joshuawayne.com

Often I hear people talking about how much they “need to lose 30 pounds”, or how they really “want to drop 20 pounds”.

The thing is, it doesn’t really matter how much you want it or need it.  Those things don’t make the difference.  You can want it for years and be at the same starting point.

What ultimately makes the difference is “readiness”.

What do I mean by readiness?  To me, readiness is:

• The decision that this time will be different.
• The willingness to experience some discomfort to get to your goal.
• Acknowledging that what you’ve always done has gotten you where you are now.
• To confront your emotional habits that want to pull you back to your heavy weight.
• The commitment to be the person you really want to be.
• Chopping wood and carrying water- everyday.
• The willingness to do whatever it takes.
• To decide that being overweight is no longer an option (notice that the suffix of ‘decide’ is ‘cide’ or “to kill off”- when you decide, you are killing off other options).
• The willingness to work with your cravings and realizing that they too will pass.
• That you’ll push through the resistance to build new habits…even if it isn’t always fun.
• The willingness to become a different person of sorts.

What do you come up with?  Email me: joshua@joshuawayne.com or comment below and let me know what Readiness means to you.

“We suffer pain because we organize our life around the concept of an enduring self in a solid world, even though all of it is simply ideas and forms coming in and out of existence… The quietness of meditation offers an opportunity to witness how the entity of ‘me’ comes into being.”

- Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Just came across this late at night shortly before bed, and thought it was worth sharing.  Sakyong Mipham is the son of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the first high Tibetan lamas to teach in the United States in the late 60’s.  He passed away in 1987.  I have been reading “The Essential Chogyam Trungpa” on and off for a couple years- it’s great, though I think a basic understanding of some Buddhist fundamentals make it much more accessible.

I’ve had the very good fortune of recently coming into contact with the most coherent and succinct description of Buddhist fundamentals I’ve ever seen in the 20 years of paying attention to it.

I plan on doing some posts in the not so distant future about the basics of Buddhism- particularly from the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism as I have been learning it from my dear friend and Buddhist monk Erik Jung and his teacher who I’ve met on just one occasion His Eminence Dzogchen Khenpo Chogya Rinpoche.

This explanation of positive and negative thinking, how it works, and how it creates the moment to moment sense of happiness or unhappiness that we experience is both profound and entirely practical.

More coming on this soon.

“Some people sleep until morning. Others know they have to bring the morning.”
Shlomo Carlebach

Love that.  Has me out the door and running in zero seconds flat.

Whoa…that was more than a wee break!  Back from all vacations, work excursions (for the moment) and food tours of Europe and  the Southeastern United States.

I’m getting ready to enter the online video revolution in the next week or so, and plan on uploading gads of stuff here.

Also, in my “wee break”, got a lot of clarifying about how I want to structure my blog in terms of content…a lot of good stuff to come!