What To Do About the News

Aside from the sports, weather, and the occasional feel good story, much of the local, state and national news seems to be often filled with arguing, violence and tragedy.

How does this type of news make you feel?

How is this type of news of use to you in your daily life and as a citizen of world?

Does this type of news influence how you act in the world?

I ask these questions, partly because I’m still not sure what to do about the news.

I confess that my approach to the news is to consume very little of it.  I have adopted this approach because the news often does not cover the part of life that I’m most interested in, the countless positive acts that people engage in everyday; the beauty of art, architecture and technology; and the wonder of nature.  I find that the more I look for this uplifting part of life, the more I find that it is in evidence everywhere.

So what to do about the news?  I have more questions:

How much news do we need to consume to be informed citizens?

If we are overwhelmed by the sadness in the world that often comes through the news how are we going to create a world of happiness, satisfaction and love?

How do we feel for all the people suffering in the world, and at the same time limit our exposure to the graphic details of the news?

We each have the opportunity to answer the questions I pose here for ourselves.  I must admit I don’t yet know how to answer many of these questions for myself, but I believe they are important for all of us to consider.

Game of the Day

How do you choose to relate to the news?

How do you choose to relate to the uplifting part of life?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Become Best Friends With Your Dreams Today

We want to be able to know our dreams when we see them.  When we look at all the various opportunities on the menu of life, we want to know our dreams well enough to choose the opportunities that will lead us closer to our dreams with confidence.

Luckily, we don’t have to wait for someday to get acquainted with our dreams.  We can begin becoming best friends with them today.

Our dreams offer wisdom on how we are to achieve them.  Our dreams most often already exist in the world.   For example, say we dream of running and finishing a marathon.  This dream already exists as fulfilled in all the people who have completed a marathon.  We can learn much about the pathway to achieving our dream from them. We can meet people who have completed marathons and ask them questions or we can read books written by them.  Their wisdom can become the wisdom of our dream communicating with us.

The more we can live in conversation with our dream the more insight we will have as how to realize it.

Recently, I read a book written by Jerry and Ester Hicks*, which talks about the importance of feeling the emotions of living your dream even when it has yet to materialize.

How we feel affects what we notice and who and what is attracted to us.

When a friend is speaking, we build connection with them by showing them that we understand the emotions in his or her story.  In the same way, we can build connection with our dreams by living their joy in our present lives.

Respect the power of your dreams.  Your dreams are seeds that can grow into the reality of your future.  Respect yourself as a changing being.  We once did not even know how to crawl.  Look at all the dreams that you have realized between then and where you presently are in life.  Now think of all of your dreams that could be realized in the next few months, let alone the next five years.  Your dreams are dancing in your future.  Now is the best time to become friends with them.

* “Ask and It IS Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires”, Esther and Jerry Hicks, Hay House, 2004.

Game of the Day

Appreciate the beauty of your dreams.  Savor your dreams now.

What do they look like and sound like?  How do they feel?

How can you start to become best friends with your dreams today?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

What Do You Get When You Combine…

the best of your childhood with the best of your adulthood?

Answer— You get the life you can live TODAY with no one telling you when to go to bed or to eat all the food on your plate.

Are you with me?  Now ask yourself these fun questions:

What did you enjoy most about being a kid?

What activities and games did you find the most fun?

(Luckily, toy stores don’t ID and refuse to sell Legos to anyone over 18.)

If you were anything like me as a kid, besides having a great time playing, you also dreamed of being big, being grown-up, being able to drive a car, being able to stay up late.

As kids, we dreamed of all the freedom we have today.

Now that we have all of this freedom, let’s remember what we loved about being kids and recombine it into our lives.

I’ve heard of research studies that have concluded that children laugh much more than adults.  My fellow adults, there’s nothing saying that we can’t catch-up and match our wonderful kids laugh for laugh.

We had a certain wisdom, and joy and wonder when we were kids, which means we can seek to recall it and employ it in our grown-up years.

Now we would do well to remember to maintain the best of our adulthood too, the freedom, the ability to be responsible, all of our grown-up wisdom and knowledge.

We could call this playful combination of the best of our childhood and the best of our adulthood, our CHOICEHOOD because we are free to choose to live it.

May we all live our CHOICEHOOD to the fullest and savor every minute of it.  Yay!

Game of the Day

How can you combine the best of your childhood with the best of your adulthood to have a truly fantastic CHOICEHOOD?

 

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Ten Happy Questions to Ask Yourself and Others

These Happy Questions can focus our thoughts and conversations on Happy Topics.  Have fun asking them!

10. What are five things you love about your life?

9. When have you felt happiest during the past week?

8. What makes you laugh?

7. What makes you smile?

6. What hobbies do you love?

5. What do you love about your friends and family?

4. What do you love about the space in which you live?

3. What do you love about the city, town, or countryside in which you live?

2. What do you love about your dreams?

1. What excites you as you look forward to the next year?

By asking Happy Questions, may you receive many Happy Answers.

Game of the Day

How many of these questions can you ask yourself and others today?

Create your own Happy Questions.

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Hire Yourself as a Happiness Detective

A few weekends ago, I saw a happy movie that was actually called The Happy Movie directed by Roko Belic.  I highly recommend it.  And movie recommendation from me is an unusual thing because I see very few movies.  (I’m not sure if this makes the recommendation more or less valuable.)

Since seeing the movie I have been thinking a good deal about happiness and I have questions.

If happiness is a central goal of humanity, how does it happen that there is so much unhappiness in the world?

If someone told you that they would give you twenty million dollars and all you had to do was to be constantly happy for six months, could you do it?

I think I might have a tough time with this challenge.   This is not because I don’t believe in happiness and want to be happy.  It’s just that I’m still solving the mystery of consistently creating my own happiness.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy the vast majority of time, but definitely not constantly.

You might well ask, Is it even a practical or worthy goal to be constantly happy?

Great!  You’re already talking like a Happiness Detective.

One thing I think is everyone’s path of clues to daily happiness will be somewhat different.  We have different tastes and wants.  So I encourage you to become your own Happiness Detective.  (Don’t worry! You won’t need to quit your day job).

As Happiness Detectives, even though we each need to do our own investigating and come to our own conclusions, we can still compare notes.

Here is an aspect of happiness I’m presently investigating:

Do things and people and places make us happy, or do we choose to create happiness with the things and people and places that come into our lives?

As I write this, I’m eating some of my favorite food, a veggie burrito and chips at Chipotle, enjoying the upbeat atmosphere and feeling really happy.

Would I feel this happy if I was drinking molasses straight from the bottle and sitting in a garbage dump?

I don’t think so.  Not by a long shot.

Now happiness would not be impossible with the molasses and the dump.  It might actually be fascinating to see what people throw away and if there were any treasures.

And if one had a camping stove and other ingredients one could maybe make molasses cookies.  (Ok, I’m stretching it. But please work with me, the point is that happiness can potentially be created in any circumstance.)

My shrewd deduction from my happiness investigation– it is best when possible to choose circumstances that I have an easy time feeling happy about.

Have fun being a Happiness Detective and investigating what truly makes you happy!

 Game of the Day

As your own best Happiness Detective, what are the questions that you are going to investigate regarding your happiness?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Turn on the Quiet

 

Noise is so normal.  At many times in my life, I thought I had to be noisy and always the life of the party to be cool.  In my view, it was boring and not worldly to be quiet.  I decided to make myself into a person who craved noise so I would fit in.

Lately, I’ve noticed that I have sought out more quiet time and that it’s wonderful.   It’s so relaxing and being relaxed just feels comfortable.  When I give myself abundant quiet time, I find I’m more able to focus, and have more freedom to create an uplifting perspective.

Focus is the act of being able to weed out much information so that you can pay attention to the information that is of importance to you.  I find focus much easier if I actively choose what information I take in.  To me, this means often deciding to drive without the radio on, choosing to limit my Internet surfing, and also not owning a TV.  (I truly love not having a TV in my living space.)

I also find that creating more quiet around me helps me maintain an uplifting perspective on the world.  Think of the perspective you get on the world from taking a walk around your neighborhood on a beautiful day compared to watching a violent movie.  Or even the nightly news.

It might be odd to ask the restaurant you are dining in to shut off the loud music they are playing, but when you are in your car or at home, the noisemakers have switches you can shut off, if you so choose.  You can turn on the quiet.

(Does turning on the quiet make a person cool?  I still don’t really know.  But I do definitely know that at times, it feels very good.)

Game of the Day

When you notice you car radio or the electronics at home seem to be wearing you down or annoying you, turn on the quiet.

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Living Daily Lives as Big as Our Dreams

Today, we can expand our lives as big as our dreams.  One of the first ways we do this is to become content with our present lives.  You might say, “But Jason, I want my dreams, not what I’m doing presently, so why are you suggesting that I become content with the present?”  (I can relate, on some days this idea seems like a very counterintuitive suggestion to me, too.)

But let me illustrate how being content with the present is indeed very important to realizing our dreams.  Say we are camping in the middle of nowhere and run out of food before our fifteen-mile hike back to the tiny town where our car is parked.  There is only one restaurant in town, which is called “Bob’s Pretty Tasty Greasy Food and Stuff”. There are only a few things on Bob’s menu, none of which we would ordinarily choose.

Still, we’re almost definitely going to order one of the menu items and not hold out for, say, sushi or grape leaves.  After the incredibly long hike, we compromise without hesitation because we are STARVING.  We will eat practically anything, even if it is Bob’s Wednesday night special, which happens to be “Random Fried Stuff”.

In the same way, if we are STARVING for fulfillment, we will often compromise for much less than our dreams.  So, it’s important to cultivate the awareness of being sated with our present lives because then we’re in a place to really choose to go after our dreams, and not base our decisions on feeling STARVED for instant change.

When we are sated, if our dream isn’t on one menu, we’re willing to travel until we find it or, if need be, learn how to create our dream from scratch.

In our dreams, we often see a change in our circumstances and life situation.  We also see happiness.  It may take time to alter our circumstances and life situation to fit our dreams, but we can live the happiness part of our dreams, right now, today.

When we live this happiness, we begin today to expand our lives as big as our dreams.

Game of the Day

What can you do to become sated with your present circumstances?

How can you live the happiness of your dreams today?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Be a Valentine’s Day Hero

I think we ought to celebrate the Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks as a Valentine’s Day Hero and I’ll tell you why.  Wikipedia describes the act of heroism that Rosa Parks is commonly remembered for by stating, “On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.” *

We know who Rosa Parks is because she was willing to claim her seat and her importance.  She silently said a Heroic Yes to her own worth.  By claiming her importance, she offered a new level of freedom to the world.  Rosa Parks once said, “I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free…so other people would be also free.” **

Rosa Park sets a vivid example of how profoundly important self-love is.

By truly loving all that you are, you free yourself from the shackles of self-doubt and self-hate.

This Valentine’s Day claim your importance and your seat in the world.  Be your own Valentine first.

Then you can truly give your Valentines to others because your Valentines are full of your love.

When you say, “I love you,” that “I” is priceless.   If you value the “I” that is you as priceless, the “I” that you give when declaring, “I love you” is truly worth more than mountains of diamonds and gold.

Rosa Parks’ self-love and recognition of her priceless value still blesses the world today.

Loving ourselves is truly one of the most profound gifts that we can offer to the people we love and to the world this Valentine’s Day.

 Game of the Day 

How are you going to claim your importance and your seat in the world today?

How will you bask in your love for yourself?

How will you offer this love to others?

 

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

** http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/rosa_parks.html

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

What to do about BAD Weather?

Sometimes, I love to just be upset about the weather.  I used to live in South Dakota and the November through March weather would often just make me upset.  Or rather, I would CHOOSE to get upset at this wintry weather.

Any type of weather is a just a circumstance, a circumstance that is largely beyond our control unless we choose to travel away from it.

However, we always can choose how we interpret any given weather circumstance.

Especially challenging are weather circumstances we have looked at in a fixed way so long that the meaning we add to the circumstance seems like a natural part of the circumstance.  For example, I can say that the circumstance “snow” is “awful” as if it is a fact.  The exciting news is that I have the power to separate this circumstance “snow” from my personal interpretation “awful,” which I chose to add to the circumstance “snow.”

A dictionary is a great resource for revealing to us when we add personal interpretations to words.  My dictionary says snow is “precipitation in the form of small white ice crystals formed directly from the water vapor of the air at temperatures less than 32 degrees F.” My dictionary says nothing about snow being “awful” (which kind of makes me want to go out and buy a better dictionary.)

But seriously, my definition of snow being “awful” is exactly that, my definition.  While I can’t change the dictionary definition of what snow is, I do have the option of modifying how I view snow.  For instance, I could change my personal definition of snow to “snow is joyful”.

Now if I really wanted to change how I experienced snow I would need to keep reminding myself that I have chosen to define snow as joyful.  In addition, I would want to find ways of viewing snow and activities that gave substance to my new personal definition of snow.  For example, I could change my view of snow by observing how soft and peaceful snow seems as it falls.  And I could find an activity that I love doing in the snow like snowshoeing and do it on a routine basis whenever there is enough snow on the ground.  In this way, I could with practice change my personal definition of snow.

Weather is just weather.  “Bad” is a word we choose to add to it as we create our personal definition of a weather circumstance.  It takes practice to alter how we experience weather circumstances that we have long chosen to define as “bad.”  But with practice, we can become content with a wider and wider range of weather circumstances.  From this practice with the weather, we can learn how to alter our personal definitions of a wider and wider range of life circumstances so that we experience greater amounts of peace and joy.

Game of the Day

1. Think of a weather condition that you dislike.

2. Look up the definition of this weather condition in your dictionary.

3. Now think of the personal definition that you add to this weather condition?

4. What new personal definition could you create for this weather condition?

5. What ways of physically viewing this weather condition could reinforce your new personal definition?

6. What activities could you do during this weather condition to reinforce your new personal definition?

 

Home Sweet Exploration

Can you imagine traveling to your favorite vacation destination and choosing to stay in the hotel room the whole time with the curtains shut?  There would be reasons to choose this option, of course, spending one’s whole vacation in the hotel room would most likely be more predictable, safer, and less expensive, than going out to explore.  But still we wouldn’t dream of choosing this option.

For when we’re on vacation, we’re primed to explore and try new things.  We are natural explorers.  We savor and delight in what we find.

However once we’re home, it is, at times, much easier for us to fall into routines where we basically live inside our metaphorical hotel room of the predictable, the safer, and the less expensive.

Home Sweet Home can become Home Sweet Dull.

Since we’re in our daily routines most of the time and go on vacations relatively rarely, our home territory is the natural ground for us to develop our exploration muscles.

It is natural to think, “Well I’ve done everything there is to do around where I live;” or “Where I live is just boring.”

I hear you.  I have felt like that at times.  But really consider the following two questions and see if they don’t excite your urge for Home Sweet Exploration.

• How much of the area within an hour drive of your home haven’t you explored yet?

• How many activities, shops, and restaurants within an hour’s drive of your home haven’t you tried yet?

Game of the Day

What is your next step in exploring your home territory as if it were your favorite vacation destination?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker.  He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska.  He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset.  For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.