The world always looks brighter from behind a smile. ~Author Unknown

I recall a number of years ago, when working for various companies I would be walking through the office and I would often get asked, “What’s wrong?” My response would always be that nothing was wrong, I was in deep thought. Well by the time I was asked three times in a span of ten minutes I would of course be ticked off. “Nothing’s wrong with me! I’m happy dammit!”

Well I am proud to say that I don’t experience that question anymore. While walking through work, I have come to find myself smiling when there was no other reason to smile, other than I truly was happy. People now comment that I have a great attitude, that I am all smiles, in fact one of the ladies who works at Von’s nicknamed me Smiley. When the assistant manager of the store returned from putting in some time at another store he jokingly said, “I couldn’t wait to get back to your smiling face Cary.”

After receiving another nice compliment the other day, I responded by telling the lady, “I’m one of those weird people who enjoy life.” She got a kick out of it. I can honestly say it is the truth. I am having fun, I am enjoying every minute, and I am excited about what the future is bringing.

It’s fun to smile, I suggest you try it. Every morning when you get up, force yourself to smile for at least sixty seconds and here’s why?

1. Smiling makes you attractive.
2. Smiling is contagious.
3. Smiling relieves stress
4. Smiling lowers blood pressure.
5. Smiling releases endorphins, seretonin, and natural pain killers.
6. Smiling boosts your immune system.
7. Smiling helps you to remain positive.

Can’t think of something to smile about? Picture my silly mug grinning from ear to ear as I walk through Von’s grocery humming a tune, while taking the garbage out.

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“Move your seat up I’m all cramped back here.”-Frank “It won’t move!”-Estelle “There’s a mechanism you just PUSH IT!”-Frank “Dad can’t you sit sideways? We are five blocks from the house.”-George “Sideways? Like an ANIMAL! Because of HER I have to sit like an ANIMAL! SERENITY NOW! SERENITY NOW!”-Frank “Serenity now?”-George “The doctor gave me a relaxation tape for my blood pressure. When I get stressed the man on the tape says to say SERENITY NOW!”-Frank “Did he say to yell it?”-George “The man wasn’t specific.”-Frank “What happened to the screen door? It blew off again.”-George “I TOLD YOU TO FIX THAT THING!”-Estelle “SERENITY NOW!!!!”-Frank

If you are a big fan of Seinfeld, then you’d get the serenity now moment.  When describing my quiet time in my car listening to music, Jim jokingly referred to it as having one of those moments.

All kidding aside, we all need a quiet place to just be, to go inside ourselves and to choose to think, or not think.  Or maybe just sing a happy tune, scream at the top of our lungs, whatever.  My time during my lunch, it’s a preemptive strike against negativity.  Every day I go to work inside a little kiosk, and quite honestly it’s a tight little space where we are often bumping into each other.  Not to mention an endless amount of beeping going off to let us know the creamers need to be changed, the espresso shots adjusted, the sanitized water needs to be changed, the coffees expired etc., and if you consider Pavlov’s theory, that you get a conditioned response to a conditioned stimuli, after awhile those little beeps and buzzers become a catalyst for negative energy.

What’s the point?  Well, when I go to lunch, I am still usually in a pretty good frame of mind, and I want to keep it that way.  On top of the tight quarters, and endless beeping, there’s the many moods that get brought to work by both employees and customers, so to just step away and just be quiet for a bit can be a life saver.  So I choose to use my car.  One reason is because the alternative means to either sit outside with the smokers, or sit in the break room with the others, and the conversations there usually take on endless bitching about work.  So, I either sit in my car, or I strap on the IPOD and just go to my inner space and detox a bit if you will.

This time “alone,” allows me to come back from my back feeling rejuvenated, ready to take on the next 2-3 hours that are left in my shift.  It is those last hours that are usually the hardest on my body, so I need everything including a great mental attitude to get me through them.  So while it’s not a serenity now moment, it is definitely serenity, and I am grateful for every minute of it.

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As a people, we have become obsessed with Health.  There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this.  We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying.  We have lost all confidence in the human body.  ~Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail, 1979

Something resonated with me while listening to Anthony Robbins speak in a seminar called Energy For Life, and that is when he asked “how can you be passionate about anything, including your job, love, hobbies etc., when you are exhausted?”  The answer is, you can’t.

I talk about how I love my job to no end, but when the day gets long, or it started off with a lot of pain right off the bat, I can’t wait to get out of there as soon as my shift is over.  I essentially become a clock watcher, someone who every few minutes checks to see what time it is, and those minutes seem to last an eternity.

Every day I do my best to avoid talking about what I feel I’m lacking in my health, because that is not what I want to attract more of.  I instead try to focus on my weight loss, which has given me much more energy than I have ever had before, but still I can’t deny that I felt pain, and that was holding me back.  I wanted to exercise more, but then I go and blow out my knee, and then right during the middle of that, I ended up in the emergency room one night, because I got stuck on the couch for over an hour.  My back pain was so severe I couldn’t get off of the couch, and when I finally did, I almost got stuck standing in the hallway, just trying to get to my bedroom for a pain killer.

How did I get here?  Well fear.  Fear of pain, fear of hard work, fear of letting go of comforts, fear of challenges, fear of failure.  FEAR!  It’s the ugliest four letter word in our vocabulary.  People worry about F bombs, when the only F bomb I don’t want to hear out of anyone I happen to love, their mouth,  that is the word fear.

To decide to do something about your life, means to first admit you’re not doing something right, right off of the bat you are admitting to being a “failure.”  It takes courage, or a lot of pain to decide to change the things you don’t like about yourself.  We’re talking about exercise right?  Yep.  Something as simple as exercise.  Because it does involve hard work, it does involve making a commitment, and initially it involves a certain amount of pain, and pain is what we’re trying to avoid right?

Then there are the what ifs.  What if I fail?  What if after all this hard work I still don’t look like Brad Pitt?  What if after losing all the weight she / he still doesn’t love me?  What if…. fill in your own what ifs here.

But then these pains can be a motivator.  My health was so poor I had to make a choice to do something about it.  My initial choice was to have weight loss surgery, and initially I felt great.  I lost a lot of weight, and for the things I was doing my health was just fine.  Then I got a “real” job, and boy was I not ready.  Now it is pain that has become so unbearable, that I am forced to work through it, and actually take on more pain initially, in order to get to a better place in my health.  This is another example of accepting “what is,” and surrendering to the present.  But I know I am getting stronger, and each and every day my muscles and joints become more flexible.

I am committed to my health, and I am committed to making better, healthier all around choices when it comes to my mind, body, and soul.  I am grateful that I have learned this before it was too late, and because of that, I am living a happier, more productive life.

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Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir

If you want to know where I have been spending my days off, you now know.  You can usually find me sitting in the back yard with my nose in a book, or just quietly meditating on the beauty that surrounds me.   It’s amazing how nice it can be to just sit, without any thoughts in your head and just be in awe of life.  I am blessed.  Have I told you this lately?  If not, let me say it again.  I am blessed, and I am in the process of receiving more blessings.

Everyone needs a quiet beautiful place that they can just go and be, and to have this place be just one step out the back door makes me a very lucky man.   I now know what exactly it was my dog was thinking, while sitting out in that very same yard just looking around.  He was thinking about absolutely nothing.  He was just sitting there…just being.

That’s it in a nutshell, I don’t know if I can say much more.  I am grateful to have such a beautiful space to relax, pray, play, and meditate in.

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When you say, I enjoy doing this or that, it is really a misperception. It makes it appear that the joy comes from what you do, but that is not the case. Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do, and thus into the world from deep within you. Eckhart Tolle

Most humans walk this world wandering what they are doing here on this planet, constantly asking themselves over and over, “Why am I here?” “What is my purpose?” I am happy to say that I have come to find my inner purpose.

In the past I mentioned Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. Well I am proud to say, that I finally finished this book over the weekend. I have not yet watched all of the web casts on Oprah.Com, or completed my workbook, but I am going back to those as time allows.

On page 258, he states:

So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary.

Your inner purpose is to awaken.

To say this book really resonated with me is an understatement. It would be hard for me to go into detail what it means to awaken, but a part of that awakening is to learn to accept the present moment for what it is. Not for what it isn’t, or what it could be, but for exactly what it is, and this is why I am at Starbucks, to learn this very valuable lesson.

I’ll give you an example. This last Thursday, I was scheduled to go into work at 6:30 in the morning. I won’t rehash all of the details, but I will just say that when I walked in, the opener hit me with unbelievable attitude. At first, I ignored it, and played back, wandering if this was the playful attitude she gets, or if she was really mad. It didn’t take long to realize that she was actually mad, and she took it out on me. Her action is not what concerns me, however my reaction is, and I can explain my “rational” thinking behind my “irrational” behavior.

It doesn’t take long for anyone to notice, whether they read this blog, or just experience me at the store, but I do my best to generate a positive energy, and to think only positive thoughts. As I have stated here before, before every shift I mentally prepare myself for the day, and I set forth the intention that I will have a peaceful, uneventful day. Well coming into this negativity how could this be?!! How could I have attracted this into my life? As these thoughts went through my mind, what happened is I decided I did not like this present moment, it had to be different, and because I could not accept the present moment for what it was, and to just let it be, I added some more negative thought onto the already negative situation. What this did was allow my ego to come roaring out of my body and react which did nothing but add fuel to the fire.

However, coming to just accept the fact that the present moment has arrived, there is no changing it, it is what it is, would have allowed me to recognize that the emotions she was dealing with were a part of the pain she has experienced in life. Just let her be angry. Now that does not mean to tolerate abuse, but to recognize that for me to react would serve no purpose but once again, pour fuel on the fire.

I am sure you’re wondering how this could be a very valuable lesson. Well it goes all to ego. It goes all to me, deep down in the past thinking “I’m better than this,” “This is now how things are supposed to be!” When things are exactly as they are at that present moment. To come to terms with this, and to learn to be present in all activities, brings about an awareness that allows you to bring a sense of quality to your work, your craft that you can’t bring if your mind is focusing on other things.

Imagine Michelangelo and how his carving of David would have turned out, if instead of having such an intense focus on what he does, an intense presence of being, he was instead in his mind thinking about all of the past hurts he suffered, or worried about his meeting with the Pope running through all of the possible conversations in his head, that more than likely wouldn’t happen.

This is what I am to learn. How to just be in each and every present moment, and accept that moment for what it is, for what it brings, instead of rejecting it because I think it should be different.

I can’t tell you how freeing this was to finally understand. As I finally came to realize this Friday afternoon while pouring through this book, it was as if a ton of bricks had lifted off my shoulders. My mind was so much clearer, I finished the last four chapters in no time at all, because I was present with what I was doing, which was reading my book. It in a sense became a meditation.

To give you another example of how this truly changes your life, and how you find the joy in even the smallest things. I will be real honest with you all, at times I was not enjoying the reading process, and that was because I was always looking for a better moment, when all I had was now. I have a ton of books on my reading list, and I was truly excited about reading this one, but while reading this one, I would look over and see another one that I just couldn’t wait to get to and read, but once I started that one, my mind was already onto the next best book. Never fully enjoying the one I had in my hands.

The way I explained it to somebody the other day was like being a kid at an amusement park excitedly waiting my turn on the ferris wheel, but once I got on there, and got to the top, all I could see was how exciting the bumper cars looked, and couldn’t wait to get there. But once I got onto the bumper cars, I saw the roller coaster, and now that held my attention.

I am trying to sum up a ton of valuable learning in over 300 pages of writing, in one blog post, and that would be impossible. The important thing I took away from this is that my inner purpose is just Being, and being awakened to that understanding, finding acceptance, and even submitting myself to the present moment.

Now that I have found my inner purpose, it is time to find and align that with my outer (doing) purpose.

P.S. If you would like to read this book, or The Power of Now, both are on sale at Sam’s Club for $8.72 :).

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Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.  ~Charles W. Eliot

Thoughts are things…literally.  They can be measured scientifically, and not only that, they actually manifest themselves into our reality.  I see this manifestation day after day with how my library of books continues to grow.

It wasn’t too long ago when I couldn’t even sit down and read a book.  If I attempted to, I would within a page or two, become drowsy and would either fall asleep or just give up and put the book down.  The lap-band surgery has helped alleviate whatever undiagnosed sleep apnea I had, because now I get up to six hours of uninterrupted sleep each night, whereas before, I was waking up every hour or so all night long.   That sleep has now not only given me the ability to think more clearly, but actually sit down and read an entire book from cover to cover.

I have always loved to read.  I started reading as a toddler, I personally can’t quite recall the age, but my father and mother put it somewhere around three.  I was reading the newspaper on a regular basis by the time I was five.  My mother used to say that when I was a child, and I was too quiet, and she didn’t know what I was up to, she would always find me somewhere in my room with a book in my hand.

During the summer at the library they would always have a reading program.  Read ten books and you would get to pick a prize out of this treasure chest full of toys.  The librarians would never believe me, but I would read those ten books in one night.  I wasn’t reading brochures either.  I usually read books like The Hardy Boys mysteries, and those were usually one-hundred plus pages a book  If my parents weren’t with me, I usually had to get one of them to sign off on the list of books I read just to satisfy the librarian.  What those ladies didn’t know, was that for one whole school year during fifth grade, they taught us speed reading.

To get back to my point that thoughts literally become things, things that actually manifest into reality.  I am talking physical objects that I can see, and touch.  I see this blessing manifest itself in books all day long.  Books that I want, books that I think about, I find them on the shelves of used book stores for huge discounts, or receive them as gifts.  Sometimes I just go out and buy them myself.

Let me give you an example of one such book that manifested itself into my life.  This is not a book that I did think about, I in fact didn’t even know that I would want, it already arrived into my life before I was ready for it.   It is titled The Prayer of Jabez, Breaking Through to the Blessed Life.

I’m a fan of Joel Osteen’s ministries.  However I was completely unaware of him until I started to learn about the Law of Attraction.  As I was sharing what I believe with my father one day, he told me that later on that night as he was channel surfing, he came across one of Joel’s broadcasts and he was saying the exact same things I had been saying on the phone earlier.  The reason I am a fan of Joel Osteen, is because most people don’t realize it, but he is teaching the Law of Attraction.  In his book Become A Better You, which I highly recommend people read, towards the end of the book in bold letters he states it emphatically that you attract the things you continuously think about.

So now I record his broadcasts every Sunday, and one Sunday he spoke about a man named Jabez.  A very minor character in a book of the Bible that in the first  four chapters does nothing but go through all the “begats.”  It is a book that covers thousands of years of descendants beginning with Adam, and right in the middle of this, the author of that book stops mentioning just names and briefly describes Jabez as if to say “pay attention to what this guy did.”  And what it says is this:  “Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’  And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory; that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.’  So God granted him what he requested” (1 Chronicles 4: 9-10)  The message of that day was to pray bold prayers, that there were storehouses of blessings awaiting you, all you had to do was to quit screwing around and ask.

This story intrigued me, I had never heard about this Jabez character and I personally don’t have a Bible, and even if I did, that is all there is to learn about this guy, because right after that it just goes off naming off names of descendants again.  The next time I talked to my dad I mentioned Joel’s sermon to him, and my father said to me.  “Didn’t you read that book I sent you?”  My father, weeks before had sent me this little book on Jabez, I guess I just wasn’t ready to receive it yet.

That is just one book of many, one blessing of many.  The last time I was at the Library, I stopped in their little used book store and found three books that were on my reading list and I ended up buying a total of ten books for less than $8.00.

The whole point I am getting at, is that I have the ability to enjoy reading again, something that means a lot to me, it always has, and because it is something that I love, and think about often with so much passion, I continue to attract it into my life.  My library continues to grow, and it won’t stop.  The Universe will continue to bring the books I want, and need into my life and for that, this morning I am grateful.

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The… patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don’t take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop. ~Quentin Regestein

It is my intention to heal my body with my mind, exercise and nutrition. That is the intention I have set forth today.

I am grateful for the weight loss, and I am grateful for all other increases in my health that I have experienced with that weight loss such as great blood pressure, better sleep, more endurance among many other things.

However, I currently am still experiencing some issues with my back and knee, but today I am grateful for my healing in all areas of my life. Without health, you can truly never be wealthy, because wealth does not imply just financial abundance, but abundance in many things in our lives. And health does not imply just physical abundance. In order to be truly healthy you have to fix not just the outer shell, our form, which is nothing but the car we drive through this experience we call life. But we need to fix the inner being, our self, our higher consciousness as well.

So once again, and with a lot of passion I will set forth my intention. It is my intention to heal my body with my mind, exercise, and nutrition.

This is how I will heal my body with my:

• Mind - I will continue to meditate daily, along with repeating affirmations.

• Exercise - I will return to my exercise plan which consisted of walking, and doing core exercises to build up my back muscles.

• Nutrition - I will continue to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, while limiting my intake of red meats, and eating healthier proteins. I will also be more diligent with taking my vitamins and minerals.

Another intention is to get back to hiking with my friends. I had such a wonderful experience out at Red Rock with Tom, Billie and Sanjay, that I was ready to return the next day. I will not only hike with them at Mt. Charleston, but it is my intention to hike down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon by next fall.

I have asked for a healthy body, and I am believing that the Universe will make mountains move in order to help make this happen, and I am receiving, and I am grateful for my miraculous healing.

The only other thing I ask for, is that the readers of this post, each hold out a positive thought for me, and my health, if not a prayer. Thank you!

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Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things. — Eric Butterworth

“As you think, so shall you be.”  Every day I remind myself to not fall into the trap of lacking in life, because I am all that I need to be, a complete, whole being.

If I were to choose to live as I did in the past, my life would be full of regrets, envy, jealousy, anger, all the words in the dictionary that described nothing but pain and poison to the system.  I recognized that there was a hole in my life, but instead of looking inward, I looked outward and tried to find people, and things to fill it with, knowing that the hole was much to big, and would only swallow these things up.

I have found a way to go inward now and fill that hole with the something out there that I knew was much bigger than me.  I am a much happier person now, and I know that even though I didn’t recognize it then, that I had everything within me I needed to transcend these petty problems in life that I made mountains out of.

Because of that new found way of seeing, that new found way of thinking, and more importantly that new found way of being, my life is filled to the brim with prosperity, as it says in the Bible, “my cup over flows.”  Here is the great secret to life.  So does yours, only if you choose to accept this truth.

I have been dog sitting for the past couple of weeks for Rita and Denny, and I was sitting and just staring at this dog, who over the past year has become a sweet loving friend of mine.  What an amazing life that dogs lead that can teach us so much about our true relationship between us, and God.  To a domesticated animal like a dog, we are their God.  We are the source of many things in their lives that allow them to sustain their living.  These animals are perfect beings.  Without exception, they live in the now, knowing without worry, that all their needs will be met.

Take a step back and watch your dog as it just sits in the back yard just being.  Do you think he is sitting there worrying about what tasks he didn’t finish before he left work?  Are there those annoying little conversations going on in his head where he’s going to tell off Fido the next time he sees him at the dog park?  Is he sitting there worrying about where his next meal is coming from?  No, once again they are just there being, and anything and everything they need comes to them, and with how we treat the animals we love, it comes abundantly.

So how could you think things would be different than you and your God, your source?  It isn’t.  Which is why personally, I am trying hard to quit chasing so many goals, to quit chasing the things I want, or think I need.  My God is providing for me, every day I wake up there is another breath, and it all begins there.

Am I saying goals are a bad thing?  No, they are something to clearly define, put onto paper, tape them to your bathroom mirror, but once you do, go forth knowing that everything will be taken care of, all your needs will be met, there really is no need to worry.

Matthew 6:25 - 26  Therefore, I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? See the birds of the sky, that they don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than they? 

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Backyard Flowers - Cary Darling

Life is short, misery is optional. — Unknown 

I used to walk around moping about how nothing ever worked out for me, that was until I learned how to change my mindset.  Now I walk around in amazement at how so much just seems to fall into my lap, and the reason is because I ask for it, I actively create the world I live in.

A few weeks ago I set forth an intention.  That intention was a rapid increase in pay, I asked the universe to give me a pay raise, even though I had just received my next scheduled pay raise.  Well it didn’t take long, but the universe brought forth events, and people that helped to make this happen.  It all began with a phone call from a good friend Teri, who informed me that they had a job opening at their Starbucks at Albertsons.  Not only did it pay more, but they were allowed to take tips.  With this information I proceeded directly to my boss and let her know the options that lay before me.  That phone call set forth a chain of events that I wasn’t even considering.  Not only am I now getting my pay raise, but I am now being trained for a management position with Starbucks which, once I complete, will include another pay raise.  How’s that for some Law of Attraction Action!

This isn’t the only evidence of manifestation in my life here lately.  I have seen many miracles, big and small working in my life, that I am forever grateful for.  Living a life of magic is fun, once you realize how much control you have over your destiny, how much responsibility you have over your own life, you quickly get over that daunting feeling of responsibility, and move onto “let’s party!.”  I say that jokingly, but life truly is now a celebration.  Even those so called difficult days, or moments.  I now realize that these are just opportunities to learn something that I didn’t quite grasp during an earlier experience.

I have set forth a few more intentions, some small, others pretty darn big, I can’t wait to report on those when they manifest themselves into my life.  For now, I will continue to be grateful for all I am blessed with, which include family, friends, a great job, co-workers, and a wonderful place to live.

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The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure. — Francoise de Motteville

I set forth an intention a few weeks ago, and now the universe is lining everything up to make it happen.   I had planned on spending my days off resting my knee before I had to go back to work on Wednesday, but relaxation was not in the cards.  I received a phone call late Monday and I was going back to work a day early, which honestly I had no problem with, I can always use extra hours.   The interesting thing is, my day off turned not only into working at my own store, but I ended up putting some overtime working in another store as well.  Ask, receive, and believe, just be careful and clear about what it is you want.

After work I headed over to pick up my sister, and one of Hanna’s friends, Hanna had a dance recital at school and we of course supported her.  I did my best to get out of it, but its kind of hard to say no to the people you love.  We had a pleasant evening, Hanna’s group did much better than they had expected.  I bought some pizza to take back to their apartment afterwards and we got to sit around and visit for a bit.

The day was a bit tiring, but in the end very satisfying, and rewarding.  Money comes easily and often, and here lately, that couldn’t be more true.  Stay tuned for further details.

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