Category: Inspiration

Postcards from the Funny Farm meant to inspire and motivate you toward achieving your dreams.

Free Your Brain

April 28, 2009 – 9:08 pm
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I ran across this inspiring photo today at Neurophilosophy, a recent addition to my blogroll. Mo, the author, describes the photo in a post there, but here is an excerpt:

Purkinje cells are the largest cells in the mammalian brain. They have a planar structure with a highly elaborate dendritic tree.

I’ve become inescapably fascinated with the brain in the past decade. I’ve begun to see our thoughts in a new way: organic. Just like fertilizer helps a tomato to grow ripe and delicious, so our brains are in a cyclical process of bloom and wilt all the time. Today I am interested in sharing a theory of creativity with you. Imagine that your creativity is like a tree such as the photo you see above. Now imagine something you’ve been told or imagined you “COULDN’T” do for one reason or another. The best way to conquer such a lie is through the stimulation of creativity, and hence: solutions.

Here’s an example of just one crazy thing you can do:

Is there water by your house you can jump in? Do it. I don’t care if it’s cold and I don’t care if it’s even permissible to swim there. Breaking conventions awakens creativity and stimulates the dendrites. No imagine the tree above thriving and pulsating as you swim through the water. Voila! You are out of your rut. The only limitations on what you can do are in your mind, in an organic way. people have said “mind over matter” for years but really the mind itself is matter. It, and only it, holds the key to true human freedom and possibilities.

I wrote yesterday about how the brain is a fragile instrument that must be cared for. I discussed Phineas Gage and the brain injury he suffered at the hands of an exploding metal rod. One capacity that he lost in the 15 years after the accident was his inhibition. Inhibition is simply a region of our brain. It isn’t the ten commandments or even the voice of your parents you hear saying: “Don’t lie!” Instead, it’s like a fleshy computer hard drive that organizes facts and feelings into a paradigm that controls our every move.

Step out of it to escape your rut, or funk, or whatever malady afflicts you … allow creativity to go crazy. Whether it’s an impromptu swim or grocery go-kart races … the results will amaze you like the glowing photo above. Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do something you want to do.

What other crazy things could you do to get your creative juices flowing?

By Damien Riley | Also posted in Psychology | Tagged brain, brain injury, brains, creativity, dendritic tree, human freedom, mind over matter, philosophy, phineas gage, possibilities, theory of creativity | Comments (0)

Patch of Orange Groves

April 26, 2009 – 7:01 pm
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A journal entry from January 2, 2007.

I left the High Desert for a while today. Wife and I took the kids to Disneyland and it was really great. The main point of this trip was to get my son on a scary roller coaster (California Screamin’). He’s 8 going on 30 and walks around acting like he’s the smartest, toughest kid around. That’s why I was astonished that he refused to go on it.

We spent time on kiddie rides, and even Space Mountain (which I coaxed him kicking and screaming to go on last trip) but he maintained a nervousness about that whiteroller coaster over at California Adventure.

I finally forced him to go on it, and now of course . . . it’s his favorite ride in the world!

My baby girl loved “A Bug’s Life” and “Snow White.” Because we have annual passes, we didn’t stay that long. It was WICKEDLY crowded. If you know what fast passes are, we checked the fastpass return time for “Space Mountain” at 11am and it was 7:30pm!!! All the ride lines were about an hour. This isn’t too bad, you talk in line, it’s cool in an old fashioned way. Plus people hear you talk and comment and you meet new friends who you never see again once they get on the ride away from you. All the rides were cool. My favorite was “Soarin’ Over California.” I love the part where you fly over the Orange Groves. You can almost smell the citrus as you soar like a hang-glider.

The drive down the hill to Anaheim (about 1 1/2 hours from where we’re at), the familiar OC freeways, the park, and dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack made me realize how fortunateI am to have been brought up in Orange County. I miss it sometimes. The average house is probably worth about 750K to 1 mil. That tends to keep me in the High Desert. It all used to be an Orange Grove once upon a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

Many years later, my family and I sure appreciate what one man’s dream (Walt Disney) did with a patch of those orange groves.

Thanks Walt.

By Damien Riley | Tagged disneyland, Joe's Crab Shack, walt disney | Comments (0)

The Library – Browsing Humanity

April 24, 2009 – 8:34 pm
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libraryI went to the library yesterday. There is a book there called “The Writer’s Market” that I needed some info from. I wasn’t sure if it would be there since I live in a 1/2 rural area of California (compared to Orange County where I grew up). As I asked the librarian for help, I was struck by her eagerness to offer it. Not only did she find me the book I needed, but she recommended a book to me as well that I read while there and it was VERY helpful.

I’m working on a book. It’s non-fiction and I really think it has some potential. Unfortunately, the process of writing it is inevitably taking my perfect idea and ripping it to shreds. My goal is to hold some semblage of the idea together to the end of the journey!

While in the library I saw a heavy kid in a T-Shirt reading “The Big Money” and I was blown away. Here was a kid reading a book I read (and loved) in college. And in Hesperia of all places!!! It reminded me that the library is a place where we can tap into history and humanity. In the library we are all equals. My wife and kids were with me. there was a kids section where the two went and played/read. My wife looked at books she was interested in. I photocopied the pages of agents I needed for my ongoing project and marveled at the number of people around me seeking out knowledge, entertainment, inspiration. I thought about life as a very temporary thing, sometimes filled with pain, other times pleasure. The library gives us the tools to make it through both. Someone said no one should write their autobiography until she/he is dead . . . there may be some wisdom in that. Nonetheless, thank writers on every subject for sharing how they made it through to now so we can get our help along the way. This is whether it be for bucks at Barnes and Noble, or for free . . . browsing through this place

By Damien Riley | Comments (0)

The Amazing Vision of Susan Boyle

April 13, 2009 – 8:34 pm
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Wow. I just watched this video my wife sent me on Youtube. The embodiment of amazing vision.  This is absolutely what the world needs to watch today. I was surprised, inspired, and admittedly a little choked up.  Do yourself a favor and watch it.

Every once in a while a story in print or in this case on video presents itself and reminds us of our folly. It brings us back to what really matters: people. If anyone has ever told you your dream is impossible (including yourself), I beg to differ … watch the video of Susan Boyle and see why.

Susan Boyle

I loved Susan Boyle’s song, and ironically it reminded me of a quote about hating songs by Woody Guthrie. I’ve added it to my Crazy Quotes page.  Check it out:

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that.”
-Woody Guthrie

I wish Susan Boyle and her family continued success. What an amazing vision she is.

By Damien Riley | Also posted in Video | Tagged amazing vision, dreams come true, Inspiration, Susan Boyle | Comments (0)

Keep Moving Forward

April 12, 2009 – 7:52 am
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Walt Disney is one of my biggest heroes.  His most famous quote that I know of is “Keep Moving Forward.”  In this podcast, on Easter 2009, I elaborate on its meaning for me and you and anyone who calls themself a member of this crazy, wonderful human condition.  This quote has been my mantra lately.

You can read a whole webpage of quotes I enjoy and that I get inspiration from at my Crazy Quotes page.  I find that a simple quote can produce more inspiration than I ever imagined.  They are worth reading, thinking about, and collecting as you travel through the pilgrimage of life.  I hope you get some inspiration from the podcast.  Happy Easter, whether you celebrate it or not.

By Damien Riley | Also posted in Psychology | Tagged Psychology, Self Improvement, Walt Disney Quote | Comments (0)

Bloggers Who Inspire Meme

April 5, 2009 – 9:21 pm
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inspiration
Photo by hkoppdelaney

What if you had to whittle your feed subscriptions down to a select few?  Who would you want to read?  This is a meme meant to recognize the bloggers who inspire us the most.  The idea is to list as many as you like, remembering that quality is better than quantity.

Please note that all blogs I read (more or less, I read quite a few each day) inspire me in some way or another.  The very act of reading blogs does in fact.  These are simply ones I recalled in a single moment to put in this meme.  If you were wondering why you were left out, please don’t be offended, I’ll get yours in the next one:

  • Dragonblogger – This guy is a blogging genius.  Reading his blogs inspires me.
  • Growing Happiness – She writes about psychology, health, and happiness.  Reading her blog inspires me.
  • This Eclectic Life – A storyteller, by profession.  Her blog has long inspired me.
  • Tyler Ingram – Cool guy, cool blog.  It’s a source of inspiration.
  • Beyond the Rhetoric – A writer that takes the time to entertain his readers in between freelancing.  A mega-dose of inspiration.
  • Beeker’s Words – Fun life, in a blog.  Always inspiring.

If you’ve never read these blogs, I read, endorse and recommend each of them.  Check them out and let me know what you think. Sometimes reading great blogs can be the baby bedding that nurtures you into a powerful, accomplished blogger all your own.

By Damien Riley | Comments (0)

Soap, Gum and Doing What You Love

April 5, 2009 – 5:50 pm
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Keep doing those hobbies, topics, and pet projects that excite you, even if they bring in little or no money. If you’re a writer, write on that stuff you’re most passionate about, despite the popularity “ranking” of the subject matter. Even something as droll as chewing gum has produced rewards in due time.

I read about Wrigley, the famous gum mogul, tonight on a website. He started selling soap as his main source of income, but kept a secret hobby of making it in the chewing gum market began in his basement. He never thought chewing gum would bring in enough money to be a big business, so he poured himself into the soap as his career. After a time however, the soap didn’t sell as he had hoped. Before long, he would be in chewing gum orbit.

To better market the soap as a novelty, the family started adhering a small package of his tasty gum to each soapbox they sold. After a short time people were buying the soap just to get the gum. You know the rest of the story. Spearmint chewing gum and gum in general is synonymous with his name.

I think the energy in our jobs and in our writing, should not always be spent on what we think will sell, but rather on our pet projects we truly feel invigorated about. We may find, as Wrigley did, that other people like them as well and they may even end up paying us money to continue doing them! Thanks for the life lesson Mr. Wrigley and thank you for Wrigleys chewing gum.

Wrigley’s full history

By Damien Riley | Tagged chewing gum, chewing gum market, chewing gum orbit, spearmint chewing gum, wrigleys chewing gum | Comments (0)

Teaching, Inspiration, and Rock 'n Roll

April 3, 2009 – 2:07 pm
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“The world is so full of boring people. It’s important for leaders, teachers, writers, performers, and artists to share an influence that is NOT boring with this starved-for-passion world.”

I started teaching at age 27. Though I thought I was old then, I look back now and see that I was most assuredly still a very young adult. Back then I was very much a self-starter. After subbing in a district for 3 months I managed to get hired on a year’s teaching contract with NO credential based purely on my wit and candor and my ability to speak Spanish and English. In California, this is called an “emergency credential” and it’s rarely done nowadays . . . for good reason. I had absolutely no classroom management skills, apart from being a sub which is vastly different from being the only grown-up in charge of 36 ten year olds for 185 days. Those first 3 years were very tough, but I got by on the inspiration of my twenties. It seems like my thirties have required more strategy than instinct to find success.

Now, 10 years later with a full credential and a Master’s degree, I still often find myself at a loss for inspiration. I never give up though. On those days that I am discouraged and unmotivated, I try and get away from the daily routine. I put aside the lessons I had planned (as much as is possible to stay within my responsibilities) and I focus on the things that I truly enjoy: guitar, art, poetry, reading, songwriting, nature, etc. Then I tap into that wonder I have for those things and bridge it to the material I have to teach. For example: if I have to teach reading data on a graph, I make a graph about the different guitars there are.

I adapt my lessons that day to whatever is really giving me personal inspiration at that moment. All people (even small ones) are attracted to a leader or performer who is passionate about what he is doing. Kids want to emulate that energy. I remember going to see REM in concert in my 20’s and being so drawn in to what singer Michael Stipe was doing onstage. I didn’t understand the weird symbols on the screen or the strange movements he made, like hitting a metal chair with a wooden rod on the off-beats on “World Leader Pretend,” but I tapped into his passion and energy for what he was doing, and when they left the stage I screamed for an encore. It was like a moth to a lightbulb, the lightbulb was passion. The world is so full of boring people. It’s important for leaders, teachers, writers, performers, and artists to share an influence that is NOT boring with this starved-for-passion world.

Discouragement that saps inspiration is the teacher’s biggest enemy. By tapping into and bridging my passions with my students, I am able to get through those tough days when I have to methodically put one foot in front of the other and keep remembering that I got into the profession to make a difference. With a brief look inward, it works every time.

By Damien Riley | Also posted in Guitar | Tagged art, classroom management skills, Education, Guitar, Inspiration, kids, lesson, Michael Stipe, reading, relationships, REM, Rock, Self Improvement, singer michael stipe, success, teacher, Teaching, Writing | Comments (0)

A Vision of Arches – Ray Kroc

April 3, 2009 – 12:49 pm
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McDonald’s stirs up images of different kinds for different people, but no one can deny the integral effect it has had as a brand and fast food business model in our country and world. When companies get this huge, as with Disney, we tend to forget that they started with one person’s vision. McDonald’s began with one man’s vision in 1940. Under the supervision of founder Ray Kroc, McDonald’s rapidly expanded and improved over the years to become a giant fast food corporation of more than 30,000 stores in 117 different countries serving 47 million customers each day.

Wow.

That goes to show you just how valuable one man’s vision can be! What’s the impact this knowledge should have on you and I? Nurture your vision and don’t let it die. Some people treat their vision as if it is a wine of the month, here today gone tomorow, easy come, easy go. Kroc, on the other hand, belongs to a selct group of visionaries who took one vision extra seriously and saw it through.

Some might think of McDonald’s as a less than “amazing” thing with regard to recent issues of obesity and saturated fats etc., and they might be right. But no one can deny the amazing feat accomplished by Ray Kroc when he started his idea.

To close this post, I offer my readers this telling quotation from Ray Kroc himself describing the time he started McDonald’s. His life’s work is truly an “Amazing Thing“:

I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns, but I was convinced that the best was ahead of me. -Ray Kroc

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my feed via rss

By Damien Riley | Tagged Inspiration, Self Improvement | Comments (0)

Power of Mantra

March 31, 2009 – 10:10 am
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Like the words of a psychologist to you on the couch, this post will introduce a series on the practice of having an open mind.

I’ve been writing about psychology and inspiration here since December of 2006 and in the process I’ve done a lot of homework I love to share. Mark Twain once said: “When I turned 20, I was amazed at all my father had learned in ten years.” Our perception of the world is filtered through our point of view. If we have an open mind as we travel through life, we transcend much of the trouble around us. One invaluable tool in keeping an open mind is to have a mantra.

Remember when you were younger, about junior high age? You could run around all day: boys at the football field, girls at the mall or maybe the softball field. (Of course I don’t mean to sound like all women wanted to be at the mall but many I knew did). At any rate, physical activity back then had very few consequences. I would run 5-10 miles on the x-country team and have no soreness whatsoever the next day. Well, now fast forward to today. I can barely run to the end of my street without needing to stop and gather myself. Part of that is my fault for not exercising enough. Another part of it is just plain aging. Even as a youngster; however, practice had its place. Running those hill workouts paid off when I won the races. Our minds need practice too. A mantra can be part of that life-changing practice.

The big picture of this series is the way we feel about the world. Our mind processes things differently as it is accustomed to do. The good news is that as long as we practice the right mental things, we never need to suffer the way we do in our physical aging. In fact, if we stay mentally “worked out,” we can be more enlightened the older we get. Kind of cool eh? So, just to clarify the big picture here:

Physical Practice = Winning races/competitions

Mental Practice = Seeing the world the way it is.

One mental exercise we should engage in is the practice of having an open mind. Just like running one mile and skipping the rest of the week will not make a young runner any stronger, so we are made “mentally flabby” when we neglect this practice. The time this verb “practice” is most vivid to me is when I get angry or when I get disappointed or otherwise discouraged. It’s in those moments I can hear that inner psychologist on the couch in my mind say: “Calm down, this is what practice is all about.”

When and how to use a mantra to keep your mind open:

  1. When we are out of sorts it comes from 1 of 2 sources: a) Internal – we have a chemical imbalance happening and need food or medicine to balance it out -or- b) External stimulus has disagreed with us in some way. The first step therefore is to determine which source is bringing you down. For example: Would a glass of water help? Some peanuts? You make the call there. This step is kind of like a stop and regroup.
  2. The second step is to ACT to accept the cause of the problem. It could be your blood sugar or a person in your face. Either way: ACCEPT the cause for what it is.
  3. The third step is a mantra. A mantra isn’t a middle eastern mystery, it’s just a phrase that has good energy for you. Remember the little engine that could? His mantra was: “I think I can, I think I can.” You can use many mantras that already exist or make up your own. I really like the mantra: “Is that so?” Eckhart uses it and recommends it in his book. I recommend it as well.

Other things you could say are (for example): “That’s one way to look at it,” “This too shall pass,” etc. I know you are creative because you’ve read this far. I encourage you to pick a mantra, write it on a card and when you lose your peace in the day, read the card, say the card, BE the card. I think you will as I have that the mental and spiritual rewards are mammoth.

When you exit a room of dissent and feel like you’ve made a contribution of peace, it’s one of the most powerful victories you can imagine.

By Damien Riley | Also posted in Health, Psychology, Reviews, Self Improvement | Comments (0)

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