Quotes from Thomas Leonard

This comes from Andrea J. Lee's Blog

Here are your 5 snippets of wisdom about people for this week. We hope you’ll find them as useful and thought-provoking as always. They’re from the collection by Thomas Leonard, and assembled by his R&D team.

We hope you’ll enjoy!

· People have the capacity to create. They create their lives and opportunities each day of their lives.

· People most often criticize traits in others that they dislike about themselves.

· People play out issues from their families of origin in their present workplace situations.

· People suffer because they resist the present moment.

· People see the world not as it is, but as they are.

TED

Wednesday Web Watch

An important ingredient for a satisfying retirement is to keep mentally stimulated. Keep your mind alert, willing to explore, discover and learn new things.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) hosts a catalog of speeches, usually 20 minutes or less) of the greatest thinkers in the world today. The speeches are well organized. Some are very technical, others less so, but always stimulating.

I first heard about TED when an email was circulating the talk by Jan Bolte Taylor discussing her stroke. If you don’t do anything else, take 20 minutes to listen to this address. It is the best speech I’ve ever heard.

I always leave the site amazed and thrilled to be living on the planet at this period in time.

Reiki Training

I’ve always walked a fine line between my training in a traditional psychological environment and practices in the mind, body, spirit connection. I blend both in my work, but don’t overtly publicize it.

When I was twenty, I was sure I had a good sense of how the world worked. I was open to telling anyone what I thought. As I’ve grown older, I’m much less sure of how the world works. I choose certain beliefs because they make sense to me. I don’t belong to any religious organization, but try to live a spiritual life that draws from the teachings of all the major religions. This means I don't get too bogged down in dogma.

It makes sense there is a unifying universal force we can tap into and use. Beyond that, I don’t make many other claims.

I have a couple of chronic bodily issues that are a minor source of frustration. I acquired asthma ten years ago. I’m lucky it is manageable with steroids. It was through the acquisition of asthma I quit smoking and for that, I’m very thankful. I am no longer concerned about smoking again. I manage the asthma with medication, but modern medicine can’t cure it.

I have a cat that licks her fur to the point of bald spots. Shots and medicine that worked initially are no longer effective.

When the opportunity arose to get involved in Reiki training, I decided to take advantage of it. Reiki comes from Japan. The basic idea is there are different levels of energy around us and through this training, a practitioner can access healing energy and channel it through their hands to affected body parts.

A nurse, who comes from the very traditional western medical model, trained me. She incorporates both western and eastern or alternatives medicine in her work. (She’s no longer in connected to a medical institution.)

I’m curious and enjoy the experience of Reiki. At this moment, I have no desire to share Reiki beyond healing myself and those very close to me, but am intrigued with the idea.

While I’ll never be able to provide more than anecdotal evidence, I’ll let you know what I think when I complete my committed 21 days of self-healing.

Global versus Local Charity

I attended a World Affairs Council luncheon yesterday. World Affairs is an educational non-profit organization with local groups that bring in speakers to discuss international issues. It’s non-partisan, so wonderful for members of the community to come together to discuss issues that are affecting the world. It helps to increase our understanding of being part of a global community. What is going on in Asia, Africa and Europe may have a direct impact on our lives locally.

The speaker at the meeting was Muhammad Yunus, a founding board member of the Grameen Foundation and Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which revolutionized banking in developing countries. The Grameen model lends small amounts of capital to the poorest of the poor, women, without collateral to start small businesses. He reported they had given loans to 130 million people since the late 1980’s, of those 80 million were to their target market. They have a 97% repayment rate. The women are required to form support groups, limit the number of children they have and those children need to go to school. If the children complete their primary education, the Grameen Foundation will pay all of their tuition and expenses to go to college or university.

Banks around the world now use the Grameen model. There were two interesting points Yunus made, which are worth repeating. He said where ever he goes people talk about managing the environment. He responds by saying the environment will take care of itself. What we need to do is manage people. We have created such environmental havoc in the world, it may require some human intervention to heal. For the most part, if left to its own devices, the environment can and will heal itself. The challenge is to minimize human impact, which is a much more complicated challenge.

The other point he made was the only way to solve global issues was at a local level. Certainly, Grameen has found a way to do this. They go into the poorest villages and by helping women start small cottage industries are able to turn around the economic well-being for the whole community.

I am one of these people who fancies herself flying off to all corners of the world to help others, when I should be asking myself, “What can I do here at home to make a difference?” Every one of us should be asking that question on a continual basis.