Posts Tagged "personal development"

The Most Difficult Thing to Do In Life

Posted by Arthur on Oct 6, 2010 in Abundance, Appreciation, Awareness, Confidence, Life Coaching, Personal Growth, Play, SpiritSentient.com | 3 comments

I was having a conversation with an Uncle this morning. The day before, he was training me in the art of dismantling opponents from what he had learned over 20 years of training in a free-style brawling Kung Fu gym.

He had a friend with an interesting situation in life. The doctors said that in 2 years, due to a disease, he would go blind, and the friend had seemingly run out of resources and opportunities, as he had trusted and given everything he had to his separated wife and baby girl, whom supposedly squandered the money he worked for in his government job, who had just recently stopped his pension.

With another close family member of mine, he proceeded to escalate and share in a misguided attempt at finding a solution for his friend, and after blasting his friend with various amounts of “loving thoughts” such as “he has no more hope”, “whatever shall we do for him” and “my friend is truly stupid”, a rampage of judging and finger-pointing went on and on… and on… until I sat down, having finished boiling water for the lemon tea I was making.

I said a few “kind words” about how much I appreciated people, anybody really, being labeled and judged behind their backs, without even the smallest amount of appreciation for who they are, what they’ve done and what they will do and shortly after, interestingly enough, it was only me and my uncle having the conversation.

We had a talk, which I won’t go over in too much detail, but in one particular instance, I asked him, can you, at this point of your friend’s life, say something good about him?

If there were crickets in my house, I knew they would be chirping right about then.

I then asked him, wouldn’t you be saying all sorts of wonderful things about the man, if he actually died?

“So on the day of his funeral, you would be talking about all his great deeds, about his love for his family, about his vision for a better Hong Kong and so on and so forth, on his deathbed. But before then, you absolutely refuse to say one good thing about the man.”

He simply agreed.

My Uncle loves my company. During his stay in Canada, he has canceled and changed several plans in order to take a walk with me and chat about various things, and I listened intently as he shared his vast experience as an owner of a Taxi company and a man with really, a very colorful history behind himself. So, he loves being around me.

I knew this, and I told him why he loved being around me:

I always thought good things about him. And I listed a few of these things to him, such as Uncle, you are a wonderful husband and father to your family, a fantastic Kung Fu master with awesome loyal students, I trust your natural genius and abundance, I know you to be at this very moment a world influencer at inspiring people around you to be more daring and more loving.

He simply accepted this, and was happy about this. And then I asked him, your friend is the same. Please start saying these kinds of good things about him. At least one good thing, I feel it would help.

{Insert long, awkward silence}

You can say it after me… if it helps. My friend is a…

He refused, very passionately! He missed an opportunity, to turn what he called a friend, into an actual friend. If you can’t even say one good thing about someone, can you really call yourself their friend?

I realized then, that to be a good friend to others, is to think good things about other people, and mean it.

This may be the easiest thing to do in the world for me, and I see everybody else as being able to easily do this in their lives, because everybody is truly, truly awesome.

Small Tip on Reading Awesome Books

Posted by Arthur on Aug 20, 2010 in Awareness, Confidence, Life Coaching, SpiritSentient.com | 2 comments

There are a lot of ideas in this website. A LOT.

And the primary tool for getting to these ideas, is reading. And there are so many different ways to read, everybody has their own preferred pace, on when and how and what they like to read, it’s all amazing.

Personally, I have a very long history with reading. I’ve been reading books or blogs non-stop almost everyday since I was about 14 years old, and along the way I picked up some powerful ways (at least, I think so), that help me absorb a lot of the most quality information in a relatively easy and fun way.

When I read something difficult, like “The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra” what I do is read it like a newspaper, and jot down all the words that I don’t know. I don’t really care about the word as I write them down, I just do it and then forget about it. Just like a newspaper, you’re never worried about if you skip a few words.

And then at the end of the reading session, I simply google, dictionary.com or wikipedia the words I don’t understand.

This is a great way for some of you to read the latest book from SpiritSentient, Idealution & Thoughtsperity, especially for some of our Japanese friends overseas and those still in Toronto, enjoying our website.

Hope you guys enjoy your new reading tool, and hopefully it will motivate you to conquer new paths of learning that were previously unavailable

Sharing is Fun

Posted by Jason Fonceca on Jun 15, 2009 in Abundance, Awareness, Life Coaching, Personal Growth, SpiritSentient.com | 2 comments

Buddhism can be summed up with the phrase, “we are all one”. That sentence may appear simple at face value, but it contains so many more layers.

Christianity can be boiled down to “love thy God, and love thy neighbor as thyself”. Just like above, this sentence embodies the majority of what Christianity is about. In the same way, this post has many layers.

Sharing is fun might sound like the punchline to a Dr. Seuss book but it’s so much more.