Today, I want to teach you a simple technique to help you protect yourself from other people’s bad vibes.
Imagine that people are like two-way radios. We are constantly broadcasting our thoughts and feelings, as well as receiving the thoughts and feelings of other people.
Read More(Reposted with the video added. This is my favorite quote. I read this often to remind myself how to live in a good way.)
"So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
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“Living from the heart” is one of the those phrases used in self-help circles that borders on cliché. Unfortunately, excellent ideas often get lost when phrases like this are overused in a Stewart Smally-like fashion.
Yet, the idea of “living from the heart” is profound and beneficial. Like all symbolism, it is open to interpretation and can evolve over time....
....I believe that “living from the heart” means moving away from living totally from thought. Our soul is our core and the reason we were born. Our minds (including our emotions) are layered on top, superimposed.
The key is learning to move our minds off the side and to live from this deepest place. The heart is our center and is an access point to this deep place.
Read MoreWorry is focusing your attention on your fears repeatedly. It is a habit; a form of condition thinking.
Worry is a waste of time and energy. It does absolutely nothing to change what you are worried about.
It is also destructive. It causes a great deal of stress, which is unhealthy physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Worrying simply reinforces living of your life in fear. Fear is paralyzing and keeps you away from living your life to the fullest.
The good news is that you can stop worrying if you choose to.
Read MoreAnita Moorjani had a near death experience after battling cancer for four years. She came back from the Other Side and healed herself completely in a matter of weeks.
Please watch the video above. In it, I read and expand upon a page from Anita's book "Dying to Be Me." She describes how she totally changed the way she approaches living life.
She has moved from living her life in fear to living her life with joy.She allows herself to simply be herself, not being burdened by other people's dogma or judgements. We can learn a lot from someone with such an experience.
Read More“Yeah, when you call my name, I salivate like Pavlov’s Dogs.” -- The Rolling Stones
A huge amount of the thoughts in our heads are there because of conditioned thinking. You remember Pavlov’s Dogs from school, right? Ring the bell and salivate. Conditioned thinking is an automatic response. Event X happens and you respond with Reaction Y, just like you learned to do in the past.
What is this means is that we are not in control of our thoughts. Our thoughts control us. This conditioning started when we were very small children. A baby is hungry, she cries and she gets fed. She gets hungry again, she cries and she gets fed again. We learn that one pretty fast.
To take back control of our thinking, we need tools to help us break the slavery to our trance-like conditioning.
Read MoreOn the morning bus recently here in Kyoto, I sat down next to a bunch of elementary school boys. They all look at me suspiciously, and then start saying to each other "You go talk to him in English!"
After it was determined that one of the boys could speak English better than the others, the one boy looks at me and says "hello!"
Read More“If you think you are enlightened, go spend a week with your family.” -- Ram Dass
"You have a choice either to be right or to be kind.” -- Wayne Dyer
With the holiday season approaching, many of us will be participating in family gatherings. While many families have wonderful times together, others don’t. Family members can drive you crazier than any other people on the planet.
If you want to have a better holiday experience, and a better life experience in general, you might want to consider a new approach to dealing with challenging people.
Read MoreToday, I would like to share with you a simple visualization exercise that can help increase your energy level. This is especially good if you are feeling drained, lethargic or depressed. It is also an excellent daily exercise to keep you strong, centered and balanced.
It only takes a few minutes and you can incorporate this into your regular meditation practice.
Read MoreThe next time you pull that camera or phone out of your pocket to take a picture or video. Don’t. Put it back.
Instead just look at what you wanted to take a picture of. Experience it. Listen to what is going on. Smell it. Feel it. Be in the present. Life is now. It is not later when you are looking at your photos on Facebook.
When you breathe your last breath and your life is flashing in front of your eyes, will you be thinking about the pictures that you took, or of the experiences you had and the people you loved?
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Understanding your energy, the energy of others and how we all struggle for more of this energy is a powerful way to understand how you act, and how you interact with others.
Every interaction you have with another person is an energy exchange. During these interactions you, and the other person, are either giving, taking or losing energy.
In today's post, I will talk about these energy exchanges between people and how you can identify them.
Read MoreOn my journey from the depths of alcohol abuse two decades ago, and from the work I do helping people improve their lives, I have found that the path of true success and happiness comes by looking inward and strengthening yourself from the inside out.
Today, I am going to briefly talk about what “going inward” really means and what you will find when you get there.
Read MoreYou are constantly and relentless being told by society that you must buy stuff. Lots of stuff. You are a consumer, so you must consume. If you do not, you are not contributing to society. Your status is judged by the quality and quantity of your things; the Armani suit, the Rolex watch and the Mercedes car.
While there is nothing inherently wrong in having things - even nice things - yet you set yourself up for a life of endless suffering by making “buying stuff” the center point of your life. You will never have enough. There always a bigger house to be bought and smarter smartphone. You will spend more and more of your limited time working to pay off your debts, and less time on the human relationships which are the most important parts of life.
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Many people think that world is getting worse by the day. But that is not true. Life is better for humanity now than ever in history.
Yet this belief in a worsening world gets in the way of solving the real problems that need to be addressed. By having an overly negative view of the world (and life), you lay the seeds for crippling depression and anxiety.
Read MoreIf you want to overcome your problems and have real success in this life, you have to go inward. Deep inside of you is your essence: you are a spiritual being having a human experience. The reason you were born was because of this spirit; it is not because of your body.
This has been taught throughout the ages in all cultures. In this modern world of rapidly accelerating change, the idea of living from the inside has largely been pushed to the side. We are literally brainwashed everyday to be consumers. We are constantly bombarded thousands of times a day by advertising to consume, consume, consume.
Read MoreThis is for all hardcore procrastinators: Do it now!
We can waste a lot more time thinking about doing something than just doing it. Just start.
Read MoreThis is a video of Paul Crouse telling a story called "Hugging in Kerala" at The Flame storytelling event at Papa Jon's Cafe Shinpukan in Kyoto, Japan.
To borrow the words of cafe owner and MC Charles Roche, it is "a tale of serendipity, synchronicity, and diesel fueled enlightenment." The video is about 12 minutes long.
Read MorePaulCrouse.com is now the name of this website and blog. I have decided that my own name is the best way for me to share my work with the world.
TooTallPaul.com will also bring people to this website. It is an old college nickname that is easy to remember.
Read MoreAre you depressed? Have you got the blues? Are you feeling down?
If so, then you should be thankful. No, I don’t mean be thankful for your depression. I mean that you need to be thankful to get over your funk.
By having an attitude of gratitude, you can break your cycle of conditioned thinking and transform the negative energy dynamic that is keeping you down.
So, begin to lose your blues by starting to be thankful.
Read MoreAlcoholics and addicts can be manipulative, self-destructive and dishonest. If you are involved with someone like this, you've probably learned that this has direct implications for you: It's important that you learn to protect yourself from them, and not to enable them.
Protecting yourself from abuse is one of the most basic spiritual skills to learn. The purpose of this post is to raise your awareness about how to take actions to stop others' inappropriate or possibly dangerous behavior from affecting your life. The context of this post is about alcoholism, but you it also applies to any other kinds of inappropriate behaviors.
Read MorePaul Crouse
Paul Crouse Show 041 "Loneliness and Isolation" with Frances Robbins
Paul Crouse Show 039 "Toxic Relationships" with Frances Robbins
A Cautionary Tale About Being Too Cautious
Paul Crouse Show 038 "Anxiety & Depression" with Frances Robbins
9862 Miracles: My 27 Years of Sobriety
Paul Crouse Radio Show #33 with Morgan Fisher - Part Two - "Thoughtless and Mindful"
Paul Crouse Radio Show #32 with Morgan Fisher - Part One - "A Rock & Roll Life"
Paul Crouse Radio Show #19 with Katherine Arati Maas - "Recovery, Healing and Taking Care of the Soul."
Paul Crouse Radio Show #17 with Rev. Taka Kawakami - "What the Bleep is Zen?"
