Simplify Your Life

All that suffering and huffing and puffing was for an extra four minutes. Many of us spend too much effort and don't get the desired results, or we feel like the outcome was not worth the effort, as Derek did. You have to learn what level of expertise is needed to hit your goals. Donella Meadows has three things that are considered to be the most important leverage in a system. The first is changing the rules. This can help define what is possible within the system. What rules can you change in your system called life? Your habits, what you invest energy and time in, which areas of your life you focus on. The second is building in self-organization. In which of the following two situations are you able to give more to others: If you are restrained by emotional cramp? If you are loose and opened up? I am sure that most of you understood this demonstration immediately. If you want to give more, to your friends, your spouse, your children, parents, family, and society - let go of that confinement. Loosen up and you will be able to give more. That is what is meant by emanating positive energy. And that is what you can do, you can achieve it. Accept death and your soul will be liberated! You will reach the state of Universal Freedom, Universal Peace, Universal Harmony. Even higher exponents of Hindu philosophy have not been able to answer that question.

I shot a questioning look at him and began, `Are you a believer in the shunya (nothingness) theory? Certain that he was falling into my trap, I moved a little closer to him and asserted, `You believe that nothing exists. So you don't exist. I don't exist. Nothing exists. Therefore, you presume that this question also doesn't exist. He smiled back. I had expected a strong reaction to my statement. Instead of the predicted negativity, his smile conveyed a different message. While this of course is the ideal, as you know, it is not the current reality for many of our students. So, what can schools do to provide attitudes and practices that build pathways to feeling safe, and to trauma-proof our students whether or not they had a secure start in life? Is this even possible? After research, study, and working with many children, teens, and adults, I find the answer is yes. To use an old quote popularized by adults in recovery from physical abuse and sexual molestation, It's never too late to have a happy childhood. This article clearly lays out a model giving educators a roadmap to support resilience. The roadmap includes help and hope for the full range of students (teachers, too). This includes those dealing with stress overload or a single terrifying incident, and those suffering complex trauma symptoms from the damaging effects of frightening events on a developing infant's or child's growing nervous system and brain. Even when central and peripheral nervous system growth has been compromised early on, it is still possible (and, I believe, mandatory) to provide healthy stimulation to exercise and strengthen the neuronal networks necessary for resiliency, balance, and internal feelings of safety. Distinguishing between Simple Trauma and Complex Developmental Trauma When you continue to do what it takes to make things work, as time passes, you will notice that all of those weeks have now turned into years.

Happiness in the relationship is something you have control over. Simply by choosing to communicate and be honest with your partner, this takes away many problems that exist for many. Taking the time to be mindful of what it really takes to be happy in a relationship, is a major key, along with controlling your own behavior. Nurture Your Loving Relationships Being blessed enough to make it to the final stages of life, it is not something that everyone gets to experience, so you want to make sure that you have people around who you love, trust and care for to spend your last days with. At this point in life, money in your bank, the career you held down, or anything else that you may have accomplished, will not matter to you at all, but having love and company will. Those who have been there to love you, fill your heart with joy, and making sure that you feel secure, safe, and satisfied, are what is important. As we go through our life, trying to accomplish goals and fulfill our dreams, we get pretty busy, which sometimes causes us to lose important time with those who we love. This can also result in us actually losing a few very important relationships because we are so focused on ourselves and our goals, we must be mindful and remember to find that balance. It could be a fictional tale or a means of informing others about true events, but either way, several parts of your brain must work together to process these messages. You must use your sense of sight to collect the information, and then you have to create a mental picture of what is going on. When you are reading, take your time and challenge yourself to make the image you create very vivid. Let's say you are reading about a young girl who lives on a farm and is going out to feed the chickens. Try to imagine what the girl looks like, what color her hair is, and other details until you have imagined a person's face. Picture her walking out the front door of her house and imagine the layout of the place. Think about whether it is a big or small farm. Imagine the chickens running to get their share of feed. This is how reading can keep your mind sharp. In the first article, I mentioned the possibility of a person not having yet discovered their optimum learning style. She wants to help you find an exorcist, but they're pretty expensive.

You learn that you were not accepted to the college you wanted to get into, or weren't hired for the job you just interviewed for and really wanted. Your mom tells you she voted for a different presidential candidate than you did. You get diagnosed with cancer, and the doctors think you have less than six months to live. Your favorite television show gets unexpectedly canceled. Your childhood friend who never went to school or worked a day in his life wins several million dollars in the lottery. You sense something off in an old, dusty house and hear a voice that sounds like a scream, but you're the only person there. Your horoscope tells you that something bad might happen soon, and the next day your car gets a flat tire and you almost crash. Your friends who you considered to be the perfect happy couple are getting divorced. You find out the man you thought was your father isn't your biological father. Or did he start with a lil' Mary Jane and then life became this unbelievable unicorn of a monster that he could no longer ride solo, so he invited hardcore drugs to join him on the journey? What was it? Do I even care? I've never even asked my dad for his truth. And in real life, I probably won't. I'm not sure that his truth matters much when I think of my journey and what it means. But it is our biggest family secret--that I know of--and I'm pretty sure I just violated family code by telling you. Oh well! But this part of my world was crucial to dissect in order to understand my grieving process. As a child, I consciously denied my feelings about my dad's addiction. This means designing your system in a way that it will improve naturally over time.

These can be self-made constraints and checkpoints--for example, setting your alarm clock for two p. It can also be deliberately not buying sugar or chocolate when you are on a diet, packing away your videogames into the attic, and so on. Finally, the third important leverage is improving the information flow. We can reflect more accurately on our progress if we introduce objective and accurate measuring tools like feedback loops. They are loops because they are inspecting information as a circulation, and not in a linear nature. The feedback itself is a tool of information delivery--it informs how a system is doing relative to the goal of the system. For example, if you are constantly arguing with your partner about nonsense, you might be in a reinforcing negative cycle. You need to be aware of this negative loop you are in to be able to talk about it and break out of it. What you'll want to do is minimize delays between measurement and improvement. You will be able to open up and your nature, your Universal Loving Heart, will start to emanate LOVE. People who live in inner harmony with themselves rarely get sick, but if we live in a confined state we will be exposed to illness. In many languages we find teaching in the words themselves. Here, I will take an example from the Hungarian language because I think it's magnificent. The word they use for health, or being healthy is EGESZSEG, but at the same time it has the meaning of being in oneness, or being whole, or being complete. What it tells us is that we are healthy when we are as one, when we are whole, when our body and mind are together. We lose oneness when our mind wanders to the past: If only I had done that differently! If only I had listened to her! I should have taken another path! Or to the future: I will be happy when this is fulfilled, when I have a higher salary or a better car. He touched my left shoulder lightly and said, his voice clear and kind, `Bhai, have you ever had a dream?