Author Archives: Guus

Don’t compare yourself to others, or to the world

Today I (still) found myself in a very negative thinking pattern. And the reasons behind this negativity and sadness seem to be something like comparing yourself to others and (high) expectations.

I was hit yesterday with what a friend said, that I was beautiful, that if I would look inside, behind all the negativity, all the mud, all the dirt, I would see myself as I really am, I would see a diamond or diamonds. And I’m still not sure what hit me, as I know it’s true, but somehow I don’t feel it, can’t accept it, can’t deal with it. And I guess this is true for most people, so probably also for you.

How weird most human beings are, mostly seeing themselves as negative, telling themselves how bad they are, mostly telling themselves they’re not OK. And it seems it’s all about uprising, about culture, all about how often we have heard not to do something because it’s bad. But how can we be bad? We didn’t make ourselves, create ourselves, or maybe we did. We just ‘are’. And are baby’s bad? Are we bad when we are born?

So what is all this. Christian culture? Being born in sin? Or even Buddhism, having karma, being born with karma?

And why I am writing this? Well, I am still inspired by the words of Lynn Grabhorn that we have the right to be happy, that we have the right to wish for things, want things, where most cultures would consider ‘wanting’ something bad, or having a lot, especially money being bad. But why would it be bad to want something, or have a lot of money. In the end there is enough or even a lot of everything, including money. And does it hurt anybody to want things, have things, except maybe that others might be jealous? And even it it would hurt someone else, then still, what would be wrong with wanting something? We just are who we are.

And I want to finish with some paragraphs from the book of Lynn Grabhorn, as I think they are very, very true and not applying this stands in the way of a lot of happiness and success:

Now here’s the big news: you don’t have to be worthy of a blasted thing to have your desires.

You don’t have to prove, or witness, or demonstrate, or pass a moral test.

You don’t have to explain your reasons, or make excuses to your family, to yourself or to God.

You don’t have to be any more worthy or deserving, or trustworthy, or upstanding than you are now.

You only have to make one decision…, just one…, and that is to be happy.

But you will never start down that road until you allow your Wants – your dreams, your desires, your hankerings – to come out of the closet, not just peek around the corner of a cracked-open door, but come all the way out!

Like any hidden talent that you’ve either consciously or unconsciously known was there but didn’t feel comfortable bringing out, once you accept the fact that wanting is part of you, and that doing it sis really okay, it becomes fun. Joy starts to flow. You begin to vibrate differently, for when you are in joy with Life you cannot vibrate negatively and you cannot attract negatively, only positively.

When you are in joy with Life, you cannot feel insecure, ashamed, unworthy, unsafe, guilty, or inferior in any manner, because you aren’t vibrating there. You cannot feel lack of any kind. Nor can you attract it.

The only thing you will do as you begin to unlock your Wants is vibrate more joy, more abundance, and more freedom in your experience. Small price to pay for dreaming, wouldn’t you say?

And it makes no difference what you choose to dream! Choose your dream because it makes you happy, and you’ll vibrate it into your life. Dream the dream of joy, dream the dream of fulfillment, dream the dream of frivolity, but DREAM!

Having desires – wanting – is no more a sin than breathing. Never again think you have to justify your Wants. Just don’t! You cannot be justifying, defending or rationalizing – which is all negative flowing – and remain to your core energy.

You need to make no excuses to anything, anybody or any higher or lower authority for your desires. Certainly not to God. To do so is to turn your back on your own higher energy, thus denying your very existence, your divine right to Life. Contrary to common teachings, gaining happiness is your hallowed right of birth.

So let yourself go, and dream. You are already creating your life every moment of every day by how you think and vibrate; you might as well create it the way you’d like it to be.

So what are your dreams? Maybe long forgotten? Your own dreams, not the dreams of others?

Wow, an inspiring day

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Wow, I had an inspiring day, even though it started with a night I hardly slept. And I had to wake up quite early as a friend of mine had invited me to attend a Buddhist meeting of SGI, representative organization of Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism at 9.30am, so it was not really easy for me to get going, especially as waking up is not my strongest characteristic.

I still don’t fully get this Buddhist thing, including the chanting of Nam-Myo-Ho-Renge-Kyo, but as my friend seems to be very positive and happy I have decided I’ll give it a try. The philosophy of Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism is a bit weird though at first, as it seems on many questions I have the simple answer is ‘just chant’. Being quite a complicated person as I think I am that’s not an easy answer to deal with, but maybe it is exactly the answer I and I guess many other people need: just keep it simple, don’t think, just do and everything will be ok. Of course there is more to it, but then better check out any SGI member or the SGI website for more information as I’m not a member and they are very serious about the right teaching.

About today during the chanting in the meeting I had many experiences. At first I just started to cry, which felt very embarrassing, as I was just new and I guess the only one crying. It was the first time in a long time though that I realized that I am a very sensitive person and that this crying is part of it. It’s not really sadness or so, just very deep emotion. And I realized that I had suppressed that emotion or maybe expressing that emotion for too long, like completely harnessing it inside, locking it up. And I am starting to realize that doing things like that, locking myself up, would of course result in an awful lot of stress and complete isolation from other people. Because how can other people see me as I really am, how can I see myself as I really am if I completely hide, well, completely hide myself, hide my true feelings, my true self. How can people love me, how can I love myself if I deny my very self, my very own being.

The second thing that happened was that i noticed that it took a while for the chanting to be in unison, or at least for like 80% in unison. It was my first experience with chanting in quite a large group and I never noticed the differences and the importance of a leader. And the difference of the leader chanting or not. And realizing that probably everybody has or had a similar experience as I had, And for me the experience was something like my emotions making it hard for me to chant, mainly because of my emotional crying. But sometimes also just feeling blocked. And it felt that the whole group was just trying to get ‘in tune’ trying to get rid of all negativity by chanting. And it took a while before there was some kind of unison in the chanting, so it seemed like quite an effort, but it felt good as the chanting got more and more, well, smooth, in unison. So there was change in energy, there was turning negative into positive, and it was kind of massive.

What I also noticed was that everybody chants differently, indeed, trying to get in tune, but different. It told me that people are different, but everybody is trying to get to ‘the good’. It made me realize that in real life people are also different, something I don’t fully get or maybe often just forget, not realize. So quite an experience for me, the ‘large group chant’.

And then the song Sleeping Child of Michael Learns to Rock was played, played on a guitar. And the guitar sounded cheap at first. And then I realized I like this type of guitar. And that I really like and love this song. And that the player, although he did not play it perfect, had done his effort, had done his exercise. And suddenly I realized that i had forgotten this type of guitar sound, that I had forgotten to listen to music for a long time. That i had forgotten how beautiful music can be, life can be. And I still don’t know what happened to me in life, i still don’t know why I ended up here, in misery, with everything fallen apart. But this song, this guitar player, this guitar sound brought back some of my long forgotten dreams, some of my long forgotten ‘enjoy life’ things, no matter how imperfect the guitar sound, no matter how imperfect the guitar player. It was one of the most beautiful things I ever experienced, so thank you friend who brought me here, thank you guitar player, for giving me this today.

Desire, spirituality and persistence

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Tonight I was with a friend and we were talking about the thing I want most in life, about what I defined as my desire and definite purpose. And I am getting confused here, because I think basically the conclusion was that I should give up on my desire and move on, look for something better. Or actually while writing this that was not was actually said or meant, but maybe my interpretation.

The whole thing was basically about spirituality, something like ‘what am I doing here on this earth’. And going back, when I wrote my ‘desire document‘ as I call it, the one from the six steps like writing down your definite purpose, I was pretty sure about my desire, my definite purpose, so no matter what, I stuck to it and am still (kind of?) sticking to it. And I never, ever changed my initial statement of what I wanted, what I want in life, no matter what happened. But what if my definite purpose is wrong, spiritually? What if I’m just stubborn? What if my persistence is just ‘being stubborn’? What if I chose the wrong thing to do?

And of course this post is all about doubt, all about ‘not willing to give’ or ‘not willing to give anymore’. And about that in my case it seems to take so much time and effort and suffering to get what I really want.

But while writing I somehow feel that maybe this is what it’s all about. That in the end indeed I’ll get what I want and deserve, as long as I don’t give up, as long as I don’t declare failure. That I still declare all the bumps in the road, even though the goal kind of feels further away than anytime before as defeat, not as failure.

And it’s weird, because while writing this it still seems that this is exactly what it’s all about. Not giving up, not declaring failure, just continue, until you get what you want, no matter the doubt, no matter the bumps, no matter what.

And yes, I guess I’m still within my constraints, my ‘willing to give’, even though it doesn’t always feel good what I’m doing. So I guess it’s not time to give up, it’s time to keep thinking of my goal, of what I really want in life. Even though it feels like it’s starting to take too much time.

But now, while writing, I feel again the desire come up, as I have a very clear picture in mind of what I want and what I also wrote down. And what I really want is good, feels good, so I guess for now I’ll just hang on to it and not give up. As it’s good for everybody involved.

Time will tell, and I don’t mean that as a negative. Maybe indeed this is what success is all about: persist until you got what you want.

Wow, another one

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Wow, another post I want to write and I don’t feel any inspiration at the moment. But I can still be proud of myself as I just saw that this is post number 61 and as I wrote most of the posts and only missed one day or so I think I achieved quite a goal and showed quite some discipline. And I thought and I am still thinking I really had no discipline, but facts now show differently. For the last months, or maybe even the last half year with the things I kind of ‘put on myself’ I have been very successful, even though they are and were little things, at least in my opinion.

And that’s what a friend of mine recently told me, that I’m so hard on myself. And I guess she is right. It felt as if she is right. But my main question is still that if I am so hard on myself, or actually just have been pushing and persisting all my life, why did I not achieve the real success yet? I’m really confused with that, although I see more and more why, as success requires a lot more than just ‘push, push, push’ or work hard and be persistent. Indeed, it seems the harder I force or forced myself, the less successful I was. So recently I am a lot easier on myself, more relaxed, and it seems indeed that things go more ‘on their own’, more natural.

The weird and scary part is still that I hardly have any money left, actually even the opposite, and no clear picture of the future. And those things I always had, at least I thought I had. But still, I feel also less scared, so somehow it seems I’m making progress. Somehow it seems I’m starting to understand.

And I guess that’s all about The Secret or the one thing that Napoleon Hill doesn’t specifically describes in Think and Grow Rich. Somehow you need to figure it out yourself, somehow the whole thing is about, well, don’t know how to describe, but I’m starting to get the feel about it. Somehow it’s about taking charge in a natural way, without all the ‘push, push, push’ and that’s also what Lynn Grabhorn wrote about. The big thing, the really big thing, doesn’t seem to be that difficult and it seems you can only understand it ‘when you are there’.

So where are you?

And this reminds me that one of the ideas of the site was to connect ‘inspirors’ with ‘people who need inspiration’. So we need to find a way how to do that.

For now of course we can do that manually, so just e-mail us or write something in a comment.

Things are falling into place

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Things are falling into place. I ended up reading the last chapter of the part of Think and Grow Rich about the Power of the Master Mind. It seems all the answers to life, to success somehow are in that book, same as in many other books. It’s something like finding yourself, finding your destiny, finding your dreams. Then find people to share it with, the right people. Then think about how you can make that dream come true, make some kind of planning. And then put that plan into action.

But the whole thing works only from positive emotions, if you have conquered your fears, if you are able to stand on your own, believe in yourself, and in others. Allow yourself to be part of it, allow others to be part of it.

And yes, it takes thinking, a lot of thinking. I have been thinking a lot lately, and things are falling into place. And I still feel guilty, as my whole process took a lot of time, time I ‘should’ have spent on other things, useful things, things ‘they’ say I should do. And I feel guilty of ‘not taking action’, not ‘doing the right thing’. But somehow I’m starting to see that action without purpose, action without the right dream, action without a definite purpose, without desire, without planning, is useless, leads nowhere.

So my next question is how I can help you, use the thinking i did, use the experience I have, much of which is not pretty, looking back. And the site is called inspiration for success, as it started from me not being inspired, inspired by other people. So the site is planned to inspire, not planned as ‘self help’ site as there are already many very good sites on that. I think through there should be and there actually are already some ‘self help exercises‘ in the site, but I think we need to make sure they are inspiring, not just ‘exercises’.I k

So maybe for now, to inspire you, in my mind is something like, first go for your dream, find your destiny, find your definite purpose. And make sure you feel it, make sure it feels good for you, no matter what other people say, no matter what your limiting beliefs say. Don’t do anything else until you know deep inside it’s YOUR dream, your destiny, what YOU want to do in life.