Tag: inspiration

What’s the Score?

“The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.” – Warren Buffett

I read this quote the other day and I took a screenshot of it. (my picture roll on my phone has as many pages of words, as it has pictures) When I read it, I thought about how many times which I have repeated to my children, “Comparison is the thief of happiness (joy).” (Teddy Roosevelt) As humans, we love praise and adulation and admiration. And we also get a lot of our goals and aspirations by being inspired by what other people have achieved.

Personally, I think that it is healthy to have both kinds of scorecards – an Inner Scorecard and an Outer Scorecard. Ironically, our Outer Scorecard (which is the image you project, and what other people say about you) might often be the kinder, softer, easier grading scorecard. We tend to be our own worst critics. Still, your Inner Scorecard requires you to be honest and faithful to your own standards and beliefs without being concerned about what other people think. Your Outer Scorecard takes your picture. Your Inner Scorecard forces you to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror.

Outer Scorecards are fickle and change with the wind. Like fashion, they change as quickly as the seasons. Based on comparison and perspective, there will always be someone who is faster, more beautiful, richer, smarter, more interesting, more creative, more talented etc. On the other hand, Inner Scorecards rarely change. They have been imprinted on our souls. It’s just that we often don’t take time to examine them, as we get consumed in chasing the flashier Outer Scorecards, and thus getting the quick, but shallow fixes of a “like” or a “follow” or a “compliment” or any form of attention.

Have you examined your Inner Scorecard? Are you compromising things on this Inner Scorecard in order to maintain your Outer Scorecard? How does that make you feel? Another writer, Abhishek Chakraborty, also wrote about this famous quote of Warren Buffett’s. This is how he ends his thoughts on the subject (I couldn’t say it any better):

“The good thing is that if you start maintaining an inner scorecard, it will automatically translate into boosting your outer scorecard as well. And what better example to validate this idea than Buffett himself. He’s isn’t concerned if the world would look at him as the greatest investor or not. He doesn’t care what the world thinks of his decisions or ideas. He has openly said that there are a bunch of things he could do that would generate a lot more money for the company, but he chooses not to compromise his standards. . . . In conclusion, more than more happiness, more fame, and more wealth, we need less anxiety, less worry, and less regrets. And we’ll have that only when we’re successful by an inner scorecard. We can’t just earn praise, we must strive to be praiseworthy as well. Similarly, we can’t just be loved without being loveable, and we should not be admired without being admirable. This simple shift in mindset makes all the difference in the world.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Enough Already

+ Kelly Corrigan is an author and a podcaster for PBS. She sends emails of her overall takeaways from her latest podcasts. This week she had a conversation with a best selling author, ultramarathoner, podcaster, former addict, Stanford educated swimmer Rich Roll. (My eldest son is a big fan of Rich Roll. They are both vegans.) I haven’t heard this interview yet, but I loved Kelly’s number one takeaway from her conversation with him. Rich Roll said this: “Change is only grand in retrospect. Day by day, it’s small choices and tiny adjustments. Believe in the incremental.” I love this. It’s the truth. The only way I have made any lasting changes in my life is when I took my goal day-by-day. Today, I will limit my sugar. Today, I will go to bed by 9:30. Today, I will write a blog post (I have been blogging almost daily since 2018 and it has changed my life. But I honestly had no idea what exactly I was setting out to do, when I started it . . . .)

+ I got a lesson/reminder from the Universe taught to me yesterday in the most interesting of ways. I am currently taking a Zen meditation/Asian art class by a wonderful Japanese woman, who is passionate about teaching. I didn’t have any supplies, so I started loading up on paints, and brushes, and hanko stamps (those red marks which you often see in the corner of Asian artwork). I got most of my things from Oriental Art Supply in California and a few things from Amazon, but I also started perusing eBay for “extras.” One extra that I ended up purchasing had nothing to do with painting. Here is the description of it:

“This decorative Japanese coin features a striking combination of green and black with beautiful lettering. It is a unique piece that will add flair to any collection.”

Now I’ve mentioned before that I have piggy banks full of lucky pennies, more than one lucky three legged toads, and an adorable lucky money tree that my youngest son gave to me. So, yes! I figured that a giant green Japanese coin was a must-have for my lucky money collection. As the seller said, it would add “flair” to my collection. And I will never say no to luck and flair. My purchase arrived yesterday. Here it is:

It came with a description paper full of Japanese lettering, so my original plan was to ask my art teacher to translate it, but I’m not a patient person, so I went to Google Translate to see what I could figure out. Nothing fruitful came to any understanding for me, from trying to translate each of the symbols on the “coin” (my husband insisted it was really a bottle opener), but the translation of the paper mentioned “the most famous, tsukubai, Ryoan-ji.” During my research, I found out that a tsukubai is a small, stone, water basin usually found in temples and tea houses in Japan, to cleanse your hands and your mouth before entering these sacred spaces. Apparently, my “coin” is a representation of the top of the tsukubai, at the entrance of a famous zen temple in Kyoto, Japan called the Ryoanji Temple. The grounds of this temple house a mysterious rock garden that is supposedly so naturally peaceful, scientists have done studies to figure out if certain placements of rock and terrain, hold the “secret” to peace. Anyway, below you will find a picture of the actual tsukubai and a translation of what the face of the tsukubai is really conveying (credit: muzu-chan.net)

“it is that famous because of its Zen inscription: taken separately, the four kanji are meaningless, but if they are read including the middle square hole (口), they become 吾 唯 足 知 – “ware tada taru shiru”. A literal translation would be “I only know enough”, but a more accurate translation would be “I learn only to be satisfied”. The real meaning of the phrase is that what you have is all you need: if you learn to be satisfied with the things as they are, then you are spiritually rich, while if you’re not contented then you are spiritually poor (even if you’re materially wealthy)…”

In short, the secret of true wealth is not collecting coins (“lucky ones” or real ones), but with feeling content and satisfied right in every single moment of your life. “What you have is all you need.” Apparently my beautiful green coin/bottle opener is really a cool, ancient mystical reminder of what we all know from the depths of our souls, but in our everyday stresses, we often forget it: “You are enough.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

So Extra

I saw an advertisement today for embellished slip-on shoes. The description said that these slides were a little “extra”. That seems to be a common catch-phrase these days. “She’s a little extra . . .”

The thing is “extra” means different things to different people. The slides being advertised didn’t look “extra” at all to me. But they were being sold by a company that traditionally stays in the black to brown color wheel of traditional, plain, timeless ballerina flats. The “extra” slides being advertised were black ballerina flats, with a thin band of rhinestones.

It’s fun to be a little “extra” sometimes, right? And a little extra you, is different than a little extra me. Yes, someone who is “extra” all of the time can be exhausting to be around, but at least they always keep it interesting.

Today, do something a little extra. Get the extra hot sauce on your lunch. Some other ideas that I saw on websites when I looked up the urban dictionary’s version of “extra”: a lemon wedge on your dog’s water bowl, bright red fake nails with an extra set of bright red fake nails hanging off of them like charms, a grandfather with a computer screen bigger than our large screen TV in the family room.

The other day, when my husband and I were in line at Chipotle ordering our food, a conservative looking young lady was waiting on us. When she smiled, I noticed an unusual glint of color and gleam on the top right corner of her mouth. Upon closer inspection, I saw that she had decorated her teeth with crystals. It honestly looked really cool and intricate. I told her how impressed I was, and my husband said that after my compliment, the young lady and her glitzy teeth just continued to beam and beam. (on an aside, if you only do one extra thing today, give someone a genuine compliment. Notice something that they have taken the time to do for/on themselves or for others, and be extra extra with your compliments, such as on their fancy hair, or their great combination of clothes, or their patient kindness in helping an elderly person, etc. I can never understand why people are so dreadfully stingy with compliments. They cost you nothing, and they make another person feel so good and “seen.” And I promise that you, too, will feel extra good for making another person feel happy.)

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Dumb Little Things

I have a couple of friends who are in the beginning stages of getting divorced. It’s a situation fraught with emotion, and unfortunately, I have proven myself not to be the best support system in this situation. I just always manage to express the wrong words, it seems (my foot-in-mouth game is in full force these days). Last night, my guys were all at a football game, so I decided to watch a couple of podcasts with an interesting character named James Sexton, who is a divorce lawyer in New York City and has been one for over 20 years, in order to better understand the situation my friends are dealing with in their break-ups. James Sexton has handled many high profile/high net worth divorces and he has written a couple of books, the latest called: How to Stay in Love: A Divorce Lawyer’s Guide to Staying Together. I should mention that James Sexton, himself, is divorced.

James Sexton doesn’t necessarily believe in the institution of marriage, although he claims that he still gets as weepy-eyed and romantic as anyone, at a beautiful wedding. (He claims he always watches the groom, because he loves to see that fullest expression of excitement, and hopefulness and love, in a man’s eyes.) In his experience as a divorce lawyer, Sexton claims that only about 25 percent of people are happily married. Over half of all marriages end in divorce (although people remain bright-eyed and hopeful, as 80 percent of divorced people marry again within 5 years), and he believes that about another 25 percent stay unhappily married because of religion, or for financial reasons, or “for the kids”. James Sexton says it all starts when people first get married. He claims people don’t know what they want out of marriage and when they do figure out what they want, they don’t know how to clearly and effectively communicate what they want to their spouse. James Sexton claims that if all marriages had prenuptial agreements (which he emphatically emphasizes to get) it would force people to confront those issues, and to learn how to communicate better about the “tough stuff”, right out of the box.

What breaks up marriages according to Sexton? He claims that marriages break apart very slowly, until it is “all at once.” While it appears that a marriage ends because a big calamity of cheating or financial blow-ups, the truth is, according to Sexton, that these things are generally the grand finale of a slow meltdown. “It’s dumb little things, man,” he said to one interviewer. He talks about one client first noticing that her marriage was breaking up when her husband no longer purchased her favorite granola, like he always had done. James Sexton says that the little, every day kindnesses (and sometimes even sacrifices) that we do for each other, is what makes our spouse feel so loved and appreciated and special. And he questions, why is this so hard for us to do? Why are we stingy with the actions and the compliments and the cheerleading for the one person who has given us the most to us in our lives, that being the pledge to share their entire lifetime with us? (James Sexton reminds people that all marriages end – either in death or in divorce.) He claims that the happiest marriages almost always seem to be the marriages that have a “us against the big, bad, scary world/life problems” mentality. Sexton says that the happiest marriages are those in which each partner is, by far, the other’s biggest fan and supporter.

I’ve been married for almost 29 years. I am still completely in love with my husband and I believe that he feels the same way about me (he always makes me feel loved and supported and cherished). It’s not always been a cakewalk. We have gone through major moves, job loss, financial disasters, dealing with supporting a child through the ups and downs of epilepsy, a miscarriage, dysfunctional relationships in our extended families, etc. We also have shared four beautiful children, amazing trips and adventures, financial booms, lived in beautiful places and have together loved countless pets, etc. We have shared an interesting, full life experience with each other so far. I feel blessed by my marriage more than anything in my life, but I also get grumpy and resentful and hurt. My husband does, too. In the end, though, I do believe that we both have always made “Team Us” our biggest priority.

The other day, I got a wake-up call from one of my best friends from college. On that day, I realized that she was even a better friend than I ever knew before. We had lunch and during that lunch, I was complaining to her about a trip that my husband wants to take this spring, to a place that I really don’t care to visit. A place that has deeply intrigued him for over a decade, scares me and really doesn’t interest me at all. I have told my husband to go with someone else, but he really wants to share this adventure with me. I have reluctantly agreed, but I have also managed to make him feel guilty and less excited by exuding my obvious blase, disinterested, “I’m doing you a big favor” attitude. After lunch, my friend called me, as we were both driving back to our own homes. She said that she still wanted to talk to me and that’s when she told me her truth: “You have always been an adventurer and a lot of tourists travel to this place every year. If you need to complain or gripe about it, call me, but support him. We’ve always talked about how lucky we feel in our marriages. I think that you should be more supportive of him. You won’t regret it.”

And she was so right! And in that moment, I felt incredibly grateful for my marriage, and also for this particular, insightful friendship all at once. (that kind of burst of gratefulness will bring you to tears – it feels so good) What did I do then? I burst out of the car when I got home and I told my husband how grateful I was for all his support in everything that I have ever wanted throughout the years (including having three dogs when he would have been happy with one, is just one example) and I also confessed what my friend had said to me, and that I realized that she was so right. I said from that moment forward, I have decided to be more open-minded and supportive and interested about the trip. And then my husband smiled and he said that she was always his favorite out of my friends. (ha!)

There is obviously no one magic formula for a happy marriage. James Sexton makes a point that in any other scenarios, almost none of us would enter into a situation with such hopeless odds stacked against us. Still, we do. Our need for love and connection and hope is strong and wired hard, into our DNA. I highly recommend checking out James Sexton on some of his YouTube video interviews. He is insightful, candid, and a great communicator.

“We’ve been indoctrinated to believe that it’s immoral to try to change someone else. We’ve been told that love, real love, is about accepting your partner “for who they are.” But we’re constantly changing our romantic partners merely by our presence in their day-to-day lives. They react to us. We react to them. That’s kind of the point. We influence each other’s behavior and, ideally, help each other, together, be the best version of ourselves.” – James Sexton

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

credit: @woofknight, Twitter

We have been hanging out with our two middle sons and their friends this past weekend. Our sons are 25 and 22. They eat a lot, and they have high, fast, young people metabolisms. I’ve been trying to keep up as best as I can. This lipstick will definitely come in handy for the rest of the week. I just couldn’t keep it secret from you until Favorite Things Friday. Ha!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

We have two of our sons with us this weekend which “magically” coincided with some delivery of outdoor furniture that needs to be assembled. (ha!) Anyway, my attention is diverted this weekend, so for this day of poetry on the blog, I am going to share some lovely words of Walt Whitman’s, who is considered to be one of America’s greatest poets ever. Walt Whitman loved our country. He called America “a teeming nation of nations” and “A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother.” I wonder if he would question her sanity today? Today’s poem is an excerpt from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman:

“I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me.

Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.”

Walt Whitman famously said this: “I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Weirdo

In my morning readings, I just read the word idiosyncratic. I haven’t seen that word in a while, and I love it. Idiosyncratic is one of my favorite words. Idiosyncratic means peculiar or individual. It means having habits and actions that are individual to you. Your idiosyncrasies are what make you stand out from the crowd. These are the things that the people who love you will nod about and recognize and smile, when you are spoken about. At my mother-in-law’s funeral in December, my sister-in-law passed out green ink pens to everyone. My mother-in-law wrote all of her correspondence (cards and letters) in green ink only. It was one of her special idiosyncrasies.

What are your idiosyncrasies? List them. Love them. Discover yourself today. Be proud of what makes you interesting and unique. Don’t be ashamed of what makes you, you. Those who love you will find these idiosyncratic attributes of yours to be endearing and familiar and interesting and intriguing and amusing and sometimes at the very least, just forgivable. Those who find your idiosyncrasies odd or irritating do not matter. They are not “your people.”

“It is one of man’s curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.” – Joseph de Maistre

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Auspicious

These are the quotes that stuck out for me today, in my morning readings. They speak for themselves:

“Your values become your destiny.”
– Gandhi

“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.” – Zadie Smith

And here is my own “feel good” story of the week:

As I mentioned in the blog, I started taking a Japanese Zen Art class last week at a local Fine Arts Center. Many Japanese calligraphers and artists use a red block stamp to mark their works, instead of signing them. I was excited to purchase my own soapstone stamp and red ink, to start making my mark on my own art. As I was searching for something unique and special (I’m not a lover of “practical and pedestrian”), I saw the unusual ink pad above up for auction on eBay. I put it on my watch list because I adored it. I sensed its special quality. Apparently, the turtle vermillion ink pad was made in Kyoto, Japan and it was sold to the seller in a specialized, traditional calligraphy shop there. The seller said that he was selling the ink pad because he no longer dabbles in calligraphy. He claims that the the turtle is considered to be an “auspicious” animal in Japan.

Now the truth is, my second Zen Art class is already this afternoon, and I am not a patient gal. I wanted my stamp, and my Asian red ink for today. I had already done a “Buy It Now” on an interesting stone stamp and I didn’t want to wait around for an auction to end on the ink pad above, so instead, I purchased a more “practical and pedestrian” ink pad from Amazon, and that was that. Truthfully, I had forgotten all about the turtle ink pad on eBay.

Last night, I was having trouble falling asleep. My husband and our three dogs were snoring away in chorus, as I tossed and I turned. Finally, I picked up my phone and I played around with it, and then I looked at my email. There was an automated email from eBay saying that the turtle ink pad auction was about to end and there were no bids on it. Eleven minutes from ending, I placed my bid. What did I have to lose? I played a couple of games and when I came back to my email, it turns out that I had won the auction. The adorable turtle ink pad is mine!! I paid the seller and then I finally fell into a deep sleep.

Almost every morning, my husband arises at the ungodly hour of 4:45 to go to the gym. I sleep. Around 6 o’clock this morning, I hear the buzzing of texts going off on my phone. I look at my texts and I see that the Family Chat was full of texts. I could start feeling my heart beating out of my chest, but then I calmed myself, reminding myself that if there were a real emergency, there would have been an actual phone call from someone. I quickly looked at the texts. They started with my husband texting that he saw a strange little white thing moving erratically on our street this morning when he came home from the gym and he wanted to see what it was, so he got closer and this is what he found:

The little turtle’s bright white egg was hanging by a thread on its back. My husband gingerly scooped up the precious little hatchling, and he brought it to safety, by taking the newborn baby turtle off of the road and placing it on a rock, by the small lake in our backyard.

When I excitedly told my husband about purchasing the turtle inkwell last night, after hearing the wonderful story about him saving the hatchling this morning, I smiled the biggest smile (inside and out). These happenings are so “auspicious”, for all of us (the baby turtle included). I am not a believer in coincidence. Coincidence is always Spirit being anonymous and deliciously mysterious.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Don’t Be Owned

“That of which we are not aware, owns us.” – James Hollis

James Hollis is a psychoanalyst, author (19 books) and public speaker whose main area of study is middle age in humans (in other words, us). He’s a difficult read. He says it like it is, and it’s not all “warm and fuzzy.” Still, his work is yet another reminder that we are the stewards of our own ships. Use James Hollis’ quote above to do a little soul searching of your own. Make a list of repeating patterns in your life – patterns that you like and patterns that you don’t like. Now, observe closely and really take ownership of your own part in each of these patterns. It doesn’t feel good to do this, especially with the negative patterns. We are a culture that likes to place blame elsewhere, but when we place the blame entirely on someone or something else, we lose agency. We may not be aware of it, but when we place all of the blame on entities outside of us, we are the ones putting our own selves in the ugly, hard, little victim seat in the corner, with nowhere else to go, but to sit and to pout.

Don’t be owned by the “unknown” parts of yourself. Be brave. Explore. You still have a good chunk of your life left to live. Do you want to keep continuing with unconscious patterns that are taking you to the same frustrations and toxicity, again and again? What about all of the good patterns in your life? Explore those, too. Become aware of the thoughts, habits, beliefs and actions that are bringing you to your highest level of living. Freedom is not being owned by anyone or anything. With full conscious awareness, you become free.

“In the second half of life, the questions become: ‘Who, apart from the roles you play, are you? What does the soul ask of you? Do you have the wherewithal to shift course, to deconstruct your painfully achieved identity, risking failure, marginalization and loss of collective approval?’ No small task.” – James Hollis

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Kia Ora

I love reading articles by Karen Nimmo. She’s a writer and a sports psychologist from New Zealand. She’s practical, sensible, no-nonsense, yet kind and humorous, as well. She says that when people come to her for issues in their lives, she’s noticed six universal cravings that almost all of us human beings seem to have, in order to create satisfactory lives. Karen Nimmo says that these are the six things that people crave the most:

  1. To Be Happy
  2. A Quiet, Calm Mind
  3. More Excitement
  4. More “me time”
  5. To Contribute to the Greater Good
  6. To be Loved

Do these resonate with you? Do you know what makes you happy? Do you know what calms you? What excites you? What would you do with more “me time” if you had it? What is your gift(s) that you bring to your communities and our world? Do you know just how deeply you are loved by many people?

These are good notions to ponder over the weekend. A new moon was just a couple of days ago. New moons are great times for fresh starts. What could you do to give yourself more of anything from the list above?

I will end with this:

Kia ora kou tou!! (this is a greeting that Karen Nimmo uses a lot. It is spoken by the Maori tribe in New Zealand and it is roughly translated as “Have Life! Be Healthy!”) Today Alan Cohen asked the question in his daily inspiration, “Are you letting life love you?” If you want to feel grateful, think of all of the times that life loved you, and took care of you, and made things alright, even at those times that you didn’t feel particularly lovable or worthy of love. Have Life! Be Healthy! Let life love you.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.