past, present, future

"What we already know is in the past. What we have yet to discover is the future. Always make your questions bigger than your answers, and you’ll keep drawing yourself into a bigger future with new possibilities."

Live Authentically

"The truth that makes men free is for the most part
the truth which men prefer not to hear."

Death and taxes are not the only guarantees in life: Truth counts as well. Deny the truth in any area of your life, and you will soon discover that life is a game of undesirable consequences.

True honesty, self-respect, trust, authenticity and character are built on truth not on perceptions.

The acceptance of truth is a moral obligation, not an option. The reason is both simple and profound; lies destroy progress, compromise character, undermine reputations, and ruin relationships with others and ourselves.

The Truth is a blunt instrument. Truth is what it is - the truth! Your health, wealth, relationships, and peace of mind are what they are. You choose your behavior, and you chose the consequences of that behavior-for better or worse.

If you’re not happy with your current results or consequences in your life right now, than you have only ONE choice to make, choose better behavior.

You either get the message in that last paragraph, or you don’t. Behavior never lies, so be the one who gets the message. Either change your behavior, or pay the consequences of your own ignorance.

Live Authentically. To live authentically is to live transparently. People who consistently win have no room in their lives for denial, fantasy or fiction.

They are self-critical rather than self-deluding, and they hold themselves to high but realistic standards. They deal with the truth, since they recognize that nothing else will make their goals obtainable. 

Every decision about your life must be based on truth, as that is the gateway to authenticity.

Confront truth and reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. If you are committed to making 2008 the best year of your life, you have no choice but to see the world in the purest, most transparent way possible or you can’t make decisions on a rational basis.

What are you pretending not to know? What truth are you hiding from? What part of your reality do you find undesirable? Denial makes us do this.

Refusing to see or acknowledge what is right in front of us - truth, is a way of coping but in the end you only survive, you do not thrive.

I want you to soar in 2008, I want you to reach each goal you set. However, in order to do that you must accept this critical reality:

You must have a plan, and you must choose a new strategy. There is NO OTHER WAY!

Jealousy

What is jealousy? Why does it hurt so much???

Here’s an article i would like to share with you all…

Jealousy is comparison. And we have been taught to compare, we have been conditioned to compare, always compare. Somebody else has a better house, somebody else has a more beautiful body, somebody else has more money, somebody else has a more charismatic personality. Compare, go on comparing yourself with everybody else you pass by, and great jealousy will be the outcome; it is the by-product of the conditioning for comparison.

Otherwise, if you drop comparing, jealousy disappears. Then you simply know you are you, and you are nobody else, and there is no need. It is good that you don’t compare yourself with trees, otherwise you will start feeling very jealous: why are you not green? And why has God been so hard on you — and no flowers? It is better that you don’t compare with birds, with rivers, with mountains; otherwise you will suffer. You only compare with human beings, because you have been conditioned to compare only with human beings; you don’t compare with peacocks and with parrots. Otherwise, your jealousy would be more and more: you would be so burdened by jealousy that you would not be able to live at all.

Comparison is a very foolish attitude, because each person is unique and incomparable. Once this understanding settles in you, jealousy disappears. Each is unique and incomparable. You are just yourself: nobody has ever been like you, and nobody will ever be like you. And you need not be like anybody else, either.

God creates only originals; he does not believe in carbon copies.

A bunch of chickens were in the yard when a football flew over the fence and landed in their midst. A rooster waddled over, studied it, then said, "I’m not complaining, girls, but look at the work they are turning out next door."

Next door great things are happening: the grass is greener, the roses are rosier. Everybody seems to be so happy — except yourself. You are continuously comparing. And the same is the case with the others, they are comparing too. Maybe they think the grass in your lawn is greener — it always looks greener from the distance — that you have a more beautiful wife…. You are tired, you cannot believe why you allowed yourself to be trapped by this woman, you don’t know how to get rid of her — and the neighbor may be jealous of you, that you have such a beautiful wife! And you may be jealous of him….

Everybody is jealous of everybody else. And out of jealousy we create such hell, and out of jealousy we become very mean.

An elderly farmer was moodily regarding the ravages of the flood. "Hiram!" yelled a neighbor, "your pigs were all washed down the creek." "How about Thompson’s pigs?" asked the farmer. "They’re gone too." "And Larsen’s?" "Yes." "Humph!" ejaculated the farmer, cheering up. "It ain’t as bad as I thought."

If everybody is in misery, it feels good; if everybody is losing, it feels good. If everybody is happy and succeeding, it tastes very bitter.

But why does the idea of the other enter in your head in the first place? Again let me remind you: because you have not allowed your own juices to flow; you have not allowed your own blissfulness to grow, you have not allowed your own being to bloom. Hence you feel empty inside, and you look at each and everybody’s outside because only the outside can be seen.

You know your inside, and you know the others’ outside: that creates jealousy. They know your outside, and they know their inside: that creates jealousy. Nobody else knows your inside. There you know you are nothing, worthless. And the others on the outside look so smiling. Their smiles may be phony, but how can you know that they are phony? Maybe their hearts are also smiling. You know your smile is phony, because your heart is not smiling at all, it may be crying and weeping.

You know your interiority, and only you know it, nobody else. And you know everybody’s exterior, and their exterior people have made beautiful. Exteriors are showpieces and they are very deceptive.

There is an ancient story:

A man was very much burdened by his suffering. He used to pray every day to God, "Why me? Everybody seems to be so happy, why am only I in such suffering?" One day, out of great desperation, he prayed to God, "You can give me anybody else’s suffering and I am ready to accept it. But take mine, I cannot bear it any more."

That night he had a beautiful dream — beautiful and very revealing. He had a dream that night that God appeared in the sky and he said to everybody, "Bring all your sufferings into the temple." Everybody was tired of his suffering — in fact everybody has prayed some time or other, "I am ready to accept anybody else’s suffering, but take mine away; this is too much, it is unbearable."

So everybody gathered his own sufferings into bags, and they reached the temple, and they were looking very happy; the day has come, their prayer has been heard. And this man also rushed to the temple.

And then God said, "Put your bags by the walls." All the bags were put by the walls, and then God declared: "Now you can choose. Anybody can take any bag."

And the most surprising thing was this: that this man who had been praying always, rushed towards his bag before anybody else could choose it! But he was in for a surprise, because everybody rushed to his own bag, and everybody was happy to choose it again. What was the matter? For the first time, everybody had seen others’ miseries, others’ sufferings — their bags were as big, or even bigger!

And the second problem was, one had become accustomed to one’s own sufferings. Now to choose somebody else’s — who knows what kind of sufferings will be inside the bag? Why bother? At least you are familiar with your own sufferings, and you have become accustomed to them, and they are tolerable. For so many years you have tolerated them — why choose the unknown?

And everybody went home happy. Nothing had changed, they were bringing the same suffering back, but everybody was happy and smiling and joyous that he could get his own bag back.

In the morning he prayed to God and he said, "Thank you for the dream; I will never ask again. Whatsoever you have given me is good for me, must be good for me; that’s why you have given it to me."

Because of jealousy you are in constant suffering; you become mean to others. And because of jealousy you start becoming phony, because you start pretending. You start pretending things that you don’t have, you start pretending things which you can’t have, which are not natural to you. You become more and more artificial. Imitating others, competing with others, what else can you do? If somebody has something and you don’t have it, and you don’t have a natural possibility of having it, the only way is to have some cheap substitute for it.

I hear that Jim and Nancy Smith had a great time in Europe this summer. It’s so great when a couple finally gets a chance to really live it up. They went everywhere and did everything. Paris, Rome… you name it, they saw it and they did it. But it was so embarrassing coming back home and going through customs. You know how custom officers pry into all your personal belongings. They opened up a bag and took out three wigs, silk underwear, perfume, hair coloring…really embarrassing. And that was just Jim’s bag!

Just look inside your bag and you will find so many artificial, phony, pseudo things — for what? Why can’t you be natural and spontaneous? — because of jealousy.

The jealous man lives in hell. Drop comparing and jealousy disappears, meanness disappears, phoniness disappears. But you can drop it only if you start growing your inner treasures; there is no other way.

Grow up, become a more and more authentic individual. Love yourself and respect yourself the way God has made you, and then immediately the doors of heaven open for you. They were always open, you had simply not looked at them.

success leaves clues

The old cliché "Success leaves clues" is possibly the most
ignored pathway to achievement I know of.

Why?

In addition to not wanting to look unknowledgeable, I
think, a big reason is because getting advice and answers
often either costs money, which people don’t want to
invest, or time, which even fewer want to invest.

I say invest because whenever you "spend" time or money on
learning, you’ve given yourself the chance to grow and
become better now and in the future at whatever you
invested your time or money in.  And if you are better at
something as a result of your "spending" then you’ve made a
wise "investment."

The average person jumps head first into most situations
without knowing a thing about what they’re doing.

I see it every day.  Everywhere.  In all settings.
Obvious solutions to problems are just ignored.

If you want to reach an important goal in your life, if
you want to beat your competitors, if you want to have
great relationships…
If you want to excel at everything you do.

…Then you absolutely MUST get direction from someone
who’s been there before, wherever "there" might be.

Buy books and read them.

Ask experienced people for solutions and listen.

You might have already known 90% of the answer.  So what
you have to listen for and hold dear is the 10% you didn’t
know.

And use it.

I love going to amazon.com and reading the reviews people
post for books.  So many people give bad reviews because in
their opinion, there was "nothing new."  What they don’t
say is that all the "old" stuff, what now is generally
accepted, they don’t even use that.

There is nothing wrong with hearing the same old stuff.
Because unless you use what you’ve heard or read, you don’t
really "know" it.

Most tasks look easy on the outside, and they are… IF
you know what you’re doing.

I wouldn’t even dream, for instance, of trying to put
something together or learning a new piece of software
without having the instructions at my side.  But most
people ignore them.  And their results show it.

Look, you may have an I.Q. in the stratosphere.  But if
you aren’t constantly looking to learn what you MUST know
to get your tasks done quickly and effectively in EVERY
part of your life, then you are creating a destiny of
almost doing a good job, of coming close to finding
happiness but not quite getting there, of being known by
everyone including yourself as undependable.  And with that
comes a poor self-image.

My purpose in writing this is for you to become more and
more of a person who is passionate about learning what you
MUST learn in order to set and reach the little and big
benchmarks on the way to your dreams.

You just can’t do it any other way.  This isn’t my
opinion.  It’s an immutable principle of life.  To deny
this is to guarantee a high failure rate at many things you
attempt.

You don’t want that.  I know it.

So do this…

Make a list of your To-Do’s for the next week.  Look at
each item and ask yourself the question, "Am I really good
at doing this?"  If the answer is no, then before you
start, write down all the things you need to know and do to
prepare before you start.  If you need some information,
get it.

And get excited.  Smile.  Laugh.  Because when you get
that info, when you learn the thing you didn’t know before
and when you achieve your outcome easier and with more joy
than you ever did before, you have expanded your knowledge,
your capabilities and your value to yourself and others
from that moment on.

Whenever you learn something new, no matter how small, you
just taught yourself that you can achieve the largest of
goals… the most amazing of accomplishments… because
what are big accomplishments?  Aren’t they just many little
ones all piled up?

It’s funny, huh?

Success at just about anything is amazingly simple when
you look behind the curtain.

If you want to change your life fast, even though it might
seem like it’s slow, then take the statements below, put
them on index cards and read them 3 times/day. Morning,
noon and just before you close your eyes at night.

They’ll seep into your consciousness. And since you’ll be
saying them so often, you’ll soon begin to believe them.
That’s how most beliefs start. Spaced repetition of thought.
Your attitudes will then positively change your emotions,
and you’ll be compelled to do more… And you’ll love it.

– I love learning
– Every experience I have gives me new lessons for living
– I have my eyes open to the learning opportunities all
  around me
– I see the value in every lesson I learn
– I learn something new from everyone I meet
– I’m effective because I learn what I need to know to do
  the best job I can

grow…

"Unless you try to do something beyond what you
have already mastered, you will never grow."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

moving on

Moving on is a process… doesn’t happen overnight… or over a couple of weeks… or maybe not even a couple of months… but you will… try moving on facing forward… not backwards…

pass by…

There will come a time  when someone walks into your life and make you realize why it never worked out with everybody else… but when you kept waiting and nobody came, it means that you’ve already let that one pass you by…

love

"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved."  I paraphrase the Great Oz, from The Wizard of Oz.

So be loved.

Uh…how exactly does one be loved?  Well, it helps to love.  In fact, the more we love, the more we are loved.  Loving really is an investment, and love is the return on investment.  Remember that the best way to have a friend is to be a friend.

Loving means to care about others, to do good for other people rather than judging them.  In fact, to love somebody is to be his friend.

So perhaps a heart is judged by how much we love, after all

wonderin’ why…

i wonder how people can easily tell me that they love me…

and yet, they were never there to make me feel it…

missing someone…

when someone misses u, its either that person got used to being with you..

or he/she’s starting to keep u into his/her life you left.

music

only music can let us sing… only music can make our feet dance.. and only music can let our mind reminisce back to our past.. but what’s important about music is, they can be the voice of what we feel inside especially when we are mute by the words of our mouth…

forget…

you can’t force yourself to forget something..

because the only reason why we forget is when a better memory has taken it’s place…

without him…

i let go of what i thought was mine, it hurts actually, but as i get through each day without him,  i realized that the world would just keep on turning and i need to continue breathing even if he is not around so, i go to move and face the world after he ruined it and prove that i can be a better person than i used to be without him….

2 things

Two things in life one should always remember:

NEVER make DECISIONS when you’re ANGRY…

NEVER make PROMISES when you’re HAPPY…

emotions are simply fleeting and misleading…

love of a lifetime

I guess the time was right for us to say
We’d take our time and live our lives
Together day by day
We’ll make a wish and send it on a prayer
We know our dreams can all come true
With love that we can share

With you I never wonder–will you be there for me
With you I never wonder–you’re the right one for me
I finally found the love of a lifetime
A love to last my whole life through
I finally found the love of a lifetime
Forever in my heart
I finally found the love of a lifetime

With every kiss, our love is like brand-new
And every star up in the sky
Was made for me and you
Still we both know that the road is long
We know that we will be together
Because our love is strong

I finally found the love of a lifetime
A love to last my whole life through
I finally found the love of a lifetime
Forever in my heart
I finally found the love of a lifetime

self-respect…

sometimes, you just have to try not to care no matter how much you do because sometimes you can mean nothing to someone who means everything to you.. it's not pride, it's called self-respect…

unconditional love?

what is unconditional love? it's when the person you love tears you into pieces and yet you still smile and say, "you know what, you don't have to love me back.. i will be okay"..

it’s so over…

if you are not sure where you stand in someone's life, it's best to leave things behind so that if they drop you off, it will be easier to forget them.. don't waste time waiting for nothing.. when efforts are not recognized, it's best to give things up.. you've done your part, let them do theirs…

20 silent messages…

1. You changed my life completely from the moment we first talked and you continue to change it in every single day. Despite what you think, I wouldn’t change one moment of anything that’s happened between us. I wish that the English language had a way to convey my true feelings about you, but it doesn’t, so this will have to do.

2. You’ve hurt my feelings a lot and I wish I could say hurtful things in return but I love you so much that I can’t. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry. If that isn’t true love, I don’t know what is.

3. I am so sorry for the way that I have acted over the years. I know you think I don’t respect you or think highly of you but you’re wrong. I wish I could be a good person like you.

4. You put me on the road to getting my life together and for that, I will always thank you. In the end, I wasn’t good enough for you and I realized that I never will be. I miss you all the time but I’m glad that you’re not a part of my life anymore. I know I will always mourn what could have been.

5. I thought you wanted to be my friend but the more I think about it, the more I realize you seemed to be going with the crowd, like you always do. I hope that one day, you will find the person you need to be, so that you don’t rely on others to tell you who that is. Despite the fact that I know I can never be in any kind of relationship with you, I wish you the best and hope that you find real happiness.

6. I find it so strange that we are so similar, and yet, neither of us have a problem with simply being ourselves. You are my peace guru. You are amazingly talented and I wish you would realize this. I know you can be what you want if you keep at it.

7. I knew that you were special when we talked that first time and there isn’t anything that has changed my mind. You don’t know it but you are one of the most wonderful people in my life and though I know we don’t talk as often as we should, I appreciate you more than you’ll ever know.

8. I know that I am not always very nice to you and that I should be there for you more. I’m sorry that I’m not and I hope that one day, I will gain the maturity I need to treasure you the way I should. Thank you for being a part of my life.

9. I want you to know that I love you but I’m scared to tell you that, both for what it will mean and that you’ll take it the wrong way. You were the first person to take my life seriously and for that, I must offer thanks that will never be good enough. I wish that you could always be close by in my life but I know it’s not possible. I value your advice more than you will ever know but I’m afraid to talk to you anymore because I think I’ll be a disappointment.

10. You helped get me through one of the darkest periods of my life, and you did it with laughter, much-needed love and a sense of humor about the whole thing. Also, you were always there to listen, even when everyone else wasn’t.

11. You turned out to be a horrible person masquerading as a nice one. I only wish I had come to this conclusion sooner. I doubt you will be truly happy in your life.

12. I wish that you could see you are more than him. You used to be fun until you thought he was more important than everything else.

13. I hope that you don’t think poorly of me. I didn’t plan for things to happen that way.

14. I didn’t think I could love anyone as much as I love you. I remember the day you came into my life and I hope that one day, you can look at me and see someone to admire.

15. Ditto.

16. I wish I had told you how cool you were while we still talked. I remember thinking for those two years how lucky I was to have such an awesome friend.

17. I’ll always wonder how you really felt about me, though I think I already know.

18. Thank you for always talking with me about something that mattered, even if I said the same thing over and over and over again.

19. I saw through you from the beginning. You are a liar, even though you are nice. I know why you were my friend and I know it wasn’t because I was such a wonderful person.

20. Sometimes I think it’s weird that you look up to me; I’m less confident than I’ll ever let on. Relationships won’t be like the ones in storybooks and I hope that you realize that soon. Magic is created, rather than experienced. It will happen, just give it time.

this was just sent to me thru email…

Stress II

"Do one thing at a time. When you are working on one thing, don't think about everything else you have to do."  Yes, I know, if you are like me you are probably saying that is the one thing you cannot do.  But it is easier to do a good job at just about anything if it is the only thing on your desk.

So make a list of all you need to do.  (Try to keep it to a few dozen pages.)  Then  do one thing, complete it, and check it off.

Done.

Next item on the list…