March 6th, 2017
One of the questions I am asked often is “Patrick, What is my purpose in life?” Maybe you have pondered this question yourself from time to time or, like some, this question greets you every morning and stays with you throughout every day.
Like threads in a giant tapestry, some lives go straight and some twist and turn and go backwards or upside down for awhile. Every single one of the threads is a necessary piece of the whole. Every twist and turn is absolutely necessary for the whole. Any tapestry would be incomplete if you removed but one thread. Your life too is an indispensable thread in the great tapestry of existence.
No one just throws millions of threads on the ground and expects a beautiful tapestry to appear. It takes the hand and the imagination of a Great Power. Awareness that there is a great power and it is not just you alone in the wilderness gives you the opportunity to relax into a guided life.
You are never, ever alone. You are part of the whole and always will be. Your mistakes, your regrets, your achievements, your breathless moments, your caring, your fears, your loves and all that you are influences everyone you come into contact with in each and every moment. Sometimes they influence your color and sometimes you influence theirs and sometimes you deeply influence each other.
Throughout your entire life you will change and you will change others. Along the way you will be helped by unseen hands of course until that day comes when you leave this physical body and the colors of your physical life will be set never again to change and at that moment the thread that your life created will be perfect because you have been guided and your life will fill a unique spot in the tapestry of existence.
So what is your purpose? Your purpose is to live. Your purpose is to explore your mind, body and soul. Your purpose is to experience everything with confidence because you know that you are developing a unique thread. Your purpose is to experience all that you can in order to give depth and richness to your colors. Your purpose is to come to the understanding that there is neither good nor bad but merely different hues and shades. Your purpose is to come to the liberating realization that you have guidance and not shackles.
Your purpose is to live and to love and to act and to react and to create and to laugh and to cry and to take all that life gives you with immense gratitude for the gift of having a life like no other and yet connected to all others.
Enjoy. You cannot get it wrong.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
September 19th, 2016
There is a certain sweetness to life. It doesn’t mean that every day is a day at the beach but there is a certain sweetness in every day. Maybe it’s a glimpse of a white puffy cloud or maybe seeing a butterfly in the city or maybe it’s some distant laughter or the smile of a child. Sometimes it just surprises you and sometimes you have to search like a pearl diver running out of air to find it.
Imagine a tightly sealed jar of honey and imagine that you put it into a big vat of sour pickles. Wait a couple of hours and then take it out, rinse it off and open the jar and take a spoonful. Does it taste like pickles or honey? Honey of course! But why? The sweet honey was sealed in a glass jar. Nothing could get in no matter how many hours it stayed in the sour brine.
You have the ability in every moment of your life to put a non porous barrier between you and your surroundings. We do it often. Walk through any tourist area amongst the panhandlers and aggressive vendors. Get squished into a crowded elevator or subway car. You instinctively put up that barrier and you turn your thoughts inward and many times you find sweetness inside in your thoughts and memories and everything becomes bearable.
If you find yourself surrounded by sour circumstances, leave if you can but if you can’t, then put up that barrier and intentionally search for the sweetness in your thoughts and memories.
Let the sweetness come in and savor it and always make it more important than any sourness outside.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
September 12th, 2016
A fellow wrote to me this morning and told me, when I asked how he was doing, that he was doing badly because it was Monday. He said his health was fine and his family was fine but that he was miserable because it was Monday. He said that he had always felt this way.
Math is not my forte but I figured I could handle this calculation. Figuring that the Mondays between ages one day and five years probably weren’t that much of a burden and the fact that most people live to about eighty years of age, then seventy five years times fifty two weeks would give you three thousand and nine hundred Mondays to be miserable on. Divide that by three hundred and sixty five days and it would be over ten years of life to be in a state of miserableness.
Now I don’t know what your limit for being miserable is but I have a zero tolerance for being miserable. I have railed against authority most of my life and so I am certainly not going to let the calendar tell me how to feel. I don’t love more because it’s Valentines Day. I don’t get more grateful because it’s Thanksgiving. I don’t wait for New Years Eve to make new beginnings. Every day is a day to be maximally loving, maximally thankful, maximally celebratory, maximally happy.
Stop feeling bad because it’s a day to pay bills or to exercise or work or travel. It is a precious gift! It is a day, in a limited amount of days. It is twenty four hours of possibilities.
We know that any life can be adversely changed in the blink of an eye and most of us expect it sooner or later. Did you know that the opposite is also true? That any life can be positively changed in a blink of an eye with a thought, a touch, a look, a word, a sound, a scent, an idea, a desire, a prayer, a sight, a laugh and most of us don’t expect it?
Don’t look to the calendar to tell you how to feel. Don’t look to the folks around you to know how to feel. Don’t look into your past or future for guidance.
Right now say to yourself – “This is now. I am alive and capable of having better thoughts. I can and will enjoy this day because I deserve happiness and I know that I am the only one who can increase or decrease my happiness.”
If you are in charge of your happiness (and you are) than open wide those gates of happiness. Let it rush in and wash away doubt and fear and anxiety. Never let a day go by that you wouldn’t want to live over again. Yes, it can be that good. You know it can.
Sundrops On Life -Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2016 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
August 1st, 2016
Where is your happiness? Is it in your dwelling? Is it in your yoga mat or gym? Is it in your friends or lovers? Is it in nature? Is it in your memories, your books? Is it in your food? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.
Your happiness is all around you all the time. Anything can trigger the happiness you want to feel. For instance, everything you own you cherished when you desired it and obtained it. The little amulets and books and clothes and hundreds of other objects you own elicited your happiness at one point. That happiness trigger is still in every piece you own. Everything of yours is imprinted with your original happiness.
It is your perception that has cast a shadow on all your happiness. What was once “OMG!” is now “Oh, that old thing”. Like an abandoned pet, all your possessions now just sit and wait. Maybe a visitor will bring attention back to it. Maybe it will be given to a friend or grandchild and it will once again be loved and cherished.
We are okay with the earth being alive and thoughts being real things and plants and animals and trees having feelings but somehow our “things” are just there.
Ask any scientist and they will tell you that all matter is energy. Ask me, I will tell you that all energy is love. You and I and all of our things are made of the same energy.
Forget about generating happiness or finding happiness. When you are home look around at your stuff, your things, and tap into the memory of when you first received them. Feel that feeling again. I guarantee that you won’t have to go looking around for happiness because you will realize that everything that you have is a happiness trigger.
While you are recapturing all this happiness with your fresh perception, don’t be surprised if a whole bunch of gratefulness rushes in with the happiness. Just look around with a fresh, new vision and be happy.
Sundrops On Life – Better Thoughts. Better Days.
(c)2016 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
July 11th, 2016
Out of the corner of our eye we catch the flash of a firefly in the darkness of the night. Thrilled to be seeing one after so long we scan the darkness for another flash not knowing where it will appear next.
For many people the flash of a firefly in the night is akin to the flash of happiness in their life. It suddenly appears and than disappears and they wait for another flash of happiness somewhere sometime.
“But”, you say, “I have more happiness than just a brief flash once in a while”. “Excellent” I say. “How big is your celebration?” “What celebration?” you say. “The celebration for all the happiness in your life.” I say
When something goes wrong in our life, everybody hears about it. We walk like we have a problem. We talk like we have a problem. We eat poorly and we mope around. There is no other topic to talk about except our problem.
We all have some happiness in our life and most of us would like more but where is the gratitude and the celebration for what we have? Where is the joy for all the people who have loved us and helped us? Where are the feel good feelings?
When our life is free of problems we look to where we live for problems. When our life and surroundings are problem free we look to our work and our friends for problems. When our life, our surroundings, our work and our friends are good we look to the world for problems. WHY???
Stop looking for problems! Focus on what is right in your life. Focus on what is good in your dwelling. Focus on the benefits of your work. Focus on the love of your friends. Focus on the beauty of the planet. Ask yourself – Right now am I looking for what’s right or what’s wrong?
Never let the pursuit of happiness be sidelined by the pursuit of problems.
Sundrops On Life – Better Thoughts. Better Days.
March 28th, 2016
The problem with feeling loving and being happy is that it is so damn difficult to share.
Walk down any street looking down at the ground and have a worried look on your face and no one bats an eye. Walk down that same street with a big smile on your face and standing tall and people will avoid you like the plague.
Someone comes over and shares their personal tale of woe with you and you share similar tales of your own and you are bonded as friends. That same person comes over and tells you the same woeful tale and you hesitate to say how good your life is because you fear the end of that friendship.
A stranger next to you at the store remarks that the world is going to hell in a hand basket and you nod affirmatively. Telling them your short list of all the good things happening and the progress in so many areas seems like the wrong thing to talk about right then.
Only a small percentage of people will understand, support and celebrate your love and happiness but real friends will and pets will and trees will and people who are in love will and Heaven will and young children will and the wind will and Angels will and flowers will.
The truth is that you can’t always act happy but you can always be happy.
Imagine if you can that you swallowed a really bright light. In fact this light is so bright that it actually shines out through your body. Kind of like putting a bright candle in a milk jug. Well happiness is just like that candle. The jug still looks like an ordinary milk jug but now it’s illuminating everything around it.
You can still be a normal (for this era) looking person and you can still let your amazing love and happiness shine through you all the time. You can listen to a woeful tale and have concern on your face but you can be shining like a full moon. You can nod at the pessimism of a stranger but you can still be shining like a bonfire. You can walk down the street like everyone else but you can still be shining like the noonday sun.
There will be times when you can show your love and happiness and times when it just won’t be acceptable BUT you can always shine that love and happiness of yours from within. The right people will always notice it and the people who need some light in their lives will think that they always feel good around you.
Your mission should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible theme) is to be an incognito love and happiness shiner. Accept this mission and you’ll never again wonder about your purpose. Shine brightly!
Patrick McBride’s Sundrops On Life
(c)2016 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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February 22nd, 2016
Look in a full length mirror and what do you see? Do you see the imperfections? Does what you see fall short of the ideal picture that you have in your mind? Do you see a body that has been wounded by a lack of sleep?
Let me tell you what you don’t see. The mirror doesn’t tell you that your lack of sleep is due to your worrying about your friends and family. It doesn’t reflect the loss of sleep because you didn’t have the money that you thought would help someone. It doesn’t show you the many nights that you stayed on the phone listening to someone who said they had no one else to call. The mirror can’t show you how very much you care.
What you see in the mirror does not reflect the ideal in your mind because the ideal in your mind is a two dimensional figure found only on screens and magazines and you are and always will be a multidimensional being who has lived a roller coaster of a life. You are undeniably real and that is priceless.
The so called imperfections you see in the mirror are the real you. A Rembrandt painting does not have the same brush strokes as a Van Gogh painting. Is one of them imperfect? If you walk into a museum of priceless works, are they all the same? Yes, you are as unique as any fine work of art.
Look in that full length mirror again. Do you now see a work of art with depth and character and a hundred incredible stories? Do you see a body shaped by time, love and a lack of love? Can you look long enough to really see yourself because when you do you will find that the real you is looking back at you and thanking you for finally understanding and not judging. Your smile will be the signal that you got it.
Patrick McBride’s Sundrops On Life
(c)2016 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
November 16th, 2015
What are you going to do about the atrocities and the injustice in this world? Are you going to tweet about it? Are you going to condemn it? Change the color of your profile? None of this changes anything!
In our quest to make symbolism synonymous with substance, we put up another rainbow or pink or tricolored bumper sticker or touching post and consider it done. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When we see a child starving on the other side of the world we can’t reach out with a sandwich but we can look around our circle of acquaintances and see if they or any member of our immediate community is hungry and feed them.
When we see people killing other people through some warped sense of beliefs we can’t shield them from harm but we can take an objective look at our beliefs and see if our beliefs have estranged or even hurt those we profess to love unconditionally.
When we see racial or economic subjugation of a people we can’t ride in on a white horse and save them but we can start responding to the cashier the same as we would a professor and begin to treat people as equals in feelings and needs.
When we see the sick and the infirm we can’t just wave a magic wand and make them healthy but we can look at ourselves and take inventory. Are we living the healthiest life we are capable of living?
We are all connected as living beings but that doesn’t mean we are all the same. Tolerate those who are different but never tolerate those who are hurtful.
We can’t help everyone individually BUT we can help the whole by being better at everything we do. A glass of pure water makes a polluted lake a tiny bit better. A sticker saying that we believe the lake shouldn’t be this bad does nothing.
Be the best you can be. Be conscious of the needs around you. Add to the light in this world with every word that comes out of your mouth. Add to the peace in this world by being strong. Add to the healing in this world with a good example and a supportive attitude. Add to the betterment of this world by striving to be better on every level. Above all, walk in beauty and gratefulness for that alone makes a difference.
(c)2015 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
November 9th, 2015
They say that tomorrow never comes but it’s just semantics. Tomorrow will be here and when it is born, there will be a name change. It will be called Today but just for 24 hours.
Are you planning for tomorrow? Or maybe you are fearing tomorrow? Or maybe it’s just another day? Let me tell you about tomorrow before it gets here.
Tomorrow gets here tonight at midnight. It takes a new name and it lives for just a day. In that day, provided you have the good fortune to live for all 24 hours, you’ll have both the power and the ability to change your life for the better. In fact the changes that you make could positively affect the rest of your life.
A period of time with that much potential cannot be taken for granted or ignored. Tomorrow is a gift that is coming to you with no strings attached. You can be grateful, surly, peaceful, resentful or any one of the seven dwarfs.
Sure there’s some limits on what is possible in one day but depending upon the choices you make, you can alter the course of your life one way or another.
Ask yourself now, Do I want tomorrow to be like today? Do I want my thoughts to be the same? Do I want the same view of myself? If the answer is yes, go ahead and strengthen your resolve. If the answer is no, write a new script for the coming day. Get a piece of paper and write out not a to do list but a how I am going to deal with all I have to do list.
What mood will dominate your day? Who will be reminded of how much you love them? How will you approach your reflection in the mirror? Will your words be criticisms or praise?
You have wished for great opportunities. Well, tomorrow is coming and it could be the beginning of the best time of your life. Yep, it’s that powerful. Ready?
(c)2015 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
August 17th, 2015
We see other people not as they are but filtered through our expectations of them. We pull up behind a big, loud pickup truck with obscene bumper stickers and empty beer cans visible in the rear window and we are sure we know the kind of person driving that vehicle. Suddenly the driver steps out and walks toward us. It’s our best friend! Our mood changes our heart opens, we welcome the contact.
“Why are you driving that? ” we ask. ” Oh, I just needed a truck to deliver food to the homeless and I borrowed this from a neighbor.” We quickly forget the truck and all of our assumptions and hug our friend.
If we knew right from the start that our friend was driving that truck we never would have assumed anything negative about who was driving that truck. It’s when we didn’t know who was inside that we started to judge.
It doesn’t matter what the outside of someone looks like. It doesn’t matter what you look like on the outside. All that matters is the person inside.
Now you may never get the opportunity to see who is driving the obnoxious vehicle in front of you but don’t be too quick to judge them badly. Your judging won’t make a lick of difference to them but it will make a difference to how open your heart is. Keep an open heart and an open mind and expect friends to pop out of the most unlikely vehicles.
(c)2015 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life