September 26th, 2019
Step Four –
Yes, you have problems. Everyone does but everyone’s problems are not necessarily your problem unless of course you are a parent or caretaker. In that case the problems of someone else are front and center in your thoughts.
You can be healthy, do yoga, eat right, help old ladies across the street and spend hours in church and you can still be a hot mess because someone you love or someone you are in charge of has problems.
How do you cope? Focus on you, your life and who and what is truly important in your life.
If you find that on top of all of the problems you are dealing with, you are getting upset about politics or anything outside of your control – Stop it!
You have enough on your plate. What is happening with your second cousin’s ex girlfriend’s brother’s next door neighbor should not take up one millisecond of your time.
If you are sick, focus exclusively on getting better. If you are taking care of someone, get yourself in the best mental, physical and emotional shape possible and take care of them from a place of strength and clarity. If something is happening in Timbuktu or Uruguay just fuhgeddaboudit.
You are not in control of or responsible for the whole world just your world. Your world consists of yourself and those you love. 99.999 percent of your time and energy should be spent focusing on your world.
Like all of us you have a limited amount of time and energy. Where is it going? Are you giving time and energy to people who could care less? Are you giving time and energy to people who are using your time and energy and consistently giving nothing back? It may be time for a personal energy audit.
This life is short but for those who are suffering the hours are very, very long. Suffering takes many forms. People who are suffering in their minds with depression, anxiety or any other mental malady may be in more pain than someone in a cast. People with chronic illnesses rarely find even the smallest relief.
This world is not just flowers and rainbows. It is also thorns and thunder. Always focus on yourself first and then and only then help everyone in your world. Stay strong.
Tomorrow – Step Five.
Love the Light Within. Patrick
Sundrops On Life – Better Thoughts. Better Days.
September 25th, 2019
Step Three – Take a Breath.
When you came into this world the first thing that you did was take a breath and then another and you continued right up to this very moment.
Your breath keeps your every muscle, organ, tissue and cell alive. The end of breathing is the end of physical life. “What does this have to do with fixing my problems or changing my life?” you may ask. The answer is well…everything.
You can go an entire lifetime without ever attempting to consciously alter your breathing pattern and you would still live a long healthy life.
Many people have experienced panic attacks and anxiety attacks. Although they are not exactly the same, a feeling of shortness of breath is common to them both and that feeling alone is enough to make anyone feel like they are dying( no one has ever died from this).
In times of distress our breathing feels terrifyingly out of control. The wonderful, amazing truth is that even though it may seem out of control you can control it! When you control your breathing you control your response. We have let our breathing go on autopilot for so long that we forget that we can take manual control of our breathing any time we wish.
There are a myriad number of breathing techniques. Some are thousands of years old. One of the simplest and most effective is based on the number four.
When you wish to calm yourself, focus yourself or become totally present, inhale slowly to the count of four, hold that breath for the count of four, slowly exhale to the count of four and hold that exhalation for the count of four and then repeat the whole process if needed. It’s called the Four Fours. Very, very powerful.
We cannot breathe an hour ago or an hour into the future. We can only breathe right now in the present moment. Your breath not only keeps you alive but focusing on your breath at any moment brings you into the present moment and the present moment is the only moment you have power.
Become aware of your breathing and you can successfully meditate. Become aware of your breathing and you can focus like a laser beam on anything. Become aware of your breathing and you can relax, de-stress and fall back asleep.
When problems, a crisis or bad feelings try to take over, first thing to do is to control your breathing and after that solutions will appear. Breathe.
(I am used to writing three Sundrops every day and I will get back to that shortly. After more than twenty years of writing those, I guess I had more to share with you. Feels good. I hope it helps even a little bit.)
Step Four tomorrow.
Love the Light Within. Patrick
Sundrops On Life – Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2019 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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September 24th, 2019
Step Two – (See yesterday’s Sundrops for Step One)
Do something.
How do you handle your difficulties? We all have them. No one gets to spend their entire life sitting on a cloud like a Care Bear and just shining good vibes.
Life is tough no matter what anyone says. Maybe it’s your own problems that take you down. Maybe you’re fine but the pain your loved one is going through absolutely knocks you out on many levels.
Pain and worry take an awful toll on the body and the spirit. A tremendous amount of stress can build day after day until you are consumed by it.
No matter the problem, you must find a way to release all that building tension. If you don’t, that tension becomes a terrible addition to what already bothers you.
Most overwhelmed people can’t spend an hour at a local yoga studio for one reason or another but everyone can do something at home. There are YouTube videos that can apply to just about anyone. There is even Bed Yoga for bed bound people.
It doesn’t have to be Yoga. It can be anything. Several years ago I met a remarkable woman named Clare. Clare was in her eighties and had a very long list of ailments and just walking to the kitchen was a painful ordeal. Every day she put her problems aside and was the only caretaker for her ninety year old husband. He was afflicted with Alzheimers and was quite a handful.
Clare had always been quite active but a series of operations had made her sedentary. She spent all of her days watching and taking care of her Harold. Outside she looked rather peaceful but inside she used to be filled with stress and worry. Years ago a long walk would have alleviated most of that but it was impossible now.
So Clare worked with what she had. She would take a damp washcloth and roll it up and squeeze it twenty five times with one hand and then twenty five times with the other hand. She also had a small ball of yarn that she kept on the floor in front of her chair. She would take her shoes off and with her toes pass the ball of yarn from one foot to the other a few times. She did both of these exercises several times a day. She called her washcloths and her balls of yarn her “Sanity Trainers”.
No one is going to get to the Olympics exercising with washcloths and yarn but it made an Olympic size difference to how Clare dealt with her stress and ailments.
The takeaway here is that you have to do something physical every singe day to relieve the pressure of your problems. Each of us has different capabilities but all of us can do something. You may think that watching TV or going online takes you away from your problems but they are only distractions. They have their place but they are no substitute for doing something physical.
Your mind and body are linked together.Your mind is always active. Your body needs to be too. There has to be balance. Physically, it’s not what you do once or twice that makes a difference. It’s what you consistently do that that keeps the darkness at bay.
Go for a walk or grab a video or a washcloth or a soup can or a kettle bell and release some of that tension every day. Don’t let stress and tension darken your life and your outlook. Do something.
Tomorrow I will describe Step Three.
Love the Light Within. Patrick
Sundrops On Life – Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2019 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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September 23rd, 2019
No one knows what you are going through. Oh, you may have a close friend or family member to confide in but they are not you 24/7 only you are.
You may have trouble with physical pain, emotional pain or spiritual pain or all three. Or they may alternate every day. Maybe you have relationship or lack of relationship problems. Maybe you have money problems. Maybe you are afraid that you are losing your mind.
It could be that something in your past won’t leave you alone. It could be that you are terribly lonely or maybe you are not at all happy with your body. Or maybe it’s depression, fear or anxiety or all three.
Maybe some of these things torment you once in a while or maybe they are your constant companion. Whatever it is, whether I mentioned it above or not, it can be better.
Yes, you’ve tried and tried to improve the quality of your life. You’ve chased more solutions than you can remember. You are a good person and you feel that you don’t deserve all this and you are right.
There is no magic wand that is going to instantly solve every problem for you but there is a way to make your life better. There is a way to look forward to the next day and the next and the next.
Step One –
Stop complaining. It doesn’t matter how true or justified you think your issues are, complaining never lets your problems cool off. Every complaint breathes new life into your problems. Believe me, your problems do not need any more reinforcement.
The other thing about complaining is that other people get very tired of hearing about other people’s problems and mostly tune them out. Everyone wants to talk about their problems and not yours.
You can state facts e.g. “I don’t feel well” “I need help” “This thing is bothering me” ” I am lonely” etc. But it is unnecessary and it is upsetting to your own psyche to constantly be describing and repeating in detail every single thing that bothers you.
Complaining about things on the other side of the world or outside of your influence while you are dealing with your issues is silly. There will ALWAYS be something and someone in this world that you can get upset about. Resist that temptation with all your might. Your complaining about issues outside of your control or influence changes nothing, a complete waste of time and energy.
If you are complaining about what happened in the past you are robbing this moment of your full and undivided attention and you are going to need your full and undivided attention if you wish to improve.
Remember, if you state it, it stays a fact. If you dwell upon it, it may easily morph into a complaint. Be vigilant. Your improvement depends upon it.
I don’t want to make this too long so tomorrow I will describe Step Two.
Love the Light Within. Patrick
Sundrops On Life – Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2019 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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August 26th, 2019
What is a regret? A regret is a thought about something that did or didn’t happen that pains you because you believed a different outcome would have been better.
What is worry? Worry is the false idea that you control everything and that something may slip past your all powerful control if you don’t stay totally observant of everything that may or may not happen.
What are Regret and Worry? They are two of the stupidest, most ridiculous, joy and health sapping, insane human behaviors.
These two behaviors destroy more potential happiness than any others. Regret causes us to doubt every decision we have ever made and this in turn weakens all future decisions. The thought of weak future decisions gives more strength to our worrying. A horrible cycle that dims the great light we came into this world with on the day we were born.
It doesn’t need to be this way. What has happened has happened. Dwelling on it is a very painful and unnecessary action that changes nothing. We cannot change one tiny bit of the past. We can learn from it. We can teach from our past actions and their results. We can try to make amends if we were at fault. But most importantly we can work on letting it go. We can never forget the past but we do have the power to change how often we think a particular thought.
Worrying about what might happen is picking the worst scenario out of an infinite number of possible scenarios and making it as real as possible in our mind. Out of an infinite number of things to imagine why would we pick something that we know frightens us?
Worry and Regret are part of human nature. Whether they are a dominant part of our nature or not is up to us. We can’t change the past and we can’t control the future but we can make amazing, beneficial, joyful choices in the present. Remember, you deserve better thoughts.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2019 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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August 13th, 2019
Hit the pause button and take deep breath, turn off the news and look around.
Look around and truthfully answer this question: Am I adding to the darkness or the light in my world?
If you get upset because a loved one is ill, good for you. If you get frustrated because you want more for those you love, right on. If you are outraged at the suffering you see, you have a heart. But…
If you get upset because someone said or wrote something that you disagree with then you are making mountains out of molehills. If you get angry because your loved ones don’t think and act like you do, you don’t understand freedom. If you are fixated on the next bit of news instead of the next bit of joy, you are starving yourself.
If you want to find more joy in your life guess what? You have to plant it. Your thoughts are your seeds. Are you constantly thinking about what could go wrong? Hello anxiety harvest!
Are you thinking about the things that you can do nothing about but you get angry anyway? Hello poor health harvest!
Are you thinking about your worries instead of your blessings? Hello stress harvest!
Are you thinking about the people and pets who have loved you? Hello gratitude harvest!
Are you thinking about the times of fun and laughter? Hello joy harvest!
Are you thinking about a brighter future? Hello possibility harvest!
If you do hit the pause button and take a deep breath and look around you just might find a big surprise. The darkness and the lightness of your world is governed by a beautiful dimmer switch and the big surprise is that yours is the only hand on that switch.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2019 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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July 29th, 2019
Is love really the answer? Life seems so full of hard things like brutality and sickness and pain and death. Love on the other hand seems so soft and willowy.
How could love in any way, shape or form stand up to the hard things in life. G.I.Joe and Marvel super heroes might have a chance but love? Get real.
Let me ask, if you got into a big fight with a bunch of hardened thugs who would you want to show up on your side? Would it be Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama or would it be Thor and the Hulk?
Would the Hulk smash your adversaries? Of course he would but then what? Some of your adversaries would heal and come after you again. Some of their friends and families would start a vendetta on you and everyone you hold dear. In other words it would never stop. A small Pyrrhic victory at best.
In a world of instant gratification love doesn’t seem to hold its own or does it?
Contrary to popular opinion love doesn’t just sit in your heart waiting to be called on. Your heart is a transformer. It takes the love from the spiritual realms and flows it through you in a way you can handle. If it wasn’t there the high voltage love would come straight through you and you would be walking around all your life like a third grader who just got a daisy from the other third grader who was equally infatuated.
Being “in the flow” actually means having love flow through you. It’s the best, most perfect feeling in life. It makes anything seem possible and the fact is that in this state everything is possible.
So, is love really soft? Yes it is. It wasn’t a giant knife that made the Grand Canyon. It was water. It was soft, continuous water. And therein lies the answer. A continuous flow of love coming through us makes us strong, super hero strong. It makes us feel like life is good and purpose is achieved.
Sometimes the flow of love just starts and sometimes we have to prime the pump with memories or teachings or just peace and quiet.
The best part is that you are in charge of the flow of love in your life.The flow of love allows you to think better, feel better and be better. Think about the people, pets and places you love and in that very moment you will feel the flow begin. Practice, practice, practice and you will find yourself to be stronger than ever in every way.
One added bonus is that as the love flows through you it feeds you too. Drink deeply.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2019 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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July 2nd, 2019
First of all I want to apologize for the paucity of Sundrops lately. I am feeling fine. Thank you to everyone for asking.
There’s been some travel and some family issues and some laziness and some new ideas. You know, life stuff.
I have started writing a book to help Caregivers. Those people who sacrifice so much to help another human being. They give all they have and sometimes even more than that. My Mom was the caregiver of my father who had Alzheimers. She gave more than she could and it killed her long before he died. I dedicate the book to her.
There are millions of people in this world with mental health issues, cancer, dementia, addiction and debilitating diseases and we have the numbers and the statistics to count them but the ones who take care of them are much less known.
I don’t expect my book to be a magic wand but like the Sundrops I have written for the past twenty odd years, I want to bring a drop of sunshine into the dark night that these amazing people live in.
If you are a caregiver, I salute you and you are in my prayers. If you know a caregiver, please give your own drop of sunshine. It means more than you could ever imagine.
The book will be out in about a year. If you have a story or a bit of advice, I’d be grateful to hear it and possibly include it in the book if it can help someone. I can always be reached at Patrick@PatrickInspires.com.
Sundrops will return shortly and will soon be on Instagram too. Many of you have asked and the trend seems to be in that direction.
Thanks for being a part of my SOL (Sundrops On Life) family. More to come!
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
April 15th, 2019
Of all the things you could do to improve your life there is one that outshines them all. It is readily available no matter where you are and it doesn’t cost a dime.
It is an integral part of everyone we hold dear in our hearts. It is what we remember with fondness when they are gone. What is this incredible, inexhaustible, inexpensive piece of magic?
It is your smile.
I know, your first thought is “a smile? really?That’s like taking a baby aspirin to fix a broken leg”.
Is it really? Have you ever looked down into the crib of a baby and when that baby saw your face that baby smiled? What happened then? You smiled!
A sincere smile is always interpreted as something very pleasing by everyone in nearly every culture. What we often lose sight of is how a smile affects the person who is doing the smiling.
“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
There are countless studies showing the benefits of a sincere, not fake, smile. It improves our outlook, our immune system and our stress levels among other things.
Babies smile naturally. No one taught them. As we age we actually smile less and less. There are far more smiling babies than there are smiling senior citizens. Why is that?
The sad and simple answer is we learned not to smile. We learned to be serious. We learned that our smiling could get us into trouble or even be seen as a weakness.It was common knowledge that if we were smiling we were “up to something”.
It’s time to bring smiling back into your life. It is a truly magical remedy to what ails us. Try smiling while watching the news. Most of the news will seem preposterous. Try smiling while talking on the phone. It improves every conversation in a beautiful way. Try smiling when you are alone and watch your mood and thought patterns change. Smile before you exercise or before you meditate or cook or do a monotonous chore. It is a game changer!
Smiling changes everything for the better, anytime, anywhere. It costs nothing and at the same time it is priceless. Set a timer to remind yourself to smile a few times each day.
You said you wanted a better world. This is how it starts.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2019 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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April 8th, 2019
The other day I was hugging the beautiful love of my life and while I was hugging her I thought to myself “wouldn’t it be great if we were at the beach”. I answered myself in the affirmative and continued on with my day.
It wasn’t until later when I was remembering that hug we shared that I started thinking why did I want to be at the beach in that moment? Yes, I love the beach but my chances of being at the beach anytime soon were nil.
It was then that I realized that in truth I wanted to be at the beach because I wanted to feel carefree and happier and at that moment I felt both were not within reach.
Personal and family health issues had been overwhelming for awhile and what I wanted was escape. I wanted to go someplace devoid of problems.
The fact was I could not go to the beach. I could not be devoid of problems and guess what happened next? I took one more step and fell into a black hole. “If I had more money I could go to the beach now. If I didn’t have all these responsibilities I could just jump in the car right now. If I had…blah, blah, blah!”
Now let’s rewind for a moment. In that hug if I had let the thought of escaping alert me to the fact that I was not in a state of gratitude for what was going right (there was plenty!). I would have realized that I needed to adjust my thinking, my outlook and my mood. Had I done that, my life would have been less dark and definitely more beach-like right where I was.
By the practice of meditation, you will find that you are carrying within your heart a portable paradise.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is up to you and I to confront our shadow, our darkness and to boldly draw upon the light within us. We can respond in an infinite number of ways to every event in our life. Make sure your response echoes the light within and not the circumstances outside. That is our true freedom. That is our indomitable strength. That is our beautiful birthright.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2019 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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