Grow Your Awareness

Wishing everyone a lovely Sunday ✨💛✨

“When is the last time you took a moment to appreciate your hands? They are so highly skilled at many various tasks. They can work together to achieve something or do two separate things to compliment each other. Each finger can work independently or as a team. Hands have eyes; if you’ve ever reached into something you can’t perceive visually, you know this to be true. You can ‘see’ the detail of things based on the feedback from your unique fingertips. Hands also have memory; you can train certain muscles through repetition, and then eventually the hands can just act without conscious thought. Hands turn faucets, flick light switches, type & write messages, rotate doorknobs, scratch itches, touch lives. Hands are extensions of our hearts, they pull in loved ones for hugs. Think of all the things you have and will use your hands for today; they turn from fresh baby hands to old & wrinkled rather quickly. Hands are our instruments. Thank you hands.” 🙏🏼👏🏼🙌🏼👍🏼👎🏼👊🏼✊🏼🤛🏼🤝🤟🏼🤘🏼✌🏼👌🏼👈🏼👆🏼🖐🏼🖖🏼👋🏼🤙🏼✍🏼— How To Train A Wild Elephant by Jan Chozen Bays

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17 F*cks You Should Finally Stop Giving When You’re A Grown And Mature Person “Life is hard” is a phrase we hear a lot, especially as we grow into adulthood and set out on our trail through life. There are bills to pay, responsibilities to follow through on, consequences and random occurrences to be tended to, as well as a lot of inner dialogue to contend with through all...

"In the long run we possess nothing on this earth, not even these bodies. But through simple awareness of our intention from moment to moment we can plant seeds of kindness and compassion that grow to create a beautiful garden. This choice to take a pause and act consciously with pure intent instead of reacting unconsciously is ever-present. With our thoughts we truly make our world." -- Jack Kornfield

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"The nature of existence is ceaseless transformation. Make friends with change because everything is impermanent but growth is optional. The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~ Alan Watts

Taking a moment to be thankful for the ability to share thoughts, pictures & videos instantaneously & wirelessly on a global scale via a device we keep in our pockets. We take this interweb of connectivity for granted because we're so used to it now, but it's still very new in the bigger picture, and smoke signals, carrier pigeons, cave art, drums/music, messengers on horseback, beepers, ram's horns/trumpets, car phones, morse code, dial-up landline phones, and snail mail show us how far we've come to get to this point. It seems so easy to get caught up complaining about things in this life but if you can zoom out and instead find something to appreciate it leads to a gratitude for what is. 🙌🏽

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FTW

Q: Am I missing moments of joy? Yes. Think of it like this: how many blue cars have you seen today? You probably passed several in traffic but were paying no attention to them. If you made a game out of it, you'd likely see them everywhere. Joy is really the same way, sometimes subtle & fleeting, and we often overlook it while our minds wander.

Some simple examples: waking up to a new day, hugging a loved one, holding hands, taking off shoes, really seeing nature, watching animals play, creative play of your own, smile from a stranger, hearing a song that connects with you, good conversation with a friend, when driving and someone let's you into the lane, feeling warm water touch your skin when you get into the shower, reclining on a comfortable couch/bed, first bite of meals, etc. [insert some from your own daily life].

The move is to simply notice these thin slices of joy as they're happening. The more you notice them, the more they appear to be everywhere, because they always are there and always have been. You just weren't necessarily inclined to notice, just like the blue cars. You can think of it as cultivating joy in a world where we are hard-wired to attend more vigorously to negative experiences. Knowing that our minds pass right by positive experiences all the time, we have to consciously choose to say 'hey wait brain, this is a nice moment right here. let's savor it. let's appreciate it.'

See, physical reality is always filtered through our perceptual mechanisms, and our minds are programmed to minimize 'noise' otherwise we would be inundated with too much raw data. The filtering is essential for survival, but it sometimes blocks out things we'd rather not be filtered. By noticing these little pockets of happiness in our daily existences, I think it can improve our time here.

And as I share this concept, it's a reminder for myself as well - the idea sparked by this book I'm currently reading by Tan Chade-Meng (of Google fame), called 'Joy On Demand'. Much love.
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Nothing lasts, everything is ultimately fleeting. We're just a dot on a dot in the universe. Still, strive for your goals, realize your intent, learn from everyone and every experience, and cherish the reward of the journey, for all we do may be just castles in the sand to be washed away by the waves of time, but it's very important that we build those castles anyways and recognize that our fingerprints don't fade from the lives we touch while doing so. I believe our purpose, the reason we're alive, is to fulfill our potential, give love & respect to all we touch, and stay humble throughout. Be what you'd like to see.
💡&💛