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Imagine if you had the opportunity to create the perfect planet. What would you come up with? Let’s brainstorm together!
To start, you’d probably want plenty of water. We all know that water is a fundamental prerequisite for life. So let’s make crystal clear water in springs and lakes and rivers for drinking and bathing and cleaning and growing plants. Then you’d probably like to have vast seas to hold more water as a source of precipitation to moisten the land. And these seas would also keep the planet cool and generate air movement. They could house infinitely fascinating creatures and would be full of mystery and beauty.
Then you’d want stable land to live on and maybe you’d cover the land with soil – a miraculous substance that would feed the creatures that live upon it and is relatively easy to dig in. It would be smart and beautiful to cover most of the soil with an incredible carpet of vegetation. There would be grasses and other low-growing plants to hold the soil together and blanket it with a lovely softness and a variety of shapes and colors. And why not also make it capable of rippling in breezes and adorning the land with flowers?
You would probably also want taller vegetation – elegant, noble trees. They would offer shade and shelter, create their own ecosystems, and support innumerable creatures. With their spreading, upright growth, they would seem to parallel the human journey, rooted in the earth and rising toward the heavens. All this plant matter would turn sunlight into biological life and provide the planet’s inhabitants with oxygen, food, lumber, clothing, paper, pigments, and nearly everything else we need.
Of course, you’d want to share the planet with a great variety of animals, each of which would be lovely in its own way. They would be fascinating and inspiring and sometimes cuddly. They would be our companions, teachers, resources, and part of a perfect, balanced web of ecology.
You would probably want to make the atmosphere just the right temperature and gas composition for all these lifeforms. It would be super smooth to breathe it. And maybe you’d choose to fill the soil with treasures – metals and minerals to fortify our bodies, and the raw materials for tools, glass, machines, jewelry, and microchips.
If it were up to you, you would make it absolutely gorgeous, right? Maybe you’d choose glorious blue skies that would make you feel free and expansive, and they’d change color in the morning and evening. You’d perhaps fill the skies with an ever-changing display of clouds that would look like swishes and dollops of paint made by a giant paint brush. And they’d provide shelter from the hot sun and would deliver water to the creatures and the land.
For interest, you’d make the land rise up in places to create chains of mountains, some of them covered with snow, and there would be lush valleys and canyons between. You would throw out the occasional rainbow as a sweet surprise. Maybe you’d create some kind of natural laser light show for people to watch at night, called aurora borealis.
Could you imagine if such a place existed?! You would look around at all of it and say, "This is perfect! It’s the greatest imaginable treasure!” And you’d feel lucky and grateful. You’d feel inspired and awestruck. You’d feel in love with the magic and majesty of it all. You’d feel honored to get to live in such a place, and reverent of the power and grace and grandeur evident in such a place. You’d feel taken care of. You’d feel home.
Let’s all remember this and treat the planet like the miracle it is.
Be well,
Peter
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January first may be a somewhat arbitrary date to divide the chapters of our lives, but there’s something to be said for joining the momentum of the mass consciousness focused on bettering ourselves. Sure, you can make new habits anytime, but there aren’t always millions of other people doing it at the same time.
That said, clearly the group trajectory isn’t enough to ensure your success. Plenty of people make and break resolutions every year, and while a few weeks (or days, as the case may be) of a healthy new habit is better than nothing, there’s also the toll of broken self-trust to consider.
If you’re going to make an agreement with yourself, it’s best to choose terms that you can fulfill, because a lack of self-trust is a serious impediment. You may think, “It just means I changed my mind about exercise and cookies,” but it has broader consequences in the bigger picture of your ability to choose and create the life you desire.
What I’m saying is, don’t do it unless you’re serious about it. And even if you are serious, I still recommend committing to just one thing. I know, I know, you can do lots of things. But I’m saying, just do one thing not only because it’s harder to keep multiple resolutions than it is to keep a single one, but also because it means that your focus and power won’t be divided (any more than they already are). Take on one thing and give all the “resolution energy” you’ve got to that one thing. Later you can add another thing.
I don’t mean to sound like I’m lowering the bar for you. I think people are capable of greatness far beyond their imagined limitations. But imagined limitations become actual limitations when we believe in them. In subtle ways we tend to sabotage ourselves, and one of the most effective forms of self-sabotage is crappy focus. We often simply don’t hold our attention on something for long enough to see it through.
Yes, there are some organic causes of impaired mental focus, but just because someone gets more done when they take an ADD drug (i.e., amphetamine), doesn’t prove that the cause was biological. In an age when we’re bombarded with a constant stream of data through multiple devices, an age with more options for distraction than ever before, we may be regularly making subconscious choices that reinforce a short attention span. Regardless of the cause, we can all improve our ability to focus simply by practicing it.
Let’s try a little exercise. It will only take one minute. Choose something small and natural in your environment to gaze at, like a candle flame, a leaf, a piece of food, or one of the lines on your palm. You’re going to spend just 60 seconds looking at it without taking your eyes or mind off it, and without thinking and mentally “talking” to yourself about what you’re looking at or anything else. Try it now, then come back.
How did it go? Were you able to do it for the whole minute? What did you notice? Was it squirmy? Was it relaxing? When I do this, I notice my breathing slows down significantly and I feel grounded. This shift may be partly due to looking at whatever I’m looking at, but I think the main reason it feels peaceful is because it’s a break from continuous mental chatter and shifting focus.
Back to resolutions, I encourage you to choose a single thing to commit to. Write down what exactly it means so that you’re clear about how to stay in the spirit of this commitment. Choose a time frame for the commitment; don’t make it open-ended because that implies forever. If you have a hard time with follow-through, you might want to start with a very short time frame, like one day. You can always re-up your commitment at the end of the period you choose.
Ensure that you don’t forget it by writing it down, setting reminder alarms for yourself, finding a partner to do this with, renting out billboard space along your commute . . . whatever it takes. Finally, as part of your commitment practice, set aside just 60 seconds every morning to sit and focus on the commitment, visualizing yourself embodying it.
Let us know how it goes.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => New Year Resolution
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[post_date] => 2022-02-03 22:51:35
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When a patient comes in to see me, I get a brief opportunity to facilitate a shift toward the positive. I might overhaul their diet, give them exercises, insert acupuncture needles, or prescribe some medicine. It’s clear that these interventions help. But when I look back at the treatments that were major turning points for people, about half the time what made the difference was something I said.
Most of what I say is pretty simple stuff. The more simple, the bigger the potential impact. All the essential truths of the great spiritual traditions are simple. But they’re underappreciated and easily forgotten. There’s so much other stuff vying for priority real estate in our minds. And in a time when we put so much value on complexity – science, for instance – simple concepts don’t get taken seriously. Someone once said, The truth is simple. If it were complicated, everyone would get it.
The nice part about profound truths being simple is that you don’t have to work so hard. Stop trying to have all the answers; just listen and remember what you already know. The simple truth I want to share with you today is one you are undoubtedly familiar with: positive thinking makes good things happen. If someone said to you, “I have the solution to most of your problems: think positive,” you might say, “I have the solution to why nobody likes you: unsolicited, crappy advice.” But I urge you to reconsider.
If you consistently had positive thoughts about your life, do you know what would happen? You would feel consistently positive about your life. And that pretty much constitutes a good life, doesn’t it? Regardless of whether or not your life is exactly the way you want it to be, if you cultivate positive thoughts, your consciousness – your experience of life – will be more positive. Isn’t that what really matters? Your perspective is more important than your circumstances. Wouldn’t you rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable? If you’re happy, you’re happy.
But it’s not just a mind trick where you fool yourself into being thrilled by a pathetic life. As you make a habit of forging positive thoughts, you become a more positive person, and then the objective circumstances of your life change. Have you ever met someone who was really successful and also super positive? Which do you think came first? I would venture to guess it was the positive part.
The tricky aspect – or so it seems to a mind that loves complication– is actually remembering to think positively. Many people feel it’s not their innate nature to be positive, or that life circumstances have made it difficult to be an optimist. But they have just made a habit of focusing on and emphasizing negative viewpoints. It’s true that the glass is both half empty and half full. Both perspectives are valid, but they are not equally meaningful observations. The optimist focuses on what is and the pessimist on what isn’t.
Like the song goes, accentuate the positive. Here’s how:
- Look and listen for good signs, positive news, beauty, and fascinating things, and then latch onto them, talk about them, share them, savor them, amplify them, run with them. Imagine you just tapped into a vein of gold in the earth, and now you want to follow that vein. Jump from one good thing to the next. Make a game out of it.
- Create more positivity in the world. This is especially important if you find it hard to arouse your own optimism. Instigate positivity in people around you, even if you feel dark inside. Create the vein of gold that you can then follow, by asking people about their lives, their kids, their dreams. You will ignite a light in someone else that will lead you in the right direction. Then keep doing it. Deliver genuine compliments. Help others to see the positive side of whatever they’re grappling with. It’s often easier to do for others than for yourself.
- Get out of the dirt. Following the gold vein is as much a matter of not choosing to veer into the dirt as it is a choice to follow the gold. Catch yourself choosing to indulge in negativity and be disciplined about shifting your attention to something else. It’s like breaking an addiction. Notice which of your acquaintances have a “this sucks” mentality and (a) hang out with them less (b) laugh internally at everything negative they say – lightly, not disparagingly (c) don’t let them throw you off your gold vein. Also, stop watching Breaking Bad. Choose your media consumption consciously.
- Tweet/post/comment responsibly. The stories and opinions you choose to share shape who you are in the world – plus who and what you attract. Are you a positive influence on your environment or a negative one? Before you click “Post,” look at what you’ve written. If it’s snarky or amounts to “Doesn’t this suck?” just delete it. You won’t feel any regret.
- Respond with humor to situations that would otherwise make you angry, irritated, or anxious. I know it’s hard, but if your habit is to relinquish the whole gold vein just because of some stupid situation, you simply cannot engage with it in an adversarial way. Be imperturbable. Go on a drama fast. Stay committed to your positivity.
- Lose the belief that finding problems and errors makes you smart or likeable. People who enjoy finding what’s wrong with everything rarely care as much about looking for solutions.
- Know what you want. Most of us spend so much time thinking about our current problems and the undesired future situations we hope to avoid that we have a clearer sense of what we don’t want than what we do want. Know with laser-like precision what kind of life you want and replace the habit of dwelling on what you don’t want with savoring the anticipation of getting what you do want.
Once you’re in the zone, let’s go have some tea together. Positive people are fun to be around. I wonder what cool thing you’ll do next.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => The Truth is Simple. Start Feeling Better.
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Imagine if you had the opportunity to create the perfect planet. What would you come up with? Let’s brainstorm together!
To start, you’d probably want plenty of water. We all know that water is a fundamental prerequisite for life. So let’s make crystal clear water in springs and lakes and rivers for drinking and bathing and cleaning and growing plants. Then you’d probably like to have vast seas to hold more water as a source of precipitation to moisten the land. And these seas would also keep the planet cool and generate air movement. They could house infinitely fascinating creatures and would be full of mystery and beauty.
Then you’d want stable land to live on and maybe you’d cover the land with soil – a miraculous substance that would feed the creatures that live upon it and is relatively easy to dig in. It would be smart and beautiful to cover most of the soil with an incredible carpet of vegetation. There would be grasses and other low-growing plants to hold the soil together and blanket it with a lovely softness and a variety of shapes and colors. And why not also make it capable of rippling in breezes and adorning the land with flowers?
You would probably also want taller vegetation – elegant, noble trees. They would offer shade and shelter, create their own ecosystems, and support innumerable creatures. With their spreading, upright growth, they would seem to parallel the human journey, rooted in the earth and rising toward the heavens. All this plant matter would turn sunlight into biological life and provide the planet’s inhabitants with oxygen, food, lumber, clothing, paper, pigments, and nearly everything else we need.
Of course, you’d want to share the planet with a great variety of animals, each of which would be lovely in its own way. They would be fascinating and inspiring and sometimes cuddly. They would be our companions, teachers, resources, and part of a perfect, balanced web of ecology.
You would probably want to make the atmosphere just the right temperature and gas composition for all these lifeforms. It would be super smooth to breathe it. And maybe you’d choose to fill the soil with treasures – metals and minerals to fortify our bodies, and the raw materials for tools, glass, machines, jewelry, and microchips.
If it were up to you, you would make it absolutely gorgeous, right? Maybe you’d choose glorious blue skies that would make you feel free and expansive, and they’d change color in the morning and evening. You’d perhaps fill the skies with an ever-changing display of clouds that would look like swishes and dollops of paint made by a giant paint brush. And they’d provide shelter from the hot sun and would deliver water to the creatures and the land.
For interest, you’d make the land rise up in places to create chains of mountains, some of them covered with snow, and there would be lush valleys and canyons between. You would throw out the occasional rainbow as a sweet surprise. Maybe you’d create some kind of natural laser light show for people to watch at night, called aurora borealis.
Could you imagine if such a place existed?! You would look around at all of it and say, "This is perfect! It’s the greatest imaginable treasure!” And you’d feel lucky and grateful. You’d feel inspired and awestruck. You’d feel in love with the magic and majesty of it all. You’d feel honored to get to live in such a place, and reverent of the power and grace and grandeur evident in such a place. You’d feel taken care of. You’d feel home.
Let’s all remember this and treat the planet like the miracle it is.
Be well,
Peter
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