“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.  The mind is everything. What we think we become.”  -Buddha

There is no more powerful or challenging change we can make in our lives than looking at how we think. The human mind generates hundreds of thousands of thoughts every day and, for most people, the majority of them are negative.  Negative thought patterns are so repetitive and familiar that often we don’t even witness them, or worse still, we accept them as the truth.

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“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” -Edna St. Vincent Millay

Three years ago today it was a Wednesday afternoon when a beautiful girl named Sydney went into a closet and ended her life with her father’s gun. It was a particularly humiliating high school break up that triggered the fall. I walk by her bench regularly, as it is on my favorite dog walking route passing into the heart of a wooded park in town. Her father built this memorial bench on the route that they used to run together.

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“Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.” - Meister Eckhart

I have never enjoyed the introductory class to anything. You know the class when they spend half the time telling you the rules and rather than doing whatever you are there to learn, the teacher goes on at length about what will be learned? While I understand that the beginning of a class sets the tone for what follows,  it also sets the expectations of speed and whether things will move at a pace that keeps you interested.

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“The future depends on what we do in the present.” ~ Gandhi

As I begin my third year of positivity quest, I am overcome with the success and changes that the discipline and practice of creating a positive relationship to life each and every day has harvested. I am getting more confident with my positivity and just like many of the books I have read suggested, I am witnessing how I am able to create ever larger circles of positivity around me.

One of the most important tools I have used in my positivity process has been keeping the positivity quest blog that has grown to thousands of followers.  Lately I have fallen off of my commitment to record what is happening in favor of being in it. But just like last year, I have learned again that the power of a discipline is only as active as your commitment to it.  Writing is how I know what I am learning, which is the surest way of teaching anything.

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“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. “ ~Richard P. Feynman

Not too long ago, my son got his first iPhone 4s and called me overjoyed.  He exclaimed “my life is complete.”  In my motherly way, I tried to explain that a phone doesn’t complete you, it is just a cool phone.  Clearly I missed the point and I was in the process of  losing touch with him over this new phone.  It isn’t that I haven’t shared his joy over this highly functional little device that offers access anything you want to know,  a myriad of ways to express your creativity,  and even more applications to play and amuse.  Our cellular technology is no doubt a wonder. The most recent models even have a built in robotic organizer who can talk to you like you are a friend. Truly we are never alone anymore. Who even remembers when calling someone meant stretching the phone cord as far as it would go outside of the kitchen to get some privacy. My kids can’t even imagine. What is not to love about our cellular technology?

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“When you feel that you have reached the end and that you cannot go one step further, when life seems to be drained of all purpose; what a wonderful opportunity to start all over again, to turn over a new page.”   -Eileen Caddy

These days I am starting over. All of the good habits that I could count on with ease are now feeling foreign. I am addicted to sugar in a way that I can’t remember. My meditations are all about noticing the thinking and trying to remember what it feels like to stay with the discomfort.  My voice feels lost to me.  I write and erase, write and erase, unsure of my words as I am of this place between knowing better and eating another skinny cow dessert anyway.

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“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” – T. S. Eliot

I sometimes wonder if the reason I have for so long embraced the motto “You never fail until you quit” is because I am so unskilled at endings. I feel like the tire that is stuck spinning in a muddy rut when it is time to move on. I have the will, the engine revving but I can’t quite release the past. Something sticks in me or, perhaps to me, and I get lost in flashes of memory, the things that were said or more often, left unsaid. I flicker between the present and those lost moments, my sentimentality sparked by the smallest of token gestures. There is romanticism to this way of living that one could argue for, but increasingly I am aware that whatever merit it holds, it effectively keeps me from embracing the future I long to embody.

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“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. “  -Bertrand Russell

Some doubts carries wisdom and insight.  Having the capacity to reflect on our life choices and experience with intellectual honesty is a gift that brings you more deeply in touch with your feelings and more honestly able to assess where you are in life.  This healthy form of doubt spurs us to grow and frees us to make challenging choices.

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“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.  The mind is everything. What we think we become.” -Buddha

There is no more powerful or challenging change we can make in our lives than looking at our how we think. The human mind generates hundreds of thousands of thoughts every day and for most people the majority of them are negative. Negative thought patterns are so repetitive and familiar that often we don’t even witness them or, worse still, we accept them as the truth.

Read the rest of this entry »

“When it’s over, I want to say:  All my life,  I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”   -Mary Oliver

It’s easy to get so lost in the momentum of holiday activities and the seemingly endless to-do lists that we forget what the holidays are for. There is always more to do than there is time for, and probably never quite so acutely as during the holidays. Gift giving drives much of the frenzy, and although we can point to all the cultural mania driving us to purchase our good holiday feelings, for many of us there is a legitimate desire to really give something that feels meaningful and is a true reflection of our love.

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