Turn this call to action on or off. Link this call-to-action to a page or your choice.Click here

Ground Report

World News & Opinions

The Beauty Around Us…Changing Our Lives Part 1

| Health & Science, Lifestyle

Share Tweet Pin G Plus Email

Changing Our Lives By Noticing The Beauty Around Us.

Changing how we see life, and making changes in ours, can be as easy as looking to the beauty and brighter side of our day.  When our lives become overwhelming, for whatever reason, we need to stop and take inventory of what’s good.  All too often our lives are filled and surrounded with bad news and downer information, much of which may not even be true. 

Most of us, myself included, put so much importance on getting the job done, which usually means going to another and doing the exact same rush, rush, rush all over again, that we forget to look at what’s going on around us.  We become so obsessed with hurrying from place to place that we don’t see anything along the way.  In our race through life, we can miss life altogether.  How many beautiful things are there along the route we travel everyday?  How much time and effort has gone into making those things appealing to the eye and food for the soul?  How many of them have we actually seen after the quick look we gave them when they were first put into place?  How likely is it when we come to the end of our road of life, that our last wish will be to drive over the speed limit in order to get somewhere and do the things we’ve complained about all our lives?

It doesn’t matter how much beauty and goodness is in our lives if we don’t stop to savor the moment.  Most of us are so focused on what we don’t have, that we gloss over the things we do have and forget how fortunate we are to have them. 

If we do anything more than three times, it can become a habit.  Rather than cultivating bad habits, take a mini-break three times a day and look around, make mental notes about the beauty that surround you at that moment in time.  Do that until it becomes a habit. 

When we’re obsessed by the doom and gloom that can surround us, if we allow it to, it can be difficult to see things that are uplifting and give real meaning to life.  The present information age is a double-edged sword.  For the most part, we only see, hear and then dwell on the negative.  How often are we bombarded by bad news, instantly, from around the world?  Next we need to ask ourselves the same question about good news.  Our physiological reactions (heart rate, blood pressure, etc.) are the same when we read or hear about someone dying halfway around the world as they are when someone close to us dies.  The reaction may not be as intense or last as long, but the basic reaction’s the same.  When we consider how many times a day we play into the bad news scenario, the overall effects on our health can be as devastating long-term as a personal tragedy can be short-term.

We’re fortunate that, most of the time, we have the choice to listen, read and participate or not participate in bad news cycles.  There’s almost always something we can be thankful for that’s more empowering than someone else’s bad news. 

We all can get caught up in the moment.  When someone else begins awfulizing, it’s all too easy to join in and keep the ball rolling.  The reason bad news travels fast is because we give it a boost along the way.  It’s like electricity.  If the electrical charge wasn’t boosted and the flow heightened, the electricity that originates thousands of miles away couldn’t reach our homes.  Electricity can do good things and be a useful tool.  News can be the same, but it’s up to us to decide which we choose, the good or the bad. 

No one else can make changes for us.  We can begin changing our lives a few minutes at a time.  Some people find it best to have private, quiet time in the evening.  Others find that mornings, before the ramming and jamming of the day begins, are the best.  Either way, we can make changes in just a few minutes a day.  Many of us believe we don’t have the time to spend.  We need to ask ourselves how much time do we spend watching or reading bad news.  Next, we need to ask if that time could be better spent on positives rather than negatives.  Then, we have to be 100% truthful with ourselves and ask if we’re deceiving ourselves about how we really want to see life.  Do we want health, happiness, wealth and gratitude or do we want to stay caught in the whirlpool of negativity that will pull us under?

        

Filed under: Health & Science, Lifestyle
Share Tweet Pin G Plus Email

About Larry Miller

I was born in Los Angeles in 1940. My father was a fighter pilot instructor during WWll and we moved from coast to coast, maybe that’s where I got the nomad in my blood. After graduating from high school in 1958 I joined the Marines. That lifestyle wasn’t for me and upon my discharge I went on with my life, and have never looked back. I worked briefly for a Caterpillar dealer in Riverside, CA before moving back to N. California where I was a welder and truck driver for a chemical company. Truck driving wasn’t my calling anymore than being in the Marines, and I went back to work for another Caterpillar dealer steam cleaning dirty tractor parts and welding. They sent me to schools, lots and lots of schools. I spent as much time going to trade schools as I did at work. I went from cleaning parts to apprentice field mechanic, to mechanic to the parts department to satellite store manager in less than two years. They wanted me to move to Sacramento and be a salesman: I moved to Oregon to learn to commune with nature. I went to work for another heavy equipment dealer and was later contacted by the World’s largest Lorraine Crane dealer and offered the position of purchasing agent and general parts manager. In 1967 I was offered a line of automotive parts and supplies and went into business for myself. My business revolved around eleven race cars that we maintained for others, driving race cars professionally and maintaining high end sports cars. I was a championship and regional champion driver. My business was the largest import parts and service, non dealer, in the state until I sold it in 1979. We went sailing in 79, first to Mexico and then Hawaii. I was an award winning Trans-Pacific sailor and sailor of the year, Hawaii, Island of Kauai. An opportunity presented itself in Hawaii during 1981 and I was back in business, importing Japanese auto body and hard parts. I also felt the pull to write and began freelancing for magazines and newspapers in 1982. My main focus in my articles is, and always has been, health, wellness and fitness. Most of us have heard the saying, “Time is all we have.” I disagree. Our health is all we have, because without our health, we have no time. I was a US Olympic team hopeful in racewalking and held all the records for the state of Hawaii. As a sponsored athlete in my forties, I finished first in nine marathons in a row in my division, qualified for the Ironman® and was the state USCF cycling champion five times in Hawaii and Oregon. Celinda and I were married in 1988 after a three year engagement. We sold our businesses and organic farm and sailed back to Oregon. After our sailboat boat was sold, we moved to Joseph, Oregon, two miles from the trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We were caregivers for my mother the last ten years she was alive. We moved to New Mexico in 1995 because it was too cold for my mom in Oregon during the winters. Celinda designed, and I engineered and built our strawbale house. I began writing the weekly health column for a local newspaper in 1996, and still do. In 2000, I took the summer off to do a four month, 4000 mile, hike, bike and kayak odyssey. I’d been writing health, fitness and sports articles since 1982 and the journey produced a full-length, nonfiction, first person adventure book, Yol Bolsun, May There Be A Road, which can be bought from Amazon.com and others over the Internet. The summer of 2001 was spent hiking. kayaking, fishing and exploring the southwest. In 2002 Celinda and I spent the summer in Canada learning the hospitality business at a resort in preparation for doing promotion for the resort in the US. Most of 2003 was spent reestablishing the trees and landscape that had died during the stay in Canada. We had a house sitter and the house sitter had an ex-husband, and that’s a long story. In July of 2004 I did a solo kayak trip on the Snake River, taking pictures, writing articles and pencil sketching the journey. I hope to do another kayak adventure on the Snake River during the summer of 2008, on the section I missed in 2000 and 2004. In 2005, I returned to Canada to the resort where we’d spent 2002. I was supposed to be there for the month of June. I’d contacted people I’d met in 2002 and they came back to Canada to fish, hike and spend time at the resort, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, while I was there. My one month became five and then it was off to Spain to do the El Camino de Santiago as a travel companion with one of the guests who’d returned to Canada in June. During the summer of 2006 a friend from Ireland, who I’d met in Spain the year before, came to visit in NM and we fished, hiked and explored the White Mountains of AZ. He’d never slept out in the wild in a tent before, and it was quite an experience, for both of us. My newspaper articles were put on the Internet beginning in 2002. I was asked to give public speaking engagements, photo and video presentations, on various subjects for the library in Deming, NM and continue to do so. In 2006 I videoed and produced a DVD for the Smithsonian Institute’s travel exhibit “Between Fences.” NMFILMS had a conference by invitation only, which I attended. While attending the conference, I realized that film making wasn’t what I wanted to do but I still wanted to use my sixteen years of experience and enjoyment of videoing and photography. During the winter of 2005, I discovered that no one on record had ever run from the Arizona border to the Texas border, a distance of 165 miles. During the spring and summer of 2006 I trained for the run and the run was completed in October, 2006. In late 2005, I began building and maintaining websites incorporating all the things I enjoyed about video, photography, travel and the out of doors. 2007 has been a summer of upgrading the home and property which resulted in a downgrading of my enthusiasm for being located in one place. If we don’t like what’s happening in our life, we need to change what we’re doing. Celinda and I are ready to pull up roots and move on. I guess I’ve come full circle. I’m ready to revert back to my childhood, and a nomadic lifestyle.

View all posts by Larry Miller

Related Posts

Leave Your Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *