Monday, October 3, 2016

From The Study...a conversation about possibilities

The Zen Of Not Giving Two Shits...

“I couldn’t give two shits” is a pretty weird expression—I mean, why anyone would want to give any number of shits toward anything is beyond me.

It’s as if some grand shit-giving presentation is the pinnacle of all meaning.

(Not giving a rats ass is another way of putting it, but I prefer the sheer perplexity of “not giving two shits.”)

People often say that the key to being happy and peaceful in life is to tear off the masks we wear and just be ourselves—in other words, to stop giving two shits about who everyone else wants us to be and just be our authentic selves.

The word “authentic” has apparently now been added to the list of buzzwords and clichés in the personal development world, which means we can no longer use it or run the risk of being forever castigated. Personally, I couldn’t give two shits about this (see what I did there?), since I actually like the word authentic. It’s in the dictionary like all the other words and I happen to feel it illustrates my point quite well.

Maybe I’ve learned to not give two shits about this stuff now, but it’s definitely not always been that way. I spent a large portion of my life giving two shits about everything. In fact, I gave more than two shits. I would go around giving as many shits as I could about every shitting aspect of life.

To put it another way, I was a serial shit giver. And it was very tiring.

I’d give shits about what every person thought of me, where I was going in life, what people thought about where I was going in life, how much money I was earning, how much I’d achieved, big life things, small everyday things and just about everything in my existence.

The weird thing was that, the whole time, I attempted to portray someone who was super laid back and didn’t give two shits about anything. I’m not sure how successful I was at that, but underneath I was desperately bothered about everything.

Shits were secretly given in all areas and directions.

What this created was an almost constant state of inner turmoil, worry, panic and anxiety about whether all this stuff I gave two shits about was actually going to work out. Regardless of what happened, I would keep on making up more stuff to give a shit about and was never able to actually sit back and just be at peace with everything.

Footnote: I wanted to share with you the humor and the talents of Michael Glover. I will present this topic over several series in the next few weeks. Each will stand on their own, but follow his story with a dash of folk psychology mixed in...hope you enjoy it. Above all I hope it made you grin...Doc


Zen and the Art of Not Giving Two shits...Michael Glover. Check out Michael's world on Facebook, pod cast and website...

Discovering Ourselves Series...Now


At Play In The Field Of Now...The Art Of Now

I've given this some thought of recent.  I always stop and read those post that highlight "the Now". Always say yep, thats good, real good...now how the hell does one do that?

We live in the age of so much distraction.  But one of life's greatest paradoxes is that your brightest future hinges on your ability to pay attention to the present. Got that? Pay attention to the present, at least  a reasonable amount of attention should be given to it.

Life unfolds in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized, and squandering the precious seconds of our lives as we worry about the future and ruminate about what's past. "We're living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence," says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We're always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm.

You are not your thoughts you know...

In her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about a friend who, whenever she sees a beautiful place, exclaims in a near panic, "It's so beautiful here! I want to come back here someday!" "It takes all my persuasive powers," writes Gilbert, "to try to convince her that she is already here."




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