Soulshine

"I had been practicing misery every night by focusing on everything I hated... all it did was make everything worse. What if, instead of griping, I practiced gratitude? Not the 'count you blessings' thing. What if I practiced gratitude for everything just as it is-- for what I hated and disliked?" Melody Beattie, Make Miracles in Forty Days There's no greater acceptance of reality than practicing gratitude for the people and things we don't like, or even hate. After all, we give our personal power away to people, behaviors and things we can't control. And we give that power away by investing a great deal of time and negative energy in ruminating over what we are powerless to change. We have the power to change only one person and that person is us. Nothing changes for the better until we decide to change for the better. So how about we look at people who have hurt us, people we have come to hate, and see them as teachers instead of seeing them a...

"His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people--his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God... and he must be about His Father's business: beauty... and to this conception he was faithful to the end."                                                            F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby It makes no difference where we have come from, who are parents were or how our past has shaped us. We are not prisoners to any of it, or anything. As adults, we have stewardship-- ownership-- of our own lives. We are all sons and daughters of God an...

“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. Healing means that the damage no longer controls our lives.” Anonymous Healing and forgiveness go hand in hand. We never have complete healing of the damage that’s been done to us until we reach a point of acceptance, of letting go and of forgiveness. Acceptance means we admit we can’t change what happened   and that we don’t have to be the lifetime victim of what happened. Letting go of the damage frees us from our victim mentality and provides us with internal-peace.   Letting go allows us to take our power back from the damage and the person who inflicted it. Once we let go, we’ll find we no longer feel resentful toward that person. Instead, we feel empowered to stand up to that person and to take our power back from him/her in positive ways. So, I’m not talking about revenge here. I’m talking about coming to the realization that the person who hurt us is in some unhealed-way hurting too. His/her unhealed bro...

“Something will grow from all of this… and it will be me.” Jodi Hills Bad things happen to everyone. No one on earth is exempt. The most popular and successful people across this world have all suffered at the hands of others and from their own mistakes. So why is it that some people who suffer terribly rise above their suffering while others wallow in their suffering forever? Well, those who rise above their suffering choose to grow from their suffering. They feel the pain, grieve their losses and then ask themselves “What wisdom can I gain from this? What can I learn from what has happened to me that will benefit me in the future?” They consciously sift-through all of the darkness that they have experienced until they find a golden nugget of wisdom and it becomes a guiding light for them to take back their personal power and to move forward in life. People who wallow endlessly in the muck of their suffering never think to ask themselves, or their Higher Power, “W...

“The meditation room is within. Decorate that.” Richard from Texas, Eat Pray Love Apparently during my trip to Los Angeles, someone was gracious enough to share their nasty little cold germs with me. This week, I’ve found that nursing a cold is a good test of how well we take care of ourselves. It’s also taught me a lot about the inner-critic in my head. In terms of self-care, I decided last Sunday that I would stay away from the office. Then I made sure I had all of the necessary cold medications, including cough drops. I immediately began drowning my body with chicken noodle soup/chicken broth to get the old electrolytes back in balance again. I’ve also downed a lot of green tea and I’ve allowed myself to lie around and watch movies. All of this has helped me reduce the severity of the cold. The cold I had last year took me through three boxes of tissues. This cold has only required one box. On the down side, I’ve heard a lot from my inner-critic. In particular, h...

No one has to accept unjust criticism. At times we allow ourselves to become the victims of complainers. Everyone is faced with people who constantly need to have something to whine about. We face these people within our families, within our social circles and within our workplaces. But we don’t have to be their victims. We can set boundaries. Boundaries allow us to retain our personal power. And when it comes to complainers, we definitely need to have proper boundaries. Look at complainers in this light: People who are always complaining are trapped in a negative mindset. Everything you say is filtered through their “you’re out to get me” mind-lens. They have an obsessive need to find fault and to place a negative spin on everything they hear. This isn’t normal. Any time someone says something, it can be interpreted in many different ways, and most people interpret statements in the way in which they were intended. Complainers do not. Everything you say is all about them and how y...