How You Think IS More Important Than What You Think

How to think vs. what to think... imperative to distinguish!

In times of tension and tumult, here's how you think better... examine everything without bias, just consider the options and choose the prudent path. When you are diligent and vulnerable, the truth reveals itself. You might learn something new about yourself or the world that will change your perspective. In order to learn to get along, humans have had to engage paradigm shifts, seeing the exact same things with different eyes. If you'd like a lot of eyes to look through, there's a great exercise here. Isolation can have benefits beyond your imagination.

We have attributed this quote to Goethe - "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." When, in fact, it was inspired by Goethe though written by an Irish poet named John Anster, though he wrote, 'What you can do' instead.

Other Anster renditions include:

"What you can do, or dream you can, begin it,

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Only engage, and then the mind grows heated, —

Begin it, and the work will be completed!”

I'm not sure how it happened, but FB seemed to think Fred's face looked like me and Markus went with it at the time. What a randomly generated honor. Time to transform to that 'quantum coagulator' it seems. Attention, intention and action. How you think about the former leads to better management of your mind and response to your environment.

Let's bring that home for a moment. Right now the conversations you have at home are extremely important for the successful navigation of trying times. Converting the fearful and panicky internal feelings and thoughts to those of the salient points for transforming chaos to order is imperative. I found a great blog called Personal Tao that addresses these issues and I'll highlight the salient points. When many are seeking solace, a few step up to provide guidance with balance and centeredness.

A simple (initial) list of guidelines for living in times of Chaos.

• Reinforce local community. Being healthy and active in your local community helps you weather unexpected changes, shortages and those who would try to take advantage of you in a weakened state.
• Don’t overextend yourself. If you overextend yourself, chaotic changes will catch you off guard
• Be patient and be aware. Chaotic times are neither good nor bad: good and bad are human morality statements. Chaotic times are times of great change. With great change come opportunities that are equally beneficial as they are earth-shaking. Patience allows you to pace your endeavors to use your resources gracefully and with awareness timed to your intuition you then decide which opportunities are indeed positive options rather than negative situations.
• Buy and work towards quality over cheap/fast. Times of chaos stress out people, materials, and social systems. In times of chaos things break down, people make things more cheaply, and unexpected shortages will occur. Make sure your work is of quality so it lasts through the time of chaos, make sure you invest in tools and materials which are of quality so that your material tools won’t fail at critical times.
• Invest in personal time, keeping in shape and helping those around you to stay in shape. The stress in times of chaos will push us to our limits. Take care of yourself, family and friends so you remain strong and can flow with the unexpected changes that will occur.
• Predict nothing! By definition times of chaos are when everything shifts to being unpredictable. Be open to change rather than trying to jigger change or outguessing it. By being aware and flowing with the change, you will more gracefully move with what happens over than trying to outguess all the random shifts that will occur.

Orderly times are more logical; chaotic times are more intuitive

How you think makes the difference between stressful and sublime moments

Sublime - of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe.

So always remember the steps of Personal Transformation are:

1. Acceptance
2. Awareness
3. Practices to explore one’s nature. Play is a critical part of any transformation. Seriously, play is about testing and exploring possibility. When you are transforming, you are changing, becoming something new. If you don’t play while in the middle of transformation.. then chances are you will revert to what you already were, since you didn’t take the time to play and work out new options of being. The problem is when a person gets older and yet gets caught in a crisis or transformation…. their adult shape and society: forces them to forget the most important aspects of life. The exploration of play to become more.
4. repeat 1-3 in several iterations (which equals patience)
5. Relaxation into self
6. You are now in a place where you worked and released most of the issues holding you back.
7. Pause and perform an evaluation of your progress, if you are not done, then repeat steps 1 – 5 again. Please note: Never try to solve all your problems at once. Otherwise, new problems will creep in to fill the void. Step 4 is critical since it allows a person to process their evolution in smaller increments of change. Move ahead with yourself in wonder and enjoyment. If done well it takes roughly two years to do steps 1-5 with several iterations and ten years to become a master of your own life.
8. However, this path I teach is deeply patient and very Taoist: most people will choose just to grab what they see someone else doing and run with that. Not many people risk taking the time, two to ten years, to explore their life deeply since the unknown scares them.

So don’t assume that chaotic times are bad times. It’s up to us on how to use everything to grow. Chaotic times offer the opportunity of new options. Such times open the doorway to transformation. How you use the energy of chaotic times is also a choice about your own personal growth.

As a parent, you are a leader in your home. How you think determines what you think. As a community member, you are a leader in your community. As a planetary citizen, your are a leader in the world. Whether Goethe or Anster, the quote is sublime... "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."