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
August 12th, 2013
When you look into your past, do you ever think “I should have done that differently” or “I should have made a better choice”? And then get upset with yourself? Of course you do. We all do.
How about if you look into your past and you see yourself getting lost somewhere at ten years of age. And you say “I was so stupid. I should have just looked at my smartphone!” And you start getting really upset that you didn’t use this useful device but then you stop and say “Whoa! What am I doing? They didn’t have smartphones when I was ten!”.
Seem preposterous? Of course it does but we do it every day. We look into our past with the eyes, the knowledge, the wisdom, the experience and the lessons we have learned and accumulated since then and we harshly judge our past self who had none of that! There is little in life that is more unfair.
Remember, you have always done the best you could with the knowledge that you had and the conditions that you were under. Your past is merely a history book. It is just the facts of what happened. It is not evidence to be used to prosecute yourself or shame yourself or denigrate yourself. It is just your story, written and unchangeable. Look at it with compassion and kindness and remember it is not who you are now.
You are better, wiser and more aware than you have ever been. The past calls to you but so does the future. One is a story already written and the other is a story that you will write fresh or copy from what has already been written. Let’s start a new story today, one of strength and confidence and love. Ready?
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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
July 8th, 2013
“I told you that!” “No, you didn’t!” “Yes, I did!” “No, you didn’t!” “Yes, I did!”
We are told that communication is about both speaking and listening and a good case can be made for refining our ability to do both very well. But there is another part of communication that is rarely mentioned.
When you speak, is any body listening? Oh sure, there is someone right in front of you and you are speaking to them and it is easy to assume that because you are talking to them they are listening to you. You may be wrong.
Sometimes the voice in the listener’s mind is louder and more demanding than yours. Sometimes they are hearing you but not listening to you. Rather they are listening to their own mind’s chatter. So how do you know if they are really listening? YOU have to be totally present and totally focused every time you speak to someone.
Many times, the more we think we know someone, the more off handed and casual we speak to them even when we are being serious, unrealistically expecting them to hear and record every word we say. BUT if you cannot be present and focused on what you are saying don’t expect them to be present and focused on what they are hearing.
If you are going to give praise, support, love or if you are going to talk about what you are feeling be present be focused. Look for signs that your words are touching the other person. Look for a hunger in their eyes for your next word. Create that with your presence. Nothing is sadder than an “I love you” or an “I feel hurt” that was spoken but never heard. If the words you are speaking matter to you, be present, be focused, be heard.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
June 24th, 2013
What is most unexpected in your life? For most people except the very young, the notion that the very best part of your life is still ahead of you is difficult to believe. When we lose our grandparents and other loved ones, it seems as if the funnest times are behind us. When we move and leave friends and familiar places we are always comparing the new friends and new places to the absolutely wonderful people and places of our past. (Things behind us have a way of being remembered as better than they ever were!)
But what if? What if our best days, our deepest most memorable belly laughs, our most confident moments, our crystal clear self realization is all still ahead of us? Would imagining a future like that change our present? You bet it would! We could surmount any obstacle, cast aside any anxiety, weather any storm because we would know, without the shadow of a doubt, that just up ahead was our total and complete happiness and contentment.
If thinking super positive about the future is a stretch for you, consider that your future hasn’t been written in its entirety yet and at this point in time, your brilliant, golden future is just as possible as any other outcome. Still hard to believe? Then consider how dark the glasses you are wearing really are. If you can cast a pall over what is yet unwritten, you are bound to be unhappy and unfulfilled.
Take off the dark glasses, throw them down, grind them underfoot and refuse to see what God has created as anything less than beautiful and uplifting. Cast aside thoughts of failure, loss, separation or future pain and embrace at least the possibility that your future could be something unexpected, unexpectedly rich and beautiful and more happy than you have ever been. It could happen.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
June 17th, 2013
Yesterday, I was sitting in the parking lot and staring at a brand new Rolls Royce to my left. I hadn’t seen one in years. As far as cars go, it was beautiful and as far as symbols go, it was up there in the stratosphere. As I condensed my shopping list to what I actually needed, I was hoping that the owner would come out so that I could judge them.
A minute or two later, a top of the line, brand new Mercedes pulled into the empty space in front of me. The woman got out and her eyes locked on the Rolls to her right. She dug into her very expensive purse, pulled out her phone and started snapping picture of the Rolls. She saw me staring at her and the Rolls and she said. “My dream car”. I nodded in approval and she went in to shop.
As improbable as it sounds, someone, somewhere was probably lusting after my ten year old Toyota as I was lusting after the Mercedes in front of me and the lady, now shopping, was lusting after the Rolls. I’m sure that the driver of the Rolls was lusting after some other car in the world too.
There was a whole lot of lusting going on at the grocery store yesterday and that got me to thinking about how much is enough and I realized that there is never enough and there shouldn’t be. Do we want more air than the breath we just took? Do we want another meal after all we ate yesterday? Do we want some sleep tonight even though we slept last night? Do we want more for our loved ones? Yes, yes, yes and yes!
Wanting is not wrong. It is life’s desire for expansion. It is only when the wanting overshadows our gratitude for where we are and what blessings we have right now that we lose our way. Remember, if you curse where you are in life, you will remain there.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
June 10th, 2013
Once upon a time there was a young girl and she dreamed wild dreams and she sang wild songs and she smiled knowingly at the wind. Her world was full and wondrous but it was not every ones world.
Every ones world was filled with chores and yelling and hurts. Every ones world was filled with strangers and moods and misunderstandings and school. The young girl visited her world as often as she could but every ones world took up more and more of her time. Soon, the road back to her world became overgrown and hard to navigate. She had to make up her mind to either go into her world and let the path overgrow behind her or stay in every ones world and let the path to her world disappear. The path disappeared.
The girl became a woman and the woman longed for a different world than the one she was in. Now and then she would dream a wild dream or hear a note or two of a wild song on the wind and she smiled but didn’t know why. She searched for people with answers. She read books to find the map. She took lovers to make them leaders but they never lead her to where she thought she belonged.
One day she cried so hard that her body shook and her breath came in gasps and eyes puffed up and all the wrong untethered itself from her soul and for a moment she felt free. “The path awaits those who are free” she heard on the wind and she smiled and she knew why she smiled.
She is still free today and she dreams wild dreams and she sings wild songs and she travels freely between two worlds. She swept the past and present wrongs from her life and that made all the difference in both worlds.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
June 3rd, 2013
(Let it Go!)
Are you ready for things to get better for you? If you truly are then the first step is to let go of where you have been. Oh, I know, it’s a very juicy story and you’ve made it even more interesting in the retelling of it to yourself and others but if you want to move forward you have to let it go.
Often, we have so much pain and agony attached to a crisis that it becomes a part of us. Not just our history but who we appear to be to others and ourselves. After the five heart operations last year, I found myself becoming those five operations to myself and others. It became what everyone asked me when we met. It became all I talked about to friends and family. I constantly improved the story until I knew where the laughs were and where the horror was. One day I realized that my life, my experiences, my loves, my learning was so much more than those five operations. I had to let it go.
I had to let it go so that I could be more than just a crisis. Immediately I began changing the subject matter every time it came up. I refused to tell the story given the opportunity. I ceased to believe that those operations were the most important things about me. And you know what? I started to heal faster than ever. I started to focus on better health. I joined a gym. I ignored the scars on my chest and started focusing on building muscle again. I started talking about my dreams, hopes and aspirations again. I felt better on every level. I gained by losing. Who would’ve thought?
Sometimes our happiness is not about what we get but by what we let go. What should you let go?
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
May 13th, 2013
(You are Invaluable!)
“All you have to do is focus on what you want” they say. But what if you don’t know what you want. What if, regardless of your age, you don’t have a clue about what you want to be when you grow up? What then?
One of the first things you must understand is that “HELLO! Everyone does not operate out of the same instruction manual!” People without well defined goals are not lazy. People without a clear vision of where they are going are not lost. People who are treading water are not wasting their lives. Every person in every second of their life is living it perfectly. Stop judging others and stop judging yourself. You didn’t write the script for this amazing play. You have a part just like everyone else and it’s working just fine. The only thing you get to change is your attitude.
If you are sitting on your butt trying to figure out what to do then revel in the fact that you are sitting on your butt trying to figure out what to do. Don’t berate yourself for not having answers. Don’t berate yourself for not having “made it”. You may have a defining moment in your life that tells you what it was for or you may be changing hearts and minds long after you die just because you lived your life a certain way.
The shepherd out on the mesa does not have a poorer life than the CEO. Your wealth, your worth does not come from some amazing accomplishment or some great resume. Your worth, your wealth comes from being kind, from caring, from loving. Your worth comes from not criticizing yourself for not being “more”or for not being a “somebody”. Your worth, what you should be when you grow up comes down to one thing. Be kind to yourself and others. The Director will make sure your part is meaningful.
(c)2013 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com