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Category: Mindset

Our Focus Is Often Out Of Focus

C.L. Harmon

We are taught from a very early age to focus. In our education, personal lives and careers we are instilled with the belief that we achieve more by focusing on what we are doing. But do we ever stop to think just what we are accomplishing with the importance we place on this focusing? The very essence of focusing is putting ourselves at the center. We must focus in order to be better. We must focus to reach our goals. We must focus to create. We must focus to succeed. At the center of all our focusing on these actions is always ourselves.

It is true that there is a need to focus on certain aspects of our lives at specific times. However, many of us allow our desire to focus to become the focus of our lives. What should only be a tool in the building of our lives, becomes the structure we are building. We have become so involved in our efforts to achieve, we ignore the needs of others. We become the center of our own attention shutting out the world around us.

We were not created to focus solely on ourselves. Our purposes are rooted in inclusion. We are designed to function as an intricate web connected to each other with each strand intentionally woven to the next. The focus on one strand alone creates nothing beyond itself. We must shift part of our attention to others so that their strands will connect with ours creating a stronger outcome for all. To be a million strands disconnected is to be broken; to be a million strands intertwined is to be the structure of life and a vision worthy of focus.

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Hello Loyal Readers

As many of you might have noticed, I have not posted any new Mindsets lately. I apologize for this, but I have a good reason! I have been working on a book and it is nearing completion. I am currently in the editing process and having the cover art designed. This book is not a collection of Mindsets like my first book, In the Midst of Reality, but one that is of a personal nature which explains the usage of our belief systems and how they often fail us. Once the book is published, I will post a link on this blog where you may purchase one if you are interested. Below, I am posting the Forward and Introduction to the book so that you may get an idea as to the content of the book.

CL

FORWARD

God owns a school. It’s a private school called the Learning Institute For Everyone but most just use its acronym, LIFE. This school is much like any other elementary school with its classrooms, teachers, administrators, cafeteria and playground. Each class has assignments to do and subjects to study with teachers imparting their knowledge to the students. These teachers are insightful and caring, sharing lessons that will be vital for these students as they progress into other levels of education and life. This knowledge becomes the building blocks in which these children will use to construct a life that offers them happiness and rewards.

The owner and chief administrator, God, puts all of these teachers in place to teach the students what they must know but then offers this very odd appointment and gives the devil the recess period. The devil becomes master of the playground; the one fun place where everyone wants to go. He doesn’t explain Himself to the staff as to why He would place the devil in that position other than to tell them to trust Him.

It does not take long for the children to become fixated on the recess period and allow their thoughts to be diverted from regular studies during class periods as they daydream about the fun they will have on the playground. But the devil not only offers fun and games to the children, but also begins influencing the children as to all the fun that could be had if they skipped a period or two now and then. The children unaware of the potential harm, listen to the devil and slowly as time passes, they are convinced to stop showing up at all for class. The devil repeats this action with every child who will listen to him.

Those children are now being left out of the studies which provide the tools necessary for a successful future that should come after graduation. No one forced them to leave class in the first place or has forced them to return. God, as principal, spoke with each child and explained the importance of returning to school and that the education should be taken advantage of, but in the end, He allowed them to make the choice reminding them of the importance of a good education. He allows them the choice because He knows whatever their choice, will also be their consequence.

School is now in session. Are you listening?

INTRODUCTION

This book began writing itself a few months before I turned 19 years of age. I am now almost 51 and have finally decided it’s time to put the words that are scattered across my mind onto paper. To some, this book is an apology. To others, it is a gesture of gratitude. And when it’s completed, it will be an explanation to myself. This book is somewhere inside me, thousands of words jumbled into forgotten closets in my mind waiting to be transcribed from my memories and experiences. This work is not about finding happiness or reaching goals, but about understanding why we find ourselves in situations that seem so far away from where set out to go. In part, it’s also about finding acceptance in the fact that we are created by a God who seemingly does not want us to understand Him. It’s a journey into the building of and the collapsing of belief systems. It’s a reflection of everything that we have been taught and told which then becomes the foundation for our choices and decisions. This is a journey for me that I am asking you to take with me and hopefully find insight into your own lives by understanding my failing belief system and the construction of the new one I am building. This is a work about failure and what it is to fail. This is a story about losing over and over again until winning seems a distant impossible dream. This work is about hope and the loss of it and the unfairness in this life. It’s a book about me, about you, about us all.

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Follow The Wind: Mindset

Follow The Wind: Mindset

I don’t believe that one can understand the purpose of life in one lifetime. It makes sense that such a colossal definition can only come in multiple lifetimes. Perhaps one for each corner of the soul with each representing a significant meaning that is necessary for us to become whole with creation. Consider that the winds which move everything on earth come from four directions. Our entire navigational understanding is based on four directions.

This is not to say we live a life multiple times but rather live multiple facets in one life. If we are to understand pain for example, then we must experience both pain and comfort. One without the knowledge of the other is not understanding but sensation. To grasp a true sense of purpose, we must learn what direction from which we are coming to know which direction in which to move forward. We must always keep moving into new directions where different experiences await us. With each corner of life we inhabit, we learn about ourselves and thus about our purpose.

We find our way because we are lost in search of purpose not because it finds us and gives us direction. Perhaps a large part of our purpose is to simply seek out that purpose. We should trust that every direction we take will not always be a positive one that rewards us for what we desire, but will instead be steeped in the riches of understanding our personal purpose. Just as the origins of the winds are a mystery with their own purpose, as are we. Life’s purpose and our part in it are a secret hidden with bits and pieces strewn about in the corners of creation. And we must venture into those corners even when they are dark and foreboding to complete our creation and discover our destiny. We become enlightened because we seek; we become purpose because we find.

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Because Something Bends And Does Not Break, Does Not Mean It’s Not Broken

Because Something Bends And Does Not Break, Does Not Mean It’s Not Broken

During the Holocaust, a brave group of people who had lost everything except their own lives, took a stand to risk their only tie left to this world—their very existence. On October 7, 1944, several hundred Jewish prisoners at the death camp Auschwitz (at Birkenau,) were being forced to carry corpses from the gas chambers to the furnace to dispose of the bodies. In those horrible moments, they chose to show the scope of humanity’s spirit in one of the world’s darkest hours. This band of broken, weak souls blew up one of the gas chambers and set fire to another, using explosives smuggled to them from Jewish women who worked in the nearby armaments factory. Out of the 450 prisoners involved in the sabotage, 250 managed to escape the camp. They would all eventually be found and executed as well as those co-conspirators who never made it out of the camp and the five women from the armaments factory. Their actions, however, are a lesson in the sense that we should never stop fighting for what is right and good even when it seems hopeless. When we choose to give up, then those who oppress and harm us find our acceptance in their deeds, but when we fight, they are forced to question their actions and the beliefs which led them to such actions. Morality is not a flexible boundary that can be pushed to justify action, but one that should be bound in stone to remind us that some boundaries were never meant to be breached.

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Ideas Are Doors Not Yet Opened: Mindset

Ideas Are Doors Not Yet Opened: Mindset

There are many ways to live life, many approaches, and philosophies to life which we can take. These options relay a message from our Creator about acceptance and insight into what we should discover about ourselves.
How we interpret purpose, success, faith, and morality define how we live.

There are vast variances in these interpretations from one person to the next. Why not create us with the same stream of conscious thought?
By doing so, wouldn’t war and disagreement be minimal? Wouldn’t humanity live more harmoniously if our design was one of shared understanding? Perhaps the answers as to why we are not, rest in your next thought.

Your next thought will be someone’s insight into a new discovery, a new path of enlightenment. Exploration happens and only happens because there is an unknown…you are their unknown. If we all thought the same, believed the same and lived the same, we would not have the opportunity to learn that an open mind is a door to an open heart. And it is an open heart which leads to a harmonious existence.

Interpretations are not destinations, but open roads which can lead us all to new places, granted we are willing to explore the possibility that each of us may be the next step on another’s journey. We can endlessly imagine what is just ahead because we are the open door to discovery and insight to every other person on this planet.

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Cracks In Character Create Chaos: Mindset

Cracks In Character Create Chaos: Mindset

Our lives are conveyed in many ways to others. Through our words, actions, choices, and beliefs, we tell the world about ourselves, about who we are and the legacy we are building. But do we ever truly consider what messages we are sending? Can we stand upon the words which we speak, change the world with our choices and save others with our beliefs?  Are they solid foundations for which our futures can be built and others can rely upon to build their own.

Imagine that every second of our lives is a building block and what we do in that second determines the strength of what we are building. Would we not view that second with the utmost importance? If it were true, then doesn’t that second become more than just a measure of time? Doesn’t it then become the most important next step we can take in the building process? Doesn’t it become part of our legacy?

If so, then we must remember that what we build can also be destroyed in another second when faulty materials such as deception, greed, and prejudice are used. Each of these become weaknesses in the building blocks which will eventually crumble under a faulty foundation. We must build with our highest quality materials to create something that stands the test of time. Achievement, success, and creation are not born but a series of blocks well laid during the time we are given to construct our legacy.

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Mindset: Equality Is A Practice, Not A Principle

Mindset: Equality Is A Practice, Not A Principle

In order to understand why existing concepts are in error, we must go back and look at the precise moment that right became wrong. It is only through realization and understanding that correction can be possible. Let’s look at the concepts of freedom and that all individuals are created equal. In their origins, they are right, fair, equal and just, but is what we experience every day truly the practice of such righteousness?

Society does not treat those it deems important and the homeless population the same. One is protected under law or duty while the other is left to die in the streets without either. In essence, this practice places the value of one life over another suggesting one is not equal to another.
When did this become common practice and why did we allow it to happen? Perhaps an idea that is not practiced should become an idea that needs to find its way back to its origins.

Laws, customs and beliefs which place levels of value on individuals are not concepts of righteousness but practices of arrogance which degrade the importance of all human life. To truly be free, we must become the original concept of freedom through our actions. The value of life is what we give it collectively and individually. If we are to live as free societies, then we should govern and treat others with an unwavering equality expecting no more or no less than what we expect for ourselves. 

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Mindset: Thread Count

Mindset: Thread Count

Everything in our lives is connected. All that we see, experience, learn and understand connects to the other at some point during the course of our lives. As we live day to day, what we perceive as random acts, accidents or seemingly unimportant events thread themselves into our psyche and become part of a woven tapestry making up our existence.

We may go for years not remembering a specific image we saw or moment from our past and then through a new experience, it comes back, helping us to understand our new circumstances. Quite often that moment or image will seem insignificant when experienced. But when the connection is eventually made, we begin to realize that what was then was simply a part waiting to connect to what is now. These small threads connect to become a weave that will ultimately connect to what will be.

Everything in life is connected with one part simply a part of another. We are all threads weaving our way through life, connecting to each other and adding to the fabric of humanity. When our spool has reached its end, what we as individuals have woven is left behind; a small part of who we were connected to a larger part of a cosmic pattern. Every thread is important, relevant and required to reveal we are a significant part of this tapestry known as life.

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Mindset: The Purposeful Road

Mindset: The Purposeful Road

There seems to be little understanding as to the meaning of life and creation. And what is believed to be understood by some is never agreed upon by all. Yet we all seek knowledge, wisdom, and insight as to why we are here and to our purpose in life. We make choices and then worry about the outcome of those choices, believing them to be drawing us closer to our purpose and not further away.

But perhaps we put too much emphasis on what we believe to be our purpose instead of the faith needed to make choices which lead us to a purposeful life. Purpose does not belong to us, but to our Creator who has already made the choices necessary for us to fulfill the purpose He has given us.

However, it’s not His purpose which gives our lives meaning; for that, we ourselves must choose to live a life of purpose and consequence. Perhaps choosing to have faith and believe our purpose is a pre-existing road already built, will lead us to the insight to make choices which provide a life that is never meaningless and always purposeful.

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Mindset: Only Time Will Tell

Mindset: Only Time Will Tell

Life has a way of leading us on journeys that we don’t understand and which seem to us to serve no useful purpose in our lives at the time…and often, it seems we would be right. But if we consider the importance of this very moment based upon what it has taken for us get here, then we can begin to understand why such moments occur.


What we take from today’s situations is not necessarily intended for use now but for a future moment when it will become beneficial to us. Most of us live in the moment because it is real to us and we feel we have some control over what is substantial, as opposed to the future which is uncertain and offers little, if any, control.


But those future moments are as important to our Creator as the present ones are to us, and so He prepares us for them. Even though we will react when the times come, we wouldn’t have had the right tools to make good choices had it not been for that earlier moment, which made so little sense to us at the time.


This life is but a timeline, a clock that coordinates past, present and future events into an all-encompassing life of purpose which transcends the here and now. All things happen for a reason. As to their meanings in a particular moment, that it is something that will only come from following life’s path and then only in time.

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