Competing for a Better Me

Competing for a Better Me

photo credit tableatny

Can competing not help to better me, without needing to create conflict in my inner self and my outer world?

It’s not competition itself that creates conflict in my inner being, but rather the intention behind that competition. Competing because I desire victory, and being a winner at the hands of another being a loser, undoubtedly creates conflict. For I have unconsciously decided that I am not enough, and that I’ll be more if someone else is less. Competition, in this intention, is an act of being better than others, and reducing myself. It’s an ego concept that invariably creates distress.

However, if I see the value in the (competitive) action done for it’s own sake, whether alone (competing with myself) or in the company of others (competing against other competitors), it can bring out the best in everyone. In this instance I am doing my bestand wanting others to do the same. Which is rather empowering and transformational, and conflict-free.

The beauty of competing for my best self is the only person I am “beating” and surpassing is the older me, and I “win” by becoming a better version of me — and helping you to do the same. I don’t know of a more valuable and supportive outcome to create than that, do you?

photo credit: tableatny

Fixed In Place

Fixed In Place

photo credit Sam Simpson

My lower mind is the part of my mental construct that demands for me to be a fixed thing. It desires definition and certainty. It desires to pin ME down. Whereas my higher mind understands the freedom I receive from being nobody.

My higher mind sees the value of having no sense of self that is fixed. It has no desire to define ME. When I am free from this burden of desire, I am more wholly me. I am who I AM. Whereas my lower mind needs to attach to certain attributes; fortifying and grounding me — in my expertise, in my knowledgability, and in my desirability. It relishes defining me as a real somebody.

What value does tying myself down hold? Where can I go when I hold myself in place? I know I need not fix myself in place. I know I need not define ME. What I need is to practice letting go of the desire to be desirable. What I need is to accept ignorance is the path to my freedom.

In my desperation to be seen as special, may I find my wisdom and my power to be the nobody I truly am.

photo credit: Sam Simpson

The Missing Pieces (of Poverty)

The Missing Pieces (of Poverty)

photo credit  Horia Varlan

We’ve created a culture of leaving people feeling as though they’re missing something. We’ve created a collective belief that, as a community and as an individual, we are not whole, nor okay.

We’ve created a commercial system that grows fat and comfortable on promoting these feelings of lack and fragmentation. We’ve bought the idea that we can consume something or someone that can leave us feeling more whole.

In the midst of our chaos of un-wholeness, we’ve created deep poverty. More than lacking material resources, deep poverty lives in our feelings and thoughts of lack — lack of ability, of confidence, and of agency — and our disbelief that we can make a plan and change our lives. This mindset can affect the materially poor and rich alike, and it’s from this place that we’ve created the material poverty of our world, and our cultural messages of lack.

Business and culture, excitingly, just as they helped shape these problems, are also powerful spaces to transform deep poverty. There is enormous potential within these spaces to create shifts away from these cultural and economic messages of lack and fear. In this moment, there is so much space and need for actions of abundance; we are desperately in need of people and businesses who actively invest in their own inherent wholeness, and ours. These positive entities are our tools for cultural and economic transformation, and their messages of abundance and of truth are integral for us to heal.

I invite you to take a moment now and feel that place inside you that believes in your own un-wholeness. Sense the amazing transformational power that pain contains… Trust that in working to heal your own beliefs of un-wholeness, you have the power to transform your whole world.

photo credit: Horia Varlan