THE DAILY GURU

"How Do You Show You Care?"

"Love is not only something you feel. It is something you do."
-- David Wilkerson

In her book, ‘No Less Than Greatness,’ Mary Manin Morrissey speaks of a research study that explored how family members communicate with each other. Apparently, the most frequently spoken words between husbands, wives, sisters and brothers were "What’s on?" and "Move."

She goes on to say, "We all desire great relationships but often settle for just getting by. Many of us have stopped questioning the fact that we may know fictitious TV families more intimately than we do our own."

The most powerful force in our lives is our ability to love. Indeed, it’s the most basic essence of who we are. How do you experience and express your love for the people in your life?

"The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love."
-- Thomas Merton

THE DAILY GURU

"What Are You Procrastinating?"

"The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started."
-- Dawson Trotman

Procrastination seriously drains our energy and our morale. What remains undone nags at us.
What are you avoiding? Make a list of items and then review each one. Does it really need to be done? After you've reviewed your list, prioritize it and start one task today.
Please do not procrastinate taking one minute to write down your answer to this question. Capture it on paper and this will help build awareness, commitment and discipline.

"How soon not now, becomes never."
-- Martin Luther

"Talk does not cook rice."
-- Chinese proverb

"Do you know what happens when you give a procrastinator a good idea? Nothing!"
-- Donald Gardner

DAILY GURU

"Be Open To Change"

"Balance is a dynamic process; it changes with the days, the seasons, the years."
-- Sherrill Sellman

How rigid are your routines? Do you exercise for 30 minutes, three times each week no matter how you feel?

Routines and structure can provide a valuable framework to bring discipline to our lives. At the same time, we are always changing and it’s wise to be sensitive to our physical, emotional and mental states so we can ensure that our activities truly meet our needs. We need to be willing to change our patterns when our practices no longer serve us.

"Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found."
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"The smallest change in perspective can transform a life. What tiny attitude adjustment might turn your world around?"
-- Oprah

THE DAILY GURU

"How Do You Work With Anger?"

"Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains."
-- Helen Douglas

How do you feel about anger, in yourself and in others? How do you deal with it?
Anger is powerful energy. If we are afraid of this energy, we may attempt to deny or hide it. And when we lack control of the energy of anger, we impose it on other people or things.

The ways we react to anger usually reflect how we experienced anger as children and how our own anger when we were young was handled by the adults at the time.
In reality, anger, like any emotion, brings us information. It tells us how we feel about what is being experienced. If we receive anger’s message and learn more about ourselves, the energy will pass.

"Too often we underestimate how quickly our feelings are going to change because we underestimate our ability to change them."
-- David Gilbert

THE DAILY GURU

"Build The Awareness Habit"

"It is difficult to see the picture when you are inside of the frame."
-- Author Unknown

Start building the awareness habit: STOP and PAY ATTENTION. Set an intention to become aware of how you automatically react to different things in your life.

For example, how do you react to the alarm clock, the shower, traffic, work colleagues and situations, your partner or children? How do you react to anger or fear in someone else? How do you react to your own anger or fear? Become a witness to your own life. Pay attention to how you do things.

"What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself."
-- Abraham H. Maslow

THE DAILY GURU

"Learn To Let Go"

"To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day."
-- Lao Tzu

How do we take something away? As we cultivate higher awareness, we begin to see just how much we have added things that really aren’t there to our picture of reality. Our beliefs, concepts and emotions all add layers of meaning to physical reality, but that meaning exists for us only – it has no objective existence. For example, the word ‘mother’ has a complicated network of meaning for each of us.

Become aware of how your beliefs and emotions colour your perception of different events in your life. See if you can begin to step out of your fabrications to experience the truth and spaciousness of what is.

"When guilt rears its ugly head confront it, discuss it and let it go. The past is over. … Forgive yourself and move on."
-- Bernie S. Siegel

Anyway by Kent Keith

Anyway by Kent Keith
The verses below reportedly were engraved on the wall of Mother Teresa's home for children in Calcutta, and are widely attributed to her. However, according to The New York Times, the verses actually were written by 19-year-old Kent Keith in a motivation booklet for high school counselors published while he was a student at Harvard in 1968.


People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;
forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, People may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, there may be jealousy;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

THE DAILY GURU

"Discover The Treasures Inside"

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude."
-- Denis Waitley

Peace, joy, health and well-being can only be found inside us. They exist within us now, waiting to be discovered. Yet we tend to look to the outside world to satisfy our needs and longings.
Our outer life reflects back to us the way we think, feel and behave. The outer world is all effects. Go to the source inside for all of life’s treasures
.
How are you searching for peace and contentment outside of yourself?

"The great Western disease is, ‘I'll be happy when… When I get the money. When I get a BMW. When I get this job.’ Well, the reality is, you never get to when. The only way to find happiness is to understand that happiness is not out there. It's in here. And happiness is not next week. It's now."
-- Marshall Goldsmith

THE DAILY GURU

"Learn To Be Aware"

"You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself."
-- Beryl Markham

Who am I? To answer this, we must first learn to become more aware of ourselves. To be aware, we must STOP and PAY ATTENTION! We need to STOP and objectively watch ourselves in action.

We live most of our lives by habit. These habits keep us stuck in patterns that limit our experience of life. Once we detect a pattern we were previously unconscious of, we can choose differently, if we want. With awareness comes choice and with choice, we gain freedom.

"To be authentic is literally to be your own author …, to discover your own native energies and desires, and then to find your own way of acting on them."
-- Warren G. Bennis

"Self-knowledge is the great power by which we comprehend and control our lives."
-- Vernon Howard