Your Morning Thought

RICHARD Currently I am deeply engrossed in a book titled "Nonviolent Communication" - Marshall B. Rosenherg, PhD.  I  am in the beginning third of the book but the premise so far is that we, as a people, have never really been taught how to express our emotions.  Rather than expressing what we feel we describe what we think we are.  Typical expressions would describe how you feel about the situation...not how you as a person actually feels.  "I feel unimportant to people." describes how you feel about the way others are evaluating you...where "I feel sad" actually describes how YOU feel.  I am only partway through the book and I will tell you I am struggling with it.  It is hard to get yourself to start thinking this way.  But I am told it will be worth it. Onto the meat of the subject. Feelings...nothing more than feelings.  Unique to the human condition.  We are the only animals that have the ability to control, adjust, regulate,...

Inspiration or desperation? Change happens.  You cannot avoid it.  I mean, I suppose you could.  We could put you in a corner and feed you the same meal 3 times a day.  Keep you safe and warm...but what kind of life would that be? I do and have done a lot of different things in my life.  I am a live performance artist.  I do acoustic folk covers and originals.  I have been a fire breather/eater.  I run a music festival, served on public boards, ran restaurants, opened restaurants, designed bars.  In high school I was in marching band and helped start the high school's first indoor percussion program.  For me, it has never been enough to sit on the sidelines.  I want to be in the arena...in the thick of it.  Why watch the show when you can be the show? I did a lot of open mics and live performances in my 20s.  Never thinking too much of it.  It was fun...and there was free booze.  It was always crazy to me to si...

Yes, This Is It Now is the time, for everything. Things sound cliche until they don't.  I know a lot of times in my experience I used to think these sayings were just that.  But there is a reason they are still around this day.  They are true. I am not quite sure where this blog is going to go today, so I am just going to ride the wave of consciousness streaming out of my head. Recently I have been reading the poem "If--" by Rudyard Kipling and it has been striking some notes for me.  I wish I would have read a lot more in my 20s, but I am guessing I wouldn't have filtered it correctly anyway.  But the first stanza, if I am remembering my English class correctly....speaks of keeping your head while others are losing theirs. If you can keep your head when all about you        Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   This has been interesting in my life as I have always been a relatively stoic person. ...

Start On a Good Note This is a good one...literally.  So, I know in my life I was NEVER a morning person.  It was so bad in my teenage years I didn't bother getting up until noon.  One sure way to avoid being grumpy in the morning is to wake up in the afternoon.  This went on through my 20s where I worked 2nd shift to avoid the morning.  I remember a few times having to battle it out with the lady who cleaned the apartment hall at 6:30 a.m. like it was her religion.  Poor lady, just trying to do her job. Just like that jerk in the McDonald's coffee commercials....Mr. "Don't talk to me, I haven't had my coffee".  That was me.  Just a bear, until recently. I have been working banker's hours for about 4 years now.  I have had some success with getting up early on a regular basis before, but it wasn't because I was in a good mood and ready to start the day.  I was forcing myself to get up and go to the gym.  I was still miserable....

The Ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure Do you remember as a child reading these books?  They were paperback and the premise of the book was choose your own adventure.  The book would start off with a general story and then you get to a spot where you had 2 choices, at least, to make.  You would make your choice and go to the page corresponding and the story would continue.  Based on your choices, you would get a certain outcome.  Sometimes the outcome would be good, sometimes it would be no so good. Life is a lot like the choose your own adventure.  Here in the United States, and I am sure in other countries as well, we have the unique opportunity to basically do whatever we want with out life.  It is guaranteed to us in our constitution.  The pursuit of happiness.  Does not mean we will get there, but we have the right to pursue it. There have been a couple things in my life that were true blessings.  They sort of landed in my lap...

You Must Give Up Who You Are “When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters The giving up of one's ego to become who they are truly meant to be.  All of our lives we have it drilled into us...Don't do this, don't do that.  Sit up straight, sit down, lay down, be quiet, don't say that, get in the car, go to school, go to college, GET A JOB!  Be nice, don't offend anyone, you shouldn't do that, watch your language, hold your tongue, play nice. Eventually...at least I would hope...most men get to a point where they say ENOUGH.  I know this didn't happen to me until I was near or in my 30s.  I realize this happens to a lot of men at or around that age, I am not unique in that perspective...

Because You Aren't Focusing On The Good For a very long time and I think we are all taught this...for a very long time what I tried to do was find everything that was wrong and fix it.  When I went down the self improvement path, that is exactly what I was doing.  I found all of the things I didn't like about myself and tried to improve them.  It doesn't work that way, well, it does...BUT it doesn't work as well as focusing on the good and improving upon those skills. It is okay to be bad at things, not all things were meant for you.  You can have all of the passion in the world, but if you are bad at the skill you are trying to develop, you are wasting a lot of time to be mediocre at best.  I suppose a person could go on to be the best one-handed guitarist in the world, but you are still a one-handed guitarist. That being said, when are you going to start developing whatever skill you want to develop, focus on what goes right. For me, I have to go back to my...