If You Don't Know Your Purpose, Discover It, NOW!

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For today, I'd like to share an excerpt from David Deida's book, The Way of The Superior Man. Sure, it hits off as a collection of chapters swimming in testosterone, but I am quite sure that having a clear purpose in life is bound to make every morning easier to wake up to. I do have to say, that every time I read the book, it feels like that old Kung Fu dude in Kill Bill is giving a lecture to his student( I swear, even the Chinese accent seem to be vibrating off the sentences in my head right now). Anyway, the drive home message here can be useful for everybody. Here it is. Enjoy! :-)

If You Don't Know Your Purpose, Discover It, Now

The core of your life is your purpose. Everything in your life, from your diet to your career, must be aligned with your purpose if you are to act with coherence and integrity in the world. If you know your purpose, your deepest desire, then the secret of success is to discipline your life so that you support your deepest purpose and minimize distractions and detours.

But if you don't know your deepest desire, then you can't align your life to it. Everything in your life is dissociated from your core. You go to work, but since it's not connected to your deepest purpose, it is just a job, a way to earn money. You go through your daily round with your family and friends, but each moment is just another in a long string of moments, going nowhere, not inherently profound.

Disconnected from your core, you feel weak. This empty feeling will undermine not only your "erection" in the world, but your erection with your woman, too.

However, when you know your true purpose, which is your core desire in life, each moment can become a full expression of your core desire. Every instant of career, every instant of intimacy, is filled with the power of your heart purpose. You are no longer just going through the motions at work and with your woman, but you are living the truth of your life, and giving the gifts of your love, moment by moment. Such a life is complete unto itself in every instant.

The superior man is not seeking for fulfillment through work and woman, because he is already full. For him, work and intimacy are opportunities to give his gifts, and be vanished in the bliss of the giving

Man: God's Most Amazing Creation

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It's Sunday again, and as usual, I bring something spiritual to you from the Holy Scriptures. Never doubt how much God loves you. Enjoy your Sunday! :-)

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!

- Psalm 139:13-17, New Living Translation

On Being Myself To Me

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Whatever your line of work maybe, or from wherever you may be coming from, I hope what you are doing goes according what is right and what can make you happy with yourself. It has been said that the ultimate judge/critic is one's self (or something like that). Living this way is a surefire way to get up happy each day. This piece from Edgar Guest taken from Frank Mihalic's The Next 500 Stories should sum it up:

On Being Myself To Me

I have to live  with myself and so

I want to be fit for myself to know

I want to be able as days go by

Always to look myself in the eye

I don't want to stand with the setting sun

And hate myself for the things I've done

I want to go out with my head erect

I want to deserve all men's respect

But here in the struggle for fame and pelf

I want to be able to like myself

I don't want to look myself and know

That I'm bluster and bluff and empty show

I know what others may never know

I can never fool myself and so,

Whatever happiness, I want to be

Self respecting and conscience free

 

Tribute to a School Dropout

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One day, a partially deaf boy came home from school with a note. It suggested that his parents take him out of school. The note said that the boy was "too stupid to learn."

When the boy's mother read the note, she said, "My son Tom isn't 'too stupid to learn', I'll teach him myself.

When Tom died many years later, the people of North America paid tribute to him by turning off the nation's lights for one full minute.

Thomas Edison had invented not only the light bulb we read by, but also the motion picture we watch and the record player we listen to. He has over 1,000 patents to his credit.

- Brian Cavanaugh taken from The Next 500 Stories

The next time your boss, teacher, parent/s or anyone else tell you that your stupid, think of Thomas Edison and prove them wrong. Have a nice day!

 

Don't Get in A Rut

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Whatever you do, don't get in to a rut. Following the lines of least resistance is a tendency which everybody has to fight against. It is so easy to let things slide, to go on as we have been going. Our mental grooves of laziness in thought and action wear deeper and deeper.

One reason why we tend to travel in ruts is that we like going along with the crowd and be popular with it. We dress alike, we eat alike, we behave alike. The average person has no shield against ridicule. We do almost everything by the same pattern just because  we are afraid of being conspicuous. Many a man and a woman has original ideas, but they are timid about expressing them. They know they run the risk of being commented on, if not actually jeered at. Only  a few have sufficient strength of character to be themselves and let the world go hang , and it is those few who become the leaders of thought, and push civilization along.

-Louis E. Bisch

Ten DIrectives For Young People

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Here's a simple list of directives taken from Gems of Thought that I think will benefit the young and young at heart alike. Sure, some of these have been used so many times but the youth seem to be more hard-headed than ever before. Stubbornness in the right direction is OK, doing your own way just so you can be a rebel isn't.

Ten Directives for Young People

1. Don't let your parents down. They brought you up

2. Stop and think before you drink

3. Ditch dirty thoughts fast, or they will ditch you

4. Show-off driving is juvenile. Don't do it; act your age.

5. Be smart, obey. You'll give orders yourself some day.

6. Choose your friends carefully. You are what they are.

7. Choose a date fit for a mate.

8. Don't go steady until your ready

9. Go to church regularly. God gives you a week; give him back an hour.

10. Live carefully. The soul you save maybe your own.

Handicaps Used

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Genius [or Success] knows no handicap through physical ills. Lord Byron had a club foot. Robert Louis Stevenson and John Keats had tuberculosis. Charles Steinmetz and Alexander Pope were hunchbacks. Admiral Nelson had only one eye. Edgar Allan Poe was a mental case. Charles Darwin was an invalid. Julius Caesar was an epileptic. Thomas Edison and Ludwig Beethoven were deaf. Peter Stuyvesant had a wooden leg. Handicaps build strength and will power - and accomplish things.

The next time you can, observe some ants at work. Place some obstacles in their path. They'll go around them, over them, under them - but never go back.

- after William Barclay

If you feel like being a total loser today, remember the people mentioned above. I'm sure they had bouts with doubts, anxiety and depression during their lives too. Those things, however, did not put them down for long and kept going. Christians often use 2 Corinthian 12:9, which is a good thing to remember. The verse states;

 " . . . My grace is all you need, for my power is greatest when you are weak." I am most happy, then, to be proud of my weaknesses, in order to feel the protection of Christ's power over me"  - Good News Bible

 

Ten Steps to Success in Work

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Since most of us like to keep things trouble-free, here's a useful list of steps on how to be successful in any endeavor in life. Picked up from Gems of Thought, I hope everyone can make this a habit in everything they do in life.

Ten Steps to Success in Work

First: Don't get the idea that you are Atlas, carrying the world on your shoulder. The world would go on even without you. Don't take yourself so seriously.

Second: Tell yourself that you like your work. Then it will become a pleasure, not a drudgery. Perhaps you do not need to change your job. Change yourself, and your work will seem different.

Third: Plan your work- and work your plan. Lack of system produces that, "I'm swamped" feeling.

Fourth: Don't try to do everything at once. That is why time is spread out. Operate on that wise advise advice from the Bible, "This one thing I do".

Fifth: Get a correct mental attitude. Think a job is hard, and you will make it hard. Think it is easy, and it will tend to become so.

Sixth: Become an expert in your work. It is always easier to do a thing right.

Seventh: Practice being relaxed . Easy always does it. Don't press or strain.

Eight: Do not put off until tomorrow what you can do today. It only makes tomorrow's job harder. It piles up on you. Keep your work on schedule.

Ninth: At the start of every day, pray about your work. You will get some of your best ideas that way.

Tenth: Take along your "unseen Partner."  It is surprising the load He will take off you. God is as much at home on offices and shops as in churches. He knows more about your business than you do.

 

On Giving

Hi, It's Sunday again. For today, I'd love to share an excerpt from the book The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. I have taken the part which I consider to be the best description about the subject of giving that I have ever read (without having to go to the emotionsl real life stories of people giving their lives for someone else, that is). I edited some of the text fonts here to give emphasis on those which have impacted me, as well as placing some of my comments.

Then said a rich man, "Speak to us of Giving."

And he answered:

You give but little when you give of your possessions.

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?

And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?

And what is fear of need but need itself? Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable? (That's the problem though, too much dread can fuel the greed of some)

There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all.These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. (Been seeing this all my life, so I do have to agree)

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

  

And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;

They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

Though the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding; (So, so true.)

And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving.

And is there aught you would withhold? All you have shall some day be given; Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving." The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.  

Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy of all else from you.

And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.

And what desert greater shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving? 

And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed? See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving. (It's as if Jesus Himself is making these statements to me)

For in truth it is life that gives unto life - while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.

Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;

For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father.

Never Trust Politicians

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This story by B.A. Botkin should be told to everybody in the world. I have always believed that in the ideal world, there are no politicians, only public servants.

The slave complained that his vote never always helped the big men into political office and it never got him anywhere. He told this story to explain his situation: "I dreamed that I went to heaven. When I got to the pearly gates, Peter says, 'Who goes there?'

"And I says, 'Abraham Jasper'

"Are you on horse or on foot?' says he.

"'I'm on foot', says I.

"Well, you can't get in here' says he. 'No one is allowed in here unless they come on horseback.'

"Since there was nothing to do about it, I started back down to earth. And about halfway down the hill I met my two politician friends. I explained to them that unless they were mounted on horses, they could not get in to heaven.

''They thought for a while and one came up with a suggestion. He says to me, 'Abe, if you got down on all fours like a horse, then the two of us could sit on your back, and all three of us would be able to get to into heaven.'

"So that's what I did, and as I pranced up to the heavenly gate, old Peter yells out, 'Who's there?'

"Two politicians" we shouted back.

"'Are you mounted or are you on foot?', asks Peter.

"'We're both mounted', says one of the politicians.

"'All right', said Peter. 'just hitch you horses outside, gentlemen, and come right in.

''So, I got them both in; and I got left out for my pains", That's Politics!

 

Double Standard

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           A foreign building contractor wanted to give a government official a sports car, in order to help him get a big government job.

         The official objected by saying, "Sir, common decency, my Christian upbringing, the leadership code, and my basic sense of personal honor- all these would never permit me to accept a valuable gift like that. It would amount to bribery and corruption."

        The contractor said, "I quite understand. But suppose we do this: I'll sell you the sports car for ten dollars ($10)."

        The official thought for a moment, then he said, "In that case, I'll take two"

-Quote

You Know Your Over 40 When...

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The following was taken from a book I've had since I had a kid. It's been passed down to me by my dad and now I want to share some of its more humorous contents. The book, entitled The Next 500 Stories, was compiled by Frank Mihalic. This piece is meant to be taken lightly and by no means intended to insult the elderly. Even if your not that old, read on to see if your getting older faster than you should. Don't think too much, laugh at your aches and pains.

Lighten up a little, you old geezer! :-)

AGING

            You know you are over 40...

when everything hurts...

when what doesn't hurt, won't work...

when you feel like the night before, without having been anywhere...

when you get short winded playing checkers..

when your children begin to look middle-aged..

when you join a health club but never go...

when your get-up-and-go has got-up-and-gone...

when you know all the answers and no one asks you anything... (Yup!)

when you read the "25 Years Ago Today" column in the newspaper...

when you stop looking forward to your next birthday...

when you turn off the light for economic and not romantic reasons...

when someone startles you when they call you "Old Timer"...

when you realize that you've lived longer than you will...

when your back goes out more than you do...

when you sink your teeth into a steak and they stay there... :-p

-Quote magazine

 

One Way to Prevent A Quarrel

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Do you have someone in your life who is, pardon the expression, an ass? He/she irritates you to the point that you almost are bound to step into a quarrel. Why not try what the man in this story first before you do anything harsh (I think the title should be one way to prevent a quarrel, but that's how I found the story). That way, every morning you wake up, there's one less ass to deal with.

One Way to Stop A Quarrel

A man living in a small town had a nice backyard garden. But his next-door neighbor kept a flock of chickens who easily found their way through the holes in the fence and helped themselves to his vegetables. The gardener wondered how he can solve his problem and keep the peace in the neighborhood.

Then he hit upon a practical idea. He went to the local grocery store and bought some eggs. That evening,  he took a couple of eggs over to his neighbor and said, "Your chickens are laying eggs in my garden, but I don't want to take what does not belong to me. So, you better take the eggs back".

The next day the owner of the chickens carefully fixed up all the holes in the fence, there never was a quarrel between the neighbors.

- by Friedritch Dietz

 

Sometimes You just Can't Win

This story by Jacob Braude is one way of looking at life: Sometimes, you just can't win.

 

The little boy absolutely refused to eat. So his frantic mother took him to a famous doctor. The expert coaxed the boy with every possible delicacy a boy would like. No luck.

So finally he asked the lad, "What would you like to eat?"

"Worms", calmly answered the boy.

The doctor went along with the idea and sent his nurse out for a plateful of worms. "Here!" he barked at the boy.

"I want them fried" came the answer.

The nurse fried them and came back with the plate.

"I only want one", said the food hater.

The doctor got rid of all but one worm. "Now", he exploded, "eat!"

The boy protested, "You eat half."

The doctor did and then dangled the remaining half in the little fellow's face.The boy burst in to tears.

"What's the matter now?" screamed the doctor.

"You ate my half", wailed the boy.