A year ago I decided to run 10 kilometers. Something I had never done before, and something I never thought I could do either. 10 kilometers is pretty far.
I set up an excersise schedule starting in may and ending in mid August at the midnight race through Stockholm.

In the end of July I ran 10 kilometers.

It felt like breaking out of a prison, suddenly I felt light like a feather. I didn’t stop running, but continued for another three and a half kilometers.
When finally I had broken through that mental barrier I had constructed, that said that ten kilometers is a long run, more than I could handle, there was nothing stopping me. I could just as well continue.
The last five weeks, I have run 15 kilometers, two to three times a week.
It’s hard work, but not a big deal.

It’s the mental barriers that is the problem. The stories we keep telling ourselves and believing in that stops us from trying. The important things are not the details, but our attitude.
With the right attitude we can do anything.
When hiring people in the past, I have always paid more attention to attitude than technical skills. You can teach people accounting, bartending, programming or an instrument. But to change their attitude to make that possible, that can take a life time.

That’s how it was when i decided to do this trip. When the decision was made, everything fell into place almost seemlessly. When I had finally gotten started, everything has been moving on without much of a problem. Sure, I wasn’t happy to end up in a hospital in India, but it really didn’t bother me that much.
There has been many important decisions to be made during this trip, but in the end it is so much easier than you think.
The important thing is to make the decision. To tell yourself Yes, with determination, knowing that whatever happens, you are going to do this. When that decision is made, everything falls into place. It doesn’t mena you don’t feel fear or anxiety, or that things can’t go wrong, but with the right attitude you just get up again after falling and keep on going.

It is that simple. Yet we spend most of our lives telling ourselves that it is impossible because of thousand different reasons. But if we realize that we are just making up excuses to ourselves because we really don’t want to do it or because we are too scared, we can also see through these excuses and reach the place where we say Yes! Where we make the decision.

I’m not saying you have to run ten kilometers or go travelling. I’m just saying that what we want to do but think we can’t, we can do.
And when we have made the decision.

Then the difficult part is already done.

We have already reached our goal.

It’s a hot day, the air is dry, the sprinkler is making the green grass moist one drop at a time. That which is turning yellow, remains green. Butterflies is circling the garden, flies is circling around me, but they don’t disturb me. Behind me, in the woods, I can hear the creek finding it’s way down to Etna.
Today is 9/11. A day that means alot in this country. There are rumours about burning the Quran, people are upset, memories are cherishe and re-lived today of something that happened almost nine years ago. Something that changed the world and mostly this countries foundation.
It’s sad to see that people can never accept eachothers differences, respecting that everyone do things in their own way and that that is good. Why do people get so upset talking politics? Why does someone elses beliefs upset others so much?

We think we can control our lives, hur things turn out, we think we have that power. We think that if we can’t use that power, if things doesn’t turn out the way we want them to, things will go to hell. We are so constantly afraid of things getting worse and worse.

But if you look at your life right now. Exactly like it is right now. Not ten minutes ago, not an hour from now, just now. You most likely do not have any problems.
If you had, you wouldn’t take yourself the time to write or read something like this.

Right?

You would be in full action to solve your problems. Taking care of things.

The fact is though, that most of our days, we don’t have problems. But if we start following our thoughts, thinking about things that has been or that might be, we see a lot of problems. That is the way we are used to living.

Focus on the problems.

But when you are here, right now. When you are just being. You don’t have any problems. Then you can sit down, listen to the creek flowing down the hills, butterflies jumping from one flower to another and enjoy the heat that is still here in September.

I’m not saying that 9/11 didn’t mean terror for a lot of people. But it seems like a lot of people like to continue that terror, day in, day out. It feeds our suffering, it justifies our hatred, strengthening our identity as the righteous ones in the struggle against “the others”.
It turns every day into suffering.

Isn’t it better to stop focusing on the bad?

I am not saying we have not been hurt, we have all been sometime in our lives. The question is how you deal with it. We all know people who handle it by constantly thinking about it, hanging on to it and reminding ourselves how we were hurt and by whom. These people are seldom very fun to hang out with.

You can choose between being right or being happy.

You can’t have both.