Every journey starts with a single step

It’s really very interesting creating my own blog and adding content to it. It’s also cool to check out my stats on the site, see where people are from and how long they have spent on the site. The one thing that I am noticing is that I need to be disciplined to do this. I can’t say that I am always the most focused person in the world, however when I’m enjoying a project and things really start to happen, it’s a lot of fun. The first thing that I have noticed in any of my ventures in the past is summed up well by Ben Stein ~

“The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.”

You would think that this would be easy with all the things there are to do on this plant earth.  I have many great ideas, but until I get focused on one of them nothing much seems to happen. I spend a lot of time and energy chasing my own tail and not getting much done. Which brings me to the second part, a quote by Harry E. Fosdick ~

“No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunnelled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated and disciplined.”

I spend a lot of time coming up with post ideas and even get going on quite a few, however it seems that some of them land up not quite completed. (This might be a good thing in some cases). The thing I have noticed with the ones that do get completed is, that I have a clear goal as to what I want to write about, the ones that don’t get completed, I don’t  have a clear goal or purpose; I just hope that something will evolve from what I am doing. Occasionally this works for me by chance and good luck, but not normally.

As someone once said and I have no clue who it was, “A plane is off course 99% of the time on the way to its destination but manages to land there at the end of the journey”. When I practice self-discipline, I feel like I am in control of my life. I seem to feel more content and motivated, because I’m moving forward towards my goals. I also become very present in the moment and the mind chatter that goes on when I am not focused and disciplined disappears. The old saying “That in commitment is freedom” seems to be very true.

Discipline for me is one of though words that I have attached in the back of my mind to school, authority and control. I thought that it was better to fight it, than comply with it, but now I am getting a new respect for the word discipline, as I like the freedom of mind and spirit that comes with it.

Another benefit is that I seem to be a lot more motivated, when I become disciplined and focused in what I am doing and tend to complete the project; in fact I usually become excited about what I am doing. Another benefit is that people and things show up to help me.

A couple of final thoughts around discipline and getting focused that work for me are,

1. Get a destination so I know where I want to land up.
2. Don’t try to do it all at once, break it down into little steps, so that I’m constantly successful and moving forward.

I try not to make it complicated, otherwise I get lost in all the details and land up going round and round in circles. However big the project or desire is, its made up of lots of little steps and  I make the little steps easy to complete. A final quote that I have found on the subject should round this post off nicely by Thomas Huxley ~

“Do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not”

Moving through reality

Reality is always kinder than my thoughts are about a negative situation. I had a dramatic experience of this last summer, when I went on my second caving trip to the Horne Lake caves, BC. My first experience of caving with some friends was a lot of fun. We climbed and squeezed though little tubes and chambers, that I didn’t think I could get into. I felt very comfortable doing this, especially as my friend who was guiding us is very experienced.

On my second trip to the caves a few weeks later, I had equally as much fun and was not ready to quit when most of the rest of group was. So a couple of friends in the group suggested some caves up the hill. After a bit of a hike, we entered the first cave in a river bank and then climbed down into a chamber, a candle was lit and we hung out for a while chatting before exiting through a lower cave that was a long, low, crawl to the river.

The next cave was called the stethoscope, because you can hear your heart beat. To enter this cave we had to drop about 15ft down into a small crevasse in the ground that was about 3ft wide. That was the easy part, but this is where it began to get interesting for me. On the side of this crevasse was a crack which is called a fissure, about 3ft from the floor of the crevasse. The first member of our group of 3 went into the fissure, gentle brushing the spiders out of the way that inhabit the caves in the winter. He is a little bigger than I am but made it in. So did my friend that followed.

A tight squeeze.

I started to go into the fissure; it was just big enough to squeeze my body though if I kept my hands out straight. It went on in this manor for about 15 – 20 ft, as far as I could tell, before entering a chamber that I could not see but was told is down there. I started down the hole and made it in about 5 or 6 ft when I had an over whelming feeling of claustrophobia, not something that I usually experience . I lay there for a while hoping the feeling would pass but it seemed to grow worse. So I back out of the hole, took a few deep breathes and shook my head to try and clear the feelings that I had.

Not to be beaten that easily, I took my helmet off, thinking this might help and tried again. I got about the same distance in again before the same feeling came over me. After backing out, I decided not to try again at that time however; it really got me thinking about what had happened. I knew that the caves had been there for hundreds, if not thousands of years and was not in any hurry to move and the cave had no feelings or interest as to whether I made it or not. It just is what it is.

Reality is kinder than my thoughts.

I also knew that it was possible to make it in there, as my two friends had already achieved it. So there was only one conclusion that I was left with and that was that it had all happened in my thoughts, inside my head and nowhere else and had absolutely nothing to do with my physical environment or reality. It was really clear to me that my subconscious was throwing out thoughts that I was not even aware of and seemed to have little control over. At the same time, it had little, if any bearing on the reality at hand. In fact my thoughts had created a horrifying illusion about the situation.

The reality of the situation was,” A man crawling through a rock tunnel”, which was painless. Everything else that I experienced was the story I told about the situation, whether consciously or subconsciously.  My conclusion was that reality is a lot kinder and easier than the thoughts that I have about a situation most of the time. Thoughts just come through the mind, whether its a happy or distressing thought it really has little to do with reality and more to do with illusion and stories.

I came home and visualized going into the fissure and had the same feelings, but each time I visualized it I was able to go in a little further into the tube, until I was sitting in the chamber and the rocks had caved in blocking the entrance. I could not physically get out but I felt calm and it was just an adventure to dig myself out. If I’m going to tell a story it might as well be one that I like or love. I am now looking forward to returning to the cave to see how well my new story works when I’m in the tunnel again.

I have used this process many times on different things and am always amazed at how I can change my own reality. If it doesn’t seem to be changing there is usually an underlying story/belief that I have not got to yet. I find that rather than resisting my thoughts at this point, I try to embrace them and then they lose their power and leave me. Its like not arguing with someone who wants to argue, in the end they give up because there’s no point to it, if there is nothing to resist.

Beauty down under

YES MAN! I watched this movie the other night at a friend’s house. Jim Carrey is a single, divorced guy, who is working in a dead end job. As usual Jim Carrey did a great job portraying his character.

The plot goes like this, stuck in a rut for 3 years; he bumps into a friend, who has just gone through a personal growth course, called “Yes Man”. He finally decides that he should check the course out and after some reluctance make a covenant with the facilitator of the course, to say  “YES”; to every situation that he encounters rather than “NO” or “MAYBE”.

As you can imagine this leads to all kinds of situation that  normally would not have happened. Besides being a really funny movie, it made me thing how often I say “NO” or “MAYBE”, before I have really given myself a chance to think about the opportunity that has just be presented to me.

“YES”! I usually say “NO” out of habit, fear or a past experience. I can give you all kinds of reasons and justifiers, even some good stories to prove my point, why I said “NO”, but I don’t tend to just say “YES” and jump in. This may sound like a wiser, smarter move to not just jump in, but this is where the spice of life is.

When I was in my twenty’s. I found that I would say “YES” a lot of the time, to see what happened. Several times I sold everything and caught a plane, landing in a foreign country, with just my back pack, a few cloths and a camera.

I remember being in Cairns, Australia, walking down the street and a man came up to my friend and me and asked whether we would like to sail up to Papua New Guinea. It sounded like fun, so we turned up at the dock and a short time later we were on our way to PNG. We sail through a Cyclone (Hurricane on this side of the plant), where the waves were so high that when we were in the trough of the wave the mast of the 45ft sailboat was at the crest of the wave and we could see the shoals of tuna running in the wave beside us.

This went on for 5 1/2 days and nights, until we hit the coastal waters of Papua New Guinea, then the weather broke and it became calm. Crystal blue waters with dolphins riding in the bow wave of our boat and palm trees all around. Every day was a new adventure, diving, climbing up to the rim of a still smoking volcano, going into the tunnels where the Japanese had housed their fleet and men. Lots of the boats, subs and equipment where still in there.

Japanese ship in a tunnel.

The people of PNG were great and I made many friends in my time there. They say that PNG is like ” every place you have never been before” and they are right. I would have missed it all if I had said “NO”. Yes, it might have been safer, wiser, less risky, to stay home and do  ”normal thing”, but where’s the fun in that and I would not have had this story to share with you or such an amazing experience.

I have come to realize, that doing what I think I should or what is safe and smart is just another form of slow death and where as I don’t recommend stupidity when saying “YES”, I do think that taking more chances is a good thing. So I encourage you to say “YES”, as often as you can in your life. I plan to recommit to saying “YES”, as it bought a quality to my life that is normally not there, when I just go with the safe and wise choices.