10 Things Mentally Strong People Won't Do

10 Things Mentally Strong People Won't Do:

1. They don’t dwell on mistakes.
2. They don’t hang around negative people.
3. They don’t stop believing in themselves.
4. They don’t wait for an apology to forgive.
5. They don’t feel sorry for themselves.
6. They don’t hold grudges.
7. They won’t let anyone limit their joy…
8. …and they don’t limit the joy of others.
9. They don’t get lazy.
10. They don’t get negative.

Continue...

-- Travis Bradberry

Core Design, Incomplete

​Almost all leadership comes out of a person's core design and is, at the same time, incomplete.  So, leadership requires leaders...not just a leader.

I Used To Think: Responsibilities

​I used to think...that the best stuff was received when I took care of my own responsibilities. Now I know that our greater joy comes from what we join, from Who we join.

Liberties

After watching the first debate of the presidential debate season, the following seems significant...as it spans both when it was written and our current context:

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Endymion

Walking our dogs in the dark recently; the skies...well Longfellow says it so well!

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Endymion":

The rising moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
       Lie on the landscape green,
       With shadows brown between.

And silver white the river gleams,
As if Diana, in her dreams,
       Had dropt her silver bow
       Upon the meadows low.

On such a tranquil night as this,
She woke Endymion with a kiss,
       When, sleeping in the grove,
       He dreamed not of her love.

Like Dian’s kiss, unasked, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought;
       Her voice, nor sound betrays
       Its deep, impassioned gaze.

It comes,—the beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity,—
       In silence and alone
       To seek the elected one.

It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep,
Are Life’s oblivion, the soul’s sleep,
       And kisses the closed eyes
       Of him, who slumbering lies.

O, weary hearts! O, slumbering eyes!
O, drooping souls, whose destinies
       Are fraught with fear and pain,
       Ye shall be loved again!

No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
       But some heart, though unknown,
       Responds unto his own.

Responds,—as if with unseen wings,
A breath from heaven had touched its strings
       And whispers, in its song,
      “Where hast though stayed so long!”

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Disconnection

I’m convinced that beneath the ugly manifestations of our present evils—political corruption, ecological devastation, warring against one another everywhere, hating each other based on race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation—the greatest dis-ease facing humanity right now is our profound and painful sense of disconnection. We feel disconnected from God, certainly, but also from ourselves, from each other, and from our world. Our sense of this fourfold isolation is plunging our species into increasingly destructive behavior and much mental illness.

Our sense of disconnection is only an illusion. Nothing human can stop the flow of divine love; we cannot undo the eternal pattern even by our worst sin. God is always winning, and God’s love will win. Love does not lose, nor does God lose. Nothing can stop the relentless outpouring force that is the divine dance.

-- Richard Rohr

SM Brunch 8: Something Bigger, Strict Confines, Feel Like It, and Getting Robbed

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

We all want to know that the other person believes in something bigger than themselves.

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As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.

-- Leonard Cohen

Recently celebrating his 82nd birthday, the title track from his latest album can be streamed from a link here.

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​We don't have to 'feel like it' first, before we are ready to give something...to serve someone else.

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Work, Food, and Play

​Work, food and play, when done together with others, is like mortar for our faith — they hold its bricks in place.

Being Human -- Without Capes

We need to be human again.  Only then can we be something more than we typically expect of ourselves.

I've Noticed: Weeds

I've noticed...that there are all kinds of weeds that grow in my relationships when I don't spend time in them.

Words: Sometimes...

​Sometimes words and ideas seem to lose all their weight and substance, becoming even vaporish, while at other times, they seem strong enough to uphold the ideals of the whole world.

So, what is it that makes it one way or the other?

Every Riven Thing

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Every Riven Thing":

God goes, belonging to every riven thing he's made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he's made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where

God goes belonging. To every riven thing he's made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He's made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing he's made.

-- Christian Wiman

Prayer: Paying Attention

​Prayer is a lot of things, not the least of which is being attentive to God,  paying attention to the real things of life (Col 4:2).  It is a listening. to him, as much as a speaking to him..like learning the language of intimacy with God.

SM Brunch 7: Entertaining, Damage, Getting Even, and Slow Motion

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

...always a great trip when we go to the 'Big House'.  More pics here....

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Someone can be entertaining, but not necessarily enjoyable.

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​​We damage our kids...when we think they can no longer hear the voice of God.

-- Rabbi

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​Getting even has never healed a single person.

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Win Hearts Before Minds

Great leaders are those who trust their gut. They are those who understand the art before the science. They win hearts before minds.

-- Simon Sinek

How Bad?

How bad do you want it?  How easily will you quit your pursuit of it?

I Used To Think: Certainty

​I used to think...that certainty was essential.  Now I know that, although clarity is so compelling, the more comfortable we can become with ambiguity (uncertainty), the better off we'll be.

When They Hire

​Reliability, initiative, and sensitivity to others are keys to good work -- what people want when they hire someone.

Focus, ingenuity, and humanity -- would be a wonderful surprise.

Hothouse

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Hothouse":

A rose, rose. A violet, violet. A jade, jade.
No. The architecture of each, a refusal.

Rose is not rose nor violet violet nor jade jade.
But each is what it is, not what it seems.

What each seems is what of each gets seen.
Though what we see isn’t the thing seen.

The petals of the rose are violet and jade.
Thus the petals of the rose look, to us, rose.

The shape of the violet absorbs all but violet.
The violet we see is the violet a violet rejects.

A rose is a rose is a rose, but not as a rose.
Jade is the name of jade, not the jade named.

-- Raymond McDaniel

From the Author:

“I think it’s beautiful and weird and dangerous that we name things according to what we see as their attributes (and attribute things according to names). ‘Hothouse’ is from a book about how we see, and everything that interferes with seeing.”

H+P+L=J

Hope + Peace + Love = Joy

Time Like This

It seems to me that I have greater peace… when I am not 'trying to be contemplative,' or trying to be anything special, but simply orienting my life fully and completely towards what seems to be required of a man like me at a time like this.

-- Thomas Merton

This week I have felt the encroachment of perfectionism and self-consciousness. I need this reminder to be willing to be who I am, not someone I am not.

Object Outside

Joy can only be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

-- Leonard Tolstoy

Fury

​Even the most docile, reserved, or self-controlled of men can have a great fury.

I've Noticed: Looking At

I've noticed...that I shouldn't be more interested in looking at someone else than I am at looking at myself.

Just A Theory

​A budget is just a theory, without any specific mechanisms to follow it.

The Inward Morning

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Inward Morning":

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
   Which outward nature wears,
And in its fashion’s hourly change
    It all things else repairs.

In vain I look for change abroad,
    And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
    Illumes my inmost mind.

What is it gilds the trees and clouds,
    And paints the heavens so gay,
But yonder fast-abiding light
    With its unchanging ray?

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,
    Upon a winter’s morn,
Where’er his silent beams intrude
    The murky night is gone.

How could the patient pine have known
    The morning breeze would come,
Or humble flowers anticipate
    The insect’s noonday hum,—

Till the new light with morning cheer
    From far streamed through the aisles,
And nimbly told the forest trees
    For many stretching miles?

I’ve heard within my inmost soul
    Such cheerful morning news,
In the horizon of my mind
    Have seen such orient hues,

As in the twilight of the dawn,
    When the first birds awake,
Are heard within some silent wood,
    Where they the small twigs break,

Or in the eastern skies are seen,
    Before the sun appears,
The harbingers of summer heats
    Which from afar he bears.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Process of Subtraction

God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.

-- Meister Eckhart

It is what has been added that is the problem...another example of the inverseness of spirituality.

Mass Hypnotic Trance

We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness. Little do we realize that God is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take. Each time you take another breath, realize that God is choosing you again and again—and yet again (Ephesians 1:4. 9-11). We have nothing to work up to or even learn. We do, however, need to unlearn some things, and most especially we must let go of any thought that we have ever been separate from God.

To become aware of God’s presence in our lives, we have to accept what is often difficult, particularly for people in what appears to be a success-driven culture. We have to accept that human culture is in a mass hypnotic trance. Plato already said this, as most religions do at the higher levels. We are sleep-walkers, “seeing through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Wisdom teachers from many traditions have recognized that we human beings do not naturally see; we have to be taught how to see.

That’s what religion is for, to help us let go of illusions and pretenses so we can be more and more present to what actually is. That’s why the Buddha and Jesus both say with one voice, “Be awake.” Jesus talks about “staying watchful” (Matthew 25:13, Luke 12:37, Mark 13:33-37), and “Buddha” literally means “I am awake” in Sanskrit. Jesus says further, “If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light” (Luke 11:34).

We have to learn to see what is already here. Such a simple directive is hard for us to understand. We want to attain some concrete information or achieve an improved morality or learn some behavior that will make us into superior beings. We have a “merit badge” mentality. We worship success. We believe that we get what we deserve, what we work hard for, and what we are worthy of. It’s hard for Western people to think in any other way. But any expectation of merit or reward actually keeps us from the transformative experience called grace.

Experiencing radical grace is like living in a different world. It’s not a world in which I labor to get God to notice me and like me. It’s not a world in which I strive for spiritual success. It’s not a cosmic game of crime and punishment. Unfortunately, many of the world’s religions at the lower levels do teach that, even if indirectly. Many religious people are afraid of gratuity. Instead, we want God for the sake of social order, and we want religion for the sake of social controls. God cannot be seen through such a small and dirty lens.

-- Richard Rohr

Modern Lighting

Modern lighting technology has resulted in the loss of the stars, which throughout human history had been a source of philosophic wonder and a constant reminder of the limitations of what we know. The cultural value of the starry night is that it confronts us with the reality that our powers over nature and our insights into its inner workings are really quite limited, not only in themselves but also against the backdrop of other kinds of knowledge. Sure, our telescopes see farther than our eyes ever could, but our natural vision is now restricted mostly to the small sphere over which we have control.  Continue here....

-- Jacob Hoerger

Calibrate Reality

​Nothing helps calibrate reality [more] than the honest perceptions of those who work closest to you.

-- Jay Samit