Tag Archives: Emotion

Wow, an inspiring day

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.

Completely down

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The last few days, or even weeks, I have been very down and it seemed that all I had worked for was falling apart again. And I was the cause myself, that was the most frustrating. So last night that inspired me to create this post and related pages, so pages related to ‘what if you are down’. Because it seems that just happens, and I guess not only to me but to everybody on their way in life, on their way to success, so also to you and I guess it’s quite normal.

So indeed, as Napoleon Hill states, “Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the Seed of an equivalent or a greater Benefit”. I can confirm that fully, as in my lowest moments I often come up with the best ideas, like now. If I wouldn’t have been down, I wouldn’t have been inspired by writing a section of the site What if you are down.

Not sure how to continue this post as I want to create a more helpful part of the site to help you, inspire you and not just talk about myself.

So I guess that’s what I’m going to do now. Or maybe one more thing: I think the most important reason for me to be down is if I lost the desire, lost the belief, lost the connection with what I really want or maybe even if I lost the connection with myself.

Anger and inspiration

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Someone was just very angry with me. And as I mostly use the things that happen to me or around me for my daily post it is kind of logical to try to connect anger to inspiration. I feel still upset though, as the anger of the other party was very big, very bad. But I decided to stand my ground. As even though I had done something I could imagine the other party was upset about, angry about, I felt treated unfair.

And yes, even though I’m still upset I guess I did the right thing, standing my ground, thinking of a sentence in Think and Grow Rich: ‘why not put up a stiff fight…’, even though I did not really fight back as the other person was too upset and might have hurt me, as he actually started throwing things at me, damaging things.

Still, standing my ground also gives me a good feeling somewhere below feeling very upset. I feel some kind of power I did not give in to some demands that I thought were wrong. But the type of anger was that bad that I really had to think what to do, how to respond, as bad things might have happened.

So yes, anger can inspire I guess, but only after being upset and when you didn’t let you get dragged into the fight.

And finally I want to share a document here about ending fights: 12 steps to end the fights. Has nothing really to do with this site, but I think there are some very useful suggestions in there on how to deal with anger.

Ruled by emotions

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Well, again, this morning i found out that one of my biggest weaknesses seems to be that when I feel down I kind of completely stop, literally completely stop. And that doesn’t feel like leadership, like being a leader. It doesn’t feel like being on the road to success, to the success I’m looking for.

While thinking I realized though that I really felt hurt from something that happened last night. So somehow I thought that maybe I should put attention to that, even though I considered that was an excuse for doing nothing, for being lazy. But I’m not lazy, I just felt hurt and didn’t understand why my partner was so angry with me last night. I had put quite some effort in a project of ours and he just got angry, told me I had done the wrong thing.

And this made me think further, because it seems most people don’t seem to appreciate what I’m doing, not even friends as they don’t really visit me, not customers, as they often have complaints, not previous bosses and employers as in the end often they asked me to resign and I was even fired in a bad way once. So I was thinking what’s the weakness behind and what to do: I work hard, do many things, but somehow it’s not being appreciated by others. So it must have something to do with me, must be some weakness. And it brings nobody anywhere, not me and also not my customers, friends, partner and maybe others.

So again, doing nothing, just thinking, waiting for some inspiration what to do didn’t really feel like an excuse, even though I feel guilty about those periods that I often have.

So mostly I start reading again in Think and Grow Rich or other books and papers I have around me to inspire me and the one that describes my definite purpose. Mostly I just open the book, relying on Infinite Intelligence to give me the right input, the right advice. So today I first ended up in the part about leadership, which I guess was the right part, because there is something there that you should be able to control yourself to be a good leader. Question arises if you would need a leader to achieve success. And do I or you want to be a leader? And is leadership a requirement for success?

Then, with my feeling of doing the wrong things as people don’t seem to be happy with what I’m doing I ended up with the story of the Chinese in the US who said the most noticeable characteristic of Americans is that their eyes are slant. And indeed, this also goes back to what I was struggling with: what seems so natural and good to do for me doesn’t seem to be so for other people. So the sentence “We refuse to believe that which we do not understand. We foolishly believe that our own imitations are the proper measure of limitations” is sticking in my mind right now as that seems to be exactly what I’m struggling with.

And, while reading a bit more also, the whole thing brought me back to:

I don’t feel desire at the moment, so how can I get anywhere as indeed, I believe desire is the driver of everything.
I don’t have a proper planning in place to deal with the things I’m writing in this post, so I’ll work on my sample plan.
I lost a lot of time taking no action, although wrong actions don’t make much sense also. Still, there are a lot of things on my list i could do anyhow, no matter how I feel, so I guess with those things it is indeed procrastination and laziness.

So what’s the inspiration I want to give you related to the above. I guess to check your weaknesses and make some planning on how to deal with them.

My emotions are blocking me

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It seems i am a very emotional person and it also seems it affects me a lot as my emotions are often blocking me. When things are not going as I want I feel that blocking emotion as tension in the upper part of my legs. And the feeling is so strong that it often blocks me to do anything.

Weird, how thoughts and body and mind work together, in a way are one and in a way are separate. My thoughts are telling me about the feeling and that there is something wrong. My body represents the feeling by the tense muscles in my legs. And while writing this, my mind seems to actually only notice the bodily tension and consider it negative. So in this case the feeling is physical, tense muscles.

Never realized that emotional type feelings could be only in the mind, but also represented by the body. Am asking myself now if there is any difference in those two.

Maybe good to write this article, as I never realized how it worked, how I can get moving again if I feel like this. And again, while writing I realize I am moving, because I am writing this article. So the feeling related to en represented by the tension in my legs has to do with something else I feel like I need to do or should be doing.

So while thinking further, the feeling is telling me I’m avoiding something. And I know a bit what it is, but not really. Again, while writing this I think it is related to things I don’t know how to solve, things i don’t want to solve, but feel I should solve.

And again, ‘should’ is a very bad word to me as it implies I’m doing something wrong, it creates guilt.

And not sure now how to end this post, how to make something inspiring out of this, or how to make an advice type thing of this.

Maybe just the last: be careful with the word ‘should’, towards yourself as well as towards others as I think guilt is a very bad feeling or emotion.

And maybe just be gentle and careful, with yourself and also with others.