THOUGHTS ABOUT LIFE

When an idea or thought comes to mind that I find interesting or illuminating, I don’t think it happened by accident. I consider such ideas valuable; as often they afford me a fleeting glimpse of my life from an exterior viewpoint.

For instance, when I feel I’m ready for a healthy dose of expansion – when I need to break some old habit or pattern of living, invariably, the first things that show up to be addressed are things that I should have faced and handled long ago; things that may have inhibited my ability to move out and expand to other areas.

Like cleaning out a closet, a long overdue project, it’s a mess when you first start. But persistence and endurance will win the day, and order will eventually appear out of chaos. It is also my considered opinion and experience that the first requisite for expansion is to put your affairs in order where you are.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Once I decide that I am going to set out on a new project of some type, the weakest link in the process inevitably and invariably shows up and persists until it’s taken care of. I never shy away from this phenomena. Instead, I welcome it.

It reveals to me the ignored or neglected areas that I should have faced long ago. Now with the chance to view these issues, handle them, and finally put them behind me, a new door to new horizons opens for me.

I find such things are interesting, and I thought others might find something of interest and value as well. – dan jacobs

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT LIFE
by Daniel Jacobs

Your attitude in the present can change your future – just as your attitude about the future can change your present.

The price of freedom is never too great – when the cost of indifference is so dear.

Your creation of time, circumstance, and conditions of life determine where you have been, what you are and who you will become.

Nothing can truly harm you – unless you have decided priorly that such a thing is harmful. When you set up the idea that anything is too painful to experience, you also set it up so that you can be harmed by that thing.

People have an insatiable demand and wish for surprise.

Once you decide you need to change your life, the first thing that comes up is the reason you haven’t done so before now.

Your power to expand is infinite – so is your ability to limit yourself.

It’s never too late to be who you are and always have been.

Your future does unfold with inexorable certainty, always in minute increments.  Large changes can and do occur but only when preceded by countless infinitesimally small one.  However, even a slight shift of viewpoint can precipitate enormous positive changes in your life.

In our attitudes and our thoughts, we all carry with us the seeds of our futures – planted, given life and sustenance by our ongoing attention on them.

Criticism often reveals a hidden message. Listen with your eyes, see with your ears, trust your instincts and act or re-act accordingly.

Learn to criticize with humor, then, at least, they won’t kill you for it.

The voluntary contribution, coordination and cooperation of the members of a group lead to a healthy, stable and expanding entity. The relationship is symbiotic, as a group thus empowered becomes a greater source of strength and power for those creating it.

Self-doubts and self-confidence alike require constant nurturing and attention to become reality.

Once you stop frantically searching for it and just start being yourself – happiness will find you

Only a fool accepts, unquestionably and unconditionally, the advice of those with no skin in the game.

Studies of life and human relationships are a never-ending pursuit of knowledge, wisdom and truth, wherever they may lie.

The first time you get bad advice from someone, it’s excusable; the second time, it’s suspicious; the third time, it’s not coincidence. Something is very wrong. Take fast, effective action now.

There is no past, present or future, except that which you create at this moment. If you don’t create it, it isn’t there.

Never invest with someone who incessantly brags about how they have “never lost money.”  Eventually, they will. And it’s your money that will be lost.

A people who, being unwilling to discipline themselves, should not complain when those whom they have elected to represent them, act the same.

A society of criminals will only elect one of its own kind – someone who can not or will not work and whose help is invariably injurious.

Truth is too often camouflaged behind a veil of complexity.

If you can’t explain something so that a five-year-old can understand it, you don’t know your subject well enough.

Misunderstanding creates complexity just as complexity creates misunderstanding.

Dealing with people you don’t like or trust is never worth the sour taste that remains after. Instead, develop walk-away power.

Simplicity expands under the spotlight of truth; complexities shrink.

Being in the present moment is an ability that grows stronger with regular exercise,

Technology: a consequence of science born of philosophy.

When things just don’t add up or make sense – follow the money.

Methods used to intimidate you, are also what the user fears most.

Beauty has, too often, found employment in disguising the truth.

You are no longer the ill effect of your future once you realize that you are the one creating it.

Never fear to act when people and circumstances demand nothing less.

Never become the lender of last resort as you will often be the last to be repaid.

Once you realize that the outcome of your life depends totally on yourself, your life begins.

It is my belief and experience that when everything is happening all at once, it can dissolve just as fast.

When your friends see you as an easy touch for a loan, you will soon have an abundance of debtors and a scarcity of friends.

Regret is a trap and a complete waste of time. It requires fixated attention on something that has already happened and can’t be changed.

Revenge, unquestionably can and will dictate certain thoughts, emotions, and actions, but with questionable advantage to anyone, especially oneself.

To maintain the negative attitudes and emotions required to motivate acts of vengeance or retaliation requires that you keep unpleasant and painful memories alive if only to remind you of why you’re engaged in such activities. You cannot contemplate doing evil without at once inviting it to your abode.

On Art and Artists:
When, through some alchemy of specious argument and vacuous logic, some attempt to reduce all life to a mechanical stimulus-response existence while seeking to minimize or eliminate any real human contact and interaction, then they have become the enemy of free people. For when the dreamers cease to dream, when the curiosity and imagination of poets, writers, musicians, and other artists are abandoned or laid to waste through neglect or abuse, then the aesthetics and beauty of the culture deteriorate to its crudest and most primitive forms. And we will have lost our greatest resource for sustaining life, existence, and survival. For in art – and in the artists’ willingness and ability to create – we find kindness, honesty, forgiveness, beauty, truth, and a high quality of aesthetics otherwise singularly missing in our lives.

Thoughts on freedom:
a. Freedom is the capacity for self-determination and power of choice.
b. Freedom begins with truth and personal responsibility.
c. Freedom is a condition, and conditions can change. d.Only constant alertness and willingness to oppose attacks on our freedom are essential to keeping it.

d.Only constant alertness and willingness to oppose attacks on our freedom are essential to keeping it.

e.Only constant alertness and willingness to oppose attacks on our freedom are essential to keeping it.
f. The value of liberty is only truly appreciated once it is lost.
g. Personal freedom begins and ends with honesty and a willingness to experience.
h. Often fought, truth yet remains the only route to freedom.

Truth knows no boundaries and answers to no authority. Truth alone shines like Mars at Perihelion – ubiquitous, undeniable, and unstoppable. Freedom is Truth. Truth is freedom.

Insecurity creates complexity – complexity creates insecurity.

The worst-kept secret in the world is that most of what you read, see, or hear cited in the current ‘mainstream news media‘ is pure, unadulterated fiction. The more generalized bad news conveyed in the message, the bigger the lie. It is a carefully crafted scheme intended to make the passive sheeple unthinkingly accept at face value, everything they are told by some perceived authority.

If someone is lying to you, they’re seeking hidden control over you. If someone is trying to control you, they’re lying to you for their own self-serving purposes.

He who makes only money may become wealthy, but he will not be rich.

Fear is the decision that what you have already experienced is too painful to experience.

Courage is not the absence of fear or insecurity. It’s being willing to face what needs to be done and going ahead in spite of your fear.

The warm, satisfying feeling of giving a gift of money lasts far longer for the giver than the receiver.

What you reward with attention, interest, or admiration, tend to appear more often.

Fear itself is not dangerous. The real danger comes from trying to avoid fear through avoidance and non-confront.

Only those things you are unwilling to face can trap you.

A supreme belief in yourself is necessary to allow your art, your message, and you to be seen, heard, exposed, rejected or criticized and occasionally even admired and appreciated.

Worrying about future problems can ruin your present and visa-versa.

Even an uncomfortable sense of well-being can do wonders for your attitude.

Vague or direct threats, generalities, innuendo, and lies are a façade used to obscure the truth and keep you from seeing what they are doing.

The true essence of any art form is to get out of the way of yourself and let your truth shine.

Confusion is diminished by giving it a name.

The two moments that require the greatest attention and effort in accomplishing anything are: at the beginning, which requires the most thrust to overcome inertia, and when you’re nearing completion, which requires the most discipline and determination to push it through to completion.  Both times rely upon supreme confidence in yourself.

The only real obstacle to achievement is desire. How much do you want it?

If not now, when?

Some people – when they don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of – will manage to find you, no matter how distant or remote. Help them back on their feet again, and they can’t remember your name. But you should, perhaps, help them anyway.

We are bounded only by the limits of our curiosity and imagination.

Once blinded by self-serving arrogance and unrestrained self-importance – only a reasoned, healthy dose of humility provides the courage to create positive change in your life.

It’s easy to forget that being yourself is an ability that requires careful attention and disciplined, dedicated practice.

Regret is in the past; apprehensions are of the future. Staying in the present moment diminishes both.

It’s no accident, with my writings, that you are often reminded of what you already know.

Don’t let the endless search for perfection suffocate your art.

Being a part of something important, giving value to others lives, including others in your success – these are what give purpose to one’s life – and life to one’s purposes.

A principle is an immutable, natural law. It does not change because you lack the self-discipline to learn and use it.

The power of music can transform your life, by inviting you to experience a sublime sensation known to those initiated in the art form.

There is an infinity of ways to apply a fundamental principle without changing the natural law itself.

Understand the principles, and you can develop your own methods.

The notes are not music; they are only the guidelines. A musician brings life and meaning to the notes. Don’t play the notes; play the music.

Principles can support methods, but methods don’t determine principles.

Fame and money are the addiction of those who have them – and the Holy Grail of those who don’t.

Ultimately, welfare suffocates initiative, by substituting dependence for imagination and slavery for freedom.

The ability to live in the present begins with the willingness to be.

Once you decide to change your life, the first thing that shows up is the main reason you haven’t done so before now.

You have to rid yourself of trivial thoughts, ideas, and people to make room for the consequential.

Create time and space in your life for those whom you treasure most, or they won’t be there long.

Artists are arguably the most valuable people on this earth as, without the working artist, the world would not be as livable; for they inject the culture with all the art, beauty or aesthetics found on this planet.

Making the simple awesomely simple, that’s genius.

Truth is freedom, as is the reverse.

Economics is impossible to understand, that’s what makes it so simple.

No solution will work until you know exactly what caused the problem.

A false diagnosis and wrong solution are worse than none at all.

The advice of most financial talking-heads is bad for your wealth.

Practice your principles and they’ll be there when you need them.

A steady diet of canned media chatter can lead to truth decay.

Living a long life can sometimes be its own reward.

The real test of your character is what happens after power arrives at your doorstep.

Simple truths vanquish complex secrets.

Fear creates indecision, doubt, and paralyzing immobility – courage creates the reverse.

Ethics and morality are no longer foreign concepts, once you realize that you too belong to the human race.

You can usually find what you’re looking for the moment you stop frantically looking for it and let it catch up to you.

Many problems vanish when you realize that what people value most are attention and affection.

They always said I’d go places. I just wish they’d been more specific.

Excellence comes from mastery of the fundamentals not the accumulation of techniques.

In every adversity, search for the seed of opportunity, it’s always there.

Your dreams, supported by unrelenting will, are a certainty about to happen.

It’s said that perfection is possible only in the mind.

Freedom from the prison of perfection comes by recognizing that you too are human.

Want people to connect with you? Slow down.

Some believe, as do I, that the invisible is more important and more valuable than the visible.

If you require proof that you have succeeded, you haven’t succeeded.

If something smells like a red herring, (anything introduced to divert attention or mislead), it is a red herring. They’ve got something to hide.

If you have to think about what you know, you don’t know.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place? Don’t wonder what to do, do what you know.

Don’t let who you’ve been, cause undue worry. Be who you are now, and what you can become will develop naturally.

Feeling trapped? Be willing to experience anything and you will be trapped by nothing.

Isn’t it curious that expectations, imagination, and creativity live neither in the past nor the future; they live in the present yet create the future.

Vague threats, generalities, innuendos, and lies are nothing but a façade to obscure the truth.

Don’t let opinions of others smother your own voice.

He who wisheth always to live, must also seeketh sooth, as whatsoever is in a man’s heart, so he speaketh.

To the innocent, unconditional power is but an invitation to the corruption of character, but once initiated to such power, unlimited corruption is practiced with religious zeal.

Lying to yourself is the ultimate betrayal; a vain attempt to forget the truth and remember the lie.

You will not be often wrong to presume that most miscommunications are based upon false assumptions.

To engender trust from others requires that you first trust in yourself.

Your attitude in the present can change your future – just as your attitude about the future can change your present.

Thinking is overrated. It’s the enemy of imagination and creativity. It’s a slippery slope into self-consciousness and introspection, denying you the world outside your head. Worry only results in more worry. Thinking is a waste of time. Stress begets stress. Don’t try to do something; you must simply do things. Look around, decide, and do what you love. Don’t think . . . Do!

Those who don’t know history tend to invent their version. You are not helped by con men who tell you only what you want to hear.

Dreams and imagination breathe life into livingness.

Assume the attitude of power and soon people will see you that way.

If you want to know what they’re saying, listen to their emotions, not their words.

Living your life to avoid losing is a losing game. It focuses your attention onto holding onto the past rather than on creating your future.

A solution that can’t be implemented is part of the problem.

Unravel any problem and you’ll usually find an earlier solution that didn’t work.

Most people would rather look for solutions than face their problems.

Focus your attention, thoughts, feelings, and actions on what it would feel like to win. You’ve got nothing to lose, except losing.

Don’t let rules get in the way of doing the right thing.

The right solution to the wrong problem is no better than the wrong solution to the right problem

Given the level of stress and pressure of existence, it’s easy to forget that being yourself is ability, one that grows stronger with attention, intention and practice.

Live a life of truth and you move beyond the borne of human limitations.

You look, but you refuse to see. You see, but you don’t want to know. You know, but you pretend you do not.

Trying to create a future with your attention is stuck in the past is like trying to drive your car with the emergency brakes on.

How much would you be worth if you had no money?

Never worry about asking permission to be yourself. Once you’ve made that decision, who’s going to stop you?

The key to credibility is to be worthy of trust. The way to inspire trust is to, first trust yourself.

The way I see it, there are two rules for happy living:

1. Be true to yourself

2. Refer to rule #1

Serenity is unstrained; tranquility cannot be forced; effortlessness exists only with the absence of stress and tension. You cannot force yourself to be serene or calm any more than you can command your mind to be still, because these elements do not exist in a force universe.

Certainty, excellence, confidence, serenity, tranquility, calmness, and truth cannot be measured or weighed, bought nor sold; for they are not of the universe of the visible. They appear only in the invisible universe; one where is found the absence of effort, the cessation of strain and tension, and the unleashing of creative ability not native to or found in the universe of objects, force, and physics.

There is a senior universe, above the trap of the physical, discoverable only when you release yourself from the slavery of material things, the bondage of possessions, the insatiable desire for consumption.

A calm spirit and a peaceful life come unbidden with cessation of effort.

Unravel any problem and you’ll usually find an earlier solution that didn’t work.

Disorder tends to generate more disorder. The same is true of order.

The natural laws of life are immutable. They don’t change just because you disagree with them.

Reassurance of affection combined with admiration is often all that is needed to soothe the soul and calm the twin dragons of worry and fear.

Don’t waste what you do have, by constantly wanting what you don’t.

All quotes by Daniel Jacobs

(c) 2008, all rights reserved