Heck it’s a Friday and I’ll take a day off from Philosophy.

You Are a Dreaming Soul

Your vivid emotions and imagination takes you away from this worldSo much so that you tend to live in your head most of the time You have great dreams and ambitions that could be the envy of all… But for you, following through with your dreams is a bit difficultYou are charming, endearing, and people tend to love you. Forgiving and tolerant, you see the world through rose colored glasses. Underneath it all, you have a ton of passion that you hide from others. Always hopeful, you tend to expect positive outcomes in your life. Souls you are most compatible with: Newborn Soul, Prophet Soul, and Traveler Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

We’ve probably all seen the Get a Mac ads at the cinema or on TV, well Novell have put together a couple of spoof ads for Linux. I think the second one is better, check them out!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtp5gNhBZgo]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVOnFdMf0RU]

Well, I’ve been hitting the gym again. Not the main gym, if I wanted to pay to see a creature running on the spot, I’d buy a Hamster. I’ve gone back to my old haunt, the Body Pump class.

Interesting, especially in light of my last post. It’s interesting the way the feeling that we should somehow be competing with others kicks in so readily. My focus in the workout was on my form, and my intended focus is on my own personal best, but I found myself comparing how I was doing next to everyone else. Later in the workout, I tried to simply accept what others were doing and make my focus my own form and the feelings in my own muscles.

I found that this freed me to enjoy the workout more, amazing how the competitive impulse simply got in the way of enjoying my workout. Compete less, live more. You know, that could be a good slogan!

Your Personality is Very Rare (INTP)

Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant.Only about 4% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

I’m going to try something that I did with the competitiveness posts, have one post continue from the previous one(s).  I like this as it lets me take my time and think more on a subject.

I was thinking more about the way we hold onto old emotions, not just anger.  We seem to spend a lot of our time, emotionally, living in the past.  If we’ve been wronged in the past, we hold onto it, and bring it into the present.  Coming back to anger, if someone had hurled insults and made us feel bad, then by bringing this emotion into the present we allow them to continue hurting us and that stunts our future growth.

But the principle of Karma says that past actions shape our present and present actions shape our future, surely the same is true of emotions and feelings?  An important thought in my view, is to remember that our emotions are powerful but temporary, we can free ourselves.  For me, the big realisation is that it’s not so true to say we’re in the grip of our emotions, but they are in our grip.  In that light, releasing negative emotions needn’t be huge battle, you don’t need to fight, simply realise that you only need to let them go. 

I was doing my meditation practice yesterday, when a wave of anger swept through me.  I was remembering an incident from my college days when I had anger directed at me for no real reason.  I tried to practise loving kindness for a little while and the feeling left me.

It occurs to me that we clutch our anger to us,  even to the smallest insult, do we think it somehow validates us?  It’s important to realise that though someone may have hurled angry emotions at us in the past, indeed they will probably do so in the future, holding onto those things is harmful.  In order to progress we need to let these things go, I’m finding meditation to be a fantastic tool for that.

Your Element Is Water

A bit of a contradiction, you can seem both lighthearted and serious.That’s because you’re good at going with the flow - but you also are deep.Highly intuitive, you tune in to people’s emotions and moods easily. You are able to tap into deep emotional connections and connect with others. You prefer a smooth, harmonious life - but you can navigate your way around waves. You have a knack for getting people to get along and making life a little more peaceful.

What’s Your Element?

Moving on slightly from my last post, I’m going to refine things a little.  Competition has great effects, it is a positive thing but I feel that it can become negative when we get too caught up in it.  Our sense of perspective suffers and it becomes all about beating another person or team.  My view is that competition is about refining our own abilities and comparing them to others in order to see where our flaws are and learn more about whatever our craft is.

Suppose we overfocus on the beating others part?  Well, I don’t consider that to be very healthy as your focus is entirely on the adrenaline rush of winning, if your only desire is to beat everyone in sight then sooner or later you’re going to get a nasty shock as there’s always someone out there better than you.  The result?  Suffering.

If we don’t get too attached to the result of competition, we don’t suffer when we lose and we’re less likely to go to dangerous extremes to win.  With the bruised ego out of the way, we can better see our flaws and compensate for them and we’re less likely to hurt ourselves and others.

We need to realise one important truth, whatever the prize, whatever it is you’re competing for, it’s temporary.  The only truth is change, and in light of that are many of the goals that we set and especially those that are set for us quite so all important?