Daily Inspiration 11-26-18

"It's not what happens to you, 

but how you react that matters." 

-- Epictetus 

[Classic post from 10-27-14]

As I grow and become a more calm and joyous person, I still have what feels like automatic reactions to things. It might be a statement someone made, a criticism directed toward me or something I was a part of. I know it is my ego and my ego is the one reacting, but I am ultimately in control of that aspect of me as much as any other, so by virtue of the idea of practice, I improve the results over time.

What is true now is that even though I may initially react and even open my mouth and speak back to the perceived attack, I catch myself in action and take back my control and sensibility. I might even stop mid-sentence, but stop I will. And, over the years of practice, these outbursts of emotion are less, and they are absolutely less intense and far shorter in duration. That is what I love about practice.

My goal is a calm consideration and if I am to react, I want to react with love. Life is way too short to go around being upset about trivial things--and believe me, in the scheme of life and death, all this stuff is trivial. Besides, when someone is attacking another for whatever reason, it really isn't about the one they attack, it is always about themselves and how they feel and think. We create our own enemies inside ourselves. That's still too deep for many, so I promote practicing calm consideration and love in all our reactive moments.

Anthony Robbins helped me with some vocabulary on this subject and others by simply changing a typically overused word or phrase to something different. For example, go from, "I'm so pissed at you!" to "I'm quite tinkled about you right now." That changes everything. If it doesn't get you laughing, we can dig deeper into Anthony's word and phrase arsenal.

I quoted this from Mr. Robbins back in 2012 in the February 12th Daily Inspiration, and it is easily worth quoting again from his book, Awaken The Giant Within: "From Tinkled To Turbo-Charged -- What would your life be like if you could take all the negative emotions you ever felt and lower their intensity so they didn't impact you as powerfully, so you were always in charge? What would your life be like if you could take the most positive emotions and intensify them, thereby taking your life to a higher level? You can do both of these in a heartbeat."

Go from being angry to disenchanted, anxious to expectant, disgusted to surprised, exhausted to a little droopy, frustrated to fascinated, overwhelmed to in demand, stressed to energized. Then go from being awake to raring to go, cool to outrageous, determined to unstoppable, energized to turbo-charged, good to vibrant, happy to totally blissed, strong to invincible.

These are the kind of word changes I have so much fun with when people ask mundane questions such as, "how are you today?" or "what's new with you?"


Going From Pumped Up To Soaring! 

Spread Some Joy Today--It's as easy as flipping a switch. You get to flip it.