A Changed Attitude Can Work Miracles

Don’t quit, COMMIT!
“I’m going to love until love comes back. I’m going to live until life comes back and I’m going to fight until the fight comes back! Because I’m in it, to win it!” -T.D. Jakes

In today’s world, where everyone wants instant results – it is easier than ever to quit. It is easy to think that if it doesn’t come easy to you, it is not for you. It is easy to try something, and then if it doesn’t work out immediately, we can talk our selves out of the importance or the significance of it.  With that said, if you were to ask any person you admire based on what they have given, gained or done, they will all have a very similar formula for success – they never quit.

Re-blogged from Jeff Moore, My Everyday Power (http://everydaypowerblog.com/2014/02/04/3-reasons-to-dream-bigger/#comments)

 

Better Endings Story, by Linda Watts :

A Changed Attitude Can Work Miracles

A changed attitude can change ‘everything’ about a situation or a relationship. I wish it were never necessary, but sometimes it is. I’m thinking back to a time some fifteen years ago when I was certainly not at my best. I allowed a philosophical/ theoretical disagreement with a valued colleague to develop into a schism between us. It reached the point where we could hardly interact and avoided one another at the workplace. I felt terrible about my part in sustaining such a divide, but there it was.

One night in contemplation I sought inner guidance to help heal this situation.  I asked for clarity and  direction, then slept. That next morning I dreamt that this estranged colleague and I were face to face. I allowed my inner Self rather than my upset personality of that time to express Itself.  I smiled and simply beamed, “Hello!” And you know what? He smiled back and said “Hello!” in turn.

That very morning, while I was in the mail room at work, this colleague walked in. We had avoided being in the same space for months. Our eyes met, and I smiled and beamed, “Good morning!” He did likewise. Nothing was ever said between us about the distance we had allowed to develop. But from that moment on, the relationship shifted and it was never again as strained as it had become. Some short months later he received a job elsewhere. I helped to host a farewell gathering for a colleague who had given many years of valued service to our institution.

How did this attitude shift come about? By asking inwardly, then listening to and applying inner guidance. Better Endings often require change of a sort that allows you to break up ‘stuck’ positions. I am not proud of having reached this negative stasis in a relationship of any kind, so it is uncomfortable for me to share it in a blog!  I write about it anyway, in case it resonates with someone else.  People won’t always agree with one another, perhaps especially in academia, where I work. But everyone deserves to give and to receive unconditional love and respect. This helps us realize we are so much more than our limited personalities, ideas and opinions.

************

This next week we get to shift to one of my favorite topics: pets!  I welcome any of your animal companion stories, photos, poetry and gushing insights.

Change It UP!

This week I have noticed a theme in blogs and Tweets I’ve been reading from others. You have to fall sometimes, or take a step back, in order to go forward with greater strength and find success.

This past Thursday morning, while thinking about this theme, I dreamed about a football play. It was an unconventional play. The QB tossed the ball, underhanded, to a receiver some 5 yds ahead. He caught it, looked around, and saw the defense closing in; he could see he had nowhere to run. So, he threw it back to another receiver behind the QB. The player there caught it and, also seeing the defense about to close in on him, he threw it even further backwards to a teammate back near the other team’s goal posts. I knew as the dreamer that the intention was to open up an area without defensive players, so a player could run forward less obstructed after catching the ball from well behind the line of scrimmage. The last player trying to catch the ball, did not, but neither did the opposing team’s players intercept. The play was dead. But it had only been a 1^st or 2^nd down, so the same team lined up again at the line of scrimmage and the next play, the QB passed a regular forward pass that was caught for a 1^st down; forward motion was restored.

Writers and other artists are very often the Innovators for art itself and for culture. New ideas have to start somewhere and it often takes an unconventional thinker or artist to advance ideas and to “change up” how we think about or view the world. This is the basis , to me, of the Beatles’ wild success; it was not that they started by doing anything entirely new, but they ‘changed up’ the way it was being done. They set a new beat that perhaps changed up slightly the heartbeat of the collective world. They broke up thought forms by being unconventional in several ways. Their haircuts—at the time; in retrospect this seems silly now—astounded and offended many parents of their young, devoted fans. Teaming with the Maharaji, courting “revolution”, daring to “Imagine”, they changed up rock and roll and, with it, they elevated an entire generation around a basic theme: openly expressed, unconditional Love.

What’s the message here? CHANGE IT UP! What do we have to lose, really? We must be true to ourselves and forge new grounds where that seems the direction we are given to go with our talents.

If the backwards seeming football play I dreamed of this morning had succeeded, it would have been a wild success; it would have forged a whole new concept in how to move a football forward on the field of play. If, on the other hand, it had been intercepted back near the opposing team’s goal, of course it would be seen as a monumental failure. But, in the end, what does that matter? A “touchdown,” points scored, on this side or that, is only that. I admire the player who got the random idea to “Change It UP!” and started the ball rolling in an entirely new direction. In the dream, on the next play, his team moved conventionally forward again, anyway. Still, the game was forever changed. The other team now knew their worthy opponents might do ANYTHING to succeed. It would be more difficult to defend against this new form of play. It was, in my view, an artistic accomplishment. Perhaps, by the next game, it might become a formal new play in the team’s playbook, one they might incorporate into their team strategy, with tweaks, over time.

What, to you, is an example of this Better Endings principle of “Change It Up”? If you are forging new directions, pushing genre boundaries, Change It UP! Follow your OWN North Star!