Let the beauty you love…

…be what you think, say and do.

don’t let the struggles of the world take you away from your own beloved beauty. In fact, the beauty you love is who you are. You are the mirror image of what you enjoy in this world. If you love rain, you love the feeling of rain in you. If you love silence, you love the silence in you. If you love nature, you love the nature in you. If you love the ocean, you love the roar and the flow of your own nature.

you are what you love. See your own image in the beauty you love before your eyes. Don’t let what you don’t love become you. Let the beauty you love, be what you think, say and do.

I am the beauty of the rain. And so are you.

 

 

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Does honesty cost and can I afford it?

Growing up, I have been taught that Yes, honesty costs, and No, I can’t afford it.

my cultural training: Someone will surely get hurt! I get shamed. blamed. The honest person gets judged negatively, punished, disowned from their tribe, friends, community, or the place they belong! Honesty is taught to be dangerous, unsafe, unreal, unnecessary, idealistic, not realistic, selfish, impossible, unattainable. Ironically, honesty is something we all want desperately from others but when it comes to ourselves expressing honestly, well…its not for us. We have many reasons we can’t be honest. In some instances, people even believe that keeping information, or not sharing pertinent information gives them more power over the ones who don’t have the information.Therefore, dishonesty sometimes becomes a power tool/weapon to control a situation.

Thinking about all these subliminal messages that I have been taught about honesty, I have learned also about the global shared mental obstacles against honesty anywhere I go. I realize there is no one person responsible for this ridiculously misleading paradigm. It is widespread and it is a global like an infectious disease.

If we want to develop more honesty, we need to learn about empathy and trust. Empathy and trust are the key that opens the door to the locked in honesty. Honesty without empathy and trust costs a great deal, well it does, sorry! That IS the problem! The reason we believe that we cannot possibly afford to be honest is because there is no empathy greeting our honesty. We don’t trust our honesty to be safe. But why wait for the world to give us empathy and safety. Perhaps we need to give ourselves plenty of empathy first and then dare to ask for empathy from others. Perhaps we can entertain this new way of being a bit more each day and spread it one bit at time. Perhaps we also can give empathy to our family, friends, and children and encourage them to express their honesty. To change this insane paradigm we can start changing it in ourselves.

Honestly nothing else is worth your time or mine.

 

Rediscover the lost art of listening

person 1 : “What makes you think that I am not listening. Do you want me to repeat what I heard”?

person 2: “Not really. I KNOW you are not listening even if you repeat what I said”!

person 1: “I give up”!

Real listening leaves a sense of being heard!  Real listening involves knowing what is important for the speaker at that moment.  A listener listens for the feelings and needs and thoughts expressed without any interference of any kind. Unless invited by the speaker.

When you listen; Are you really listening to the other person or are you immediately directing the conversation back to yourself to tell them your opinion, stories, feelings and needs?

Are  you really listening or are you judging what the other person as good idea/bad idea?

Are you really listening or are you jumping in to fix, analyze, philosophize, psychologize, spiritualize, or bull-shitifize what you are hearing?

Are you really listening to the other person without inserting yourself into what is said?

For most people, the art of listening is a lost art. Let’s face it. It is true!

YET, the need to being heard is the secret to the continuation of any relationship.

Try it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presence

In the present moment, we recognize transient feelings and needs as valid and real. There is nothing to be ashamed of or try to conceal! If our needs are met we feel happy. If our needs are not met, we feel unhappy. There is nothing to fight about or suffer about. Accepting the presence of our feelings and needs are the first step. Honesty is about being present with ourselves first and those who love us are able to be present with us and validate our feelings and needs. To love is to recognize the essence of our own humanity and everyone else’s humanity no matter how young or old or foreign they are. We all share the same need to be present with each other. Recognizing the presence of others is very joyful. Looking in someone’s eyes and recognizing them as as a miraculous living being (just like ourselves) is the essence of being happy.

Your cultural language impacts the way you think and live

When we study the impact of our cultural language (Farsi or English, French or German, Arabic, Japanese, etc.), we clearly see the positive and the negative impact of language on the way we think and relate to self and others. My fascination and focus is primarily on this topic because of the enormity of its impact on individuals, humanity and the state of the world!

Lera Boroditsky, a stanford psychology professor and an expert in linguistic cultural connections, notes that in English, we’ll often say that someone broke a vase even if it was an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers tend to say that the vase broke itself. Boroditsky describes a study by her student Caitlin Fausey in which English speakers were much more likely to remember who accidentally popped balloons, broke eggs, or spilled drinks in a video than Spanish or Japanese speakers. (Guilt alert!) Not only that, but there’s a correlation between a focus on agents in English and our criminal-justice bent toward punishing transgressors rather than restituting victims, Boroditsky argues.

The impact of language and thought is much greater than we have ever imagined! Language and thought are in fact revolutionary tools of humanity. The funnest part of this is an direct experience that with guided practice we all can change our language and thought and experience a drastic positive impact on quality of day to day life.

L.O.V.E.

Q. Do you love me babe?

A. When? Now? hmmm…Yes, I love you right now.

Q. What do you mean right now! How about other times?

A. Not always! Not when I don’t Listen, or I am too busy to Observe you with my non judgmental  eyes, or when I don’t Validate your feelings and needs, and times when I can’t Empathize with you.

Q. Oh yeah! you are right! You don’t always LOVE me. Why not!!!

A. Because well I am a human my love… I sometimes don’t L.O.V.E, but I have always come back to you because I love to L.O.V.E, you. And when I do, it feels damn good!

Awww…..Thanks babe.

The end.

 

 

 

Mirror

If we consider for a moment that the state of the world is a mirror reflection of human mind, we can clearly see that there is a mismatch between what we want the world to look like and what the human mind looks like.

We have been educated for thousands of years to think and speak and act in ways that creates divisions between us (and them)!

All human beings deeply desire connection, beauty, flow, gentleness, peace, and harmony, collaboration, creativity, growth, understanding, and coherence in the world. We all do.

Yet, in our own mind, we struggle to have the skills to create them even for ourselves. We continue to think, speak and do the same things expecting a different outcome.

If we were to have a better world, doesn’t it make perfect logical and intuitive sense to change the internal landscape of our own mind, first and foremost?

You may say I am a dreamer…. but I am not. I am also a believer in the power of human mind and that a different kind of thinking, speaking and acting indeed does make a big impact inside and all around us. We change. The world changes with us.

One mind at a time.

Welcome to my blog

What is the overriding emotional spice of your mind right this minute?
Is it positive or negative?
Moody?
On edge?
Socially isolated?
Or are you motivated?
Playful?
Creative?
Connected and engaged?

No matter what your emotional spice might be, BEING GRATEFUL is a delicious spice to the soup of internal emotional landscape. This morning at dawn, the east sky was astonishing! I felt so grateful for my ability to have my vision to see the beauty before my eyes.

How extraordinary!

Ted Talk on Vulnerability: Brene Brown