Lately I’ve been on a journey of self-discovery and cleansing, attempting to break old bad habits and dissolve limiting beliefs while building positive new ones. During this process, which is ongoing, I have discovered one tool that has proven to be more useful than any of the others I have tried so far. Meditation. (more…)
Lately I’ve been paying more attention to the quality of things that surround me, both at home and at work. For example, last year I started using an all natural, handmade bath soap rather than something mass produced that I can pick up in almost any store. Correspondingly, this handmade soap costs me 3 – 4 times what I would pay for soap in the store. I’m ok with this – it’s a small price to pay for something that I consider to be far superior to the scented chemical bars the store carries. Well, that’s started spilling over into other things, and other areas of my life. (more…)
I completed day one of logging my activities, food, and spending. Interestingly enough, I’ve already experienced one side effect, or perhaps desired effect from doing this. As I mentioned yesterday, due to poor food choices over the weekend, my weight had gone from around 208 to 212. Since I didn’t get all my food prep done over the weekend for various reasons, rather than buy food at the cafeteria as I would have a couple weeks ago I decided to improvise and see what I could do. The result was I wound up eating quite a bit of watermelon yesterday, more than I woud have preferred. Just out of curiosity I stepped on the scale this morning. I weighed in at 208.2 lbs – I dropped nearly 4 pounds in a single day! (more…)
I’ve known for a while now that I have the tools to make my life into something pretty special. One of the things I’ve always noticed about the people I admire that seem to have their act together, is that every single one of them acts from a solid personal base. What I mean by that is, they have things lined up – finances, relationships, mental/emotional/physical health, and their actions at least publicly, support what they want to do. So, today is the first day in getting my collective act together.I have been through self-help programs before where one of the things you do is observe yourself during the day, and later at night or at one time during the week you go back and look over all the stuff you write down about whatever you were tracking. Almost inevitably, what happens is that the simple act of observation changes my behavior. This is actually a typical response to this type of situation, even when the results will only be seen by that person. (more…)
Here we are, June 21st, the longest day of the year, and the official start of summer on the Gregorian calendar. Today was a day I had targeted as the to doing certain things I wanted to do – ritual, meditation, yoga, jujitsu class, and healtghier eating. Instead, here I am once again writing about my catastrophic failure to do any of that, despite putting things in place that would make this a fairly easy transition. (more…)
Last week I went to a meeting of pagans, a meetup group that gathers once a month at a local restaurant to eat and talk. A few weeks ago, someone in the group floated the idea of having a midsummers ball to celebrate the change. At that time I thought it was a great idea, though I didn’t really expect anyone to pull it off. Well, here we are, a little less than 2 weeks away from it, and I’m less than enthused. (more…)
I started this post a couple weeks ago, but due to illness and other matters, was unable to complete it at this time. Now that those are behind me, I should be back to posting more regularly than the last month or two.
Last week as I was thinking, one of the things I spent some time thinking about was my nature – what is primal to me, if there are things that are so ingrained in my character, or everyday expression of myself in the world that on some level they are inseparable from who I am. As is frequently the case with most questions of great importance, the answer is both yes and no, and both are true. Let me explain. (more…)
I was thinking deeply last week about some matters that are important to me. I’m sure the location of this thinking session is not big mystery, given my particular affinities. Originally this post was going to be title ‘the power of place,’ but after some reflection I’ve figured out that there’s more to it than just location. It’s a matter of who we are and where we’re at in our lives. (more…)
So says Master Oogway from Kung Fu Panda, along with a number of real life spiritual teachers. This last Friday was a rather long and intense day for me, and illustrative of this point, I think. Which is why I’ve decided to share it with you. (more…)
So, if you were paying attention to my last blog post, you noticed that I mentioned doing the P90X workout. Actually, if you’ve followed my blog for more than the last month, you’ll know that my attempt to lose weight has met with limited and temporary success thus far. My goal has been to reduce to 175 pounds, about 25 – 30 pounds less than where I am now. Last year I made it to 180 before getting sick and put it all back on over the next several months trying to get my system to balance back out. Given the way things have been going lately, I’ve decided it’s time for a different approach. (more…)