Your Strength of Mind

You have strength of mind that you do not know yet.

Not all of it has been tested.

Yes, you have had some decisions that are life-changing.

And you will certainly have more of them.

How you keep your course is something that will test your strength over time.

You may decide to change your course for good reasons, and sometimes just because you get distracted.

But you will come back to your true course as you refine it and use your strength to maintain it.

Your strength of mind will move you forward.

It will keep you in a calm place while others around you are disturbed and distracted.

It will draw resources to you that will aid you.

Your strength of mind will wait while you grow up to appreciate it.

It will never dessert you.

It is part of the character you were born with.

You will discover more and more of it as you face the challenges in your life.

It will allow you to appreciate the paths others have taken ahead of you.

It will allow you to help lay down the path for others who will follow you.

© 2016 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Create the Peace You Crave

Whether it seems like it or not, your life is under your control.

If it feels crazy, unsatisfying, unbalanced, you can take steps to create the peace you crave in your life.

Instead of accepting the life you see around you, you can state the quality of life you want.

Peace, happiness, balance, joy.

Doing the things you love.

Making a contribution to society.

Creating community with like-minded people.

Take a deep breath, and listen deeply within.

Sit quietly until you can sense a deeper peace.

In that quiet feeling, you will get a sense of direction.

It may be a specific course of action, or it may simply be a peaceful feeling you can carry with you.

Use this as your guide when you feel tense or pressured.

You can turn to it within over and over again all day long.

With practice, this can become a constant factor which redefines and recreates your life.

© 2016 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Set Up a Social Business Model

How does your business/service pay its bills and benefit its recipients?

How much profit do you need/want?

Where is the best place for it to go?

For yourself?

For your community?

what callas and tugs at your heart to create?

How does it feel to you?

What does it feel like when you imagine ourself doing it?

Who benefits?

How?

Is is a good idea to expand?

How does i feel to be in blanche?

Who owns the company?

You?

Employees?

The bank?

Who makes the business decisions?

You?

Employees?

The bank?

What about cooperative ownership?  What are the steps to get that working?

How does the mind-set change?

Yours?

Employee/owners?

What bank?!

© 2016 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

The Reason

Do I just want to make this life prettier?

What would I need in order to do that?

Exercise.

Save and invest my money.

Keep to a routine.

Make sure I meet the right people.

Its totally doable.

But then, I run out.

What is behind this?

What is the reasoning?

Look good.  Have more stuff.  Be respected in a capitalist world.

Ideals?

Contribution?

Individuality?

So what kind of success is it really?

Just pretty.

© 2016 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

The Closest Thing to Forgiveness

Events and Incidents build up in our lives and become positive or negative influences.

The more we can find the good in what happens to us, the closer we can come to forgiveness.

This is a speedy effort in our own favor.

It gives us positive momentum, no matter what negative things have occurred.

The gerbil wheel of repetition, going around and around mentally repeating the incidents either lead us toward happiness or to misery.

Misery is only interesting for so long.

Happiness and recognition in overcoming challenges moves us forward with strength and grace.

As we resolve the issues which continually crop up, we give ourselves momentum.

As we go over them, we bog ourselves down.

So, developing a habit of finding good no matter what puts us on the positive side of any life equation.

It attracts more good to us.

It begins to cancel out more and more of the negative until we fill in the void created by it with a much better and stronger image of what we can do.

It builds up the positive until one day we find ourselves in the actual place of forgiveness, both for ourselves and for any other parties.

© 2016 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Peaceful Energy

At a recent conference for improving the bio-region, I met several “young people” who were engaged in this long-term activity.

In the midst of all the teen angst and search for self-definition, meaning and purpose, they have found a calm, peaceful energy within themselves.

One had a natural evolution from the mainstream school culture.  He immersed himself in discovering interesting things on YouTube and let it be known that he wanted to be around Nature.  That led to a job on an herb farm within a few months after graduation.

A young woman who has graduated college with a combination major she designed herself is volunteering in the PeaceNook, a bookstore which also carries Fair Trade products.

Another young woman is contributing to peace through her courage to sit with those considered suicidal and to maintain a place for them within her heart, a truly courageous contribution.

Another young woman describes herself as a “senior parent” of a nine-year-old, compared to the many parents of very young children at the conference.  She raised her daughter in a isolated Nature area and they are now living in a town where she provides Story Time and other activities.

We ran into someone who described herself as a “reader” when she saw my husband and my books on our table.  She prefers books to TV.  We were so delighted to meet her.

I am so comforted by the consistent definition these several young people provided for me for this generation.

Despite the media harassment, I am seeing a different movement happening, a deeper one with meaning and maturity and purpose.

And it started twenty and thirty years ago, when these people were born.

It makes me feel much better about humanity’s future.

© 2015 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com

Rejection

Although it is not my favorite, rejection can be a way into a higher place.

Without the resources and distractions of people and society, it is possible to find a place of comfort that is immune to cruelty.

It turns out that this is an Infinite Place.

And, once you define it for yourself, you can return there at any time.

Oh, and every once in a while, you will find someone else there, too, although this Place has many other resources of a different kind of life available.

The temptations of being in the herd - the protection, the leadership, the safety of conformity, the acceptance - are pretty small once you find this Infinite Place.

After all, it was because of your individuality that you got yourself thrown out in the first place.

You were already uncomfortable about aspects of society.

You were not trustful; you had been betrayed.

You were not willing to bury yourself in society’s dissatisfying employment.

Your relationships just did not work out.

Because you have already had a taste of your own individuality, you have actually laid the groundwork for the transitional step of rejection.

The next step of disorientation and searching takes you toward the Infinite Place.

Don’t worry.

You will not give up.

You are too uncomfortable where you are.

You will keep taking the next step until you find it, this other, infinite, place.

Your one step takes you off the traditional path, and it will give you more than a traditional reward.

You are definitely on your way.

© 2015 Kathryn Hardage

www.InspiredPractices.com