“When we fear what other people think about us, we are frequently more focused on ‘being interesting’ and less focused on ‘taking an interest.’ That’s why many people talk a great deal when they are anxious and why many people never feel heard. If both people and conversation are trying to be interesting, there is no one left to genuinely listen.”
― John Yokoyama, When Fish Fly: Lessons for Creating a Vital and Energized Workplace from the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market
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Rooted in traditional Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements as taught by Don Miguel Ruiz offer steps toward personal freedom and a life of peace, grace, and unconditional love. The Toltec strived for mastery of awareness through personal discipline. The agreements are simple but profound; here is the essence of each of them:
Unfortunately, just before you take your first step on the righteous journey to pursue your dreams, people around you, even the ones who deeply care for you, will give you awful advice. It’s not because they have evil intentions. It’s because they don’t understand the big picture – what your dreams, passions, and life goals mean to you. They don’t understand that, to you, the reward is worth the risk.
So they try to protect you by shielding you from the possibility of failure, which, in effect, also shields you from the possibility of making your dreams a reality.
As our friend Steve Jobs says:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Here are 10 ill-advised tips (lies) people will likely tell you when you decide to pursue your dreams, and why they are dreadfully mistaken.
Sufi mystic Shibli was asked, “Who guided you in the Path?”
He said: “A dog. One day I saw him, almost dead with thirst, standing by the water’s edge. Every time he looked at his reflection in the water he was frightened, and withdrew, because he thought it was another dog.
“In this same way my own obstacle vanished, when I knew that it was what I took to be my own self. And my Way was first shown to me by the behavior of a dog.”
Question society and what you are told. You don’t have to live the life that has been laid about before you. You don’t have to live the life your parents, grandparents, and great grandparents have lived. Feed your potential by moving around, by stirring things up.I want to protect youth from false guilt that is projected onto them when deciding what path is their own. You don’t have to answer your neighbor when they condescendingly ask about your plans are after high school. Breathe, collect your thoughts, try things, see what falls in your lap and recognize what feels true. What is time? It’s subjective. You are not the same. You are you. Why are we told we must decide by a certain age? Pressured into decisions with their deadlines, we’re told we won’t be great if we don’t follow through into traditional schooling. Why are we conformed into school systems that control our minds for eight hours a day, telling us we must learn this way, speak this way, perform this way, obey until we graduate, and then live this way, retire, die? The natural latter seems like death to creativity in so many of the young, leaving them silent and straight jacketed walking in a straight line to predictability.
It’s always your choosing to decide whether you’ll live a curious life or a comfortable one. Maybe I’m crazy for not following a path I know that would lead me to a stable life, maybe I’m crazy for following my passions. Maybe I won’t have a big yard or an abundance in my bank account, but I’ll have stories and a heart bigger than my body, a brain with stretch marks. I’ll have films and images, an archive of my life of adventure. My life of constant hunger for better understanding of Earth and my spirit within it.
There are always other options.
Challenge your comfort, let yourself unfold.
– Madison Dube from thewanderlustchild.com
Life is more than “what you do” We live in a society that likes to define us by our job titles, how much money we make, who we know, and how cool our business card looks.
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