Ericksonian Principles

The Person Who’s Always There

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Out there somewhere

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Each and every one of us has someone in our lives that affected us in a positive way.  The person has been a great support through thick and thin. When we were in self-doubt that person had faith in us. When we were down and out that person had lifted our spirit. When we were lonely that person had kept us company.  The person was there at the beginning when our great  ideas seemed stupid. The person was there during our failures and the person was there during our successes. The person was honest with us when we needed to know the truth. The person was strong for us when we were vulnerable.

Wishing To Go Back

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Streetlight sepia

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If we’re wishing we were a younger than we are now or to go back in time, then we’re trying to find another excuse for not doing something worthwhile today in our lives. We don’t have to regret the time we’ve lost yesterday or 10 years ago. Our life is a continuous journey. It doesn’t end when an important event happens in our lives instead we change from it and continue on our journey to meet the next big thing. The next big thing will affect and change us to create deeper and meaningful experiences.

 

A Brand New Start

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Now this looks like butter .....

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“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” – Carl Bard

It is never too late to start, if we start now.  Our regrets will be eclipse by starting now. So we no longer have to keep dreaming about what we want to do with our lives. When we do something worthwhile today, then we can look forward to doing it again tomorrow, the next day and so on.  We’re molding our future by starting in the here and now. The future will take care of itself, while we have fun with the only one thing we know, is today.

 

We Own It

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Can We Fix It?
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Owning something means taking responsibility for the work we do. When something is broken, we fix it or get someone to fix it. We get a sense of pride, when we take on the work as our own. When we think and dream about it, we’re making the work our own.  Not only can we experience pride in our work, but we can also experience a sense of satisfaction in our work. We look forward to doing the work because it has become a part of us now. It is all right to allow ourselves to enjoy what give us self-worth.

Ignorance And Confidence

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Confidence

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“To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.” – Mark Twain

In other words, we don’t have to know everything about the subject for us to do. We just need confidence and be unafraid to get our hands dirty to find out about things.  If we learn everything first, then it would take a long time to try. But confidence allows us to go ahead with things in spite of not having all the information.  We just need just enough information for us to proceed with things and through trial and error we will learn something about what we’re trying to carry out. The information we gain through trial and error is most valuable.

When We Feel Vulnerable

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Hearts, so vulnerable

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It is all right to experience the feeling of vulnerability. Showing vulnerability is being transparent. Most of us can identify with vulnerability because everybody has it. Some of us hide vulnerability more than others because some of us think it is a sign of weakness. There is a place and time to put ourselves out and there is a place and time to retreat. If we want to build a stronger bond in our relationships, then we should reveal more about ourselves. We can start by sharing and revealing ourselves with our relationships.

Praise The Effort

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Praise Springs Forth As the Earth Buds
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It is important that we praise others and ourselves for our efforts. It can be lonely sometimes when it comes to working on something new. So, we need the praises and support of others along the way.  Our efforts sometimes seem to be not enough when we first start out. But if we continue to hang on long enough, then we will see that our efforts are paying off. We just got to wait and see and not be too quick to give up. We will always meet resistance on different levels when it comes to doing something that’s unfamiliar.

 

Experience The Senses

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Day 151
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The best way to learn is by experience. We can read a manual all day long and have gain knowledge but that knowledge won’t do us any good if we don’t use it through our experiences. We discover more things if we’re experiencing them ourselves. Experiencing life by touching, seeing, smelling and tasting are best way to break up rigid thinking and biases. Rigid thinking and biases are just a short-cut way to interpret reality or our model of the world. Since we’re unique, one’s model of the world is different from another’s model of the world.

Pain and Pleasure

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IMG_0100

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“Pain is not punishment; pleasure is not reward.” ~  Pema Chodron

Pain doesn’t have to be in the context of punishment just as pleasure doesn’t have to be in the context of reward. We all have experienced growing pains when we’re learning something new or when we’re struggling. Some pain can be useful. Our body and mind are constantly communicating to us what is painful whether that’s physical and/or emotional. If we’re sitting a certain way too long, our body will let us know, and then, we make adjustments. Pain is good. We all used pleasure as a reward after completing a difficult task. It all depends on how we use pleasure that’s important to us.  We experience pleasures everyday. A nice brisk walk can be pleasurable for one person while reading a good novel can be pleasurable for another.

 

 

Staying On Track

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On the tracks by Thoreau's place

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When we feel like we’re off track, that may mean that we have forgotten who we are and what we want. From time to time, we need to re-center ourselves by going inside ourselves. We need to get back to who we are as unique people and to remind ourselves that we are unique individuals with different perspectives of the world. It is better to be more ourselves than to try to be someone we admire. It is all right to be our best self and let other see that, because then, they will feel freer to be themselves. We all have foibles but we also have strengths that can help us along the way while contributing to something bigger than ourselves.

 

All The Time It Needs

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Endurance patience
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“Patience has all the time it needs.” ― Allan Lokos

If patience has all the time it needs, then impatience waits twice as long. A mind of a patient person is quiet while a mind of an impatient person is stormy. Impatience builds pressure in the human body while patience experiences freedom. Impatience only focuses on the destination while patience enjoys the journey. Patience accepts reality easily while impatience causes disruption. It takes practice to be patient while by our nature we’re impatient. So let us experience more patience while experiencing very little impatience.

Things Coming At Once

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Sunny Room in old Apartment
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When too many things are coming at us at once, we then can sit back and rank what  thing is most important. When we find what thing is most important, we then can do that one thing until it is completed, and then, we can move on to the next important thing. It is a lot easier this way than wondering what to do next without direction or purpose. When we’re prioritizing we begin to find out our purpose in doing what we’re doing. When we have a purpose, especially in what we’re doing to help others, then it become a labor of love.

It Was Always There

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136/365 - Blind Spot

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“How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?”
― Robert Frost

We will never see the whole picture of our lives. We all have blind spots. So every time things happen in our lives, we don’t have to react but to find an understanding. Denial is another blind spot. Denial means not wanting to know. Denial is a defense mechanism to protect the ego and is another way of coping without an understanding and/or insight.  But there will come a time when we will experience the “aha moment” and something will occur to us that can be life changing. This usually happens when we just give up our rigid thinking for a moment as our minds open a little wider to see what was always there.

 

Risk And Trust

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Leap of Faith
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“Vital lives are about action. You can’t feel warmth unless you create it, can’t feel delight until you play, can’t know serendipity unless you risk.”
― Joan Erickson

Risk is the courage to act in spite of our fears. We can never grow if we don’t act. We have become immune to many things we have done up to now because they have become part of our lives. However, when we’re trying something new, we feel some discomfort. When we get into unfamiliar territory, we become anxious about whether we should continue, or reconsider our decisions.   So we sit on the fence about things. Every risk we take always has some sort of personal growth.  But when we do take risks we begin to discover and learn something about ourselves and feel confidence in ourselves. Risking is not only learning to trust one’s self but also trusting others.

What’s Your Legacy

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Labor Legacy

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“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
― Dr. Seuss

In the beginning of our life we’ve learned how to talk, walk and do many other things using our brain and body. When we’ve reached the middle of our life we begin to look back on the body of work, whatever that might be, and hopefully be proud. Then after we’ve lived a long life, we can think about our legacy and how it has and will affect others after we’re long gone. But at the end of our lives we can smile and be grateful that we’ve received the gift of life that we have given the freedom to live our lives because of others countless sacrifices that became their legacy and body of work.

Hang In There

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Hang on!

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If we just hang in there a little longer, then may be we will see from a distance clearly the ending. When we’re going through a difficult challenge, it is easier to give in and give up than to stay on track.  It is not easy to keep up consistency in everything we do, but we got to make an attempt. And yes, we will slip up at times, but we can get ourselves back up from the ground, get the dust off our paints and continue on down the road of experiences and learning. It is the journey that’s the greatest reward not necessarily the ending.

 

 

The State Of Happiness

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Happiness

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“I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”

―  Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

There are facts and there are opinions about facts.  We don’t need to convince another if we are right. When we want to always be right all of the time, it presupposes that everyone else is always wrong which may cause division and alienation. It’s all right to have an opinion about things but it is also all right to respect the opinions of others. We can agree to disagree but we can also find common interests.  We can just be happy while enjoying the company of another without trying to convince the other our point of view. Happiness is a state of being. We don’t have to do great things to be happy.

 

Respecting Another

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Respect
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“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
―Eleanor Roosevelt

We can feel inferior, but in truth we’re not inferior to another person. We have the same rights as anyone else. We breathe the same air, we share the same sun, moon and earth. We are all going to die someday and we all feel as human beings. And we don’t have to be superior to another person because we feel inferior. Instead, we can be respectful to one another because we want to be treated as fairly as the next person.  When we’re depleted of self-respect, our hostility increases, our anxiety increases and our stress-level increases.  However, when we find a nice balance between self-respect and respecting others, then there is no hostility, no anxiety but self-confidence.

10,000 Ways

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Banyan tree of Thomas Edison
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“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
― Thomas A. Edison

What patience that Thomas Edison had when he found out what worked and what didn’t work.  Thomas Edison had an attitude that finding out what didn’t work was just as good as finding out what did. We won’t know if we don’t try and see what works and what doesn’t. This takes a lot a time and energy. But our patience is required during this process of trial and error. When one thing won’t work, we are forced to think up the next best thing that has the possibility to work. When that won’t work, we then find out why this approach is not as effective as getting the results we want.  The information we got from the previous attempts may help us carefully construct another approach that may get us closer to our goal. Thomas Edison’s 9,999th attempt was much closer to his goal than his first attempt. 

 

 

On Being Front And Center

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The Center of the Universe

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“Some people dream of success, while others wake up and work hard at it.” ~Author Unknown

We can dream about it everyday, but if we don’t do the work, it’s just a dream nothing more nothing less.  It is better to be front and center of a project than to sit on a sideline contemplating when to start. Contemplating can be agonizing because of the turmoil and the inner conflicts it creates. Once we decide to commit to the work, then we begin to narrow our focus and concentrate without distraction. Working hard is about making an earnest effort by moving through pain, stress, tiredness, sweat, etc.