It’s the thought that counts

Posted on by Roger Jarman

I’ve come to a point in my life where often-times things are humming along smoothly in just about all aspects of my life. We all wear many hats, as parents, spouses, kids, siblings, bosses, employees, co-workers, customers, vendors, friends… humans…

In each of these aspects there are a range of things which happen, a range of life which transpires and completes the “picture” of our life as we perceive it. These aspects include our mental and physical health, financial health, self-care and ability to relate and create in the world around us.

For some people this matrix of life is a myriad of issues and problems stacked upon each other. For others these pieces of the puzzle come together naturally. I’ve worked for several years to align these aspects of my life. Some have been good for as long as I can remember, others I’ve had to (and continue to) work diligently every day to create a flow.

One thing I have learned, is when something is out of alignment it sticks out like a sore thumb. An easy way to bring it into place is to intentionally focus on a given item. Recently my family has gone to a single income as we take a step back to move a few steps forward.

Removing a full-time income as summer comes up and summer camp kicks in, while we’re experiencing record high gas prices and inflation, is a scary endeavor. There are a lot of reasons I can find why we should do this now, why it’s safer to hold off until the world stabilizes.

The truth is, the world is always changing, and will always be influx. What we believe, will be reality. Initially I wanted to find all the reasons why we need a second income (if you’ve ever paid for summer camp for kids, it’s like having a second mortgage!).

Instead of staying in this fear based thinking, I changed my thought on the concept. I removed the emotion from the process and went through the bills, the budget and realized there are a lot of things I can easily adjust and make this work. As a family we can adapt to a fiscally tighter space for a time, and honestly really not notice what we’re “missing”.

This is but one simplified example and the over-arching concept is powerful. Whenever and where-ever you experience lack and/or fear in life, it is an opportunity to re-evaluate the situation and change the narrative you are telling yourself.

Write down the area(s) you are struggling with and ask yourself why this is a struggle. Think about how you can change the story in your mind, what would a better outcome look like? If you need more money, what are you willing to sacrifice to achieve it? If you need more love, how much love are you willing to give?

When we change our thoughts, we change our actions. When we change our actions we change our habits. Be the change you wish to see, act it out everyday. It all starts with what you are thinking in this moment. Like it or not, the state of our lives is a direct reflection on the state of our thoughts.

Be the awesome in your own story!

Love is always in the air…

Posted on by Roger Jarman

In the fourth installment and fourth tool you can use to upgrade your thoughts, I offer the most powerful one yet.

Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s what I choose to focus on, but have you noticed how the “love” word is thrown around these days like unnecessary loose change? It’s easy to “love” things these days, from the hearts we tap on social media to telling your kids you love them, and everything in between.

“Love” can certainly be cliche’ these days, an overused term which has lost much of it’s true meaning to many people. The Love I speak about isn’t a heart on social media or a quick “love you!, smooches!!” to your gym acquaintance.

The Love I speak about creates a warming, calming, powerful feeling in the center of your chest. It’s a feeling I can conjure on demand at this stage in my life, when I center myself and focus on my connection to God, Source, universal entanglement.

The Love I speak of is a deeply spiritual energy which permeates my being and releases itself to my surroundings as quickly as I absorb it in. Creating this feeling takes time, practice, patience and more patience with practice…. Learning to truly be grateful for gifts currently in your life, and FEELING the blessing of these gifts.

If you’ve felt it, you know what I’m talking about, even if it was only once for a fleeting moment. If you’ve never felt this, you may well think I’m nuts, or making it up. I spent most of my adult life not feeling this, and only in the most powerful moments of life did I experience a sensation close to it.

The feeling I had when I was first married, when each of my daughters was held in my arms for the first time, in those rare instances when I catch the eye of my wife in just the right light, with the right energy. I spent most of my life voided of this feeling of Love and only in those rare instances did I feel this “strange” emotion I briefly described earlier.

Yet, Love and it’s power is within you and available to be unleashed should you choose. This may be the most powerful tool at our disposal. Once we learn to Love, and sit in the feeling of Love can we begin to fully engage in being in the moment, living in the now.

Taken a step further, learning to Love during every part of our day is where the rubber meets the road. From getting up in the morning, to doing laundry, creating reports at the office, sitting in traffic on the way to the office. Love is found when taking out the garbage, washing the car and even during an argument with you spouse, child or co-worker.

My youngest daughter has the assignment of vacuuming the house. The other day I asked her to vacuum and she griped she had just vacuumed two days ago!! Why does she have to do it again? It’s such a chore! I smiled at her and asked if she preferred to live in a place which didn’t have a floor which needed vacuuming.

Perhaps dirt floor hovel would be easier to care for. Perhaps we wouldn’t need to do the laundry if we had no clothes. If we didn’t have food to eat, we wouldn’t ever have to worry about cleaning the kitchen or emptying the dishwasher!

“Fine. Now your just guilt-tripping me!” declared my nine year old daughter as she went to grab the high powered, cordless vacuum. If only she had to use a vacuum with a cord… the horror!

The bottom line is this. Love is in our life, right now in this moment. I don’t care what’s happening this moment, how down you feel or how the world has been cruel. Love is in your life, in this very moment. Choosing to focus on the blessings, the daily miracles we experience yet often never realize.

I challenge you to find love in everything you do for a week straight. If you can’t find something to love about it, perhaps that aspect of your life should be changed or removed.

Finding the good all around us.

Posted on by Roger Jarman

As the old saying goes, life is often stranger than fiction. Most of us can relate to this through our experience, and these last few years have hammered this principle home!

There is a silver lining in all of it, where we experience bad, there is also good.

I firmly believe everything comes with a lesson, and if we can find it within us to learn the lesson, nothing is wasted. I will be the first to tell you, there are times where you simply won’t see or understand what good (or lesson) can possibly come from a situation.

I can also tell you in my experience, sometimes learning to deal with the pain of an event is the lesson. When we can resolve ourselves to stand in the harshest of times, we will be prepared for the next evolution in our life.

If you think of love and fear for a moment, I’ll provide an example of finding the good, the lesson in everything. Love and fear are two opposites of the same emotion. In fact, ALL of our emotions, the entire spectrum of what we feel stems from either love, or fear.

Pictures this, If this emotional spectrum was a line, a dot on the left side is fear, a line connects to another dot on the right which is love. Exactly where does love end and fear begin? At the halfway point you say? Now measure it, what emotion specifically is the zero point between the two?

On paper you can pinpoint a dot. In reality there isn’t a single emotion which separates the two, just a grey area which bleeds into each other. We all have a different opinion on this, a different emotional spectrum by which we judge it.

It’s the same thing with cold and hot, large and small, fresh and stale. All open for interpretation as to where cold becomes hot, large to small, fresh to stale.

Both sides of the spectrum must be present and accounted for in order for it to BE.

Now apply this concept back to life. If a thing happens and we perceive it to be bad, then by nature there has to be an opposite effect. We can’t have love without fear, or hot without cold. What I perceive to be bad is a blessing to another.

Using this simple tool in my everyday life I can shift my perspective on anything which happens around me. I can take the “bad” thing and try to understand the opposite of it, which is equally real.

When I can see the opposite, I can often learn the lesson and grow from the experience. When this happens, it’s no longer a “bad” thing but a blessing and needed event to teach me a lesson about something.

When I learn, I appreciate and stay in a focused and grateful state of mind. There is always good in the world, no matter how dark it may seem. While we don’t always have the ability to see the good in the moment, knowing it is there helps to light the way.

This is an important step in growing mentally and spiritually. The more we can practice this the more we see how this world works FOR us, instead of against us. No hustle and grind required.

Welcome!

Posted on by Roger Jarman

Welcome, to the fearless, passionate and powerful blog! Life can be confusing and complicated, and often times the easiest of solutions is buried under a mountain of marketing campaigns focused removing money from your pocket.

At Fearless. Passionate. Powerful we simplify the game and focus on an ethos by which to make quick and easy (not to say painless) choices in life. We offer a direct, no non-sense approach to optimizing your body, mind and spirit and the focus of this blog and podcast will be to dissect these areas of our life, and those who share the platform with us.

I choose to live fearlessly in my faith, passionate in my pursuits, powerful in my results and impact on this world. If this resonates with you, follow us and don’t forget to share! If there are areas of your life you’d like help with to live more fearlessly, passionately and powerfully, drop us a line and let’s talk about specifically your goals are.

In the coming weeks we will start putting out content, we’re glad you’re here! Stay tuned for more and feel free to reach out at any time with your comments! Cheers!