The theme that I’ve been practicing this week is appreciation of what’s around you. It’s the appreciation of what you have versus thinking (or obsessing) about what you want.  At one time or another 90% of the things that make up your day are things you wanted once, but do you stop and remember that you wanted them or do you focus on the next big thing that’s coming down the pipe? I find that most people, me included, don’t think all that much about the things that surround them and make up their environment, so I’ve tried to rededicate myself to my things. It’s not just the big things either. Some of the greatest pleasures I know these days is taking pleasure in the small things.

Lip balm for instance.  You use it for chapped lips or for sunscreen, but I have some Burt’s Bees Honey Lip Balm that I really enjoy. I like to take the time to just sit back and enjoy the experience as well as the lip balm. The resistance of the cap when I pull on it to take it off. The crisp little pop it makes and the whiff of air that I smell when the cap is finally released.  The lip balm itself isn’t much to look at. A milky white with a hint of yellow that may just be a reflection of the packaging. It’s in an orangish yellow honey looking tube with honeycombs imprinted in the background. Then I like to smell it for a while. It’s got a pleasant honey smell but mixed with something that I can’t place, probably lanolin and oils. Then I put it on, gliding it over each lip, pressing them together and then put the tube away. It’s this slow mindfulness of each step in the progression that helps me to realize how good a small thing like putting lip balm can be. It involves all the senses and if you can slow down the hustle and bustle of the day for a moment and experience your environment with all of your senses you can grow to appreciate what you have.

Something else that I’ve been enjoying lately is a small bar of soap that I picked up at some farmer’s market sale. It’s a little bar like the kind you get in hotels. It’s neatly wrapped in recycled paper that’s stiff to the touch and thicker than store brand soap papers. The package states that it is rich in peppermint and essential nourishing oils. I don’t wash my hands with it though, I haven’t even opened it. I smell it. I keep it on my desk and, every once in a while, I’ll just stop what I’m doing, pick up my little soap, and breath it in. A good full enjoyable and rich sniff. It’s a very simple act and it takes what, 10 seconds maybe, but the soap, although it says it’s peppermint, is more like a spicy mix of cloves and cinnamon and a hint of peppermint, but also with some earthy undertone that makes me think of warm sunny days, walking up a hill I used to love, and sitting in the spring grass.  It’s funny how smells can work like that.  They say that the sense of smell is most closely linked with memory and I tend to agree with that. There are a LOT of different smells that take me to different places in my mind, but for now I’m taking a short break from work and enjoying a tiny bar of soap with my nose and in that moment I don’t want anything and I can see that I don’t need anything. I have what I wanted (and didn’t even know it when I bought the soap). I wanted a connection, an escape, a little whiff of happiness in an otherwise ordinary day.

It’s these kind of little things, these moments we can collect with the things that we already have around us, that can remind us that we can be happy right now with exactly what we have.

The last of the little things I want to talk about is a baseball.  You may notice that the little things I have and enjoy aren’t really that impressive or big, they’re ordinary, but they’re mine and I have them for a reason.  Taking notice and really studying what you have is also a great way to get rid of things you no longer want (or need), so I’ve actually been doing this as a two part process. Enjoying what I have and evaluating what I want to keep.

The baseball; however, is something that I’ve been studying for a long long time.  It’s a normal Rawlings “Official Ball: International League” baseball. I have other baseballs that I also like, but this particular one lives on my desk. It was given to me by a good friend who found it in his house when he was remodeling. He knew I had been looking for a baseball so he’d given it to me.  Keep in mind that I’m not a fan of the game at all. I can’t sit through the games and can’t remember the last one I watched.  I may go so far as to say that I don’t like the game at all. To me it’s very boring, but the baseball, the actual ball itself, is of particular interest.  There are a number of reasons I appreciate my baseball. One is that it was given to me by a very special friend. Second is the mysterious manner in which the baseball was found on a high and unused shelf of a house next to a baseball game ticket. Was it a fly ball, caught by some previous owner? Probably, but the questionable origin of the ball lends to my imagination a wealth of possibilities. In my mind there is a certain level of perfection in the baseball design.

Aesthetically, it’s nothing to look at. It’s scuffed and pretty dirty, lending some weight to my imagining it being used in an actual baseball game.  The umpire may have even rubbed the special “ball mud” into the leather just like they’ve been doing for years and years.  There’s even a little splotch of what appears to be mud on the back, just touching a stitch.  The perfection I see is in the overall design of the ball. The red stitching tight against the leather, binding the seam so tight. I follow them with my eyes, then my finger like a train on tracks. They seem to figure-eight around and around in a twisted curved version of infinity. The juxtaposition of the blue “Rawlings” against the tannish gray background of the leather.

It fits perfect into my hand, gripping it any number of ways to test the feeling, it feels like it was born to live out its life there. My favorite grip is more like an eagle talon clutching the egg of a baseball between thumb and first two fingers. My fingers seem to instinctively try different stitching grips. They align along the red stitches, parallel, then they turn the ball and cross perpendicular, thumb running between where the stitching is the closest. There’s a great deal of comfort in the feel of the ball, the weight of the ball in my hand. I love it so much that I have a backup ball in my car to grasp onto when I’m driving to help pass the time. It’s not really the same though as the one on my desk. I can get so much joy in that one object sitting on my desk that it makes me wonder why I would need anything else. I have to stop and pick it up, but in the few minutes that I spend examining every millimeter of baseball I am lost in the world of that object and far away from anything else I might’ve had on my mind. In a sense I am happy. The happiness is there, it’s always there and always been there, we just have to slow down (or stop) and experience it, open it up with our senses, and dwell there with it for a while. Then we can truly be happy with what we have.

I took a few weeks off from the blog to deal with some NotedFaith and other business and to recharge my batteries a bit.  I worry that if I try to expand on the same themes or topics that I run the risk of falling into nice platitudes and very insightful sounding blogs that may make you think, but won’t make you act and really, that’s where any kind of change will come from, action.

All the thinking in the world is worthless without action of some sort. If it’s writing down the thoughts for others to read or sharing them with a group or using what you read to create actions of your own. If you want to affect change around you, you must be ready to take action and, while I think that I’ve stressed it previously, I’m going to be very straightforward now and say that you must take positive action to cause any change in your life.

Take the bull by the horns or take the reins or take charge. There are many euphemisms to what I’m talking about and major religions also talk about faith and action. The Bible discusses faith without works (see James 2:14-17), the Hindu Bhagavad Gita states that “even the life of the body could not be if there were no action”, and the Buddha himself said: “An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.”  Regardless of your faith you can’t get anywhere in the world without taking some manner of action to get there.

What I would like to challenge readers to do is to take action, but make it their own action. We spend too much time reacting to fires, big and small, that seem to crop up around us that we may hardly ever take a very well defined action of our own.  Take ownership of your life and then take the actions necessary to make your life the way you want it to be.  That’s the process I’m trying to describe in my blog entries. It’s sometimes a slow and arduous process, but taking control, even if it’s a very small amount of control, over our own actions liberates us from the whims of the world that force us to react rather than act.  Over time and through practice of action ownership, we can learn to act rather than react to things around us.  It takes patience and some forethought, but it will help in a multitude of ways to overcome our natural “knee jerk” reactions to stressful situations that may cause us to react negatively with anger or frustration.

A great way that I have found to help me to act and not react is to slow things down. My daily pace is usually somewhere between hectic and frantic with period of lull, but most of the reacting that I tend to do happen in those hectic times.  The pace is really too fast to take a thoughtful action. This also happens when I spend time with the wife and kids. My focus may be so intent on something else that I react to them rather than act with them.  The key here is to slow it down if you can. Sometimes you have to react, like when someone swerves into your lane on the highway, but at work or especially at home, take some time to stop before you act.  I try and try to do this and with a consistent effort it can be done.  Little by little I’ve been able to slow down and try to act with love and kindness when my first reaction would’ve been much harsher. Take a breath, count to ten, sing a little song or do whatever you need to do to give you a few seconds to slow it all down, then you can check with your inner you.  How are you feeling about what has just happened? Are you happy or angry or anxious or irritated or nervous or sad?  Is it best to allow your actions to be an extension of those feelings or is that not the best way to act?  These are all questions that I’ve tried to integrate into my slowing down process.  Once you practice, these kind of “gut checks” occur in just a flash of time, but can make all the difference in taking ownership of thoughtful actions and cutting off harmful reactions.  So remember, act by not reacting.

I wanted to take a break from my series on change to discuss the present.  Not the right now we’re sitting in, but the concept of “the present” and what we can do with it to help make ourselves happier people.

The title of this entry is “Open Every Present” and, word play aside; this applies to both a gift and right now.  I’ve touched on this before, but right now is a sum of the past for each person living in it.  Right now is a convergence of many, many threads that all touch at this point in time.  They may touch for a few seconds or hours or years, but the threads are always moving, touching and not touching and creating right now.
Happiness is ours for the creating, but we can only truly create it in the present moment. That happiness is a thread as well that we can spin into the future and into the past by making it ever-present.  It may change and move and even falter, but if we carry happiness with us from moment to moment, it becomes part of our past. By practicing what I call “happiness now” we can prepare the future for more happiness to come.

In other entries I have discussed how you can change to help find happiness and the many happiness traps that can hold us back, but now let’s look at happiness from a very simple and immediate perspective.

Are you happy right now? Just think about that for a second. Are you happy right now in this moment?  Now I ask you this. Were you happy two paragraphs up, before I asked you to think about your happiness?  Maybe you know, but maybe you don’t. I’ve found that I was often happy in retrospect and it’s only upon reflection of the past that I can see that I was happy. This may not be the case for everyone, but happiness for me is almost always a function of memory.

I have a few theories on this, but I think that happiness, as a concept, is generally a sum of moments that have passed (sometimes right up to now) and it’s only upon reflection and identifying this happiness do we realize that we were or are still happy.   It’s often, “I was happy before” or “Man, those were happy times.”  It’s a naming and comparison process that takes place in the mind that determines the happy times in your life, but how often do we really focus on our happiness just in the present.

If you stop and think about right now you may see that yes; right now I’m happy, but I didn’t know it until I thought about it and compared it to other times when I was or wasn’t happy.  Feelings like happiness and sadness are very dependent on mental comparison and personal history. Happiness is subjective. Someone that’s been a prisoner for years may be happy with simple freedom. Simply being out of a cage makes them happy.  A starving man is happy with a crust of bread, but a spoiled, fat man may not be happy with a feast.

Happiness that is pinned on temporary things or changes is often fleeting.  If you’re happy because you just got a cookie, how will you feel after the cookie is gone.  Happy for a while, but you’ll slip right back into neutral or merely content.  Over time, a cookie’s not going to make you happy because you may feel like you must up the ante to find new happiness.  It’s this consistent raising of the bar of happiness that will eventually leave you unhappy.  This constant “pursuit” of happiness will leave you empty because the happiness you may have right now is being compared to happiness in the past and, as disappointing as it may seem, the bar of happiness will eventually be beyond our grasp. Even if you win the lottery tomorrow, given enough time, that new existence (with lots of money) will become common and won’t sustain happiness.

Comparative thinking is what I’m looking at here.  If you think about right now and isolate right now without comparing it to your memory of the past or your expectations of the future, you will see that now is only what you make it. Most people don’t feel happy all the time. They’re in a state of contentment or neutrality. Happiness is a spike on the charts that slowly creeps back down to flat-line.  Seeing right now as a slice of time you have some control over gives you the perspective and the power to create sustainable happiness because it deals with simple happiness that is within each of us. It’s not being compared to some other outside happiness or sadness to make it valid.

How do I feel right now? It’s a very personal question, but it’s simple enough.  The true answer is also simple as long as you don’t use the word “because”.  Don’t think about why you’re happy as a function of something outside yourself or in comparison to another time when you were happier or sadder. Don’t say, “I’m happy because I just aced a test.” This may be a true enough statement, but the next time you ace a test you may not be as happy about it, and if you fail a test, then what? You have to take those happy moments as they happen, identify them for what they are, and then accept that they are fleeting. You can’t revolve your personal happiness around these events or things.

Think about your happiness as a fragile and delicate piece of art encased in an ornate box. If you take away all the “because” statements you can see that happiness can be right here, right now, inside our outer decorative box, fragile and beautiful, but right here. I may not be content with all aspects of my life, but buried inside in every moment I’m alive, there is a happiness that I either choose to hide or open the box and let it out.

You can also make this choice. With practice you will be able to differentiate the temporary happy spikes that come after some joyful (but temporary) event with the underlying happiness that you carry from moment to moment. Sure, there may be sadness too, but even though sad things may happen, let them flow into the past so you can rediscover your inner happiness. If you practice knowing yourself, loving yourself, and recognizing your moods, you can choose how you feel right now and let it shine out if you want. If you do this you won’t have to just remember the happy times, you’ll see them right now and in every next present you unwrap.

Here is a list of things, small things, that I think help us to make a positive impact in our own lives and in the world around us. We can start doing any number of these things right now and know that we’re making a tiny difference for us, the people around us, and the world we live in.

Remember the 7 steps to starting change I talked about before? If not, go read them here. The 7 steps are still valid to changing the world around you, but changing the world is a big task and the 7 steps are focused on making a very specific change. For now we just want to keep changing ourselves and making small changes in the world around us. It takes small steps before you can start taking big ones. Once you start to feel those changes you can make, it will be time to take step 1: Focus in On the Change You Want to Make.  Until then, start small:

1. Smile, let your inner light shine through your face
2. Make someone else’s life easier if you can.
3. At least don’t make someone else’s life harder.
4. Avoid judgments. Approach new people as a blank slate.
5. Help keep things clean. If you see trash, pick it up.
6. Be polite to everyone, but especially the young and old
7. Hold the door for someone
8. When driving, think outside the car.
9. Wave and smile at random people.
10. Try to think like a child and remember to play.
11. Laugh or get someone to laugh.
12. Speak less and listen more
13. Before you say something ask yourself if it is hurtful. If it is, then don’t say it.
14. Take a break, close your eyes, and think of something you love.
15. Don’t be afraid to say no or yes if that’s what you truly want to do.
16. Let someone in front of you in line.
17. Talk to cashiers, sales people, or anyone working to help you. Listen to what they say.
18. Focus on the quality of what you do, not the quantity or speed.
19. Go outside and breathe some fresh air.
20. Be willing to take suggestions and be open to opportunity
21. Remember that we only get one “right now” make it count.
22. Walk though life lightly, but deliberately.
23. Accept people and their actions and move on.
24. Strive for realistic goals for yourself and others. Perfection is unrealistic for anyone.
25. Instead of complaining, think of ways you can help improve the situation.
26. Put things back, pick things up, and try to leave things better than you found them.
27. Many things can affect your mood. Be mindful of changes in your mood before it impacts others.
28. Avoid blaming, instead focus on praising the good and learning from the bad.
29. Talk to children with the same respect you’d give anyone else.
30. Remember what makes you happy and think about what makes others happy.

Once we’ve come this far, it would be a shame to turn back.  I’ve often found that my happiness, my true happiness, comes from helping others, from loving others with the kind of un-tethered limitless compassion that musters itself from deep within me. It’s a scary and overwhelming feeling, but it’s a compassion that doesn’t come from my want of happiness. It doesn’t seem to feed back into my happiness. They seem to be generated separately and simultaneously. I’m not attached to the object of my compassion because many times I don’t even know the person I’m showing compassion towards. It’s a force that is beyond attachment and selfish good feelings. It’s compassion and love that is right and good and that’s what makes me happiest in life.

Showing this kind of positive compassion to your loved ones is easy and it’s supposed to be because you’re automatically attached to them through the love you feel for them. Compassion for them is a by-product of that love. On the flip side though (I like to see as many sides as possible) your loved ones are often the ones you can hurt the most, treat the worst, be offhanded with because that love you feel for them and they feel for you can get taken for granted. That kind of attached love is a double-edged sword. It is often the sweetest and most sour kind of love.

Finding that feeling of positivity and happiness in ourselves sets the stage to shine that light of positivity and compassion outward. It’s easy to become negative, cynical, and jaded in this world that seems to be filled with likeminded negative and cynical people. I often feel this way after watching the nightly news or read a random newspaper. The easy thing to do is to join in with the crowd.  I choose, however, to be my own person. I choose to think and feel the way I want to, I need to, in order to make a difference in the world around me and you can too.  The easiest way to start is to filter out that negativity or, like I do, stay away from it.  I try to stay informed without letting the negativity presented with the information (or in my own thoughts) persuade me to be negative.  It’s hard, but like anything else that’s worth something, it’s not easy. Easy things aren’t cherished enough. They aren’t regarded highly enough and feeling positive and sharing it with others is worth the constant filtering.

We can choose how we feel and act and I like to choose compassion if I can.  Compassion for someone that is standing next to you in line at the grocery store is difficult.  It’s much easier to show compassion to someone or some cause that we can categorize. This is part of the way people are made. Our brain tries to help us sort through our daily information overload by categorizing, compartmentalizing, and judging.  It’s easier to donate to help relieve refugees in some far off African country or help causes for compartmentalized people with cancer, but showing compassion on a personal level, face to face, and not by just writing a check is a very hard thing to do.  It will definitely force us to step outside of our comfort zone and we’ll have to put away our cynicism, doubt, and judgments to really make that difference we want to make.

As I said though, our brains make judgments for us all the time and they’re usually based on very little true information mixed in with our own history, mood, feelings, prejudices, and the pattern of judgments we’ve made in the past. We don’t know anything about most strangers except for our own snap judgments that we make in our heads.  I’ve had to work hard, very hard, to stop listening to this voice in my head and over time, I’ve been able to get the volume of it down. This isn’t to say that my mind doesn’t make little judgments of other people all the time. I just choose not to listen to it. Those judgments are never based on any real fact and (for me) will err on the side of negativity if I’m not careful.  I think this is the next hurdle in making positive change all around us.

It’s not about just writing a check and sending it off to someone in need or sighing up at NotedFaith.org. These are great ways to help, but to make a real, personal difference, we have to start where we live. We’re all in need all the time, some obviously more than others, but getting your hands dirty and making a difference here and now is a great way to start affecting some real positive change all around us.  We have to see our own potential to affect change and then act on it.

That feeling I was talking about, that seemingly depthless well of compassion that sometimes springs up in me is scary. The feeling is so wonderful that it drops my defenses and makes me very vulnerable, which is quite uncomfortable. Over the years I’ve worked hard on my cynicism and negativity as a method of keeping this overwhelming compassion in check.  I’ve come to see that this is not the way to live or the way to make a difference around us.  I’ve often wondered why such positive feelings have a tendency to overwhelm me and it may be that I’ve been hiding from them for so long that I’m just not used to them. I’m starting to see that I need to keep letting it come out and make a positive difference in people around me. The more I try to contain this compassion, the more it tries to overwhelm me, and the more I have to work to keep it at bay. Now I try to let it out more and more. It seems like this helps keep it from being so scary or overwhelming.

I said earlier that it’s easier to feel like you’re making a difference from afar and in conjunction with others, but active change takes place in small and personal ways.  We all need encouragement, inspiration, or kindness every day, including the people all around you. They are your friends and family, but also the people around you wherever you go. Strangers need compassion as much as you or I might and sometimes more.  Your chance to make a difference in their lives is right now.  Spread some compassion, be kind to others, and be thoughtful towards others.  Step outside of your own mind when you meet someone new. If you make a judgment (you probably will) don’t listen to it right away. Think of how you can make this stranger feel better. What can you do to help them? Thinking of others and how you can help them will open you up to spreading compassion to others. For me it’s the small things that can mean a lot. It is not the grand gestures that go the farthest for me. Someone can be polite or pleasant or even just a little helpful or happy. These small positives can make the day a little brighter and it’s with these small steps that we can move toward making larger and larger active changes in the world that we touch each day, changing right here and now.

Next time: Practical ways to start changing the world, one smile at a time.

Taking responsibility for our happiness, as discussed in my previous post, is one of the keys to getting on the path of change.  The steps necessary to make a difference in our lives and in the lives around us start with us.

To briefly recap, the most important part of this process is realizing and then believing that our ability to change and find our happiness is inside of us all. It’s all up to us to succeed in seeing our happiness, then being it.

Transitioning from helping ourselves to helping others requires a little bit of mental preparation. This helps us to understand our role in our world and how we can impact the world around us.  It also helps us to understand how we can make a difference and gives us realistic expectations of how we can make a difference.

It is important that we see the underlying connections between people in order to start making the small differences it takes to start making our world a better place to live in.

Everything around us is fleeting, even our happiness is fleeting. It’s an ever-changing and complex world we live in and we’re all interconnected.  Whether you realize it or not, everything around you right now is connected to you and your life experience. This is simple to see in the things that surround us. The chair you’re in is obviously connected to you in a strong way. It’s your chair and it helps shape your present reality.  Material things that make up our lives are connected to us in a rudimentary sort of way, but sometimes we can become confused by attaching ourselves to these possessions. This is an instance of relying on something external for our happiness. If we lose those possessions that we so strongly attach to, then suffering will occur.

People are complex and our interconnections to people are complex as well. It’s easy to see how we connect with our loved ones and friends, but the web of interconnection spans much farther than we may be able to perceive and it even stretches backward through time, building upon itself every day that we live.

The food on the shelves at the grocery store doesn’t magically appear there every day, a person, living breathing as real as you or I, has to put that food on the shelf.  A person has to drive a truck to deliver the food, many people are integral in the manufacture, packing, and shipping of the things on the shelf.  We may think we live in a world of material reality, but the essence of reality lies in people and in unperceived actions that may stretch back years and years.  It all connects and the bonds are sometimes very strong, or quite weak, but the connection exists. It takes a lot of concentration to try and sort though our web of connections with other people, but it’s worth thinking about and being thankful for.  Just think about the things that make your life comfortable and livable each day. They are all connected to people, most often strangers, that you will never meet or know, but impact our lives in very real ways all the time.

An example I’m fond of thinking about is my house.  My house is about twenty years old and I don’t know really how or who built it. I’m sure I could find out, but it’s really not the point. Everything about my house or any house was put there by a person. Someone had to work with every board, every shingle, every inch of paint was applied by a living and breathing human being at a time in the past and their actions then are still resonating in the life I live every day. They’ve had an impact, a very real impact, on the my life and the lives of my family and they’ll never know. This just goes to show that our actions now can have real impacts in ways that we couldn’t even fathom on the lives of people not just today, but far reaching into the future.  If you live in a very old house then the people that were responsible for building your house are probably long dead. Even after we’re gone our impact can be felt and we’re all significant in the lives of other people.

Even as a consumer we’re impacting lives. When we buy a shirt that’s an impact on someone elses life somewhere else, even if it’s just a tiny bit. We buy a shirt, the store makes money, they pay their employees, the shirt company has made money and can continue to make money because we buy their shirts so they can stay in business and keep someone in say, Malaysia, employed.  Our impact to them is tiny, but far reaching and reaching into the future.  When we are brave enough to see our impact in our own lives, we can then start looking outward, outside of our sphere of consciousness, and try to trace how we effect (and are effected by) the lives of others. Making a difference in other’s lives in a small, but real way, is a key concept behind NotedFaith.org and one that we truly believe in.

It’s impossible to know all the connections that we have with total strangers, but it’s important to know that they are real.  The next time we’re in a traffic jam and start to feel anger and impatience coming into our heads at the drivers around us, it may do us some good to stop and think that these people, they’re not separate from us. They’re not different from us, not really. We’re all in this together. Not just this traffic jam, but this world and our lives are all interconnected.  We are not better or worse or equal to anyone else around us. We have to keep our egos in check to feel connected and start making differences.

This feeling of togetherness can really help when you feel all alone or unhappy. We’re never truly alone and kindness and patience with strangers can make a real difference in their lives, our lives, and countless others.  Kindness and happiness can create a ripple in our lives that, as we extend compassion outside our sphere of consciousness, effects the lives of everyone we’re connected to and they’re connected to and on and on. The effect may be tiny, the bond may be weak, but the ripple of influence our happiness and kindness can have spreads on and on.  Our positive influence can positively influence others, prompting them to create positivity around them. This can have a wonderful cascading effect of ripples that we may not see, but we can feel inside us as our happiness increases.

Next Time: Let the inside meet the outside.

I feel like Step 1: Focus in On The Change You Want to Make from the previous blog needs a little more examination and clarification because it’s a huge step and there’s a lot of preparation that goes into taking this first step.

Self actualization is hard. That’s about as plain as I can say it, but it’s true. It takes a certain amount of internal investigation to determine that an active change is really necessary inside of us. The reality is that we’re always changing. Our outside world is always changing and our inside world is too. These are usually passive changes, changes that we don’t (or can’t) actively control.  By taking the change process into our own hands we decide to make an active change in ourselves and our lives. Active change, at its core, is not to fix something but to increase your happiness. It’s a change toward happiness.

Active change takes a lot of courage and honesty just to get the ball rolling. How many of us can truly look at ourselves, our actions, our inner and outer lives, and see them in the light of honesty?  It’s rhetorical, but I think the numbers are pretty low.  It’s hard to see ourselves with warts and all and be able to accept responsibility for what or where we are. We must first take ownership of our inner and outer lives before we can start making active changes. These are actions, not just reactions to the changes around us.

We have to have the courage to see ourselves first. It’s the courage to accept responsibility that yes, we’re not perfect, we have flaws, and I’m unhappy with the way things are. Why? Why are we unhappy and how can we make things better? It’s not acceptance of what’s wrong in our lives, it’s acceptance of our responsibility in creating our lives that we need to embrace.  The things that are wrong in our lives cannot be just accepted. That’s what we’ve done all along. That’s how we got to where we are right now, blind acceptance of our circumstances. We ultimately control the circumstances surrounding our lives and it’s up to us to change these for the better. We have to accept that a change is needed (and we can make the change) and then muster up enough courage to start changing.

When we start the process of self examination we may tend to focus on the symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself.  We must not just answer how we are unhappy with ourselves or our lives, but why. The root cause is the answer to that “why”.  Personally I see a lot of symptoms that crop up in my life and many others that stem from sadness, emptiness, helplessness, laziness, and dissatisfaction.  The root cause of my external weight was much, much deeper than my body, but ultimately in my mind. We have to chase down the root of our unhappiness and change at the base while we make changes to the symptoms. Over time I’ve found that these often change and evolve together simultaneously.  When I talk about inner change, I’m speaking about changing the root cause of our problems, not the symptoms of the cause.  That root cause of discontent and unhappiness is inside us, writhing around and nicely hidden because we don’t have the courage to look it in the eye.

Here is a list of how the cause of unhappiness is often masked in people and ways to avoid or correct it in your own life.

1. Blaming Others: As humans we have many coping mechanisms that ultimately help us hide from our root cause of unhappiness. Blame shifting is something I see on a nearly daily basis.  We shift the blame for our unhappiness to someone else.
“My life isn’t what I want it to be because my mom / dad / teacher / husband / wife / etc / did this or that.”

The list of people to blame is nearly endless, but blaming others for your unhappiness in life is a fruitless endeavor.  I’m not saying that there aren’t circumstances in your life right now that are beyond your control and in the hands of someone else, but blaming someone else for our own unhappiness is giving power over our lives to someone else because we’re too scared to see that we have the power over our own life. We determine how our life is, not someone else. This goes back to having the courage to accept responsibility for your life.
The best way I’ve found to overcome this is to find those things we blame on others and look at them in a new light. Don’t think about how someone else is making you miserable or impacting your life, think about how you can own this part of your life again.

Most times it comes down to perception. Look at the situation objectively and try to step out of your own dissatisfaction.  Is that other person truly responsible for your unhappiness? Were they an active participant or did they do something that triggered your own negative reaction? Often it’s our reactions to these people that make us miserable. They may not have even realized the effect their actions have on us.  This is an internal problem, the problem of irrational reaction. This is very tricky to overcome and is best left to other posts because it’s a lengthy subject.

Just know that you don’t have to react negatively. We choose how to act. When we react we’ve failed to choose and this often does more harm than good.  This being said, if there’s someone out there who’s making you miserable, by all means, put the blame on them. Just remember to never give them the power to keep making you miserable. That power is yours alone and through active change you can overcome that misery.

2. Living In The Past: Another method people use to avoid facing responsibility for their happiness is living in the past. This is a form of blame shifting where we blame circumstances in the past for our unhappiness today. Blaming the past is very much like blaming others, but harder to step out of.  We are a summation of everything that has ever happened to us.  Where we are today is a result of everything that’s happened to us in the past. To say that this isn’t true would be like saying you can get to the end of the race without taking the first step. It’s just not realistically possible.  To get to the finish line of a race you have to take all the intermediate steps to propel you forward.  Time is a lot like that. Each year, month, day, moment, propels us into the next.

How much control do we really have in what happens to us?  We may have had varying degrees of control in what has happened, but this doesn’t change the fact that it’s over and done with. Blaming our present on our past is useless because we’re only continuing the cycle of victimhood that was begun long ago.  We are not victims of our past, we can only be victims or saviors of our present because no matter what’s happened the only time you can truly impact is right now.  What you choose to do and feel right now is all that really matters going forward, so blaming an immovable past on where you are today isn’t helping us move forward, it only holds us back.  First we have to accept our past. What has happened has happened. Horrible things happen to many people, but dwelling on them create unhappiness. Accepting them is the first step in creating happiness in the now.

We create happiness in our lives today. We affect change in our lives in what we do today, then tomorrow we can look back at it with ownership and the acceptance that even if the outcome wasn’t what we expected, at least we tried to make a difference today. We did what we could to change our circumstances for the better.  To become happier with the path we’re on. With that knowledge that we’re actively participating in our lives we can continue to try to do what we can today to make a change.

3. Living In The Future: This isn’t necessarily the opposite of living in the past. Living in the future is an optimistic sort of way to keep from making an active change in our lives. It’s a way to shirk responsibility for today while dreaming of a “one day”.  This type of thinking often puts us into some kind of utopian state of mind where all our dreams come true and we’re “happy” without specifying when this time is or how we even get there. Some people delude themselves into believing that one day everything will just start falling into place and then they’ll be in this fantasy future.  The real courage here is in facing reality.  The future isn’t a real place. We have no real idea what the future may hold for us more than maybe a few days or even hours.  Life is change, how can we predict that fantasy future years from now when we can’t even say with 100% accuracy what the weather will be more than about 5 days out.

The future is a nice place to live in your head which is why so many of us fall into this trap, but it is what we do in the present, today, that will shape our future. A present that is ignored because we are dreaming of the future will be shaped by reactions doled out without thinking about their purpose or impact.  The future is just the present that hasn’t gotten here yet. You’ll only be able to deal with that future moment when (or if) it comes to be the present.  The future is being built in the steps we take today. If we’re already planning our storybook wedding, but don’t have the courage to take action today to find the right person to share that wedding with, then we’ll never get there or worse, we’ll get there through reacting to circumstances around us rather than taking an active role in how our next present moment will unfold. This kind of reaction is generally a vain attempt at getting to the future in your head and, often, ends up in more misery.

I’m not saying to ignore the future. I’m saying to have a goal, ultimately, but also have short term realistic goals that you can meet to get to that final goal. Don’t ignore the steps it takes to win the race by thinking about the finish line. Also remember that a goal is just a direction for your life, the excitement of life is realizing that nothing is set in stone, not even what we think we want to achieve.

4. Happy Delusion or Ignorance Is Bliss: This is where the blameless fail to see any real problem with their lives and, therefore, never attempt to find happiness. This is something that happens to all of us from time to time. We may not even know we’re unhappy but more often than not, we aren’t brave enough to admit that we’re not happy.  I’m not saying that everyone out there is unhappy. I’m betting you’re not reading this because you’re perfectly happy in the now with all aspects of your life.  We’re all human beings and we can all take control of our lives right now. Our natural tendency is to seek happiness and, in most ways, everyone is searching for more happiness in one way or another.

Don’t let the phrasing get in your way of taking your life into your own, capable, hands.  We can call it a problem, or discontent, or a drive, or sadness, or anything you want, but happiness is a priority for all of us. If we’re not happy, or at least content, then something’s out of place.  Pretending that your life is perfect is part of the happy delusion.  Maybe you’re happy right here and now while taking full responsibility for your happiness. That is a wonderful achievement, but as we all know this moment is fleeting and change is all around us. Happiness at any one time only lasts for as long as we let it. Eventually circumstances will change and we may or may not still be happy.  Being ignorant or pretending that there’s no need for change is easy and it’s for people with a certain level of laziness and fear. Doing easy things creates complacency within us and before we know it we may be suffering again because we weren’t willing to actively participate in our lives and look at ourselves and our lives objectively, realistically.  This type of cycle tends to repeat itself.

We all know someone in our lives who makes the same mistakes over and over again.  Maybe you know someone who is always having relationship problems, going from person to person, and failing every time. They may have brilliant and creative ways to shift blame, but the one factor in the equation that is constant is that person. They may not believe that there is a problem, but something’s not working here. This person is perpetually unhappy with their personal life. Some self-examination is in order to get to the root of why this cycle repeats itself.  This is a perfect example of not believing there is a need to change and, therefore, never actively changing to become happier.

5. Being Your Own Victim: This is taking the blame for all of your unhappiness, but not having the courage to do anything about it.  Most of the methods of hiding from yourself that I’ve talked about have a certain degree of victimhood.  We are the victims of others, our past, our future happiness.  It all boils down to not being able to take responsibility for our own lives and happiness.  When you blame yourself for everything you’re at least acknowledging that you have some control over your life, but you end up torturing yourself with blame. This self-inflicted suffering can easily spiral to the point where you start to blame yourself for others misery as well and keep digging a hole of unhappiness. It’s not a good habit to get into.  This is the act of accepting blame, but not being able to accept the circumstances and reality of right now.  Blaming anything for your suffering is counter-productive.  Ultimately blaming creates an excuse to yourself and others as to why things are the way they are and also gives us a reason not to change; not to pursue happiness. It’s all about avoiding responsibility and not acting, but staying in the cycle of reaction.  Blaming yourself for your problems is negative and leads to inaction.  Accepting responsibility isn’t blaming.

This may warrant and example:

Blaming: “I’m a big loser who’s screwed up everything so my misery is my fault.”

Taking Responsibility: “Yes, I’ve made the choices and actions to get to this point. They may not have been the best or the worst, but I will make the most of now and make the best choice or action that I can to help me find my happiness.”

Taking responsibility levels the playing field for you to accept your successes and failures as you move through life and will help to avoid being a victim of circumstance.

6. Misplacing our Happiness: I saved this for last because it really pulls it all together.  Misplacing our happiness is really the current underlying all of what I’ve been talking about.  If you’re not truly happy right now it may be because you’ve misplaced your happiness. It’s not that you’ve lost it, you’ve mistaken things or people for your own internal happiness.  Just like you may place blame on the wrong things, you may be expecting happiness from the wrong things.  This is a key concept and, ultimately, the one thing to learn that makes everything else clear.  You must place your happiness into your own hands.

The only thing in this world that can make you happy, truly and sustainably happy, is you.  Nothing is forever, so putting expectations of happiness in other people or our past or our future or the material things around us or our money or jobs or any of it will eventually lead back to unhappiness.  All of these things are temporary. They can bring you a certain amount of well being or comfort, but pinning your happiness to it only leads to blaming these things for your unhappiness.  Happiness is the feeling you generate for yourself as you connect with all of these things. Happiness is the symptom and you are the cause.

Life is contrast. There are going to be ups and downs, but without sadness or discontent, you’d never know happiness or contentedness. If you can’t see what’s making you unhappy, you’ll never be able to find happiness.  What we fail to see is that it’s within us already.  Having the inner strength, courage, and faith to see this is our first step in making active changes to our lives that will, hopefully, lead to happiness. Remember though, happiness isn’t something that will happen in the future, it’s right here right now, solid as it ever was or ever will be. We just have to see it in our hearts and minds.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Changing ourselves is hard, very hard. It’s a long hard path to follow and to move down that path takes one step at a time just like any other task in our lives.  Changing the world, while a much larger scale, is a lot like that internal path to change ourselves.  It’s a hard path and it takes one step at a time.  The number of steps change, the length of the path may change, and the kinds of steps will definitely be different, but the essence of the task is the same no matter what, it’s our perception of the task that’s fundamentally different.

Change that comes from within takes a concerted effort. How many of you have tried to quit smoking or lose weight or tried to affect some other outer change upon yourselves? Most, if not all, of us have tried to change something about ourselves that we may not like and, more often than not, we’ve failed.  We may have succeeded eventually, but trying something like quitting a bad habit or losing weight takes real effort and it takes inward change to impact that outward change.  In this sense we have to “become” the change.  It’s not good enough to just say, “I want to lose weight so I will by cutting out sweets.” This changes one aspect of your outward approach to the world, but it doesn’t actually change anything from within.

I’ve personally battled the weight loss demon and won more battles than I’ve lost and what I’ve seen is that change, real change, starts inside you.  You become what you think, how you feel inside. It permeates outward through your work and your consistent effort. Taking the small steps that you feel right about on the inside create the change in yourself that you wish to see.  If you cut out sweets, but don’t change how you feel about food or how you listen to your body (versus your mind that will trick you into over-eating) or what you believe you can do, you’ll never realize a full change.  If you believe you can’t work out enough to get into shape, then you won’t. If you think that you can just go from couch potato to marathon runner, then you’ll fail.  You’ve got to change in increments and steps from inside first.  This works on the micro and macro-scopic scale.

Here are seven steps that have helped me and others to realize some change in themselves.

1. Focus in On The Change You Want to Make – This is kind of an obvious first step, but an important one. This is about setting goals, long term and short term. Make those goals achievable and measurable (if possible). This way you can track your progress and prevent the discouragement that can come from over-extending yourself into the realm of unrealistic expectations. Make the first steps quite small. These little achievements will help your progress steamroll as you continue to change. This encouragement will be very valuable when you hit those first roadblocks (and you will).
2. Learn, Plan, Learn and Plan Again – This is an important part of internalizing your change process.  To really embrace the process of change that you are going to be planning you have to be flexible and willing to learn.  We don’t know everything, although we may think we do. If you knew everything then you probably wouldn’t need to change.  Start the learning process and then plan the outward steps you need to take, but also plan the inner steps. If you’re dealing with anger issues, for instance, and you want to work toward controlling your anger, start reading on ways to change your habits, ways to change those mental processes that occur and trigger your anger.  Educate yourself in what has worked for others. These types of changes in mental and physical habits may help you. Then start planning.  Learn some more and then plan some more.  The best way to insure your success is to be well educated on what you’re trying to change and the pitfalls, hurdles, and roadblocks that may pop up along the way. Forewarned is forearmed.
3. Don’t Forget To Believe – It’s step 3, but it’s really something you’ve got to do all along and keep doing throughout the change process. You have to believe that the change is possible. It may sound obvious or corny, but it’s the honest truth. If you don’t believe you can do it, you won’t. It’s not even about believing all of it. You can break it down into steps like anything else.  Believe that you can reach your next set goal. Believe that reaching this next goal is going to help you change. Believe that the next step after that is going to be achievable.  Keep it close and achievable.  If you’re losing weight and believe that one day you’ll be a size 3, but right now you’re a size 14, then you’re skipping a lot of the middle part of the change. This middle part will make or break you. For now, just believe that you can get to the next marker on the path.  This is going to be key to affecting that inner change.
4. Stop and Think – Stop and think about exactly what you’re doing, right now. Think about what you’re going to do next and think about how these actions, thoughts, or beliefs are going to help or hurt the progress you’re making to change.  You’ve got to slow down a bit to get really effective at self-assessment, but just take some time to think about the change process. Make sure you’re flexible. If the plan you made in step 2 isn’t going that well, then change it up, but keep on trying.
5. Determine What You Can Control – What can you do to help this change along? These can be internal or outward controls. You can control a LOT about your physical life and, you may not know it, but you can control even more about your internal life.  Determine what you can control to help you change and don’t worry about things that are out of your control.
6. Measure Twice, Cut Once – Measure your progress in some way. If you can’t see the progress you’re making then you’ll become discouraged.  If you don’t feel like you’re making the progress you need to or if you think your plan is going wrong then try a little harder and a little longer and measure again. That’s right. It’s too easy for people to say “well, I tried this and it’s not working, let me try something else.” This is the perfect way to set yourself up for failure. Take it from someone who knows. I’ve been there and it becomes too easy to start changing steps and goals before you really know if it’s working. Hang in there a little longer and work a little harder and the change you’re looking for may come barreling down at you.  If you keep changing plans and goals you’re going to get frustrated because you’re changing too many variables and not getting results. The flip-side of this kind of rapid changing is that you change your goals and steps so much that they become no change at all. You end up creating a plateau for yourself by stopping your forward momentum and taking steps that are too small.If you’ve tried a little longer and worked a little harder without seeing a change, then maybe you do need to change what you’re doing.  Remember, change one thing at a time and make sure you try it before you buy it. Meaning: try out the change for a significant amount of time before committing to it. If you still don’t get the results you want, go back to your original plan and change something else. Changing too many things at once won’t help you understand why you’re not seeing results.
7. Use your momentum to your advantage – As you see results you’ll feel uplifted and reassured that your plan is working. Don’t let this be your downfall. The period of time after some great achievement is a perfect place to fall into traps that will impede your progress. Don’t let goal achievement make you complacent. If you’re not at your final goal then don’t stop now. Keep on trucking. Don’t let an achievement give you a reason to backslide. It’s easy for us to say, “I’ve worked so hard, I can slack off a little.”  That little slack can often slip your grasp and lead right to failure.  Don’t marry your plan just because it’s working.  That’s right.  The plan is never set into stone even if it is working for now.  Just because it’s working right now or for months or years, never be above reassessing it and making sure it’s still the right plan for you. As you change your plan may change. Use the encouragement of reaching your goal to propel you to the next.

Following these steps to change or going your own way with these to guide you will allow change to flow outward from your thoughts and actions to your life and from there, with some consistent effort, it will hopefully change others lives. After that, who knows, it may change more and more until it’s really changed the world. It’s all about taking the small, sure steps, to create a ripple of change outward. It can work in your life just like it works with our service at NotedFaith.org.

Most of all remember to believe in yourself and your change and become determined to succeed in spite of failures and setbacks. I know this may sound hard, but I’ve found that the reality of doing is never as bad as you perceive it to be.

This is an introduction to our company and blog here at NotedFaith.org.  If you haven’t had a chance to check out our About Us page on the main website, then let me start by telling you about us.  Three guys were brought together by feelings of dissatisfaction.  They were in jobs, but not careers, and their daily grind felt like it was just going through the motions.  There was no lust for life, there was no effervescence to their existence.  Their work lives were lacking.  The missing pieces weren’t very well defined. Each guy had a different way of putting it, but even though they used different words, they were saying the same thing. Freedom and purpose.  They were lacking freedom and purpose.  So those three guys set out to form a company, Charitas, LLC, and start working towards that freedom and building that purpose.

The long road to where we are started with a simple idea. How can we make a difference?  People ask themselves this all the time and the answer can be daunting. How can one person make a difference and how can we keep from losing our drive to make a difference, our faith in the difference we can make?  That’s the heart and soul of NotedFaith.org.  We started the service because we know what it’s like to ask that question and feel helpless, but behind that helplessness is the answer. We can make a difference, but it has to be small, incremental, building and spread throughout.  It’s almost impossible for one person, by themselves, to make a real substantial difference. These are unrealistic goals and failing to see a difference that we’ve made can be discouraging.  NotedFaith is meant to help everyone, from all walks of life, make a difference and get inspired to keep making a difference.  That is the essence of our mission. We want to show you how you can make a difference in little steps, but if we take those little steps together, big things can grow from it, and big differences can be made.

It’s simple really, but elegant. We’ve found that some of the most beautiful ideas are simple and elegant.  We make the price of the service low, ($1.99 per month). This way everyone can afford to help.  We try to inspire you daily by sending daily messages of faith, hope, inspiration, a positive message every day in a world that seems to focus on the negative. Stay the course; you don’t have to make a change by yourself. We can make a change together. Our subscribers tell us where to send their money.  More than half of that $1.99 goes to the church, charity, or cause of your choice.  That’s right. We send $1.00 of it every month to where you want to make your difference every month.  It’s a small amount, but these small steps add up.

NotedFaith shouldn’t be your only method of making a difference, but it helps and it can help big. We like to look at a larger picture because if we focus on the individual we fall into that helplessness trap. It’s that feeling that we can’t make much of a difference our own or with only $1.00 a month.  The larger picture is that as a group, these dollars add up. They can really add up and keep adding every month and almost everyone can afford the cost.

Here’s a big picture type example. Let’s say you attend a small church of only 500 people.  These people probably give every week, but if just 200 of them signed up at NotedFaith.org that’s $200 a month back to the church every month, and we’ll even partner with your church for free.  Then your church can send out their own daily messages to their supporters.  At the end of the year you’ve raised $2400 and received daily messages of faith and inspiration.  You’ve made a difference and it’s significant.  It’s not the only way of making a difference, but it helps.

This model expands outward. If you’re in a church with 5,000 members, you could raise up to $5000 a month and receive inspiration directly from the church.  If you’re part of a non-profit charity that has regular membership and supporters numbering in the 100,000’s then the numbers compound from there.  Think for a second, $50,000 a month split between 50,000 people.  That’s $600,000 a year and a HUGE difference. All from individuals banning together and giving just $1.00 a month. It’s not about the amount you give, it’s about the difference we can make working together. The difference and the inspiration to continue making a difference. That’s what I think is at the essence of Charitas, LLC and NotedFaith.org.

If you made it through all of those words, then now you can we can talk about the blog.  The blog isn’t just a way to talk about our service, although I could talk about it a LOT, it’s talking about all of those things that were on our minds when we were starting the service. It’s about that long path that we’ve walked, and continue to walk, in finding our purpose, making our difference, walking deliberately and working towards spreading a message of faith, inspiration, hope, and real positive change in the world. That’s what we’re hoping to achieve through this blog.  If you don’t decide to use our service, that’s fine, we just want to inspire everyone who reads this blog to go out and start working towards making that change. Work in small, manageable steps, and though some consistent work and effort, you’ll see the change you want to see in the world around you.