Time Warrior

Feeling overwhelmed?

Odds are you’re spending way too much time thinking about the future and all the things you think you need to get done.

Byron Katie (check out the Notes on Loving What Is) puts it this way:“We never receive more than we can handle, and there is always just one thing to do.”

So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, quit stressing yourself out.

Pick one thing to do and do it with everything you’ve got.

(And repeat. :)

How great is that story? :)

Are you using the crayons of your imagination to draw scary monsters that freak you out?

Well, let’s quit doing that!!!

(It really is that simple.)

Here’s how Vernon Howard puts it in his great book,The Power of Your Supermind (see Notes): “A chief cause of unhappiness is what I call mental movies. Mental movies are a misuse of the imagination. You know how it goes. You have a painful experience with someone, then run it over and over in your mind. You visualize what you said, what he did, how you both felt. As awful as it is, you feel compelled to repeat the film day and night. It is as if you were locked inside a theatre playing a horrible movie.”

Here’s to putting the crayons away and no longer drawing those scary monsters and/or watching that horrible movie!

Action action action.

That’s the essence of the Time Warrior.

As Chandler tells us, we need to forget considerations of happiness and just get into action.

This is a theme he hits again and again throughout the book. Another theme he comes back to is the fact that we want to focus on SERVICE.

So, when I read the above passage, I immediately thought of Viktor Frankl’s extraordinary advice to his students. This quote probably wins the award for “Most Quoted” in these Notes, but it’s worth the repetition!

“Again and again I therefore admonish my students in Europe and America: Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”

Here’s to letting our happiness be a by-product of service in action!

LOVE. THAT.

“What needs to be done now in these three minutes?” Reminds me of another one of my favorite questions: “Now what needs to be done?” You procrastinating?

Alright.

What needs to get done now in the next three minutes?

Get on that and watch your procrastination gremlins retreat into the crazy place they came from forever. :)

Like me, Chandler’s a huge fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

So, let’s enjoy some Emerson mojo that echoes the above wisdom.

He tells us: “Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do.”

Plus: “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”

And, I just love this passage from Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (see Notes): “George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: ‘The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.’ So don’t bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking—and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It’s the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth—and one of the best.”

Time to spit on our hands and take DECISIVE ACTION, yo!

Stuck?

Alrighty.

Time to ask yourself the all-important anxiety-busting question: What’s my next action?

Then do it. NOW.

In fact, if you’ve been stressed, now might be a good time to ask yourself that question.

What’s your next action? Go rock it. We’ll be here when you get back. :)

Hah.

That’s awesome.

Seriously though.

What are you procrastinating on?

Chandler tells us to make a list of three things we’ve procrastinated on. And then to do those things.

Let’s take the first step now by listing the three things you’ve been procrastinating on:

1. __________________________________________________________

2. __________________________________________________________

3. __________________________________________________________

Alright. Step 1 is complete.

Now go do those three things.

(And, repeat whenever necessary. :)

That comes from a chapter on the power of perception.

Fact is, as we discuss ALL the time throughout these Notes, it’s ALL about our perception. Why not choose the most empowering one?

These challenges? They’re what help us grow. The weights in our spiritual gym.

Here’s how Vernon Howard puts it in The Power of Your Supermind: “If your grand purpose in life is to wake up, then whatever happens to you is good, for it can prod you into self-awakening.”

He also tells us: “If it takes apparent misfortune to turn us into true philosophers and doers of good to receive good, then apparent misfortune is our greatest fortune.”

Amen to that.

Here’s to embracing the wind on our heroic kite flying expedition, my friend.

Yikes!

I’d never heard of hagfish before. But that’s disgusting.

And, it’s quite an appropriate comparison, eh?

Just like the slimy little eel-like creatures that slide into their prey and kill it from the inside, our worries and resentments eat us from the inside-out.

It’s time to go fishing.

Let’s let go of our resentments from the past along with our worries about the future and enjoy rockin’ it in the eternal now!!!

That’s awesome.

Chandler is a super funny guy who gets a kick out of sharing his less-than-stellar past filled with addictions and aimlessness.

His wisdom reminds me of Paulo Coelho’s gem: “I don’t regret the painful times; I bare my scars as if they were medals.”

Which reminds me of Joseph Campbell’s mojo: “Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength is there. Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”

Here’s to being proud of our scars and train wrecks and time in hell as we rock it today.

As Alexander Graham Bell tells us: “Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

You want energy?

Get REALLY clear on what you want.

Victims spend all their times complaining about all the things in their lives that aren’t going their way. We need to shift to a Creator orientation and the way to do that is really simple: Focus on what you want.

As David Emerald tells us in his great book The Power of TED* (see Notes): “One of the fundamental differences between the Victim Orientation and this one [Creator] is where you put your focus of attention… For Victims, the focus is always on what they don’t want: the problems that seem constantly to multiply in their lives. They don’t want the person, condition, or circumstance they consider their Persecutor, and they don’t want the fear that leads to fight, flee or freeze reactions, either. Creators, on the other hand, place their focus on what they do want. Doing this, Creators still face and solve problems in the course of creating outcomes they want, but their focus remains fixed on their ultimate vision.”