The normal way to live our days is to suffer. The reason we suffer is because we have programming which says some things are good and others are bad. Life is enjoyable whenever that which we have named “good” is happening and miserable when whatever we have named “bad” happens.

The fastest and best way to change this programming is to live each day as if we were infants. If you have ever been around a very young child, you have undoubtedly noticed how amazed they are by whatever is happening around them.

With this in mind I have written seven suggestions for cultivating a more childlike wonder of the world in which we live, move and have our Being:

1. Imagine you are seeing things for the first time. If you have ever enjoyed the experience of seeing something that you had not previously noticed, despite the fact that your path had taken you near, several times, then you know what this suggestion implies. Consciously open yourself to looking at your world as if with new eyes. Imagine that you are going to take an awareness quiz about your surroundings and notice everything. Pay particular attention to where you notice beauty, which you previously overlooked.
2. Question every preconception you have. I was with a friend, recently, who upon hearing my exclamations of gratitude for an exquisite pea salad, decided to ask for a taste of this treat. After she swallowed a small sample, the woman stated, “I have avoided peas for thirty years because I have never liked them. This really is excellent.” The peas she tasted on this day were quite different from the peas she remembered hating. Things shift. Our ideas change. Memories are often exaggerated. Question your preconceptions. Explore areas you previously avoided. See what surprises you. Discover how delightful it is to replace an ancient hatred with a new love.
3. Allow that knowing is not as exciting as learning. Jump with both feet into some area where you have never gone. If you are stuck in some rut, deepened by your routine, change it up. Even if you feel your job is boring, look for ways to challenge yourself. Set new goals and play with learning what works and what does not, always moving in the direction of these dreams. Once I had a job in a brake press factory. I cannot imagine a duller job. My biggest challenge in this work was to keep my fingers out of the way of the brake press so that I could take them home, intact. I was quickly bored by the monotonous routine. Move metal into place. Clear fingers. Press button. Clear area. Repeat. I would do this process several times a minute for two hours at a time, followed by a short break. The way I eventually found joy was by striving to see how many of the objects I could create in any given hour. Instead of allowing my mind to wander to where I would rather be or to what I would rather be doing, I focused every ounce of energy into being as quick and as accurate as I could be. I did not do this for attention or for recognition. I did it to free myself from the doldrums of repetition. Very quickly I discovered ways to improve my performance. Instead of being bored out of my mind by the repetitive nature of the work, I found myself having fun and being able to give every two-hour segment all I was capable of giving. It was a transformative experience for me. I was quickly promoted and moved to other areas in the business. I took this decision to work “in joy” with me, wherever I moved and it served me quite well. Others who had been there for much longer resented my enthusiasm, which was kind of unfortunate, but I knew I was only there for a while, and I wanted to enjoy every moment I had.
4. Notice where your routine “owns you” and make some changes. Perhaps you work some place where you have no personal power over your hours. You still have domain over the minutes before you arrive and after you are done. Change your routine. If you have been getting up at 6:00 A.M., brushing your teeth first, showering second, and getting dressed third, change it up. Get up at 5:30. Lay in the bathtub for 15 minutes while sending love to a situation you would just as soon avoid.  Leave the house ten minutes earlier and take a different route to work, preferably one you which will require your attention, so as to avoid the temptation to drive on autopilot.

   

5. Do something totally unpredictable, surprise yourself. After this day of “routine-busting” not only do you take a different route home, but you stop, impulsively, at some place totally new. Get out of the car. Enter the surprise location and look around with eyes of wonder. Stop and touch things, preferably things which are unfamiliar to you. Talk with people you do not know. Love them with your eyes and open heart. Perform random acts of kindness, without hoping for any attention.
6. When you get home, do something you have never done. Make some recipe you have never tried. Whatever your typical evening routine is, vary it. Watch a movie that never interested you before. Read that book which has been sitting on your shelf waiting for the right inspiration.
7. Finally, go to bed earlier or later than usual. Before going to sleep take a few minutes to reflect on and to give gratitude for all the new discoveries of this day, both the ones that made you feel more alive and the ones that you have no interest of trying again in the future. Each holds its own unique blessing.  Consider new ways you can avoid the routines of life, and applaud yourself for breaking out of your habitual ways of moving through your days.

   

This is only seven possibilities for helping pull yourself out of the autonomous way in which you normally spend your days. Dream up other ideas. These suggestions have given you a framework for new ways of living your life. Before long you will notice that you have new eyes in which to view what is ostensibly a new world to you. Life becomes very exciting once you break out of the dull routines your programming has created in an effort to keep you safe.

There is great excitement in viewing the world through the eyes of a child. Give it a try and enjoy.

*Note: I first published this, most recently, at Wikinut under the title: Living Peacefully  It was originally published, (although this piece has been reworked) on my original blog Love Expressing which I have not used in several years.

P.S. If you have any ideas for looking at the world with new eyes, please put them in the comments. I would like to write an entire e-book on this subject and would love to share your input with the world.

Norman Vincent Peale became famous in part due to his wonderful book, The Power of Positive Thinking.*

I want to open today’s Secret to Peace by sharing some thoughts from this book: “One of the most important and powerful facts about you is expressed in the following statement by William James, who was one of the wisest men America has produced. William James said, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” As you think, so shall you be. So flush out all old, tired, worn-out thoughts. Fill your mind with fresh, new creative thoughts of faith, love, and goodness. By this process you can actually remake your life.

You can think your way to failure and unhappiness, but you can also think your way to success and happiness. The world in which you live is not primarily determined by outward conditions and circumstance but by thoughts that habitually occupy your mind. Remember the wise words of Marcus Aurelius, one of the great thinkers of antiquity, who said, “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

It has been said that the wisest man who ever lived in America was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Sage of Concord. Emerson declared, “A man is what he thinks about all day long.”

A famous psychologist says, “There is a deep tendency in human nature to become precisely like that which you habitually imagine yourself to be.”

It has been said that thoughts are things, that they actually possess dynamic power. Judged by the power they exercise one can readily accept such an appraisal. You can actually think yourself into or out of situations. You can make yourself ill with your thoughts and by the same token you can make yourself well by the use of a different and healing type of thought. Think one way and you attract the conditions which that type of thinking indicates. Think another way and you can create an entirely different set of conditions. Conditions are created by thoughts far more powerfully than conditions create thoughts.”

*Peale, Norman Vincent. The Power of Positive Thinking. N.p.: n.p., 1980. Print.

Of course, Mr. Peale’s thoughts were not particularly original on this matter since, as he stated, Marcus Aurelius had discussed this idea somewhere in the years about 170 to 180 years after the birth of Jesus.

Henry Thomas Hamblin also discussed this concept in-depth in at least three of his books written in the 1920’s. Consider these words relating to the ignorance of allowing oneself to engage in negative thinking from Hamblin’s book The Power of Thought:

WE do not believe that there are many who deliberately think negative thoughts. Most people mean well and want to do good and be good (not goody, goody). But, nevertheless, most of us are wrong thinkers, more or less, and this is due, so we firmly believe, mainly to ignorance. Because it is not generally known that negative thoughts are highly destructive, we ignorantly indulge in them, thinking that they do no harm. Actually, thoughts of impurity, anger, revenge, hate, resentment, envy, brooding over wrongs, brooding over sorrows, losses and griefs; thoughts of fear, failure, weakness, penury, sickness, disease, decay, mortality and death, are all highly destructive. They are destructive of health, of happiness, of circumstances, of life in all its departments. They break down the nervous system; they paralyse endeavour; they undermine the will; they make for wrong decisions. It will be admitted that this is a matter of prime importance, yet neither children nor the general public are instructed in these vital matters. Because of this almost universal ignorance we most of us go on indulging in negative thinking, much to our detriment.

*Hamblin, Henry Thomas. The Power of Thought. Chichester: Science of Thought, 1921. Print.

Both Hamblin and Peale discussed, at length, the power that negative thinking has to create illness and the power that positive thinking has for restoring health.

Why then could we ever believe that there could be anything such as an idle thought?

A Course in Miracles* says this: “There is no such thing as an idle thought. For that which gives rise to the whole world you can see can hardly be called idle.”

*A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume. Glen Elen, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1992. Print.

What you need to know from this information is this: There truly is no such thing as an idle thought. Every thought is creating. It is my belief that every thought is a prayer which the Universe has no choice but to answer in accordance with the truth held by the thinker. Since every thought is creating we are always either creating a more loving world or we are creating a more hateful, chaotic planet.

Because our thoughts are always creating, it is absolutely imperative that we think loving thoughts. Every other thought is working to create a world we do not want to see manifest, unless the proliferation of so-called evil is one’s desire.

To change the way we are thinking we must first become mindful of the thoughts we are entertaining. Thoughts arise. They always will, as long as we are in form. There is a mistaken idea about meditation that if we merely work at it long enough, thoughts will stop arising, but as long as we are in form and have a functioning, human brain, this brain is going to think.

The thought arising, by itself, is not the problem. It is merely an indicator of where you place your truth. What causes the challenges is when we run with or I like to say invest in the thoughts. For example: someone cuts you off in traffic. As a fear response you feel anger immediately rise in your awareness. This is completely natural and does nothing to create more hatred in humanity. However, if you allow the anger to simmer, perhaps you chase the person down so they can see your less than loving finger language, or maybe you really take it to an extreme and you chase them through traffic endangering yourself, them, and other drivers. This choice to allow yourself to be hijacked by your fear-based thoughts creates negative energy which attracts more negativity into your life by contributing to the collective consciousness of the human race in an undesirable manner.

Now consider this alternative: The same scenario happens and immediately when you notice the anger rising in our awareness you choose to bless the person instead of reacting. You decide “I am worthy of loving myself and am capable of making loving choices, regardless of the circumstances.” Then, feeling empowered by your recognition of your ability to make loving choices, you decide to also bless the inconsiderate driver and you take a second to wish her well, seeing the path safe for her and for all who intersect in her journey. This second choice creates a wholly different energy in your body and for the collective consciousness of humanity. Not only does such a choice bless the offender, yourself, and everyone around you but it makes you feel better, immediately.

Make the wise choice. You are worth it and so is your brother and sister.

I will close with these additional thoughts from Norman Vincent Peale:

“Think positively, for example, and you set in motion positive forces which bring positive results to pass. Positive thoughts create around yourself an atmosphere propitious to the development of positive outcomes. On the contrary, think negative thoughts and you create around yourself an atmosphere propitious to the development of negative results.

To change your circumstances, first start thinking differently. Do not passively accept unsatisfactory circumstances, but form a picture in your mind of circumstances as they should be. Hold that picture, develop it firmly in all details, believe in it, pray about it, work at it, and you can actualize according to that mental image emphasized in your positive thinking.

This is one of the greatest laws in the universe.”

Today I would like you to consider these words from Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay Social Arms: “Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.”

I really only remembered the simplification of this quote, John F. Kennedy attributed to Emerson, which I recall as: “What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say.” I have always used this as my guiding light in raising my children. I offer this as my most profound lesson whenever I am asked, by a young parent, for guidance.

Our children learn from what we do. They are constantly watching. Our words mean very little, but the teachings we impart by the life we demonstrate are innumerable. Our children pay attention from day one to our every expression, each action and reaction, all mannerisms, our words, and how well we love. If you ever want to see what you have taught your children, simply observe the way they interact with the world.

If they see you lie, they will grow up lying.

If they see you hide something, you have left the store without paying for, they will grow up as thieves.

If they see you show hatred, for any reason, towards another, they will grow up failing to see the worth of others.

If they see you showing loving kindness, your children will naturally be gentle, loving individuals.

If you stereotype others or display bigotry, your children will automatically incorporate these actions into their lives without ever examining them.

I share this because your personal spiritual practice is being observed and emulated by your children. If you are living a life dedicated to becoming more loving, your children will eventually share that commitment. Telling them you love them is not enough. You teach love by demonstrating love. This promise of peace will also be passed on to your grandchildren and their children. What we live, teaches each generation after us. We leave a legacy of the life we live. Whether this is a conscious creation or not is up to us.

I will leave you, on the start of this Labor Day weekend (in the U.S.) to consider these wise words from Thich Nhat Hanh:

“There is a child inside all of us – That child is all future generations.” 

It is imperative that we demonstrate the peace we hope to see, we are anyway so we might as well be conscious about it.

Have an amazing Labor Day if you are in America, if not still make this your best weekend yet.