Posted on by BWThomas

Life is a fight for territory. There is no standing still in life, we grow or we rot.

There is no standing still in life, we grow or we rot. Life is a fight for territory.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Life is a fight for territory. Les Brown

Is living a fight for territory?  The full quote is, “Life is a fight for territory and once you stop fighting for what you want, what you don’t want will automatically take over.” I think this is true and if you grew up in a household with lots of siblings we were all fighting for territory, for our place, our niche. Maybe we were the funny one, the dependable one, the level-headed one, the smart one, the troubled one, the sick one, the healthy one, the complaining one, the happy one, the smiling one, or we found another niche.

Then we get out into the world and we are finding our place again. How many of us have been to a gathering of some type and one person takes all the air in the room. They have all the jokes; they are the loudest and most boisterous. We might not like to be the loudest jerk in the room but doesn’t our voice raise when we think we are not being listened to, we are not heard, and we are not acknowledged.

When we were in the dating world we were fighting for territory. My sister tells me when she watched her husband walk into the singles group she was a member of she said, “Ladies, he’s mine.” She staked a claim and they have been married for years.

Maybe when we claim things as ours it is easier to get what we want. What do we want? Maybe we haven’t voiced what we want and that is why we don’t have it. If we stake a claim we then need to do something with that claim. We can register our business but that is the easy part. Building a business is a challenge, but staking our claim, declaring our intent, and then going after it and doing what needs to be done will get us where we want to go. We need to know where we want to go all through life. If we quit setting a goal, quit working toward what we want we may have to settle for what we don’t want.

I don’t think this means we should always be striving and not enjoying the beauty and bounty of our lives. I think it means we should be making things better in our lives in every way we can while we enjoy the beauty and bounty.

The spring bulbs are up under my crabapple tree which should be in full glorious bloom this weekend. If I don’t keep planting new bulbs my spring flowers get sparser and sparser. I used to have crocuses but they have died out. If I want crocuses or any other spring flower I will have to plant them. The beautiful garden doesn’t just happen and nor does a beautiful life, family, marriage, business, or great accomplishment of any kind.

Life does not stand still. Where there is no progress, there is disintegration. Grenville Kleiser

Staying healthy as we age is definitely a fight for territory. If we don’t exercise our body ages at a faster rate, we feel more aches and pains, and we have more health problems.   

Some people may laugh at the idea of living our best life. But when we say we are living our best life, we are staking our claim and then we have to do what it takes to make that happen. If we aren’t staking our claim we get what we get. Too many days of not staking our claim of going for a walk may mean we are not able to walk as far, we are stiff after our walk, or we can’t move as freely in our day-to-day life.

If we don’t stake our claim for eating healthy food, we won’t be healthy as we make choices that are not good for our health. Doctors are great for the things they can do for us but they cannot make us healthy. We have to do that for ourselves.

We have to stake the claim in our relationships that we will expect the best of ourselves. We will overlook our partner’s missteps and they will overlook ours. Too many missteps on either side won’t create a good marriage but nor will holding our partner to standards that normal people can’t attain. We can have such great expectations for our children they feel no matter what they do it won’t be good enough. We need to stake the claims for our own life and let others stake the claims for theirs.

Are we fighting for the territory in life we want? Is it true there is no standing still there is only going up or sliding down?

There are many ways of going forward, but there is only one way of standing still. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Marriages either move toward communication, connection and intimacy or they move away from these things – they don’t stand still for very long. Unknown

Self-development should be a perpetual process. In life you are either growing or rotting. You’re moving forward or backwards; there is no standing still. Al Duncan

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

Thank you to everyone that reads my book. A special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Good reads. If you click on the picture and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Learning from the masters. Can we too become masters if we work hard and practice?

Learning from the masters. Can we too become masters if we work hard and practice?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

It’s not so much staying alive, it’s staying human that’s important. What counts is that we don’t betray each other. George Orwell

My cousin called me yesterday and said, “I met Hemmingway.” Of course, she means she started reading one of his books. Other than what she read of him in school she has never read any of his books. I haven’t read his books either.

What makes a Master? I have a book called “Write Like the Masters.” I started reading it and will take notes. We tend only to see the results of masters we don’t see what they did to become masters. We figure they must be special, but we often underestimate the amount of work it has taken to develop their skills to be masters. It isn’t just innate skill that makes masters it is also hard work and practice at their craft.

There is a story that Pablo Picasso was in a bar in Paris having lunch. A woman who recognized him came over and asked him “Excuse me, sir, aren’t you Pablo Picasso?” As Pablo confirmed he was, the woman handed him a napkin and asked, “Can you please draw something for me?”

Pablo took the napkin and got to work. 10 minutes later he was done and as he handed over the napkin back to the woman he said, “That’s $10,000.”

The woman looked flabbergasted and said, “$10,000? But it only took you 10 minutes to draw that.” Pablo looked at the woman and said, “Yes, but it took me 25 years to know how to do this in 10 minutes.”

I’m looking at an article from The New York Times dated January 12, 1992, “Reading Hemingway without Guilt” by Fredrick Busch. He says, “It is not fashionable these days to praise the work of Ernest Hemingway. His women too often seem to be projections of male needfulness. There are too many examples of his lifelong anti-Semitism, his affection for denigrating black people in just too many forums private and public. And he was violent: he loved bullfights…

He is so very incorrect, except in this: he gave the century a way of making literary art that dealt with the remarkable violence of our time. He listened and watched and invented the language – using the power, the terror, of silence – with which we could name ourselves.”

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. George Orwell

Writers don’t write only about what is correct, beautiful, noble, and good because that is not where the story is. Writers know their characters do not always do what they should, and think what they should because people don’t do those things. If there is nothing to overcome, if everything is how it should be, then there is no story.

Can we judge people by the standards of our time that lived in other times? If we get rid of all the works of people who didn’t live how we wanted or think what we think they should have thought, how does that serve us?

In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities. Thomas Sowell

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. George Orwell

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

Thank you to everyone that reads my book. A special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Good reads. If you click on the picture and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

To live in beauty and bounty we must be part of the providers of it.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Nature is not a place to visit. It is home. Gary Snyder

Yesterday we woke up to snow-covered daffodils, cherry blossoms, and snow-laden branches it was unexpectedly beautiful and I wish I’d taken pictures. We had twin crabapple trees that for a couple of days in spring were covered with pink blooms. Our neighbor has cut all the limbs off of her tree and only the stump is standing and I expect it will be pulled out too. It seems like sacrilege to take down an over twenty-five-year-old tree when we are trying to create tree-lined streets.

Mom tells me in her complex it was decided to remove a beautiful ten-year-old maple tree and replace it with something else and she is not impressed with their choice.

It’s not my business it’s her tree. What if everyone cut down their tree and we ended up with barren ugly neighborhoods? Whose business does it become then? When does our business become someone else’s business? When do our actions infringe on other people?

Jordan Peterson talks about how we can’t take living in safety, peace, and plenty for granted. Is there a correlation between happiness and beauty? When we live in beautiful surroundings it makes a difference in our lives. We are told to clear the clutter to clear our minds. How often when we look at pictures of stark, minimalist décor does it still have a plant or flowers somewhere in the picture. Nature feeds our soul. What is someone thinking as they pave over every blade of grass and root out the trees on their property?

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own. Charles Dickens

The World Happiness Report suggests wellbeing is positively affected by spending time in nature. The trend is to cover our property with concrete or pavers. We want a low maintenance option but what about the option of living in an urban forest where we offer habitat for birds, squirrels, and other wildlife.

I love watching the squirrels. We have grey, black and recently little red squirrels have moved into the area. I haven’t seen chipmunks in our yard but I have seen a skunk ambling through the back yard and I came home from a walk to see one on my front walk one morning. We see a pair of cardinals in our yard all the time. Occasionally we see a blue jay in our trees and goldfinches in our front yard. I would hate to live in a sterile yard with no life, no trees, and no nature.

Life changes and my crab apple tree lost a friend. I think of the two trees nodding in the breeze like two ladies talking about the goings-on of the street. Mine is now the lone pink crab apple on our side of the street.

Nature is messy, beautiful, and irreplaceable. We may think we want stark, lifeless yards because they are easy, maintenance-free spaces. It’s probably okay if a few people think like this but what if everyone on the street thought this way? Cities can be deserts or they can be beautiful urban forests with birds and other wildlife. It’s our choice and I pray most people choose the trees.

We live in beauty and bounty, but we can’t take it for granted that someone else will provide it for us. We have to be careful of the choices we make lest we someday no longer live in beauty and bounty and wonder where it went.

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray, where nature heals and gives strength to body and soul alike. John Muir

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. William Wordsworth

Time spent amongst trees is never wasted time. Katrina Mayer

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

Thank you to everyone that reads my book. A special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the picture and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Fundamental choices are what we build our life on. Are we happy with the direction our life is going? Do we need to make a fundamental choice to change it?

Are we happy with the direction our life is going? Do we need to make a fundamental choice to change it? Fundamental choices are what we build our life on.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you. John C. Maxwell

How do we make fundamental choices that change our lives? We know people who make fundamental choices they quit smoking and this time it worked. What is the difference between when it works and when it doesn’t? According to Robert Fritz in The Path of Least Resistance, there are ways we avoid making effective choices.

Choice by possibilities – choosing only what seems possible or reasonable.

Choice by indirectness – choosing the process instead of the result.

Choice by elimination – eliminating all other possibilities so that only one choice remains.

Choice by default – the “Choice” not to make a choice, so that whatever results happen seem to occur without choices.

Conditional choice – imposing preconditions on choices.

Choice by reaction – choices designed to overcome a conflict.

Choice by consensus – choosing by finding out what everyone else is willing to recommend and following the results of that poll.

Choice by adverse possession – choice based on a hazy metaphysical notion about the nature of the universe.

We can choose results we want to see manifested or we can make choices based on what we want to avoid. If we can have a clear vision of what we want to create and then actually say the words, “I choose to have…

We have different kinds of choices to make. We have primary choices which are choices about major results. A primary choice is about some result we want in itself and for itself. It is not a step to something else it is the thing itself. It is the ultimate goal it might be something like a superb relationship, a beautiful home, or a wonderful vacation.

Secondary choices help us take a step toward our primary choice. Booking the tickets for the vacation, going on date nights, and going to the gym.

Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision. Tony Robbins

A fundamental choice is a choice upon which primary and secondary choices rest.  A fundamental choice is a choice in which we commit ourselves to a basic life orientation or state of being. When we have made a fundamental choice about the way we want our life to be all other choices support that choice.

When I made the primary choice to be a writer something changed from when I was just hoping, wishing, and thinking I would write someday. I can’t put my finger on it but reading this book has crystallized that being a writer is a primary choice for me. Getting married was a primary choice and having children was a primary choice. Going into business for ourselves was a primary choice.

The more we are willing to make fundamental choices in our lives about the direction we want our lives to take the more control we have in our life. We can’t control the outcome of many things but we can control the direction. If we are in a reactive response we are waiting for circumstances to make us happy. If we are creating our own lives we are creating our own satisfaction and we are happy from the inside out. When we make fundamental choices to be true to ourselves we may deal with the circumstances differently to remain true to ourselves regardless of what the circumstances are.

The four fundamental choices Robert Fritz offers in his book The Path of Least Resistance are:

To be the predominant creative force in our life.

To be true to ourselves.

Health (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual).

Freedom

He says we should not assume that we automatically want to make these fundamental choices. He says if we make the choice for these four fundamental choices circumstances may change slowly or quickly as the structural tendencies of our life work to fulfill these choices.

What choices do we need to make? Are they fundamental choices, primary choices, or secondary choices?

You have a choice. A single choice, whatever that choice may be, you have to live with the consequences it brings. That’s all. A Choice. G. Gutierrez

One of the most important things that I have learned… is that life is all about choices.  On every journey you take, you face choices. At every fork in the road, you make a choice. And it is those decisions that shape our lives. Mike DeWine

We’re making decision right now that shape our lives. Even indecision is a decision. What’s going on today is a result of the choices we’ve made in the past. Toni Sorenson

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

Thank you to everyone that reads my book. A special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the picture and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Are we choosing what we want? Are we letting life choose for us? Are we happy with the choices?

Are we letting life choose for us? Are we choosing what we want? Are we happy with the choices?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

If you don’t do the choosing, life will choose for you, and it may not be the choice you want. Robert Anthony

In the smorgasbord of life are we choosing what we want or what we don’t want? Do we say, “Well I don’t want to be poor, sick, or homeless instead of rich, healthy, and well housed?”

I’ve been the person that found asking for what I want, and sometimes even stating it, has been tough. We may even put processes in place we think should give us what we want without actually stating what it is we want.

I look at my writing as an example. I developed the habit of writing when my husband brought home a laptop and I used it every night at the kitchen table and developed the habit of writing. I never asked myself what do I want to accomplish with my writing, what do I want it to become? At that point maybe it was too much to know. Maybe I needed to learn that I could stay on the path of writing without knowing or thinking too hard about where that path would or could lead.

Jogging might work the same way for some people. When they take up running they may not think one day they will be part of the Boston Marathon. My family and I signed up to do a little 5k marathon and last year it was canceled but this year they are going ahead so we are to be part of a “Virtual” marathon.

I can remember at times being asked, “What do you want to eat?” All I knew is what I didn’t want and that isn’t very helpful. What if we wander around the smorgasbord of life and look at all the choices and each one isn’t what we want, but we can’t articulate what we do want so we can’t figure out how to bring what we do want into our life.

Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90% of all your happiness or misery. H. Jackson Brown

One of the lessons I’ve learned from painting is a limited palette is often more pleasing than using every color. I picked up the book, “Color Harmony for Artists” by Ana Victoria Calderon and she creates a 28 color palette for paintings. The book is page after page of a picture and the 28 colors she chose for the palette. Why did she choose 28 colors? I haven’t found an explanation in the book for why the number is 28 and that probably is not important. What it does do is give a starting point for creating our own color scheme and putting a limit on it so instead of reaching for one more discordant color we pick one from our palette. I haven’t been working with her concept that long but color harmony in paintings is part of what makes a painting work or not work.

The choices we make in our life are what make our life work or not work. I’ve started working out my own 28 color palette and when I look at my colors I can’t choose the ones I don’t want. I have to make choices of what colors I am going to choose. Am I going to mix colors or use them from the tube?  Is the color scheme going to be warm or cool, complementary, triad, split complementary, or some other choice? If I like the look of the 28 colors together in my notebook chances are I will like the color harmony of whatever I paint.

Sometimes we don’t choose because when we do we are responsible for that choice. The only way to get what we want is to choose and be responsible and if that choice doesn’t work out be willing to make another choice. Every day we can choose to feel blessed, grateful, excited, happy, and thankful for the choices we have.

The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do is who you become. Heraclitus

We are free to choose our paths, but we can’t choose the consequences that come with them. Sean Covey

You have a choice each and every single day. Choose to feel blessed. Choose to feel grateful. Choose to be excited. Choose to be thankful. Choose to be happy. Unknown

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

Thank you to everyone that reads my book. A special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the picture and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Planting what we want to reap. Making things better. Bringing the worst out in people.

Bringing the worst out in people. Making things better. Planting what we want to reap.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut. Stephen Covey

Yesterday was a day of April showers. The spring bulbs are up and the Star Magnolias are blooming in all their glory. This is my favorite time of year and my cousin who lives in California was telling Mom her spring starts in January. That sounds perfect, but spring whenever it comes is welcome.

I was reading about a word for green called “Dog Barking Green” because even the dogs are happy to see the new shoots that come with spring. Don’t our hearts lighten in spring? Wasn’t it terrifying when we watched Game of Thrones and winter was always coming and they didn’t know how long it would last? Years went by without winter and then when winter came they didn’t know how long they had to be prepared for and it seemed they were never prepared enough. How could we prepare for a winter we didn’t know when would end?

It is easy to think things should be different. It is not easy to know what is the difference that makes things better instead of worse. In our hubris, we think we know. Some of us think it would be better if we got back to normal. We think decisions being made are not the right ones. Some of us think the cure is worse than what we are being saved from.

The load some are being asked to bear is more than is reasonable. No matter what happens in life there are always some who do well and some who do worse. As they say, there is never an ill wind that doesn’t do somebody some good. It is easy to get sucked into rhetoric on either side. The middle view is so much less attractive it seems and yet when we live our lives in the middle isn’t that when life works the best.

When you act within the darkness of lies and untruth you attract experiences towards yourself that are equally as disturbing. Unknown

I digress, what about spring because spring is what we need. New beginnings, new expectations, and new directions always seem so great but we don’t always like where new directions lead us. Who do we trust for our information, who do we trust for news? We think we don’t know the whole story about anything and those who want us to believe their side, tell us what they think will convince us they are right.

What seeds are we planting? What germinates will grow. What we tend will flourish but is what flourishes what we want to harvest? My son put it succinctly last night: when we are individualists we take the power and control we have and we can live our lives in a way to bring about the best results. When we are waiting for someone else to fix things we have given up our power and even if they do fix things, will they fix things to our satisfaction? Isn’t it better to use our own power to build our own lives?

People looking to profit off of others, is real, but can we live our lives in a way to keep ourselves out of the clutches of such people? We may do our best and still come into the clutches of some, but if we take control of our lives we can often overcome mistakes and missteps. Expecting society to change so there are never people looking to take advantage of, step on, or just be mean and nasty doesn’t seem reasonable.

How do we make routine traffic stops not turn into fatalities? Most of them do not and we need to remember this even though too many that do are in the news. I think of my dog when we are out for a walk. She reacts to very few dogs, but some of them elicit a response I don’t understand. My little twelve-pound cock-a-poo is agitated and snarling, sometimes at a dog that with one bite would snap her in half. What brings this on? Does the same thing happen to people?

Is there a way to plant what we want to reap and ensure a peaceful outcome to routine events that scare us?

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. Thomas Paine

The less you respond to negative people, the more peaceful your life will become. Unknown

The good deed and the evil deed cannot be equal. Repel the evil with one which is better, then verily he, between whom and you there was enmity, (will become) as though he was a close friend. (Quran, 41:34)

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts please click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

Thank you to everyone that reads my book. A special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the picture and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the affiliate program.

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Posted on by BWThomas

Serendipity shows up but we have to recognize it.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Serendipity is finding something good without looking for it. Unknown

It has been beautiful lately now that spring is here. I’ve been taking my dog for a nightly long walk. My husband has always encouraged me to walk and listen to something but I resist. I started listening to Jordan Peterson’s book Beyond Order, I really enjoy it, but I miss the thinking I do as I walk. We can’t fill our minds up with other people’s thoughts and have our own.

My husband and I listened to a podcast I’m going to be on this Saturday, the Abracadabra Podcast Author to Author, the host Jasveer Singh Dangi was in conversation with Isabella MacLeod author of Metamorphosis and Nano. She is a former nurse who suffers from a disease I’ve never heard of but sounds like it is related to Lyme disease. These books are a fictionalized journey as she picked up the pieces of her life and puts them back together.

My interest was piqued partly because I love a good story of people overcoming adversity but also because my brother suffers from some strange affliction and we have wondered where it came from. I will listen to the podcast again and look up the name of the disease she has and start going down the rabbit hole of research and see where it leads.

Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching. Siddhartha Mukherjee

Her disease may be nothing like my brother’s. I have no reason to think it is except it is debilitating enough that she can no longer work and so is his. She lives in Eastern Canada and he took a trip out there just before he became ill. I have a feeling and I often go with my feelings and see where they lead. Serendipity is a mysterious force that works in our lives. Serendipity has been defined as, “The accidental discovery that leads to unexpected value.”

In the book The Serendipity Mindset by Christian Busch, he tells us how we can learn to recognize and leverage serendipity to make our lives better. What if the people we think are lucky are using serendipity when it arrives in their lives in ways that unlucky people are not?

How many times has serendipity knocked on my door and I was not aware of it and did not get the gift I was being offered? When the right person looked at moldy bread they recognized something in it and we now have penicillin. To everyone else, it was just moldy bread.

Who knows where my research will lead? How is serendipity working in your life?

Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you’ve found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for. Lawrence Block

I always leave room for serendipity and chance. Ken Stott

I am a firm believer in serendipity – the random pieces coming together in one wonderful moment, when suddenly you see what their purpose was all along. David Levithan

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

Thank you to everyone that reads my book. A special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the picture and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the affiliate program.

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Posted on by BWThomas

Be the creator of your own life. Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want.

Focus on what you want, not on what you don't want. Be the creator of your own life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Creativity is contagious. Pass it on. Albert Einstein

Are we building the life we want by being creators, or are we reacting to the problems we see? How many of us think if we can just solve the problem our life will be better?

Problem-solving is taking action to have something go away. Creating is taking action to have something come into being.

This is the difference between focusing on the problems and focusing on creating what we want. We are focusing on what we think are the ills of society. Are we putting as much into focusing on what we want our society to be as what we don’t want it to be? We know that sometimes we have to do things in the midst of a problem like hunger for instance. Giving food to people in a famine does help but it doesn’t provide food security which is what they need.

The problem with problem-solving as our main way of doing things is even when we are successful we now have the absence of the problem but we do not have the creation of something we wanted.

If we have a problem with weeds in our garden we can pull the weeds but we have not created a beautiful garden just by pulling the weeds. To create a beautiful garden we will have to plant the garden we want and tend it and it can become the masterpiece we create.

We seem to be very good at knowing what we don’t want, are we as good at knowing what we do want? Have you ever gone into the kitchen knowing what you don’t want to eat but if you can’t figure out what you do want or what you will make nothing happens? My husband knows he doesn’t like celery in his soup (or anything else). It doesn’t answer the question, what does he want?

The more we answer the question “What do we want” instead of focusing on what we don’t want the better our life will be. We can create what we want, or at least try. We may hate our job, it’s easy to quit a job, but did that solve the problem or just give us a new and worse problem? What do we want, a new job, a business? Then we need to know what kind of job, or what kind of business? Could we perhaps get a job that would pay our bills and create a business part-time that will feed our spirit? Now we have a win/win we are creating a life, maybe a life we will love.

It is a sobering thought to realize we are spending our time focusing on the wrong things. How much time do we spend thinking if I could just fix that problem? But, fixing that problem is not what we want, we need to focus on what we want and we may think getting rid of things like problems is what we want but really don’t we want to build and create the life we want.

Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else. Les Brown

Is it true that the more we focus on problems the more problems we get? What difference would it make in our lives if we became builders of our lives instead of problem solvers in our lives? What if we build a happy family instead of trying to fix the problems which we may always have to deal with? We will never see things the same, there will always be challenges, but as we build what we want those differences will not be as important as what we create. We will always have problems but focusing on fixing problems seldom leads to final success.

In fact, focusing on our problems often leads to a problem cycle:

The problem leads to action to solve the problem, which leads to less intensity of the problem, which leads to less reaction to the problem, which leads to the problem remaining, and the cycle continues.  

This is the life cycle of problems. Many of us pride ourselves on our problem-solving abilities. We may even call ourselves creative problem solvers. Problem-solving can be distracting at the same time it gives us the illusion we are doing something crucial and important.

One of the things we are fighting about is if we don’t see the same problem, or the same solution to that problem. How heartless are we if we don’t care about someone else’s pet cause, and how heartless when they don’t care about ours? We can feel the romance of being the individual against the elements, the machine, big government, injustice, inequality, racism, sexism, the division between rich and poor, global warming, and there are more. We certainly have enough problems that everyone can find a noble cause to make them feel good.

Problem-solving gives us a false sense of security. If we didn’t have these big problems to focus on what would we think about, what would we talk about, and how would we let people know how noble we are? Instead of asking ourselves what problems do we want to solve? What if we asked ourselves what do we want to create? If we get more of what we focus on and we focus on problems are we getting more problems to focus on? What if we focus on creating the life we want, we focus on our circle of influence, and as we create the life we want our circle of influence enlarges. What if this is better than focusing on our problems? What if this is what is behind the saying, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for today, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”

Imagination and creativity can change the world. Unknown

Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected. William Plomer

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. Arthur C. Clark

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read again. Have a blessed life filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

Thank you to everyone that reads my book. A special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the picture and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Embracing the path of least resistance and most reward. Be a creative force in our own lives.

Be a creative force in our own lives. Embracing the path of least resistance and most reward.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Like water I take the path of least resistance. Unknown

Water is one of the most powerful forces on earth and it takes the path of least resistance.

Do we live our lives following the path of least resistance? I remember as kids in the spring we would make paths for the water to run off. If the water was running somewhere we didn’t want it to we would use a hoe and make a little path to get the water running where we wanted it to. This only works if where you don’t want the water to go is not already the lowest point. We know when dealing with water that water takes the path of least resistance and if we can engineer that path we can have water go where we want it.

I think I’ve adopted a path of least resistance in my writing. First thing in the morning I get up turn on my computer, put my dog outside, feed her, pour myself a cup of coffee, and sit down at my desk to write. On Mondays and Thursdays, I write a blog post, and the rest of the mornings I work on my second novel.

The resistance is how early I get up but I have an early bedtime of 10:00 pm so getting up at six is not unreasonable. When I write my blog I need to be sure to get up at six because I need all the time to write my blog. When it is my novel I can turn the alarm off – but I shouldn’t.

Robert Fritz’s book The Path of Least Resistance is about setting our life up for success. We don’t walk through walls or windows we have halls and corridors. If we walk in a forest there is usually a path and if we follow the path it is an easier walk than if we traverse through the forest without one. When we are at the mall and we see a huge escalator there is one for up and one for down. It might be possible to go up the down escalator but it would be tricky and dangerous.

My husband and I see plans for houses we think are not well planned. Instead of halls, you have to walk through a room to get somewhere. We looked at a small house where the bedrooms were located in the basement and to get to the backyard you had to go through one of the basement bedrooms. How frustrating would that be if it wasn’t your bedroom you had to walk through? What if you wanted to have friends over for a barbeque?

One of my sisters designs kitchens her job is not only to design a beautiful kitchen but a functional one. We want a kitchen where the flow makes working in it fun, not frustrating.

In his book, Robert Fritz talks about how some of us walk a circular path. We always start things but we come around to where we were without achieving them. This would be like living in a two-story house without a staircase to the second floor. We need to build a staircase to access our dreams and goals. When we can see the stairs we can start moving up them.

Why do we have lives without a staircase to our dreams and goals? Part of it is probably because our dreams and goals are on the second floor of our lives. We can’t touch them we only dream about them. We don’t see how to reach them. We are missing the stairs that connect our reality to the reality we want.

It is important to know where we want to go by setting goals. But, goals that are just floating in the air above us without a way to make them concrete in our lives are very frustrating.  I remember when our house was being built my husband and I looked at the hole in the ground that would become our basement. It looked so small but eventually as we saw the house take shape and the partitions dividing the rooms were put in we had everything we were promised even though it didn’t look like that basement was big enough for the house we purchased.

If we want to do anything we need to be able to break it down into sizable chunks of actions we can take. We need to know which actions need to be taken first, which actions should follow, and if we follow the steps taking each action and doing what is needed we will arrive at a place where we have completed that goal. Often completing one-goal leads to the setting of another goal. Sitting down every day and writing will accumulate words on a computer. Eventually, we will have the accumulated number of words we set as our goal.

We can pat ourselves on the back but all we have is an accumulation of words. There are new goals to be set. There are new steps to be taken but we have accomplished one goal. We need to make sure our goals are broken down into small enough steps that we can see when we have finished that goal. We could write and write every day forever accumulating words without asking our self what we are going to do with them. Sometimes the goal is only to write. If we keep a journal the goal is to write in our journal, to document our life, and to sort out our thoughts and feelings on paper.

We need to know what we want to do, we need to form a plan of action breaking our goal down into small steps, and then we have to take each of the steps. We will not do this perfectly, we may fail, but we need to pick ourselves up revise our plan, and keep going. Maybe we made our steps too big; we might need to adjust the size of our steps. Was our goal too small and we needed to set new goals? We may have a goal that seemed so important but a new bigger, better goal is taking its place. We may get back to that first goal later or maybe never. This too is part of life.

Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force. Lao Tzu

We may think we are always arriving back at where we started but maybe we are on a circular path that takes us up a steep path and our circular path is getting us where we need to go by a more scenic route. When we are driving up a mountain we don’t take steps, we take a circular route and though it is longer it gets us where we want to go.

When we evaluate our progress we need to make sure we are not too hard on ourselves. Are our expectations of where we should be reasonable? Have we made progress just not as much progress as we wanted? Did we face failure and the success is that we are not still wallowing in that failure? Are we comparing the best of someone else’s life to the worst of our own and feeling bad about our own?

We need to walk our own path, slay our own dragons, and climb our own mountains. The important things in life often don’t come with accolades. Plumbers have saved more lives than doctors. It is as creative to make a good soup as painting. Creating a family and raising the next generation is the most important role we take on, and we forget it at our peril.

Will we be like water and take the path of least resistance? Does this mean we cannot direct its path?

Taking the path of least resistance is always helpful and peaceful, which is always in line with your life’s purpose. If your current work area is different than your purpose then you will face extra challenges. Hina Hashmi

Any path will get you there – choose the path of least resistance and move foreward. Michael Eric Jones

There is no need to use force. Instead, create a path of least resistance, and gravity will do the rest. Michael Dunlap

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

Thank you to everyone that reads my book. A special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the picture and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the affiliate program.

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