February 1st, 2016
Every change we attempt to make is going to be judged, influenced and battered by the ghosts of our past. So how do we make effective changes in our life?
If you go on certain rides you are going to get scared. If you go into a haunted house you are going to get scared. If you watch a horror movie you are going to get scared. How do we stop getting scared from these things? Answer – we don’t go on rides that scare us. We don’t go into haunted houses. We don’t watch horror movies.
So how do we stop being battered, judged and influenced by the ghosts of our past? Answer -we don’t unnecessarily go into our past. There is more than enough in this present moment to keep you occupied. Only in this present moment do you have the power to begin anything you want. You can take a step in any direction. In this present moment there is opportunity, choice and a blank canvas. In the past there is only an unalterable history.
Effective change requires presence, your presence. Any change you want to make can start right now. Start thinking about it and it begins. It will continue in a positive way UNLESS you look back. The lessons of your past have made you more than capable of having an amazing present. The lessons have been learned. A review is unnecessary. A comparison is unnecessary. Leave the past in the past. Embrace new beginnings right now and stay with them.
We don’t have eyes in the back of our head because we were made to always be looking forward.
Patrick McBride’s Sundrops On Life
(c)2016 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
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December 28th, 2015
“The new year is almost here and I can’t wait. I just wish it were here already. Don’t you?”
Uh, NO!
“WHY???”
Because today is the gift I just opened. I want to sit with it, explore it. I want to open my heart and my mind to it. I want to be here, to be grateful and to be aware of every minute of it.
I have no fear or love of the new year simply because it’s not here yet. I would not step out into a chasm now because there was going to be a bridge there in a few days. I want to savor what is here now. I don’t want to be eating my lunch and discussing what I want for dinner. I want to enjoy every bite of my lunch and to be grateful for the taste, the nutrition and everything that brought it to me.
I don’t want to start thinking about the weekend on Monday. I don’t want to think about Monday on the weekend. I want to tell you I love you so that you will feel my love in this moment and not because you will remember this moment in some future.
When we hug it could be the last hug for either one of us. I want to be there when we hug. I don’t want any part of my day to be on auto pilot while I go rummaging around in the past making believe it was different. I want to go out and feel today’s sun and not sit inside fantasizing about the possibility of next summer vacation’s sun.
I want today, right now, to be forever. I want to walk slow enough to take it all in. I want to eat slow enough to taste every bite. I want to hear the music and the words. I want to love so slowly that every moment is ecstasy.
Don’t live today as if it were your last. Live today like it was your only day and you had the power to do anything.
In a few days I will wish you a Happy New Year but right now I want to wish you a happy today. A today that is so deliciously slow that you don’t miss a thing.
Patrick McBride’s Sundrops On Life
December 21st, 2015
It is really very simple. If you want to enjoy Christmas then go ahead and enjoy it. If you want to complain about greed and materialism and people’s attitudes then you don’t really want to enjoy Christmas.
Sure, there’s traffic and crowds and stressed out people but there is also expectant children. There is also the chance for many people to say “Look, I know this year has been tough but I want to take this opportunity to show you that I care”.
And really that’s what Christmas gives us. It gives us an opportunity. It gives us a chance to celebrate something. It gives us a chance to give a gift in return for support given. It gives us a chance for a couple of weeks to decorate where we live with some of the colors and ornaments that make us happy.
Yes, there is a religious message too at this time of year. It is a message of light and love. It is the light of the Star of Bethlehem. It is the lights of Diwali. It is the Hanukah lights. It is the increasing daylight that comes with the Solstice. It is the lights on the tree in Rockefeller Center. It is the light of the dinner candles in countless homes as family and friends gather for a holiday feast. It is, at its very core, the light within each of us.
In a few hours THE day will arrive. Can you rise to the occasion? Can you see the light in the hearts around you? Can you feel the light within you. You should, it’s the first gift you ever received.
Have a wonderful Christmas but before it comes please decide whether you are going to celebrate or criticize this occasion. You can’t do both and right now I do believe that this world has more than enough critics. Go ahead, be the rare one. Be the one who celebrates light and love unconditionally and if you do, my door and my heart is always open to you. Merry Christmas.
Patrick McBride’s 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
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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
October 26th, 2015
You are not great and maybe you never will be great. Blasphemy! Cruel! Horrid! How could you say such a thing?
The fact of the matter is that we are all pretty average. AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT! I’m so tired of hearing and reading “experts” lie and say that everyone can be great and wealthy and problem free. It just ain’t so.
So many people today have low self esteem and are upset with themselves because they can’t get rich or they can’t manifest great things. They feel like failures because they “only” have a regular job. They have a three star life and they feel like failures because it isn’t a five star life.
The unhappiness you feel after all the seminars and all the CDs and DVDs and workbooks and workshops haven’t produced greatness is misplaced. You learned a tremendous amount from all your searching and you learned or will learn at some point in time that it’s okay to just be you.
You don’t have to be better than anyone else. You don’t need great wealth. You don’t need to be any better than you are right now. You don’t need to be skinnier. You don’t need to be more popular. You just need to be satisfied with you. That and a bucket full of love and gratitude will get you through this life very well.
In this life you will find people and animals to love and who will love you back. You will always, always have an opportunity to make someone else feel loved. You will have good days and bad days. The good days will make you smile and the bad days will give you something to talk about.
There may not be Oscars and yachts and embassy balls in your future but if you can look at yourself in the mirror and say “Yes, It’s Okay” and mean it, you can have a peace that escapes most people. Fill your life with love and… Just live.
(c)2015 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
September 28th, 2015
Should you move, break a relationship, quit your job, go back to school, buy a drum set? When the idea of changing your life surfaces it isn’t because there is something terribly wrong with your life. It is because you want more. You want more adventure, more challenges, more newness. You want to feel more alive.
The key to success is to change before you make the change. What that means is to act like you would in a new place before you make the move. Look around you. Is this the way you want to live in the new place? Change it now. What it would feel like to have a certain someone no longer in your life. Is there freedom or sadness? Imagine it happening now.
We warm up before exercise. We prepare before going to bed. We put on seatbelt before we drive. We prepare for what we are going to do but we jump right into life changing situations and consider ourselves brave.
Whenever you are faced with a big change, take it for a test drive first! Act as if the change has already taken place. How does it feel to sit for endless hours in a classroom? How does it feel to hit a drum like a three year old instead of Ginger Baker?
Change is great! It is highly recommend. Lights come on in the areas of your brain that were dark and dormant. Change is aliveness! BUT make the changes that help you to live a bigger, better, happier life. Change just for the sake of change is a recipe for regret and depression and a fear of making any more changes.
Go ahead and make changes. Make small changes and big changes. Make them first in your thoughts and then in your imagination and then in your life. Right now, look around. What do you want to change? …..Think about it.
(c)2015 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
September 21st, 2015
Be informed they say. Know what’s going on all over the world they say. Find out who’s covering up this or that they say. You are being lied to they say. Be filled with gratitude they say. Eat this and not that they say. Believe us and not them they say. Do this to live longer than say.
How about we stop listening to “them” and we start listening to ourselves? How about we decide today, right now, to just live?
Years ago we got input from our family, neighbors and teachers and a few books. From that we decided who we liked and what we wanted and we just lived. Television connected us to more people wanting to make a buck and get some followers. The internet followed and more people tried to make a buck and get more followers. Suddenly great numbers of people wanted us to think like them for their own profit or for power. We stopped just living and everyone started to enroll in the camps of “one of us” or “the others”.
It’s time to just live. It’s time to reconnect with your heart. It’s time to be you, the real you. The you that conforms because you want to or the you that doesn’t conform because it feels right. It’s time to stop getting upset with countries and to start understanding that the world is filled with different people and it’s not your job to “fix” them. It’s time to just live without judgement or animosity. You know in your heart who you want to be around and who you don’t. Honor that.
The past is not the answer. You’ve grown so much since then. It would be a shame to waste that. The present is where you get to say “I’m going to do my own thinking and make my own choices and as long as no one else jeopardizes the safety of me and my family, I’m just going to live”. The future is your place to dream. That’s important too.
It’s time to turn down the cacophony of voices wanting you to do this or believe that. There is a power inside of you that knows the way. It lives in a beautiful, powerful place past your conditioning and your ego. It’s who you are. Be quiet. Meditate if you can. Connect with the real you and just live.
(c)2015 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
July 27th, 2015
Where is your happy place? Where is that place that when you bring it to mind, a smile parts your lips, that “ahhh” feeling permeates your whole body and you relax into a little bliss?
Maybe it’s a place from your past. Maybe it’s a place you want to experience in the future. Maybe it’s a fantasy place. Whatever and wherever it is, it is the key to better thoughts and better feelings. It’s the thought that improves your mood in just a few seconds.
If I asked you to visualize cutting a cold lemon into quarters and putting one of those quarters into your mouth and tasting the dripping juice, you would start to pucker and salivate. Why? Because the thought in your mind directly influenced how your body responded.
We can’t control every thought that comes into our mind but from time to time we can think better thoughts. We can hold a thought that actually improves our mood, our outlook and even our immune system.
Go to your happy place as often as you can. See it in as much detail as possible. Enjoy it for a moment or for several minutes. Think of it as your own mini vacation, no reservations required and enjoy!
(c)2015 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life
July 13th, 2015
What follows you around like a giant mosquito, always buzzing so you know it’s around and when you think it’s gone the familiar sting tells you it’s not? It’s guilt.
Some people feel guilty about everything regardless of whether or not they are at fault. “I’m sorry the ocean is so salty and it ruined our vacation” “I’m sorry that I didn’t know what you were thinking” .
Some people hide their guilt and walk around with a perpetual hundred pound weight on their chest. It doesn’t matter whether or not they were actually at fault. The only thing that matters in both cases is the perception that somehow it was their fault.
Guilt is a powerful feeling that can help us to change for the better or paralyze us into inaction. How can we see it in a positive light when we believe, right or not, that we did something wrong? Forgetting is an impossibility.
We hear about forgiving yourself but in order to forgive you have to take a higher position and pass an order of forgiveness to yourself. How can you take a higher position, in other words act as a judge, when guilt has laid you so low?
Guilt will weaken you and it can only be tamed one way. You have to become stronger than the guilt. If the guilt is pervasive “I’m sorry for everything!” you must rein it in and see it in the light. Is it really, really, really your fault? If so, take responsibility and apologize ONCE. If it is not your fault, stand your ground FOREVER.
We all make mistakes or we haven’t really lived. We cannot change one iota of the past. If you have done wrong, rectifying it is sometimes possible. Learning from it is always possible. Learn and move on. Get strong, not arrogant. Be the door that only allows love to enter and not the doormat. Be strong, wonderful you.
(c)2015 All Rights Reserved, Patrick McBride
www.PatrickInspires.com
Facebook – Sundrops On Life