Showing posts with label worry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label worry. Show all posts
Monday, September 10, 2012
Getting Up
Hope is a waking dream.
Aristotle
***************
Hello Barbara
***************
Wake up. Yawn. Stretch. Get out of that bed. Stand up. Wash your face. Brush your teeth. Make your coffee. Eat your breakfast. Get dressed. Open the door.
Wait a minute, you forgot something. Where;s that dream you were having? It's still back in the bed. Well, that's probably a good place for it. It was an improbable dream anyway. And maybe there were things about it you didn't like. So leave it there.
It's another day, a chance to make a mole hill out of that mountain you left yesterday, a chance to make one more step towards the plans you made last week, a chance to check up on the things you planted in your life last month, a chance to observe and appreciate how much you've grown in the last year as an indication of how much you are going to grow this year. If you don't have things to look forward to you might make the mistake of looking back.
So you've your plans, your ideas, your desires all tucked neatly (or maybe not so neatly) into your agenda, each with its own color. These are the hopes that got you out of bed this morning and every morning whether you know it or not. Each one has its demands on you, demands which you gave them. And those demands involve dreaming up the thing and dreaming up the way to do the thing. It's time. It's also time, armed with desire, courage and hope, to do battle with the bad dream of worry, the nightmare of failure.
What you do is to start at the end, visualizing exactly what you plan to do or be and where. Then holding that dream in mind at all times you go back to the beginning or where you left off, take the next step, take advantage of the things that occur as a result of that step and the previous steps and then accept and rejoice over your accomplishments. Don't be surprised when unexpected benefits arise, for as Shakespeare said "the mightiest space in nature fortune brings to join like likes, and kiss like native things."
Designs are made for unique constructions. Tools get invented to do things there are no tools for. Surfaces are prepared to launch great ideas. Hope becomes gratitude in advance as the dream slowly becomes a reality and life is better.
Then on to the next one. There is always another day to dream.
Dana - The Vagabond
Never give up.
**********************
Monday, June 11, 2012
Polish Up
The gem cannot be polished without friction nor people without trials.
Confucius
***************
Hello Margie
***************
Human life is a totally harmonious, satisfactory, fulfilling experience in which we all live in perfect peace and mutual love. Right? Hardly.
Whenever I hear someone warn me of trials, problems, tough times I want to tense up a bit in fear and dread about having to face something I don't want to face, something that is going to disturb the calm waters of my life. But then I have to stop and reflect that the moment of panic has made me momentarily forget all the problems that are already on my plate and that I have taken for granted. One more test, other than the frustration, will hardly be noticed as it disappears in the crowd. To amend the opening comment, life is a continual test of our intelligence, ingenuity, patience and courage. It's also an opportunity to practice the fine art of staying on the right road.
The mental highway is filled with a myriad of detours and some of them are so attractive they resemble the highway itself. It is easy to be fooled. Down some of those detours are all the dire things that could happen but probably won't. Other detours take you where you don't know enough, you don't have enough information to deal with the problems. Then there are the detours that leave you confused and in doubt about what to do. There is even a side road that runs along next to the highway for a while that is the suggestion that you should feel sorry for yourself considering all the problems you have. Staying on the highway that leads to solution and harmony is tricky business.
My mother, bless her, was a first rate worrier. She worried over things there was no need to worry about. In fact, she was such an accomplished worrier that she eventually convinced me of the righteousness of it and I became a worrier myself. I was a good student.
It took me many years to break myself of the habit. I was a heart palpitating, fingernail biting, floor pacing maniac. Until I learned a great lesson. It's the lesson of the night watchman, the palace guard, the traffic cop. One of our rights, guaranteed by nature, is the right to think what we want to think, the right to choose the thoughts that we let in and the right to bar from the door harmful, discouraging and destructive thoughts. In short we have the right to not worry.
This exercise as border guard is important for other reasons. Thoughts held firmly in mind will produce results. "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me," it says in Job 3:25. Which means get rid of the fear if you don't want the results. And since fear, like everything else, begins in thought it means to blow the whistle, hold up your hand and say "Stop."
Let the trials you have and the solving of them polish you. No need to add extras to the plate.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
Confucius
***************
Hello Margie
***************
Human life is a totally harmonious, satisfactory, fulfilling experience in which we all live in perfect peace and mutual love. Right? Hardly.
Whenever I hear someone warn me of trials, problems, tough times I want to tense up a bit in fear and dread about having to face something I don't want to face, something that is going to disturb the calm waters of my life. But then I have to stop and reflect that the moment of panic has made me momentarily forget all the problems that are already on my plate and that I have taken for granted. One more test, other than the frustration, will hardly be noticed as it disappears in the crowd. To amend the opening comment, life is a continual test of our intelligence, ingenuity, patience and courage. It's also an opportunity to practice the fine art of staying on the right road.
The mental highway is filled with a myriad of detours and some of them are so attractive they resemble the highway itself. It is easy to be fooled. Down some of those detours are all the dire things that could happen but probably won't. Other detours take you where you don't know enough, you don't have enough information to deal with the problems. Then there are the detours that leave you confused and in doubt about what to do. There is even a side road that runs along next to the highway for a while that is the suggestion that you should feel sorry for yourself considering all the problems you have. Staying on the highway that leads to solution and harmony is tricky business.
My mother, bless her, was a first rate worrier. She worried over things there was no need to worry about. In fact, she was such an accomplished worrier that she eventually convinced me of the righteousness of it and I became a worrier myself. I was a good student.
It took me many years to break myself of the habit. I was a heart palpitating, fingernail biting, floor pacing maniac. Until I learned a great lesson. It's the lesson of the night watchman, the palace guard, the traffic cop. One of our rights, guaranteed by nature, is the right to think what we want to think, the right to choose the thoughts that we let in and the right to bar from the door harmful, discouraging and destructive thoughts. In short we have the right to not worry.
This exercise as border guard is important for other reasons. Thoughts held firmly in mind will produce results. "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me," it says in Job 3:25. Which means get rid of the fear if you don't want the results. And since fear, like everything else, begins in thought it means to blow the whistle, hold up your hand and say "Stop."
Let the trials you have and the solving of them polish you. No need to add extras to the plate.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Idols Of Doom
Worry is the darkroom in which negatives can develop.
Unknown
*****************
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them."
My mother was a worrier, and extreme worrier. She was also a controller. She would decide how long my brother could stay out and when he wasn't back when she expected him she would begin to pace the floor and declare out loud that she knew something terrible had happened to him. When he finally did come home, even if it was ten minutes later, she was in such a state of fear and anger that he was not warmly welcomed. And I, who had to listen to her pacing and ranting, was not much better at greeting him. If, heaven forbid, the phone rang during her parade of worry, it would strike a chord of greater fear in her. She would pick it up expecting to hear the dire news. I learned to answer the phone for her. It was usually one of her friends who wanted to chat. Too bad. She had to worry instead.
There were reasons for my dear mother's condition: the sudden tragic loss of her husband at an early age, a subsequent nervous breakdown and continuous financial insecurity and impoverishment. But her imagination was so active that even when there was no danger to any one of us she held on to the pictures of disaster, they became engraved on her thinking and she worshipped them without realizing that's what she was doing.
Visiting the temples of our doubts, fears and failures, burning incense to our worries and letting them bow us down to a negative life is a fruitless activity. Today there are people who dwell in the world of doom, who hold in thought all the things that could go or might go wrong. And some of them are very active in trying to prevent what they have imagined and engraved on their own thinking. There are those who try to convince others of the dire consequences of life, whose thrust of conversation and action is against not for. Goethe called the devil "the spirit of negation."
It would have been possible for my mother to turn her head around and start having trust and faith that her kids were able to take care of themselves and that life wasn't so bleak and tragic.. She never did.
It is possible for the negaters of the world to start having the same faith in the future, working and speaking in a positive way to that future and erasing the engravings of doom from their thoughts. Will they do it?
DB - The Vagabond
********************
WEEKEND CONTEST
One day an ardent fanatical feminist told me I should never refer to a woman as a "lady." No "Ladies and Gentlemen" no "Ladies Room" no "Ladies First" no "Everyday Is Ladies Day With Me"? Well, I'm not an anti-feminist by any means but, nonsense, I say. Here's your contest.
Who are these first ladies?
(Match each of these ladies with the names of their gentlemen friends below.
Do as many as you can before you start to cheat.)
1. Ellen Axson
2. Edith Kermit Cardow
3. Nancy Davis
4. Julia Dent
5. Frances Folsom
6. Hannah Hoes
7. Elizabeth Kartright
8. Lucretia Rudolf
9. Margaret Mackall Smith
10. Claudia Taylor
======================
Grover Cleveland
James Garfield
Ulysses Grant
Lyndon Johnson
James Monroe
Ronald Reagan
Teddy Roosevelt
Zackary Taylor
Martin Van Buren
Woodrow Wilson
Good luck.
DB
*************
Unknown
*****************
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them."
My mother was a worrier, and extreme worrier. She was also a controller. She would decide how long my brother could stay out and when he wasn't back when she expected him she would begin to pace the floor and declare out loud that she knew something terrible had happened to him. When he finally did come home, even if it was ten minutes later, she was in such a state of fear and anger that he was not warmly welcomed. And I, who had to listen to her pacing and ranting, was not much better at greeting him. If, heaven forbid, the phone rang during her parade of worry, it would strike a chord of greater fear in her. She would pick it up expecting to hear the dire news. I learned to answer the phone for her. It was usually one of her friends who wanted to chat. Too bad. She had to worry instead.
There were reasons for my dear mother's condition: the sudden tragic loss of her husband at an early age, a subsequent nervous breakdown and continuous financial insecurity and impoverishment. But her imagination was so active that even when there was no danger to any one of us she held on to the pictures of disaster, they became engraved on her thinking and she worshipped them without realizing that's what she was doing.
Visiting the temples of our doubts, fears and failures, burning incense to our worries and letting them bow us down to a negative life is a fruitless activity. Today there are people who dwell in the world of doom, who hold in thought all the things that could go or might go wrong. And some of them are very active in trying to prevent what they have imagined and engraved on their own thinking. There are those who try to convince others of the dire consequences of life, whose thrust of conversation and action is against not for. Goethe called the devil "the spirit of negation."
It would have been possible for my mother to turn her head around and start having trust and faith that her kids were able to take care of themselves and that life wasn't so bleak and tragic.. She never did.
It is possible for the negaters of the world to start having the same faith in the future, working and speaking in a positive way to that future and erasing the engravings of doom from their thoughts. Will they do it?
DB - The Vagabond
********************
WEEKEND CONTEST
One day an ardent fanatical feminist told me I should never refer to a woman as a "lady." No "Ladies and Gentlemen" no "Ladies Room" no "Ladies First" no "Everyday Is Ladies Day With Me"? Well, I'm not an anti-feminist by any means but, nonsense, I say. Here's your contest.
Who are these first ladies?
(Match each of these ladies with the names of their gentlemen friends below.
Do as many as you can before you start to cheat.)
1. Ellen Axson
2. Edith Kermit Cardow
3. Nancy Davis
4. Julia Dent
5. Frances Folsom
6. Hannah Hoes
7. Elizabeth Kartright
8. Lucretia Rudolf
9. Margaret Mackall Smith
10. Claudia Taylor
======================
Grover Cleveland
James Garfield
Ulysses Grant
Lyndon Johnson
James Monroe
Ronald Reagan
Teddy Roosevelt
Zackary Taylor
Martin Van Buren
Woodrow Wilson
Good luck.
DB
*************
Friday, November 21, 2008
Healthy Handling 11/21/08
The art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of energy in our great men.
Captain J. A. Hadfield
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If you want to be a worrier there a great many things to worry about If you don't have enough write me, I'll send you a list.
Indeed, worrying, fretting, fearing are some of the most energy wasting things the poor human can do who is afflicted by them. To be sure there is a time to worry. But as Tom Ainsley, the horseplayer, says "The time to worry is before you place the bet, not after." Worrying about things over which you have no control is a foolish activity.
Things can go wrong. So what? Worry won't prevent them from happening. But, "the thing I greatly feared has come upon me." We can manufacture trouble for ourselves by fretting and fearing, because if and when it does occur we won't be in the right frame of mind to deal with it.
My mother was a prime worrier. If my brother wasn't home when he was expected, she would immediately start pacing the floor and saying that she knew something terrible must have happened to him. When he finally did arrive, maybe 15 minutes later she would start scolding him for making her worry. If one pointed out to her that she made herself worry, she wouldn't understand it.
If he was going to be very late he would always call, and when the phone rang she would pick it up with a feeling of dread.
Watching her suffer so much from this malady, I tried to grow up as a non-worrier. I don't pass myself off as a "great" man but I can certainly understand what Capt. Hadfield is talking about. It isn't what happens, it's how you deal with it that matters. And you have to be in a calm, restful frame of mind to deal.
As an actor I learned, thanks to my teacher, to be relaxed on the stage. I was at home there. One evening trouble occurred during a performance. There were two similar scenes in the play, one in the first act and one in the second. And, you guessed it, we accidentally skipped into the wrong act. One by one panic began to appear on the faces of the other actors as they gradually realized it. I saw and heard what was happening and was able to make up a short speech that returned us to the proper cue to resume the right scene. It wasn't a brilliant, purple prose speech but it did the job.
There's an event the jazz pianist Herbie Hancock tells about Miles Davis. They were playing a set together and Hancock accidentally played a chord which had nothing to do with the piece or the key they were in. Davis calmly played notes around it that brought it into the piece.
The restful mind is the best.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Captain J. A. Hadfield
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If you want to be a worrier there a great many things to worry about If you don't have enough write me, I'll send you a list.
Indeed, worrying, fretting, fearing are some of the most energy wasting things the poor human can do who is afflicted by them. To be sure there is a time to worry. But as Tom Ainsley, the horseplayer, says "The time to worry is before you place the bet, not after." Worrying about things over which you have no control is a foolish activity.
Things can go wrong. So what? Worry won't prevent them from happening. But, "the thing I greatly feared has come upon me." We can manufacture trouble for ourselves by fretting and fearing, because if and when it does occur we won't be in the right frame of mind to deal with it.
My mother was a prime worrier. If my brother wasn't home when he was expected, she would immediately start pacing the floor and saying that she knew something terrible must have happened to him. When he finally did arrive, maybe 15 minutes later she would start scolding him for making her worry. If one pointed out to her that she made herself worry, she wouldn't understand it.
If he was going to be very late he would always call, and when the phone rang she would pick it up with a feeling of dread.
Watching her suffer so much from this malady, I tried to grow up as a non-worrier. I don't pass myself off as a "great" man but I can certainly understand what Capt. Hadfield is talking about. It isn't what happens, it's how you deal with it that matters. And you have to be in a calm, restful frame of mind to deal.
As an actor I learned, thanks to my teacher, to be relaxed on the stage. I was at home there. One evening trouble occurred during a performance. There were two similar scenes in the play, one in the first act and one in the second. And, you guessed it, we accidentally skipped into the wrong act. One by one panic began to appear on the faces of the other actors as they gradually realized it. I saw and heard what was happening and was able to make up a short speech that returned us to the proper cue to resume the right scene. It wasn't a brilliant, purple prose speech but it did the job.
There's an event the jazz pianist Herbie Hancock tells about Miles Davis. They were playing a set together and Hancock accidentally played a chord which had nothing to do with the piece or the key they were in. Davis calmly played notes around it that brought it into the piece.
The restful mind is the best.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
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