that God said this, is in fact saying this right now, is in fact talking to you in every moment -- however difficult that may be for you I ask you to please open your mind and consider what this quote means to you.