Difficulty

No matter what happens, I can overcome adversity.  People have survived situations that are so much worse and so much more challenging than what I'm going through now.  Time to man up.  Time to be a champion.  If people can go to war and fight to the death with bayonets and daggers while their friends are getting trampled by cavalry and their legs are all rotten and swollen from infectious diseases, then what I'm going through is nothing.  Some people in the world have no food.  Some people are missing limbs, eyes, ears.  Some people can't walk, some people can't breathe without the help of a machine.   Moaning and whining is really a complete waste of time.

Life is about so much more than the trivial nonsense that we preoccupy ourselves with 99% of the time.  Life is about screaming into the vastness of the universe that you get to decide what should be.  It is up to us to be great, and not up to the universe to bestow greatness upon us.

!!!!!

Awaken to the Infinite Sea of Potential

Everything is waiting for you.  We exist now, on the surface of everything that can be.  The future is open to your decisions to shape it.  You are open to your decisions to shape yourself.  An amazing song, an epic film, a great story, a brilliant program, a happy friend or family member, a different world, a better reality...all of these are unchanneled energy.  Wake up.  Seize the moment, seize your own abilities, learn from the past, be the present, and create the future.

Breathing and Thinking

It's so hard to describe what's in my head.  I think it's impossible.  Every once in a while, I breathe deeply and realize how incredibly epic every single moment is.  Whether or not you succeed or fail, whether you are great or 'average', whether you are rich are poor...we are all caught up in this amazing pattern.  We live on a planet that is teeming with diversity and complexity, orbited by a silent moon that  gleams a brilliant silver and white because of our magnificent sun.

I think about the people who have created amazing things, and I can only feel a sense of awe at the richness and power of whatever vision was in their minds.  To be human is to be more than human.  We can tap into levels of awareness that would defy the imaginations of our ancestors.  Fantastic depths of creation and destruction lay dormant within us, just waiting to be called forth.  And all of this is against a backdrop of unimaginable forces.

To be alive is to be an important character in the most important journey that will ever take place.  Our time on Earth may be limited, but we are part of a story that transcends time, transcends limitation.  Every moment is important, every instant is eternal.

Resilience

I can't do this.  It's too hard.  I'm not up to the challenge....no.  No, no, no.  You want to be unstoppable.  You want to be amazing, great, unbelievable.  You want to destroy any obstacle in your path, to climb the mountains that seem too high.  You can do it.  Yes, you can.  Yes, yes, yes.

Why is that the weak voice says "I" and the strong voice says "you"?  Somehow, it seems like the strong voice starts out as something that's not part of my normal thinking.  It's something higher, or deeper, or something held in reserve.  And then when I need it, I call upon it for help and it infuses some of itself into me.  Super-ego, I guess.

I feel amazing.  Hardened and battle-ready.

Go, go, go.  Be brave.  Think fast.  Be strong.  Overcome.

Roar

I am energized.  I am ready.  I am unstoppable.

"I can't do this, I can't do that".  Bullshit.

"I can't be everything that I want to be."  Bullshit.

"The odds are against me."  Bullshit.

Defy all odds.  Do more than others believe you are capable of.  Destroy your internal barriers.

So many people are so willing to accept mediocrity but YOU DON'T HAVE TO.

DO NOT TOLERATE IT.

This manifests itself in so many ways, I don't want to get into them all right now.  But here are some examples:

Your child is whining.  Time for a time-out and stern lecture.  No whining is allowed.  Ever.  Not even a hint of it.

Your friend wants to go drinking, but you have productive things that need to be done.  Give him/her a raincheck.  Being a one-in-million person means doing things that 999,999 other people wouldn't do.

Your coworkers are sleepy/lazy/goofing off.  Either infect them with your energy or ignore them and be amazing on your own.  You don't have time for their bullshit.  Don't let them contaminate you.

Go, go, go.  Be awesome.

Inspiration

Cynicism is a powerful obstacle that many of us, including myself, need to overcome.  It is bullshit to think "people are always going to be greedy, lazy, vicious, etc."  It is bullshit to think that we can't transcend the status quo.  The world is a terrible place, people are starving, killing, raping, stealing...all this is true.  But just think, for one minute, about what we are doing right now.  We are communicating across the planet with machines that are making billions, literally billions, of calculations per second.  We are changing digital patterns in the displays of our computers, and thereby changing the patterns of thoughts in our minds.  Yes, we are animals.  Yes we are driven by hunger, lust, primitive instincts.  But we can be more than that.  We can set aside our hunger to do work, to play with our kids, to meditate, to compose masterpieces.  We can lose everything and still come back and make a fortune through perseverance and fortitude.

If you think the world is a bad place and ultimately there is nothing we can do about it (and I admit I frequently think this way, to my discredit), then you've just identified the first problem you need to solve on your way to doing something incredible for your family, your community, your country, your world.  Solve the problem of your cynicism first.  Then solve something greater.

Five Minutes of Productivity

I am in a situation where I have exactly five minutes to kill.  I'm currently watching a group of people, trying to make sure they are all doing something productive with their time (for the last 70 minutes).  Now that the period is almost over, I feel that it's okay for me to try and cram in a little productivity of my own...but 5 minutes is not a lot.  Now I'm down to 2.  

I should jot down a quick list of my priorities for the day/weekend.  Mission accepted.

Update:  well now I feel dumb, I actually have a whole 30 minutes of supervising left to do.  Derf.

The Urge to Create

I want to write.  I want to have insightful thoughts...to create something worth reading.  Unfortunately, sometimes (like now), I feel that there really isn't anything to say.  Even with all the change in the world, things are the way they are.  We live, eat, sleep, die.  Talking about what one day may be is not really new territory.  Plenty of people write about immortality, whether it is speculative science or just fiction.  Plenty of people write beautiful poetry.  I want to create and have new ideas, but sometimes that urge feels like vanity.

Perhaps this is an obstacle that I need to crush.  I need to smash that attitude, and tell myself that I can create something interesting, and that it is not vanity.  I can draw, I can compose music, I can write fiction, I can write about people or places that fascinate me.  Or, I can always "feed my mind"...I have an infinitely long list of books that I intend to read one day, and there are a lot of inspirational movies, paintings, songs, etc.

Go go go.  Work work work.  Be awesome.

Pretending to Be Who You Want to Be

Will regularly pretending to be who you want to be make you eventually become more like who you want to be?