Be what you want.

If you want to attract happy people, be happy.

If you want respect, respect yourself, and people will respect you.

If you want people to treat you well, treat yourself well.

If you want loyalty, caring, and love, be loyal caring and loving.

Does it work ALL the time?  No. 

But it works most of the time, and the alternative doesn’t work at all.

Personal packaging

We look at people and try to size them up.  It’s human nature.  It will never change.  We have to.  It’s part of understanding how to get along in the world.  

We look at someone and see how they are dressed and groomed, and how they carry themselves.  

We take them at face value.  It’s pretty accurate to assume that if someone dresses for a part, then that’s who they are.  After all, nobody knows you better than you do.  If you present yourself to the world in a given way, who are we to argue that you are someone else?  So we treat you like the person you present to us.

In the movie “Catch me if you can”, based on the true story of young con man Frank Abignail, he passes himself off for an airline pilot, a doctor, and many other people simply by dressing the part.  Nobody questions him, and they take him for how he dresses.

If someone dresses shabbily, we talk to them differently than someone who dresses well.  It’s how it is. 

The world is your mirror.

How do you present yourself to the world?

Happiness is your job.

Does your happiness depend on other people changing? 

That’s a real problem; because it’s not going to happen. 

Putting happiness outside yourself is not a good idea.  “When they change.”  “When this happens.” “When I get this.”  “When I find love or respect, I’ll be happy.”

Don’t place control of your happiness in anyone else’s hands.  They aren’t thinking about you, or your happiness. 

Happiness is your job.

Your world lens

We all have a lens we see the world through.  The shape of the lens was ground through our past experiences – where we lived, our childhood, our family, the beliefs that people around us had that we picked up, and what we learned along the way.

Now, everything we see and experience passes through this lens, and is distorted by it.  Everything presented to you each day comes through your filter and is seen and understood against your preconceived understanding of the way the world is.

How can you change your lens?

Let go of your attachment to it and your resistance to anything that challenges it.  Observe without judgment.

Decide that you want to change.  You don’t have to admit anything was wrong.  That’s not an argument you have to get into.

Get some new perspectives.  Talk to true trusted friends (they may not be the ones closest to you).  Change the environment that supports your old thinking patterns.   It takes some work, because it’s easy to fall back into default thinking.  Keep working on it.

It’s worth it.  Inner changes will change the world – just like that.

Perspective in your life

It is human nature to focus on what is wrong.  We’re wired for it.  one thousand years ago, what was wrong could jump out of the darkness and kill us – and often did.

When we put what is wrong into our mental radio station on repeat, what’s wrong gets bigger and takes up more space in our mental world than it really is in the real one.

Once in a while we need some mental floss.  As we rise above our life we have to purposely ask, What is right and going good in our lives?  How important is what I am worrying about?  Am I sacrificing something large (our happiness, a job, a relationship, harmony in our life) for something small?  Where is this track I am on going?  Is it what I really want?  Does it match my values?

Being in your head all the time pondering injustices, inconveniences, and small matters is not always good for extended periods.  Use all your abilites to get a larger understanding of your life by mixing up your mental point of view. 

Zoom out and get some prespective.  

What are your true goals?

Yesterday we asked what your true values were.  

Today, we go further.

What are your true goals?

What do you really want to do while you are here?

What are your true values?

What is really important to you?

While nobody knows this better than you, it may not be easy to actually list them.  It requires thought and consideration.  Hint – think about what you DO, not what you say. 

Give it a try.

Top 3?

Reduce the need for willpower

Willpower is great in small bursts, but only goes so far in daily life until it runs out.

Set up your environment so you don’t need so much willpower.

So if you want to work out in the morning or go for a walk/jog/run/bike – layout your clothes at the foot of your bed the night before.  

If you want to read 10 pages a day, clear off that little table with the comfy chair next to it and put one object on it – the book.

If you want to stop eating sweets, don’t bring them into the house.

If you want to stop drinking, don’t bring it into the house, and when your friends invite you to the bar, decline.

If you want to eat better, don’t go to a pizza place and try to order the salad, while the pizza comes for the rest of the group – because that requires willpower.  Have healthy food you like ready to eat instead.

Change your environment and it’s much easier to change your habits.

Mental Radio

We all have a voice playing in our heads all the time.  It’s our inner voice; our identity, our story.

You are both generating it and listening to it, and reinforcing it all the time.

But you have the power to interrupt that voice and reject it and make a decision to change parts of it.

Your ego won’t like it – it will tell you to hold on to the old story because it wants to be right, and fight to survive – after all, you have a lot invested in the old story you thought was you.

But it was only you because you said so.

What’s playing in your mental radio station?

Is it time to change the station?

Do you buy more things because you can afford it?

It would be nice to have this.  It would be cool to have that.  But every possession is a responsibility.

You have to house it, store it, clean it, change the oil in it, pay tax on it, mow it, roof it, maintain it, find a place for it, look at it until you throw it out, etc.

When we are starting out in life we need to get a car, and then a nicer car, and then a house and a second car, and some furniture, ….

But at some point we have to shift from buying things because we can, to asking “Do I need this/want this bad enough, and will I still need/want it tomorrow?”

Saying “yes, I could, but no” is ok. 

A simpler life is not a bad thing, in many ways.