Capturing The Thrill

Do What Excites You DailyOM

Each human life has the potential to be dramatic, thrilling, and awe-inspiring. Our lives are, in truth, ours to design. Each day, we make choices that influence the character of our experiences, and our decisions determine whether our paths are rousing or tedious, breathtaking or tiresome. We can create an exciting life by simply doing what excites us whenever the opportunity presents itself. Your passions may ebb and flow, and what excites you one year may not excite you the next, but when you make excitement a regular part of your existence, life becomes more fun and more fulfilling.

If you are somebody that tends to live practically, excitement may overwhelm you at first. To ease the anxiety that prevents you from incorporating all that you find exciting into your life, acknowledge that you are alive right now in this time and every moment matters. When you choose to do more of what excites you, even if your choices requires you to make certain sacrifices, your daily life will soon be imbued with exhilaration, pleasure, and optimistic anticipation.

To understand what excites you, you may need to observe and ponder your reaction to the activities, events, circumstances, and concepts that make up your life. What makes your pulse race, what makes you want to get out of your chair and take action? Try to avoid getting too wrapped up in life’s details; their tedium may cause you to plod through your existence unaware of prospective excitement. Once you have created a substantial list of what excites you, find ways to integrate each item into your routine. You will soon find yourself riding a wave of excitement that lifts you up and makes life truly worth living. What excites you in your life?

The Magician

Today’s Card of the Day is the Tower - Angel Paths

The Magician is normally numbered one and is sometimes called the Magus. The Magician is usually depicted as a powerful adept, a master of the four elements. He is able to shift events in his favour - to make the World change around him according to his Will.

He is highly skilled, highly powerful and hence a highly dynamic and charismatic figure. He is that part of us which we harness to control our own lives. When we are the Magician we make what we want happen.

However, you can be sure that we receive exactly what we ask for - “be careful what you pray for, you might just get it”! The Magician knows where to throw the pebble into the pool of the Universe in order to get exactly the ripples he wants. If we choose happiness and joy and put our Will behind them, that is what we can achieve.

Today’s Affirmation is: My life is everything I make it.

An Inner Choice

Peace DailyOM

Often we look at the outside world and find it in a state of seeming chaos or disorder. We feel compelled to transform the situation from one of turmoil into one of peace, yet we are often disappointed in our best attempts to do so. One reason for this is that we cannot bring to the world what we do not have to offer. Peace starts in our own minds and hearts, not outside of ourselves, and until its roots are firmly entrenched in our own selves, we cannot manifest it externally. Once we have found it within, we can share it with our family, our community, and the whole wide world. Some of us may already be doing just that, but for most of us, the first step is looking within and honestly evaluating the state of our own relationship to peacefulness.

Interestingly, people who manifest peace internally are not different from us; they have chattering thoughts and troubled emotions like we all do. The difference is that they do not lend their energy to them, so those thoughts and feelings can simply rise and fall like the waves of the ocean without disturbing the deeper waters of peacefulness within. We all have this ability to choose how we distribute our energy, and practice enables us to grow increasingly more serene as we choose the vibration of peace over the vibration of conflict. We begin to see our thoughts and feelings as tiny objects on the surface of our being that pose no threat to the deep interior stillness that is the source of peacefulness.

When we find that we are able to locate ourselves more and more in the deeper waters and less on the tumultuous surface of our being, we have discovered a lasting relationship with peace that will enable us to inspire peace beyond ourselves. Until then, we help the world most by practicing the art of choosing peace within.

The Wisdom of the Heart

from the 14th Dalai Lama Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1989)

1. Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
2. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
3. Sleep is the best meditation.
4. Spend some time alone every day.
5. We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.
6. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
7. We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.
8. Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
9. If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.
10. The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis.

Cling Free

From HeartMath

Timely: It’s funny but this seems to describe how I’ve lived life 99% of the time. Sometimes I mistook it for allowing others to walk over me, but I recognize that it truly is a matter of not allowing it to bother me. I simply do not care (in the non-attached sense). I do care about those around me! 

How often are you angry or frustrated or disappointed by someone’s actions because they aren’t what you want or expect? How often do you operate more from your own agenda rather than what is needed or important for the other person? Worse yet, how often do you get what you want only to discover it wasn’t the best of all possibilities?

Whether it’s the actions we expect our colleagues to take, the recognition we think we deserve, or the careers we want our children to choose, we can save a tremendous amount of energy when we accept that people will not always act as expected or in ways that suit us. This doesn’t mean losing control; it means acknowledging that in most cases we’re not in control and don’t need to be for things to turn out okay.

Accept the unpredictable nature of life. Let go of expectations and view the world around you from a new and more spontaneous perspective. Be more flexible and ready to adapt and respond to whatever may come your way with more intelligence, more creativity and more balance. Expect only the unexpected!