Play Time Anybody?

“Now and then, it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”

            -Guillaume Apollinaire-

I remember when I was a young boy and it didn't matter where I was, who I was with, or what I was doing, it was play time, pretty much all hours of the day.  The small portion of the day that I wasn't playing, I was getting my physical needs met(food, clothing changed, diaper changed, or sleep), and then it was back to play.  I am reminded of this natural love of play when I watch my 3 year old nephew go from one game, to the next, sometimes playing with toys, and sometimes without. 

Then of course we get older and our ability to follow the directions of the big people around us increase.  We are told to behave, sit still, be quiet, settle down, and act appropriately.  I have a sneaky suspicion that this is because the outward expression of joy in a child is uncomfortable for many adults who have to be reminded that they don't play like that anymore.  So the kids continue to be told, and most listen, learning to eventually cover up that innate playfulness.

The bad news is, most of us big people, don't play much.  The good news is, that desire and capacity for play hasn't gone anywhere, it's just been pushed down.  Imagine a big blown up beach ball, and you have been trying to push it under water for years because that's just what you are 'supposed' to do.  Every once in a while your hand slips and the ball of course naturally comes bursting back above the surface of the water.  Well, that ball is just like your joy for life, your playful spirit, and your well-being, the moment you stop fighting so hard to keep it down, it just bubbles right back up to the surface of your experience.

Now, it may feel a little weird at first when you aren't fighting so hard to keep your essence in check like most of us have learned to do since very early.  Don't let the weirdness fool you into thinking that it's unnatural to play your heart out, it's simply unfamiliar, like anything you're not used to experiencing on a regular basis.

I'm guessing there are some of you going 'why do I need to play more?'  If that's you, let me just say that nobody has to play any more then they are currently playing.  Nobody needs to experience any more joy or well-being than they are currently experiencing.  I'm merely suggesting, the possibility of being playful is always there, it's simply a matter of access and choice.

So, why play more?  That is a fantastic question.  Remember you are under no obligation to have more fun in your life, but if you do decide to crank up the play, here's how it might make your life more wonderful:  (These bullet points are adapted from Michael Neill's brilliant book, Feel Happy Now!)

1. Play feels good!  At the risk of stating the obvious, when you play like you did when you were a child, it's fun and there is usually a pleasurable feeling in the body that goes with it.
2. Play makes you healthier.  Without getting into too much detail about the bio-chemistry of the body, the chemicals released when you are joyful and playful, beef up your immune system.  Not to mention if your play involves some sort of exercise.
3. Play makes you smarter.  If you've ever been stuck trying to solve a problem for several hours, and then you decide to take a break and do something fun like dance, shoot some hoops, or watch a funny movie, and then you come back and easily solve your problem, then you know what I'm talking about
4. Finally, Play makes you more successful.  This one may be less obvious, but the creativity, ease, and clarity of thought that comes with the joy of playing, naturally results in successful communication, connection, and decision making.  Some people talk about this as a flow experience. 

If you still need more convincing, you may not be ready to let play back into your life.  On the other had, if you are ready, it's amazingly simple.  Here are a few tips to access your playful side.

• Make a list of things that you would consider play and then pick one that you haven't done in a while and do it.
• Identify the top 3 most playful people in your life.  Schedule interviews with all of them and ask them how they access their play and joy.
• Hang out with the most fun people you can find
• Imagine a time when you had an amazing time playing for the pure joy of it.  Step back into that memory fully so that you are looking through your own eyes, seeing what you saw at the time, hearing what you heard, and feeling what you felt in your body.  Turn up the intensity of the memory with your handy intensity knob(mines in the upper left corner of my mind).  Practice bringing the energy of play with you as you open your eyes and come back from the memory.
• Remind yourself to play by posting it everywhere(in your car, on your fridge, your bathroom mirror, etc.)

Now, all that's left to do is play.  Ready.... 1, 2, 3, GO!

Love and Light,
Ty

The Power of Focus

"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." 

-Marcel Proust-

Focus is one of those words that gets a lot of play in the personal development field, and even though it is a somewhat cliche topic, it is talked about a lot for a reason.  Let's see if I can put a new spin on it for you.

I heard the word focus a lot growing up from parents, teachers, coaches, and culture in general.  It usually showed up as someone telling me "just focus harder", or "you've got to buckle down and focus more".  Well, believe it or not, that was not always the most useful of advice, firstly, because I wasn't entirely sure what I needed to be focused on, and secondly, I didn't really know how to focus harder, or where to go to get more of it.  They don't exactly sell it down at the local department store do they?

I've since learned a bit more about the power of focus, so let me share with you the best of what I know now.

The first question that it seems to me is worth asking is, what is focus?  Well, good old dictionary.com says focus is 'a central point, as of attraction, attention, or activity'.  I would phrase it in terms of our brains capacity to observe and attend to information coming in through the senses.  Now, we can't be simultaneously aware of all of it at once, so we take the flashlight of our focus, and shine it in different directions around the dark room of life.  For instance, you can have the majority of your focus on what you physically see right in front of you, like I see my cat laying on his back on the floor, but I'm not simultaneously aware of the physical sensation in my left middle toe. Suffice it to say, we have the capacity to be aware of things, but not everything all at once.  

Okay, now that we have a better idea of what it is, my next question is, how much focus do we actually have to work with.  If we can't be aware of everything at once, which would likely cause us to go insane, how much can we focus on at any given time.  Well, it turns out there was a bit of research done by a guy named George Miller, on just this very subject.  According to him, we are taking in approximately 2,000,000 bits of information through the 5 senses every second.  He then determined out of those 2 million bits, we have the capacity to focus on approximately 156 bits in any given moment, which is roughly translated into 7 +/-2 chunks, or 5 to 9 things.  So, let me ask you this, is 156 bits different from 2,000,000 bits?  You bet it is!  

This makes it painfully clear that not only are we not aware of everything, but we can only focus on a very small portion of the whole in any given moment. This clears up one of the problems surrounding focus, and that is believing that we can be aware of everything, and see all possible angles to any situation or circumstance.  This is a big problem because the second you believe there is no other way to see it, you close yourself off to possibility and creativity.  On the flip side, when you see that where you are shining the flashlight of your focus is only illuminating a very small piece of the puzzle, that affords you the option of looking in a new direction, and finding different perspectives and possibilities.

Think about it this way. Imagine you had never seen a computer before, and you came upon one that had a search engine displayed on the screen and someone had just searched for the words 'struggle and hardship'.  There would be images and phrases relating only to those words right?  Well, if you had never seen a computer before and didn't know how a search engine worked, you might mistake what was on the screen for all there was on the computer and the internet.  This is how most people use the powerful search engine that is their mind.  When we were young the words struggle and hardship got typed into our minds, that's our 7 +/-2 chunks, and then we go around thinking all there is in the world is struggle and hardship.  But we don't realize that if we simply began to search for love and abundance, that is what would begin to come up on our screen.

We live in a huge quantum soup of potentials, and there is almost everything you could imagine in this world.  The reality is, your experience of life will be based on what you've got the search engine of your mind searching for.  And whatever is not typed in, that doesn't mean it's not there, it just means you won't have an experience of that.

If you're wondering how to tell what your mind is searching for, it's easy, whatever experiences you keep having over and over again, those are the ones you are searching for unconsciously.

In very simple terms, you will always tend to see, whatever it is you are looking for.  How is this useful?  Well,  if you don't like what is coming up on the screen of your experience, then look for something else.  I invite you to suspend the belief that what you want isn't possible.

WEEKLY EXPERIMENT

Here's how you can begin to put this to use in your own life:

1. Notice that what is showing up in your awareness is a very small piece of the whole, and the whole likely contains what you want as well as what you don't want.
2. Decide what you would love to see and experience more of in your life(peace, acts of kindness, love, warmth, opportunities, learnings, etc.)
3. Actively search for what you want:
• Use a real search engine for examples.  
• Ask questions that will steer your focus, like 'Where is the opportunity in this?' or 'What do I love about him?'
• Print and Post what it is you want to see and experience more of in your life.  Post it in the car, in the bathroom mirror, on the fridge, on your desk.
• Ask other people about where ________ shows up in their life?
• Make a list of all the ways that what you want is already in your life.
4. Enjoy your new experience of life

The more you bombard your conscious mind with what you want to focus on, the more you will see it in the world, and the more you will create of it in the world! 

So, if you are feeling stuck, before you go rushing off to tell your friends and family how stuck you are, simply focus your gaze in a different direction.   You may begin to notice that you're not actually stuck, you just forgot to look around and see the way forward.

Love and Light,

Tyler

When Actions Don't Work

"It is an old ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way."

-Rollo May

What I'm present to this week is the tendency to look to actions to solve our problems.  We want to do more, faster, and better.  Tangible, physical actions have their place in the world, there is no question about it, but let's look at where they go wrong.

The first problem we as humans bump up against when we go into action to solve our problems, is when it is in an attempt to address something that actions don't help with much, like our emotions.  Because as a culture, we are so used to getting into action around something to solve our problems, we just go there automatically when something is feeling off with our internal experience.  Unfortunately, the worst way to try and change how you feel, is attempting to change the world and the circumstances.  You may have noticed that wherever you go, and whatever you change outside you, you are still there, just like you were before.

The second problem I encounter for myself and the people I work with, is when we try and crank up the action to actually accomplish something in the outside world, but we do it from a place of internal struggle and emotional pain.  While this can be slightly more useful than the first problem, it still tends to lead to lack luster results and a pretty unpleasant journey.  I've personally had the experience of buckling down and doing what I need to do even though I'm angry, or frustrated, or depressed, and it just seems that there's a whole lot more resistance from others as well as myself.  You can get things done this way, but it is definitely the hard way.

So if any of this sounds familiar to you, and you're either not having a wonderful experience of life, or not creating the results you want, let's explore what you can couple with action, or replace action with to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Because our emotional experience is a direct result of the thoughts that we are thinking, and not the external circumstances, it then makes sense to take a look at our thinking if we want to shift our inner world.  I talk about this as 'Seeing'.  How are you seeing this situation? Start with spotting the thoughts that hurt, when you are experiencing emotional pain, I can guarantee there will be a thought there somewhere, even if it's pretty unconscious.  I invite you to experiment with just spotting the thought, and as soon as you realize that the source of your experience is coming from the thoughts flowing through your head, you might just find it takes the sting out of the whole thing.  The first step is just an awareness and a noticing.

Once you've identified some of the thoughts, ask yourself, am I willing to not take this thought so seriously? If you can honestly answer yes, then ask yourself, how else could I SEE this situation?  Keep asking yourself this question until you come up with a response that really resonates with you, and then try it on.  Look through some different glasses for a while.  If you're finding yourself a bit stuck, get a friend to help you play the 'how else could I see this' game.

The point of all of this, is that the second you truly see what is going on around you differently, the appropriate actions will flow from that place.  Also the moment you can realize that how you see something is completely subjective, and you're creating it, then you can begin to consciously create a different way of seeing.  You can see something as a tragedy, a blessing, a lesson, a learning experience, a gift, a punishment from god, or completely neutral.  The list is endless.  Just ask yourself, is how I'm currently seeing this empowering or dis-empowering?  If it's dis-empowering, notice it, ask yourself if you're willing to have it be less significant, and than see if you can create something new for yourself.

The second thing to consider before you take your action is, how am I being about this?  Am I in a state of frustration or anger, am I sad or depressed, am I experiencing curiosity and wonder, or am I playful and full of joy?  These states often flow from how we see something, but in addition to focusing exclusively on the seeing, you might ask yourself, how would I love to be about this situation?  Do you want to be more loving, more accepting, more joyful, more peaceful, or more purposeful?  Once you have your answer, just create an intention around how you want to show up.  Don't worry about how to make it happen for now, because controlling our states is not easy.  You can however point yourself in a direction.  Just keep pointing yourself in the direction of well-being, joy, and love, and you might just find yourself living into that more and more, every day. Guide yourself with the questions, how would I love to be about this, and how would I love to see this?

Now that you've taken into consideration how you are seeing the world, and how you are being about the world, you are now ready to take action if there is still action to be taken.  It's amazing how often I find there is no longer anything to 'do'. When there is actions required to create what you want, they are simple and straight forward.  Experiment with how different your results are when you take actions that flow from that place of inner wisdom and well-being, as opposed to desperation and fear.

Love and Light,
Tyler

What Would Love Say?

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

 - Rainer Maria Rilke

        One of the most powerful realizations I have had in my life is that when I am having the experience of being stuck, it is almost certainly because I am living life from the answers.  In other words I am approaching my life from a closed off state of already knowing everything.  Conversely, when I am experiencing flow and well-being, it's a pretty safe bet that I am 'living the questions', as Rilke so elegantly states in the quote above. I am coming from a place of genuine curiosity and I ask myself powerful questions throughout the day.

For the last several days I have been asking myself some variation of the question "What would love say?", and I'd like to share with you some of the things that came up.  Now before I go any further, none of what I say here is the truth or correct in any sort of cosmic sense;  all I'm sharing is the answers that I got from asking my inner guidance this powerful question.  If you experiment with asking yourself powerful questions, which I highly recommend, you may get very different answers to those that I get, and that's great.  Know that your own wisdom will have messages that are relevant for you in the moment, nothing is either right or wrong here. The question is, is it useful, and is it uplifting?

Now, just to clarify, when I ask to see through the eyes of love, I'm speaking of an unconditional loving energy that is much different than western cultures' relatively limited view of romantic love.

Alright, so what did love have to say to me?  Here are a few of the insights I got from that still, small voice within.

Love would say 'You are that which you have been looking for'

Love would say 'Your essential self is love'

Love would say 'Love is real, fear is an illusion'

Love would say 'We all have the capacity to come from love in any moment'

Love would say 'Love bears no grievances under any circumstance'

Love would say 'You are much more than just your body'

Love would say 'You are not your thoughts'

Love would say 'When you love others, you love yourself'

Love would say 'You can never fight your way to a peaceful resolution'

Love would say 'You are not what you do'

Love would say 'Forgive everyone and everything. and forgiveness is simply seeing others for who they really are'

Love would say 'We are all connected, and that separateness is an illusion'

Love would say 'Anything other than love such as anger and fear, is simply a call for more love.  And remember, you can love someone from a distance'

Love would say 'Peace, Love, and Joy are your birthright'

Love would say 'We are all divine beings of light'

Love would say 'When you are arguing or fighting with someone else, you are only fighting yourself'

Love would say 'There are no violent people only violent actions'

Love would say 'When someone behaves in a way that is unloving or unkind, they have simply forgotten who they really are in that moment.'

Love would say 'If you want to have a more wonderful experience of life, practice loving yourself, and taking really good care of yourself.  Your own well-being is the best gift you could ever give to someone else, even if they don't realize that.'

Love would say 'Any emotional hurt I feel inside will pass just like the clouds in the sky to reveal the sun'
Love would say 'Everyone is doing the best they know how given their current level of understanding'
Love would say 'There is nothing you need to be, do, have, or change in order to be happy'
Love would say that 'Love is formless, so don't worry so much about how it shows up'


For me this is a useful exercise in both asking powerful questions, and tapping in to your own wisdom and intuition.  What will your question be?  Love is a powerful word for me that includes essence, spirit, and wisdom.  For you, it may be something very different.

This Weeks Experiment:

1. Think of some state of being that you want to show up more as
2. Fashion a question around it, such as 'What would _____ Say, See, or Do.  
3. Be sure to get quiet within, do some gentle deep breathing.
4. Ask the question.
5. Listen for an answer.  

Just for fun as a side experiment, see if you can separate out the answers you get from your head, and those that seem to come from a deeper, wiser place.

Until next time, get curious, be who you really are, and have a wonderful experience of life!

Love and Light,
Tyler