Show up unprepared, show up unready, show up scared. What I have found about those I respect most, is that there is honor in showing up. Showing up to trial, showing up to a work presentation, getting out of bed and showing up for the day when things are tough. Showing up to our personal arena.
Don’t wait for the day you aren’t afraid, it’s not coming. Today, show up to the arena. Ready or not, scared, vulnerable, however you feel, show up and face what we are afraid of. As the Stoics say, “the obstacle is the way.”
I love this! I saw that I had a comment, I was so excited, the comment was the above. It hurt me. It hurts to share what’s on your heart and face rejection, meanness, the world’s rejection of your courage to be vulnerable. But I cannot fail to practice what I preach. If we let the world dictate our emotions, we are slaves to the public.
Man in the Arena is what I live my life by. Theodore hit it out of the park. His speech saved me in a dark time and I say the speech daily. We are not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or how the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.
if you are getting criticism, you aren’t moving forward. As Marcus Aurelius says, the obstacle is the way. Go in the direction of criticism, seek it, we know we are going the right way in video games when there is new obstacles, new enemies to fight, new challenges.
I love this critic and will love the next. The difficulty is when the worst critic, the merciless one, is ourselves. For anyone reading, take what helps and leave the rest. Smile, laugh, brush the critic off, and get back in the arena! Thank you “Isreal Nite club!” May the cowards of the internet abyss armed with keyboard, who spew worthless toxicity which is only their own inadequacies projected, never be unable to find me!
“All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.” (Joseph Campbell [1904 – 1987]. If you haven’t heard the above, maybe you have heard “attitude determines your altitude.”Jesus said “the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)” But we often say in response, “ya but you don’t understand MY problems, MINE are actually difficult.” Well, take it from a man who was ripped into a concentration camp during the holocaust.
in Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, a doctor in neurology, a man in the absolute torture and hell of suffering in the Nazi concentration camps, embraces attitude. Viktor stated that everything can be taken from a person but for one thing, the last of our human freedoms, the freedom to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances and to choose one’s own way.
Buddhists say that suffering is lack of acceptance of pain. We fight it. We are in the pain of regret of the past or the pain of worry of the future. Be in the now. Practice gratitude of the now. Accept the pain, it is only temporary and will pass.
choose happiness. Breathe, be grateful, laugh. Smile, in the arena of life
The good and the bad, even this, this too shall pass.
I just got out of my morning convenience store and the owner said he had to tell his mother to stop watching videos of snakes or she would think one was in the room. He said he watched a snake movie once and was in his bedroom with a flashlight convinced he saw a snake.
I said yes brother, we are what we consume. The workers all agreed with me. I said that’s the problem with politics, people plug into hate 24/7 and start to see problems everywhere. We need to eat mental vegetables. Smile, be kind to people, consume healthy things to see and feel healthy things.
When I was preparing for my first jury trial, I was in my office buried at whatever crazy hour. I was burned out, broken, and beyond stressed with adrenaline being the only source of energy. My paralegal wrote “have fun with it” on a post-it note and put it on my computer screen.
I saw the post-it and she said “you have to have fun with it or you will be traumatized, miserable, and never want to do this again.” She was right, I was traumatized but I was not miserable. Trial broke me but I was ok because I had a good time. It was a mindset. Everything is. My paralegal had wrote “smile” on a different post-it weeks prior when I was equally stressed. I placed the “have fun with it” post -it onto the bottom of the “smile” post-it and viola: we have a life philosophy and I have smiling in the arena.
in life, happiness doesn’t find us. We search for it but it’s illusive. When we get it we want something else. “Your conditions for happiness are the chains of your suffering.” Happiness is a pursuit, not a destination. To find happiness, you must be happy. Smile, breathe, laugh, be grateful, be happy.
We can either be miserable and traumatized or smile, be happy, and have fun with it. I choose to have smile and have fun in the arena. What’s your other option? Misery? No thanks.
