The Power of Decision

Amen. So, begs the question: How do you see yourself?!?!

As a Divinely-inspired genius put on this planet to share your precious gifts and love and compassion and creativity and abundance? (Awesome. :)

And while we’re shaping that self-image, we wanna remember that we aren’t some helpless little creature trying to get by in a world of other separate little creatures. Noperz. According to Barker and his friends, we’re “pure Intelligence”—and our job is to recognize this fact and align with and express it in our day-to-day lives. Powerful stuff.

Ernest Holmes, the founder of the Science of Mind movement says this in Creative Mind and Success (see Notes): “The individual who has the most power is the one who has the greatest realization of the Divine Presence, and to whom this means the most as an active principle of his life.”

Ervin Seale, another old-school New Thought dood, says this (see Notes on Take Off from Within): “One can never love himself as he ought until he esteems himself in terms of his spiritual heritage—a divinely generated being, destined to win, to achieve, and to express the nature of his source. As water rises no higher than the level of its source, so a man can rise no higher than his personal estimate of his source.”

Love that! Walter Russell, the somewhat obscure 20th century genius, says this (check out the Notes on The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe for more): “Early in life I found that to achieve greatness one had to go only one inch beyond mediocrity, but that one inch is so hard to go that only those who become aware of God in them can make the grade, for no one can achieve that one inch alone.”

Dig it. Osho and Emerson say similar schtuff:

Osho tells us (see Notes on The Book of Understanding): “Man is not born perfect. He is born incomplete, he is born as a process. He is born on the way, as a pilgrim. That is his agony and his ecstasy, too; agony because he cannot rest, he has to go ahead, he has always to go ahead. He has to seek and search and explore. He has to become, because his being arises only through becoming. Becoming is his being. He can only be if he is on the move.
Evolution is intrinsic to man’s nature, evolution is his very soul. And those who take themselves for granted remain unfulfilled. Those who think they are born complete remain unevolved. Then the seed remains the seed. It never becomes a tree and never knows the joys of spring and the sunshine and the rain, and the ecstasy of bursting into millions of flowers.
That explosion is the fulfilment, that explosion is what existence is all about—exploding into millions of flowers. When the potential becomes the actual, only then is man fulfilled.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (see Notes) reminds us: “Genius appeals to the future.” And: “A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.”

Plus, positive psychologists are scientifically establishing the same fact. In the words of Sonja Lyubomirsky (see Notes on The How of Happiness): “In 1932, weighed down by the sorrows and agonies of his self-absorbed and aimless clients, an Australian psychiatrist named W. Béran Wolfe summed up his philosophy like this: ‘If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert.’ He was right. People who strive for something personally significant, whether it’s learning a new craft, changing careers, or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person, and you will find a project.”

Of course, we want to completely accept who we are and all the wonderful learning opportunities we’ve had in our lives (aka mistakes/failures :) plus all the wonderful things we’ve achieved—as Nathaniel Branden says in Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (see Notes): “Pride is the emotional reward of achievement. It is not a vice to be overcome but a value to be attained.” And, he also tells us that: “Self-esteem contemplates what needs to be done and says, ‘I can.’ Pride contemplates what has been accomplished and says, ‘I did.’”

When we’ve embraced what is, we wanna find something we can get excited about!

So… What are YOU excited about creating in your life?!? :)

Love this:—> “You cannot walk forward by looking backward.”

If we wanna go forward, we can’t be staring backward! Glancing once in awhile is fine. But staring? Not such a good idea.

Think about driving your car. You have a rearview mirror but you DON’T stare at it the whole time! (Right? :)

Same thing with our lives: Let’s let go of the past and fill our bottles up with new wine!!!

Emerson’s genius comments come to mind here: “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

And I love Pema Chödrön’s comments on the matter: “This is the path we take in cultivating joy: learning not to armor our basic goodness, learning to appreciate what we have. Most of the time we don’t do this. Rather than appreciate where we are, we continually struggle to nurture our dissatisfaction. It’s like trying to get flowers to grow by pouring cement on the garden.”

The next time you find yourself swimming in negative thoughts, think about the fact that you’re pouring concrete on your potential garden of happiness.

And quit doing that!!! :)

Here’s one way to do it via Sonja Lyubomirsky (again, from The How of Happiness—which *totally* ROCKS, btw!): “Write down your barrier thoughts, and then consider ways to reinterpret the situation. In the process, ask yourself questions like… What else could this situation or experience mean? Can anything good come from it? Does it present any opportunities for me? What lessons can I learn and apply to the future? Did I develop any strengths as a result?”

So, there ya go. Let’s steer away from the concrete and pour some love on our seeds! :)

Carlos Castaneda tells us we wanna be on “the path with heart” while Joseph Campbell tells us to “follow our bliss.”

Castaneda’s wisdom from The Wheel of Time (see Notes): “Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: ‘Does this path have a heart?’”

And how about Joseph Campbell’s wisdom from Pathways to Bliss (see Notes): “Your bliss can guide you to that transcendent mystery, because bliss is the welling up of the energy of the transcendent wisdom within you. So when the bliss cuts off, you know that you’ve cut off the welling up; try to find it again.”

Dig it. So, our heart/bliss is a great guide to bring us back to the right decision. And, to Barker’s point, we ALWAYS KNOW the decision we should make. The challenge is, as Castaneda says, having the courage to actually follow it. In his words: “But how will I know for sure whether a path has a heart or not?’ ‘Anybody would know that. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path.”

So, what decision do you need make?

Reminds me of a great creative exercise I love: The Angel’s Advocate.

So, we’ve all heard of the devil’s advocate—that voice of “reason” that tells us all the things that can (and probably will!) go wrong in any given endeavor. Now, the devil’s advocate can be a great resource for some situations. So, let’s not get rid of it entirely. But how ‘bout we don’t let the devil come in till the ANGEL has done her work thoroughly? :)

Here’s the deal: Let’s imagine you have an idea of something you’d like to create in your life—whether it’s in your career, creative pursuits, intimate relationship, family, health, whatever. Let’s excuse the devil from the room and invite in our angel’s advocate.

Now, this angel is pretty extraordinary. She is INCREDIBLE at helping us see *all* the things that can GO RIGHT in our lives and helps us paint THE MOST AMAZING picture of our ideal that we could possibly imagine!

So, let’s get to work: Imagine you’ve got an angel on your right shoulder who can wave a magic wand and make ANYTHING and EVERYTHING you can imagine come to life.

What would you imagine?

Seriously. Let’s do it.

If everything went perfectly in my life, I worked hard, embodied the ideals I know to be true, here’s what my life would look like in 10 years:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

(For the record, this is NOT just self-help silliness. In fact, positive psychologists call this kinda thing a “Best Selves Diary” exercise and have SCIENTIFICALLY proven the fact that reflecting on your ideal future increases your happiness levels. So let’s flex our optimism muscles and get our angel’s advocate on on, yo! :)

Did you know the Tibetans don’t even have a word for guilt in their language?

Noperz.

The closest thing they have is something akin to “intelligent regret that decides to do things differently.”

I like that.

You have some guilt? Maybe you can lighten your load by swapping out the guilt for some intelligent regret that decides to do things differently, eh?! :)

Another tool is Louise Hay’s concept of moving from “shoulds” to “coulds” (see Notes on You Can Heal Your Life). REALLY powerful. She suggests we start noticing how often we use “should” in our lives. (“I shouldn’t have said that to so and so.” Or, “I should have turned off the TV earlier.” Or, —> Insert your favorite should here. <—:)

Know that each of those shoulds we’re piling on ourselves is bringing us into a deeper and deeper sense of helplessness/disempowerment, which is the quickest way to get ourselves depressed!

And, finally, the world’s foremost authority on self-esteem, Nathaniel Branden, speaks of the importance of self-acceptance in his brilliant book The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (see Notes). In fact, self-acceptance is the second pillar of self esteem and might best be summed up as “my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship with myself.”

So, what’s stressing you out right that’s creating some guilt/shame/ick?

And…

Is *now* a good time to lighten your guilt load a bit (or a lot!) through exercising some “intelligent regret that decides to do things differently” or perhaps some “should to could” mojo?!?

As you know if you’ve read many of these Notes, we can quote quite a few peeps on this subject.

Let’s stick with Tolle for now (see Notes on The Power of Now): “Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in yourself, in whatever form—it may be the awakening of the pain-body. This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, depression, a need to have some drama in your relationship, and so on. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant state.”

Can you catch your negative moods a little more quickly today and maybe aikido them into something more positive?!? (Sweet. :)

Love that.

Wayne Dyer describes something similar in his great book The Power of Intention (see Notes):

“The Wright brothers didn’t contemplate the staying on the ground of things. Alexander Graham Bell didn’t contemplate the noncommunication of things. Thomas Edison didn’t contemplate the darkness of things. In order to float an idea into your reality, you must be willing to do a somersault into the unconceivable and land on your feet, contemplating what you want instead of what you don’t have.”

And did you know that at one point learned scientists thought our bodies would explode if they went over thirty miles per hour?!?

Yep, in his brilliant book The Big Leap (see Notes) Gay Hendricks tells us about that and likens it to the current notions of the limits on just how much happiness we can withstand in our lives:

“Am I willing to feel good and have my life go well all the time? At first glance, you might ask who wouldn’t say yes to all of these questions. Well, for many of us, the idea of all of this positive emotion seems far-fetched to begin with. It is easy for us to just assume that with the positive comes the negative. To that I say, ‘Why not get willing, and see what happens?’ We humans have a long and wonderful history of transcending our beliefs about what’s possible. In the early days of the steam-powered train, learned scientists urged capping the speed at thirty miles per hour because they believed that the human body exploded at speeds greater than that. Finally some brave people risked going beyond that limiting belief and found that they did not explode. I think we’re approximately at that same stage of development with regard to our ability to feel good and have our lives go well.”

So…

What do YOU currently think isn’t possible in your life?!?