March 24th, 2014
There is an infinite pool of unconscious thoughts upon which you and I are constantly drawing. Most of the time it serves us well. Someone appears and we draw upon our memories and remember them. We step into the shower, make breakfast and thousands of other acts by drawing upon our memories and all goes well but what happens when we reach into this bank of thoughts for a rose and instead feel the sharp prick of a thorn?
Suddenly our defense are up, our position is fortified and defended, we are ready for a battle. The detrimental part is that the battle will usually be fought inside of us and the only casualties will be our mood and our peace of mind.
There are thoughts in each of us that can make us laugh, make our heart sing or cry, put a bounce in our step or chain us to the bed. Yes, our thoughts rule us. They determine our response to others, the state of our immune system, they even determine what we see when we look in the mirror. The eyes merely observe. It is our thoughts that determine whether what we see is good or bad.
Today, you and I will constantly think. We will be unaware of most of our thoughts until they stir one of our emotions. Then we will respond the way we have learned to respond UNLESS today is different. Today we will switch off the auto pilot and purposely think thoughts that make us feel good. We will think about ways to help someone else. We will smile. We will hum or sing a song that uplifts us. A new dream, a new plan, a new perspective will be our conscious thought. We will feel happy today just because we choose that above all else. Today’s thoughts will be our cheerleaders. Regardless of what is going on, we will consciously think more thoughts that uplift us and then we will find out what we have known forever but forgotten…that we deserve to feel better. Think about it.
(c)2014 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
December 9th, 2013
Let today be “THAT” day. You always said to yourself that you wanted to be more grateful. Let today be that day. You told yourself that there would come a time when you would stop worrying because it really never has helped. Let today be that day. You said that you really wanted to stop responding with anger or worse yet, indifference. Let today be that day. You told yourself that there would come a day when you would be kind, supportive, congenial, and forgiving. Let today be that day.
Look around at every single one of your possessions right now. Look at what you are wearing right now. Everything you have was, for a moment, what you wanted. It was the thing or the article or the silly tchotchka that made you feel good, that made you smile. You even told yourself that you would feel so good in the future when you wore it or watched it or held it or drove it. Let today be that day.
Think of all of the people in your life. Think of the ones that mean the most to you. Remember when you said that someday you would tell them exactly how you feel? You always said that you could love more and that you would when all the other stuff didn’t take all your attention. Remember when you said you would do something to honor the ones that shaped your life but are not here any more? Let today be that day.
You said that one day you would start eating better, dressing better, being a better person, loving more, yelling less, meditating more, criticizing less, praying more. Remember when you told yourself that you would be so courageous that even if you blushed and stuttered, you would finally speak up? Remember when you said you would love yourself more? Let today be that day.
Every morning when you wake up, it’s “THAT” day. If you woke up this morning, guess what? It’s that day! Walk your talk. Live your heart. Go easy on yourself. Stand up tall. Breathe deep and smile, because you just remembered, it’s that day.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
November 18th, 2013
Sometimes you look around and you know that you should just be grateful for all of your blessings. You know you should feel satisfied with all you have but there seems to be a something that isn’t there, something missing. Maybe your health isn’t exactly perfect or maybe it’s your relationship or your job or your dreams. You can’t exactly put your finger on it but you know there is something that you need to add to your life.
With that in mind, you set about adding. Maybe some shopping will do it. Maybe a new book will do it. Maybe a seminar, a therapy session, a massage or maybe a new friend will do it. More often than not, none of this does it. There is still that nagging sense that things could be better and you know what? YOU’RE RIGHT! You are absolutely, positively right.
You are not greedy or selfish by wanting more than you have because the fact of the matter is that there really is something missing. That missing something is zest. You need zest. No, not the outer layer of a citrus fruit! You need enthusiasm. Every segment of life is improved with the addition of enthusiasm. You can’t buy, beg or borrow enthusiasm. You generate it.
You say your generator is broken? Or maybe you misplaced it? Balderdash! Your intent to be enthusiastic is all that is necessary. Your generator is automatically turned on the moment you decide that you are going to be more enthusiastic about your life.
So go ahead, fantasize, dream, imagine. Think about anything that excites you. Thought always precedes manifestation. Get excited about the possibilities in every area of your life. Enthusiasm gives you the strength to attempt the impossible. Enthusiasm is the boredom destroyer. Enthusiasm is the stress destroyer. Enthusiasm is the super hero of emotions and it’s yours any time you want it. Get excited about something and then about everything and don’t look back.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
October 21st, 2013
“I’ve talked until I’m blue in the face and nothing changes.” It doesn’t matter if you have said this about a boss, an employee, a coworker, a friend, a parent, a spouse or a child. What does matter is that you are making yourself upset because you forgot the first rule of living on this planet. You can’t change someone else if they don’t want to change.
It doesn’t matter if you have the very best intentions or if you are doing it out of a deep love and caring for the other person. You can’t change someone else if they don’t want to change. You can guilt, bribe, ignore, threaten or shame but the result will be temporary at best.
“So what am I suppose to do? Just sit idly by and let them ruin their lives, their career, their relationship, their health, etc.?” Emphatically NO! You are not suppose to sit idly by. You are suppose to follow the second rule of living on this planet. You are suppose to work on you.
You are supposed to aspire and work toward excellence in every aspect of your own life. Your duty is to become loving, caring, compassionate and even-tempered. Your duty is to embrace all that is good and project the optimism that comes from living a spirit centered life. In other words, you are to become the best example of what you talk about.
If someone is inclined to change, your example will be their blueprint. Your words may be ignored or forgotten but the image of who you have become will never leave them. If, every day, you work on your happiness, honesty, love and being non-judgemental you will become worthy of being copied. That’s your reward. If someone in your life tries to change themselves because of your example, that’s a bonus.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
September 30th, 2013
It doesn’t matter that you surrender, give up, let go, forgive, move on or put it behind you. It’s going to remain in your mind. It’s going to surface every now and then, usually when you are at your weakest or most vulnerable. It’s going to duplicate inside of you similar feelings to when it was actually happening. What can you do?
Three steps. First of all you have to firmly tell yourself INHN. Shout it to yourself if necessary. INHN (pronounced in hin) stands for It’s Not Happening Now. Secondly, look around. What IS actually going on now? Focus on now. Breathe. Inhale to a slow count of four. Hold it for a slow count of four. Exhale to a slow found of four. Hold it for a slow count of four. Repeat if necessary.
Don’t make the mistake of trying to figure out what caused you to remember. That’s a trap that keeps you connected and keeps it very alive. You may come up with a truth but not necessarily the truth. You don’t need to figure this stuff out for the millionth time. You need to put your thoughts elsewhere.
Thoughts that disturb you have energy and passion to them. In order to displace them you need to have thoughts that are equally or better yet, more energized and passion filled. These are not just going to occur to you. You will have some homework to do. Thirdly, when you are feeling good, write down three or four thoughts that really floats your boat. From real incidences or from your imagination (your mind can’t tell the difference) find those scenarios that make you feel really, really excited. Keep that list with you and refer to it as often as you need it. Pretty soon, every time your past pulls a knife, you’ll pull a gun. You win every time.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
September 23rd, 2013
Imagine for a moment that you are walking into Disney World and up ahead is the Magic Kingdom and new experiences and new people are all around you. Suddenly, you look over and see a candy wrapper lying on the ground. You look to your right and there is a bench with a broken armrest. You feel your agitation rising and finally you shout out “I’m outta here! This place is horrible and filthy and broken!”.
Pretty ridiculous scenario don’t you agree? BUT isn’t this very similar to what we do with many days of our life? Don’t we get up in a positive mood and see new experiences in our immediate future and don’t we proudly carry that buoyant feeling until….da da da dum, our pet starts fussing, our child spills the cereal, we forgot to do the laundry or pick up the dry cleaning, it starts raining, the check didn’t come, someone snaps at us?
Suddenly, the day is lousy. Maybe we go so far as to say that life is just one struggle after another, that nothing ever goes right, that we can’t catch a break, that we just want to give up.
Just because something is wrong does not mean that everything is wrong. Look around you. That’s your first blessing. You can look around. Now take a deep breath. Another blessing. Now say thank you and hear yourself saying it. Two more blessings. Now think about the people you love and the people that have loved you and the people that still do. Infinite blessings. Now think about the power that you have to change your attitude, how you are looking at things. Think about all that you do have, food, water, shelter and time to change for the better. Everything is never all wrong and if you look honestly you’ll see that almost everything is very, very right. That truth will set you free.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
August 26th, 2013
What do you believe? I’m not talking about a particular deity or a particular spiritual practice. I’m not even talking about science or politics. No, I’m asking you a question that is much more important. What do you believe about you? Well, today’s your lucky day. I just happen to have some answers for you. Let me tell you what I believe about you.
You saw the world differently than others when you were small. You could tell when people were lying. You could tell when people honestly liked you and when there was no connection. I believe you still can. You grew up and you felt and endured hurt from others but you kept it to yourself. I believe you can let it go now. You felt bad when you bent to someones will. I believe you are stronger than that now. You knew there was a path for you but it kept disappearing. I believe you are on it now. You want to help make life easier for others. I believe you always have and you will continue to do so. You want to love and be loved in return. I believe you are loved far more than you know. You want someone to completely understand you. I believe that person is inside of you and not outside of you.
I believe that you want to make changes in your health and wealth and I believe you can. I believe that today might be the most important day of your life because I believe that you will look back on this very day and say that was the day I started to appreciate myself. I believe that today you are going to find that indomitable place inside of you and you are going to identify with it. I believe that what you think that people think about you is no where near as important as what you think about you. I believe that you are going to find out just how wonderful you are very soon. I believe that you believe.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved
www. PatrickInspires. com
On Facebook -Sundrops On Life
August 19th, 2013
Okay, so it’s not going like you planned. Now what? You wanted everything to go one way and it didn’t and now life has lost its luster, the future looks like a big neon question mark and you feel smaller. What’s your options?
You can of course attack the illusion of feeling smaller and give yourself the illusion of feeling bigger by filling yourself with anger. You would feel perfectly justified because as we know, all anger is the result of unmet expectations and you’ve got them. Add someone or something to blame and you are set. You will have terrible regrets and you will have hurt some people in the long run but right now you feel powerful. Thunderbolts ready to hurl, begin.
OR you could accept the reality of the situation. Acceptance doesn’t mean for a moment that you like what’s happening. It means you see the futility of ranting and raving and alienating friends and making yourself ill only to realize that it changes reality not one little bit. It means that you decide to adapt to the way things actually are instead of clinging to the ridiculous notion that your way still exists. Acceptance doesn’t mean that you can’t work to change things. It just means that you accept and adapt calmly to the reality of the moment.
Think about what the second choice would mean to you. It would mean that although you are disappointed with the way things worked out, you would start an immediate search for the positive aspects of the situation. You would be calm enough to seek answers or help and get them. Nobody wants to deal with or help an angry person. People will do or say anything, even lie to get rid of an angry person or to get them to calm down.
Every day is not going to be a day at the beach and every plan is not going to go your way. When the inevitable happens, breathe. Let go of any building tension in your body, relax. Your mind and your vision will stay clear and you will respond with clarity. Be known for your wisdom, not your thunderbolts. People like to be taught not scorched.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved
www. PatrickInspires. com
On Facebook -Sundrops On Life
July 29th, 2013
What kind of day are you having? Is it a day of upsets, catch ups and overload? Is it a day of “there must be a better way”? Well, you are right and this is your lucky day!
First of all, it’s a lucky day because you are alive and if you are alive you can change things and if you can change things they can start getting better. Secondly, this day isn’t over yet. That means you can still pull this off. This day might have been going into the books as a bad day or a just get through it day but right now you can change it into a day that turned around and actually turned out very good. Ready?
If you decide that you actually have the power to make this a better day (you do), for the next hour you are going to feel like a salmon going up and over the falls. All the really great reasons for this not being a good day that you were comfortably flowing along with are now going to be rushing at you when you turn around. All the people you got to agree with you this morning are going to be trying to turn you back around to flow with them. Don’t do it!
Start by picking two things that you are grateful for right now. Just two. Only two! Think about them. Visualize them. Uh-oh, what’s happening? You’re smiling a little bit. There’s kind of a good feeling bubbling through your body like little club soda bubbles. It feels kinda good. Oh wow, the smile is responding by getting a little bigger. Well what do you know, there’s suddenly a better feeling in your belly, in your heart, in your eyes, on your face. Hey, maybe it’s not such a bad day after all. You know what would make it even better? You staying fixated on what’s right on not on what’s wrong. Wow, that salmon made it! Amazing!
Have a great day. There’s still time.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
July 22nd, 2013
How do you get to feeling good when you are feeling bad? There are all kinds of people, germs, accidents and genetics that have a different agenda than making you happy. Sure, there are flowers and rainbows and wonderful songs and books and people but you can’t just tote them around in a backpack like some kind of happiness insurance.
We speak of the practice of music or medicine or meditation in order to become a good musician, doctor or meditator but what does it take to be feeling good? Practice!!
We love happiness. We revel in happiness when it appears. We pursue happiness as if it was the last bowl of ice cream on the planet. And we wait and we wait some more for it to show up again. Do we wait for education to show up? Do we wait for muscles to show up? No, we work at them. We practice. How do we practice feeling good?
First and most importantly, we start right now wherever we are and however we feel. Secondly, we commit to achieving a better feeling regardless of the stubborn voice in our head that tells us not to change course. And then we smile a small smile. A sincere, small smile. A smile that says we chart our own course. And then we smile a little bit bigger smile. And suddenly we feel the tiny flow of well being start up again. And then we tell ourselves that whatever is going on, IT’S OKAY. We don’t have to like it and we may want to change it as fast as we can but regardless, IT’S OKAY. We can handle it and we can handle it with the mood of our choosing. That’s incredibly powerful! That’s incredibly doable! That’s incredible you!
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com