3 Gratitudes Is a Good Start, and It's Puny

I'd never read manga (Japanese comic books) before. My nephew recently recommended two of them to me: I Had That Same Dream Again and I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. Both of them got me crying, and the second one had me sobbing at one point.

They both put me in touch with the preciousness of life and every - single - moment - we - have (including the challenging and painful ones).

Have you heard of gratitude journaling? Getting present to 1-to-3 things you're grateful for each day. 

It's a powerful practice. And 3 a day is puny.

A couple weeks ago I went to the eye doctor and got my pupils dilated (as well as some really cool sunglasses 😎). My vision got so blurry! 

One of my daily self-creation declarations is "I see beauty in everything." And yet, until I had my pupils dilated, I never even thought to thank my eyes for showing me the universe.

That day I began thanking my eyes (and my ears). Thank you for the gift of vision. Thank you for being healthy enough to show me colors and shapes and sites. Thank you for serving me so fully without ever any acknowledgment.

And thank you, God / Creator / Universe / Spirit / Mystery, for the profound gift of eyes and vision.

We're in a universe in which we can create gratitude for everything. 

The question to ask isn't, "What are you grateful for?"

The question to ask is, "What are you willing to be grateful for?"

Gratitude, like Love, is not just a feeling - it's an act of the will. It isn't a noun - it's not something we have. It's a verb, it's something we do or something we be, intentionally. 

Get in the driver's seat with gratitude. Don't wait for the feeling to fall into your lap by circumstance or conditioning.

Create gratitude. Generate gratitude. Be gratitude expressed. 

How? Start with, "Thank you," and then get filling in the blank.

It's a muscle and it's a practice. 

It's an access to experiencing the Divine that is, instead of getting caught up and blinded by our own arrogant judgments and stories of how things should be some other way.

The only thing between each of us and a life with more gratitude and love is our willingness to say, "Thank you."

You don't have to. And I invite you to.

Much Love. ❤️

They All Smell Like Pee!

Our dog, Bear, loves going on walks.

He’s male and he likes to sniff every pole, mailbox, and tree we pass, and pee on half of them himself.

It’s mechanical for him. He sees a pole, he hustles over to it, and he sniffs it.

"Dude! It smells like pee! They all just smell like pee!!"

I’m sure there’s a world for him inside that smell. Details that you and I likely can’t believe he gets from a smell.

Yet, it’s still just another tree that smells like pee.

And it’s got me thinking:

What are the pee trees in our own lives that we simply can’t help sniffing?

The distractions in our lives that keep us from doing our real work? They’re pee trees.

The same petty arguments we have with our spouse, our kids, our colleagues? They’re pee trees too.

The endless stream of judgments about ourself, others, and institutions? Pee trees.

Complaints. Pee trees.

Excuses. Pee trees.

Justifications. Pee trees.

Resigning ourselves. Pee trees.

Being cynical. Pee trees.

Putting our egos - our small self, our false self - first. Pee trees.

For most of us, the pee trees we can’t help sniffing are fundamentally the same old stories we wake up into and go to bed with each night. Stories like:

Life is hard. 

Life is unfair.

People don’t get me.

There’s something wrong.

There’s something wrong with me. 

There’s something wrong with them.

People don’t treat each other kindly anymore. 

I’m not good enough at this. They’re not good enough at that.

I’m too much, they’re too much, and we’re too much.

I’m screwed.

I’m unlucky.

Humanity is doomed.

Evil is prevailing.

The urge to sniff those trees is real. It’s just like our attraction to drama - it’s there and it’s a part of the mechanism of human being.

We’re addicted to sniffing these trees, but we don’t have to sniff them - we don’t have to react from the urge to sniff them. We can allow the urge to be there.

If my dog could just get this: those trees all smell like pee, and if he could just be with and allow the urge to sniff them to be there without reacting from it, he could move beyond smelling each and every tree.

And something else would become possible.

For him and us.

Much love. ❤️

Power and the Quality of Our Lives

19 years ago, I sought coaching for something I was struggling with. The situation was hard, stressful, and anxiety-producing. I couldn't see my way out of it.

The coach asked me a very powerful question: “What are you committed to?”

Nothing came to mind. At least on the surface, I couldn’t tell that I was committed to anything.

“I’m not committed to anything.”

That’s why I had no power.

Some people don’t like the word power. Power in the way I use it doesn’t mean force. It doesn’t mean power over someone or something. It doesn’t mean domination. 

Power, as I use it, is the ability to honor our commitments. Power is aligning all levels of my being - mind, heart, body, spirit, actions, relationships - intentionally, in service of my commitments.

It’s no wonder why I was struggling, stressed, anxious, and exhausted. I had no power because I had no clear commitments and no integrity in honoring the commitments I did have in the background. 

The truth was that I did have commitments - commitments of the spirit. I just wasn’t present to them, aware of them, or intentional about them at all.

I was blowing in the wind. 

When we're not living from our commitments, we're living from our default intentions. 

Intentions are our objectives or purpose. They are the background for all our actions. ALL actions are taken with intentions in the background. ALWAYS. Mostly, we’re oblivious to the intentions guiding our actions. This is living from the default. 

You see, we are always intending something. We’re just not usually conscious of what we’re intending.

We yell at our kids too often. We gossip about our boss and colleagues. We complain about our spouse. We judge others’ behavior and make them wrong.

Here are the default intentions for human beings:

• To be liked

• To look good or avoid looking bad

• To prove we’re better (or worse!) than others

• To be right

• To win this argument

• To dominate or avoid domination

• To make it

They’re how we show up a lot of the time.

Our created intentions, however, align with our commitments, our aspirations, our values - our ‘why.’ Created intentions are what people mean by "live intentionally."

Created intentions are our access to fulfilling our commitments.

The quality of our lives can never be any better than the intentions we’re living from.

Think of the different areas of your life: maybe work, home, marriage, children, religion, spirituality, hobbies, health, fitness, diet, etc.  In each of these areas, you have commitments. Sometimes the commitments aren’t obvious even to you, but you can find them if you look.

When our actions are guided by created intentions, we're honoring our commitments.

So how do we live more powerfully in our lives? By living from our created intentions instead of our default intentions.

First, get clear on what you’re committed to. Then, be intentional in how you show up in honor of these commitments.

That’s one definition of integrity, by the way: aligning our intentions with our commitments.

Much love. 🙏❤️