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Is the grass green on the other side?

Greener grass anyone?

Greener grass anyone?

Change your philosophy, change your life.
Vv.

Envy

How much do you earn?

Is it enough for you? Do you wonder if your friends, neighbours or family are earning more than you? Do you secretly covet what your neighbours’ drive; what house they live in? I wonder …. Is the grass greener on the óther side?”

How do they do it? What do they do to make so much money and wealth? How can you learn their secrets, you wonder. Should you change jobs or see if the grass is greener on the other side. What word could sum up this way of thinking, I wondered. I think a good word would be: Envy.

Some argue that envy is the root of all evil.

Some argue that envy is what spurs on economic growth. Well and good in a capitalist society. My question is how much growth is enough? I must admit that I, along with many others have been charmed by “overnight success Rags-to-riches stories” and the wealth of the very rich.  You’re bombarded with examples on social media, on-line and in magazines and papers.

The simple things in life are often the best

The outward display of success seem so appealing that it’s pretty easy to fall for those less-than-subtle advertising ploys touting fancy foreign engineering (like cars) or architectural wonders of some luxury house.

Gee, even in church we sometimes focus on the trappings – lavish sanctuary, fine pipe organs, plush carpeting and so forth.

It seems the advertising industry is the machine that uses this belief as its fuel: Envy. Most in the western world have been have been prisoners in the tyranny of consumer culture. Programmed with advertising, movies, video games, magazines, tv and MTV from the cradle. They say by the time a child in our western world reaches the age of 21, he or she would have watched and/or listened to a million ads.

Now, that is a lot of noise and clutter for the brain, and you wonder why the fastest growing disease is mental disease.

It is certainly great for business, because more growth is better for everyone, for the sake of capitalism.

De-clutter your brain of all that noise built up from early childhood clouding your thoughts.
Delete and stop contributing to the bottom-line of ‘bullshit’
Work on managing your funnel better. Don’t be part of the horribly growing stat

 

Try Harder = more success?

The theory is that if people are unhappy which has resulted because people were envious or jealous, people generally tend to TRY HARDER. Does it work that way with you? Or do you pull others down rather than raise your standards and climb up to theirs? Do you just wrap yourself in self-righteous misery when you cannot complain anymore about the unfairness of life?

If you are a believer in Christ and very wealthy, remember not to leave God our of your life. It is said that – without understanding, you are like the beasts that perish. Your power, influence and wealth won’t carry weight now but will not matter one zilch, in eternity.

I know you know this already.

A neuron example & its network of dentrites

Nature of Wealth

Do you read the annual publications of Rich Lists? Where do you stand? What do your friends make? Do they make more than you? How does it make you feel? Does it make you happy or miserable? I dare say that it must make more people unhappy than happy. The thing is, it shouldn’t be. You see, there is a finite nature to wealth ….

Do you wonder those “what if “ scenarios like the price you may have got in on a certain share/stock or what if you had sold your car or business at a better price by waiting a little longer or if you had not left that job? I’m sure you have thought about certain things in your life this way too. We all have. Does this make your life better or worse?

In this life the wealthy often inspire awe, admiration and praise. Be happy for them, don’t envy. This adulation will be short-lived. The possessions that are the basis of their pride and self-aggrandizement will not serve past ‘six-feet under (the grave)”.

Allow your mind to ”connect’ with infinite intelligence.
With consciousness.
It is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.

Contentment (genuine) brings you closer to the elusive Happiness

Maybe we should resolve not to begrudge others their success or good luck in life. Maybe we should resolve to be happy for them. To genuinely wish them well with it.

Maybe we should see that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not always. Maybe we should not yearn for the grass on the other side.

Maybe.

Maybe it would be easier to sail your ship through the sea of life by looking ‘straight ahead’ instead of looking over your shoulder at the other ships (other people).

Maybe, just maybe you will find contentment and move a little closer to everyone’s elusive ‘happiness’ goal, if you stopped coveting the wealth and treasures of the very wealthy. I believe – being content, genuinely content, is one of the surest ways of moving close to happiness. It is a process by which you also move to another consciousness level. Ask yourself how content (genuinely content) are you with everything in your life?

 

Be content with where you are and what you have achieved to get this far.
Appreciate what I refer to as your ‘reverse bucket list’ and have an attitude of gratitude.
This is a key ingredient to moving towards genuine happiness

Change your colour, change your life

I know one thing for sure: being less envious and accepting that ‘the grass is not always greener on the other side’ would make your life less depressing.

No, I am going to take it further and suggest that maybe, we should trying viewing the colour of grass not as green or greener but viewing it as another colour (another view/philosophy).

Change your colour (philosophy). Find the right colour. Change your life – for the better.

For me, the colour is a combination – black with a touch of red.

What’s your new colour?

Then ….

Ask God to teach you to help you find and guide you with your perspective on life … to learn to live always, not for this life only, but with “ëternity’s values in view.”

One way to know YOU is to understand God.
God is in you.
God is you.

I’ll hopefully, see and chat to you in heaven when our time in this third dimension is done and dusted!

Until next time.

Cheers and a big ahoy to you on your journey through the maize of life!

 

The old Cap’n Viking Pirate … & thoughts on envy, contentment and happiness in life.

Appreciate beauty. Find your truth. Create your beauty if you can. Usually, beauty and truth does not involve wealth, growth, mass and material possessions.
It is counter-intuitive, but to find your beauty, your truth … LESS IS MORE.

 

Eliminate and de-clutter the ‘noise’ that has been uploaded in to your brain since the cradle

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Too many mind.

To dig deep, you have to dig deep.


My grandfather told me … 

Yes, not who are you… no, what are you?

My grandfather told me when I was very young that – “You are what you constantly think about every day. “ My grandfather was a bit of a philosopher as I later inferred.

Well, great. I guess, we had better think life-affirming thoughts then, shouldn’t we?

I think so.

Thought has power.

Thought has power.

You’re probably aware of that already… but how do you use that power – consciously?

Thought has energy. What is Energy? One would immediately think of an energy drink. Energy does not vanish., it is never created nor destroyed. It does not disappear. It persists for all of time. All of eternity. Energy transforms from one medium to another or many.

To think, really think .. is probably the hardest thing To do in life

Energy is life.

Energy TRANSMUTES.

Energy transmutes from one moment to another. Energy is the life-blood of life itself. Without energy,  I would cease to exist. You would cease to exist. Life, as we know it, would cease to exist.

So, it could be argued that energy is life and that would make Einstein one of the greatest thinkers that has ever walked this earth.

Why?

Simply, because I think he came up with a formula that fundamentally sums up Life. And what formula would that be, Paul? Well, I’m certain everyone who is reading this knows this following formula:

Energy (E) = Mass (m) x (C x C),    where C = Speed of light

Or, in layman’s speech – E = M C squared.

In the Quantum world the Experimenter becomes part of the experiment.
That is the “hard problem” of the Quantum

Everything is energy, including your thoughts. 

So, if life is Energy, then based on the formula above, everything is energy – all matter, and matter being gas, liquid and solid…. & everything in-between.

Energy is everything and everywhere and omni-present.  It could be said that Energy is God, because God is omnipresent too. The formula above describes that of classical physics but in Quantum Physics, the energy of a particle in its simplest forms (photon, proton etc) within a system is summed up in another famous formula by Physicist – Max Plank:

That Energy (E) = the wave vibration of the particle x Plank’s constant.

Phew, what is that Paul, some of you may ask?

Well, it simply says that everything is energy and that each sub-system of a system, for example, a particle, has a certain wave frequency and oscillates at that wave-length. It should also be noted that Quantum particles can exist in two or more states or locations simultaneously and can be mathematically described by a Quantum wave-function. Interesting findings by science, isn’t it? So, energy is everywhere. Everything is energy, including your thoughts.

So, What does that say? What does that tell us about thought?

Everything has a frequency, everything has a resonance. What is your resonance? What resonates with you?

Are your thoughts … Oscillating in a wavelength that is healthy?

Well, we have got to ask ourselves what frequency of thought we are on and if we are oscillating in a wavelength that is healthy. If we are not, can we and what do we need to do to change our thought operating frequency (from negative to positive) and make the change to a different thought oscillation, making this your default. Your default way of thinking.

So if everything is energy, I also think we have got to devote more thought ( as I’ve established is a form of energy) … devote more thought to energy itself but in particularly, in our management of energy.

Back to my opening statement about thought.

What are you?

You become what you think of, everyday.

It is said that any thought held unwaveringly in mind, or any thought held constantly in mind through focused concentration and brought into the conscious mind often enough, seemingly, attracts to it those qualities of the human mind which it most resembles. Basically, you become what you think, every day.

A thought is like a seed put in the ground, that produces a crop that is of its kind and how healthy it turns out depends on the nutrients and caring it has from its internal and external environment.

Therefore, one must watch one’s thoughts.

It is dangerous to allow the mind to hold any thought which is destructive. Why, because, such thought will manifest itself in the physical sense, sooner or later. Be careful, I say, be careful! Just like the seedling needs constant nutrition and nourishment from the sunlight and healthy soil to keep them alive, so does the qualities of your mind. Without proper nutrition and nourishment, everything that lives and grows, dies.

Everything.

Feel the interconnectedness of everything
Live 4 2day

Nutrition for the mind is as important… than nutrition for the body.

The qualities of the human mind also dies, if one does not nourish it and constantly feed it the nutrition it needs to live and develop. Nutrition for the mind is as important, if not, more important than nutrition for the body. How do you do this, I hear you ask?

Simple. Keep it simple, stupid (The KISS principle I learned from one of my business mentors).

Like, any plant would: learn to become more aware (of your thought/thoughts), concentrate and think about it, making the correct choice and then apply (or use it). My philosophy of the Triple A can be adopted here. Refer to an earlier blog for an elaboration on the first A: Awareness.

Are you a spirit… a soul … a leaf 🍃 of consciousness in the vast seas of consciousness?

No one has ownership of your mind, but YOU.

No one has ownership of your mind, but you.

Yes – YOU!

You do not need anyone else in this world to help you manipulate your mind so it will function as you want it to. You also have control over your mind, no matter where you are in life, which phase you  are in life, but provided you exercise the right rather than allowing others to do so for you.

Better control and ownership of your mind and choosing to exercise these factors will allow you to free you of the curse of all fears and stagnation. And why is this important? Well, because I believe that there is a growing hidden epidemic in mode-day societies (one of many) and that is many are suffering from –

Too many Mind.

We’re all swinging like a pendulum .. continuously moving between two points – activity & non-activity/ entertainment/rest . Creating waves 🌊…in the universe

Clutter to the mind is akin to weeds are in a garden.

Your mind is made up of the hardware and the software.

The software keeps changing, keeps getting updated, every day, every second of the day, for some. What happens when you fill your tummy up with so much crap, when you eat too much ….

Well, you feel like crap, don’t you?!

Well, that is also what happens when your nutrition for the mind is also crap. If you keep feeding it crap, you will think and ultimately act like someone who is physically ill. But like I said earlier, who has ownership and control of your mind?

You, yes – YOU!

Not managing your food for your body well enough, can make you very ill, just like mis-managing your nutrition for your mind. This leads to chaotic thoughts, which ultimately causes increased clutter & “noise” in the mind, which then leads to bad decisions, because of lack of focus, which then causes distress in the physical world.

Clutter to the mind is akin to what weeds are to a beautiful garden. The weeds feed on the limited resources and sometimes overgrow and overtake the area, affecting the proper growth of the desired plants. Even killing them off.

So, watch your thoughts, I say. Be the best gardener you can be for your garden! Thoughts, positive or negative GROW STRONGER when fertilized with CONSTANT REPEITITION. Remember this.

My idol.

Too many thoughts = Too many mind.

Too many thoughts = too many mind. 

Very similar to that age old saying – “too many cooks spoil the soup.” That I heard adults saying when I was a child. If you have too many thoughts … too many mind … running chaotically through your consciousness … you muddle up the soup .. muddle up or clutter up … your most precious resource: your Mind.

Clutter doesn’t do much more than cloud up or congest one’s life. One’s mind. Its like a ship with too many destinations  and being paralysed with motion as it has too many competing travel plans. I’m not sure who said this but some thinker, I think it was Einstein, that taught us a big lesson: he felt it was more important to use your mind to “think” than to use it as a warehouse for facts.

That if you could record the information somewhere, then do so, hence freeing up your mind for more important decisions. So, do just that. Don’t use your brain as a storehouse of information, it will just cause unnecessary clutter. Instead focus on the thinking or thought process behind the intelligence. That is why my kids are amazed that I have over 35,000 unread emails in my gmail inbox. I chose yo filter out unnecessary “stuff” and stopped weed from using up my brain cells and cluttering my mind.

Let your light bring colour to the world. Focus 🧘🏾‍♂️ your thoughts 💭 on the area you want the rainbow 🌈 to land

The ability to know how to get information is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts.

The ability to know how to ‘get information’ is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts.

What really matters is not how much intelligence you have, but HOW YOU USE what you do have. The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than the quantity of your brainpower. In other words, the thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.

Does science have the answers?

All the answers to the truth? The answers we may have to harvesting the mind? What truth is this? What is truth? What is science anyway … it could be seen as a makeshift, a means to an end which is never attained?

Could nature be truth? Could the universe be truth? Where is the source of our knowledge? Do we know everything? Do we think we know something? Are we, as human beings, so arrogant to think we know something … our so-called meagre knowledge … and maybe, missing out on the advantages of actual ignorance.

A man’s ignorance may not only be useful, but can be seen as beautiful. Sometimes, knowledge can be worse than useless and worse still – ugly!

A butterfly 🦋 knows when to fly and when to sit and feed.
Timing is everything in their life.

Where and how can you harness your mind?

So, where and how can you harness your mind, de-cluttering it in the process. Well, one way, is to get you dreaming again … to spark your imagination. To do this, you could try to fall in love with nature. Become one with nature. Become one with the universe. Let nature become one with your spirit – your subconscious. This would allow the mind to be fertilized and bear fruit in the garden, the garden of your subconscious, the fruit of which is imagination.

How would you know which of your thoughts is valuable: a clue could be any thought that comes to your mind, that is anything, but what you thought….& resonates with your heart ❤️.

That is imagination. Imagination is key: A key gift to you in your journey through life.

So become more aware of your thoughts, and then, catch that ‘aha’ thought that you weren’t trying so hard to think about. Unthink to think (refer to an earlier blog on this).

Until next time,

P.

Tesla, Einstein’s hero was so “in-tune” with the Energy & understood HOW to harness that Power energy

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The Pendulum of Life

We’re all swinging like a pendulum .. continuously moving between two points – activity & non-activity/ entertainment/rest

How does “How are you equal Busy?”

“How are you?” someone would ask you during the day.

“Busy” you may find yourself replying.

Busy.

We’re all guilty of that, being ‘busy’, I mean. How busy is that? How busy is busy?

I guess it would seem, that it is better to be busy than not busy. It depends. This isn’t a blog about how busy you are in comparison to everyone else. It isn’t a blog about not being busy. It is, however, about the two things we seem to swing back and forth every day of our life.

These two things are like two points on a line or two points on a pendulum in a clock. I introduced this thought in my most recent blog “Unthink, to think”. Specifically, the two points on a pendulum of life that we swing back and forth on are:

1) Activity

2) Recreation

We swing back and forth between these every day. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Goes the clock. Your clock!

Keep your pendulum swinging … because to be stuck at one end is not life-affirming

The ebb and flow of the tide

I’d also like to think of this pendulum our lives being as similar to the tide of the open sea moving out and then back, in. The ebb and flow of the tide. Repeating and never stopping.

What would happen if the tide stopped? Well, I would think that there may be a serious problem with the earth’s gravitational force, for one, and our time, our life on this lovely earth would be, up. Hmmmmm …. Not a very good ending.

The same would happen if your pendulum got stuck at one end or the other.

What is it that keeps the clock going? Well, it’s the pendulum of course. Just like the gravitational forces that keep the tides of the seas moving, so does the pendulum keep the clock ticking.

We’ve got to be aware of the forces in our lives and it’s impact on our energy and ability to keep our pendulum swinging.

We all need our Re-charge point

So, back to us. To our lives.

You see, if we represent the pendulum, we have to be aware of  how much time we are spending at each end of our clock and not lose ourselves in the busyness of life. We need to keep swinging, ever so skilfully between the two ends – of activity and recreation.

Activity in this context is anything that we do that is not recreation. The most common being paid work, house work and work-related activities – travel, research, meetings etc.

The essential component of recreation, is recreate, which means to refresh by means of relaxation and enjoyment,  and as to restore physically or mentally. Is there a place or activity that you do, that ‘re-creates’ or ‘re-energizes’ or ‘re-charges’ YOU?

One of my re-charge points is my hour of weight-training I do 5-6 days per week. Apart from the myriad of benefits exercising with weights and living a bodybuilding lifestyle does for the body, mind and spirit, I feel a sense of improved vitality and an extra spring in my step, after each workout. At its very essence, life comes down to energy management – everything is energy. Just like our many electronic gadgets need re-charging every day, so do we.

We all need a re-charge point!

Orderly chaos. We need to be better managers if the fusion of chaos & order

Keep swinging…

I also see these benefits with everyone I train at my gym. They may commence their session with low energies, feeling tired or depressed, and they leave feeling 100% better with new determination to take on whatever life has to throw at them. I see this every day. Every day. Don’t leave it to your yearly vacation. You should be doing this every day. Yep, every day. Once a year is not near enough.

It is better to work on managing your energies, instead of your time. We have an energy crisis in the world today. Start by becoming a better manager of your energies and you can avoid your pendulum stopping or getting stuck at one end, before its too late.

Ask yourself, where your ‘re-charge’ point is? Where do you ‘re-create’ yourself? Where do you go to escape the hustle and bustle of life? Where do you go to escape? It could be in the car home from work listening to some soft tunes. For some, it could be the golf-course, or for some, ironically, could be the commuter trains and buses from work. For others still, it could be the garden, the pub or your church.

If you don’t have one, don’t fret, try reaching out, maybe you can use just absorb the beauty of the morning, the quiet of the evening, the touch of friends or the smile from strangers, or may be, just the strength of silence to stop. Yes, that’s right – stop!

Take it all in, including a deep breath, fill your lungs up and then keep pushing on.

Wherever it is, whatever it may be, hang on to it. Hang on to that re-charge point. It is vital to you maintaining your sense of vitality.

It is vital to maintaining that delicate balance between activity and re-creation. It is vital to keeping your pendulum of life swinging.

Keep swinging, I say, keep swinging. Back and forth, back and forth. Don’t stop. Tick, tock, tick, tock!

The alternative: six feet under before your time, is not that attractive.

Thanks

yours in iron, mind, heart 💓 & muscles 💪,

Paul e 💝alentine

Keep your pendulum ticking. It relates to the ticking of your heart 💓. Your life.  

Become better at “being comfortable at being uncomfortable “ to keep your pendulum ticking … & your life, living

 

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The End. In Foresight.

Like an FM station, just one point off gives you an irritating “shhhh…”

Ever wondered what the mongoose or squirrel was thinking as it crossed the highway and got hit by a car, its body laying splattered there on the road?

No?

Me neither.

However, it got me thinking about something. About Life.

The roadkill’s life had come to an abrupt end. Its purpose in life was over. It probably wasn’t thinking of the risk of crossing a busy road, with other fast, big, road users.

You see, we’ve all been given 4 key inter-related things/gifts in life:

  1.  Our Mind – to allow us to think and make choices based on our assessment of RISK
  2. Our Body – to execute the wishes of the mind based on our choices
  3. Our Spirit – to help you “see” what the mirror does not reflect
  4. Our Life – determined by how we utilize the other gifts (1,2 and 3).

They say, goals are very important to your success in any area in life.

Goals: Set them. Plan your work. Work your plan.

Probability of realizing the goals are improved. Its true. It works, if you follow it through. There is a difference though, between wishful thinking and goal-setting.

In addition, however, I say: have the End in Mind. Develop your FORE-SIGHT. Improved Foresight enhances INSIGHT.

I leave you with a little formula that might shed a little light in to finding your Purpose in Life:

FOCUS + FORESIGHT = INSIGHT.

No End. No Purpose. No Life.

See YOUR END (Foresight).

Find YOUR PURPOSE (Insight).

Live YOUR LIFE (Focus).

You only have one life. Its no dress rehearsal. Don’t live it like that road-kill. Find your purpose, before its too late…. Before your daily 86,400 seconds stop ticking.

Tick, tock, tick, tock. Its your life. Write your story the best way you can: with purpose.

Become increasingly aware … take actions (sufficient & appropriate) and adapt accordingly.
My Triple A to self – development.

Find YOU.
Find clarity.
Find Life.

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