Day 447 - Hooray!! I'm grateful for...

This life!

When I express the word 'hooray' (def: used to express joy or approval) inside of myself, gratitude comes up with it, so I thought I'd dedicate this post and ask:

What am I grateful for in my life?

The connection from hooray to grateful is interesting in itself. When I look at the feeling if it, it's kind of stored as a memory, but like a picture-archetype of a group of people all going "hooray!" after hearing news of an accomplishment or victory to which they all had contributed their blood, sweat and tears.

I connect 'hooray' to joy as gratitude, especially in a teamwork setting. And what I'm most grateful for, is what I most enjoy. So, without further adieu, my

#GratitudeList:

- Connection

First it was Mommy, we all know that. Then they cut the cord. Dad; eventually I became grateful for my brother.. Friends. Beings exchanging words....or more. It's this idea of understanding myself through others, 'two or more in my name. 'What are the similarities? the differences? Who am I in relation to another? Is one of the questions that I'm most grateful for.

- Education

Learning and the ability to learn. To understand and be understood. The process of familiarizing ourselves with what's here. I've not really been able to commit to a single area of deep investigation, (other than DIP), because everything is so fascinating. I'd be wise to calm down a bit, and focus my attention more, because specialization of applied understandings, is where the money's at.

By focusing education, we have access to create more value for the world, and fair compensation should be expected. It's the natural way. Not all education is perfect, and I tapped out of Academia after my bachelors to pursue a deeper understanding through...

- Vocabulary

Learning words has been nothing short of everything when it comes to learning new things. At a young age, word acquisition was one of the greatest ways we could apply ourselves, for it was a very powerful tool for getting our needs met. More words, more specific requests, more power. The early childhood education vocab lays the foundation for our thoughts, and thus, what we will create in our lives, over and over and over. Fascinating: how we kind of outsource our thoughts to the mind, automate them, and then we get stuck in weird thought patterns that just aren't helpful anymore, if they ever were!!

The more vocab words, the more choices of thought at my disposal. To all who played a part in my journey of realizing the importance of words: Thank You. I've realized it's not too late to be bound by our current vocabulary level, no matter where you're at, you can improve - and it's as worth it now as it was when you were 2. It's a big world out there, and we're all missing it, because we can't see beyond our own vocabulary. Learn Words.

- Body

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abuse and forget about my body.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to entertain the mind, over my body. I.e. binge eating candy.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to dissociate from my breath, heart and living flesh, so I can go on a vacation in the mind for some energetic stimulation addiction.

I commit myself to take a breath, slow down, be with my body, cry if I need to, learn from my mistakes, and commit to new awareness.

I commit myself to eat better, to cook my own food more often, and to consider the long-time point of view for everything I ingest.

I commit myself to a daily routine, to honor my body, through exercise and stilling the mind from time to time.

I commit myself to honor my body.

- Me

None of this would be possible if it weren't for me.

Thank you Daniel, you've made many good decisions in your life so far. Keep it up! Don't let yourself get stuck in a rut. You can do what ever you set your sights on. Thanks for sticking with me, as me. We'll get this done! I believe in me.

Thanks for reading..

- All

(this is now a comprehensive list, goodbye)

Day 416 - Word Critic Bully Character

A little backstory before opening up this character:

While working through level 10 of my vocabulary building program, I came across the word infer, and slowed down to read all the definitions for it because I have long had trouble distinguishing between inference and deduction. This lead to a journey of understanding, aided by the internet and, well, Yahoo Answers. Reading through all the contributions from others, I was definitely starting to refine the boundaries of these two words for myself. Below is one of the more poorly rated answers, but I resonated with it. I thought was a really effective expression of her understanding. Then I expanded the 1 comment, read it, and went through a semi-heavy reaction as I closed the page in disgust of the nasty meanness of humanity online.

I reopened the tab to investigate what this reaction was. Rereading this, O_hutch may have been simply saying that it was funny, and not in a derogatory way. Regardless, my interpretation/reaction of the situation, was such, as to reflect my own nature; and so, I walk the necessary self-forgiveness, take responsibility for my contribution to this uncool aspect of our world/internet culture.

--

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge my own and others' words.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to polarize my understanding of the importance of clear understanding of individual vocabulary words, and create a positive experience attached to perfect word choice and execution, and a negative experience/judgment of fumbling my words, incorrect word use, nonsense - and within allowing my mind to polarize and energize this point, I now see, realize and understand that I am absolutely sabotaging an awesome potential to support myself and those around me, putting my understanding of vocabulary to its best use.

Scenarios:

- Listen for the definition mismatch when listening to others. This is accomplished by attentively listening to the whole of the other person to get their context and how it influences their understanding/use of particular words, and then comparing and contrasting it to my understanding. Additional cross referencing is often required, as my contextual associations with my words could just as well be misaligned.

- Use my Vocabulary Builder everyday. This is most clearly an expression of putting my understanding of vocabulary to its best use.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that my definitions and understandings of words are more clear, more refined, more accurate, and thus judge myself as superior to all around me (straight up ego design), and TOTALLY MISS how others choose their words according to their own understandings of them! It's kind of a..."duh" thing, but this also shows me how stupid and compromising it can be when I let my ego steer my perception.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to listen to others superficially and from the narrow vantage point of my current understanding, reactively ready to pounce on/judge others when they speak/write with any word-definition discrepancies to my own; instead of (correction) leveling with others and working to understand why/how they use their words to convey meaning, and resolve discrepancies.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to be fast and rush through information, and be the first person to correctly interpret what someone means, sometimes even before they finish speaking.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to treat others as intellectual inferiors because of an inflated sense of having comprehensive understanding.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abuse myself and others within and through operating from a partial understanding, inflated to seem to me like a better or more accurate understanding. I commit myself to humble myself and see the honesty of me operating within and from a partial understanding.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to trust my own understandings, which are actually inferences that I've been making my whole life.

I commit myself to be humble and willing to reconsider everything (311, thanks again for this song)!

I commit myself to actively realizing that we all don't have the same positioning and reach within the English lexicon, and take responsibility for creating shared understanding within what is best for all.

I commit myself to apply active listening to cross reference my initial interpretations and understandings with other potential meanings, especially meanings relevant to the individual speaking. This requires a humbleness and slowing down. Patiently taking in more information than I would normally cruising through my life at mind-speed.

--

It's a rather obtrusive personality program in my life, specifically in the realm of communication, which was my field of study in college. Damn, no matter how much I know, I really do need to humble myself and keep learning, all the time.

Bottom line: To have an inflated self-perception of mastery within understanding = not chill.


More to come on: listening, bullying, words, and my life experience. Thanks.

Day 345 - Aligning Purpose with Participation

Inspired by today's interview:
Living Words: Purpose - Part 2

As a child growing up, I believed I had a great purpose to fulfill. A purpose to make this world a better place. I later learned that there are lots of people just like me in the world. Everyone has a sense of purpose, but it appears that it can get convoluted in the midst of the mind: Perhaps it's a self-defeatist thought like, "I can't do it," with a lovely little fear of failure that prevents us from fulfilling our purpose. Other times it may be a a simple pursuit of desire, a side-track of fulfilling one's own self-interest. The tricky part here is that there are justifications that one may use to make it look like self-interest is, or will eventually be how that purpose can be fulfilled. And before we know it, our life passes us by and that horrible sense of regret come into view too often.

Maybe it's just that we never really took the time to seriously consider our purpose. And even of those that have contemplated the point, it could very well be that no real plan was drawn up. This is not a worthy excuse (as if there is one). Many, many other people in the world are not in positions to have a purpose other than to just survive the day.

For myself, I have simply never drawn out a tangible map for bringing my purpose to fruition. I've spent most of my purpose driven time within an ambition energy, jumping from idea to idea, never committing to any one idea because I was afraid of loosing the opportunity within all the other ideas, AND ideas that may come in the future. Total mind delusion of self-importance with very little to no proof in the physical. Purpose without a plan is not recommended.

Solution:
Write it out, and check the practicality of it.

Let's walk an example that's very near and dear to me. I want to make the world a better place. Ok...how? There are many different ways, and each person will have their own individual idea of how they may see themselves fulfilling this one purpose that unites us all. So, I have spent a lot of time educating myself because I really like understanding...maybe I can be an educator to facilitate understanding. Now, I'm getting somewhere. What do I want to teach? Life skills. What kind? The stuff that matters...the stuff that determines relationships between people...communication. AH HA, I studied communication in college. So far I'm on track. (now here's where things get interesting) Communication is a large topic area, so there are many different directions I could take with this, but because of my participation with Desteni, I understand how important my relationships to words are (i.e. Purpose). So, there are a few more steps here that I was able to take because of my investigation of the desteni message, which is most highly recommended, so I now know how to fulfill my purpose. I want to help people understand the importance of their relationship to words.

I have a plan for how to do this, and I'm currently working on it. In other words, this idea is actionable. That is the key. Once you reach the point of an actionable idea that's aligned with a higher purpose, all once then has to do is push through the personal resistances and actually do it.

So, if you're looking for your purpose, great! It's not lost, it's only buried in the depths of cognition and memories. The cool part about Desteni as a tool is that you learn that you only need yourself. So write. Map out your individual expression within the higher purpose that is to make this world a better place. The interview at the beginning of this post is extraordinarily supportive, and the desteni forum board is too. See ya tomorrow for an expansion and some related self-forgiveness and corrective application statements.

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