#UnBlockYourself

An Ichigo Ichie Through Words

Did you know physical touch can reduce stress and blood pressure? Your skin receptors send messages to the brain that regulates and suppresses hormones that cause those negative effects on the body. 
 
But today I want to get into a different type of touch. Touching through words. Although words are invisible, they are very strong, dangerous, creative, and even deadly if used the wrong way. 
 
Loving words can bring comfort.
Fighting words can cause violence. 
Intellectual words can bring wisdom. 
Encouraging words can build bravery. 
Ignoring words can make things go wrong. 
 
You see, physical touch leaves a short lived impression. It can become a memory paired with emotion, but most are forgotten within seconds.
Words touching a person leaves a longer lasting impression, if abused, they even leaves scars. 
 
Words have a ripple effect that can last generations, even centuries. Look at the words annotated in different religions.
 
Words can build and destroy:
3 out of 4 people sell themselves short. That’s astounding compared to all the potential power, influence, and impact a person has in them! But think, probably 3 out of 4 young people grow up surrounded by a negative views of the world. Coming up I remember always hearing how the system against us, people are stupid, and how everyone is looking out for themselves, so it’s every man for himself. Kill or be killed. When you become older, how do present yourself in the adult world? The same exact way.  And the cycle continues.
 
Find words that you can encourage yourself with and others. 
Watch how life changes when we feed our minds positive words to think on.
Remember the six magic words: We become what we think about. 

An Ichigo Ichie Through Sight and Awareness

Sight is the most highly developed sense that humans have. But we tend to spend more time watching life on screens, than experiencing it first hand. - Ichigo Ichie 
 
Looking and seeing is as different as hearing and listening. 
Looking is elevated to sight when you add intention, and awareness.
This is where the filters attitude, vision, courage, and persistence come in.
When we apply the filters to the things we are looking at, we feed our minds images to process into things we probably will be thinking about.
 
And the six magic words are… 
We become what we think about.
 
The biggest component to sight is awareness. This is takes focus. Most things we happen to see are looked at, but overlooked. True gems “hidden in plain sight”.
 
Awareness is in sight is essential. It gives value to a subject, and sense it is valued, it is handled more carefully than things we hardly care for. This is why two people can see the same thing and one think it is the greatest thing in the world, or a solution to a problem, and the other sees it as useless. I think of a usb cord. One comes with everything, we’ve had hundreds over the past few years, but a charger cord is like gold in my house, we never have one when we need it. In some other households, people say, “I have way too many of these”, and throw them away.
 
Sight is intentionally being aware of things, in other words, paying attention.
 
An encounter using sight enhances and gives value to what is being seen in the Ichigo Ichie moment.

An Ichigo Ichie Through the Art of Listening

The first thing that popped up on google said this: Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process. Listening is key to all effective communication. Without the ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood. ... Effective listening is a skill that underpins all positive human relationships. - Skillsyouneed.com
 
“The way to improve your listening skills is to practice "active listening." This is where you make a conscious effort to hear not only the words that another person is saying but, more importantly, the complete message being communicated.
In order to do this you must pay attention to the other person very carefully.” - Mindtools.com
 
Applying the filters:
Filters are reflective devices that reflect the thoughts and feelings on the subject being communicated to you. What being said, and what we hear through these filters can be very different. I’ll tell my coach things I’ve heard and she would always say, “I said that? That’s good!”
Hearing things with a good attitude, according to our purpose in life, courage to try to understand the unknown, and the fight to understand the “complete” message, will bring about a deeper connection to the messenger and the message.
 
I’ve talked about this before in podcast episode 258, but today I want you to understand that we listen with our subconscious too. This is where things get real. Literally. The things that we hear and process, will start to shape our reality. We become what we think about. 
 
The mind does not turn off, and what we allow into the mind through the 5 senses are the very things we feed it. Intentionally or unintentionally.

Ichigo Ichie through the Five Senses and Filters

From wikipedia, “ichi-go ichi-e (Japanese: 一期一会, pronounced [it͡ɕi.ɡo it͡ɕi.e], lit. "one time, one meeting") is a Japanese four-character idiom (yojijukugo) that describes a cultural concept of treasuring the unrepeatable nature of a moment. The term has been translated as "for this time only", and "once in a lifetime". The term reminds people to cherish any gathering that they may take part in, citing the fact that any moment in life cannot be repeated; even when the same group of people get together in the same place again, a particular gathering will never be replicated, and thus each moment is always a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” Trying to translate it, you will get that ichigo” means “one life or time” and “ichie” means “a one-time encounter or meeting.” 
 
A few episodes back I talked about re-educating ourselves through the five senses. I would like to apply that this week through the concept of Ichigo Ichie, and the filters of success.
 
Listening. Seeing. Touching. Tasting. Smelling.
 
The five senses can cause you to recall good and/or bad memories, life experiences that probably taught us a thing or two, and shaped the way we see things according to those experiences. But, as we gain new experiences, to make them really personal and effective in our lives, there are a few filters that we need to apply.
 
Attitude = This filter is how we approach things directly influences how well we will get something out of the experience.
 
Vision = This filter will compare what’s being experienced to what your purpose is. It will try to make it useable to your overall vision for your life.
 
Courage = This filter is the strength from within to face new experiences, and to learn from them. It is difficult to face the unknown sometimes, due to the lack of security of what we know.
 
Persistence = This filter is simply the determination to make what is being experienced something of meaning. It’s a driving quest to make the experience an Ichigo Ichie.

Review your flow of information

"No one is really self made, but the really successful apply themselves to be self taught...  In an age of this much free information, your ignorance is a choice.” Rachel Hollis 
 
Information is "Potential Power".
If applied, information can turn into knowledge.
Applied knowledge leads to: (4 P’s and a F)
Poise - state of being balanced
Position - in a place open to opportunities 
Power - influence 
Peace - peace of mind
Freedom - options to choose what you want
 
Annie besant 
Knowledge is essential to conquest, only according to our ignorance are we helpless. 
Thought creates character, and Character can dominate conditions, and the will creates circumstances and environment. 
 
DO NOT TAKE THIS NEGATIVELY!
If you are failing and knowledge, there is a wealth of treasure in information on the subject that you need. If you lack knowledge in an area, either you are conceited, ignorant, or both.
 
Conceited because you deny the work and research on the subject that has been written down for you, Ignorant because you didn’t know that it was there, current (but that can be fixed, right?), Or both because you choose to be ignorant.
 
A man kept getting passed over for a higher position because he didn’t have a college degree. He complained to his friend, “I’d give anything to be able to go back in time and go to college”, his friend said, “well, why don’t you go?” The man went on to say, “I’m 35, I have a wife and kids, it would take me 10 years to go to college at night and graduate.” 
 
The friend asked, “well, how old would you be 10 years from if you went?”, the man said, “45!”
And then the friend asked, “how old would you be in ten years if you didn’t go at all?”, “well, 45 I guess…”
 
Time moves forward if you want to be knowledgeable in your strengths or not. 
Why choose not to have power?

Review your Creativity

Creative - relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work. 
 
My take will be a little different, but first let me tell you about today. Today was silent. No direct insight from God. It was a return to the understanding behind ichigo ichie. 2 things kept coming up over and over during my walk. Listen, and be creative. Listen, and be creative… 
 
So I did. This time, I listened to what I was thinking. I thought about creativity, and my definition is that creativity comes when your intentions and willingness to listen starts to solve a problem. Your approach to anything really. With your intentions and imagination you create solutions from the simplest to the most complex situations in your life, and at that moment, you are a creative being. Making full use of the mind given to you. 
 
Remember that you become what you think about, so be creative and create who, what, where, when, and why, whatever you want to be!

Review Your Character

Character is what is on the inside, displayed or coming out for the people to see.
Back up what you say with action
What we say to someone may be good, what we say and do for someone makes it even better. 
Our testimony is the same way, our confession of faith is good, but our walk with God proves His existence. 
 
John Maxwell says, “we teach what we know, but we reproduce what we have.” So many people try to give away something that is not in them and they burn out quickly.

Review Your Best

Earnest Hemingway said, “Write your best, and finish what you start.”
I want us to apply this to what we do, so:
Do the best you can, and finish what you start 
Living and doing our best comes from what we are working towards.
What are you working towards?
 
Successful people are successful not because of an accomplishment, but because they were or are working towards something meaningful to them. 
This means success can only be defined by the individual person. If I want my podcast to hit 50,000 downloads this year, and I’m working towards that, it may not mean anything to someone who is not interested in me nor personal growth. They couldn’t care less. But that cannot define me. 
Understand this too, that success is a process. It comes from doing our best working toward something, it is celebrated if accomplished, but it is happening and in the works when we are in the middle of going for it.
 
I feel successful when I’m working towards the goal, so producing a video almost daily to add to the podcast increases the chances of reaching more people with my thoughts. So the working toward making the videos and talking is the small “Kaizen” accomplishments that I can look back and say that, “I’ve made enough videos, or podcast episodes to watch daily for an entire year!”, instead of that one video to go viral. 
 
Living your best life now is your ikigai, and every moment you reflect on you will see that the entire time has been a success. 
 
Be proud of that!