One of my favorite book of poems is by a guy that I randomly met at one of the yoga studios I taught at.  He wasn’t a yoga student (of the studio), but he was there promoting his book at an event the studio was having.  His name is Dan Coppersmith.  I was trying to find my favorite poem of his, but I literally could not pick my fav.  They are ALL so good and beautifully done.

I’ve had this book for 5 years or so, and I always go back to it.  At times, I read from it to my yoga students and when I do I always have someone ask me what I was reading from.  So…I randomly picked one today to share with you.  Here it is:

Food For Thought

Sometimes we whine
Gripe and complain
Singing the victim’s
Familiar refrain

Blaming the world
For all that’s wrong
Each new day
The same old song

It’s a trap we crawl into
A place where we hide
Keeping our spirit
Stuffed deep inside

Somehow forgetting
We determine our fate
That the life which we lead
We chose to create

Each decision we make
Each thought we embrace
Affects the complexion
Of the world we face

If our food for thought
Is a negative meal
That is what
We will taste as real

If we dwell on anger
Injustice and pain
We’ll tend to attract
More of the same

If we suffer, hopeless
At the mercy of all
We are the ones
Keeping us small

Placing the blame
On somebody else
Puts the solution
Outside of ourselves

Recognizing
We are Source
Awakens the captain
To master his course.

Dan Coppersmith

I highly recommend this book.  It’s called “The Elusive Here & Now”.  And, as a bonus, Dan is an amazing nature photographer and the book is filled with beautiful pics.  You can click here to buy it.  Or, go to his website (which I have been browsing and loving) and look at all the amazing nature shots he has gotten!

Have a great weekend you guys and don’t forget…You are the captain!

No matter how “bad” things seem to you, or to someone else looking at your situation, you have a choice.  You can choose to accept the situation and find a positive perspective, or you can choose to look at the situation as awful.  Regardless of what you choose, you are right!

Here it is perfectly said by Ester & Jerry Hicks:

Nothing needs to be fixed. Everything is unfolding perfectly. So when you stand in your now accepting that all is well, then from that vibration, you become surrounded by more and more evidence that all is well. But when you’re convinced that things are broken, that there is pollution, or that things have gone wrong, or that the government is doing conspiracies… then what happens is you get caught up in that vibration, and you begin to manifest that kind of stuff, and then you say, “See, I told you that things were going wrong.”

— Abraham (this excerpt was taken from a workshop they did in LA in March of 2000)

I choose wellness.  What do you choose?

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One of the things I’ve learned, and still practice, in yoga is to be nonreactive.  As I practice breathing, relaxing, and letting go while my shoulders are burning and my thigh is yelling at me, I become aware that my mind is more calm and I get a sense of ease, strength, and peace.  It can be so easy to have a negative reaction when the teacher calls out a pose I don’t like, or when a sub walks in that I wasn’t expecting, but all that does is make the situation worse.  If I change my reaction to these things and make them more positive, or don’t react at all then my outcome is way better.

You choose how you want to respond.

As I take what I’ve learned on my yoga mat and apply it to real life, I realize that everything we experience (good or bad) is because of our reaction or response to it.  This same nonreactive principal that I’ve learned in yoga can also be applied to our life.  Jack Canfield has a formula that he teaches:

E + R = O  (Events + Responses = Outcome)

The idea is that everything you experience is because of how you responded to an earlier event in your life.  If you aren’t enjoying the outcomes that you are experiencing right now, there are basically two choices you can make.

1.  You can blame the event for the outcome.

There’s a ton of external factors that we can blame.  We can blame the economy for not having a job.  We can blame our boss or our clients for having a bad day.  We can blame the rain for not working out.  We can blame our lack of money for not starting our dream business.  We can blame a lack of time for eating fast food.  Excuses.  Excuses.  Excuses.

We’ve all done this right?  I know I have.  Going back to yoga…I was in a workshop last week and I noticed I was making excuses for why I wasn’t getting into a pose.

There’s no doubt that these blame factors exist, but it’s up to us to overcome them.  There are tons of people who are still employed and very successful.  I see people out walking in the rain all the time.  For every impossible thought we have, there are many out there that think it is possible.

OR

2.  You can change your responses to the events until you get the outcomes you want.

Can we respond differently to the events that happen?  If we get fired, maybe we take the time to educate ourselves and learn a new skill.  If the boss is being a hard ass, maybe we have some compassion for him rather than gossiping with other coworkers about how awful he is.  He may be having a lot of personal issues at home, or had a father that was hard on him.

We can change our thinking, the way we communicate, and our behavior because really that’s all that we have control over anyway.  We don’t necessarily have control over any extremal event.  All we have control over is our responses to them!

We tend to get stuck in our habits and the way we respond  to our children, our spouses, the traffic, and our bosses.  So we must gain control of our thoughts, our behavior, the images we hold in our head, and our dreams.

We need to know what we want, and then everything we think, say, and do needs to align with our goals, our intentions, and our values.

In the words of Jack Canfield: If we all experience the same EVENT, the OUTCOME you get will be totally dependent upon your RESPONSE to the situation.

If you don’t like your outcomes, you must change your responses.  It’s that simple!

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