thoughts

Your Personal Ground Zero

April 18, 2016 By Arminda

SPOILER ALERT: There is no mecca to a better life.

Who you are is different from the thoughts you believe about yourself. That habit of believing your thinking is not who you are.

But only never.

That moment just before you have a thought about yourself? That’s who you really are.

Who you are IS happiness.

Your ground zero IS happiness.

Your natural and original state IS happiness.

There isn’t a magical elixir to consume, nor is there anything you can purchase, experience or renegotiate that will show you the way to inner fulfillment.

Aside from the biological needs of a baby and their only means of communication being tears, what’s their “natural” state of being? How you show up is who you BE.

We arrive happy and then spend a lifetime unlearning and forgetting about it, un-training every young child with whom we come in contact that happiness is the ever-elusive carrot dangling at the end of the proverbial stick.

Good News

There isn’t a 9-day intensive or a three-month workshop or a two-year masters’ program leading into a doctorate, at the conclusion of which you’ll get to defend a dissertation on your personal journey to joy and happiness.

You are not broken, in need of fixing, or on a journey.

You’re already there.

Your destination is you.

Practice Happy

Notice your thoughts.
Notice you are not your thoughts.
Allow your thoughts to amuse and to entertain you.
Do not make the mistake of believing your thoughts are true.

All the Feelings

November 23, 2015 By Arminda

Events and/or others’ actions can seem to cause a rush of emotions and questions and fears, all erupting simultaneously within us.

Inherent in this “system” of reacting is a misunderstanding about the reason we are upset at all.

Commonly, we believe events and other people cause our feelings.

Because ________ happened, I’m devastated.
When __________ took place, it forced me to say something.
He said _________ and it really upset me.
She did _________ and I’m so mad because of it.
They didn’t _________ and now I’m completely frazzled.

EVENTS/PEOPLE ==> FEELINGS

However, when we pause between event and response, there is a small space in which we formulate a thought about that event, and to that thought we attach an emotional reaction.

Events and people don’t cause our emotions. Rather, our thoughts about the event or the person create the feelings.

What?!

We have the power within us to own and to control and to generate the very emotions and feelings we want to experience WHEN we see the connection between the event and the reaction.

EVENTS/PEOPLE ==> THOUGHTS ==> FEELINGS

Viktor Frankl said:

Everything can be taken from [someone] but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s own way.

Choose to be free from the emotional weight of other people’s actions and the events you do not control. Choose to emotionally experience life in a way that fills you up and not in a way that depletes you. Choose to pause — take that proverbial deep breath and count to ten — and choose what to think.

Events only provide us with information and nothing more.

Stop It!

May 15, 2015 By Arminda

Just stop.

Stop thinking about it.

Just do it. Or don’t do it.

But stop thinking it over.

All those thoughts swirling around in your head and spilling out of your mouth in conversations with co-workers or friends or family members or yourself in the mirror? They’re entirely made up.

And the more you talk about, or around, or instead of something else, you’re not in action. You’re just thinking out loud about a life you’re not creating.

Oh wait. You are creating a life: the one you’re not living.

Just Keep Going

March 21, 2014 By Arminda 3 Comments

There was a period of time in my life when I felt broken emotionally and couldn’t see through the density of my situation to a better tomorrow. I knew only to take one step at a time, placing one foot in front of the other. So that’s what I did. One foot and one step at a time. Step by step I filled an entire day and then a second day and eventually a week and all of my steps added up to my forward movement.

One night in a moment of uncertainty, confusion and deep anguish, my dear friend Bea called to check on me and she taught me something I’ve always remembered and carried with me as truth:

You never have to go back to yesterday; it’s over. Where you are is here. Now. And nothing that happened in a string of your yesterdays can hurt you today. Or tomorrow. Or ever.

I understand now what I was incapable of seeing then: the past and its cacophony of emotions born of experiences (some of which we choose and others chosen for us) have power over us today only if we choose to give those emotions a place in our heads and in our thoughts.

What matters is what we think because our thoughts, which flow through us and can sometimes be really loud in our heads, determine our state of being.

Your feelings are real to you. Your adventures in life will generate a wide range of thoughts, which will create emotional responses that will inform your journey. And you get to make the choice every single day about how you interact with those emotions.

When it seems as if the voice in your head is too loud and your thoughts are negative and the accompanying emotions feel too heavy to carry, please remember

You never have to go back to yesterday; it’s over. Where you are is here. Now. And nothing that happened in a string of your yesterdays can hurt you today. Or tomorrow. Or ever.

Take a deep breath. Let the chatter and emotions come to a resting place inside your head. And then choose to embrace a different emotion.

I am grateful for the knowledge that I’m wired for happiness, as are you.

I’m also grateful to have lived through enough of life to reiterate Rainer Maria Rilke‘s profound wisdom:

No feeling is final.

No amount of hurt, joy, heartache, euphoria, stress, pleasure, pain, delight, grief, happiness, trauma, enjoyment, agony, amusement, sadness, entertainment, anguish or diversion will last forever. I promise.

That’s not to say we won’t be faced with all of these emotions, to varying degrees, at some time or another throughout our existence. I believe we should experience this broad range of emotions. How else can we possibly learn and understand and grow into better humans if not through these very personal moments that add up to a lifetime?

Just keep going and when you think you can’t, just take one more step and then another.

I’m cheering for you.

Choose you. Choose happy.