Ray's Daily

“The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.”

Steve Maraboli

Yesterday I suggested that if we say yes more often it can make our lives more interesting. I finished up with a quote that said we should say no often enough for us to be able to say yes to the things that are more important. For me I think what is important is to not only do good things for others and ourselves but also making sure we have time to do things that will make us happy. If you read yesterday’s Daily you know I shared some of the author of the PositivelyPresent blog’s suggestions on why we should say yes more often. Later I thought about the importance of not just saying yes to others but also saying yes to ourselves.  I think too many of us are so busy doing what others want us to do, or doing all the things they tell us we should want to do that we don’t have time to bring more happiness into our own lives.

After thinking about it awhile I did a little personal brainstorming and realized that over the last few years I have been saying yes to myself much more often than in the past. In fact these are the best years I have ever had. I also went back to Dani’s blog to see if she had similar thoughts and here is what I found. Dani had ridden horses when she was little but like so many of us other things kept her from being able to continue. But after many years she said yes to herself and after a day of riding a friends horse she wrote the following.

5 Benefits of Doing What You Used to Love Again

1. It reconnects you with (the old) you. Simply walking into the barn — smelling all those old familiar smells and hearing those old familiar sounds — brought me right back to some of the best days of my childhood. I used to love being at the barn, tucked in the stall with one of my favorite horses, and going back into a barn reconnected me to those old feelings of comfort that I had felt as a child when I spent time with horses. Whatever you used to love to do, you loved it for a reason. When you go back to it again, you’ll be reconnected with parts of yourself you might have forgotten about.

2. It feels excitingly brand new… Even though I had spent years in barns and in riding rings, going back to a stable felt like a brand new experience for me yesterday. Of course, the memories came rushing back, but I also felt as if I were experiencing my former love of riding for the first time. I was nervous and uncertain around the horses — something I hadn’t been since back when I’d first started riding — and so a lot of what I was doing (even though I remembered how to do a lot of it), felt brand new. Just like anything, if you don’t do something for a long time, it will seem new again the next time you do it, which makes it exciting.

3. … and yet it feels oddly familiar. Even though it felt like I was doing it all again for the first time, I also had some idea of what I was doing. The brushes and the bridle looked familiar. I remembered how to pick a hoof and how to curry the dirt in circular motions. So much of it came back to me and, even though it was a new place and a new horse and it had been years since I’d done any of these things, it was all oddly familiar. I think this is what I loved best about getting back in the saddle — the feeling of familiarity blended with the excitement of something new. Going back to an old hobby provides an odd but awesome mix of familiarity and freshness.

4. It helps you conquer fears. One of the reasons I hadn’t been on a horse for so many years was fear. I missed horses and longed to ride one again, but my inner voice kept asking, “What if you don’t remember how to ride? What if you get thrown off? What if you hate it?” And so I let that fear hold me back from getting back in the saddle for years. Yesterday I was definitely nervous, but it felt great to get back on the horse. I didn’t get thrown off. I didn’t forget how to ride. And I definitely didn’t hate it. Trying something again for what feels like the first time might seem scary, but conquering that fear is an amazing feeling.

5. It makes you more present. Oddly enough, in going back to something I used to love doing in the past, I found myself feeling more present. Even though I was familiar with the barn and the horses, it felt new to me in so many ways that I found myself being very aware of everything about the experience. I was very conscious of the feeling of the reins in my hands, the movement of the horse’s ears, the smells and sounds of the barn. Doing something new — even if it’s something you used to do a lot — really heightens your senses and makes you more aware of what’s happening in the now. While revisiting what I used to love doing, I found myself very in the moment — and loving it.

They tell us that you can never go home again implying that everything has changed so much it is just not anything like it was, and most of the time they are right. But I have found, like Dani, that there are many things that I have done in recent years that brought back the positive feelings of the past.

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Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You’re going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don’t try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.

Anthony Robbins

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GOLF

* In primitive society, when native tribes beat the ground with clubs and yelled, it was called witchcraft; today, in civilized society, it is called golf.

* The man who takes up golf to get his mind off his work soon takes up work to get his mind off golf.

* Golf was once a rich man’s sport, but now it has millions of poor players!

* The secret of good golf is to hit the ball hard, straight and not too often.

* Many a golfer prefers a golf cart to a caddy because it cannot count, criticize or laugh.

* Golf is a game in which the slowest people in the world are those in front of you, and the fastest are those behind.

* Golf got its name because all of the other four letter words were taken.

~~~

My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”

~~~

A young lady came home from a date looking rather sad. She told her mother, “Arthur proposed to me an hour ago.”

“Then why are you so sad?” her mother asked.

“Because he also told me he was an atheist. Mom, he doesn’t even believe there’s a hell.”

Her mother replied, “Marry him anyway. Between the two of us, we’ll show him how wrong he is.”

~~~

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

~~~

A zoning board had just been set up in a new community. A householder went to the office to request permission to build a small toolshed in his backyard.

“Have you a plan?” asked the director.

“Oh, yes,” said the householder, who showed him a map of his neighborhood, the dimension of his yard, and a sketch of the shed.

“That looks fine,” said the director. He pulled out a piece of paper, wrote a few words on it, Xeroxed it, and said, “Here’s your permission.”

A month later, a neighbor in almost exactly the same situation also wanted permission for a shed in her yard. She went to the director, got as far as a secretary, and made her request. “Thank you, Mrs. Smith,” said the secretary, taking the documents. “Telephone me in two weeks and I’ll let you know what the director’s decision is, or what further steps are necessary.”

“But,” groaned Mrs. Smith, “a month ago my neighbor got permission right away.”

“Oh, yes,” said the secretary, “but that was before we finally got organized.”

~~~

“Looking back you realize that a very special person passed briefly through your life and that person was you. It is not too late to become that person again.”

Robert Brault

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Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

Ray Mitchell

Indianapolis, Indiana

Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies. The editor is somewhat senile.

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