When I let things slide I quickly get a feeling of malcontent. I’m unbalanced, out of harmony, unhappy.

The last couple of months I have had this feeling because things have just been piling up:
Christmas time and presents
Bills I haven’t dealt with immediately
My closets that needs cleaning up
My bedroom where I spend most of my time have been messy.

It’s surprisingly easy to fall into a state where I don’t deal with something immediately, like take up my clothes instead of letting them lie on the floor.

Now I have started on a new mission: Tidy up my bedroom. I actually love to spend time tidying up – I’m just not so effective when I’m doing it. I started it some days ago, and already I feel the benefits are showing up. I have dealt with my bills, thrown out magazine’s I have read or never will read, dealt with some to-do tasks (like paying bills, stop newspaper subscriptions etc.).

I’m going to take a critical look at my bookshelves and start throwing away DVD’s I’m not going to see again, books I will never read (and hopefully can purchase as ebooks).

The result is more space around me, it’s lighter, and I feel more inspired and energised.

How do you like your surroundings to be?

In 08/09 I worked as a volunteer for Red Cross, and one of the activities we went to was to paint our own cups. The cup I painted will go in there. I even made sure that I got a diploma for the work I did there and a letter speaking about the activities and discussions we had (those documents were meant for the girls, but I wanted one too ).

Just before new years I wrote a letter to myself about my expectations for this year that I will open in late december. I wonder if anything I wrote in there will apply – I’m guessing that a lot more happened than I expected or even thought of.

Patricia gave me a personal astrology reading for this year, that have been surprisingly accurate so far.

And I will write a summary of this year, of every month and keep in there to remember the year of 2009 which probably will be titled “New beginnings”. And I will probably need to put some photographs in there as well, for what is all of this without pictures to remember it by. People and places.

I want to be able to use this box to go back in time and remember things that have happened with fondness, and to see how my life progress.

My story…

Open the pdf in Preview.
Open the sidebar: Preview Menu –> View –> Sidebar
Choose Thumbnail view: Preview Sidebar –> On the bottom left there is an icon, click and choose Thumbnails. Ensure that you have one of the pages selected/marked.
Select all the pages: Preview Menu –> Edit –> Select All
Choose the Select Tool: Preview Menu –> Tools –> Select Tool

Now you can mark the area of the page that you want to keep. Since you previously selected all the pages, the changes will occur on all the pages.

To remove the unmarked area: Preview Menu –> Tools –> Crop.

Now you can save the document.

This worked as a charm for me and the pdf’s ended up looking good in my iliad, though the font size is still a bit small (but still readable) in most cases.

Before creating Dilbert, Scott Adams used to be a regular Joe with a regular job. What sparked my interest is this quote:

When I had a full-time job, before Dilbert, I awoke at 4 AM, sat alone in a comfortable chair with a cup of coffee, and waited. I did that for a year or two, just emptying my mind and freeing my imagination. I don’t remember the day I picked up a pencil and started drawing instead of sitting during those hours, but I’m sure I didn’t have a choice.

I have heard that statement before by Eckart Tolle. He also used to sit quietly in a meditative state, not doing anything, just letting the thoughts run free without pushing them to the forefront. Tolle has also stated that one needs to take the time doing nothing, to allow ideas to come forward, even if one has to wait a couple of years. That’s how the book “A New Earth” appeared to him. The book was waiting to be written, and at some point it came to Tolle so he could write it.

Oprah tries to meditate every day, doing nothing. She told that one day all she had time to was meditate while her dog was drinking out of the bidet. That was funny

So now I try to take some moments every day where I do nothing, except sitting there in solitude and quiteness. I find it a bit hard, and I only last for a cup of coffee, but at least its something. And apparantly I have to do that for a couple of years before some inspiration grips me. I want it to come sooner than that.

Getting there have been work. I started looking at what wasn’t working in my life, what I weren’t pleased with. The first part was recognizing the unhappy thoughts – I dislike my life, I will never be happy, I don’t belong, life is meaningless etc. and figuring out what triggered those thoughts, and what feeling of loss was there, what was I missing in my life?

Then I started looking at what I liked doing, what gave me a sense of pleasure and well-being and what I wanted from my life. What I really wanted was a feeling of peace and stillness within myself.

So how does one find peace and stillness? It’s not something one suddenly can decide and then feel it immediately afterwards. I had to search for it.

The first decision I made was that I will not grow complacent about my own well-being. If I’m unhappy, I need to figure out why and deal with it immediately. If I wanted peace, well, god damn it, then I had to work for it. What stopped me? What troubled my mind? Peace and happiness is an internal mood, but to get it I had to deal with external problems, internal issues and doing activities that I liked.

From a friend I got two tips: Nonviolent communication and Katie Byron. Nonviolent Communication is about how to communicate with others in a compassionate way, but it’s also about finding and recognizing ones needs in dealing with oneself and others. I started working through the issues I had, and my needs behind them.

Katie Byron have come up with a process called ‘The Work’ for dealing with issues and suffering in ones life.

By combining these two methods I started working on myself and figuring out what I needed to do to moving forwards and becoming happy. That was the start, but it’s an ongoing process.

I have never been particularly interested in self-realization books, but when I started to watch Oprah and get some tips, I got the sense that I can use those too feel better and I started reading them. I bought ‘A New Earth’ by Eckhart Tolle and ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne. I take what works for me and discards the things that doesn’t work for me.  What I have found is that by even taking the time to read those books, I feel better and more happy.

I have made several decisions over the course of time:

1. I shall like and be happy with everything I do.
2. My surroundings shall have people that care about and love me.
3. Affirmations, I tell myself every day that I like my life, I am secure about myself and everybody in this universe will work to make me happy.

Weekly happiness tasks:

• Exercise at least once a week
• Go to a cafe, relax, read a book etc. once a week
• Spend at least one hour each week on my religion (reading, translating etc).
• Doing an activity that connected me to other people. In my case I decided to do some volunteering work for Red Cross and for youths.

Other:

• Indulge myself with a massage twice a year.
• Visit my friend in Trondheim at least twice a year.

All of these activities are something I want to do, that gives me joy. I look forward to each and every one of these activities. And what I find is that this list keeps on growing over the months.

The result: I’m happy

Things like cooking (which I haven’t liked before), I suddenly enjoy. I enjoy baking, cleaning up. Even the smallest task is suddenly something I look forward to. I feel peace and stillness within myself, and my life is richer for it. And I nurture that happiness each day, so that I may never loose it again.

My review:

This book is fantastic !!!!! I even liked it so much that I have bought it as an ebook and as a paperbook. This book should be tought in schools, from kindergarten to university. It shows us how we are brought up thinking in terms of right thinking and wrong thinking, instead of focusing on what our needs are.

I often experience that my words are being misunderstood (and who doesn’t?) and when I voice my opinion, people explode in agression. I have one recent experience of this:

My mother just got married, and as it usually is, there was a wedding dinner and party afterwards. I got to know a little bit one of the guests, and she (let’s call her Elise) was having a bit of trouble with her boyfriend of many years. My mother managed to act and say something stupid, and Elise was fuming in anger when I happen to meet her on the way in to the party premises. I got to know Elise a little bit, and after a while I realized that Elise needed a lot of attention and understanding/loving care. The problem was that she went after that attention in the wrong way, by talking about her views, opinions, acting a certain way and forcing others to acknowledge her, which led to others being angry at her for not taking considerations of others.

So while I was sitting with some of these people, she said something like: “Let’s go, I don’t want to be here”, and she left. And then the other people muttered something badly about her. That was when I opened my mouth and told them: Don’t you see how much she is hurting? She needs understanding and loving care from you.

That’s when the explosion happened, and they got quite aggressive towards me, and I reacted as I do after a while, I stopped talking and just accepted the verbal abuse. They were obviously in so much pain that had accumulated over much time, that the only way to express that pain was by being aggressive, taking the high morale way, saying that I didn’t know what I was talking about etc. In other words, they weren’t able to express their pain, instead they were talking about the “correct way of thinking and acting”, and “she doesn’t deserve any compassion, she got herself into that mess”. This book shows me how to deal with these situations, relieving the pain of others and at the same time avoiding being verbally abused myself.

This books shows how one can deal with any situation, in a way that is beneficial for you and others. As the book title says: A language of compassion. And that compassion extends to our selves. It shows how one can focus ones attention to ones needs instead of focusing on what others did wrong or what “I” did wrong.

I strongly urge everybody (and yes, you who reads this), to read this book. It should be one of the compulsory tools in our toolbox for dealing with life.

Book description:

Do you hunger for skills to improve the quality of your relationships, to deepen your sense of personal empowerment or to simply communicate more effectively? Unfortunately, for centuries our culture has taught us to think and speak in ways that can actually perpetuate conflict, internal pain and even violence. Nonviolent Communication partners practical skills with a powerful consciousness and vocabulary to help you get what you want peacefully.

In this internationally acclaimed text, Marshall Rosenberg offers insightful stories, anecdotes, practical exercises and role-plays that will dramatically change your approach to communication for the better. Discover how the language you use can strengthen your relationships, build trust, prevent conflicts and heal pain. Revolutionary, yet simple, NVC offers you the most effective tools to reduce violence and create peace in your life?one interaction at a time.

Podiobooks contains podcasts where one can subscribe to episodes in a RSS feed, and they have recent books where the copyright haven’t expired, but the authors uses creative commons or the likes.

Librivox provides free audiobooks from the public domain (the copyright has expired). You can also volunteer to read in books if you’d like.

Manybooks have also a large collection of audio books. At the moment of writing this post, they had 838 audio books available.

I have read a lot of books of Mercedes Lackey, and when I found out she and Steve Libbey released a joint project, The Secret World Chronicles, I raced to the opportunity.

He is one of the persons that have a genuine interests for every scientific subject there is, though I have yet to find something about religion and philosophy. He did take a trip last year through India with his family, so I’m thinking he has to have some interest in that area as well. It would have been nice the hear his thoughts in that regard as well.

Anyway, here are some links to his blogs and radioshow:
His personal webpage and blog (english version of his page, though not as frequently updated)
Future and futuristic thinking blog (norwegian)
Vitenskapsprogrammet – his radio show on Radio Norge(norwegian). I love the podcasts.

So, during my browsing of ITunes I found a lecture from Randy Pausch titled “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. To my surprise I found out he died just some days ago. It was a good lecture and I found myself looking through the entire thing. So here it is for you: