authenticity

All you need is love

Posted on by DareToBeHappier

I’m a fan of Marianne Williamson – her books have inspired me over the past 16 years or so.  A friend recently told me about how she walked out on to the stage after the Paris shootings, and said that we needed to send love out to the city – and that included the terrorists.  She had misread many in the the audience.

But then she wasn’t coming from the point of the audience.  She wasn’t denying the horror, she was simply coming from her truth.  She is a long standing teacher in the Course in Miracles, which teaches that what we believe, we perceive; so since she believes that ultimately love is what matters – what will transform the world – then that’s what she sees, and how she lives.  And though I may have been where those in the audience were, I just thought wow, she really lives her truth, and it’s transformed her in the process.

How we think – what we perceive – is how our lives unfold.  If love is really what matters to us, we will look for it and find it, and we will be it.  What if we lived today, looking at the world from the eyes of love, or the eyes of what we feel is missing from our life – friendship, compassion, kindness?  What if that’s all we tried to focus on being and seeing? How would our day change?

Do let me know what you chose, and how you got on…

At least, you know his name

Posted on by DareToBeHappier

At the fringe of the world

where rampant darkness lives,

and foot-fall runs

from searchlight’s glare,

a lifeless statue sits.

Grey dust plastered on by hate.

 

He’s five years old.

And on the edge of power,

the mothers of the world

have gathered round to watch,

as long as he has lived,

to wring their hands

with tearful fears,

their eyes wide open to

what man can do to man.

 

The statue’s past

was bombed and blasted

into shards

that whipped and ripped

his brother’s future

from a family’s heart.

While he, freeze-framed, swims

through no-man’s fogs

that makes it fearful to remember,

more dangerous to forget.

 

Thick skinned with daily life

of unread books

and monsters educated

in the art of war,

of barrel bombs that rain

Confettied buildings, people, cats,

he moves

to touch

the warming ooze

that’s on his head

(the ketchup’s red).

Then starts,

and scrapes the chilling madness

of death’s playground

onto white helmet’s safety’s seat.

 

The tearless frozen statue sits.

No lullabies of sirens

were whispered in his ear.

No prelude to this solo non-performance

in the spotlights of

our hashtag havens

for his fifteen minutes of unwanted fame.

Omran.

At least, at least

you know his name.

 

© Caroline Johnstone 2016

Is the kind of life you are currently living sustainable? 

Posted on by DareToBeHappier

In her book More Time to Think, Nancy Kline refers to an article which posed that question. It said:

“Describe your current life – the number of hours you sleep each night; the amount of time you rush; the proportion of your day you worry; the amount of time you don’t just sit; the amount of time you don’t listen to your children and your partner; the amount of time people don’t listen to you; the amount of time you complain; the amount of self-betrayal you do by not sticking to your value of self-care the amount of time you do emails; the amount of time you don’t exercise; the number of days per month you drink alcohol; how often you don’t laugh; how frequently you don’t each freshly prepared food; your waist measurement; your weight; the amount of time you spend in aeroplanes and cars; the amount of time you are away from the people you love most.”

And then she says, here was the scary question.

“Is this sustainable?

Well.  

Is it?



 

Remember – life isn’t a dress rehearsal, so dare to be happier! x

https://daretobehappier.wordpress.com

T: @DareToBeHappier.

Don’t make others right or wrong

Posted on by DareToBeHappier

Instead of making others right or wrong, or bottling up right and wrong in ourselves, there’s a middle way, a very powerful middle way…… 

Could we have no agenda when we walk into a room with another person, not know what to say, not make that person wrong or right? Could we see, hear, feel other people as they really are? It is powerful to practice this way….. true communication can happen only in that open space. 

Pema Chodron

It’s not the critic who counts – Theodore Roosevelt 

Posted on by DareToBeHappier

It’s not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. 

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred with the sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause and who, at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. 
Theodore Roosevelt

Made some bad decisions? You can still create a great life…

Posted on by DareToBeHappier

A pilgrim walked through difficult landscapes. 
“As he traveled, he saw a great deal of suffering and conflict, getting more discouraged each day. Finally, he happened upon a shop that promised him his heart’s desires. The pilgrim asked for peace – within his family and the world. He asked for health, for freedom for all, and many other good things. 

The shopkeeper, looking very downcast, apologised to the man. “I should have explained. We don’t supply the fruits here. We only supply the seeds.”
In transitions, God provides the seeds; what we do with them is up to us. We can toss them in a drawer and forget about them. Or we can plant them in the garden and wait to see what grows next spring. God can work with anything – good and bad decisions alike – and still help us create our lives out of the choices we’ve made.”

Debra K Farrington 

Forgive yourself: let go of useless guilt…

Posted on by DareToBeHappier

When I forgive myself, I’m letting go of a certain kind of useless guilt – not the simple awareness of responsibility (that’s precisely what I’m accepting and acknowledging), but a self-regarding and sometimes self-dramatising guilt that leads nowhere in particular. 

While I hang on to this guilt, I am subtly presenting myself as having done something that not even God can forgive it. Although this behaviour has all the external appearance of humility, it’s really a clever and externally pious way of making myself the centre of the universe – the only person in all creation who is beyond the reach of God. 
Bill Countryman 

Be strong enough to be yourself 100%

Posted on by DareToBeHappier

Love this by Stacey Charter …

There comes a time when you have to stand up and shout:

This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel, love the way I love! I am a whole complex package. Take me. . . or leave me.

Accept me–or walk away! Do not try to make me feel like less of a person,
just because I don’t fit your idea of who I should be and don’t try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision.

When you are strong enough to love yourself 100%, good and bad – you will be amazed at the opportunities that life presents you.
💜

Our Spiritual Change Agents

Posted on by DareToBeHappier

People come in to our lives for a reason – and they leave for a reason. Sometimes we will know why (circumstances, our own actions, their actions) and sometimes we may never know why and then we need to let them go, especially from our minds. To hold on to them means we do not free space or energy to meet others.

I’ve been thinking about various people in my life and through my life who are no longer part of it. Of course I am happy to never meet some of them again. Others, I think I miss sometimes, but if we were to meet now I doubt we would have very much in common. Yet… though many of these changes caused great sorrow,
I learned that their leaving often left room for better to come!

All of the people we meet on the journey of our life are one way or another, our spiritual change agents. Bosses, colleagues, neighbours, friends, family, partners – there’s no distinction in them being our teachers if we let them be.

By seeing them as teachers and spiritual change agents, we can let so much go! And why would we be angry at any of the less than totally positive people we’ve known, when all they were doing is fulfilling our purpose to be all that we can be?

That includes those who are our deliberately positive change agents. Those who know who we are and still love us, those who are brave enough to ask the hard questions, and who stand by us when times are tough. Angels who at the right time have said the right thing, or just turned up on our doorstep when we need them. Those who knew we needed a coffee – or a cocktail! Those who connect us to a teacher, a book, a course, a different view point or way of being.

Mine have challenged me to grow, change, stand up for myself, move, learn, to take the risk to love again – and to take responsibility for my life.

They’ve taught me much about myself and others, shown me how to find my voice – and that I cannot work where there’s a conflict with my values. They’ve introduced me to passion, humility, love, contentment, grace and happiness. They’ve made me see that I can always choose my thoughts – and thus my attitudes and actions, so happiness is always possible for me.

They have shown me I am a teacher, student, writer who helps people live better, brighter futures. And they are showing me how to love, nurture and inspire myself. I am who I am now because of them all, I value what I have because of them too, and I’m now truly grateful for them all.