Tag: Follow Your Gut

Believe in Yourself

Posted on

Believe in Yourself

Let me start off by saying this.. believing in yourself, and taking care of yourself first is not selfishness.

I remember years ago I was told that believing in yourself is not selfishness, it was hard to hear because the way I was raised was to put others before myself. As I’ve grown on my spiritual path I have adopted this philosophy of taking care of myself first… it was difficult at first but the more I practiced it the more I realized that by serving myself I was also serving others.

What do I mean by this?

When you start taking care of your own needs first, and you are honest about what you feel and who you truly are, you are going to weed out a lot of people in your life. That is ok. You can’t make everyone happy, nor should you want to. Eventually though you will find someone that is on the same vibration that you are, someone that believes in themselves as much as you believe in you. You’ve heard me talk before about ‘mirror’s’. When I talk about mirrors what I am talking about is this… when you look in the mirror you see yourself, if you look in the mirror and you see someone that is miserable, unhappy, insecure, etc., do you really think that you’re going to get back something else? Let me elaborate. You can’t have what you are not. It’s impossible. It might happen, yes, but it will be brief because the other person will eventually see your true colors. So, no matter what you want in this world you have to be honest with yourself and honest with the other person.

It’s a hard lesson, but a worthwhile one. I wouldn’t have who I have in my life now did I not look in the mirror and become who I truly am. I have who I have in my life now because I am reflecting who I am. I wrote a song called The Mirror of your Soul with D.N.A.. I wrote this song after dating a narcissist. I believe though that everything happens for a reason. Had I not have had this experience I never would have taken a look at who I really am. Everything happens for a reason… Everything.

What did I learn from this and how can it help you?

Take it from a guy that has taken the backseat in many relationships. I’m not blaming them, quite the contrary, I was to blame for all of them. Why? Because I wasn’t in the relationships for me, at first I was, but after a period of time I was in them for somebody else. It was either to please a family member or to prove to the other in the relationship that I could become what they needed me to be in order to make them happy. It’s a lose/lose situation because you can never make somebody else happy, that is their responsibility. Now, that doesn’t mean that you cannot add to another persons happiness, but you can not, and let me say this again… you can’t be responsible for somebody else’s happiness or unhappiness. It’s impossible. But I tried, and I failed many times. It was a pattern of mine to do everything in my power to make someone happy, to prove to them that I could do it. The pattern would last for about 3-5 years before I internally blew up. I would run away, I would start resenting them or I would go find somebody else, and the person I was with at the time would be left standing there dumbfounded not understanding what the hell was going on. They never knew because I would beat myself up inside, convincing myself that I could change for that person.

It wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles that all of this changed. I was forced to be alone. I forced myself for the most part. I recognized the patterns by learning more about myself. It took me being alone, with myself, to really look deep into who I really was and what I really wanted. Yes, I dated here and there, and sometimes I would fall back into the pattern, but this time it was different. I recognized the pattern. That was the key. Sometimes it would only take one date, sometimes a month, but I looked at what I wanted first. Was this person serving who I really wanted to be to the world? Were we both in alignment of what we both needed? How could I serve that person while also serving myself? Millions of questions would come up, and each time I would meditate on it to see if I was falling back into an old pattern or not.

Who are you seeing in the mirror? Who do you want to see in the mirror?

Start taking care of yourself and that reflection will change. Trust me.

Namaste,
David

What do you want?

Posted on

In my line of work I get to talk to a lot of people and one thing I’ve noticed is that they all have a common theme; they all know what they don’t want, but they struggle with what they do want. I’m not saying this is a bad thing because we all have to find our way through life via trial and error. Not one of us on this planet wakes up at birth saying, “This is what I want to be, and this is who I will be.”

This dialog is an ever changing one when we are young. We might decide we want to be an Astronaut, Nurse, Doctor, Race Car Driver… and the list grows as we age and as we try different things. We go to college to study medicine only to find out that spinning records is much more fulfilling. Some of us get stuck doing something we don’t love for many years because of family obligation, or social acceptance. Breaking that cycle and really doing what you want is difficult and complicated.

It’s easy to say what you don’t want. It’s easy because you’ve either tried it or someone you know has tried and failed. Nobody wants a bad marriage. Nobody wants to get stuck in a job they don’t like, or a career that just gets them by. To finally sit down and decide what you do want can be depressing because it might seem impossible from where you are sitting right now. You might feel that you don’t deserve it, or you don’t have enough money, you’re not attractive enough, you’re too fat, etc. This dialog will never change until you change. Your circumstances aren’t going to magically disappear overnight. And they most definitely aren’t going to change if you’re stuck in the dialog of what you don’t want.

So Dave… how am I going to change this?

You can start by sitting down and writing down what you want.

If you write down that you want more money…. how much? What would it feel like to have that amount? What would you do with it? If it’s a new car… what color is it? What does it feel like to sit behind the wheel? Where would you drive it? Or maybe you just want to be happy. What would make you happy? What would it feel like to smile? When you are writing these things down, paint a picture in as much detail as you can. You can even create a vision board. Take some old magazines, cut out pictures that you like and paste them on your vision board. Prop the vision board up in front of your bed so that is the first thing you see when you wake up and then the last thing you see before you fall asleep.

Surround yourself with people you aspire to be like. I have a quote that I keep close to me at all times… “Attract what you expect. Reflect what you desire. Become what you respect. Mirror what you admire.” Surrounding yourself with people that you have nothing in common with, or that are negative does you no good whatsoever. Why are you with these people? What value do they have in your life? Is being around them helping you and them grow? If not, gently and with love… walk away.

Don’t tell the world what you want. Just do it. And by God, don’t post it on facebook!

A for sure way to stop you in your tracks is to tell the world what you want. What you are doing is inviting people to tell you that you can’t and that it’s impossible, or they’ve tried it and failed. You will get every excuse in the book and it will eventually wear you down and you’ll end up quitting yourself. I’m not suggesting that you don’t share what you want, but keep it to a small group of people that are inspiring you to do it. Start a meet up group of like minded people that will push you, and you in turn help them as well.

In summary, we live in a ‘Have – Do – Be’ world. If I have a great job, work hard, I will be happy. Unfortunately, we’ve been getting it all wrong. Turn that around to ‘Be-Do-Have’. If you are happy, and you are doing what you love you will have all that you desire…

So. Feel Good. Focus on right NOW. Focus on something, anything but the lack in your life.

Arthur the Stripper

Posted on

It seems like a million years ago now, but I remember how exciting the field that I fell into was when I first started.

Flashback to 1986 or so, I had just gotten out of what was to be my second enlistment in the Marines. I say ‘was to be’ because I never finished my second enlistment… hell, I had barely had a year in on my second tour. To keep it brief I had received a medical/honorable discharge after being hit by a car.

But this is not a story about my time in service, that I will tell you another time. This is a story about the career that chose me for close to 25 years. You might be thinking that I’m talking about music, or porn for that matter… not this time. This is talking about my career as a Graphic Designer, or whatever label you wish to call it now. It started out as Desktop Publisher which is just as foreign and confusing a name as ‘stripper’ is.

It started out as most careers start. I needed a job. I had dabbled in building houses for a short time until it got too cold (Cape Cod winters are pretty frigid). Then I worked as a line cook at a deli, Piccadilly Deli, to be exact. I was a Disc Jockey on a Classic Rock radio station (PIXY 103), and I was going to College. It’s amazing how much stamina we have in our youth. Sleep? Pffft. Over-rated.

By no means did I understand this statement when a college friend presented it to me…

“Hey Dave, we need help at Gnomon Copy.”

I looked at my friend with the most puzzling look and replied, “Copy? Do people make copies? Of what?”

That was the beginning. It was more out of curiosity than anything, but mostly it was because I needed cash. From copies, it went into paste-up, to computer design, labels, business cards… stuff like that. I won’t bore you with the details of my work life so I will narrow it down to just the highlights because I know in the back of your mind you are asking yourself…

“Who is Arthur the Stripper?”

One of my last jobs in Massachusetts was managing a copy shop on Main Street in Greenfield. As luck would have it I got fired (It wouldn’t be the last time either). Let’s just say that I have learned through all of my mistakes. Because Necessity is the Mother of Invention I decided to start my own design business. It was actually picking up traction when my partner decided that we were moving to Florida and because I wanted to honor my partners’ decision (we had only been married a month) and again that curiosity thing that I had mentioned above, had its grasp on me. We headed to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida where I was hired almost immediately at a print shop. I’m talking big Heidelberg 4-6 color printing presses. I was hired to help make the transition from paper to computer. For those of you that don’t know about the ‘olden days’, customers used to create their designs by pasting their pictures, text, etc. together on this blue-lined paper (the blue wouldn’t be picked up by the stat cameras when shot). You’re going to have to Google what that means. Ha!

My job, as I stated was to get the client to supply, on floppy discs, their documents, or I would sit with them to design their ads on the computer. Not an easy task. It’s like asking a baby to write out the formula for Newtons’ Law of Thermodynamics. Once I convinced these toddlers that I would make magic for them, they would eventually conform to this theory, which, as we see today… it worked. I would then print their design to film.

The old Linotronic 300, I believe that is what it was. When they first came out the film would stretch and the crop marks wouldn’t line up. You see we had to print out Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black or K as they called it (CMYK). I hope I’m not losing you here… I’m really trying to make a point of all of this nonsense.

Remember Arthur? The Stripper?

In the other room, we had these HUGE light tables with people hunched over them with little magnifying glass things called ‘loops’. Their job was to ‘strip’ the film together. They would do it by lining up the crop marks, shooting the film and then getting it ready for the big old printing presses.

Remember I said that the crop marks wouldn’t line up when I printed out the film from the computer? That is where Arthur steps in.

“You damned kids and your computers!”

It was on a daily basis that this old film stripper, Arthur, would come into the computer room yelling and screaming at me because the crop marks wouldn’t line up and he would have to spend extra time cutting the film apart to make it work. Arthur was ‘old school’. He was a stripper for the New York Times back in the ’50s and ’60s. Back when massive rooms were filled with these light tables and people hunched over them. A dead art now, long gone. Most of these people ended up embracing the computer world and leaving their loops behind.

I feel like Arthur now. I’m the ‘old school’ Graphic Designer and ‘those damned kids’ are now my competition. Most of my design friends are still plugging away, and some have faded away.

Arthur never embraced the computer world. He went into retirement and probably never looked at a computer nor a cellphone for that matter. As much as I feel like Arthur now I don’t have the option of retirement. Long gone are the long-lasting jobs. There is no more loyalty in the job market. We’ve turned our loyalty to the almighty dollar. Conform or die.

I don’t want to leave this on a sour note, I want to inspire. So, that being said, as you conform yourself throughout the years to come, ask yourself…

Is what you are doing serving humanity? Because if it is not, you are wasting your time. Maybe Arthur had it right after all.

 

Following your intuition

Posted on

I’ve written about this before in the past but as I learn more and more about our gut feelings, our intuition, I start to understand that following our thinking mind is the last thing we want to do.

Our thinking mind, our ego, is put in place to crunch numbers, to give us the tools for motor functions, such as limbs, speech, work tasks, etc. But what about the gut, and the heart? They have been doing research now that suggests that we have a second heart in our gut, per se, called the enteric nervous system. It is such a vast area equal to the heart and pretty much runs itself. So, when people tell you to follow your gut, it means a LOT more than you think.

I’ll leave you to look up the scientific information… I’m not here to convince you of that but I am here to tell you about my experience throughout the years.

A few weeks ago I was offered a gig back in California, it’s a one-off that might not amount to much more than doing the gig… well, at first I consulted a few of my intuitive friends to get their input that was very helpful but not essential because I had already made up my mind to go forward with it.

I am not who I was

Posted on

A big part of my spiritual growth is recognizing that I am not who I was, and recognizing that the inner child, that dark abandoned aspect of my developmental years, still thinks I am who I was.

There have been many things of my past that I am not proud of. Things that I’ve done which now I wouldn’t even venture to do, were, non-the-less… done. So where do we take ownership of these things and put them on a shelf, and where do we realize that some of those aspects are still in our newer versions of ourselves?

I believe the key to understanding these former aspects and the growth that we’ve accomplished have, in fact, made us who we are today. It’s recognizing that where we were at that time, we were using the tools that we knew how to use for our best version of ourselves… at that time. Hopefully we’ve grown from that. Some do, and some don’t. It’s not for us to decide. All we can do as spiritual ‘be’ings is to recognize that they are no different where they are then where you are. So… recognition of the change from who we are is in fact validation that we are no longer our former selves, and at the same time there may be shadow aspects of ourselves that we still cling onto for some false sense of security.

I left my small town of Granby, Massachusetts, when I was 17. That was 39 years ago. I am not who I was then. So many different variations of who I am have changed over the many years. I would like to think that I am a completely different person. And here lies the dichotomy…

The other day I allowed a picture of my ex to throw me over the edge. I went into a deep over analysis of betrayal, remorse, depressed feelings of something left unresolved. After the episode passed, and after talking to several close friends, I felt like an idiot. I felt like all of this work that I had been doing on myself had been a complete waste. Well, after my Chernobyl incident, I went back to square one and started doing the work again. I started meditating again, and writing songs. I actually wrote a song called ‘One Love’. It is a song about loving ourselves and knowing that whatever we go through, the ups and downs, they are all part of our growth. I should know this, but when I’m having a nuclear meltdown all of that knowledge gets cast aside and the inner child who was abandoned feels abandoned, yet again.

I started doing this inner child work while riding my motorcycle across Texas. Texas is HUGE with nothing much to see except oil derricks, big open plains, and pickup trucks… LOTS of pickup trucks. It was probably the best place to do this inner child work. As the miles of nothingness ticked away the deeper I went peeling away the layers of myself to get to the root of all of this stuff that had been plaguing me since the age of 7.

What I’ve learned might help you as well to recognize some of these patterns that we all have, these programs that run in the background that create these limiting beliefs of ourselves. The first thing to recognize when you have a Chernobyl event like I just had, is this…

  1. You will lose your mind. You will have a temporary amnesia while it is happening because the programming comes front and center and takes over. It’s a defense mechanism where the child needs to feel security. Nothing else matters except that security.
  2. Don’t beat yourself up for the meltdown.
  3. Recognize the meltdown as not going backwards, but yet another part of the onion that needs to be peeled away.
  4. And last but not least… give yourself credit for recognizing it as not who you are, but that inner child wanting attention. It’s now time for you to be the adult and let that inner child know that it will be ok. That you’ve got this.
  5. Ok… one more. Thank your friends for being there during the meltdown because at some point you’re going to be the shoulder that they will need, so put your hazmat suit in the closet for future use.

So, what was the lesson for me and hopefully for you as well?

When we lose someone that we have loved we need to look at why we fell in love with these people in the first place. When a breakup happens we tend to only look at the ugly aspects of it instead of the good. We have to remind ourselves why we fell in love in the first place. Whatever the reason may have been at the time, that doesn’t matter. We did it. So what did you learn? Did you learn that you can never love again or that now you can love even more, knowing now what you’ve learned about yourself?

I would like to believe the latter.

David Reed Watson

WRITTEN BY

David Reed Watson

Singer/Songwriter/Reiki Master/ Human ‘Be’ing

Write the first response

What do you expect?

Posted on

Along my journey I’ve learned a lot about giving and receiving. Many times along this vast journey there have been imbalances depending on the relationship or time in my life. I think that can be said for most of us, although I’d bet that a good majority will say that they’ve given WAY more than received. This might be true, but I’d venture to say that our Ego has those numbers a little skewed (I can hear ALL of my ex’s screaming right now, “That’s right asshole! I gave you everything!”).

I believe that a lot of giving and received comes down to expectations.

When we are in love this energy exchange is evident. You bring her flowers, she makes you coffee. You both sit on the porch swing chatting away, sipping your coffee, she leans on your shoulder and you feel the energy exchange between the both of you. It’s bliss.

You are both doing this without expectations. The love that you share, the mutual respect, the adoration, is flowing between you both. In the metaphysical world this is called ‘balance’, the Yin/Yang.

Let’s use this in an example…

He brings her flowers every day. They’ve been together for awhile now and one day he is just super busy at the office, he comes home without flowers. She is so accustomed to him bringing him flowers, but she doesn’t say anything, but instead of letting it go she doesn’t make him coffee… and so the descent begins.

Mind you, I made her out to be the spiteful one, but it works both ways.

He brings her flowers every day, but one day he forgets and feels bad about it, but doesn’t say anything. The next day comes and the guilt has set in, but he says nothing about it. Eventually he starts to feel guilty, and then he starts making up in his head that she doesn’t appreciate him anyway, “Why do I always bring her flowers? What does she do for me?” This mental chatter goes back and forth and he finally blows up at her. She, on the other hand feels like she has been hit by a Mack truck. Where the hell did that come from?! I know this from experience… I’ve been that guy.

So how do we stop this madness?

C.O.M.M.U.N.I.C.A.T.I.O.N.

Those 13 letters will save your life. Communication is the key. Seriously, it’s as simple as that. If you start feeling resentful, sit and talk to your partner. Allow them to discuss your feeling with them. Remember, your feelings are your feelings and if you feel a certain way it’s not dumb, or stupid, or selfish. They are your feelings, no matter how skewed they are. Make a time every day to sit with your partner and communicate your feelings. It’s your partner, not your buddy at a bar. This is the person that you’re supposed to confide in. Not dump on mind you… but to share your feelings.

If you aren’t in a partnership right now, that is ok. Now is a good time for you to see where in your past you might have built up resentment, where you might have created a mountain out of a molehill.

Look at it deeply. Do this now and clear it all up to prepare yourself for your next relationship. Dig deep into your soul and see what has stopped you from sharing in the past. What has stopped you from giving in the past… and most of all….

What has stopped you from receiving in the past?

Look back all the way to your childhood. Be meticulous. Look at different situations in your past where you’ve expected things. Be as non-judgmental as you can. Don’t go into beat-up mode for your past mistakes, use them as tools, to learn how NOT to do something.

And again… remember those 13 letters. COMMUNICATION. Without communication you can’t learn from tools that you’ve been using in the past, you have to acquire new tools. Be open to dialog with others, be transparent, give freely, receive freely, and never expect anything other than the lesson that you need to learn.

Peace!

P.S.
I’ve created a Patreon page and a Ko-Fi Page where you can go to donate and help me on my journey. This way I can continue giving coaching and Reiki for everyone for free.
If you would like coaching or Reiki just shoot me a DM or email me at iamarocksinger@gmail.com

http://www.patreon.com/davidreedwatson
http://www.ko-fi.com/davidreedwatson