Daily dose of “G”

When I was younger, I believed one should feel grateful in order to give thanks. To do anything else seemed somehow dishonest or fake — a kind of “preposterously ridiculous” insincerity that one should reject. Considering the fact that we are in a universe that seemed to hurt for no reason and living in a world where children die of hunger every day, it just doesn’t make sense. When it comes to being grateful and thankful, it’s best to be emotionally authentic, right? Wrong. Building the best life does not require fealty to feelings in the name of authenticity, but rather rebelling against negative impulses and acting right even when we don’t feel like it. In a nutshell, acting grateful can actually make you grateful.

Being grateful is a choice. Some make the mistake of waiting to feel grateful rather than choosing to be grateful. Today, you are alive. You have the opportunity to enjoy your abundance, right your wrongs, cling to your hopes, rekindle your dreams or re-live your passions. You and me, we are alive and so be grateful we must and truly live.

The gift of life is the best gift we’re given every single day.

The tragedy of success.

WHEN SUCCESS KILLS SUBSTANCE

No matter what goals or aspirations you might have, there is one thing certain: There is a price you must pay to get what you want in life. In fact, there is no sidestepping the fact that any type of success demands something from you. It’s simply the way life works. As it is often said: you will not gain something for nothing.

As you make progress along your journey towards your desired outcomes, your pursuits will demand that you make difficult choices about what you will do and about what you won’t do. The goals and objectives you have in mind will not magically manifest in your life. You will need to work hard and potentially make some drastic sacrifices along the way.

I must say that anything you want in your life is essentially unattainable. It’s unattainable if you do not give something up in order to get something back. Giving something up could come in the form of your time, energy, money, relationship or worst, your personal being. You might need to sacrifice one of these things, or maybe a combination of these things in order to get what you want. Considerably, one of the biggest and most profound sacrifices you might undoubtedly need to make along that journey is changing who you are — for whom your “goal” needs you to become. Inarguably, many become blinded by the deceiving notion that they need to transform themselves into “ferocious beasts” in order to scare, devour and topple any competition while being unaware that they are slowly sliding down to a point of losing grip on their substance — the core value defining their humanity.

Having said that, I have one challenge for all of us: Don’t let slip the things you have that are real and substantive in the pursuit of success, most importantly so, in the pursuit of the ephemeral, the prospective, or the offhandedly promised.

This is not to say you should not be willing to set it all aside and go after something bigger or something better. But make sure you do it intelligently, and be aware of what you’re giving up, or might be giving up, when you do so, so you can make the best and most informed decision about which path you must  chose to take.

 

 

Falling behind? I think not!

Timing is the one thing that we often forget to surrender to.

Things are dark until they’re not. Most of our unhappiness stems from the belief that our lives should be different than they are. We believe we have control — and our self-loathing and self-hatred comes from this idea that we should be able to change our circumstances, that we should be richer or hotter or better or happier. While self-responsibility is empowering, it can often lead to this resentment and bitterness that none of us need to be holding within us. Hear me out on this: We have to put in our best efforts and then give ourselves permission to let whatever happens to happen—and to not feel so directly and vulnerably tied to outcomes. Opportunities often don’t show up in the way we think they will.

You don’t need more motivation or inspiration to create the life you want. You need less shame around the idea that you’re not doing your best. You need to stop listening to people who are in vastly different life circumstances and life stages than you and who tell you that you’re just not doing or being enough. You need to let timing do what it needs to do. You need to see lessons where you see barriers. You need to understand that what’s right now becomes inspiration later. You need to see that wherever you are now is what becomes your identity later.

“There’s a magic beyond us that works in ways we can’t understand.”

Sometimes we’re not yet the people we need to be in order to contain the desires we have. Sometimes we have to let ourselves evolve into the place where we can allow what we want to transpire.

Let’s just say that whatever you want, you want it enough. So much so that you’re making yourself miserable in order to achieve it. What about chilling out? Maybe your motivation isn’t the problem, but that you keep pushing a boulder up a mountain that only grows in size the more you push.

There’s a magic beyond us that works in ways we can’t understand. We can’t game it. We can’t perfect it. We can’t control it. We have to just let it be, to take a step back for a moment, stop beating ourselves up into oblivion, and to let the cogs turn as they will. And trust that one day, this moment will make sense. 

Give yourself permission to trust that. 

You need to give yourself permission to be a human being.

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N.B.: This is sort of a follow through of the post Thoughts and Quotes (#Misconception). This, however, emphasizes the significance of what appropriate timing can effect on peoples’ lives, dispositions and perceptions. And this also holds and much stronger view about facing the realities of one’s personality, circumstances, and existence. 

(c) 2016 viewpointsofandrei.com

 

Thoughts and Quotes (#theWayoftheHeart)

“Follow your heart” is a creed believed and followed by billions of people. It’s a statement of faith — a gospel proclaimed in many of our stories, movies, poetry and songs.

Essentially, it’s a belief that your heart is a compass inside of you that will direct you to your own true north if you just have the courage to follow it. It says that your heart is a faithful guide that will lead you to true happiness if you just have the courage to listen and act. The creed says that you are lost and your heart will save you.

This creed can sound so simple and beautiful and liberating. It’s a tempting notion to believe.

YET, be reminded that the heart is a vessel – of joys as well as sorrows. It beats out anger and frustration as much as mercy and love. It, sometimes, gets played, stabbed, wounded,  stamped, burned and broken, emotionally. It mechanically beats and functions. It works to keep us physically alive at the same time to keep everything inside of it — the happiness, pains, longings and miseries — sustained also. It can get highly intoxicated by the variety of emotions that it takes and processes on a regular basis.

I often have heart to heart talks with my heart lately (and on the not so long past) and I was surprised by what I found out. My heart has said things I would not wish to repeat. Being true to myself, my heart tells me that all of reality ought to serve my desires. And about how I should be treated by others, and varied assortments of selfish, narcissistic wants and longings. More often than not, such conversations pointed farther south, down into the realm of deeper and darker emotions.

As much as I love and admire the strength and resilience of my own heart, and how it has never failed to keep me alive and feel alive, I still won’t entrust my precious life on its bidding. I must not follow it, rather I must lead it to where  I want to be at in life and who I wish me to become as a person.

Have you talked with your heart lately? What did it tell you?

(c) 2016 viewpointsofandrei.com

Thoughts and Quotes (#Misconception)

At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we’re going to become, and then when we become those people, we’re not always thrilled with the decisions we made. So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get. Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry. Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain. On and on and on. The question that fascinates me is, why do we make decisions that our future selves so often regret?

All of us are seemingly walking around with an illusion, an illusion that history, our personal history, has just come to an end, that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives.

Why is this so? And why is it that most of us can remember who we were 10 years ago, but we find it hard to imagine who we are going to be, and then we mistakenly think that because it’s hard to imagine, it’s not likely to happen? It’s a pity, when people say “I can’t imagine that,” they are usually talking about their own lack of imagination, and not about the unlikelihood of the event that they’re describing.

The answer unto all this is time. Time is a powerful force. It transforms our preferences. It reshapes our values. It alters our personalities. We seem to appreciate this fact, but only in retrospect. Only when we look backwards do we realize how much change happens in a decade. It is as if, for most of us, the present is a magic time. It is the moment at which we finally become ourselves. Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our life is change.

(c) 2016 viewpointsofandrei.com

Thoughts and Quotes (#Fear)

“Fear is one thing. To let fear look you in the eyes and stare you down is another” -Andrei

Fear.  The real “F” word.  It has the power to knock us down and keep us down.  But only if we allow it to.

Look your fear straight in the eye and stare it down!  Don’t blink. For it is the ONLY way to conquer it.

(c) 2016 viewpointsofandrei.com

 

Thoughts and Quotes (#love&hate)

“There is a very fine line between love and hate. We cross it all too often and it dissipates” -Andrei

 

(c) 2016 viewpointsofandrei.com

Thoughts and Quotes (#aman’sP)

“The smaller his P the bigger the man is. A man grows by pruning down his Pride” -Andrei

 

(c) 2016 viewpointsofandrei.com