Time to Grow Up!

Many people never grow up.

Now this can be both a good thing but also an incredibly bad, bad thing.

Not growing up in the sense of retaining a childlike sense of wonder for things and exercising a wholesome imagination are beautiful qualities.

Then there is the other side of not growing up. The ugly side.

I just saw a SlideShare presentation that inspired this thread. I want to expound on the themes in it throughout this thread. This is essentially a self improvement thread surrounding becoming mature and responsible adults, real adults.

It is at once an exercise for myself to be mindful of this work that must be done, and also just a place to share pictures and stuff. Please chime in with your own thoughts on the topic as you wish

 

My hairdresser is a vegan. She just had a baby. What a lucky damn baby to have a chance to grow up vegan!

 

“The great man is he who does not lose his child’s-heart.” ~ Mencius, Book IV

The SlideShare slide today I want to touch upon brought me to a purposeful article on Purpose Fairy. The quote above is from the article. So is the post below this one, copied right from it. It's called 15 Ways to Change Your Thoughts and Transform Your Life.

Growing up is largely connected to changing the way we think and behave. Behavior tends to be rooted in our thinking patterns, obviously.

 

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale

The nature of our thoughts determines the quality of our life whether it is sad or happy and contented. Happy, optimistic, positive thoughts, emotions, and feelings generate a zing in our system which makes the blood flow freely and heart beat joyously. They create a spring in our feet and spur us to action. Let us remember the age-old saying that the mind - thoughts - can move the mountains. Pessimistic, sad and gloomy thoughts, on the other hand, create inertia and force us to stay bed-bound.

Our actions are the practical manifestations of our thoughts.

It is quite clear, therefore, that we must bring about a change in the way we think in order to create happiness and sense of fulfillment in our life. A good thing about our brain is that it willingly adopts any changes that we bring about in our thinking patterns.

Here is a list of 15 ways you can change your thoughts and give a positive direction to your life.

15 WAYS TO CHANGE YOUR THOUGHTS AND TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE

1. Create positive affirmations
Affirmations are not always positive. They can be negative as well. The hexes created by the witches are negative affirmations.

The truth is that most people are given to making negative affirmations. When you think repeatedly that you are not going to succeed in a particular project, it is a negative affirmation. Affirmations, both negative and positive impact the neurological functioning of the brain.

Positive affirmations are like mantras. They have a sacred and spiritual force about them. Let us be clear about creating positive affirmations. They should not be normative or weak.

Thoughts such as I ‘should’, ‘ought to’ or’ abstain from’ are normative.

Examples of negative affirmations are: ‘I can’t’ do this. It is ‘quite difficult’. On the other hand, affirmations should be forceful and determined such as ‘I can’, ‘I will’, or ‘I am going to’. As mentioned above, your brain is always adapting to your thought patterns and directs your organs to act accordingly.

2. Learn to apply full stop
We keep mulling over our misfortunes, the perceived wrongs committed to us by those who we have loved and stood by so sincerely. We never stop cursing ourselves for the mistakes that we think we have committed. What would have happened if I had done this or that? What would happen if I do this or that in future?

This is not to suggest we should not learn from our past mistakes or plan our future intelligently. The only thing is we should stop thinking over and over once we have learned from our past and decided about our future.

3. Let go of the need to be masochistic
Quite often we love to wallow in our misery. We enjoy creating self-punishing thoughts or being gloomy and pessimistic. Here is an example:

“If I start selling candles, the sun will stop setting,

If I start selling shrouds, people will stop dying.”

I was born unlucky. Nothing good will ever occur to me.

Such thoughts not only cause a harmful impact on the mind, but they adversely affect your physical health as well.

4. Count your joys and blessings
Most people take their joys and blessings for granted and start grumbling about what they do not have; or, when they are faced with problems and troubles. Just think of those who are less fortunate than you. Or, think of a situation that could have been worse than it is now. You are crying because you have hurt your knee in an accident. What if the leg itself had broken? See the filled half of the glass for satisfaction and the empty half with a resolve to fill it.

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” ~ Melody Beattie

5. Appreciate and enjoy what you already have
This is not to suggest that you should not aspire for a still better life. Enjoy whatever amount of success you have achieved instead of feeling sad about what you have not been able to achieve. There is nothing wrong with always fixing higher benchmarks or goals, but failure to reach them should not spoil your enjoyment of what you already have.

I think that's good enough for now. We could read the entire article right now and probably would forget the entire list by this time tomorrow. Redundant it is to copy it here. It's better than anything I have to type up right now though.

 

Raj writes with purpose but damn did I make a few edits to the above post. Too purposeful and filled with elementary basic insight to not share. I am trying to be a student more. My comments will be minimal in this thread as I draw from other sources and post a menagerie of basic stuff. Once we grow up we can think about progressing to something beyond the basics.

 

Lol I was just looking for this thread on a search engine. Seems alot of people like to talk about growing up and becoming a real adult around the community.

Well I've seen enough here friends.

Find me on The Dao Bums forum if you want to connect to a new community, whom also values keeping your sexual energy inside by not fapping! Name's No One.