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Thursday, June 9, 2011

Your Personal Message

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?
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Well, I do have a thought on my heart.

Practice being content.  The biggest reason that people suffer is their attachment to expectations.  We go to college and thus expect to get a great job after graduation.  We've put 2+ years into XYZ relationship and expect it to work out.  We work SO hard at our jobs and expect acknowledgement and advancement.  Then, when those expectations aren't met it shakes our very foundation!  We cry out at the storm, shaking our fists vainly at the unjust gods. But, the truth of it is, you have no right to anything you expect in life.  

See, life has different mathematics.  In our minds, Hard Work + Dedication = Success.  That seems like a solid formula.  That same equation in Life's eyes could lead you to financial failure, marriage, prison, the possibilities are limitless!  Whatever path we take, we can only see so far.  Thus the key is to practice contentment; being able to feel the lows and highs of life and knowing that they are temporary states.  Repeat- Lows AND Highs.  Some people spend their lives seeking only the positive only to find that they can't sustain it and suffer as a result.  Any extreme is exactly that.

As I was writing this post, it reminded me of a song by the lovely, India Arie entitled, "Back To The Middle"  One verse of the song says, "


You gotta take the good with the bad, and you might hit the wall
Sometimes you'll fly and sometimes you'll really fall
There ain't no way to avoid the pain, But it's
Getting burned, that's how you will learn to come back to the middle




Today showed me that a continual state of stress is harmful, but experiencing and recovering from stress allows us to grow.


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