Blog - Monty Winters

Your Story Isn’t Over Yet – You Matter

April 4, 2014 By montywinters Leave a Comment

Your Story Isn’t Over Yet

Stop focusing on all the things you don’t know how to do and start cultivating the things you do know how to do. You have something beautiful to place in this world. Don’t keep it buried inside your soul because you are afraid it’s not good enough.

Stop caring about what is good enough and just do your thing. This life my love is your only one. I say that so often because I want you to understand how fragile your story is. How in a blink of an eye it ends.

While you have this time I want you to fill up your book of life with pages of creation, laughter, joy, and love. I don’t want to watch the pages pass by. Each one blank because you were too afraid to mess up the words. Too afraid to share something. Too afraid of who would see and what they would think.

You have something inside of you that this world needs. Someone on this earth needs your words, messy or not and your story to continue their own. Your story matters. The life you live makes a difference. What is important to you could shine a light so bright it could heal someone’s soul. Isn’t that reason enough to try?

I know you are scared. And I know the fears have become walls so high and thick they seem unbreakable. They are not. Don’t let them deceive you into thinking you are a meaningless nobody. Tear those walls down. Let your faith and belief rip every brick out of your way. You were born a treasure and you will die a treasure. Fear doesn’t change that. Doubt doesn’t change that. Scars don’t change that.

Don’t look at the big picture. Don’t focus on how far you think you have to go. Don’t think so much just do it.

Just pick up that pen and write something. Write anything.

Grab your camera and take those photos. Let the world see what you see.

Take that class you’ve been wanting to and learn something you want to learn.

Draw. I mean it just draw. Don’t think of what it should be. Let your hands and the paper guide you.

Do something. Create something. Share it with me and the world.

I believe in you. I believe in your story.

And I believe your story will help someone tear down their own walls and let the light in.

Your story isn’t over yet.

I promise.

~ m

Listen: Do You Really?

February 18, 2014 By montywinters Leave a Comment

Just Listen

They don’t directly listen to you.
They just hear things within their minds that are triggered by your words.

~ Toba Beta

Have ever really examined how you Listen?

It doesn’t matter to what..

Whether to a bird, to the wind in the leaves, to the rushing waters..

Or listening to the dialogue with yourself..

Or to your conversation in various relationships with your intimate friends, your wife or husband.

If we try to listen, we find it extraordinarily difficult..

Because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses..

And when they dominate..

We are hardly listening at all to what is being said.

In that state.. there is absolutely no value at all.

One Listens and therefore Learns..

Only in a state of attention..

A state of silence..

In which this whole background is in abeyance.

Then, it seems to me..

It is possible to really Communicate.

Behind the words is where the heart lies. That’s where you get to connect to another human being on a whole different level.

For me, that is how my well gets filled..

By really seeing people and learning about them. The way to really see and learn about people is by learning how to listen, and seeing and learning about people is a key to finding real meaning behind this life.

~ m

Check Out Julian Treasure on “5 Ways to Listen Better”

Feelings: They Are Never Wrong

February 4, 2014 By montywinters Leave a Comment

There are no wrong feelings.

There may be wrong actions in the sense of actions contrary to the rules of human communication. But the way you feel towards other people: loving, hating, et cetera, et cetera; there aren’t any wrong feelings.

And so, to try and force one’s feelings to be other than what they are is absurd. And furthermore: dishonest.

But you see: the idea that there are no wrong feelings is an immensely threatening one to people who are afraid to feel.

This is one of the peculiar problems of our culture: we are terrified of our feelings. We think that if we give them any scope and if we don’t immediately beat them down, they will lead us down into all kinds of chaotic and destructive actions.

But if, for a change, we would allow our feelings and look upon their comings and goings as something as beautiful and necessary as changes in the weather, the going of night and day and the four seasons, we would be at peace with ourselves.

What is so problematic for Western man is not so much his struggles with other people and their needs and problems as his struggle with his own feelings. With what he will allow himself to feel and what he won’t allow himself to feel. He is ashamed to feel really profoundly sad, so much so that he could cry. It is not manly to cry.

He is afraid to loathe somebody, because you’re not supposed to hate people. He is ashamed to be so overcome with the beauty of something, that he goes out of his mind over this beauty. Because all that kind of thing is ‘not being in control, old boy‘; not having your hand on the wheel.

I think this is the most releasing thing that anybody can possible understand. That you’re inner feeling is never wrong. What you feel is never wrong – it may not be a right guide as to what you should do, but it is right that you should have the feeling of hating, or of being sad, or of being terrified. When a person comes to himself he comes to be one with his own feeling, and that is the only way to be in a position of controlling it.

~ Alan Watts

Being Human

“Feelings are never wrong” is really pretty simple. We can lie in our heads, we can label ourselves in certain ways, and we can misunderstand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. But not so with our feelings. Like guileless children, feelings are innocent and reliable indicators of what’s going on with us, and it’s important to pay attention to them, because they always, always, always have something to tell us.

We might not like our feelings. Or we might not want to deal with them. We might have learned early in life that our feelings are to be “toughed out”, suppressed, or ignored. Maybe we’re afraid of succumbing to them because we were shamed for our big feelings as children and don’t want to relive that as adults.

Why do our big reactions have so much to teach us? Because they’re almost always an indication of unfinished business from our past. Usually, they’re rooted in fear, and they’re very old, and they have probably been causing problems, or really, different versions of the same problem, for our whole life. Getting to the bottom of them is the only way to heal, and healing from our old wounds is so very necessary to living a fully engaged life.

So the next time you find yourself having a big reaction that doesn’t fit a situation, try to step away from it and assess what’s going on. You may need to own the reaction and apologize, but after taking care of this, go inward and try to find the source. Here are some things to consider:

What was the exact feeling? (Fear, grief, or anger)
What did this incident remind me of?
When did I feel this way earlier in my life?
What was I able to do about it then?
What can I do about it now?

You may be able to come up with a specific incident or two that are often indicative of a pattern that occurred in your childhood; probably a painful one that you would rather not remember (which is why you repressed it in the first place). Being able to identify this incident and own how painful it was is the key to working through it. Feel it, to heal it.

Feelings are never wrong.

If we start with this simple premise, we can come to understand our feelings, and thus ourselves, at a deeper level; we can learn to separate our feelings from our reactions; and, we can learn to control our reactions no matter how big the feelings that underlie them.

~ M.

The Dance

January 1, 2014 By montywinters Leave a Comment

A beautiful poem to celebrate 2014, from a favorite writer of mine:

I have sent you my invitation
the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living.
Don’t jump up and shout, “Yes, this is what I want! Let’s do it!”
Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires,
spiralling down into the ache within the ache.
And I will show you how I reach inward and open outward
to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, everyday.

Don’t tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart.
Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt
and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are,
And see who I am in the stories I am living.
And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day.
Show me you can risk being completely at peace,
truly OK with the way things are right now in this moment,
and again in the next and the next and the next. . .

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring.
Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall,
the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will.
What carries you to the other side of that wall,
to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side
by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart.
And I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business
without letting business determine who you are.
When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul’s desires have too high a price,
let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world
the stories and the songs you want our children’s children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle
not to change the world, but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude,
knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging.
Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words,
holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest
intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don’t say, “Yes!”

Just take my hand and dance with me.

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer, “The Dance”

You Just Never Know

November 9, 2013 By montywinters Leave a Comment

You just never know if:

Someone has just been diagnosed and is thinking about all they have to lose.
Their lover just texted them to say, “It’s over”.
He wakes up every day thinking he’s about to fail, fearing that everyone else in the world knows something that he doesn’t.

You just never know if:

She’s in the middle of a divorce and is about to go on stage.
Before he was your driver, or your waiter, he was a doctor in his homeland.
Their spirit was fractured as a child by unspeakable things.
She is frightened.. All the time.
He resists life itself.. All the time.
They are frail from lack of love.

You just never know if:

They’re faking loving the heart-hollowed life they fought so hard to make.
Chemicals are coursing through them in destabilizing ways.
She hasn’t slept through the night in months and months.
They’ve experienced a loss that will leave a gaping wound for the rest of this incarnation.
Today is especially hard and they’re doing their best, while they wish for just a little more than what they’ve got.

You just never know.

Suspend judgement.

There is a story behind every person you meet.

Avoiding conclusions..

Can be a monumental act of love.

~ M

You Are In Control – Take Back The Wheel Of How You Feel

September 9, 2013 By montywinters Leave a Comment

Take Back Control of Your Life

Each time you allow another person to get under your skin, you’re choosing to give up control over your life. The next time you hear yourself saying “so and so makes me so mad”, or “what she/he said really hurts my feelings”, check within yourself to see what it is that is truly making you that upset. A lot of the times, what upsets us so much about another person is really a reflection of our own selves, things we’re not aware of that we don’t like about ourselves.

Pay attention the next time you get upset with what someone says or does to you. Ask yourself why it is upsetting you so much. Check to see what kind of expectations you have for others. If you’re expectations for other people are too high, then you’re more than likely going to be going around upset all the time. People will never be able to live up to them. Just because you would not say or do such a thing does not automatically mean that others will live by the same rules you have for yourself.

No matter how upset you get about the actions or behaviors of others, it won’t change anything. The only person you have control over is yourself, and if you’re so busy being upset over the behavior of someone else then you have just given that person power over you. Another person cannot make you upset without your consent. Check your thoughts when this happens to see what you are focusing on.

Be careful not to get wrapped up in another person’s emotions, they are responsible for what they say, feel and act. Don’t allow them to drag you into their misery. Detach yourself from the drama.

Whatever it is that you feel another person is upsetting you about has more to do with you and less to do with them. Take responsibility for your emotions and get control over them. Make a commitment to yourself that you will no longer allow others to determine how you feel. As soon as you notice anger, hurt or fear arise take charge of those thoughts going through your mind, ask yourself who it is that is really in control of how you feel, is it another person that really has that kind of power over you or is it that you are letting them have that power over you?

Look at the upsetting thought and tell yourself “that is an interesting point of view ” and simply let it flow right past you, don’t hang onto it.

It’s not yours, it belongs to someone else.

~ M

Die Before You Die

July 28, 2013 By montywinters Leave a Comment

“The secret of life is to die before you die and find that there is no death.”

~ Eckhart Tolle

That is one hell of a powerful quote don’t you think?

But what in the hell does it mean? How can you die before you die?

And how can dying paradoxically be the secret of life?

Well it’s only in the second “die” that Tolle refers to physical death. The first “die” actually refers to the death of our identification with our mind.

Throughout our lives since we are very young we form a self-identity. This is who we think we are which is partly based on our experiences and partly formed by our social environment – that is how people see us and interact with us.

We have a nexus of “evidence” – images, memories, impressions, beliefs – that make up the mental profile we have of ourselves. A cumulative life-history that gives us a sense of self.

It’s a long list full of “I am this, I know that, I have this, I love this, and I wish that”.

I think you get the idea.

We attach these things to our own self. That is to say we identify ourselves with them. In other words, we identify ourselves with external things or partial and fleeting perceptions we have about our world and how we feel about it.

We don’t do this intentionally or with purpose. It is a “default program” of the mind to make associations between things, identify fixed points of reference and make sense of reality by categorizing things and experiences.

There is no fault as such in this. The problem comes when that program completely runs your life unconsciously. This means that you are not conscious of the fact that you can be different or more than that image or identity you have of yourself.

You run the risk of attaching yourself to a false identity. This is what some spiritual traditions call the illusion of mind and of the self. You become completely entrapped in that reality like there is nothing more outside of it.

The essence of the problem is that because you identify yourself with certain beliefs, ideas or external things you strongly believe that if you lose them you will lose who you are (this is why we react badly when we feel that one of those things – like our beliefs – are being challenged or threatened). Or else that in order to be more complete you need to get more of those things like possessions, social status, recognition, knowledge, special abilities, relationships and what have you.

The truth is that none of these will actually bring completion. When you get them you realize that you’re still not there and you search for more down a bottomless pit. It brings eternal dissatisfaction which no self-gratification can relinquish.

Death, according to Tolle, is the “stripping away” of all that is not you. It is the stripping away of those beliefs encoded by society, those fears, those assumptions, those half-baked truths that become your internal reality after many years. Death is when that bubble bursts and you see yourself as you truly are. You understand that you are much more than you “thought”.

This brings us back to the quote. To die before you die is a way of saying that you strip off those illusions before you physically die and realize that there is no death, for you are more than your physical embodiment and those limited perceptions you identify yourself with.

To die before you die is realizing that you are not what you possess or achieved or your inclinations and dispositions. It’s understanding that your being is much more than your having or your doing.

It’s peeping into your naked true and authentic self and being more alive than you can ever be.

I get paid to teach people to strip.

I like to call it “The Full Monty”.
Original huh?

You Are Important

March 4, 2013 By montywinters Leave a Comment

In my experience, I can always tell when I am reading brilliance. I do a doubletake, re-read it, then another time, then I just sit back and soak it up. This is definitely one of those times. Kudos to Chelsea Fagan, you friggin moved me. Brilliant writing! I had to share this, please pass it on. Enjoy.

You Are Important

I wish I could have met everyone you know. I wish I could have been there to hear everything everyone ever said to you, from the grandiose proclamations to the offhanded commentary. I wish I could have written it all down for later speculation, saved it somewhere I would have been able to reference whenever needed. Then, at least, I would know who told you. I would know if it was one person or a hundred, a school bully from across the playground or a past love who wanted to hurt you one last time before you went your separate ways. Because someone told you — convinced you, even, and it seems not to have been so hard-won — that you are not important.

You apologize for things which are not your fault, even for things which hurt no one. You will bump into a table and mutter that you are sorry to have hurt it, you will excuse yourself. If you happened to cross a stream of particularly rude passerby, you would hold the door open for hours on end, never entering the building yourself. There is a part of you which seems embarrassed to take up space, as though you don’t deserve the things you touch, the air you breathe, the chairs you sit on. You feel as though there is always a way to be more accommodating, less of an intrusion. But you are not intruding, you know. You never are. There is a way you move, a way you take up your space in this world (the space to which each of us is entitled, never more) that makes me wish I could be more like you. I feel boisterous, even occasionally oppressive. You are always kind, always humble, always so deserving of being there.

We are undeserving. It is we who are graced by your presence, and your generosity. You feel as though you need to give more to this world to earn your keep — that your being a kind person and deferring to others is somehow not enough — but that is ridiculous. It seems that you are just one of those rare, beautiful people who err a bit on the shy side, who assume the best in people, and who always move just slightly to the side of the stage so as not to compete for the spotlight. But you should have the spotlight, it should be turned to you. Its glow should cradle your face, and there should be a round of eager applause for you being here. When you step into a coffee shop, or a party, or a crowded commuter bus — I am glad you are there.

There are those among us who will be crippled by our delusions of importance, who tend to absorb the room as we walk in and push the furniture to the sides so as to better accommodate our presence. But there are also those who feel, often from being unjustly led to believe as much at some point in early life, that they have no importance. They feel that they are a burden of some kind, and are willing to accept being treated as a bit of relatively drab set decoration. You can see in their eyes that they nearly flinch with apology at the end of declarative statements, that their opinions are always tempered in a bit of empathetic softness. They are always doing on behalf of others, putting a million kinds of happiness before their own.

But you are important. You are important in a way that many people will never acknowledge, because they are too consumed with their image in the mirror or their voice on a recording to notice that they share the world with people around them. But you are important because you are good, because you look at your surroundings with tenderness and understanding. You don’t step on flowers when you walk, you allow a housepet to come to your hand instead of roughly insisting on your touch, you leave messages and wait for people to call you back at their convenience. You treat people with respect, and so rarely ask it for yourself. But you should. Because you matter. You matter to me, you matter to the woman you held the elevator for, and you matter to the friend you listened to while they unloaded the problems the world had put on them. You are more important than you will ever know, and never let anyone tell you that your economy of words is a stinginess of character. You are overflowing with love, and we can see it from a mile away.

~ Chelsea Fagan

Source: You Are Important – Chelsea Fagan