Eyes Again Pain Etched All Text

"There's always room for a short story that tin can send people to another fourth dimension and place."

Allow me distract you for a moment…

It's story fourth dimension!  😉

I've told the following brusque stories to our students, readers, and briefing attendees dozens of times over the past decade, and I usually get thanked for doing so.  The people and circumstances differ slightly every time I tell them, but the core lessons and narratives are grounded in truth.

My challenge for you today is to read the first story below.  So come back tomorrow and read the next one.  Give yourself a little extra perspective every twenty-four hours this week.  Run into how doing and then changes your thinking from day to day…

Story #1:  What Life is All About

In one case upon a time, there was a girl who could practice anything in the world she wanted.  All she had to practice was choose something and focus.  And so, i day she sat down in front of a blank canvas and began to paint.  Every stroke was more perfect than the next, slowly and gracefully converging to build a flawless masterpiece.  And when she eventually finished painting, she stared proudly at her piece of work and smiled.

It was obvious to the clouds and the stars, who were always watching over her, that she had a gift.  She was an artist.  And she knew it too.  She felt information technology in every fiber of her being.  Only a few moments afterward she finished painting, she got anxious and speedily stood up.  Because she realized that while she had the ability to do annihilation in the globe she wanted to do, she was simply spending her fourth dimension moving paint around on a slice of canvas.

She felt similar at that place was so much more than in the world to run across and do—then many options.  And if she ultimately decided to do something else with her life, and so all the fourth dimension she spent painting would be a waste.  So she glanced at her masterpiece one concluding time, and walked out the door into the moonlight.  And as she walked, she thought, and so she walked some more.

While she was walking, she didn't notice the clouds and the stars in the heaven who were trying to signal her, because she was preoccupied with an important decision she had to make.  She had to choose ane thing to do out of all the possibilities in the world.  Should she practice medicine?  Or design buildings?  Or teach children?  She was utterly stumped.

Xx-5 years later, the girl began to weep.  Because she realized she had been walking for and then long, and that over the years she had go so enamored by everything that she could do—the endless array of possibilities—that she hadn't washed anything meaningful at all.  And she learned, at last, that life isn't about possibility—anything is possible.  Life is about making a conclusion—deciding to exercise something that moves you.

And so the girl, who was no longer a girl, purchased some canvas and paint from a local craft shop, drove to a nearby park, and began to paint.  One stroke gracefully led into the next just as it had so many moons ago.  And every bit she smiled, she continued painting through the mean solar day and into the night.  Because she had finally made a decision.  And there was still some time left to revel in the magic that life is all about.

Story #2:  When Our Quondam Stories Concur Us Dorsum

She rarely makes eye contact.  Instead, she looks downward at the ground.  Considering the ground is safer.  Because different people, it expects null in return.  She doesn't have to feel aback almost her by.  The basis just accepts her for who she is right now.

As she sits at the bar next to me, she stares down at her vodka tonic, and so the ground, and so her vodka tonic.  "Nigh people don't get me," she says.  "They ask me questions like, 'What's your problem?' or 'Were you beaten as a child?'  Merely I never respond.  Because I don't feel like explaining myself.  And I don't think they actually care anyway."

Just then, a young man sits downwardly at the bar on the opposite side of her.  He's a little boozer, and says, "Yous're pretty.  May I buy you a drink?"  She stays silent and looks back downwards at the ground.  Later an bad-mannered moment, he accepts the rejection, gets up, and walks away.

"Would you adopt that I get out too?" I ask.  "No," she says without glancing upwards.  "But I could use some fresh air.  Y'all don't have to come up, but you can if you want to."  I follow her outside and we sit on a street curb in front of the bar.

"Brrr… information technology's a actually dank night!"

"Tell me well-nigh information technology," she says while maintaining her usual downwards gaze.  The warm vapor from her breath cuts through the common cold air and bounces off of the ground in front of her.  "So why are yous out here with me?  I mean, wouldn't yous rather be inside in the warmth, talking to normal people near normal things?"

"I'm out here because I want to exist.  Because I'chiliad not normal.  And expect, I can see my breath, and we're in San Diego.  That'southward non normal either.  Oh, and you're wearing Airwalk sneakers, and and then am I—which may accept been normal in 1994, just not anymore."

She glances upward at me and smirks, this time exhaling her jiff upward into the moonlight.  "I run across you're wearing a ring.  You're married, correct?"

"Aye," I answer.  "My married woman, Angel, is simply getting off work now and heading hither to see me for dinner."

She nods her caput and and then looks back at the ground. "Well, you're off the market place… and rubber, I guess.  And so tin I tell you a story?"

"I'm listening."

Every bit she speaks, her emotional gaze shifts from the ground, to my eyes, to the moonlit sky, to the basis, and back to my optics over again.  This rotation continues in a loop for the duration of her story.  And every fourth dimension her optics meet mine she holds them there for a few seconds longer than she did on the previous rotation.

I don't interject once.  I listen to every word.  And I assimilate the raw emotion present in the tone of her voice and in the depth of her optics.

When she finishes, she says, "Well, now you know my story.  You think I'm a freak, don't you?"

"Place your right hand on your chest," I tell her.  She does.  "Do you feel something?" I ask.

"Yeah, I feel my heartbeat."

"Now close your eyes, identify both your easily on your face, and move them effectually slowly."  She does.  "What do you lot experience now?" I ask.

"Well, I feel my optics, my nose, my oral fissure… I feel my face."

"That's correct," I reply.  "Only unlike you, stories don't have heartbeats, and they don't have faces.  Because stories are non alive—they're not people.  They're just stories."

She stares into my eyes for a prolonged moment, smiles sincerely and says, "Merely stories nosotros live through."

"Yeah…  And stories we larn from."

Story #3:  The Weight of the Glass

(Note: This story is an excerpt from our NYT bestselling volume.)

Twenty years ago, when Angel and I were merely undergrads in higher, our psychology professor taught u.s. a lesson we've never forgotten.  On the last day of class before graduation, she walked upwards on stage to teach one last lesson, which she called "a vital lesson on the power of perspective and mindset."  Equally she raised a glass of water over her head, everyone expected her to mention the typical "glass half empty or drinking glass half total" metaphor.  Instead, with a smile on her face, our professor asked, "How heavy is this glass of water I'm belongings?"

Students shouted out answers ranging from a couple of ounces to a couple of pounds.

After a few moments of fielding answers and nodding her head, she replied, "From my perspective, the accented weight of this glass is irrelevant. It all depends on how long I hold information technology.  If I concord it for a minute or two, it'due south fairly lite.  If I hold it for an hour direct, its weight might make my arm anguish.  If I concord it for a 24-hour interval straight, my arm will likely cramp upward and experience completely numb and paralyzed, forcing me to drop the glass to the floor. In each case, the absolute weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I concur information technology, the heavier it feels to me."

Every bit virtually of us students nodded our heads in agreement, she connected.  "Your worries, frustrations, disappointments, and stressful thoughts are very much like this glass of water.  Recall about them for a piffling while and nothing desperate happens.  Think about them a bit longer and you begin to experience noticeable pain.  Think about them all 24-hour interval long, and you will feel completely numb and paralyzed, incapable of doing annihilation else until you lot drop them."

Story #4:  Just One Small Sip

Once upon a time in that location was a woman who had been lost in the desert for three whole days without water.  Just as she was nearly to plummet, she saw what appeared to be a lake merely a few hundred yards in front end of her.  "Could it be?  Or is information technology just a mirage?" she thought to herself.

With the final fleck of force she could muster, she staggered toward the lake and quickly learned that her prayers had been answered: it was no mirage—it was indeed a large, leap-fed lake full of fresh h2o—more than fresh water than she could ever drink in her lifetime.  Yet while she was literally dying of thirst, she couldn't bring herself to drink the water.  She simply stood past the water's border and stared downwardly at information technology.

At that place was a passerby riding on a camel from a nearby desert boondocks who was watching the woman's baroque behavior.  He got off his camel, walked up to the thirsty woman and asked, "Why don't you have a potable, ma'am?"

She looked upward at the man with an exhausted, distraught expression across her face and tears welling upwardly in her eyes.  "I am dying of thirst," she said, "But there is way too much h2o here in this lake to drink.  No matter what I practice, I can't possibly finish it all."

The passerby smiled, bent downward, scooped some h2o upward with his hands, lifted it to the woman's mouth and said, "Ma'am, your opportunity right now, and every bit you move forward throughout the residuum of your life, is to understand that you don't have to drink the whole lake to quench your thirst.  Yous can simply accept one sip.  Just one small sip… and then another if y'all choose.  Focus only on the mouthful in front of you, and all your anxiety, fear and overwhelm about the rest volition gradually fade."

*****

Challenge yourself throughout the solar day to focus solely on the sip (task, step, etc.) you're actually taking.

Honestly, that's all life is—small, positive actions that y'all have moment by moment, and so one day when yous await dorsum information technology all adds upward to something worthwhile—something that's often far amend, and different, than what yous had imagined when you started.

Story #five:  Where Nosotros Can Go When We Feel Lost and Alone

She notices the people sitting in a small sports bar across the street.  They're auspicious and chatting.  They look so alive.  She wants to cantankerous the street and join these people just to connect with them—to be a part of something.  But a subtle voice that comes from inside, that whispers from the open wounds in her centre, holds her back from doing then.  So she keeps walking.  Lone.

She walks to the stop of the metropolis middle where she sees a dirt path that leads up a grassy hill.  The loma, she knows, overlooks a spiritual sanctuary.  But it isn't the sanctuary she wants to visit tonight—not withal anyway.  It's a warm, breezy Sabbatum dark and she wants to find a identify outdoors with sufficient lite so she tin can sit and read the volume she'due south grasping in her right hand.

Only reading isn't what she really wants.  Not deep down.  What she really wants is for someone—anyone at all—to tap her on the shoulder and invite her into their earth.  To ask her questions and tell her stories.  To exist interested.  To sympathize her.  To laugh with her.  To want her to be a part of their life.

Merely information technology isn't even this connection with someone new that she wants most.  At least not at the deepest level.  At the deepest level, in the cadre of her soul, even fleeting connections with others seem to interfere with what she desires most.  Which is to know that she's not lonely in the globe.  That she truly belongs.  And that whatever she was put here to do, in time, will be done and shared with others who deeply care.

*****

This young adult female left a substantial segment of her life backside to be in this small urban center this evening.  A few months ago, she was engaged to a strapping immature businessman, managing a fast-growing start-upward company, working long, hard days and enjoying the fruits of her labor together with a deepening community of friendships in Manhattan.

In a period of just a few months, her fiancé and her split and decided that it was easiest to shutdown the company and divide the monetary remains rather than attempt co-ownership.  As they began the procedure of shutting downwards the visitor, she learned that almost of the seemingly deep friendships she had made in Manhattan were tied straight to her old business affairs or her concern-socialite of an ex-fiancé.

While this young woman didn't consciously expect such a rapid, tragic serial of events, it too wasn't totally unexpected.  Subconsciously she knew that she had created a life for herself that was unsustainable.  It was a life revolving around her social status in which all of her relationships brought with them a mounting and revolving set of expectations.  This life left no time for spiritual growth or deep connection or dear.

Nevertheless, this young woman is drawn to spirituality, connexion and love.  She has been fatigued to all three all her life.  And the only thing that steered her off grade into this unsustainable lifestyle was the careless conventionalities that if she did certain things and acted in certain ways she would be worthy in the eyes of others.  That her social status would procure lasting adoration from these people.  And that she would never feel alone.

She realizes, now, how incorrect she was.

*****

The young woman walks up a steep paved route on the outskirts of the urban center eye.  She feels the fire in her calf muscles as she marches higher and higher.  The road is, at first, filled with quaint boutique shops and young couples and friends, but as information technology advances uphill they give manner to small-scale cottage homes and kids playing with flashlights in the street.  She keeps marching higher and college until she reaches a clearing where there is a small public park.

In this park, a group of teenagers are huddled around ii guitarists who are strumming and singing an audio-visual melody.  "Is it a pop song?" she thinks to herself.  She isn't sure because she hasn't had time lately to listen to music.  She wants to join the group.  She wants to tell the guitarists that their music is incredible.  But she hesitates.  She simply can't discover the nerve to walk over to them.

Instead, she sits on a park bench a few hundred feet abroad.  The bench overlooks the cityscape below.  She stares off into the altitude and up into the night sky for several minutes, thinking and animate.  And she begins to grin, considering she tin can see the spiritual sanctuary.  It's dark exterior, merely the sanctuary shines vivid.  She can see it clearly.  She can feel its warmth surrounding her.  And although she knows the sanctuary has existed for an eternity, her centre tells her something that stretches a smile across her cheeks: "This sanctuary is all yours tonight."

Not in the sense that she owns it.  Nor in the sense that information technology isn't too a sanctuary for millions of other people around the world.  Simply rather in the sense that it belongs to all of us as office of our heritage, exclusively tailored for every human being and our unique needs and beliefs.  Information technology's a serenity refuge that, when we choose to pay attention, exists all around us and within us.  Nosotros can escape to it at any time.  It's a identify where we tin dwell with the good spirits and guardian angels that love us unconditionally and guide u.s.a. fifty-fifty when we experience lost and alone.

Especially when we feel lost and lonely.

Story #6:  What We Have Been Searching for All Forth

About a decade ago on his 37th birthday, later on spending his entire developed life loosely dating different women, he finally decided he was ready to settle downwardly.  He wanted to detect a real mate… a lover… a life partner—someone who could show him what it meant to be in a deep, monogamous, trusting relationship.

And then, he searched far and broad.  At that place were and then many women to choose from, all with great qualities, but none with everything he was looking for.  And then, finally, only when he thought he would never find her, he found her.  And she was perfect.  She had everything he ever wanted in a woman.  And he rejoiced, for he knew how rare a find she was.  "I've done my inquiry," he told her.  "You lot are the one for me."

But as the days and weeks turned into months and years, he started to realize that she was far from perfect.  She had issues with trust and self-confidence, she liked to be silly when he wanted to be serious, and she was much messier than he was.  And he started to have doubts … doubts about her, doubts most himself, doubts well-nigh everything.

And to validate these doubts, he subconsciously tested her.  He constantly looked effectually their apartment for things that weren't clean just to bear witness that she was messy.  He decided to get out alone to parties with his single guy friends just to prove that she had trust problems.  He set her upwards and waited for her to do something airheaded just to testify she couldn't exist serious.  It went on like this for awhile.

Every bit the tests continued—and as she, clearly shaken and dislocated, failed more and more than often—he became more and more than convinced that she was not a perfect fit for him later all.  Because he had dated women in the past who were more than mature, more than confident, and more willing to have serious conversations.

Inevitably, he found himself at a crossroads.  Should he continue to be in a human relationship with a woman who he in one case idea was perfect, simply now realizes is defective the qualities that he already establish in the other women that came before her?  Or should he return to the lifestyle he had come from, drifting from one empty relationship to the next?

Later he enrolled in our Getting Back to Happy Form a few days ago, desperately looking for answers, this is the gist of what Angel and I told him:

I of the greatest lessons we learn in life is that we are often attracted to a vivid light in some other person.  Initially, this light is all we see.  Information technology'due south so bright and beautiful.  Only afterward a while, equally our optics adjust, we find this light is accompanied by a shadow… and oftentimes a fairly big i.

When we run into this shadow, we have two choices: we tin can either shine our own calorie-free on the shadow or we can run from it and continue searching for a shadow-less light.

If we make up one's mind to run from the shadow, we must likewise run from the low-cal that created it.  And we soon find out that our calorie-free is the merely light illuminating the infinite around us.  Then, at some bespeak, as we wait closer at our own light, we find something out of the ordinary.  Our light is casting a shadow likewise.  And our shadow is bigger and darker than some of the other shadows nosotros've seen.

If, on the other hand, instead of running from the shadow, we decide to walk towards it, something amazing happens.  We inadvertently cast our own light on the shadow, and also, the low-cal that created this shadow casts its lite on ours.  Gradually, both shadows begin to disappear.  Not completely, of form, but every part of the two shadows that are touched by the other person's calorie-free illuminate and disappear.

And, as a result, we each observe more of that bright beautiful light in the other person.

Which is precisely what we have been searching for all along.

Story #vii:  Naked and Free

She has light chocolate-brown hair, a seductive smile, and the most engaging ready of hazel-green eyes I've ever seen.  Information technology's the kind of engaging I can't ignore—the kind that makes me want to engage too.  Because she's mysterious.  And I'thou curious.  And I need to know more than.

All the same, I do my best to avert making middle contact.  Then I stare downwards at the pool tabular array and pretend to written report my opponent's next motility.  But but long plenty for her to wait the other manner, then I can once again catch a glimpse of magnificence.

I do this, not because she intimidates me, but because I think she may be the girl Chad met last night.  A wild night that, he said, "involved two bottles of port wine, chocolate block, and sweaty bed sheets."

Then, but every bit her eyes unexpectedly meet mine, my opponent groans, "It'south been your turn for like five minutes.  Ya planning on going old tonight?"  And the girl walks gracefully away.

And so I continue to wonder… "Is she the port wine and chocolate cake girl?  Gosh, she doesn't look like that kind of girl."  But I don't wonder too long because Chad enters the room and says, "Marc, there's someone I want you to meet."  And so I follow him into the kitchen and we bump correct into her.  "Oh, Angel," Republic of chad says.  "This is my buddy, Marc."

And I smiling from ear to ear, and requite off a footling chuckle…

Because she'southward not the port vino and chocolate block girl.  But likewise because I spent the by twenty minutes thinking near the port vino, and the chocolate cake, and the sweaty bed sheets.

Hours afterwards, the party begins winding downwards.  But the ring is all the same playing, the two painters who take been painting a wall landscape all evening are even so painting, and Angel and I are nevertheless dancing.

"Are you lot tired?" I ask.

"No," Angel says.  "Dancing is my outlet.  When I dance, I transcend myself and the doubts that sometimes prevent me from being me.  This night has been enchanting, just dancing with you lot and being me."

Then I twirl her around.  And the drummer keeps drumming.  The guitarist keeps strumming.  The vocalizer keeps singing.  The painters keep painting.  And at present we're the only ones dancing.

As we keep to trip the light fantastic, she says, "I feel as if nosotros're naked.  And not just yous and me, but the drummer, the guitarist, the vocaliser, and the painters too.  Anybody left in this room is naked… naked and complimentary."

I smile and tell her that I hold.  "We are naked.  We are free."

Every bit I know we don't have to take our clothes off to be naked.  Because moments of passionate presence flow into each other like port wine flows into chocolate block.  And if we let them, these moments tin can expose us completely, and continuously.  And create climaxes that don't even crave sexual practice.

Considering a true climax has little to do with orgasm, and everything to do with the passion, love, and devotion nosotros choose to invest in someone or something.  In the aforementioned way, nakedness has little to practise with how much clothing we wear, and everything to do with our awareness in a given moment of fourth dimension—an unfettered, nowadays awareness that frees the mind and allows us to truly live the moment for all it's worth.

Subsequently a few more songs, Angel asks if I'd like to join her out on the front end porch where it's quieter.  "Just so nosotros can talk almost life," she says.

I give her a piffling wink.  "I beloved life in this crazy world!  It is crazy, isn't it?"

She smiles.  "Yeah, a world in which nosotros can exist naked with our clothes on and experience continuous climax without intercourse."

"Considering instead we can achieve both with music, or pigment, or trip the light fantastic, or whatsoever class of avid self-expression," I add.

"Y'all got it.  Even the sincerity in this conversation is beginning to piece of work for me," she says as we step out the front door and into the moonlight.

*****

I tell this short story mostly because I need the reminder.

I need to be reminded of the dazzler and sweetness of passionately arresting oneself into the nowadays moment—into the people, the dialogs, and the priceless lilliputian events that exist in that location.

I need to exist reminded of what it'south like to be "naked" and "free."

Considering besides oftentimes, amidst the hustle, I forget.

I forget to pay attention.

I forget to be grateful for the opportunity directly in front of me.

Then I tell a story about a night from my afar past that I can remember and recite in vivid detail only considering I was completely present at the time.

I wasn't distracted.  I wasn't in a blitz to go somewhere better.  I wasn't resisting things, or trying to alter them in any way.

I was 100% at that place.

And, every bit a consequence, I immune that dark to change my life.

Now, think nigh how this relates to YOUR life.

The floor is yours…

Before you go, delight let usa know:

Which story or betoken higher up resonates the most with you correct now?

Get out a annotate below and share your thoughts.

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Source: https://www.marcandangel.com/2018/08/12/7-short-stories-that-will-change-your-attitude-and-spare-some-pain/

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