Believe in You

April 28th, 2014

If you want to run a race, go back to school, lose weight, get a promotion, strike out on your own, there is always the same advice, believe in yourself. It’s great advice but how exactly does one do such a thing?

Let’s start by explaining the opposite. How does someone NOT believe in themselves? First and most importantly, they would have to convince themselves that they are totally alone and unconnected to any source of life or energy. Secondly, they would have to have a voluntary kind of amnesia whereby everyone who believed in them and their abilities and potential would be forgotten. Thirdly, they would have to convince themselves that they have never succeeded in or overcome anything no matter how small. If by chance these three steps can be mastered (it will take daily reinforcement over a long period of time) one will actually be able to stand up and say that they don’t believe in themselves. Oh, but wait… if they do that then they will actually have to admit that they succeeded at something and that wouldn’t, couldn’t really be allowed. Forget the last paragraph.

Okay, moving on, if one wishes to believe in oneself one must climb a great mountain barefoot or save a squadron of nuns from shark infested burning buildings and remember one of those two incidences anytime they fail to believe in themselves.

Absurd? You betcha. It’s absurd because everyone believes in themselves. It was hardwired into each of us at birth. It’s the reason we hope and pray and cry sometimes. We believe that our life is tough and we honestly believe that we can make it better. We believe that we have overcome pain and sickness and loneliness and will continue to do so. We believe that all that we have been through has somehow made us wiser and stronger. We believe that another mistake, another embarrassment, another wrong choice is not going to be the end of us. Yes, we believe in us. Sometimes we just have to remember.

So when someone tells you that you have to believe in yourself, don’t ask “How?”, just smile and say “Thanks for the reminder”.

(c)2014 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life

 

The Road

April 21st, 2014

We all want to know our purpose. We all want to know what we should really be doing with our lives. The answer is that our life, our destiny is in the hands of a Creator who is much more than we are. Our life’s purpose is being guided unerringly in a certain direction. Otherwise it would be like putting a hundred small children in a playground and expecting a city to be built. Not going to happen. There is guidance in every moment of our lives. There is a plan! You and I don’t have to worry about the thing we most worry about!

When we surrender to a higher power it doesn’t mean that we throw our hands up in the air and give up. It doesn’t mean that we suddenly become a puppet of some celestial being. It means that we agree to flow in the direction that we are beings guided. Which direction is that? It is the direction that makes us feel better.

When we are cruel or mean, we feel bad. It’s a sign that we are thinking and acting in the wrong direction. When we help someone, when we do a kindness and feel good, it is the right direction.

There is guidance for us every step of the way. We can ignore it and make our journey one of suffering or we can accept it and realize that all is well. It may not seem like it in every moment but all is always well. Have faith in that. Faith is not a memorization of words but a commitment to ignore the clouds because you know without a doubt that there is a sun shining behind them.

Your road is laid out for you. You can’t fail. Your only job is to hold as many hands and paws as you can along the way. Lighten up, stop worrying and start enjoying.

(c)2014 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life

 

Special

April 14th, 2014

We didn’t all win the spelling bee or the ball game. We never got singled out for our great thoughts and our love and caring like we thought we should. And so we gave up on feeling special and we tried to think of ourselves as just like everyone else. We started to practice fitting in and being like everyone else or at least trying to be like the people we liked. The truth of the matter is that as hard we tried, we didn’t fit in. Oh, we tried. Boy, did we try. It just didn’t work for us like it seemed to work for everyone else.

The estrangement comes from the fact that we know our inner world and we compare our inner world to everyone’s outer projection. We think that their projection is who they are on the inside. We are wrong. They are just trying to fit in too.

It’s hard to see the oneness of people when everyone acts so differently and believes so differently. It’s hard to see us all as one big family unless you also believe in extreme limits of being dysfunctional. The truth is we are all one on the inside not on the outside. The outside is where we act as cops and robbers and protagonists and antagonists and strangers and lovers. The inside is where we love.

Whatever part you are playing or projecting right now, know that your heart beats in harmony with over seven billion others and that long after your physical heart stops beating, the pulse of life that is common to all of us will continue to beat in you. That’s our oneness.

On the outside you and I will have moments of being special and moments of being not so special but that is just the parts we are playing. Don’t take it so seriously! It is the inside that keeps us eternally connected and eternally special. Have fun with the outside, with what you can create and what you can experience but if you want to feel special look nowhere but inside. Search for the source of love within you and you will be amazed at how special you really are in every moment.

(c)2014 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life

 

Experience Life

April 7th, 2014

What we want is a mind that, like a beautiful butterfly, flits from the flower of gratitude to the flower of love to the flower of bliss. What we get is usually a mind that, like a blind hippopotamus, stumbles from the glue trap of regret to the glue trap of anger to the glue trap of frustration. Where did we go wrong?

As unbelievable as it may sound, all is well, all always has been well and all will always be well. If we go into a library and see a book about fire, it’s not on fire. A book about the sea is not dripping with salt water. A book about anti gravity is not on the ceiling. Reading the books gives us the experience of fire and salt water and floating. When we pick up a book we are desiring an experience. The more emotion it evokes the higher we rate it. Life is exactly like that.

Life is a mixed up, topsy-turvy compendium of experiences. It is flowers and glue traps and butterflies and hippopotami all mixed together. No one has it all figured out. No one knows, without a shadow of a doubt, everything about anything. This life is for you and I to experience the good, the bad and yes, the ugly. There are guideposts and guidance. There are choices and there are requirements. There is yin and there is yang.

Life is the meat and the tofu, the love and the pain, the bliss and the tears. Your life and mine are the sum total of our experiences, the ones we lived and the ones we thought. This is why we are here. There are no rewards for living a life without any anger or frustration or mistakes. In fact, there’s probably a penalty for not living fully.

Quiet your mind, fill your heart and fully experience the rest of this brief life. Suspend judgement of yourself and others. Let your mind flit from flower to glue trap and back again and then sit back and say “Now isn’t that something”.

(c)2014 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life