Archives for September 2013

Sep 21 2013

Why You Should Forgive?

Why Forgive?

That’s a good question. I know I’ve felt hurt by others’ actions before. If I tallied all the times I was hurt physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually… The list would be very long. I’m sure it’s the same for you.

But what’s the point?

Does it hurt the people who hurt me when I think of the things that happened?

Does it pay them back or get even with them?

Do they even know I’m thinking about it?

To think of injustices I’ve received in the past is like tearing open a healed wound to see if the damage is still there.

And what of the injustices I’ve inflicted on others? When I’ve learned from them, grown from them, become a new man. Does constantly examining them make them go away?

Does it change what happened?

Can anything change the past?

Does it help people I’ve hurt for me to punish myself constantly for something I did in the past when I was a completely different person?

Does it help you if you punish yourself for things you did in the past, when you were a different person?

Does it help those around you?

The past overflows with lessons. When we learn the lesson and grow, it’s time to let it go. Besides, it’s nearly impossible to grow from something you’re unwilling to release.

But let’s get back to why we should forgive.

If something horrible happened to you and you continually think about it, you’re forcing yourself to relive that experience over and over. If you take the same event and you discover the lessons in it, then you can release it. When you release it, you stop reliving it. That’s when you truly heal.

Part of healing is forgiving the person who hurt you.

Understand that the person may never know you forgive them. You can tell them if you want but it’s okay if you don’t. Forgiveness isn’t about going to that person and telling them everything is okay. Maybe it’s not okay. Maybe what they did was horrible beyond compare. Maybe it was life-altering for you or your family.

You should still forgive them because forgiveness isn’t about them.

Forgiveness is about you.

Forgiveness helps you. When you make the choice to forgive, you’re choosing to release hate, fear, loathing, sadness… All the things that tear at you, that bind you in chains of misery.

Forgiveness is refusing to let painful events in your past ruin your present or your future.

What if the person who hurt you did it deliberately, with malicious intent?

“Oh no, I could never forgive them…”

Why?

Reframe it. When you choose to hold hatred and anger in your heart, it’s like your allowing that person to continue hurting you. In cases like that, isn’t the best ‘revenge’ to completely let go of what happened so their actions never hurt you again?

We’ve all seen the person who refuses to forgive another. Sometimes it consumes their life. They begin to define themselves by the hatred they hold for the person who hurt them. That’s bad enough. The truly sad thing is that their choice to withhold forgiveness impacts everyone in their life. Their children, friends, family, associates, everyone they interact with feels the hatred, anger, pain that they radiate.

So what do you do? How do you start forgiving?

Understand that their actions weren’t about you. Their actions were and are about them. For whatever reason, the person who hurt you was doing the only behavior they knew to meet some need. I like to think that if the person knew a better way of meeting their needs, they’d do that instead. Again, this in no way justifies their behavior or makes it okay. It helps you understand that what they did was a desperate attempt to meet some deep emotional need.

Ask yourself, “If I were them, why would I do that?” This also helps you understand that their behavior was about them.

Look for the lessons in the event. How could this event improve your life? That might sound strange but everything has some positive in it. When you discover how something about a painful or otherwise damaging event can improve your life, you’re miles closer to releasing it, to healing.

Ho’oponopono

Ho’oponopono is a prayer or meditation that you repeat while thinking of the person who harmed you. It’s worked wonders in my life. You can also use Ho’oponopono while thinking of yourself. How many of us hold anger toward ourselves about some past event that we should or could have handled better?

It works best if you sit quietly, without distractions. Then think of the person who hurt you or that you hold anger toward and repeat mentally; their name I love you. I’m Sorry. Please Forgive me.

If the name of the person who hurt you is Rick, then you’d repeat Rick, I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Do this at least ten times in a row every day for a week. You’ll be amazed at the difference you feel.

But why would you even think forgive me to the person who hurt you?

What you’re really saying is forgive me for holding onto the anger, hatred, hurt… I feel over your actions. When you hold on to those things it’s about you. It’s about your choice to remain in pain. This helps you release those feelings and that helps you heal. Again, this is only something you say in your mind. They’ll never know unless you tell them.

When you chose to use Ho’oponopono on yourself, you use your name. So when I use the method on myself I say, “Roland, I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” If your name is Sue, you’d say, “Sue, I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” If you resist the urge to use Ho’oponopono on yourself, then you really must do it!

You might feel weird or silly saying that to yourself but I challenge you to try it anyway. It heals deep wounds. It reduces self-criticism. It fosters patience. It lets you know that you care and love yourself in a healthy way.

Ultimately, the real question is, “What have you got to lose?”

Until next time:

You Are The Master of Your Destiny!

Roland

Sep 15 2013

Why Do You Care What Others’ Think?

Really; Why Do You Care What Others’ Think?

I used to worry so much about what others’ thought that I was paralyzed by fear. I put off doing things I loved because I might look foolish. I rarely tried new things for the same reason. I felt like I was walking in a spotlight, like everyone was watching, judging my every word and movement.

You might imagine the havoc that creates. How can you ever learn new things or improve when you’re terrified of trying because, “Someone might see me mess up…”

When I remember what it was like to live that way, I’m dumbstruck. Seriously, the energy it takes to constantly worry about what others’ think is exhausting! It’s hardly living. It’s like I was a prisoner, shackled in the cell of my fear!

Maybe you can relate to how that feels, maybe you can’t. I hope you can’t honestly because life is too short to let fear of people’s opinions rule you.

Here’s an example of how I used to let fear of others’ opinions control me:

Defeated

About 10 years ago I was working out almost every day. I’d go to the gym in the morning and exercise for two hours and then go to work. I was in great shape and I loved my time in the gym. For over a year I was a regular.

Then I missed a few days because of a family vacation. No big deal, right? Just get my butt back in the gym as soon as the vacation was over.

That’s the logical thing to do. Is that what I did?

Not so much.

I’d only missed five days, less than a week… I got up, got my things together, and drove to the gym. But when I got there, waves of fear and anxiety washed over me. I gripped the door handle in my car. But I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I wanted to, desperately. But the voices in my head were louder than my desire to workout.

I knew that my friends would think I was a fool for missing my workouts over the past few days.

I knew I’d let them down.

I knew I’d failed at my goal to get in the best shape of my life.

I knew they’d talk behind my back about my lack of dedication, that they’d point and jeer when I wasn’t looking…

After about 30 minutes sitting there, I tucked tail and drove to the office, defeated.

After that it became easier to miss my workouts. I was in a self-defeating cycle. I wouldn’t go to the gym because I feared others’ opinions. Each day I missed at the gym strengthened my fear of what they thought. You certainly understand the problem with this pattern. Soon I’d rationalized that I didn’t want to work out at the gym anyway. And because we moved before I learned to overcome my fear of what others’ thought, I never set foot in that gym again. In fact, I stopped working out for a few years after that and ended up in the worst physical shape of my life, which I overcame later—but that’s another story for another time.

I eventually overcame my fear of, what others’ thought, and learned some valuable lessons:

People’s opinions are their own. They have more to do with them than you (or me).
People are rarely watching us, judging our every action. And even if they are, So What? Who Cares What They Think!
You only control your actions. What other’s think is outside your control. So do what you know is right because its right and let others worry about themselves.
Relax your rules about being perfect. If you miss a day, or two, or ten doing something you want to do, then just stop the slide and take action. Get back in your routine as quickly as possible. Face it, life happens. Sometimes things are going to get in the way of what you want to do. Accept that up front and it’s easier to navigate through distractions and obstacles.
Every time you take action in the face of fear, the actions get easier. In time you forget that you were ever afraid.

Hopefully you’ve never experienced this type of fear personally. But if you have, that’s okay. You can get past it.

Start by asking yourself the following question…

What would happen if I stopped being afraid of that?

Then break the thing you want to do into the smallest possible step And Do That Step Now!

Keep repeating this process and you’ll soon discover your fear has vanished and you’re taking action on your dreams!

You Are The Master of Your Destiny!

Roland

Sep 11 2013

There is no Tomorrow

There is no Tomorrow is a story from my Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology: A Slice of Madness. I hadn’t planned on posting this story on my blog, but when I woke this morning, it seemed the perfect thing to do. Enjoy!

There is No Tomorrow

Detective O’Connell pulled his mustache and walked in tight circles as he read the note. His jowls and gut quivered in time with his stride. When he finished he barked, “He’s a freakin madman!”

“C’mon, O’Connell, what’s it say?” His bear of a partner, Detective Hamner, asked. The other officers just stood there and looked at O’Connell with blank expressions.

“Moron…thinks he’s gonna save the world!” O’Connell laughed. He gripped the note with fingers like banana slugs and shoved it at Hamner. Then he noticed the recorder, it was still running.

“Hey, Ham. Check this out.” He peered into the recorder’s view screen and noted the blank wall centered in the shot.

“What’s that?” Ham didn’t even look; he was enjoying the note too much.

“A digicorder. And it’s still recording…” O’Connell’s fingers disappeared in his walrus like jowls as he massaged them. “Says it’s been runnin for forty hours…” He sighed. “Odd.”

“Yeah, odd,” Hamner grunted.

After documenting everything they could about the recorder, they stopped it and went back to the beginning…

Since he was a boy Harold dreamt of time travel. Not the childish what if I could change that or go there type of dream. No… He dreamed endlessly of the mechanics and beautiful science that would make a time machine possible.

As he grew, Harold took a quasi-normal approach to his teenage years. He learned guitar, wrote poetry, dabbled in mild narcotics, and dated girls—usually not the kind you’d take home to meet your parents. But through it all he was a closet scientist, always dreaming, always creating, in the forefront of his mind…the time machine, always the time machine.

It was his one, true love.

Upon graduation he was accepted into an Ivy League school—one of the best science programs in the nation. That was the end of the rock band he’d formed in eighth grade. The guys didn’t understand why he’d choose college over music. And they told him as much—in not so nice words.

But what they couldn’t see, and this saddened Harold a little, was that science was the symphony of his soul and time travel was the concept album of his life.

Within weeks of starting college, he made a name for himself as one of the brightest and most unconventional thinkers around. He spoke to any professor, or student, who could understand the advanced concepts he toyed with. He bounced ideas off them and considered their input. But he never gave more information than was required; only the essentials necessary to understand whatever he was working on that moment.

He never revealed the entire scope of his dream.

And so it was, when he published a paper on the possibilities and mechanics of time travel, most were stunned.

“Why would an intelligent, respected man toy with something as foolish as time travel?” They wondered aloud. At least until they read the paper. Then they started talking—whispered conversations in hallways. None spoke openly, lest the scientific community frowned upon them.

This is how most of the conversations went.

“Could it be possible?”

“I don’t know… The math seems right.”

“Should we endorse him?”

“Not yet, let’s wait to see what happens…”

Harold overheard some of his colleagues. But this didn’t daunt him. It only made his desire to prove his theories more powerful.
It took a few years for Harold to gather the financial backing necessary to start building the time machine. But once he did, there was no stopping him. Sleep was meaningless, socializing…nonexistent. The women who noticed him were ignored; like meaningless shadows in a darkened room.

Nothing could distract him from fulfilling his dream.

Four years he labored lovingly on the device. Four years that were a blur of waking, working in his lab, and sleeping fitfully because his body occasionally demanded rest.

Now, it was finally finished.

Along the way Harold made another discovery; one that would make testing The Time Machine—he always thought of it as “The Time Machine”—more difficult. There was no future, and therefore no way to travel to it.

You could only travel backward. Despite what some thought, time didn’t exist in all states at once. There was no overlapping of past, present, and future. Instead, time was a radiant blast, like photons shooting randomly from the Sun.

The path of the past was traceable, known. All the variables could be factored. Therefore it was possible to plot a course to a single instant in the past and travel there.

But the present…the present was different. It was like the surface of a star—a violent churning mass of uncertainty. The future didn’t exist yet. It couldn’t be plotted or traveled to because it was created every instant by billions upon billions of variables, all interacting in unknown, unpredictable patterns.

Harold surmised that once you traveled to the past, you could never return to your present. The time-line from which you came became an unreachable point lying somewhere beyond the random chaos of your new present. The place and time you came from would continue without you, a forever inaccessible tangent.

There is no tomorrow—not in time travel, not in reality. There is only the present and the past.

With this in mind Harold planned his tests.

The tests all went the same. Like ill-timed strobes, the lights flickered and dimmed. Angry insects seemed to fill the room as the current crackled and buzzed. Plasma ghosts danced around the machine. Harold’s hair formed a static halo, like a puffer fish around his head. Then the room grew cold, thunder split the air, and it happened.

The object in the machine vanished!

It didn’t matter if he sent the object back twenty seconds or twenty years; he never saw it again.

He trusted his calculations implicitly, but he could never see the result.

Still, as he worked he developed a strategy.

On Friday October 16, 2020 Harold was ready. After the campus emptied, he carried out his plan.

On Saturday October 17, 2020, the police arrived to question him about a recording that showed someone who looked like Harold stealing an arsenal of weapons and ammunition from a local gun dealer.

They found a note and his digital recorder, still running, in his lab.

It was all Harold left.

Detective O’Connell joked about the lunatic scientist who thought he was a hero. They all had a great laugh, until the recording started playing. Then their chuckling died. Detective O’Connell’s mouth gaped like a seal gasping for air. The rest stood stunned, eyes fixed on the screen.

They watched as Harold sat in the middle of the room. The stolen weapons, piled like a mercenary’s dream around him. One by one he loaded them and placed the weapons in a large spherical device.

When all the weapons were in the sphere, he put the remaining stacks of ammo inside. Then Harold punched buttons on some sort of control pad and stepped in. The sphere door hissed shut as pressure locks sealed.

A single window in the door reminded O’Connell of a ship’s porthole. Harold stared at the camera through it. His eyes were hard, determined. His mouth fixed in a bloodless line, jaw muscles bunching.

O’Connell had seen that look before.

In the war, soldiers wore the same expression when bent on doing something brave—or stupid—because they thought they could make a difference.

Yeah, O’Connell’d seen it. But most of the guys who looked that way never came back…

The sphere shimmered, the lights dimmed, the crack of thunder split the air, and the machine vanished.

The rest of the recording showed the empty room, empty all weekend until O’Connell and his men arrived on Monday.

Vanished. O’Connell thought. Now how in the world am I supposed to explain that?

He’d never have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. He wasn’t sure he believed it anyway. A quick glance told him Ham and the others were also struggling with what they’d seen.

O’Connell read the note again. He looked from it to the screen and back repeatedly as he studied it. Maybe the scientist wasn’t so mad after all, he thought.

O’Connell never laughed about the crazy scientist again. He silently tipped his hat to the man who’d taken on such a fierce task.

“Let’s get out of here, Ham.” O’Connell sighed. He motioned to the other officers in the room, “Document everything… You know the drill.”

He left the room shaking his head. They’re never gonna believe this at the precinct.

In our time line we’ll never know what happened to Harold. He can’t return to us. His life is reduced to a police file and a digital recording…his last act of defiance.

But maybe, just maybe, he succeeded; and there’s another timeline where the Twin Towers still stand.

End

Roland Byrd

You can visit my Author Page on Amazon here: http://amazon.com/author/rolandbyrd

Sep 01 2013

How Emotionally Flexible Are You?

(This is an excerpt from my book on personal transformation, Break Your Mold, available Oct 2013 in eBook and shortly thereafter in print.)

That really comes down to this question, What do you do when resistance happens in your life?

Many fight resistance. They might scream, convulse in anger or frustration. They might bemoan their fate or curse their luck. Often people quit, throw up their hands and say, “That’s it! I’m done!” Then they walk away from their dreams.

What does that accomplish?

Right!

Nothing worthwhile.

Anything worth having, achieving, or changing takes effort. Changing how you approach life, and the results you get, takes effort! Sometimes you’ll meet resistance. At others, you’ll glide effortlessly through this process.

Either way, you must persevere. Being Emotionally Flexible allows you to do just that!

Think of your life path as a streambed. Resistance is a boulder thrown in your streambed. If you’re a rock rolling through your streambed, chances are you’ll roll into the boulder, get chipped or cracked and stop moving! Depending on your speed, you might even shatter.

But if you’re water flowing through your stream bed, you’ll meet the boulder, fill up the stream bed until you flow around the obstruction, and continue on your way. Sure, the obstacle delayed you as you filled up enough to flow around the edges. But it never stopped you. It never damaged you. It only slowed you—while you grew enough to get around the obstacle.

Another great example of managing challenges in life is wind. Imagine you’re the breeze floating across a meadow on a warm summer day. As you near the edge of the meadow you discover trees in your path. These are simple. You effortlessly glide around them and continue on your way.

They hardly slow you down.

Next you come upon a shack, sagging against the mountain side like a tired old man. You flow over its splintered wood and through empty windows. You fill its lone room with warmth and the smell of flowers before exiting the other side and flying across the mountain. The shack slows you more than the trees, but you still pass it without effort or difficulty.

But what if you’re a boulder rolling through the meadow? When you hit the trees, you’ll Hit The Trees! You won’t make it far because the trees become a giant net, slowing you, trapping you. And you’re going to break some trees too! Forget making it to the cabin. Every tree you hit steals your momentum. It won’t take long before you’re at a standstill.

Wind and water have two main things in common. They both take the path of least resistance and they both keep moving!

Wind and Water adapt to situations effortlessly and persist in their path.

A rock may try to take the path of least resistance but it’s incapable of adapting. A rock will plow through or break against most things that wind and water slip around. Everything the rock hits slows it down. Sure, it might crush an obstacle, but it loses energy and momentum with each one. And, as you realize, when a rock crashes into something bigger or harder, the rock takes a lot of damage.

Is that how you want to live?

Rocks live tough lives. I know. I used to be one…

Emotionally that is.

How can the principles of adaptation and persistence make a difference?

Here’s an example from my life:

The Boulder

I used to have the emotional flexibility of a boulder. I talked down to myself all the time. If something wasn’t happening how I thought it should, I felt anxious and scared. Often, I’d feel angry because I couldn’t stand feeling out-of-control. But I felt out-of-control any time things weren’t going according to my plan.

As you know, life’s rarely ordered, logical, or predictable! That means things rarely went according to my plan. The very nature of life meant that I almost always felt out-of-control. So I almost always felt angry, anxious, and scared. (You understand the problem with this pattern of thinking.) So I used to try to force order on my life anyway, to make it comfortable for me.

It was all about me… Aside from being a selfish way to live; that resulted in lots of stress and anxiety!

Why?

I was trying to control things that were outside my control. There are things you can directly impact or influence in your life. There are many, many things you aren’t able to impact or control though.

Do you know the difference?

I didn’t.

So I lived in a state called “Hyper Vigilance”. I tried to control everything, and I mean everything, that happened in my life. This behavior wasn’t just because I like order, logic, and predictability. I hadn’t learned to deal with many things that happened to me as a child. Hyper Vigilance was my subconscious mind’s way of trying to protect me from harm. The root subconscious belief was, If I can control everything in my life, nothing can hurt me.

But you know what?

That belief is fundamentally flawed because:

There’s no way to control everything that happens in life because there are many other players in the game. You can’t control others. Nor should you try.

You’re responsible for how events impact you. No matter how crappy something is, you’re the one who decides what you do with it. That means horrible, even tragic events can be used for your good—and the good of others—when you choose to use them that way.

Once I learned those concepts, life was much easier to bear. I began to love life because I understood that happiness and love are choices.

I started choosing happiness and love. I stopped being a strong, inflexible, fragile rock and started becoming like wind and water. Make no mistake; wind and water are strong too. They can wear down cliff faces, topple trees, and reshape their landscape. They do that when necessary. But for the most part, they work with slow precision creating change that runs deep and lasts.

Which will you choose?

Roland

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from my book, Break Your Mold! (Available Oct 2013)

Always remember; You Are The Master of Your Destiny!

Archives for September 2013

Why Forgive?

Part of healing is forgiving the person who hurt you.

Forgiveness is about you.

Ho’oponopono

Why Do You Care What Others’ Think?

Defeated

What would happen if I stopped being afraid of that?

There is No Tomorrow

How Emotionally Flexible Are You?

That really comes down to this question, What do you do when resistance happens in your life?

The Boulder

There’s no way to control everything that happens in life because there are many other players in the game. You can’t control others. Nor should you try.

Double Your Motivation to Exercise!