Narrating our experiences

We are constantly narrating our experiences to ourselves. Choose to frame this self-talk in positive, optimistic, nurturing stories. Make life a game in which your a winner and a giver and a contributor to wellness and happiness of others. each time you smile at life, count that as a little bit of a win. Share your smiles. Be a solution and not a problem. Focus on your own problems and accept that others have problems of their own. Begin sending and receiving practice with yourself. See confusion as a grey cloud of smoke and breath it in. When breathing out, it is transformed into a clean mist or light, leaving behind a feeling connected with resting in vast openness. Grow by putting more time into this project. Gamify life.

Hope you have an awesome day!

This journal is meant as a reminder to encourage my future self. Where I work on my mental fitness and ‘adulting’. A reminder to him to operate in the world with love and compassion and some tips put together in a moment of clarity to help him when he is less clear and caught up in stuff the he can’t control.  Continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com.

The well-trained mind brings happiness

The motto of the philosopher Epicurus, which was taken up by the essayist Montaigne as well, was lathe biōsas. Live in obscurity. The French have a saying, Pour vivre heureux, vivons cachés: “In order to live happily, live hidden.”

When you screw up or miss an opportunity, ask yourself if it matters in the long run. Is it really bad luck? Or has Fortune done you a kindness?

Don't put on an external show, that attracts attention and creates a reputation; act as an inward antidote to self-cherishing, ego-clinging, and defiled emotions. We should bring our minds to ripeness without anybody knowing.

Act without hypocrisy

1. Mind training without anyone knowing

2. Emulate friends

3. Be discreet even secretive

4. Have pure motivation

5. Only the welfare of others matters

6. Be a hidden yogi

Even saying this much is a problem.

Live a gentle human-sized life

Be simple.

Smile a lot.

Go for a walk.

Be kind.

Express gratitude.

This is where happiness comes from.

Image by Will Simpson

Hope you have an awesome day!

This journal is meant as a reminder to encourage my future self. Where I work on my mental fitness and ‘adulting’. A reminder to him to operate in the world with love and compassion and some tips put together in a moment of clarity to help him when he is less clear and caught up in stuff the he can’t control.  Continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com.

Silent - Sound

Sound is the absence of Silence. Silence is the absence of Sound. Two sides, same coin. Can a sound impact silence, can silence impact sound? If either are true then both must be true. If either is true in the present that they must be true in the past and future. A future sound can impact a past silence. In the same way as time and being behave as described in Dogen's Uji (Time-Being)

Both sound and silence together happen in the whole universe now. When and where else could they?

Don't think sound becomes silence nor that silence become sound. There is no before and no after.

Hope you have an awesome day!

Credits 

• Eihei Dogen, Kazuaki Tanahashi (Translator), Moon In a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen, (1999) North Point Press p. 76-84

• Cage, John, Silence: lectures and writings, (1961) Wesleyan University Press

This journal is meant as a reminder to encourage my future self. Where I work on my mental fitness and ‘adulting’. A reminder to him to operate in the world with love and compassion and some tips put together in a moment of clarity to help him when he is less clear and caught up in stuff the he can’t control.  Continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com.

Remindful disengagement

When your mind is captured by a thought, re-mindfully disengage and watch the though unwind and return to your original focus. These lapses will happen often affording lots of practice at remindful disengagement.

Surveillance of the mind in order to intelligently re-mindfully disengage with discursive thought is a skill that is worth the time to develop.

Image by Will Simpson

Hope you have an awesome day!

Credits — Austin James H., [2011]. Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen.

This journal is meant as a reminder to encourage my future self. Where I work on my mental fitness and ‘adulting’. A reminder to him to operate in the world with love and compassion and some tips put together in a moment of clarity to help him when he is less clear and caught up in stuff the he can’t control.  Continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com.

The future self wins the vote

My Past Self said I’d do it and my Future Self will be glad I did, so let's do it!

The future has many possibilities and the is only one now. Only a single possibility in the now. If we give each a vote on what to do, how to behave, what to think, then we’d give more weight to thinking about the future. But instead we seem programed by default to giving the now, the single possibility, all the decision power about what to do, how to behave, what to think. 

Hope you have an awesome day!

This journal is meant as a reminder to encourage my future self. Where I work on my mental fitness and ‘adulting’. A reminder to him to operate in the world with love and compassion and some tips put together in a moment of clarity to help him when he is less clear and caught up in stuff the he can’t control.  Continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com.

Sauntering

Image by Will Simpson

“In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a career with a vision will get you a distance proportional to n, while no vision will get you only the distance √n. In a sense, the main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen.”

— Richard Hamming

Aimless wandering in this sense is a problem. Intentional 'aimless wandering', sauntering is another story.

Solitude is being with immediate experience. A sense of meaning comes from acting with intention. Sauntering with the intention to be present with the immediate experience.

Hope you have an awesome day!

This journal is meant as a reminder to encourage my future self. Where I work on my mental fitness and ‘adulting’. A reminder to him to operate in the world with love and compassion and some tips put together in a moment of clarity to help him when he is less clear and caught up in stuff the he can’t control.  Continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com.