People Pleasing?
Are your actions, which include spoken words aimed at being liked? Is being liked the primary goal? Are you willing consciously or not, to compromise yourself to be liked? If that’s the case, then no one ever gets to know the real you and we all lose. Worse, is that you don’t get to know the real you from which your true joy emanates.
If your actions are moral, ethical, and compassionate, then do what you do in a way that pleases you. Do what you like and hope that others like it and don’t do what others like and hope you like it.
“It is better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for someone you are not.” – Andre Gide
“I don’t want to be interesting. I want to be good.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Who Or What Sets Your Mood?
Does a rainy day set your mood? Does a rejection or acceptance, perceived or real set your mood? In other words, is it external validation that you require?
If we begin each day by being thankful and grateful for the gift of life and all its possibilities, we will curtail the need for external validation.
Throughout the day if you remind yourself that the gift is given to you to use it for the benefit of one or many, you will have all the validation you need. This is especially true when you utilize that gift and all of your possibilities.
“Happiness is an inside job.” – William Arthur Ward
“There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.” – Herman Hesse
Revised from the original sent 6/29/11
Kicks
Sing along “Kicks just keep getting harder to find…..” – Paul Revere and the Raiders
Are you seeking kicks to fill a void thinking that will bring you happiness? Or would you find that joy by seeking fulfillment that will bring lasting happiness? The way to permanently fill a void is by finding fulfillment. Or is that something you avoid? We too often look for kicks, fun, and things as the primary goal, thinking that will bring us happiness. The kicks are like eating a piece of candy. That brings a fleeting high and then a low, and so we crave another piece of candy. Nutritionists will tell you to avoid simple carbohydrates (sugars) and for sustained energy eat complex carbohydrates (whole grain starches). To find a sustained level of joy or fulfillment do something to bring happiness to others. Then you can have some candy.
“Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.” – Zhuangzi
“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington
“It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.” – Walter Benjamin
Happy Day of Giving Thanks
We so quickly and casually say “Happy Thanksgiving” that we often miss and forget that it’s a day for actually giving thanks. Of course, so is every day and we begin everyday with Thanks.
Thank You for being a friend of The Spinning Rabbi
Happy Thanksgiving!
Free Will
While we have all been created for and with a purpose/mission, we were also created with free will. We have the freedom to make choices, good or bad. We instinctively know what is for the good, yet that is not what we always execute. Adam and Eve knew not to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge* and yet they were seduced into doing so. They had it all, then threw it away and left us the legacy of repairing the damage their choice created. The world we all wish for is in our hands. It may not happen on our schedule, but by all of us making the right and good choices, we will get there. We can do good because it’s the right thing and we can do right because it’s the good thing. The freedom we were given should be celebrated by exercising it for the good. We should be grateful for it and not leave it to someone else to do our part.
“We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice”. – Isaac Bashevis Singer
“Perhaps the greatest madness of all is to see life only as it is and not as it ought to be.” – Cervantes
Dr. Viktor Frankl in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, vividly describes how inmates of Auschwitz living in unimaginable conditions and with everything stripped from them still had the freedom to do good.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way”. – Dr. Viktor Frankl from “Man’s Search for Meaning”
*Conventional wisdom says the fruit was an apple. Yet in the Torah it does not say what kind of fruit it was. All we know is that it was organic and locally grown (laugh)
Right Now
You Cheated, You Lied….”* Cont’d
Once we have internalized the belief that we have a purpose and it’s that purpose which makes us valuable, we take the next step. The next step is to do, and do, and do more.
“When deeds speak, words are nothing.” – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
We all intrinsically know what to do and the opportunities are presented to us all the time, if we have a “listening heart”.
“I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us…if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do.” – Christopher Reeves
Knowing what to do and doing it, is sometimes a big to do. It is a big to do only because we make it so. The most important moment of all is right now, therefore the time to start is right now.
“How wonderful it is, that nobody need wait a single minute before starting to improve the world”. – Anne Frank
“The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” – Proverb
‘A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” – Charles Darwin
The Spinning Rabbi - Heart & Soul 