I grew up in California at a time when swimming was a part of the high school curriculum. A life guard was a full-time faculty member, whose only responsibility was to insure the safety of the students in the water. Well, in a moment of negligence on his part, I almost drowned! Although that moment occurred some 47 years ago, I can still viscerally recall those moments. Death literally stared me in the face!

For many years after that I would not get close to a swimming pool. Perhaps the school waived the state requirement for me so that my family would not press charges. As the years went by, I watched many of my friends enjoy swimming pools and days at the beach while I was frozen with fear.

During all of those years, I had a deep seated longing to become friends with the water. It wasn’t the water that was my enemy; it was my fear of the water that immobilized me. That same water that represented death to me represented profound joy and pleasure to many other people.

So year in and year out I was tortured with a calling from within: I must conquer my fear, or continue to let my fear conquer me.

And so it is for each of us with the “swimming pools” of our lives. The objects themselves are neither good nor bad: they just exist. It is our fear or our willingness to learn how to swim that determines whether or not we will get from the starting point to the finish line.

So, finally, at the age of about 53 I learned how to swim. I had some wonderful teachers  — who were like children to me (“And a little child shall lead them”) — but they taught me how not to be afraid of the water. One of the most important aspects they taught me was to relax and float on my back. I could not do that if I had any amount of tension and/or distrust. It is imperative that I let go and trust the water. The water really will take care of me, but only if I let it. That is perhaps the most difficult aspect, because, as a leader, I am so accustomed to being in control. The more I try to be in control, the more I will sink.

Now my fear of the water was not unjustified. Fear has its place in our lives. Its function is to warn us of possible harm. If a child just gets in the ocean without knowing how to swim, they will drown. My teachers were my angels that surrounded me with love and guidance, showing me the things I needed to do to make the water my friend. What is more, they let me know that they would always be there to protect me, in case I got in trouble.

Many people think that the opposite of love is hatred, for hatred seeks to harm the one whom love would uplift. Others say that the opposite of love is indifference, for indifference ignores the other person altogether. While it is true that both hatred and indifference oppose love, they are each too small in scale to serve as love’s polar opposite. The true force that opposes love is self-centeredness.

It is self-centeredness that responds with hatred when another person hurts us or seems different from us. It is self-centeredness that responds with indifference toward those who cannot or will not benefit us. One may look at each of the “seven deadly sins”, and each of them is rooted in selfishness: envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth and wrath. All things that stand against love are rooted in selfishness. All things founded in love require the taming of one’s own self-centeredness.

If we wish to become better human beings, then, our most essential task is to learn to get over ourselves. We need to truly get into our hearts that the world does not and should not revolve around us. The Golden Rule is a good starting place; when we manage to treat others the way we wish to be treated, we greatly improve our lives and the lives of those around us. The greater challenge, however, is to internalize that rule, to love others the way we wish to be loved. That is the true key to reaching our human potential.

When we do learn to live in love, amazing results can happen. People like Mother Theresa, Gandhi and Jesus all show the power of a life dedicated to love. While most of us are unlikely ever to attain that level of achievement in the area of love, we do have the ability to change our own corners of the world for the better. By tempering our own egos and developing our capacities for compassion, we can build stronger families, more productive workplaces, and healthier communities. It’s all a matter of love.

We at the IFL received the following text in an email, and we were invited to forward it.  Although the advice is very general, it contains great wisdom.

Another year is upon us. 

 

                                  Let’s get ready for “2010″ !!!!

 

                                              HANDBOOK 2010

 

        Health:

         1.       Drink plenty of water.

         2.       Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a  prince

                   and dinner like a beggar.

         3.       Eat more foods that grow on trees and 

                   plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants..

         4.       Live with the 3 E’s — Energy,   and Empathy Enthusiasm

         5.       Make time to pray.

         6.       Play more games

         7.       Read more books than you did in 2009 .

         8.       Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes  each day

         9.       Sleep for 7 hours.

        10.      Take a  10-30 minutes walk daily.

                    And while you walk, smile.

 

        Personality:

        11.      Don’t  compare your life to others.

                   You have no idea what their journey is all about.

        12.      Don’t have  negative thoughts or things

                    you cannot control.

                    invest your energy in  the positive present moment.

        13.      Don’t over do. Keep your limits.

        14.      Don’t take  yourself so seriously. No one else does.

        15.      Don’t waste  your precious energy on gossip.

        16.      Dream more while you are awake

        17.      Envy is a  waste of time. You already have all you need..

        18.      Forget  issues of the past.

                   Don’t remind your partner with

                   His/Her mistakes of the past. 

                       That will ruin your present happiness.

        19.      Life is too  short to waste time hating anyone.

                   Don’t hate others.

        20.     Make peace  with your past so it won’t spoil the present.

        21.     No one is  in charge of your happiness except you.

        22.     Realize  that life is a school and you are here to learn.   

        23.     Smile and laugh more.

        24.     You don’t  have to win every argument. … Agree to disagree

                  Problems are simply part  of the curriculum that appear

                  and fade away like algebra class…..

                  but the lessons  you learn will last a lifetime.

 

        Society:

        25.     Call your  family often.

        26.     Each day give something good to others.

        27.     Forgive  everyone for everything..

        28.     Spend time w/ people over the age of 70

                   & under the  age of  6.

        29.     Try to make at least three people smile each day.

        30.     What other  people think of you is none of your business.

        31.     Your job  won’t take care of you when you are sick. 

                   Your friends will. Stay in touch.

        Life:

        32.    Do the  right thing!

        33.    Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or  joyful.

        34.    GOD  heals everything.

        35.    However good or bad a situation is, it will change..

        36.    No matter  how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

        37.    The best is  yet to come..

        38.    When you awake alive in the morning, thank GOD for it.

        39.    Your Inner  most is always happy. So, be happy.

 

Rescue workers struggled to clear rubble and bodies from the streets of Haiti's "flattened" capital, where a government official said the death toll from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake may exceed 100,000. This tragedy makes my heart go out to all the people who have lost loved ones. As a father and grandfather who has suffered near fatal tragedies, I can empathize with the gutt-wrenching pain and agony these families face. There is a passage in the Old Testament of the Bible -- Jeremiah 31:15 --that says, "There was a voice heard in Rama, Rahel weeping for her children...because they were not." This prophecy, tied to the Christmas season, which we just celebrated, calls us all to honor the least among us and care for the defenseless. When we recognize the poor, the needy and the despised among us, we bring life, healing and hope to the whole of humanity. If we neglect those less powerful, we breed the seeds of our own defeat.

We live in a materialistic society, where we often confuse a person’s net worth in the human sense with his or her net worth in the financial sense.  We therefore feel a never-satisfied drive always to gather more goods, a better job title and more friends, thinking that such possessions will increase our overall value.  Ultimately, this way of thinking makes our feelings of self worth dependent upon forces that we do not control, and when the inevitable tough times in life arrive, we are shaken to the core.

The alternate way of thinking is to evaluate self worth based upon the living of trascendent values, such as love, peace or humility.  This way of life sometimes lacks the comfortable trappings of material wealth, but it does not depend upon those same trappings to sustain itself.  Each person’s value is determined only by his or her own deeds.

To what extent do you determine your self worth in terms of material goods, social status or interpersonal relationships?  How has your sense of worth been affected by uncontrollable events or the behaviors of others?  To what extent do you base your self worth upon the values you live?  What values best indicate your true worth?

Tomorrow, people across the U.S. will gather together for Thanksgiving Day.  Most of us will reflect upon the good things and good people that have been in our lives for the past year, and we will express our gratitude to the One who provides these gifts to us.  It is a day of gratefulness and appreciation.

This year, as you count your blessings, remember to include the painful elements of life.

I know that it sounds a bit odd, but remember to give thanks for the unpleasant times you have had along with the pleasant ones; show appreciation for your painful experiences along with the joyful ones.  Good times and pleasant people are easy to appreciate because they give us happy feelings, but bad times and dificult experiences are also vital to our health, for they compel us to grow.

For instance, what are the possible end results when a romantic relationship passes through a difficult stretch?  Either the couple will stay together through the ordeal and find their love for one another deepened through the shared experience, or they will realize that the relationship has no staying power, and each will go his or her own way.  Is not either outcome preferable to a shallow, stagnant relationship?  Or think about difficult economic times.  While we prefer the ease and comfort of wealth, it is when we financially struggle that we learn to appreciate what we have.  Rough economic times force us honestly to sort through our priorities as we stretch our resources, and having less money available to run all around town means that we end up spending more quality time with our families.

The same kinds of blessings may be found in any type of hardship.  In losing those things and people that made us comfortable, we begin a journey into the unknown that provides us with freedom, growth and change.  Entering into new life is difficult and painful, but it is good for us; it grants us wisdom and understanding and experience, all of which help us to become better people.  Profound insights emerge from the depths of despair, if we are open to them.

This Thanksgiving, as you list the blessings in your life, remember to give thanks for your sorrows.  They may not be pleasant to experience, but if you have the wisdom to learn, they are shaping you into a better human being.

In a recent article on RealAge.com, two doctors advised us to take time out of our busy days and deliberately practice deep breathing.  While this is not really new advice – and forms the basis for meditation and yoga – the article suggests a medical explanation for the benefits of deep breathing.  In the readers’ comments section, one reader suggested that this was just more impractical data; it doesn’t help us get the rent paid, so to speak.

We can either dismiss this reader’s comment or hear his words as part of a much larger sentiment.  Perhaps he echoes the tension we all feel when wrestling with the spiritual vs material aspects of managing our lives.  Even a doctor who advocates exercise may not maintain a regular routine of physical exercise, and certainly may overlook spiritually “tuning up”.

In the same way, the enlightened among us may say that exercise, meditation and prayer will enable us to meet life’s challenges with vigor and vitality, but do we model such behavior?  In our constant battle for time allocation, do our choices favor practical materialism over spiritual awakening?

When we are better prepared for a job, we perform better; but in the big job of “doing life”, do we take adequate time to prepare ourselves, or do we just go out and take our best shots?  No one going into battle would choose to go out unprepared, yet we dare to go out into the battlefield of life with no armor, no strategy and no resources.  No wonder, then, that we often do not win.

Our natural instinct is to deploy most of our resources to the tasks at hand, whatever those may be.  If, instead, we shift our priorities to preparedness, we will realize greater success.

Our fifth Question of the Week is on the topic of spirituality.  Feel free to discuss other aspects of the issue that you feel are relevant.

For many people, “religion” has come to mean something contaminated by power groups, while “spirituality” is personal and free flowing.  Other people find that their religion and spirituality mutually support one another.  In your life, do religion and spirituality work together or conflict?  In what ways does a focus on spirituality challenge the status quo?  What are you doing to grow in these areas?

I was talking with a friend recently who said one of the favorite phrases he remembers from back when he used to attend church was when preachers or other leaders would say, “When You Know, That You Know, That You Know.”

He didn’t remember anything else from church, except the power and certainty of that phrase.

Well–talk about self confidence – it seems like a phrase like that really sums it up. A person in that position is perhaps even in a state beyond belief; they are in a state of knowing with certainty. Isn’t that the ideal position that we would all like to be in with regard to our place in life?

When I was graduating from college and the country was in a recession. Most of my colleagues were afraid that they would not be able to find a job (although we were graduating from a prestigious Ivy League school). Somehow, my self confidence was such that I had no doubt that I would receive job offers. And, indeed, I received multiple offers. I am further reminded of numerous entrepreneurs who, upon losing a business have said with conviction, “I’ll build another one, just like I built this one.” And they did.

So what are the steps to building self confidence?

1. Plan Purposefully. Nothing is more important to happiness and success than “being on-purpose.” Discover what your special gift to the universe is, by asking what you would do if you didn’t have to work for a living. If you cannot immediately find that exact job, see how close you can get to it — or do it on a volunteer basis.

2. Prepare Prayerfully. Whatever “prayer” means for you, seek guidance. We are connected to the universe, so listen! When we listen, doors will be opened, things will become clearer, and we are given the strength that we need for the journey.

3. Dress for Success. “Your attitude determines your altitude” is a well known adage. Your dress, posture, speech, and presence communicate your vision of success to other people. It is for sure that no one will believe your vision if you don’t. Everything about your physical appearance speaks volumes to others about your confidence. So shine! Buying designer clothes is not necessary — that speaks to their success. Clothes that are right for you, and do not distract from your message will enhance your mission.

4. Proceed Positively. Once you have defined your dream, brought it into clear focus, and prayerfully prepared for it, proceed with positive energy to put all the pieces in place. When a person builds a house, they have to see the house on the empty lot before one shovel has plowed the ground. They then proceed with vigor to do all the things necessary to bring into being a house that does not exist! And so it is with bringing a dream into reality.

5. Pursue Persistently. Anyone who has ever built a house knows how persistent they must be with the architect, the builder and others to stay on top of every detail to get it done. And so it is with our dreams: bringing it to reality requires persistency, diligence and hard work.

6. Record Success. On the journey to bringing our vision to reality there will inevitably be joys and sorrows. Winners learn to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones. In other words, every time there is a setback use that as an invaluable lesson. When successes occur, record them. Celebrating the successes provides the fuel to keep going.

Where I live, February can be brutal and miserably long. Days are short, temperatures are cold and the sky seems permanently overcast. The snow, which was clean, white and refreshing around Christmastime, has become gray with road salt and has solidified into hardened piles of ice. Roads are pocked with potholes, people are stir-crazy from being indoors too long, and there is an overall feeling of depression and gloom. Not many people around here like February.

The irony is that the miserable Februaries are why this part of the world is so pleasant. It is the long, cold winter that controls the number of bugs and other vermin. It is the large buildup of snow and ice, released together in the spring thaw, that provides a well-watered climate for hardwood trees, flowers and agriculture. It is the difficulty of socializing in winter that shapes a culture to value deep friendships over passing acquaintances, that leads us truly to appreciate the mild weather of the other seasons of the year. We may not appreciate February while we are in the middle of experiencing it, but it is a wonderful gift that blesses us and makes us who we are.

In the same way, we as human beings pass through “February” periods in our lives, times and situations which are painful, even agonizing, but which are in fact blessings. We may not feel blessed at the time – we are usually too focused on trying to endure the experience – but it is the very pain and depression and misery that provides us with the raw materials we need to become better human beings. It is when we are broken that we are able to evaluate the individual pieces of our lives. It is in our loneliness that we learn compassion. It is by experiencing poverty that we may discover the hollowness of earthly possessions. It is in walking with death that we find what it is to be alive.

It is a foolish vanity of our current civilization that we go to great lengths to try to avoid pain and sorrow. We strive to be happy at all times. This behavior is both useless and self-destructive. It is useless because joy and sorrow are fundamentally intertwined and cannot be separated. It is self-destructive because it leads us to deny or to try to escape painful situations without ever learning from them. We therefore keep finding ourselves back in that painful place over and over because we have refused to experience it deeply enough to understand our own roles in creating and maintaining it.

The only sensible, healthy response to sorrow is to face it fully, to go into the pit of despair and experience it directly. Yes, this is painful, but it is the pain of healing; it is the pain of re-creation. In our pain, we are able to sift through our priorities and our values to discover higher truths than we had previously known. In our pain, we face the hard realization that we do in fact need other people to be whole. In our pain, we touch the presence of the Spirit of All, who breaks us down through our hardships so that we may be created anew.

To seek joy without sorrow is like a plant that seeks only bright, sunny days. Not only will the full range of weather conditions come whether we will it or not, but it is the gloomy, rainy days that provide us with the water we need to grow and survive. It is the cold of winter that clears away the distracting bugs that sap our strength. Too many sunny days in a row is called a drought. Too much happiness without the soul-nourishing waters of sorrow leads to spiritual withering and lifelessness. We need to drink deeply of our sorrow to be able to thrive when the sunshine arrives. It is our Februaries that open the doorway to spring.