Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me”
Of course, you do not do so out loud; otherwise
Someone would call the cops
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us
To connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a full moon
In each eye that is always saying,
With that sweet moon language,
What every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
Hafiz
Month: April 2010
Practice gratitude
An indepth study on gratitude has been carried out by psychologist Robert Emmons and colleagues at the University of California, Davis. He examined the effect of noting the good things that happen regularly. To conduct the study he set up three groups. One kept gratitude journals. One recorded daily hassles. The third wrote down neutral events.
He found that the group keeping the journal exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week than the other groups. A second study found that the gratitude group enjoyed higher levels of alertness and energy compared with the others. A further benefit was observed in the realm of personal goal attainment: Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental conditions.
If you want to try this exercise in your own lives you can do so very easily. You can choose to follow these simple instructions from Dr. Emmons : “There are many things in our lives, both large and small, that we might be grateful about. Think back over the past week and write down up to 5 things in your life that you are grateful or thankful for.” In actual fact it was found that those who wrote in their gratitude journals every day got far more benefits than those who did so weekly, so it is best to keep a small notebook and write up to five good things that happened during the day.
Or for those of you that have an iPhone and want to keep a gratitude journal, you can download the app “Gratitude”: http://itunes.apple.com/app/gratitude-journal-positive/id299604556?mt=8
See more at http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons
Following your path
We have to dare to be ourselves,
however frightening or strange
that self may prove to be.
May Sarton
A Joyful day
Joy in the context of spirituality
is not the same as happiness.
Happiness is a feeling that,
like all feelings, comes and goes,
while joy is a more fundamental attitude toward life.
This joy doesn’t change your circumstance;
it embraces it.
Joy doesn’t make your situation other than it is;
but reveals the greater reality in which it is.
Being aware of the greater reality
always manifests as joy.
The more narrow the attention,
the more focused we are on fleeting moments
of happiness and sadness.
The wider our attention becomes
the more aware we are
of an unending flow of joy.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Pause and Wake up
When we learn to face the fear we habitually avoid, we begin to awaken from a trance.
By pausing and accepting our experience, we free ourselves to respond to our circumstances in ways that bring genuine peace and happiness.
In a pause, we simply discontinue whatever we are doing. We become wholly present, attentive and, often, physically still.
Try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing “no thing,” and simply notice what you experience.
Taking our hands off the controls and pausing lets us clearly see the wants and fears that drive us. We become conscious of how the feeling that something is missing or wrong keeps us leaning into the future. We can continue our futile attempt to manage our experience, or we can meet our vulnerability with the wisdom of what I call “radical acceptance.”
Tara Brach
Speeding up
Aspects of life in modern society can become ingrained in our brains and cause people to hurry, whether or not they are pushed for time. Researchers at Toronto University found that people today move faster and hurry after a brief exposure to the logo from famous fast-food restaurants. In other words, our brains are told to speed up, even if a person does not need to do so.
Fast food represents a culture of time efficiency and instant gratification,” said Chen-Bo Zhong, assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Toronto University The problem is that the goal of saving time gets activated upon exposure to fast food regardless of whether time is a relevant factor in the context.
Mindfulbalance 