Healthy Wealthy Boomer Talks about Common Sense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said: ”Common Sense Is Genius in Working Clothes.”

Reading the Emerson quote this morning reminded me of the many personal discussions over the years based on the premise that there is nothing common about common sense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Quote...

The irony here is that Emerson – himself – was a master of common sense, in working clothes.

Through observation – over the course of his life – Emerson  chronicled his code of how things are – identifying the ground  rules of common sense, for any individual willing to sit quietly long enough, often enough  and pay attention.

About common sense, in a different context, Emerson also wrote this:

“Common sense is as rare as genius.”

Emerson was a scholar and a champion of individualism. Emerson grew into this perspective through life experience and close observation of both human spirit and human nature. Over time he became a spokesperson for both.

Emerson tells us how to acknowledge our own common sense by following our own inner voice and paying attention to Nature and the Universe around us. He is a guide. In many ways, Emerson directs us to how find our own way.

What other influential western thinkers  have to say about common sense:

Albert Einstein:  “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

George Bernard Shaw: “Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.”

William James: “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

Leonardo da Vinci: “Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.”

Source: http://thinkexist.com/quotations/common_sense/

There is a hint of Lao Tzu throughout and a connection here somehow between genius, common sense and individual freedom that threads itself learning to understand and recognize truth.

Emerson says that common sense is genius in working clothes. Shaw says a little bit of common sense is instinct and a lot is genius. Einstein implies that we have a handle on common sense when we are young before society teaches us the lack of it. James defines common sense as humor moving at a different speed.

Speaking of humor, WC Fields has this to say about that:

“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting
on people. ”  ― W.C. Fields

So collectively we learn that common sense is:

• genius
• instinct
• rare
• humor at a different speed
• disguised in working clothes

In today’s world of politically correct speech, an agenda driven muzzle for  independent thought, it is incumbent upon us to say what we think and to be authentic in the expression of who we are.

Great minds show us that more common sense is a good thing and it is inherent in the natural way of things in Nature and the Universe. Less common sense leads to difficulty, complexity, the lack of authenticity and individualism. Common sense gets more done with less effort. It is mental and practical economy.

My mom always used to say to me: “Use you head”.

Yet today it seems we are encourage not to do so. And on that note, we end this discussion with a final quote:

“Common sense has become the greatest oxymoron of our time.”  - Michael Barrett

I AM Michael Barrett, Managing Editor of Healthy Wealthy Boomer.

In this short 2 min 31 sec video, Jim Carrey talks about “Awakening”.

He is much more than baby boomer born in 1962, a regular guy who thought about getting a job in the steel mill where he grew up. He is a man who has worked his way to the top, through all the struggle and mistakes, and persisted until he succeeded. Jim Carrey is a healthy wealthy boomer role model.

Here we get to know him in a new way and there is a good message.

Carrey’s presentation offers reverence, sincerity and a recognition of something magnificent. Simultaneously he seems almost shy talking about his experience. There is both a tone of authenticity and humility. Seeing him expose a new part of himself we get a sense of childlike awkwardness coupled with truth.

A  favorite character role that Carrey portrayed on screen was  in the “Mask”.  The persona he created in this movie, Stanley Ipkiss, typifies the contrast to achieving in the face of adversity versus our resistance to take the risk necessary to do so. Ironically, the word “persona“ derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask.

Eleanor Roosevelt said:

“What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?”

And she also said:

“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.” Source: Eleanor Roosevelt

Read more: Jim Carrey Awakening…

I AM Michael Barrett and I AM a Healthy Boomer.

Healthy Wealthy Boomer Authenticity

Are you authentic?

Why is being authentic such a big deal and so appealing?

Because, authenticity is interwoven into our health and wealth as a fundamental ingredient of being a Healthy Wealthy Boomer.

Authenticity is only difficult when you are trying – instead of being - authentic  and people see the difference. People know inherently when you are being real and coming from the heart. It’s something we read through all the unspoken things, intuitively.

Most people – who seem real – are.

Expressing authenticity is also a sign of health.

From personal observation, we watch time and again as participants in Core Health workshops and Heart Forgiveness workshops release old baggage, trauma, confusion and emotional junk.  This happens through participating in the processes of the workshops which are designed to clean out the junk and leave the “good stuff”.

The result?

What’s left are the positives – the natural part in each of us.

Participants begin to reconnect to their inner core of health and to take their identity from within themselves – again – as they did when they were young children. In the process many rediscover their own authenticity.

Their individual-ness becomes more visible, active and available in their behavior and attitudes. It is as if a dormant computer program gets activated and the “real person” – the authentic version of themselves – steps forward to participate in life – again.

Authenticity also is a big part of long term, healthy business relationships.

It impacts people in business, customers who buy from us and most things financial. Integrity, trust, credibility and reliability are part of the picture. Like the old business adage says: People like to do business with their friends.

We want to be friends with authentic people. Of course we want to do business with them.

In my experience around hundreds of speakers and trainers (behind the scenes) when I worked for Peak (and seminars I have attended), I have observed the following to be true:

Authenticity is fast becoming synonymous with walking our talk – where walking our talk is not just a coy 10 second sound bite for maximum “PR” benefit.

It is, by contrast, a quality – admired by all.

It is both an attribute and a symbol of strength of character.

What is it about Authenticity - or Being Authentic - that we like so much?

Authenticity is uncommon – particularly in the media and politics.

So, it stands out more dramatically than if it were common place. As a result, authenticity is becoming pronounced – as in “strongly marked, distinct”.

We admire risk takers who openly express independent thought and challenge the validity of the status quo. We are attracted to people who are willing to be vulnerable and take the chance of failure in front of others.

We ask ourselves: ”How do they do that? That’s scary. I wish I could do that.”

There is enormous peer pressure to conform in today’s society:

• to be careful what we say
• how we say it
• who it we say it to

The interesting thing is that this effort to modify and alter individual behavior for the good of the many is having the reverse effect.

Inherently in human nature, we are attracted to truth.  Somehow – on a non-conscious level – we always know the difference when someone speaks the truth or represents the truth or holds us accountable to the truth.

Here is a quote from Lisa Barone of outspokenmedia…

“While I’m sure you’re a very complex and interesting person, the core of you is simple. It’s the you that exists when you’re not trying too hard to be anything else. That’s what people want.”

Here are several web definitions of authenticity that strike a harmonious note:

Undisputed credibility wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Authentic – conforming to fact and therefore worthy of belief; “an authentic account by an eyewitness”; “reliable information” wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

The quality of being genuine or not corrupted from the original; Truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, and intentions; The quality of being authentic (of established authority)  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/authenticity

Authenticity Is Appealing

Because it is so rare.

Authenticity includes a component of being singular – or the attributes of singularity – the only one like it.

We are attracted to singularity because, by definition, there can be only one.

• the quality of being one of a kind; “that singularity distinguished him from all his companions”

and further…

• strangeness by virtue of being remarkable or unusual
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

• the state of being singular, distinct, peculiar, uncommon or unusual; a point where all parallel lines meet; a point where a measured variable reaches unmeasurable or infinite value…en.wiktionary.org/wiki/singularity

Authenticity is living and being the real “us” and through that expression, the finest example of what and who we are because we are all “singular” and unique.

Each – when being fully authentic – is the only living expression of who we are in the universe.

I AM Michael Barrett and I AM a Core Health Facilitator. We’d love to see you participate in one of our live workshops and help you discover your true authentic self again.  You’ll be glad you did. See what others are saying: Core Health Testimonials

Baby Boomer balance has everything to do with alignment and walking our talk.

How many times in your life have you verbally committed to doing something and then reneged at some point because something came up – or the memory and focus of the original conversation faded and became a distant glimmer of muffled sound – like a silhouette of a campfire on the beach against a cliff late at night?

Was it your intention not to follow through? Did you actually make the commitment intending not to follow through?

In a peculiar way, this is the truth.

Recently, on a personal level, I have learned about authenticity – living it, speaking it and looking for it. This ties in directly to other aspects of what I am learning that I would like to share with you. See how it sits with you and maybe it will make sense to you the way it is beginning to in my life.

Lately many aspects of emotion are becoming clear in my life.

What emotion is, for example.

As far back as I can remember, emotion has been something usually associated with discomfort – something to “kind of walk around” or to be cautious about not stirring up the mud in the bottom of the pond, so to speak.

Because there was so much turmoil in my household as a boy, it became easier to avoid emotion than deal with it. As a memory, there is a great deal of fighting and negative emotion throughout much of the childhood experience. So looking back at the chain of events in my own experience, I see that inadvertently, as a young man my “internal” system gradually guided me in the direction of avoiding emotion as a survival tool, because many times this was easier than experiencing the emotion that was available there.

It was not a conscious choice, in retrospect.

And looking at that process, it becomes clear to me that a great deal of my subsequent experience around emotion was either directly – or indirectly – linked to the that “unconscious choice” so many years ago.

What is interesting about this scenario is that I have always been a highly sensitive human being with an singular sense of fairness and equity that has always been a major part of my personality. Being a “Cancer” with a heavy emphasis on emotion, this aspect has often been a double edged sword for me.

More often than not, I felt more than the others around me did. Many times it created a situation where I really felt like an outcast – the weirdo, the odd one – that got messages and direction that nobody else seemed to understand – or be aware of. At the age where peer approval was so important to a young man, this was often troubling and confusing. And yet on a certain level, I really didn’t care what they thought either. I rarely listened to what other people had to say.

Talk about confusion…

So here I am as a teenager:

• becoming a master of avoiding emotion while simultaneously
• being highly sensitive to the energy and emotion around me
• angry and aloof – getting tons of “downloads” encrypted in a language that only I seemed to understand

So back to the “truth” of not intending to follow commitments – of having intentions NOT to honor commitments we make – even though we are verbally nodding our heads.

In 2005, at a Peak Potentials Wizard Camp (a 5 day intensive seminar not to far from Whistler, BC) I had an epiphany. I learned first hand what commitment means. This took place in the form of a direct experience – but also, I actually saw commitment with my own eyes. I have written about this experience in depth in my book so I will not reiterate it here.

I really got something in that experience that I have carried forward with me since and have grown to realize that it affects everything we do in life – all the time.

To summarize, this is it:
Commitment does not exist in the cosmos as ‘partial’. It is all or nothing. We are either 100% committed or we are not committed. There is no such thing as “sort of committed”.

This is the crux of the theme of this post: Baby Boomer Balance.

Lately, as a I mentioned earlier, many aspects of “emotion” are becoming clear to me.

1. I have recently heard this: emotions are the way that God speaks to us.
2. Emotions are the internal guide posts that empower us to choose the right decision.
3. Emotions have nothing to do with pain or fear – both of which stem from our reaction to what our emotions are telling us – rather than what is actually being said.
4. Most of us avoid experiencing emotion like the plague because in much of our experience, when we feel emotion, we feel pain – so we associate it with pain.
5. Emotions are tools to guide us in the decision process. That decision process is very simple: Does this choice feel good? Or does this choice not feel good?

When we pull this understanding into our daily life as an operating tool, emotions make it easy to decide what to do. Esther Hicks and Abraham always talk about “going upstream or going downstream”.

I am learning how simple this is – but it took a long time for me to “get it”.

I am learning to use this tool frequently throughout the day. Any time I start to feel agitation about something I am hearing, or about something I am thinking or a choice I am about to make, I ask myself:

Does this feel upstream or downstream? If I get the feeling that the “thing” is upstream ( a choice that will take me into a situation that will mean “fighting my way upstream”), I choose consciously not to do that thing, or say those words or go that direction. No explanation, no argument and no rhetoric.

If this thing makes me feel “downstream” – like flowing with the current and really going with the flow, that is the choice I make. I find that as soon as I identify internally what feels good and what feels downstream, all sense of agitation and discomfort – in the bottom of my stomach immediately fades away and I feel good.

What a cool way to deal with emotion. It now becomes a tool for choosing our path and for making decisions all the time. And it is so simple – as long as we just listen and do not resist or react.

Now more about balance…

I am finding that living our truth is all about balance.

To be authentic we must live our truth. That means we can not go against what we know is right within us. In other words, we must always choose what feels downstream in order to follow “what feels right for us”. Any time we make a choice other than this, it means that we are making a choice out of alignment with who we are.

Maybe this is to please others whom we admire and whose approval we are seeking. Maybe we want a different outcome to be our reality so we think that if we ignore that “feeling” it will come out the way we really want it to happen.

The truth is that we can only make choices in alignment with our “authenticity” if we want to be authentic. Nothing else makes sense. The interesting part is that as soon as we choose this, everybody else around us identifies our authenticity and starts to respect it.

Now how does commitment fit into this picture?

It is very simple yet subtle – much in the same way how easy it is to choose “upstream or downstream”. Yet, perhaps commitment is one of the most misunderstood concepts in modern society at this point. Truly most of us think we are committed when we are not.

Because being committed means that no matter what we will follow through. It means our word is our bond, it is an extension of our truth and it is a big part of being authentic.

How is this so?

If we are truly being authentic, we follow through on our commitments because when we are following our inner truth, we only commit to those things that make us feel “downstream:” We choose what is right for us at all times and we choose to be in the flow.

When we are authentic, we are choosing that which is alignment with our higher self – which also means we are choosing that which is in alignment with the part of us which is Divine.

When we are authentic, we only agree to commit to anything that we choose to be in alignment with. What this means, therefore, is that it is really ok to say NO.

Simply go inside and ask yourself: If I commit to this does it make me feel downstream or upstream? Then base your commitment on that feeling – one way or the other.

If we commit to something and we do not follow through, either we were not being authentic when we entered into the commitment, or we are not being true to ourselves when we do not follow through to that commitment.

We are the leaders for future generations. What happens is our responsibility. How can we lead these kids and guide the flow “downstream” in the bigger picture if we are not committed to our principles, our values and our integrity?

And how can we expect those who are so desperately needing our leadership to believe us and follow our direction if:

• our walk is not in alignment with our talk and
• if we are not being authentic

We cannot expect them to listen because it will not feel “downstream” to them. And they will blow us off.

We have a chance to make a real change as we head into the magnificent transition into the new paradigm that is coming.

Commit to your own alignment and your Baby Boomer Balance.
Being in alignment is a big part of Baby Boomer Balance as well as a major ingredient in Baby Boomer Health. Coming to grips with these issues are not only a component of who were are becoming as leaders, it is also a big part of choosing emotional cleansing and self esteem on a conscious level – instead of an unconscious one.

Are you ready to see it all in a different light and quit fighting the inevitable – upstream?

I am.

Blessings.

Michael Barrett