Living On Purpose

As I ponder on the meaning of living on purpose, I wonder how to bring up the issue of landfills and recycling. I’ve been wondering for some time now. I like to think that if you’re aware of the choice you’re making when you throw something away, you’re living on purpose. If something is in your hands, and you walk over to the trash can and watch it leave your fingers and land in the trash, it’s like affirming,

“I am sending you to the landfill because that’s the best place for you.”

Or perhaps it’s like stating,

“I’m sending you to the landfill because I’m too lazy to investigate whether there is somewhere better for you.”

Around me in my little neighborhood, only three or four houses put out recycling bins. That’s because the city where I live forces you to pay extra to get recycling pickup. But still, I see little interest in reducing the trash going to landfills from many people, even the ones I “preach recycle” to. As a citizen of the world, however, I believe that all of us have personal responsibility for the things that pass through our hands. And I just found a man who believes this way, too. He’s embarked on a year long experiment in waste reduction by sending all his trash to his own basement instead of the landfill.

Here is a little of what Sustainable Dave has learned:

“But I think the most enlightening aspect of this challenge is discovering how hard it was to change a basic habit. Try training yourself to never throw anything away and you’ll see what I mean. Having said that, now that I have gotten used to it, I don’t even think of heading for the garbage can anymore. It’s actually become a part of my routine. And that got me to thinking.

The “solutions” that we all read about daily are all out there, yet many find it hard to change. For some, it’s a matter of not knowing where to start. For others, it’s a question of information. And for many more of us, it’s a tendency to give up due to how overwhelming it all can be.”

Changing habits is very difficult, indeed. It really is all about re-training yourself. Whether you are re-training your brain to think about what you really do want instead of what you don’t want, or re-training yourself to actually screw on the toothpaste cap (or even just flip the lid closed), or re-training yourself to become a more sustainable citizen of the world, change takes practice and persistence.

Practice and persistence lead to purpose!

365 Days of Trash by Sustainable Dave

What kind of mental image does the word “meditation” conjure for you? Some think it means chanting in a foreign language, twisting your legs into the lotus position, or even idol worship. These are stereotypes! I have spoken to several Christians who would not like to consider taking up meditation because of their misconceptions of it. Verily, you do not have to sacrifice your religious beliefs to take up meditation; you will not be doing anything sacrilegious.

If you are a Christian, know that I found mention of meditation in many places in the bible. It is suggested that you find a quiet place to go within and think about The Lord! That’s meditation! Throughout Psalms, there are verses that say I will meditate on your decrees, on your wonders, on your unfailing love, on all your wonderful works. Here’s a nice one:

My meditation of him shall be sweet; I will be glad in the Lord. Psalm 104:34

It seems to be in vogue now for the medical community to suggest meditation for stress relief. Long-time meditators who started for the end-goal of enlightenment may suggest that the best and only reason to meditate is for the dissolution of the ego, and all that health stuff comes in second place.

So what do you think? If a person starts meditation simply for the health benefits like reduced stress, controlling your thoughts, happiness, and increased concentration, will they also gain enlightenment?

Here are two links to read about that.

Pick the Brain

Will Holosync make you enlightened?

Just in case we were all confusing “living on purpose” with being serious all the time, I thought I’d “break the ice” a little bit. A friend over at Cafe Chronique just awarded me with an “Arte y Pico” award, whose origin is traced back to the country of Uruguay. Seeing the Spanish web site of the award, I got to thinking I would share some trinkets I recently brought back from El Salvador.

This one is a gem! It is a toilet paper holder, and it says, “In case of emergency, break the glass and then you choose.” “It is an honor to be born Salvadorenan”. And the punchline is that in the “glass” container there is a choice of a corncob or sandpaper.

Mama said there would be days like this!

And then there is this one. Haven’t you always wanted an image of the last supper printed in that special 3-D process that children’s books sometimes use? The caption on this woodblock wall hanging reads,

“Don’t tell your God how big your problem is, tell your problem how big your God is.”

And that is our “purposeful quote of the day”!!!

Humor needs to be a part of our lives, whether we think we’re living on purpose or not. The phrase “lighten up” indicates a different problem than a lack of a sense of humor, and the phrase “take your life more seriously” is not talking about a person’s overactive use of their sense of humor. These phrases are about priorities. What’s your priority?

Purposeful living is about awareness, and one facet of that awareness is in becoming an educated consumer. Yesterday I was standing in line at a hardware store. The woman and her daughter in front of me were buying a harsh pesticide meant to kill bedbugs. I just happen to know that these chemical treatments not only kill bedbugs, they also damage the immune function of anyone who breathes in the fumes. I’m talking about all pesticides, from outdoor bug and weed killers, to head lice shampoo, to bedbug spray treatments. There have been plenty of reports indicating that young children fall very ill after being exposed to these treatments; some respond after only one treatment, and some respond after repeated exposures. I don’t want to take a chance with my child’s life!

That woman had heard me ask the clerk if the store carried diatomaceous earth, and the clerk responded, “What’s that?” and so she waited outside to ask me if I knew how to treat bedbugs. I just about talked her ear off! I’ve never tried treating an infestation, but I’ve spoken on the phone with people who have.

This is where being an educated consumer comes in. There are pros and cons to many of life’s decisions. Use pesticides and you risk doing long term damage to your own health, and there is always the risk that the pests have developed an immunity to the pesticide (as in head lice and permethrin). Use diatomaceous earth and you’ll have to wear gloves and a face mask, as it’s a dusty application, and you may have inhalation hazards due to the nature of the substance.

But as an educated consumer, I would choose the diatomaceous earth over any chemical to take care of indoor insect infestations. People say it works for roaches, bedbugs, and spiders. But be careful, it also kills the beneficial insects like ladybugs (we need them to eat the aphids!) and that’s why I’d just use it indoors.

Well, well, well, we face tough choices every day. It takes a lot out of us to go ’round and ’round an issue to consider all the angles! Researching takes time, and when you’re faced with a sudden infestation of bedbugs, there is not enough time to consider; you just want them gone, don’t you? That’s why it’s prudent to think of these unthinkable situations before they happen, so you can react as an educated consumer would!

DIATOMACEOUS EARTH: A Non Toxic Pesticide

Diatomaceous earth at Wikipedia

I have learned from a non-denominational Christian church that grace is God’s gift to us humans. There is a song used in worship service called Grace Like Rain. It’s pretty much Amazing Grace sung in a near monotone with a new chorus put in. Lyrics by Todd Agnew:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now I’m found
Was blind but now I see so clearly
Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me
Hallelujah, all my stains are washed away, washed away

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed
Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me
Hallelujah, all my stains are washed away, washed away

When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun
We’ve no less days to sing Your praise
Than when we first begun
Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me
Hallelujah, all my stains are washed away, washed away

It is that phrase, grace like rain falls down on me that has been repeating in my head these days. When rain falls from the sky, it doesn’t fall just on one person! It falls on everyone around that person, too. What else engulfs not just one, but everyone near? Light.

I propose that grace is also like light. Your world begins to glow with good things once you attain a certain state of grace. Every person you come into contact with may also receive the light. And realize also, that if you fall into a state of disgrace, it is not because God is punishing you. If grace is God’s gift, then disgrace is the withdrawal or absence of that gift, not a punishment. If grace is Light, then disgrace is an absence of light.

I recently saw a movie called States of Grace. The title itself is a play on the words grace and disgrace, and it refers to the fact that all of us humans are usually in a state somewhere between grace and disgrace, based on our past decisions. The movie’s main characters are LDS Mormon missionaries, but it’s not about being Mormon, it’s about being Human.

Don’t beat yourself up internally if you’ve made a mistake and fallen into disgrace. That would be like picking at a scab so it never heals. Time and Light and forgiveness will heal your internal wounds, and then you will find grace, a gift that we so often don’t even deserve!

Well, there is officially a “movement” going on about finding one’s life purpose. Jim White, author of What’s My Purpose? and creator of The Circle of Success, a customized, yearlong leadership and management transformation process has launched a blog about finding one’s life purpose. He’s looking for a million people who want to commit to finding their life’s purpose. I was the 92nd person to comment, and to date, there are 218 comments; all from people affirming that they are committed to the same goal. He will host a free teleseminar this Saturday, July 12, and it proves to be interesting.

What’s my purpose?

In order for a person (let’s say you) to arrive at a state of being where you can find your purpose (and live it, to boot!), there has to be awareness. This kind of awareness is internal, but it can start with external things. If you find yourself living on automatic, it will be beneficial to begin to develop a new habit of watching your thoughts, and even watching what you do with things (like the toothpaste cap, your keys, or the top to your peanut butter). If you realize that you’re thinking about stuff unrelated to what you’re doing while you perform daily tasks, (and then just focus on the task at hand) you’ll lose less things!

Zen philosophy: When you’re sitting, just sit; when you’re eating, just eat; and so on. According to Zen, existence is found in the silence of the mind (no-mind), beyond the chatter of our internal dialog.

Did you know that even the act of acknowledging your troubling thoughts can help you feel better?

The zen tradition focuses on bringing awareness to the breath during meditation. This, in turn, brings more awareness of the types of thoughts and reactions you’re having throughout the day. You can begin to actually watch thoughts, label them, choose to follow them or drop them. Wow, with thousands of thoughts happening during the day, this seems tedious, and lots of people give up after being overwhelmed.

There is a method of meditation, however, that is not so tedious, and can help you gain awareness like a Zen Master. It uses binaural beats to train the brain as you wear headphones and listen to a soundtrack, and after time your brainwave patterns become more symmetrical, meaning that you are calmer and not as easily swept into drama as before. I’ve already written a testimonial about my experience with Holosync here.  It really works for me. If you want to skip my testimonial, and read about Holosync from the source, here it is: Centerpointe.

Patient, heal thyself!

Most Americans consider the managed health care system that uses allopathic physicians (western doctors) as the only form of health care, but there are other methods of healing: chiropractic, alternative (or eastern medicine), massage and many varied forms of bodywork, just to name a few.

The body is capable of healing itself if we reduce the stressors to it. If we are to create our health on purpose, then of course, we have to give attention to our bodies, in the form of the proper nutrients, exercise, healthy mental attitudes, the proper rest, etc.

Read about Sherry Williams, a cancer survivor profiled on Dr. Weil’s web site. She describes her discovery of how stressed her life was:

Through self-discovery, I realized my health is more associated with my lifestyle and how I chose to cope with things than anything else.

As I look back over the two years prior to my cancer diagnoses, I was clearly overwhelmed, stressed-out, sleep-deprived, and had failed miserably at recognizing it. Living the fast-paced life that society forces upon us leaves us thinking this is the way it is supposed to be.

And then, she reveals the lesson she learned through her cancer diagnosis:

The body can actually heal itself if it is fed and nurtured properly. Unfortunately, often illness has to hit us - in my case, four times - before we are forced to stop and evaluate.

Living Well Using Weil

Through my personal experience with different alternative medicines, I have found that chiropractic care can help your body heal itself by reducing spinal pressure on your nerves. Every major organ in your body is governed by the nerves that emanate from your spinal cord. The body will manifest problems in the organ that corresponds to the nerve where excess compression exists.

Many people think a chiropractor is someone they turn to only if they’ve got a neck problem like whiplash or other injury related problems in the back. But I’ve been seeing a chiropractor for therapy for six months now, and I believe everyone could benefit from the special “brand” of chiropractors who belong to a group called Maximized Living. All of the doctors associated with this group receive consistent training. The link below is not an affiliate link. I am not being paid to endorse this group.

Maximized Living Click on “Find a Maximized Living Doctor”.

And, while we’re on the subject of purposeful healing, here is a special treat. Do you remember the movie Patch Adams? He is a real doctor with big dreams based in Virginia, USA. He’s the clown doctor who believes patients need to laugh and feel appreciated and cared for when they are in treatment. From his web site:

In spending this amount of time with patients, we found that the vast majority of our adult population does not have a day to day vitality for life (which we would define as good health). The idea that a person was healthy because of normal lab values and clear x-rays had no relationship to who the person was. Good health was much more deeply related to close friendships, meaningful work, a lived spirituality of any kind, an opportunity for loving service and an engaging relationship to nature, the arts, wonder, curiosity, passion and hope. All of these are time-consuming, impractical needs. When we don’t meet these needs, the business of high-tech medicine diagnoses mental illness and treats with pills.

So there you have it, straight from the doctors’ mouth! All the ingredients for good health are in the quote above. To live your life on purpose, incorporate things into your life that will bring you health, as described by Dr. Adams. Read about his vision for a totally free hospital, below.

Gesundheit Institute, Patch Adams

What do you do if you believe “life sucks?” If you tell yourself that life sucks on a daily or even hourly basis, then yes, life will suck. You will find more and more reasons to justify your belief and that will lead you deeper into depression. If you believe it strongly, then nothing anybody says about positive affirmations, meditation, or even exercise will sway your belief that “life sucks.”

To get out of this mindset, one of the best things you can do is to lie to yourself. At least, it will feel like lying to yourself when you say, “I’m a loving and lovable person…” or whatever positive affirmation you select. It will feel like *BS* at first, and you’ll want to give up immediately. But stick with it and then add a reason that you’re grateful. It could be as stupid-sounding as, “I’m grateful for brakes on cars.” If you keep it up, you’ll find more personal things you’re grateful for.

If you really don’t feel like “lying to yourself”, then start with your diet. Change what you eat. For real! I’m not saying “go on a diet.” I mean look at what you eat and make sure you’re giving your body the proper vitamins and minerals. This is a little more challenging than taking a single vitamin pill a day.

Feed your body “brain foods” and you will begin to find it easier to find things to be grateful for. Fish, especially cold water fish like wild salmon, are rich in DHA, and are at the top of most healthy brain food lists. If you can’t eat fish twice a week (please, not deep fried!), then go to the health food store and pick up some DHA rich fish oil softgels. You may be surprised how quickly you forget how negative you used to be after taking DHA. (For vegans, take algae capsules.)

I find it interesting that the question “what are you eating” is not the first approach for a health care practitioner or alternative care specialist when seeking to alleviate the problem of depression in patients. Check out the below description of an expensive class designed to help lift depression:

“Draw on psychiatric medicine, mind-body techniques, reflective exercises, guided imagery, affirmations, thought-stopping tools, and spiritual exploration, to transform anxiety, distress, and depression. You will learn and practice tools for continued self-healing at home.”

Proper diet and nutrition is nowhere in the above description. And in my research into both psychiatrist-authored and allopathic physician-authored books on depression and mental health, proper nutrition is not mentioned very often, either. Most often, these books, as well as the commercials on television, tout pharmaceutical solutions to the problem of depression. Pills like Prozac are serious drugs, with serious complications in some people, and moderately negative side effects for most people. After months of research on the side effects of antidepressants, it is my humble opinion they should be used with caution, and should be a last resort after other types of therapies are tried, including nutritherapy.
So, if you’re down in the dumps and don’t see anything positive going on in your life, try getting some brain foods into your diet first, then add another type of therapy like meditation with Holosync or talk therapy, or yoga and exercise. You’ll have a powerful combination for improving your mood quickly. I have prepared a recommended reading page so you can start exploring this issue further if it moves you.

I saw James Arthur Ray in person at an event in Aurora, CO a couple of months ago. He really got the crowd fired up, and I could tell his mission was to attract people to buy tickets to his weekend workshop. All well and good to hustle a bit, but how’s his message?

He’s had an eclectic background and has gathered quite a bit of wisdom over the years. He has molded his wisdom into a method and is now teaching it: Harmonic Wealth. If you are depressed because you are broke, or because you are out of shape, or because you don’t have the relationships you dream about, or because you haven’t achieved the education you wanted, there is an answer for you at his web site and in his book. I have dreamed of tailoring a teaching course just like this one. He has done an excellent job (and the typesetting of the book is above average quality, if you ask me, a typesetter!)

Harmonic Wealth is like the outline for a quality system of living that eradicates stress, frustration and depression. Of course, you have got to be willing to do as Mr. Ray says, though, and I warned you, he’s eclectic! I’ve known about him for years, and in fact, the quotes (Thought of Power) from his newsletter often adorn the pages of my main Live on Purpose site in the top banner.

He teaches that you have to resolve your emotional issues first in order to heal yourself, and I’m all for that. In fact, that’s the entire basis for this Live on Purpose web site. If you spend the energy to heal your emotional wounds, you can think differently, in ways you never could before, and you expand. When you expand, you take in more, learn more, and therefore you can give more. You can bring more awareness to your thought patterns, and you can pinpoint the types of thoughts that don’t serve you, and release them. So I built this site to point you to different ways you can actually accomplish that. Harmonic Wealth is one method/system to help you live your life with more purpose.

Check out the Harmonic Wealth web site

Live on Purpose offers a monthly newsletter. To subscribe or to see past issues online, see our Newsletter page.

Today I searched for resources for you about purposeful parenting. Bringing awareness to parenting is a great gift for the child, and a big responsibility for the parent. Resources abound if you search for them.

Dr. Phil has written an article about purposeful parenting. He says, “One of the great responsibilities you have as a parent — and one of the greatest gifts you can give to your children — is to teach them to develop their gifts fully to build their lives around whatever it is that fulfills them.”

July will be purposeful parenting month at onlineorganizing.com. Of course, with a name like that, they suggest routines and schedules.

My favorite resource for positive parenting is the Love and Logic Institute. Their tagline is, “Kids don’t come with an owners manual; but I found one, it’s love and logic.” Check out their articles online, their online radio show, and see if you can find their books in your local library. This is a life changing decision if you are currently having power struggles with your children. You’ll learn a lot about how to become more effective as a parent, and thereby raising your happiness level with your relationships with your children.