Monthly Archives: September 2012

Random Thoughts, Thought of the day

we become true masters of our own destinies.

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002Emotions, our masters or our slaves? Emotional response is both conscious and subconscious, But the conscious mind has the ability to shut down any emotional response we consider inappropriate or unnecessary. Our conscious mind is the part of our mind that mainly interacts with the outside world and is the part of our mind that controls our actions and reactions to external stimuli . The subconscious rarely overrides the conscious unless it’s in a life or death kind of situation, even then the conscious mind can still keep control if it is well-trained and /or disciplined. We can allow our subconscious to control all our emotions and emotional reactions or we can learn to take control of them through the conscious mind. To be a slave to your emotions is to let them control your life, influence your decisions and by doing so you limit your potential as a human being.  We need our emotions, but we need to learn to be  in control of them. Once we learn to control our emotions we become true masters of our own destinies.

Just some Odd thoughts to think about.

Ray Barbier

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Random Thoughts, Thought of the day

A flame that consumes all the positivity within you

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009 Acceptance of who and what you are is the first step to improving your outlook on life. If you are at war with who and what you are constantly then you will never find happiness or peace in your life. The things that you dislike about yourself can be removed, tamed or changed into something positive or at least acceptable. Those negative thoughts about yourself and others is like a flame that consumes all the positivity within you. There is no reason to hold on to negativity nor is there a reason not to be more positive. Forgive those whom have hurt you, forgive yourself for the hurt you’ve caused both yourself and others. Learn not to repeat the mistakes of the past and avoid those people who cause you pain. Don’t hate them or hold a grudge just be smart enough to avoid them as much as possible. Find those who are supportive, kind and bring light into your life and avoid those who suck the happiness and positivity out of you.

You must learn to be a positive force in life, you can not allow the negativity of others to influence you and you can not allow the negativity within you to gain control. You are the one in charge and you can choose to be happy, positive and content with life or you can choose to be negative and unhappy. Be someone who you would love to be with, be someone who you would be proud of and learn to love yourself and others unconditionally.

You are the master of your emotions, thoughts and actions. No one can make the choice of how you feel, what you think or what action you take but yourself.

Ray Barbier

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Random Thoughts

Yes, I want it!

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Image came from the internet

In times when people fight and starve for a single work position, college diploma is one of their greatest weapons to stand out against the other.

Despite of the expensive cost, continuous pressures, taxing tasks, and years to finish college, teenager still choose to have a college education for it will open more opportunities for them in the future.

It takes four years or even five years to finish a college education, but the experiences and skills that you’ve learned can soon be a great firearm when entering the real world – into  the different industries and fields.

College education helps us to become well-equipped for our chosen profession.  It teaches us the hardest lessons in life whether in academics or not. It help us realized that there an ample challenges before heading to the real world.

It may come to the point of frustration when almost all things resulted in a negative way. For example, getting a solid 5 or 3 from a professor, erroneous projects and of course failed quizzes and tests. But all of these are part of college life, these are all normal.

Like the cliché goes, “Failure is success if we learn from it.” Failures help us to keep on get going. It helps us develop our character and prepares us for our future career.

In just mere four or five years, all these hardship will be worth it. As soon as you apply to get a job position, the first thing they’ll check is your college education. It will increase your chance to get the position for the management will always prefer a college graduate than the other.

However, no matter how impressive your resume is, it will still boil down on how you showcased your abiliity, talent, character and of course, your hard work and dedication to your chosen career.

So as you faced the demanding life of a college student, you must not forget that there are more serious and tougher challenges outside the campus. It is just a mere preparation.

friends, Personal, Random Thoughts, Thought of the day

what I don’t like about myself I try to change and what I like about myself I try to improve.

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004Sometimes I let what other people think of me bother me more than it should. If someone likes me or not is something I can not control and knowing that makes me see that they are going to think what they may no matter what I do or say. So do I really care if others lie me or not, well I would be lying if I said no, but it isn’t as important to me as it used to be for sure. All I can do is to try to be someone who I would like and try to be someone I could be proud of being. IF I am neither of those then I have a problem, I may not always love myself but what I don’t like about myself I try to change and what I like about myself I try to improve as well. It is an ever going challenge to improve oneself and to grow emotionally and spiritually.

Be who you are and make who you are someone you could respect and love.

Ray Barbier

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Random Thoughts, Thought of the day

We do not always see the opportunities that surround us

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IMG_1077The power of thought be it positive or negative  can affect the body as well as the mind. If you go around with a negative attitude it attracts more of the same. There is no guarantee if you are a positive person that you wont have to deal with some negativity, but you will not face as much as someone with a negative attitude. With so many books out there claiming they have secrets that will lead  you to better life and all that your heart desires, the only one getting what they want most of the time with those books is the author and the publisher. Not saying the don’t have some kind of truth to what they are saying, usually its all common sense or plain positive thinking along with visualization. Now I am not saying don’t buy those books or that they don’t work, I am just saying a lot of what they teach is out there for free if you look hard enough.

One easy way to be happy and have all you desire is to be more realistic in what you desire and expect of yourself and others. Though most of us would not be happy with that scenario so that leaves us wanting for a shortcut or easy way to reach our goals and find happiness in life. Reality is, there is no real shortcuts out there unless you have some rich uncle or you are a con artists or something along those lines. Hard work is always needed to achieve your goals, saving and investing wisely also helps. The one thing I have learned it is hard to get rich owning your own business bit its next to impossible to get rich working for someone else.

But is it really money, possessions and or social status we are needing or wanting? Will they really bring that happiness we think they will or will they just temporarily give us a happy high and then we find ourselves back where we started or worse? Financial stability always helps but to be rich is only having way more than we need. Sure I would love to have enough right now to retire and live like I do for the rest of my life. I am happy being a lower middle-class person and I don’t see any real need for me to be a millionaire. Give me a roof over my head a good vehicle, bills paid and 3 square meals a day with maybe a bit left over in the bank and I am one happy man. But that is me and I know there are those that want the moon and everything else they can get in their lifetime.

So does visualization and positive thinking work? Yes, but to the magnitude that some claim, probably not as often as we all would like. Sure you can attract things through positivity and visualization,  you can also get a lot of things through faith and prayer as well. Sometimes it is just the matter of opening your eyes to the opportunities around you. For most of us we do not always see the opportunities that surround us nor the gifts God has laid by our feet because we are too focused on the stress and worry of life to see them.

Positive thinking, visualization, faith and prayer all can bring you some happiness and even some wealth. but if you forget where your blessings and help comes  from (GOD) they can always be taken away just as fast.

Ray Barbier

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Random Thoughts, Religious, Thought of the day

Just as Jesus taught us to do, He will do for us the same.

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English: Jesus Christ - detail from Deesis mos...

When we learn to put aside all our worries and stress we find that happiness is such an easy thing to obtain. As my mom always told me, let go and let God, thus let God handle all the stressful situations and let him be the source of your strength. Jesus taught if we see a neighbor or even a stranger carrying a heavy load that we should help that person carry the load. If they ask you to carry it a part of the way, you should carry it all the way. The compassion, fellowship and kindness in your heart should always inspire you to help others. Just as Jesus taught us to do, He will do for us the same. Jesus will help carry your load when you need it and he will counsel you when you are unable to discern which way to go.

We should practice compassion, understanding and kindness every day, for if we do not show any compassion, kindness or try to be understanding towards others how should we expect the same from God? The same goes for forgiveness, God through Jesus has forgiven us all and we should forgive others through Christ as well. If a person sins against you just remember you are a sinner as well, forgive him and pray for both his forgiveness as well as your own. Love the sinner and hate only the sin, we all have sin in us and none of us are worthy to enter the kingdom of God without Jesus. We also need to learn to forgive ourselves as well, we can not carry the weight of our sins and be forgiven at the same time. Christ died on the cross and was resurrected to wash or cover our multitude of sins. So you pray to be forgiven and truly repent then forgive yourself and forget your sin.

 All our strength, help and forgiveness comes from God through his Son Jesus Christ. We must remember this and thank God for that he has given, will give and even that which he has taken away.

Ray Barbier

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Personal, Random Thoughts, Thought of the day

Just some Thoughts on a Friday night 9-21-12

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026Smile, be at peace with yourself, your family, your friends and even those who choose to be your enemies. For we all are human and are prone to be imperfect in thought, emotion and action. We all have problems and we all have our shortcomings as well. We should remember how hard life is for ourselves when we look at others and begin to judge. For the bible teaches how we judge others is how we too will be judged in the end time. So if you must judge do so with compassion, understanding and mercy. It is so easy to point a finger or cast blame on others especially when it keeps your own faults hidden.

Worry not about what others think about you, say about you or try to accuse you of. Just worry about your words, actions and how you treat others. For what is truth always is revealed and you will be remembered by how you treat others.

just some Thoughts on a Friday night

Ray Barbier

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Health, Music, Thought of the day

Music, stress and relaxation

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English: music therapy

Listening to music is a good way to relax and relieve stress, especially if you just kick back, close your eyes and let the music take you away. As my fellow author would call it.. Space out…  We tend to get too much in a hurry to do everything and to get everywhere. We act like we are running out of time, though in a way that is true for we only have a short time to live our lives in this world. But to live every second trying to do everything at the speed of light leaves us in the dark to what is going on around us and also keeps us in sensory overload. We need to breathe, stretch and just chill out at times. Our jobs make that next to impossible, but outside work we can learn to manage time to where we have time to relax. Music being a very good tool for relaxation is what I usually use to relieve stress and relax the body and mind.

There is some scientific research out there that suggest music can alter ones brain wave patterns. Brainwaves tend to sync with the music tempo you are listening to, if you listen to harder faster music you become more mentally alert and the slower tempo music causes most of us to relax and can even cause us to enter a meditative state. Music also has proven to lower blood pressure, help with anxiety and depression as well.

Music is vibrational medicine for the mind, body and spirit.

Ray Barbier

More info on this subject can be found at one of these links below.
Brainwave ‘Music‘ May Soothe a Troubled Psyche | Fox News
Music Therapy – How and Why Music Therapy Is Effective
Brain Wave Music Therapy | eHow.com
Sit back and relax to brain wave music – TODAY Health – …

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Green Issues, Random Thoughts, Thought of the day, Thought's on World Issues

Put our minds and hearts together

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English: Poverty Русский: Нищенство

Between Mass media and the world-wide web it seems we are becoming a global minded society. Nothing wrong with being global minded as long as we never forget we live in our own small community as well. If we keep our minds distracted with the news of overseas conflicts and international problems we tend to forget the problems we face in our home towns. We should start at home when it comes to helping the needy, impoverished and those who can not fend for themselves. Though I fully support helping the less fortunate on a global scale as well I believe our hometowns should be our first priority. There are hungry, homeless, handicapped and many who can not do for themselves in every town and city in our great nation. Food stamps, welfare are good as temporary solutions in helping those who are able to work and is the right idea for those who are truly physically or mentally incapable of working.

We need to focus on offering those able to work training to do jobs and also offer them state and/or federal jobs doing community service. At least they will be on the right track back to being independent and self efficient individual. Most of those who are on some kind of governmental assistance usually prefers to work for their living but find it hard to get a job which pays enough to support themselves or their family. So if we offered them training and/or a job with the government doing something constructive for their money they would gladly accept one if not both options.

In the Appalachian region a lot of coal miners are finding themselves unemployed due to the greener America movement and the lack of permits being issued for mining. The idea of greener technologies and alternative energies is a great idea, but if you get a greener America at the cost of the jobs of Americans then how will that be a better America? We need to bring in more industries and jobs into the region and retrain coal miners to do the new jobs before we start forcing coal mining to shut down.  It doesn’t only affect the coal miners and their families it affects the whole community and the communities surrounding it. Food stores, shopping malls, restaurants and many small business will get hit hard by the loss of coal mining jobs. They rely on the coal miners for their income and business.

This is just some of the issues happening here in our own back yard and for some their front yard as well. It is time for communities to start coming together as a community and start dealing with the problems here at home. Together we can overcome any challenge as long as we put our minds and hearts together . Turn off that television, radio, mp3 player and any  other time-consuming distraction device  and tune in to what is going on in your own town for a day. Take a little time to help out your neighbors and your fellow citizens and see how just a little help can go a long way.

Ray Barbier

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spacin’ out

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So.. my good friend Ray invited (or dared) me to blog a bit….. I suppose I had better introduce myself…. My name is Simon, i’m 42 years old… I originally come from England but now live in Denmark, I own my own computer business and only work to pay my way…. ( I don’t subscribe to th corporate world and materialism, at least not anymore…) I’ve had my share of hard times and have been through the school of hard knocks like Ray and alot of other people….
So what do I wan’t to blog about… well so many topics come to mind, but one keeps coming back….. lets call it “the power of spacing out”…. so here we go….
Having been just another “worker bee” for many years I decided to start my own business 4 years ago (right in the middle of the economic collapse)…. When I used to work for “the man” I was not at all happy… don’t get me wrong.. I had plenty of money and used more than I had… but my happiness was out the window… my wife used to complain about me being a “grumpy old git”….
I started my business 4 years ago.. and my salary was cut in half…. but… I was the boss… I could decide if I wanted to do anything or not…. for the first time in 10 years I felt ALIVE !…. I have done so many things around the house that were left for dead…. I will never regret starting my own business… it turned me into a completely different person…. All of a sudden i learnt the value of money because i didn’t have any….
where’s the “spacing out” bit i hear you say…. well I’m on my way…. actually I “re-learned” spacing out and doing nothing after i quit the rat race… You really need to feel the power of sitting down, staring into a flame or into space without and kind of interruption and thinking about everything and nothing… it’s pure catharsis for the soul…..
loadsa people ask me why I take so long doing stuff… (like repointing my house)… well now… I tend to repoint around 3 sq feet and the sit down space out and enjoy looking at what I have achieved…. why I hear you say… well I’ll tell you why… I don’t get tired of repointing the house day after day after day… because I space out…
If you haven’t learned to space out… you should try it…

L8R PPL