Hello again . . .

Hello again.  I know it's been a while.  I've been busy, life is busy, you know the usual retoric.  I'm not sure what I'm going to talk about today is about compassion.  Maybe it's about compassion for yourself.  I don't really know.  But I've learned something.  I've always known it, but today I really learned it.

Life has many ups and downs.  Some bigger than others.  I have a friend who in 2010 was diagnosed with cancer.  She had the applicable treatments, and recovered.  Now it's 2016.  She was diagnosed with a very rare form of skin cancer - 1 in 1 million is what she said.  She had the operation this week.  Time will tell I guess.  Overall, am I worried?  Yes I am.  Is she worried?  I am sure she is.  Does she show it?  No she does not.

Every day she steps out in the world and is grateful,  Grateful that she has another day.  Grateful that she has wonderful people in her life.  Grateful that she's still alive.  Is she worried?  Not out loud.  She always has a smile on her face.  She always looks to the positive.  She plans her runs and her races like this is just a minor glitch in the grand scheme of thing.

This woman, this girl, this child is an inspiration to me.  My problems are so minuscule, that I don't even want to think of them as problems.  She inspires me to put my best forward.  She reminds me that when things get tough 'it's not going to feel like this forever'. She lifts me up and carries me along beside her.  She has the strength to do that.  She is an angel among us, that I am fortunate enough to know.

From this person, I shall grow.  What she has taught me in no uncertain terms is P.A.C.E.  Positive Attitude Changes Everything!!

Living in the Moment

Last month my mom and I went on a little mini vacation.  We drove out to the Kootenays in British Columbia, Canada and did a road trip of three hot springs.  We went to Ainsworth, Nakusp and Halcyon.  We had a really great time, and I was reminded how I really need to be grateful for the things that I can do, and that I get to do.  It's a privilege to have time together with my mom, and be able to do road trips together.  I know it won't last forever, so I need to be thankful for the times that we get to make some memories together.

Sometimes I get frustrated with the small things.  You know the daily things that can irritate and take away from the moment.  This happens to me sometimes when I am travelling too.  I might have an agenda that's simply too jam packed full with stuff, and then I start to focus in on what I am missing, instead of enjoying the here and now, and fully taking in what I actually get to do, see and experience.

It's actually hard to live in the moment.  It's hard to just enjoy the day as it unfolds infront of you.  It's hard to always ignore the past and not contemplate the future.  But living in the moment without the drudgery of the past and the uncertainty of the future is an amazing spot to be in.  In the moments that this can be achieved, life is vibrant.

So how do we achieve that state of 'living in the moment?'

1.  Be thankful/grateful for the current moment - that it exists in your world.  Don't clutter it with things from the past, or anticipations of the future.  Just let it be there - on its own.

2.  Make sure your mind is present.  Don't just be there physically, but concentrate on right now.  What do you sense?  Use all your senses - smell, listen, see, touch.  Soak it all in so that you are enveloped in it - right now.

3.  Love yourself, love the ones you are with.  Don't get lost in the irritations of everyday.  Ignore those, and just be.

4.  Be mindful of your thoughts.  You have to always corral them to be in the present - and not let them get away with drawing your attention elsewhere.  It's like a meditation - to be available at the moment.

5.  At any given moment just allow the joy of your experience to wash over you.  It will help keep you in the here and now.  It's when you let go of those moments of purity, that you loose the connection to the moment, and allow other things to clutter.

I'm grateful that I had this time with my mom.  It also reminded me to be more present and enjoy the good times while they are here.    

Tweaking Our Stories for Meaning

I posted earlier a small piece about the stories that we tell each other.  The stories that we tell each other come from the scenarios that we create for ourselves.  We create who we are, thru our actions or inactions, how we decide to spend our time and what we spend time thinking about.

For us to have a life with a good story, we have to cultivate it, and make it interesting.  At the same time that we are living our stories, we can also weave compassion and kindness into them.     Adventures make for interesting tales, but compassion makes our journey meaningful.

Compassion is living a life in the service of others.  Even though this implies a selfless endeavour, Helping others actually helps ourselves.  It nourishes our souls and grows our capacity for loving kindness.  So what does 'living our lives in the service of others' entail?  What can we do to achieve this?

The obvious one, and one of the easiest to start with is doing some charity work.  We can start with something fairly non-committal like fundraising for a cause, or dive into it a bit deeper and do some hands on work with people.  Volunteering at a hospice house, or a soup kitchen.

More spur of the moment compassion involves random acts of kindness such as helping somebody out at the grocery store that doesn't have enough money, or offering a coffee and a bit of company to a street person.

Sometimes we just need to be kinder to our own families and/or coworkers.  We can judge less, and cultivate a closer sense of community.  Offer some help even when it's not expected.

Reach out and touch someone - literally!!  Human beings crave contact.  We need to be hugged, loved, and cared for, yet so often we neglect to do these simple acts.

Let's get out out there and start weaving our personal stories with servitude, love and kindness!!

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mohandas Gandhi

Hugs and Smiles! 😃

A couple of days ago while walking down the street I saw one of the girls from my running group.  A really nice gal that I only just recently had my first chat with.  As soon as she saw me, she walked over and gave me a hug and exclaimed how she missed the running group so much and couldn't wait until the group banded back together again.  It was so random, this hug.  I don't know her well, but in that instance she made me feel so good.  I had a smile on my face for the rest of the day, and my mood had been uplifted.  Since that moment, I've been consciously thinking about giving out more hugs to people.  It's not natural for me at this point, but I'm loving the reactions I get, and the smiles that I put not just on the faces of others, but on myself as well!

I encourage you to give a few random hugs today and see for yourself the positivity that flows from such a simple act of kindness.

Handling Negative Emotions

As humans we have many different emotions that can crop up.  Some of these emotions such as anger, some types of fear, jealousy etc take away from ability to show compassion.  These emotions need to be controlled.  When we feel emotions such as anger, our judgement becomes compromised, and we react without intention, and become more open to hurting others.  It is only with a clear mind that we can make proper choices.

Negative emotions also cause health issues.  High blood pressure, depression, heart and stroke issues, are just a few of the ailments that arise because the wrong emotions are running rampant in our bodies.  In order to be healthy in our bodies and develop our compassionate side, we must become familiar with these emotions and familiar with the signs that they are developing, so that we can restrain these negative emotions before they take hold.  

Being able to remove negative emotions before they have a chance to fester allows us to have more clarity over the issue and develop positive solutions to these problems.  Once we have been infected we loose control over out judgement, and that is when we start to hurt others, and hurt ourselves.

How can we get control over our negative emotions?  One way is to become familiar with them, and contemplate them.  We can develop new patterns, so that once an emotion like anger is invoked, we already realize that it is coming and we can have some 'medicine' available to us.  We can catch it before it takes over and remind ourselves how we have planned to react, and learn to push the angry emotion away.  

Mindfulness of ourselves is key.  This can be developed consciously, thru a practice of confronting these emotions in a thoughtful manner when we are not in that state, but of a clear mind and reviewing how we are going to react the next time those feelings come up.  A few minutes meditating on this every week is a good way to start.  

Steps to learning how to handle negative emotions:

• Be mindful of the emotions that we are feeling in any given situation.
• Become familiar with these emotions and when and how they are invoked, so that you can learn to see it happening.
• Contemplate these negative emotions and become familiar with them.  This can be done a few minutes for a few times a week perhaps during a meditation.
• Think about how you can replace these negative emotions with a more constructive response.
• Commit to being intentional and mindful about your emotions, and practice, practice, practice.
• Don't connect to negative emotions if you slip up, or it takes a while to get the hang of it.  Have compassion for yourself too!!  

Enviornmental Compassion

In the book that I touched on earlier 'A Force for Good', about the Dalai Lama's vision for the future of humanity, he recgnizes the fact that we must protect our environment and nature.  For without it, we can not exist.

Sometimes it's easy to look around the earth and see the massive destruction that is happening, that we as individuals have no control over, and think that what we do on a personal level has no impact and therefore we may throw up our hands and not be as vigilant as we could be.  But what we need to keep in mind is that every little bit helps.  If we all do our best to be kind to the environment at every moment, and try to help others adopt similar practices it will make a difference.  10 small gestures by 1 individual, could turn into 10 small gestures by 1 billion people and the impact would be awe-inspiring!!

Here are 10 simple things that I am intentional about in my everyday life to have a better impact on the environment:

1.  Reusable shopping bags.  I have two to three nylon bags that fold up so small I can throw them in my purse.  I leave them there always and so I always have some bags available for shopping.  I also keep some of the larger reusable bags in the car for bigger shopping days when I go to multiple locations.

2.  Travel coffe cups.  I keep one in my car at all times, so on those occasions when I need a coffee on the go I don't have to use a paper cup.

3.  Recycle.  Our city has need recycling super easy.  We have three garbage bins provided by the city.  One for garbage, one for recycling, and one for garden debris.  The only thing I have to deal with separately is glass.

4.  Re-use.  Simple things like plastic bags can always have a secondary use.  Freezer bags can be washed out and reused.  Computer paper can be printed on both sides, or the unprinted side can be used for scrap paper for writing notes or shopping lists.

5.  Donate.  Clothes, shoes, furniture, housewares etc can be donated to organizations that help people in need.

6.  Pick up the garbage of others.  I do a lot of hiking and trail running.  When I am on the trails, and I see some garbage I pick it up to properly dispose of later.

7.  Purchase less.  I try to think about my consumption, and try to stick more to needs rather than wants.  If we all consumed less, then less resources would have to be converted, which is a huge addition to the global carbon footprint.

8.  Keep vehicles in good maintenance.  I look after my vehicle to ensure that it is running at its best. I recently just purchased a VW diesel Golf, which as far as pollution goes it is a very clean burning engine.  Also the mileage is tremendous - so less fuel being burnt per km.  I wish I could say that I substitute riding my bike to work sometimes, but my situation right now currently does not allow for that.

9.  Turn off lights when it's not necessary to have them on.  This is so simple, yet I'm not so great at it.  Mostly during the year when I get up and its dark, but by the time I leave the house it's light out, I often leave the house because it's not readily apparent that the lights are on .  .  .  Need to be more intentional here.

10.  Spread the word.  Help others become intentional, and develop good practices to be good to the environment.  Every little bit counts!!

How's it Going So Far?

Well here I am.  About 6 months into living a more meaningful, compassionate life.  How do I feel?  What have I learned?  How am I progressing?

Living with intention and awareness

  Writing about compassion has definitely helped me be more intentional.  It keeps in the forefront of my thoughts so that I am thinking about it more frequently.  In the past I've always had trouble with that, but writing the blog is a huge help.

  Also, I just love seeing compassionate gestures in people, and really noticing and celebrating those moments.  It reminds me, especially when those terrible moments come up in the news, or when life throws a little bit of a curveball at you, that we must persevere.  We must, because there is goodness all around.  We just need to collectively unleash it and spread the energy.

Control over negative thoughts/emotions

  There are days when I feel like 'I've got this'.  And then there are days when I think how come this is so hard.  It's definitely a work in progress, but I've noticed that because I am always thinking about it at least I am aware of my thoughts and can take actions to try to change them.  Being aware allows me to take action sooner.  Whereas before I may have 'hung out' with the negative emotions for a longer period of time.

Not being so quick to judge

I definitely at times still have a tendency to pass judgement, or jump to certain conclusions about things.  But I am able to catch myself now and think about others ways that I could perceive events or circumstances.  I try to find a bit of grace in my thought process, and look for things to take my biases away.  It's tricky to realize that we make judgement about a lot of things, sometimes without really being aware.  We just let our minds take control.  But we need to harness our minds and take control, and tell it what it really needs to think.

Reaching out to others

This is the last one that I've been working on.  It's probably the most difficult for me.  I don't know if I posted previously, but about 6 weeks ago I was with a group of people in Rossland doing a trail running camp and my running coach had us pull some type of a 'tarot' card.  My card was the 'quiet' card.  Now there are lots of ways to interpret that card, but I chose it to mean that I should be more quiet.  I was so pissed off at the card that I made my first attempt to be the exact opposite!  And I've been working at it ever since.  Guess what?  It makes me happier in a group setting to put myself out there and participated!  I'm not saying I turned into a social butterfly, but I am saying that I've made an effort.  My goal for this fall when I go to Cuba is to collect a few stories from the locals. I guess we'll see how it works out.

These are some of the things I've been working on - but how do they make me a more compassionate person?  By developing and getting control over my mind, and being mindful of what I want to accomplish has allowed me to focus on being compassionate.  I look for the good in people more, and am not so critical over perceived 'faults' or 'wrong doings'.  Things roll off my back easier, and I am more concerned about being able to communicate better with people, and hopefully touch their lives positively.  I try to put myself in the other persons shoes as much as possible, and don't sweat the small stuff.

As the saying goes, be soft on people, and hard on tasks.