Your Commanding Officer

What might happen if you took that energy you're spending being upset/frustrated about not getting recognition and simply DID the things that would unquestionably entitle you to recognition?

(My hunch is it'd be good. :)

So I say we follow the Master's mojo and f...

So, the next time we're in the company of someone who we find a little less than inspiring, rather than criticize or get irritated, let's see if we can see how WE have those same qualities we find offensive in others and do some work on correcting them within ourselves, shall we?!? :)

So, are you feeling a little impatient about growth in a certain area of your life?

Confucius would prolly advise us to chillax on the stress and just get back to doing the necessary work.

I always love Gay Hendricks answer to that question (see Notes on The Big Leap and Conscious Living): "My purpose was this: to expand in love and creativity every day and to assist those who are interested to expand in their ability to be more loving and creative."

He continues: "Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not b...

Abraham Maslow (see Notes on Motivation and Personality) likes to say: "Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This n...

"The Master said, He does not mind not being in office; all he minds about is whether he has qualities that entitle him to office. He does not mind failing to get recognition; he is too busy doing the things that entitle him to recognition."

"He does no...

"The Master said, In the presence of a good man, think all the time how you may learn to equal him. In the presence of o bad man, turn your gaze within!"

Love it.

Confucius says it another way as well: "The Master said, Even when...

"As in the case of making a mound, if, before the very last basketful, I stop, then I shall have stopped. As in the case of leveling the ground, if, though tipping only one basketful, I om going forward, then I shall be making progress."

That's awesome.

"The Master said, (the good man) does not grieve that other people do not recognize his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs."

Love that.

Where's your focus?

Are you frustrated people aren't seeing yo...

"The Master said, Give me a few more years, so that I may have spent a whole fifty in study, and believe that after all I should be fairly free from error."

It's awesome how humble Confucius is about the time it takes to truly master his life.

He...

We're going old school on this one.

Believed to be rockin' it in the 5th/6th centuryBCE (around the same time as Lao Tzu and Buddha), Confucius was super passionate about learning and developing himself into the best person he could be according to the dictates of his classic s...

longer overstepped the boundaries of right."

And this: "One who will study for three years without thought of reward would be hard indeed to find."

Vernon Howard puts it this way: "Do not be impatient with your seemingly slow pro...

"The Master said, If out of the three hundred songs I had to take one phrase to cover all my teachings, I would say 'Let there be no evil in your thoughts."

Nice.

As it turns out (and as you know if you've read many of these Notes), this theme is...

but has a deeper meaning, something closer to "striving to do your best" moment to moment to moment.

When we're fully showing up in any given moment, there's no difference between what we're capable of being and what we're actually being.

And, when that's the cas...

While Marcus Aurelius (see Notes on Meditations) advises us to watch how we're soaking our mind: Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is poss...