Weather of the Mind 2016 Remix Day 3

In the same way that hearing a weather report for afternoon thundershowers can help us plan properly, learning about the weather of our minds is particularly valuable when we must deal with the inevitable rough storms of our lives.  We use measuring devices – thermometers, speedometers, and clocks – every day and these help us understand the situation and allow us to respond quickly and effectively.  And yet, we have developed no gauges for rapidly assessing our emotional health.   

Imagine if our fire department did not have a method for rapidly assessing a fire.  Imagine they didn’t have a practiced response for each challenge they faced.  Imagine if every time there was a fire they spent a half hour trying to understand what was going on and then another half hour making a game plan for how to respond.  That would be insane.  Yet, this is how we approach our emotional challenges.  Most of us don’t have a great sense of how to assess our internal challenges, our internal fires, and when we try to figure out a strategy from within the fire we are often not seeing things clearly.  

The Weather of the Mind is intended to help us learn how to more readily assess our emotional state and to have a basic plan of how to respond when the challenges are greatest.    

Weather of the Mind 2016 Remix Day 2

The book opens with these two quotes.  I can read these two quotes every day as a meditation.  So powerful, so potent.  

“And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years,
and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years.”

– John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: 
first, by reflection, which is noblest; 
second, by imitation, which is easiest;
 and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

- Confucius