Great Effort and No Expectations

In my mind great effort comes with great expectations.

Work hard and get rewarded

It’s built into me

Society screams it at us

But the world is a random place

And expectations are funny things

Very funny things

Unlike anticipation, which means to prepare for anything

Expectations implies a certainity

And this is where we get tripped up

High expectations are a trap

This is a lesson I must learn

To put in everything I have

To give everything and leave nothing behind

At the same time have no expectations

As little as possible

How true it is man is a prisoner of his own thoughts?

His own expectations.

Me?

I expect myself to have a dream home

In a great area

With a nice car

and to be great in bed

and have the coolest freinds

and dress amazing

And every single time I miss these marks

I hate myself

Despise myself

Pain myself

Why must I own a house for example?

Why? Why? Why?

I’ll tell you why.

Because its expected of me. To be home owner. 100% expected.

Expected by who?

My friends, my family and most importantly, ME.

And it pains me.

But this pain is self inflicted.

What is the best work =I can do?

Do the best work and let go of the expectations

Empty yourself to what is in front of you and stop looking for the glorious answers.

No home runs.

Take the single.

Run hard

No expectations

Do what you can

No expectations

Love

No expectations

Anger at Myself?

Most of my anger stems from feelings about myself,

When I am angry I am expressing displeasure not only at the other person but mostly me.

How can they keep me waiting?

How can they be so lazy?

How can they drive so badly?

Really what I am saying is

You see, your that lazy or you are a crappy driver or your always late. My anger at these trivialities stems from myself.

Anger tires me out like no other emotion, sure it gives me short rush but after that I am done, its like I am over heating.

Now I need to ask myself would someone who loved me react this way?

Would someone who loved me be upset that I was 5 mins late?

Would a loving person be upset that you have a lazy day?

The answer is no, the loving person would most likely be unaffected by these little things, it wouldn’t bother them.

If the loving person sees himself being lazy they would give themselves the right kind of encouragement. The right kind not the wrong kind. They wouldn’t curse or belittle person, they would think how that person would react and try not to hurt them.

The first reaction of anger stems from not looking at the situation from a place of love and compassion.

How angry can you be at yourself for being 5, 10, or 15 minutes late. You can’t be that angry.

Personally I am person with allot of anger and hate, it comes to me so naturally, to rage and to judge. Any judgement on the outside world ultimately is me judging myself.

Being and Death

Is it possible to understand death?

I don’t mean conceptually, I mean to understand and live with it every day

Really live with it.

Say goodbye to your wife and kid and understand death can take them when you turn your back

To accept that you may not return and condemn them to a life of poverty

But what do you care? You will be dead, it wont bother you

You don’t exist

Contemplate how much time you have…

5 years

5 days

5 mins

Can we really understand that? I am not sure

If we can’t understand that, can we understand the inverse?

That we are alive and being?

To love, to hate?

Pleasure and pain?

I think we do, I really think we understand at least at a deeper level what it is to be alive

But to be dead? I don’t know

But why? Why understand and contemplate death?

Think of it as salt

Its not food but it enhances it

If you can apreaciate every meal as your last. How much more would you taste?

If that kiss would be your last, how much more would you love?

What would anger you if you knew death was waiting to take you?

Anger is hard to imagine

The pain ends

Most wounds are self inflicted

You wont be able to hurt yourself anymore

You did okay

Its okay

Let it go

You did what you did

It doesn’t matter

Death is that reminder that your time is ticking so enjoy it

Embrace it

Don’t sweat the small stuff but enjoy the little things

Their goes life again

Full of paradoxes

Struggles of Living with Love

I don’t mean love in the romantic sense. I mean it more in the acting with love to your fellow human sense. This post is about some of the struggles I have experienced whilst acting with love.

The first thing is the struggle of being kind to myself and people in general. My own poisonous self talk fuels smart arse remarks to those around me as I ‘make fun’ of them. These comments as harmless as they seem are not coming from a place of love. Really I am just trying to make myself feel better whilst in some ways putting the other person down.

I try to combat this by looking my self in the mirror and saying

God loves you
God made you
God makes no mistakes
I love you and you are a good person

As corny as this sounds, it does help. The other is just to say nothing and try not to be that funny cool guy because you are fine just the way you are.

The other area is my own vindictiveness. I struggle to let go of vindictive behaviour when I feel that I have been ‘wronged’. I want to take vengeance out on the person. The worst part about it is that I am aware of it whilst it’s occuring.

I mean to say I catch the moment. The moment when my anger turns on.

My issue is I choose to follow through with my anger.

To combat this I try to do an act of kindness, either to the perceived perpetrator or to some one else.
The act of kindness could be thinking of something nice to say, a message to check up on a friend or an act of self kindness, stretching or watching my favourite TV show.

Nothing worth doing is easy and the above is only the start of my struggles of doing things with love, but already I see that’s it’s worth it. It brings a certain colour or dynamic to things that wasn’t their before.

Hopefully I can continue and improve on my progress so far, the only thing in my way is me.

The Little Voice

Can you hear it?

You know that voice that tells you random things

For example

Drive to the coast

Or speak to that person

Its time to leave

Be quite

Be still

Its only by listening carefully

Stillness

Prayer

You will hear ever so faintly, it normally comes up as a random thought

We normally discard it, pay it no mind

It normally speaks to the too hard basket

Or too scared

Or to not bothered

That little voice has gold in its whispers

It will lead you to do once in lifetime things

Move overseas

Ask your wife on a date

Meet your best freind

Change someone’s day

Or life

That little voice

Cultivate it

Listen for it

And most importantly feed it

How do you feed it you ask?

Well by doing what it says, it loves when you do what it says

It will give you more when you listen to it

It gives you deeper and deeper insight

It will appear to others that you are working on instint, when really you are working on another level

The voice

Listen and see where it takes you

Save You

I really can’t

I see you walking down the wrong path

Poisoning your mind and body but I can’t do anything

I know you love me and I love you

And I know you will be gone soon because of what your doing to your self

And there is nothing I can do to stop it

There is noting I can say

Its too late

The cuts are too deep

The dye is cast

Your ship has sailed

And I feel its on its final voyage

But I am not going to stop trying because you gave me everything

everything

My belief

My courage

My views

It all came from you

I wish I could have done more

Made it easier or your life better

But I have not done what I promised

I was gone a long time and now that I am back your almost gone, never to return

But I will not give up because I do not want you to go

I want you to spend time with my son and see him grow up

To see him marry, so you can teach him the things you taught me

I hope you will be there for him but I know its too late

Too much damage

We cannot get that back

I wish I could save you, to repay you a little bit

I would do it for you if I could but its not how it works

Its not how life works, only you can do it

And if I am being honest, I don’t know if you can

Soon you will be gone and the it alredy pains me to my core

Time isn’t up yet

Maybe I can help you still

Letting Ideas Out

We need to let our ideas out

They need to breathe

We need to learn from the idea itself and work out if its any good

Or are we any good? Can we get any better?

Only then do we truly know if we have something serious on our hands otherwise its just fantasy and to live in fantasy is a dangerous place

Fantasy makes us think we are capable and deserving when we don’t know

It can create ignorance but worse a sense of entitlement thinking you deserve as much the next person

A natural law of life is that those who risk get the reward

Go to the most expensive street in each and every country and each I can ensure you the vast majority of peole their did not earn a slary but profit, they worked for themselves

If you don’t put it on the line then what do you deserve?

Life is nothing without a risk right?

Well risk it, risk it all

When its on the line the ideas flow

And what is the hardest thing to put on the line? Our love, our selves our being

Its only when we put it all out will we get it back and learn

Adjust and learn

Wash and repeat

When these ideas come out, more ideas will come

But not only that, more of ourselves will be out into the world

God is love

Doing It Wrong

Let me explain

In yoga they say the pose matters but its also about how you get to the pose, what you do during the pose and what you do after the pose

Everything matters

Its simply not just a matter of getting it done

An example from my own life, travelling

I travelled wrong for a long time played it too safe, I needed to embrace the locals, spoken to the people and done things to be in the moment.

Risk taking, walking the line.

I have treated my life as a series of tasks that need completed to become something, the attitude is effective in doing things but it isn’t the best.

The result matters but I am coming to the realization its also about enjoying the process and giving your best and not worrying about the outcome

If I use a metaphor, I should of squeezed the lemon for more juice and whilst squeezing smiled

Whilst squeezing, smile. Is that it? Maybe.

Entitled To Time?

“Time is mine, I own it” or “When I wake, the next 24 hours is mine” or “I allot it how I see fit”

“At 9am I will do this, at 10am this, so on and etc”‘

“Please do not impede on this time because its mine, not yours, so I gift you with some of my time, be grateful”

This is my current mentality towards time

Its strange this, really strange

The first reason is because I waste so much time. I waste it on the internet, YouTube, blogs, texting, porn or any other way I find to distract myself from what is really going on around me

My dopamine addiction is real and I can’t get away from it and I feed it through wasting my time in different novelties

Now if someone were to ask for a piece of that time I would be really upset, even a friend calling me can really bother me.

Don’t come past on a Sunday night, that time is for me and me alone to dread the oncoming of the week

Now the second funny thing is time is not mine

I do not own it, this time on earth is a gift

I did not join this world on my own volition nor will I leave at my own will

So in essence the time I have is not mine, just like the moon and the sun. These are gifts to be enjoyed and shared with everyone in the world. To claim ownership is laughable.

Me being a miser with my time in general is unhealthy because of the sense of entitlement I feel and the hostility it creates to the people who are in my life

If anything I need to miser where I focus when I have being alone with no one else around

I do not own time

There is no such thing as “my time”

There are only moments, present moments

This is where I need to be, to live, to focus

If I am going to have any chance at this

With Love

Just remember to do everything with love
That was the advise given to me
I don’t like advice
I think it’s overstated and mostly bullshit

But this stuck with me
You see I had a kid recently
So an old friend told me
“Try to do everything with love, your children will mirror your mood”

How does one try to do everything with love?
I mean what is it about doing things with love?

I guess it starts with ourselves and how we treat ourselves

“How long would you be friends with someone who spoke to you the same way you speak to yourself?”

So love yourself
This means stop judging myself and comparing myself to some idolised version that I have in my head
I am what I am and that’s okay
Some people love me and others hate me
It’s all good

The next is how I treat those closet to me
My wife
My parents/brothers
My friends
Am I coming from a place of love?

Do I ask them how they are?
Do I listen when they talk?
Am I honest and do empathize with them?
Am I patient?

I need to be there for them more and more.

The final area is how I interact with people?
Is it possible to bring love into this small interaction?
Can I be kind?
Can I look into someone’s eye and say thanks?
Am I able to compliment people in a heartfelt and sincere:way, not caring who hears it?
Can I give love?

I hope as a new father that my kid can feel my love.
To be honest I don’t know how I feel yet about my son.
I probably haven’t faced up to it yet
I have been treating it as a task to complete
Which is wrong
I will come around
But if there is one thing I want my son to say is that I loved him
Even if I don’t know it yet.