Energy of Heart

Do  your birthdays leave you feeling older? Mine don't. I've never felt old. And I usually have to think about it to recall how old I am and how old I'll turn on my birthday. My age just isn't really important to me because I feel young. My last birthday--number 49-- a few months ago showed to me how my perception was really changing for the better. But first, a little bit about the last year. Summer 2020 I worked several weeks on building a nice shed in our back yard. It's an 8 ft x 12 ft shed that I designed. The kids did help and it was great to get their help, and to teach them, however I mostly ended up building the shed myself. It was mostly built after a month of getting up early and spending a couple hours on it before going in to work later in the morning, The COVID scare made it so work was slow anyway. For the first few weeks I was regularly sore from the work my body wasn't accustomed to. But after a few weeks I felt stronger, and better. My eating h...

I posted the following on another blog and thought it'd be applicable here as well. The title doesn't state "pride is scarce". Pride is certainly not scarce. It's all too common among all categories, classes, and types of people. From the extremely rich to the poorer-than-dirt, pride infiltrates, infects, and infests many of the human race. Pride is evident is all races, ethnicities, religions, movements, nationalities, genders, ages, groups, etc. Is pride ever good? There's a single verse in the Book of Mormon that implies there must be some level of pride that is acceptable. It's during a discourse Nephi gives to a multitude who had gathered outside his garden tower. He rebukes them for their pride, their desire to "get gain" and "be praised of men", and for setting their hearts on the riches and vain things of the world. He calls them to repentance and to return to God. And he warns them of impending destruction because they had unit...

 As a man (woman, child, or anyone) thinketh, so is he. Or as it's written in the King James version of the Old Testament: "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he" Proverbs 23:7 The interesting thing about this verse is that it doesn't say think in our mind. It's thinking in our hearts.  When most people consider "thought" it's the conscious thought that is brought to mind. It's what we are intentional thinking about, what we are aware of. What's not considered is that many of our thoughts are reactions to how we feel. When something happens we respond "naturally" or, more correctly, subconsciously--how we've been conditioned or programmed to act/react--and those responses bring thoughts to our conscious. This is where awareness, or mindfulness , comes into play. We really need to be aware of how we feel and the thoughts that result from those feelings. Without this mindfulness it'll be extremely difficult to make changes...

 I was listening to Bob Proctor this morning--he's one of several people in self improvement whom I listen to--and he shared something that he learned from Earl Nightingale. Bob asked Earl how it was that he had mastered time management so well. Earl surprised Bob by saying he didn't manage time. He said you can't manage time. You can only manage activities. Wow! Talk about a change in a mindset. How often have you heard someone talk about time management?  I've even attended classes that were supposed to help one better manage time. The internal programming that has been set in the mind of most people is that we need to someone manage our time better to get more done. That's the paradigm. The belief set, that we can, somehow, manage our time. The problem is time cannot be managed. Everyone has the same amount of time in every day. When you can manage something, you can change it. It can be adapted, improved. It can be made better or worse. Yes, we can be more effec...

 When I was growing up as a teenage I was active in my scout troop. One of the skills that I learned (which has since become rusty) was compass navigation. Even on its own a compass is extraordinarily useful for helping you stay on course. Combine the compass with a topographical map and you could traverse an area. Then I started hearing about an awesome new technology that used satellites to identify your position on earth. Called the Global Positioning System (GPS) it was a quantum leap from the map and compass.  Initially it wasn't very precise as the military had it locked down, but over the years it's precision narrowed down to identify your position to within several feet, and then down to your exact location. I was taking flight lessons during several of those years, first in a single-engine airplane and a few years later in helicopters. The advance in technology was immense and in that time GPS went from being used solely as position awareness to being able to use if f...

 I'm looking forward to some future posts. Over the last several months I've added a few new habits and I'm working on how to add some additional ones. That's what I've been studying and learning about: how to add good habits and eliminate bad ones. This has been a challenge for me. I'm learning lots of great self-improvement and personal development information, and getting great ideas. Some of these I've already been doing or they need minimal adjustment. Others I want to incorporate into my life. And, I start but then the follow through drops out. So, how do I make those changes in my life? I determined that the key is to identify and incorporate habits that will lead to greater success. The question is how to do it in a way that those habits--ones that I need and others that I want--truly become a part of my life. Research has shown that 40-50% of our daily life is habitual behavior. Here's the kicker. Our daily life operates around habits at a much ...

 It's so easy to get stuck in the motion of getting ready to act. All the various things that we think we need to do before we actually take action. We need to get real and honest with ourselves. All of the "getting prepared" tasks and trying to make sure we have all of our ducks in a row before we pull the trigger are just stalling tactics. In our mind we think we're strategically planning how we're going to make the move. We're analyzing. We're learning. We take more classes. We read more books. We do what we can and then go back to improve some of those things that we may have missed. All the while we aren't making any headway towards our dream. Instead of our life taking a quantum leap it's a quantum dud. All of the preparing and getting ready tasks, all of the strategizing and trying to figure out tactical specifics before we act are just a way that our beliefs systems, our mindset, and paradigms are undermining our desires. It's done with...