I watched a woman who clearly had a physical handicap, haltingly out walking for exercise yesterday. I remarked to myself, “What a testament to the human spirit.”

Here was this woman, overriding any acceptable excuse not to exercise, displaying her human spirit.

What is the human spirit?

We all have it, and yet we all constrain it from doing its best.

The human spirit is what animates us and differentiates us from being dead.

Yet, many of us are the walking dead, without an acceptable excuse, because we keep our human spirit on a leash.

How do we confine the spirit we all have?

It’s done through patterning.

We all learn patterns of behavior and thinking. Some of the learning is conscious; most of it is conditioned without our permission. We learn most patterning by accident and then that accident becomes a way of life.

Are you rude? You didn’t go to a formal class to learn it but, nonetheless, you were schooled. Think about it, who would consciously decide to learn rudeness?

Taking the learning one step further, you have channeled your human spirit into being rude, because like water, spirit will go wherever there is a route.

So we channel our malleable human spirit through patterning, most of which was done outside of our awareness. It seems like this patterning keeps us stuck in place.

Not for the woman out walking yesterday.

What made her human spirit flow into a productive pattern of exercise versus into an acceptable excuse not to?

I would only be guessing because I don’t know this person, but my sense is that she discovered that our human spirit will flow wherever we channel it.

That means that we have to begin to recognize where we are allowing it to flow now. That’s easy to determine, just look at your patterns. That’s where your human spirit is flowing.

In order to redirect the flow, it’s essential to recognize a confining pattern while it’s happening, not during a guilt trip, or on the therapist’s couch after the fact. That’s just a history lesson, not a plan of action.

When you begin to recognize your patterns in action, you create a space for the flow of human spirit to go somewhere new. Repeated recognition, while the pattern is happening, creates a channel for your spirit to flow away from that which is holding you back into something new that’s more productive for you.

To save your spirit from stagnation, begin to recognize where it’s pooling now and you’ll quietly create a channel for its escape.

The human spirit is remarkable; we just need to lead it where we want it to take us. That’s done through using our gift of recognition. It’s the catalyst for producing new channels for our human spirit to animate.

I’d write more but I want to catch up with that woman who’s out walking.

All the best,

John

LOSE WEIGHT & KEEP IT OFF
STOP SMOKING FOREVER
SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT EVERY NIGHT
IMPROVE YOUR SELF CONFIDENCE
I LOVE MY BODY
RELAX IN 2 MINUTES
FEEL FOREVER YOUNG
VIRTUAL MASSAGE