Author Archives: Yucel

Grateful that there are those less fortunate than yourself?

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Ever feel grateful to realize that there is someone less fortunate than yourself?  Someone less beautiful?  Some who has even less money?  More debt?  Greater pain?  More grief?  Etc?

Have you even perhaps tried the exercise of thinking of those less fortunate to feel better?  Telling yourself that this makes you grateful?  Perhaps teaching your children this exercise?  Maybe you learned this exercise at home from parents or grand parents yourself?

Have you ever considered why this may feel better?

Being grateful that there are those less fortunate than yourself is a form of “misery likes company”.

Being grateful in this way is in fact a form of misery.   An insidious form of expanded misery that requires others be miserable.  A multiplicity of misery.

This is a form of misery we feel is alleviated by finding other miserably resonating souls. 

The law of attraction brings like people together.  And, it brings additional similarly resonating circumstance into our lives.

Focus on misery and those more miserable brings what into your life do you thing?

Ever have an office Sad Sack who comes in with a cloud over their head and goes around telling their tales of woe attempting to find people to share misery with? 

Notice how they light up when they find someone who shares a misery?  Perhaps even they get into a “my misery trumps your misery” kind of discussion? 

See how they glow a bit brighter in this… until they trail off, looking for more misery for next time?

The way to be truly happy, is to be grateful for what we have in life.   That is for what we have in life inside of us.  Right now.  Not for what we do not have.  Not for what we have more than others.  Not for what others have or don’t have. 

For what we have in our lives, right now. 

To ever experience true happiness and joy, we must be truly present and truly grateful for what we have, right now.

If we are hungry, we might be grateful that we have senses and have lived as long as we have.  If we have sight in one eye, we might be grateful that we have memories of seeing with  two eyes, and that we can enjoy the gifts and beauty of sight with one eye.

The alternative is to try to be grateful that we are less hungry than someone else, who we assume is miserable.  Or, that we try to be grateful that the man with no eyes, would call us king.

Yet, can you see, how the person who is hungry, if they are grateful that they were alive, would in fact be happier than we?  Or, that the man who was blind, might be grateful that they enjoy sublime pleasures on  hearing things like crickets (not better than us by the way, this being akin to misery likes company).  

So, this premiss of being happy to find someone that is “less fortunate” than we also requires they be miserable for having less…

For, if the person had less than we, and was grateful and happy none the less, all we really need to learn is that in their true gratitude lies their happiness.

Thus, we do not need to find those less fortunate.  We need only learn to be grateful for our lives, such as they are.

Peace and love,

Yucel

 

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Fairest…

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Who is the fairest of us all?  Ever have someone ask you, “what kind of a ‘such and such’ are you anyway?” 

What kind of such and such are you to have behaved in some way to this person that they feel so put out?  Why are they so offended?  What makes them so frustrated?  So angry?

What have they done to deserve you in their miserable otherwise perfect lives anyway?

Mirror mirror on the wall, the answer is within us all.

We are mirrors of one another, one and all.  By the process of mirroring, for someone to have such anger toward you, to feel you such a villain, they  must see this villainy somehow within themselves. 

We mirror the horror within them, when they see us as horrible.

We mirror the love within them, when they see us as lovable.

We mirror the thief within them, when they see us thieving.

We mirror the connection within them, when they see us connecting.

We are in fact all connected through mirroring to each other, the world and the universe.

Mirroring is one of the simplest ways to realise our connection with the whole.  If we see it outside us, it lies also within us.  Thus we are connected.  Mirroring is the device through which we may see through the separation illusion. 

If we see it outside us, it is within us.  We are thus connected internally, with what we see externally.   And so we are whole with and connected to all we see as “outside” us.

What we see is what we are.  Mirrors are we, one and all. 

If we see it anywhere without, it lies somewhere within.

Whatever we see as being in others is a mirror of what we know or have yet to learn lies in ourselves.

If you feel you have been wronged by someone, what within you has wronged?

If you feel you have been loved by someone else, what within you has loved?

The choices for you are infinite… what will you see?

As you are what you see, it may be wise learning to see what you perfer to be.

To see is to be.

Mirror mirror on the wall,

what you see is what you be. 

I am grateful for them all…

Or at least am learning to be…

Grateful to see you,

Yucel

Like Answers?

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Cool!  How cool are answers anyway?   Answers to all life’s little questions.  Answers, for sale.  Free!  Big questions too?  No problem.

Where are these answers?  You guessed it.  They are inside you.  Feel gypped?  Wait, it gets worse… 

According to Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera,

“A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized.”

Okay, so maybe I misspoke… if a mistake is a future benefit, that’s better, not worse, right?

Answers are often not forthcoming without mistakes.   

Did I say free?

Misspoke again.  Come on!  Can’t I get anything right right out of the bag?

They say you get what you pay for.  That what goes around comes around.  Is that true too?

If it is true, mistakes – also read “miss-takes”- are what goes around.

Sometimes it makes my head ring thinking about it all going around and around, which is what I do with a great deal of my time…

So, if we do a mistake, then is a mistake going around?

What if we think of it as Land says, a future benefit going around to enlighten and enrich us?

If like me you are old enough to actually have taken a Polaroid picture, as in “shake it like a polaroid picture,” why not take a chance?  Maybe even a mistake. 

Go ahead.  Shake it for a bit.  Wait and watch as the benefits develop before your eyes. 

If Land is right, and I believe he is, benefits are just around the corner. 

With all my mistakes, I got so much cool stuff around my corner… 

How about you?

Peace and Love,

Yucel

 

Time, The Coin of Life

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Have you ever rushed to get somewhere, mindless of and frustrated by where you were?  The time between the here you were and the there you wanted to be?  In my past, I had often rushed to get somewhere in just such hurried harried haste.   At some point, when we learn better, we realize joy and life are the journey itself. 

In the words of Greg Anderson:

 “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.”

Recently, I have driven on the same very roads I had rushed to get past in years past.  Roads with vistas beyond breathtakingly beautiful.  Vistas virtually ignored in years past.

The roads, in the past, were as obstacles between where I was and where I thought I wanted to be.  ( for more on wanting see also:  http://choose.ws/2009/11/10/positive-pivots/choosing/how-to-get-what-i-want/yucel/ )  The company journeying with me were not appreciated.  The vistas, went largely unappreciated. 

I received an email today which had a version of this quote within it.  On googling it, I found the source of and original form of the quote.

“Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once.”  – Lillian Dickson

My journeys in the past, often were like coins spent on time wasted.

I had spent the only thing we ever have in life, which is time, to kill the only thing we ever have in life, which is time.

Time is the journey.

Today when I drive these same beautiful roads, I appreciate the time I have, perhaps behind a slower driver, the chance this provides for me to slow down, to be present to my company, to view and enjoy the scenery around me, the time I have to be with my thoughts.  This is my time.  This is my life.

Time is the journey.  Time is my journey.  Time is our journey.

Time is the very coin of life.

Enjoy and embrace every fractional instant of it.

On any road, in any place, there are joys to be enjoyed, if we are present to and grateful for them.  If we choose to fill our lives with them.

Fill your life with joys. 

Find things to be grateful for right were you are. 

Use the time you have to enjoy the life you have.

The roads are the same, only I transformed am changed.

Yours in journey,

Yucel

The Power of Choosing

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Recently, I choose to arrive with a total availability and faith in a close relationship, where in the past I had arrived with a hesitancy and fear laden wanting in this and other relationships.

It felt so much more present, empowered and complete to be in relationship where I was fully choosing to be engaged in the moment, committed integrally with faith and without reserve.

I realized that fear of eventual failure in the relationship, which had been a prior pattern in this relationship and in past major relationships going back to infancy, created a kind of space where holding back had room to occur within me.   That this fear based holding back created a kind of 0h-well, here is my insurance policy life jacket hedge for when the expected happens safety blanket kind of fall back ready reserve.

Reserve, being what it is, held me back from fully engaging, from fully committing, from being fully present in the relationship.

I had been wanting in the past, instead of choosing my true desires.

Wanting being a form of desire for lack, is fear based.

Choosing is commitment.   ( for more on wanting and choosing see:  http://choose.ws/2009/10/29/positive-pivots/choosing/what-place-do-you-choose-for-want-in-your-life/yucel/ )

Choosing has an element of faith.

I could feel the difference this made in how I felt and arrived immediately and on goingly.

Being fully present and committed felt so much more alive and present than the fear based reserve and walking on egg shells ways of the past.

Where in the past, I had been awaiting the dropping of the other shoe, I “knew” on some level would drop, the second shoe always had fallen… , while in a kind of stupefied fear I walked on egg shells waiting,  now I was confident, alive, present, faithful, fully committed.

It felt powerful and fabulous.

Well, it turns out that this relationship ran on rocks.  Pretty soon, and pretty hard.

Interestingly, it still feels different.

Having chosen and bravely committed fully, holding nothing back with faith, where before there had been fear and reserve and want, on termination this time there could be no hope or optimism.   ( for more on hope and optimism see:  http://choose.ws/2009/11/09/what-is-reality/positive-realistic/is-hope-promiss/yucel/ )

In the space created by elimination of hope and optimism was room for realism. 

Having fully committed to and allowed the relationship, having arrived fully present and available, and with the relationship’s demise, having done all I could, realistically this time there could be no more I could do.

In the past, where I had been wanting, I had arrived with reserve. 

Arriving with reserve, a reserve I arrived with unconsciously or subconsciously, I always had something held back.  I could always arrive yet again with something more I could do, something more I could give.  There had always been an available built in extra tank of a bit more kindeling through which I could reignite my hopes and wants, my fears and lacks.

To quote the bard, “Cowards die many times before their deaths: The valiant never taste of death but once.”

In the past, I had been wanting and needy and had walked on egg shells and died many deaths, over and over and over again in hesitancy and hope.   This time, I was valiant, committed and having chosen, it was but one ending, eased by knowledge of having done all I could.   I could also allow and accept and even embrace the unfolding of my choice.

Yours in choice,

Yucel