April 13, 2008

• Most awesome

  I found this posted on my Sparkpeople site in one of my groups. All  I can say is Wow! The cool thing is...I have already begun and didn't even realize it! *LOL*
  

  The site this came from is:http://www.hackyourself.org/
  

  
  

  You can be happy. You can live the life you want
  to live. You can become the person you want to be.

  This is what I've figured out so far.

  

  Stop assigning blame. This is the first step. Stop assigning
  blame and leave the past behind you.

  You know whose fault it is that your life isn't perfect. Your
  boss. Your teachers. Your ex-lovers. The ones who hurt you,
  the ones who abused you, the ones who left you bleeding. Or
  even yourself. You know whose fault it is — you've been
  telling yourself your whole life. Knowing whose fault it is
  that your life sucks is an excellent way to absolve yourself
  of any reponsibility for taking your life into your own hands.

  Forget about it. Let it go. The past isn't real. “That was
  in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.” If we're
  not talking about something that is real and present and in
  your life right now, then it doesn't matter. Nothing can
  be done about it. If nothing can be done about it, then don't
  spend your energy dwelling on it — you have other things to do.

  I may sound cruel, I may sound simplistic, I may sound like I'm
  saying you should just “get over it,” by suggesting that you
  should let go of your past. I'm sorry for that. But life won't
  hold still and wait for you to lick your wounds. The race is
  still being run. Get up and keep moving. You can't do anything
  about yesterday.

  You can do something about tomorrow. And about the next day.
  Focus your energies there.

  

  “I don't have time to write.” “I can't dance.” “I can't talk to
  new people.” “I'm not attractive.”

  I hear this all the time. I always hear the people around me
  sabotaging themselves, drawing lines and borders and boxes
  around themselves.

  To which I say, make the time; dance; just talk to people;
  be attractive!

  Yes, again, it's simplistic of me to say that. But it's simplistic
  of you to so easily say what you cannot do!

  We're excellent pattern-matchers. That's what the human mind
  does — it's a pattern-matching engine. So we look at ourselves,
  at our history, at our behaviors, and we draw straight lines
  between the points — we assume that just because we've done
  things a certain way in the past, we'll always do them that
  way in the future. If we've failed before, we'll always fail.

  Screw that.

  Surprise yourself. No — amaze yourself.

  You don't have to keep doing the things you hate.
  Why go home and beat yourself up for, say, not going
  over and saying a few words to someone you find really
  attractive? Can any damage they could do to you by
  rejecting you possibly be any worse than the damage
  you're going to do to yourself for missing the chance?

  

  Find the demon.

  Do you know what I'm talking about? It's the little voice
  in the back of your head that's always whispering,
  “You can't.” You know the demon. You may think you
  hate the demon, but you don't. You love it. You let
  it own you. You do everything it says. Everytime there's
  something you want, you consult the demon first, to see
  if it will say, “You can't have that.”

  What you don't realize is that your demon doesn't know anything.
  It's an idiot. It's nothing but a parrot, repeating back to
  you anything negative that it's ever heard, anything that
  makes you hurt, makes you squirm. If a teacher once told
  you “You'll never accomplish anything,” it was listening;
  it hoards words like that and repeats them back to you to
  watch you jump. It doesn't know what it's saying. It
  doesn't care.

  Exorcise yourself.

  You can take me literally or not, as suits you. But do,
  please, the next time you hear that voice in your head,
  imagine it, visualize it, as something physical that
  you can get hold of; tear it out of you, feel its
  fingers weaken and lose their grip on your spine,
  and grind it to dust, to nothing, under your boot heel
  on your way out to dance in the streets.

  You can. You think you can't; but it's telling you
  that. You can.

  

  You don't exist.

  You just think you do.

  We're nothing but the stories we tell ourselves. We know
  in our hearts what kind of people we are, what we're capable
  of, because we've told ourselves what kind of people we
  are. You're a carefully-rehearsed list of weaknesses and
  strengths you've told yourself you have.

  (Self-confidence, for example, is a particularly nebulous
  quality you can easily talk yourself out of having.)

  You owe no allegiance to that self-image if it harms you.
  If you don't like the story your life has become — tell
  yourself a better one.

  Think about the person you want to be and do what that
  person would do. Act the way that person would act.

  Amazingly enough, once you start acting like that person,
  people will start treating you like that person.

  And you'll start to believe it. And then it will be true.

  Welcome to your new self.

  

  You are a product of your environnent.

  Most people realize this — usually, in the form of having
  something else to blame — but they tend to forget one
  important fact:

  Humans are the masters of changing their environment.

  What this means is that if your environment affects you,
  and you can affect your environment, then obviously,
  you can affect yourself.

  • Your environment includes people. Figure out who in your
    life isn't good for you, whose presence tears you down more
    than it builds you up, whose nearness is poison to you — and
    get rid of them. Get them out of your life. I don't care
    if it's your best friend, your boss, your mother, your lover —
    if they are harming you, if they are doing nothing but
    reinforce everything bad you tell yourself about yourself,
    then your relationship with them needs to radically alter
    or it needs to end.

  • Your environment includes goals. Don't set yourself
    pie-in-the-sky impossible goals and then beat yourself up
    over not achieving them — set yourself goals that will
    be good for you, not a source of pain. Attainable goals.
    Set them and meet them. Don't tell yourself you can't —
    that's the old story, that story you used to tell yourself
    about what a poor sad victim you were and how you could
    never change anything about your life. You can meet your
    goals. This is the new story.

    Trying to clean your house? Good for you — a clean house
    can really affect your state of mind for the better. But
    don't say “Today I'm going to clean the entire house from
    top to bottom,” when you don't have the time and energy
    to — don't set yourself up for failure; don't feed the
    demon. Just say, “Today I'm going to wash all the dishes
    and clean off the kitchen counter.” And do it.

    Don't tell yourself, “This month I'm going to write that
    novel.” Tell yourself, “Today I'm going to write five
    pages.” And do it. Take your dreams and break them
    down into small pieces and you'll have them in your hands
    before you know it.

    And you'll find, as you start meeting your goals, that
    you like it. That it feels good, makes you feel confident
    and capable. You'll develop a hunger for it.

  • Your environment includes yourself — your physical presence.
    Do what you know you need to do — treat yourself better.
    Sleep, eat right, exercise. This doesn't mean you have to
    stop staying out late at night now and then, it doesn't mean
    you can't have a candy bar, it doesn't mean you have to stop
    sitting around watching television — it just means start
    doing the things that are good for you as well as the
    things that are bad for you, every so often. It's
    not an all-or-nothing proposition; you don't have to
    devote your life to being a health nut. Just try eating
    more fruits and vegetables, the occasional vegetarian meal;
    go for walks in the park on the weekends. You'll feel better
    and be more alert if you're a little healthier, and once
    you start feeling a little better, you'll start wanting
    the things that make you feel better. You'll see.

  • Your environment includes your appearance. If you're
    not happy with yourself, if you're angry with the person
    in the mirror, it can honestly help to literally change
    who you see when you look in the mirror. Try a different
    hairstyle, new glasses, new jewelry, new clothes. It
    doesn't have to be expensive — there's a whole universe
    full of possible You's waiting to be found in thrift
    stores, if need be. If you're deciding to become the
    person you want to be, then decide what that person
    is going to look like. Dress the part. It's not
    shallow, it's not about vanity, it's about
    self-transformation — even the most primitive
    tribes understand the value of costumes and masks
    for ritual, for change, for becoming someone else.

  You are not an object. You are a system. Like with
  any system, if you change the inputs — change what
  goes into it — you'll change what comes out.

  

  Despite everything I've just said:

  Self-examination can be paralysis.

  Don't “remember to breathe” — just breathe. It's a
  Tao thing.

  It's the paradox at the center of all this — remember that,
  “Am I living up to being the person I want to be?”, is not
  a question the person you want to be would ask.

  If I can leave you with just one thought, it's this:

  Stop wasting your time fretting over not being happy.

  Just be happy.

  

  Michael Montoure is a writer and a web developer living in the Pacific Northwest.

  • 3:14 pm
  • 1 Comment