If you want to bring meaning and passion to your work and relationships, you need strong values - but are your values healthy or harmful? Are they rooted in a desire to improve the world, or are they based on ignorance, fear, and greed?
The Odd Couple
A few weeks ago U.S. President George W. Bush invited the Dalai Lama to the White House.
President Bush speaks of peace and goes to war; the Dalai Lama speaks of peace and lives in peace. What do you think each man’s lasting legacy will be? Who’s words carry more power to capture your imagination?
Armed with a strong set of beliefs, we all have the power to manifest peace and happiness or to create immense human suffering. Here are a few photos of famous people you may know. Each of these people were convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were doing the right thing.
In your own life, in your own way, are you creating happiness or are you creating suffering?
Choose your values carefully.
Links to learn more about the people shown in this article:
The 14th Dalai Lama - Tenzin Gyatso
U.S. President George W. Bush
Mother Theresa
Adolf Hitler
Martin Luther King Jr.
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln
Joseph Stalin
Mahatma Gandhi
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Tags: Goals, Ideals, and Life's Purpose
Saintly patience doesn’t happen overnight - it’s like a muscle and needs to be exercised every day. You don’t just step into the gym and lift 500 pounds on your first day - you patiently work up to it. You build the strength and tolerance to lift 500 pounds over a long period of time by training your body every day. One day, after months or years of training, you are able to lift 500 pounds and everyone will be astounded by your strength. Instead of admiring your strength, they should be admiring the patience that allowed you to train so hard for so long.
Life gives you opportunities every day to exercise your patience, if you recognize them for an opportunity instead of an obstacle. I used to say, “I’d be more patient and calm if everyone else weren’t conspiring against me. The world just keeps throwing obstacles in front of me! Why are people so crazy, slow, dumb, difficult, etc.?” Now I try to look on every delay and every difficult situation as an opportunity to exercise my patience. I simply smile and recognize that the universe is giving me an opportunity to become a better, stronger person. It’s now become a challenge to see just how long I can drive in the city without throwing a fit and cursing out loud (I’m up to four hours now). Bring it on, old people, logging trucks, and red lights; I’m exercising my patience! Pretty soon I won’t be honking my horn and flipping you the bird; how are you going to piss me off then?
Patience Isn’t Inborn - Just Ask a Two Year-Old
I’m not a naturally patient person. In fact, I’ve gone through life continuously moving from one frustrating delay to another. I’m improving my patience by repeating the following phrase whenever I encounter delays and setbacks in my life.
Life’s delays aren’t life’s denials.
Just because you don’t get what you want immediately doesn’t mean you won’t get it eventually. If I’m stuck in a traffic jam and late for an appointment, my plans might not work out according to schedule. Getting angry and upset will do nothing to improve the situation - when I’m angry and impatient, bad things happen.
Develop Universal Patience
The power of water is an example of how patience can be applied to your life with amazing results. One drop of water falling on a stone does nothing but make it wet. But if that same drip is repeated over and over again for thousands of years, water will easily drill a hole right through the middle of the stone. Consider blogging: if you write three, five hundred word articles a week, for one year, you’ll have written an average length fiction novel at the end of that year. Just to give you perspective, J.R.R. Tolkien spent 14 years writing the Lord of the Rings; it’s word count is just over 300,000. If you apply the same blogging example above, you can easily write over 1,092,000 words - enough time to write two epic novels with room to spare!
Write your great novel one blog entry at a time.
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Tags: Self Mastery
