Not writer’s block. Promotion block.

Posted October 25, 2010 By reikiday and has 17 comments.

It is interesting how much easier it is for me to write a book than promote it.

It is a mental block.

This is the same thing that happened with everything else important in my life.  I hesitated, because I was not sure.  I doubted. I have delayed so many things because I was not certain taking the next step would really work out.

Yet it always has.  My marriage, completing graduate school, becoming a licensed psychologist, etc — all that stuff is working out. 

It is not that I do not believe in myself.  I just keep forgetting that I have anything anyone wants.

I think if I get over this, I will be able to help others who are having this professional/artistic self-confidence problem.  

If I keep the future in mind, where I will hopefully help them, maybe I can help this book have an audience.

Maybe if we were all confident that what we do has a purpose, more good things would be done in the world.

The paperback book is now available at WordClay’s bookstore.

It will soon be on Amazon and B&N’s catalogs. 

It is also available as an eBook from all eBook retailers, including Amazon Kindle and iPhone/iPad/iTouch.

Thanks for reading.

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Happiness through nonattachment

Posted October 14, 2010 By reikiday and has 21 comments.

It is our self-grasping, resulting in overvaluing things, ideas, and especially feelings, that leads to discontentment. Forego these things, and a great consistent happiness is possible.

So says the Buddhist meditation master.

In the midst of some unavoidable tests of my patience over the past two weeks, I finally started reading a book loaned to me by my colleague Kathryn at the Center for Mindful Change.

It is called “How to Solve Our Human Problems: The Four Noble Truths” by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso and I am really enjoying it. It is written very much like the books written by Hindu gurus in India that my wife Jen brought home more than two years ago.

Here is one passage I really liked:

“Just as there is room in the sky for a thunderstorm, there is room in the vast space of our mind for a few painful feelings. Just as a storm has no power to destroy the sky, unpleasant feelings have no power to destroy our mind, when painful feelings arise in our mind, there is no need to panic — we can patiently accept them, experience them, and investigate their nature and where they come from. When we do this, we will discover that painful feelings do not come from outside but arise from within our mind.” (pp. 42-43)

Today I resolve to take myself less seriously, because what is the point?

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A deeper gratitude

Posted October 4, 2010 By reikiday and has 19 comments.

The practice of reciting five things per day for which we are grateful is a good maintenance program. But what happens when we are really burnt on the way things are going? What do we do when our overscheduled lives seem to take over? What do we do when our lives seem like a runaway train, while we desperately hang on for fear of falling off the back?

Well, I have one answer. And it is not as smug as it seems.

I list ten things for which I am grateful.

This really works for me, especially if I have been remiss in reciting my five per day. It gets the good energy flowing again, but sometimes even this requires a few tries throughout the day.

I find I am surprised at just how difficult it can be to say the first few things I am grateful for, not because I have trouble thinking of them, but because I end up feeling guilty I allowed myself to become so overwhelmed with life in the first place.

Life requires reflection. Going to church/synagogue/mosque/temple seems to be a tradition not of a less sophisticated time, but maybe a reminder to those of the future that life can carry us away from ourselves.

In an increasingly isolated world, we require reminders. We need support. We yearn to feel grounded.

And so, we are grateful. But not without a huge effort at times.

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