Thoughts of the Week: 07-21-2024

TOTW: 07-21-2024

What a week!

Sundays are a great day to reflect

What did you personally learn this week?

What made an impact on your life?

Who made an impact on your life?

Whose life did you impact?

What will you remember?

The more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know

The more we grow, the more opportunity we see?

Here are some of my own takeaways from this past week

Suffering = Expectations? - Reality

We are responsible for our own expectations

Less Things, More Peace

Isn’t that the truth

Without self-awareness, we are all vulnerable to mental-spirals The key is catching yourself early in the process

Anxiety is nothing more than Future-Forecasted-Pain

And just as we have the ability to imagine its existence, our minds can say “No Thank You”

We do not see things are they are

We see them as we are

Monday – 07-15-2024 - Suffering: The Gap between Reality and Expectation

What does the word suffering make you think of?

Pain, hurt, fear?

It makes me think of denial

We suffer when we attempt to deny reality as it is

Instead, hoping that somehow, we will find reality as we individually would like it to be…?

What if we embraced the experience “bad” emotions

Would they really feel as bad as we make them out to?

Perhaps, it is our own resistance that causes more pain, than any pain itself

Read more Here

Tuesday – 07-16-2024 - Less Things, More Peace?

Hello Amazon Prime Day

Goodbye Amazon Prime Day

What did you purchase on promotion?

Is it really going to make you happy?

Maybe it will

Maybe it does, for now

But do our material possessions really bring us the peace & fulfillment we crave?

How often do those possessions add stress and complication to our lives?

Read more Here

Wednesday – 07-17-2024 - This too, shall not be recalled

I have yet to figure out where I saw this passage

If you read this and connect the dots, please let me know!

Talk about the gap between reality and expectations

Yes, I do expect to remember almost everything

And yes, if I could learn to let that go, I would find myself with much less stress

While I am still in work-in-progress, it was fascinating to see how quickly my mind can spiral

The inability to place a short passage led to me losing perspective

Nothing I did seemed to take away the void where this uncallable memory should be

I am feeling a little triggered just typing this

Thankfully, time is one of nature’s greatest antidote’s

This will come back to my conscious when the time is right?

Or someone could just help me out and tell me

PS – This makes me think back to RunAway Thinking….

Maybe it’s time to revisit that

Read more Here

Thursday – 07-18-2024 – “You Suffer more Often in your Imagination than Reality”

Working on my inner Marcus Aurelius with a self-dialogue structure

We all get anxious, it’s a programmed evolutionary response to the perception of a threat

But how often does our reaction overshadow whatever discomfort comes with the thing itself

We suffer more in our own minds than we do in reality

Future-Forecasted-Pain is the source of more suffering than reality itself

See if you can catch yourself creating Future-Forecasted-Pain this week

Read more Here

Friday – 07-19-2024 – Blinders, Always On

Continued self-dialogue, short & sweet

We like to pretend that we can see things impartially

Yet, we do not see anything as it is

We see things are we are

?Where is this applicable in everyday life?

Where isn’t it applicable, this paradigm is at work everywhere

Whether we realize it or not

A conversation with a friend

A team meeting to discuss a work deadline

Planning with a significant other

Talking with our parents or our children?

We do not see things as they are

We see things as we are

Read More Here

That’s it from last week folks

Now, we begin again

I look forward to sharing new insights, perspectives, and reflections?

Thank you again for your time and your attention

If you have found these articles helpful, please share them with a friend

Sincerely yours,

Jack Crabtree