Spititual

All you have to do is stay in the present. When you catch yourself upset about the past or worried about the future, say to yourself, “Ah, I’m time traveling,” then STOP. That’s what meditation is. That’s what being “spiritual” means: not time traveling.

ONLY DO THINGS YOU ENJOY

The only real fire to cultivate is the fire inside of you. Nothing external will cultivate it. The greater your internal fire is, the more people will want it. They will smoke every drug lit by your fire. They will try to ignite their own fires. They will try to light up their own dark caves. The universe will bend to you.
Every time you say yes to something you don’t want, your fire starts to go away.
You will get burned out.

VALUES

STEP 1: THE VALUE MUST FAIL.

Davis intuitively understood something that almost all of us do not: values are based on experience. You cannot argue someone out of their values. You cannot threaten them to let go of their most deeply-held beliefs. That just makes them defensive and even more resistant to changing themselves. Instead, you must approach them with empathy.

The only way to change someone’s values is by presenting them with a contrary experience to their value. The KKK members held deeply racist values and instead of attacking them and approaching them as an adversary—in a way that would reflect their values back to them—Davis chose to approach them in the completely opposite way: as a friend. And that friendliness and respect caused the KKK members to call everything they knew into question.

To let go of a value, it must be contradicted through experience. Sometimes this contradiction happens by taking the value to its logical conclusion. Too much partying ultimately makes life feel empty and meaningless. Pursuing too much money ultimately brings greater stress and alienation. Too much sex gives you chafed thighs and rug burns on your knees.

Other times, a value is contradicted by the real world. Many KKK members that met Davis had never known a black person, much less one they respected. So, he simply met them and then earned their respect.

STEP 2: WE MUST HAVE THE SELF-AWARENESS TO RECOGNIZE THAT OUR VALUES HAVE FAILED.

When our values fail, it’s terrifying. There’s a grief process that takes place. Since our values constitute our identity and our understanding of who we are, losing a value feels as though we’re losing a part of ourselves.

Therefore, we resist that failure. We explain it away and deny it. We come up with rationalizations. Davis said that for months, his KKK friends would struggle to justify their friendship with him. They would say things like, “Well, you’re different Daryl,” or create elaborate justifications for why they respected him.

When our values fail, we have two knee-jerk justifications: 1) the world sucks, or 2) we suck.

Let’s say you spend your entire life chasing money. And then, in your 40s, you accumulate a good amount. But instead of diving and swimming in gold coins like Scrooge McDuck, this money doesn’t bring you happiness, it brings you more stress. You have to figure out how to invest it. You have to pay taxes on seemingly everything. Friends and family members continuously approach you looking for help or handouts.

But instead of considering that the value sucks, that maybe you should care about something more than money, most people instead blame the world around them. It’s the government’s fault because they punish wealth and success. The world is full of moochers and lazy people who just want a handout. The stock market is a racket and impossible to win.

Others blame themselves. They think, “I should be able to handle this, therefore I just need to make even more money and everything will be alright.” They get caught on a treadmill of constantly pursuing their value more and more until they become a sort of extremist.

Few people stop to consider that the value itself is at fault. That valuing money got you into this situation, therefore there’s no way it can get you out.

STEP 3: QUESTION THE VALUE AND BRAINSTORM WHAT VALUES COULD DO A BETTER JOB.

In a previous post, I described how the process of maturity is replacing low-level, material values, with higher-level, abstract values. So instead of chasing money all the time, you could chase freedom. Instead of trying to be liked by everyone, you could value developing intimacy with a few. Instead of trying to win everything, you could focus on merely giving your best effort.

These higher-level, abstract values are better because they produce better problems. If your primary value in life is how much money you have, then you will always need more money. But if your primary value is personal freedom, then you will need more money for a while, but there might be some situations where you need less money. Or, where money is completely irrelevant.

Ultimately, abstract values are values you can control. You can always control whether you’re being honest or not. You cannot control if people like you. You can always control whether you’re giving your best effort. You can’t always control if you win or not. You can always control if you’re doing something you find meaningful, you can’t always control how much you’ll get paid.

STEP 4: LIVE THE NEW VALUE.

So, here’s the catch: sitting around thinking about better values to have is nice. But nothing will solidify until you go out and embody that new value. Values are won and lost through life experience. Not through logic or feelings or even beliefs. They have to be lived and experienced to stick.

This often takes courage. To go out and live a value contrary to your old values is fucking scary. I imagine the KKK guys were terrified to spend time with a black man. It probably freaked them out when they realized they liked him and respected him. They probably avoided him and put up walls between themselves and him.

We do the same thing in our own lives all the time. It’s easy to want authentic relationships. But it’s hard to live them. It’s scary. We avoid it. We come up with excuses for why we have to wait, or we’ll do it next time. But the “next time” inevitably ends up being another failure and another pain.

STEP 5: REAP THE BENEFITS OF THE NEW VALUE.

But when you do summon the courage to live out your new values, something crazy happens: it feels good. You experience the benefits. And once you experience those benefits, not only does it become easier to continue living the new value, but it sounds insane that you didn’t do this sooner.

It’s like the high you get after a good run. Or the relief you feel after telling someone the truth. Or the liberation you feel when you stop being a racist fuck and hand over your Klan robe to a nice old black man.

Like jumping into a cold pool, the terror and shock passes and you’re left with a wonderful sense of relief, and a newer, deeper understanding of who you really are.

Rejection / Odrzucenie

REGRET OF NOT TRYING IS WORSE THAN REJECtiON

I FEAR REGRET MORE THAN FEELING OF BEING REJECTED

Have Zero Tolerance for Self-Criticism

Tempting as it might be to list all your faults in the aftermath of a rejection, and natural as it might seem to chastise yourself for what you did “wrong” — don’t! By all means review what happened and consider what you should do differently in the future, but there is absolutely no good reason to be punitive and self-critical while doing so. Thinking, “I should probably avoid talking about my ex on my next first date,” is fine. Thinking, “I’m such a loser!” is not.

Another common mistake we make is to assume a rejection is personal when it’s not. Most rejections, whether romantic, professional, and even social, are due to “fit” and circumstance. Going through an exhaustive search of your own deficiencies in an effort to understand why it didn’t “work out” is not only unnecessarily but misleading.

Revive Your Self-Worth

When your self-esteem takes a hit it’s important to remind yourself of what you have to offer (as opposed to listing your shortcomings). The best way to boost feelings of self-worth after a rejection is to affirm aspects of yourself you know are valuable. Make a list of five qualities you have that are important or meaningful — things that make you a good relationship prospect (e.g., you are supportive or emotionally available), a good friend (e.g., you are loyal or a good listener), or a good employee (e.g., you are responsible or have a strong work ethic). Then choose one of them and write a quick paragraph or two (write, don’t just do it in your head) about why the quality matters to others, and how you would express it in the relevant situation. Applying emotional first aid in this way will boost your self-esteem, reduce your emotional pain and build your confidence going forward.

Boost Feelings of Social Connection

As social animals, we need to feel wanted and valued by the various social groups with which we are affiliated. Rejection destabilizes our need to belong, leaving us feeling unsettled and socially untethered. Therefore, we need to remind ourselves that we’re appreciated and loved so we can feel more connected and grounded. If your work colleagues didn’t invite you to lunch, grab a drink with members of your softball team instead. If your kid gets rejected by a friend, make a plan for them to meet a different friend instead and as soon as possible. And when a first date doesn’t return your texts, call your grandparents and remind yourself that your voice alone brings joy to others.

Rejection is never easy but knowing how to limit the psychological damage it inflicts, and how to rebuild your self-esteem when it happens, will help you recover sooner and move on with confidence when it is time for your next date or social event.

Breathing

The next time you are in a stressful or emotional situation, focus on taking slow deep breaths, inhaling through your nose until you can feel your stomach swell outward and grow tight, and then exhaling gently and completely through your mouth. As you exhale, go ahead and push that breath out until you have completely emptied your lungs.

Technika 4-7-8

Jak prawidłowo wykonać technikę 4-7-8?

1. Upewnij się, że leżysz w łóżku w pozycji, która nie ogranicza twojej zdolności do głębokiego oddychania.
2. Zamknij oczy, a czubek języka umieść na podniebieniu za przednimi zębami. Staraj się trzymać go tam przez całą sekwencję oddychania, nawet podczas wydechu.
3. Zrób głęboki wydech ustami, a następnie wdychaj powietrze przez nos przez 4 sekundy (licz w myślach do czterech).
4. Wstrzymaj oddech na 7 sekund.
5. Zrób wydech ustami przez 8 sekund.
6. Powtórz całą sekwencję oddechów cztery razy.

Technika 4-7-8 doskonale dotlenia organizm, daje poczucie lekkości i relaksuje układ nerwowy.

Grounding

To ground yourself, sit or stand comfortably, and breathe into your belly. Imagine that you’re gathering warmth and light in your belly, and as you breathe out, imagine that your breath and light or warmth are moving down through your body and into your chair (if you’re seated). Breathe in again, and imagine that light as a cord that’s moving down into the floor beneath you, into the foundation of the building you’re in, and down through the layers of soil and rock beneath your building. Breathe in again, and continue letting this light and warmth make its way downward. Just ground the circuit and thank your sadness.

Imagine your breath and that light moving down and away from you, as if you’re reaching down under the ground with a very long pole. Feel your grounding cord moving ever downward until it reaches the center of the earth, however that looks to you. Anchor your cord (rdzeń) in some way; you can imagine your cord connected to the center of the earth on a lighted chain with an anchor, you can see it as the roots of a tree that wrap themselves around the center of the planet, or you can imagine a bright waterfall that creates a pool at the center of the earth. Any image that works for you is the correct image. Keep breathing normally.

If it disappeared, please breathe in, imagine gathering light and warmth in your belly, and breathe down to the center of the earth again. But this time, imagine wheels or use some other imagery or felt sense that will allow your sense of grounding to move with you.

We need our logical intelligence to help us make sense of things, but when we’re accessing our emotions, we also need to rely on imagery, our intrapersonal intelligence, and our empathic abilities.

Here’s an exercise that utilizes your free-flowing fear and sadness: Focus yourself and breathe normally. Feel the connection between your body and the center of the earth and bring your calm focus to bear on your interior state right now. If you’ve got any tension, confusion, or emotional upset inside you, breathe into that area and envelop it with your breath. Gather the tension, breathe it downward, and let it slide down into the ground. Try that again. Breathe into your area of tension (wherever it is), gather that tension, and exhale it down and into the ground. Let the tension ground away from you, and sense the relief your body feels when you let things go. If you need help, move your hands down your body and your legs, and describe grounding to your body in a literal way. Maintain your calm focus, and let your body tell you when it feels done. When you use your sadness and fear together, you won’t release too much or exhaust yourself; your fear will help you remain focused and alert. Use this technique as often as you like; grounding helps you release tension consciously.[7]

 If you can breathe in, gather your confusion or tension, and then send it down into the earth, you can refocus yourself. Grounding helps you remain centered in the outer world by giving you a way to cleanse and stabilize yourself in the inner world.

When you can ground your tension and any intense emotions, you won’t need to blast other people or repress everything and become flattened.

Some pointers: Grounding restores healthy flow to your body, and healthy bodies need to move. Remember: this process is not about perfection; it’s about wholeness, which means it encompasses peace and turmoil, grace and clumsiness, competence and incompetence, and the whole range of life experiences.

Additionally, any time spent by a body of moving water (or with calm animals) is naturally grounding. Finally, any art form (dancing, singing, painting, ceramics, playing music, and so on) that helps you express yourself and focus your attention on creation will help with both centering and grounding. Art heals!

Anger and shame

Anger helps you observe and respond to boundary violations coming from the exterior world, and shame helps you observe and avoid boundary violations that may come from your interior world. Shame helps you protect your boundary and the boundaries of other people

What I notice when I have a good boundary is that I can experience other people as themselves instead of needing to control or change them. I can’t do it all the time—who can? However, when I’m grounded, focused, and well-defined, my interpersonal intelligence gets a lot smarter.

Anna miłość

If my loved ones are too damaged or dissimilar for our relationship to work, I don’t stay with them (and I don’t let them keep my credit cards!), but I don’t stop loving them.

Łusiiiiik

Doggie

Peak moments

One simple diagnostic to gauge whether you’ve transcended the ordinary is if people feel the need to pull out their cameras.         

Mae West

"It isn't what I do, but how I do it. It isn't what I say, but how I say it, and how I look when I do it and say it."

Sex is emotion in motion.

"I'm a woman of very few words, but lots of action."

Career choice

Emocje / Emotions

Keep a Journal 

You’ll get a better idea of which emotions get you down, which pick you up, and which are the most difficult for you to tolerate. Pay careful attention to the people and situations that push your buttons, triggering strong emotions. Describe the emotions you feel each day, and don’t forget to record the physical sensations that accompany the emotions.

Every adult individual is responsible for their own feelings. No one has the power to make you happy or make you sad. If someone behaves a certain way, you then make an interpretation of it, which causes the feeling. So the meanings you make are what cause your feelings.

Data science 5,000 to 7,000 hours of work

By Year Three you’ve put in 5,000 to 7,000 hours of work

Surrender

Surrender is something else. If you’ve reached this point, if you’ve said no to all the things you are entitled to say no to, you are ready to surrender.
But not before then.
Surrender means:
You are eating well.
You are sleeping well.
You are taking care of your body.
You are saying no to the foods and drinks and activities that can harm you.
You are saying no to the people who are trying to bring you down.
You are saying no to the stories that people have tried to force you into. You are not marching in the army; you are your own person.
You are saying no to the lies that keep the stories going.
You are saying no to the offers and opportunities that might be second best. You are searching deeply for the real Yes in the opportunities that come to you.
You are saying no to the noise. Finding the silence that is between every word, that is between every breath of air.
All of this allows your creativity to roam free. Your spirit to relax. Your brain to breathe a sigh of relief. Your body to have more energy than ever.
So much relief!

Now …
Surrender.
To whom?
To you.
To the higher part of you.
To the “you” that is wise and knows better.
Do it.
Say yes.
To you.

Our brains don’t care if we are happy. There is only one mission for the brain: replicate the DNA.
When DNA doesn’t replicate, a species becomes extinct. That’s failure. When DNA replicates, a species thrives. That’s success.
And that’s all the brain knows. So we have to get the brain out of the way. We have to trick it or hypnotize it.

Because the pure energy knows what to do, if you trust it.

Giving up

“Okay, you take care of it. You do it all,” where “you” is some higher power, some godlike entity?
That doesn’t work either. If you do nothing, usually nothing happens. This is just a more insidious way of trying to control things. It’s like you are trying to passive-aggressively guilt-trip the universe into providing for you.

We can’t say yes until we experience the deepest No.

Every time you say no in the way you are entitled to, it will help you take a step forward on this road. But the highest No you can say is to everything you once thought was the being known as “you.” Your history, your upbringing, your things, your dramas, your relationships. Those are all your story, and you have to give up control of that story.

Buddha no harm

Let’s call it “Buddha explains the Power of No to his son.”
All he said was this: “Before, during, and after you think, say, or do anything, determine if it will harm someone.”

The Graceful Exit

 “You’ve obviously given the matter a lot of thought and it’s been interesting to hear your views.”

How Much Should You Disclose to Someone New?

The authors of First Impressions use the analogy of a game of strip poker: you don’t want to be sitting there naked, while everyone else is fully clothed.

The next two principles below will help you understand how to go about keeping your rate of disclosure symmetrical.

Gradually Deepen the Conversation in Stages

In Conversationally Speaking, communications expert Alan Garner delineates the 4 stages through which a conversation proceeds and becomes more meaningful and significant:

• Clichés. These are the little rituals of sociality that mean little, but open up interactions: “Hi, how are you?” and “Nice to meet you.”
• Facts. After the opening salvos have been launched, people exchange basic information. Where they’re from. What they do for work. As Garner notes, at this stage, “Each person tries to find out whether there is enough to share to make a relationship worthwhile.”
• Opinions. Once folks have gotten to know each other a bit, they begin to introduce their views on current events, sports, money, love, etc.
• Feelings. “Feelings differ from facts and opinions,” Garner says, “in that they go beyond describing what happened and how you view what happened and convey your emotional reaction to what happened.” Just sharing facts and opinions keeps the conversation relatively shallow and dry; feelings reveal your heart — and that’s what really gets people interested and intrigued.

Feelings may be conversation’s most potent hook, but you don’t want to skip right into sharing them; doing so generally shows a lack of self-awareness, and provokes a “Whoa! Easy there fella!” response from the other person. Rather, you should proceed through each of these stages gradually, building an on-ramp from more shallow small talk to deeper conversation. Move topics from mild to strong, lighter to heavier, neutral to charged.

Efficiently conveying information to a group of people

S.M.E.A.C.
Ah, S.M.E.A.C.—a part of our family lexicon once again borrowed from the Marine Corps.

What is S.M.E.A.C.? It’s an easy, intuitive mental framework for efficiently conveying information to a group of people about an upcoming task. Once you’ve used it a few times, it comes naturally, and gives you a great mental checklist to ensure that no planning essentials get missed. S.M.E.A.C. stands for:


Situation—We’ve got to prepare a sales proposal for a new prospect at short notice.
Mission—To ensure that the plan that we prepare wins us the sale. (In the Corps, this also includes “Commander’s Intent”: this is especially important, because if everyone knows the overall mission—as opposed to just “do this by then”—then there is scope for individual judgment and initiative if the situation changes.)
Execution—Tom will gather data about the prospect’s formal requirements; Frances will gather information about who will be judging the proposal; John will be responsible for doing the graphical aspects of the presentation; we will then gather and do a first draft three days before the presentation is due.
Administration and Logistics (a.k.a. Bullets, Beans, and Band Aids)—What we’ll need to get the job done—We’re assembling in Tom’s offices next Tuesday at 9 A.M.; Frances is responsible for providing the laptop, dry erase board and pens for brainstorming; John is bringing the coffee. Keep receipts for any expenses incurred, as the client says that they will reimburse these if we file them following the presentation.
Communication—This is how we are going to stay in touch while executing the mission. E.g., any problems before Tuesday, use e-mail; if anyone gets held up on the day, give the rest of the team a call.

THE NO TO PHONY STORYTELLING

How often are our choices planned by people who are themselves unhappy, sick, worried about their debts, unhappy in their marriages, or unhappy in their jobs? Should we let these people tell us what should we do with our lives? Impose their stories on us? Are they right about us even though they are wrong about themselves?
I don’t want to waste my time getting angry or arguing with people. Or trying to convince people they are wrong about their plans for me. None of that is fun. I just choose not to listen to them. It’s a big world. When one door shuts, ten more doors open. When one person hates me because I won’t do what he or she thinks is right, I have another seven billion people I can choose from to pick as people I want to be around.
People (including me in the past) instinctively follow what has been imposed on them by institutions, parents, colleagues, schools, culture, false anger and dreams, and on and on. But each of us is unique, and we have our own path, regardless of the paths of others. You have to find your uniqueness.
I want to do what makes me feel at peace. Even if it means sometimes saying no to everyone I love. To all of the stories they tell.
Because that’s proof that I love myself.

Enough instead of jealousy

There’s a story about Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22, finding himself at a party made up of a bunch of Wall Street hedge-fund managers. A man comes up to him and points to a young guy in his 20s. The man says, “See that guy over there? He made more money last year than you will make in a lifetime of writing your books.”
Heller turns to the man and says, “I have one thing that he will never have.”
The man laughs and says, “What?”
Heller says, “Enough.”

Rejection

But I now know three things:
1. If he doesn’t mean it the first time, he doesn’t mean it at all. Period.
2. To attract the coolest man, I had to become the coolest woman—and this is not just in love; it is in every aspect of life.
3. To become the coolest woman, I had to realize I was worth it, uncover my own creative talent, and use it.

The death I needed was to realize that I am not in control of anything, especially when it comes to relationships. I can’t control a man any more than I can control what my brother will say or do, or what my now husband will publish on Facebook (James: well, she can occasionally control that). Or what a boss will do. Or what a bank will do. And on and on, all the myths we fight for fruitlessly.
The death I needed was to say no to my relentless obsession to orchestrate every relationship.

I then addressed God and all the people present and told them that I was ready for a real relationship, one in which we would love, honor, and respect each other, one in which man and woman would be joined by a power greater than ourselves and in the service of that power.
I said I was ready for a relationship in which both parties would protect and love each other, but also protect and help the world in any way we were guided to.
I told the group that with those words I was also letting go of any attachment to results, that I was open to whatever the universe might send; I just wanted to say it out loud, to all of them, so they would be witnesses to my sending of a clear message.

Let a higher power play into our love and offer our love to it.

Group gathering
When the groundwork is done, when we ask for help, when we surround ourselves with those who will respect our time to speak up and hear what we need to share, we are let in on a huge and powerful secret: we reach God much more easily through other people’s ears.

Once you have one friend or a group of people with whom you feel safe, try it. Tell the people in front of you that you would like to ask God for something, and that even though it may sound strange, you want them to bear witness to your clear desire to manifest something in your life. Tell them you have chosen them because you know you can trust them.
Then say it out loud: “I am ready for this (say what you want). I want to manifest it in my life, and my friend is a witness that I am inviting this energy in. Thank you.”
Thank your friend(s) or support group for participating in your ritual. Let it go. Be present. Witness the circumstances of your life as they develop over the next few weeks. Open yourself to life and see what happens.
Surrender to the words you said. They are out there now, bringing opportunities to you. Say yes to those opportunities because now you are ready.

BOND

“I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.”― Rainer Maria Rilke