How Do You Want To Be Remembered

For as the body without a spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also (James 2:26).  In other words, faith has to be accompanied with action and as well as the spirits joins the body.  How do you want to be remembered?  A spirited individual with faith ...but faith alone is worthless.  You need to demonstrate faith!  Materialize faith...

          Fill in the blank.  (This is a psychological interpretation) The war is to be won come the clutch moment but the battles are fought every time in _____________ and against yourself.

How do you want to be remembered?  Do you want to be remembered for the inspiration you've given?  Inspire others and be inspired by others.  How do you remember love ones who have passed away?  Do you remember more good than bad?

Observe Yourself

A few men explored unseen areas.  They have seen the surface of the moon, the basin of deep trenches, and walked in the barren winters of Antarctica.  Yet several of us has to discover ourselves.  People look out in the stars and want to know if there is life in other planets, other galaxies, or other planetary systems.  The great mathematician and also a great Greek philosopher, Pythagoras quotes, "Man know thyself, then thou shalt know the Universe and God."  Self-knowledge through self-discovery.  Do you know yourself?  Have you explored your inner universe?  The person who absolutely knows himself will comprehend the universe around him.  

Another idea from Pythagoras is, "above all things, reverence thy self."  To fully have some comprehension of the self-concept is to respect yourself above all.  This is a necessity of being virtuous (by definition is a divine act as a foundation of principles and good moral person).   You want to work for this and practice them.  All by discovering yourself.  If you do not believe it is a necessity than you want to desire the virtuous path.  

Respecting yourself is more about what you do and how you do them.  Now let us discuss about confidence.  Confidence goes hand and hand with respect.  Confidence is how you feel.  The more respect you have about yourself, the more confident you will become.  Be honest with yourself.  Remember the cocky versus over-confidence rule.  Respecting yourself means to be modest.  Stay true to yourself.  Another revered thinker and philosopher of all times, Socrates said, "Well I am certainly wiser than this man.  It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge of boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance.  At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is too this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know."  Do not fall into prey to people who disrespect you.  Watch out for the manipulators, the needy, the liars, and the controllers.  Stop pleasing others!  Remember we are discussing self-respect.  Pleasing other people's needs before your own shows low self-respect.

Discover who you are.  Develop a principle you go by.  Everyone has standards.  We all know the famous saying from the Golden Rule, treat others the way you want to be treated. Stop waiting and thinking about other people's acceptance.  You're not looking for approvals!  Changing who you are means you have not found yourself.  Find your personality.  Find your talents.  Find your creativity.  Find those and you will appreciate who you are.  Appreciate yourself because no one will.  Yet again, still clueless.

Being the Best

I had this thought in my head.  The thought of being the best.  I am not talking about the previous blog about being perfect or near-perfect human.  I am talking about being the best of what you do.  What you stand for.  What you like to do.  How would you compare yourself to yourself?  The competition is you versus you!  People want to break world records, local records, or even personal records.  Being the best is what most competitive person strive for.  One thing to think about once you are the best there is only one way to go next and that is to go down.  Instead of focusing of being the best, focus on being better.  Being better than a week before.  Being better than a day before.  Being better than the last time you did it.

I live every day better than the day before.  Better yourself before you get the best of yourself.  Look at the days ahead and ask yourself how can I be better.  If you happen to fall and worsen yourself, maybe you need to look deep down inside.  Failure is part of success.  When you are looking at the days ahead, you are planning on your success.  Planning on your willingness to be better.  The proverb, "He who fails to plan, plans to fail."  Whoever created must have failed miserably or not planned several times.  With that said, it all boils down to success.  The goal is to better yourself day by day.  Hour by hour.  Minute by minute.  The less time the harder but it surely is doable depending on the situation.

Failure makes us stronger ...but how?  Learn from our mistakes.  Learn to grow (mentally).  Come in with a focus state of mind and looking back what you did before.  How were you mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  Let's take a page from Bill Gates.  A drop out from college and a failed first business.  Now, everywhere you look it is his product.  Thomas Edison made 1,000 failed attempts in inventing a light bulb before finally resulting in a design that worked.  The most successful basketball player Michael Jordan was cut from his basketball high school team and the rest was history.  M.J. played 1,072 games and lost almost 300 games.  With over 24,500 shots he took, he missed 9,000 shots in his career.  You think Michael dwelt on those missed shots and every games lost.  He bettered himself.  You have to take account to every situation at hand especially if you are injured, sick, or other extraneous circumstances.  Beethoven, a great musician and composer, composed many musical pieces and symphonies while he was deaf.  In his young life, Abraham Lincoln, a once great leader of the U.S., entered the Black Hawk War of 1832 as a Captain and left the war as a Private.  Many successful people in history had their failures and bounce back from it.  Be better then the next day and the rest will take care of themselves.

Enjoy Yourself

I figured I wrote in a consistent basis but today I'm  enjoying myself by not doing a weekday blog.  The weekend was a good rest.  Rest the mind, body, and soul.  For that, enjoy myself and enjoy yourself.  There's a phrase I like to say, "don't cheat yourself, treat yourself."  I'm not sure if that context fall on enjoying yourself.  Well, still clueless as ever. Out like a scout on a new route!

Alter the Course of Your Life

Do you like change?  Or do you like the indistinguishable life that you had?  If you cannot change the environment around you then change the way you are around the environment.  To handle yourself, use your head.  To handle others, use your heart.  As Dr. Ron Archer said, you will need to transform your head, heart, hands, and habits to create success.  My main thought on this blog is alteration of habits.  We, as humans, are creatures of habits.  We can do most things without thinking about them and why is that?  Habits.  Do smokers habitually smoke or just have a craving?  Do runners or any athletes run for the sake of running or are they just trying stay in shape?  Habits are evil yet virtuous.  The habits we choose make us to who we are.  If you are habitually making excuses, then guess what, you are continually going to make excuses because it is part of who you are.  Those habits is a part of your character.  Your self.   Own them before they own you. 

 

 Good thing about habits is you can change them before they eat you alive.  I ask you again, do you like change?  Do you want to keep those habits?  To change your, lets say, BAD habits is the same as being successful in life.  You will fail before you will succeed meaning you will fail miserably changing your habit before you become successful.  Another tip is to remain committed to changing that habit.  Sitting on your ass saying to yourself these millions of excuses to not do the right thing.  Your habit is telling you what you are doing while sitting on your ass is a good thing.  So what I want you to do first is to start thinking what is good.  What is positive.  Think about what got you in the rut, those negative thoughts, and extinguish them with motivational and positive ideas.  Corny as it is but little phrases goes a long way.  Say to yourself, "yes, I can," "I can do it," "get up," or "let's go" over and over helps but does not guarantee success.  With thoughts come doubts.  Now your heart has to be involve with the process.  Focus.  Focus on the will-power.  Focus on one goal, one task.  Concentrate on it not just by thought but also by compassion.  Be passionate on changing your habit.  It sounds so simple but it is difficult for many.  One last tip to help change for the best is to exercise.  The best form to relieve stress.  One saying to help change yourself is to change what you look on the outside before you can change what you are in the inside.  If you cannot make yourself exercise in a daily basis, then I'll help you make excuses for yourself for not exercising.  Like the old proverb states, old habits die hard. Do you like saying this to yourself... I'm too fat.  I'm too slow.  It's cold out.  It's raining.  I got a headache.  It's too hot.  I got a headache.  My muscles ache.  I'm stomach hurts.  I don't have clothes to exercise in.  I don't have the motivation.  I haven't ate yet.  If this is you then we have a lot of work to do.  First and foremost, get rid of the petty things in your life.  Stay committed to what is important to you.

 You want to stay the same.  Is that what is important to you?  Alter the course of your life.  Don't be afraid of change.  Change is inevitable.  Look around you.  Nothing is truly the same.  Look at yourself.  Do you look the same a few years ago?  Do you feel the same?  Do you act the same?  Do you think the same?  If you answered all yes then yes, stay the same.

Suffocate Yourself ...Figuratively

As I ponder on days past, I gravitated on this particular saying, "to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what you are for what you will be come."  The feeling as I say that to myself is unfathomable.  As a younger man, I loathed sacrifice.  To sacrifice is give up or to let go and to suffocate is to do away with.  I thought to sacrifice something or someone is to die for it.  Jesus sacrifice himself for us in such a horrible way.  I felt if I had to sacrifice anything I had to do it the way Jesus did.  Like the American religious poet and writer, Mary Gardiner Brainard said, "I would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light.  For many, many years ago, I have gone alone in the light knowing I have not walked with God.  In light, you feel secure.  In light, you sense the presence of a higher being.  In light, you have no fear.   Your mind assumes all those when in light especially with the state of mind of God that He will be there with you always, light or dark.  Suffocate those assumptions and your mind will be clear as well as spiritually.

To feel pain is to live.  Without it, your dead.  Amazing when I hear people say they want to go to heaven but they are not ready to die.  Suffocate your lies.  Suffocate the doubts.  Suffocate your fears.  Are you ready to sacrifice every want that you desire?  If you were to ask me that 10 maybe 15 years ago, I would say, "Go screw yourself."  Ask me now and I'll tell you, "I'll sacrifices my wants and needs."  What's change?  Fear.  It's no longer there.  I'm not afraid to suffocate. To sacrifice. To fail.  To be myself.  Ask yourself this, have you ever known things that you simply had no way of knowing?  I know I'm no longer afraid but the thought of it makes me want to embrace the fear.  Suffocate my fears ...or embrace them?  There is no turning back, I'm going to suffocate it!  What are you afraid of?

Mind, body, and soul.  Three parts to make a functional human.  You lack in one then you are not enlightened (yet).  You lack in two then that's impractical.  More like worthless.  Everyone has one but not too many has two and a very few have three.  Then there's the perfect human.  The one who have attained such greatness.  The one who achieved the enlightenment.  What is God's description of the perfect human?  Or how about near-perfect?  Before my lifetime, should I attain for the status of perfection?  I need to conform to the description or definition of God's ideal type.  And now, the true question is?  Should I try?  What are you doing to try?  Being more compassionate?  Piety?  Charity or unselfishness?  Love for thy fellow man?  Help to strive world peace?  If you have perfected the body and soul but not developed your mind, I say you are an idiot.  The saying ignorance is bliss.  If you do not know, then you are happy.  If you do not know how to attain perfection than you are complete.  Well, just call me an idiot and I will live my life blissfully.

As I wrote about the past blogs starting with impression (the body), expression (the mind), and now the suffocation (the soul), I feel the reader knows somewhat of my standpoint before I start my daily muse.  My rants.  My concerns.  My goals.  ...my life.  Come follow me as I try, better yet, attain the level of perfection.  What lies ahead is to develop the three parts of a functional human and see my progression.  There is no looking back.  I'm already hurt and I'm not ready to quit.  I might as well keep going and reward myself to the finish.  What are you doing to progress?  Is your development over once you hit a certain age, career, education, or physical feat?

Life... I have no clue. 

Expression. What a wonderful process!

My second way to express myself.  First ask yourself this, define yourself.  To clearly to define yourself, lets define what expression is.  Expression is the act of expressing or setting forth in words; the process of making known one's thoughts or feelings.  Expression has many meanings.  Algebraic Expression is an expression which is obtained by performing a finite number of the following operations on symbols representing numbers: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, raising to a power.  I'm not talking about countable or mathematical definition as of yet but the questions maybe algebraic or formulas. 

Now let us continue.  Pardon my expression, I'm going to crap on this.  The words that you use for showing your thought or feelings can be disturbing yet relieving.  Express yourself.  When reading words put in sentences then put on paragraphs then to chapters into books, can you see the writer's expression?  Are their faces of anguish or glee when you read those words? Mine.  It's simple.  I have a mind-numbing stare when words appear with the tapping of my fingers.  That's my expression.   

As Ice Cube from N.W.A. would say from the song, Express Yourself, "I'm expressin' with my full capabilities,  And now I'm livin' in correctional facilities, Cause some don't agree with how I do this.  I get straight, meditate like a Buddhist, I'm droppin' flava, my behavior is hereditary,  But my technique is very necessary."  I express not much in words but in actions.  My thoughts and feelings generate energy.  Energy release to my expression can cause pain.  Whether someone else or myself.  Here's another question, can you have expression without emotion or vice versa?  There are human emotions into which expressions are categorized.  What do you think Ice Cube's facial expression when singing that song?  Happy, contempt, or shame?  Unless you are a true diagnosed sociopath or psychopath, humans have emotion expression. Startling, huh?  Speaking of startle.  It's more like a reflex to intense sudden stimulation which is unique expression.

Words are not enough to express myself.  My mind goes off in tangents.  To left field.  To A1689-zD1 (which is the furthest galaxy in the universe).  Ways to express myself.  Being Optimistic; Smile or laugh.  Manage negative feelings; how to handle stress, anger, fear, worry, guilt, and the list goes on.  Overcoming shyness or other insecurities.  Now once I get the emotion controlled, then creativity will be clear or soon to follow.  Another verse of a song, Lateralus, from Tool, "Over thinking, over analyzing, separates the body from the mind. Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines."  Thinking about this verse, I never think myself too seriously.  "Separates the body from the mind," tell me I should find my happy place.  It helps me find a place that inspires you and that will help spark your creativity.  Never be afraid to try something new.  Blogging for the day two and thinking to myself, how will you know whether or not you're a secret writing/painting/sewing genius if you never try it?  I say, relax. Get away from the outside world.  If you're interested in writing, read books.  If you're thinking about arts, go to a museum.  If you're wondering about sewing, hell... go to Tchad in Chicago, Illinois.  Just have the willingness to explore, learn, and discover.  Be unique, be creative... and just express yourself.

...but still I have no clue.