Inspiration

Why Experiences Create The Most Amazing Memories

Posted on by drjuneau
View from the Cliff House, San Francisco, CA

“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” –Dr. Suess

Who doesn’t like a challenge? Here’s a very quick and exciting challenge for you. Take a moment to reflect on the greatest and most vivid memories of your life. Seriously, take a brief moment to slow down, stop, and think about it. Which memories comes to mind?

I recently did this challenge and realized the most joyful and vivid memories of my life involve spending time with family and friends, often engaging in activities costing no money at all.

As a child playing ping-pong with my brother on a heavy wooden table so rickety its fold-down metal legs could buckle at any second, and often did, comes to mind. One end of the table would come crashing to the cement floor with enough force to break your toes. An injury-trap waiting to happen, adding another level of suspense and challenge to the game. When we played ping-pong It was not about winning…it was about survival. It was fun.

Or taking memorable car rides through muddy cornfields in Canada’s corn belt with my father during summer breaks from school. He was a young teacher trying to feed a growing family on a young teacher’s salary, so he would take part time jobs inspecting corn crops to help make ends meet. We’d ride along dirt roads in the country for hours, sometimes he’d let me steer, do spin-outs in the fields, and take the car home covered in mud from top to bottom. Mom would ask what happened to the car. We’d look at each other and shrug our shoulders. Laughing. Joking. Bonding.

What memories came to your mind?  More likely than not, memories of fun times shared with people, places visited, and special experiences. Sure, there could have been some amazing birthday or holiday gifts, but even with those, the memories and experience shared with others as a result of the gifts, not the gifts themselves, probably feels most special.  Very few of life’s greatest memories are of material things themselves. Material things may help enhance experiences, but experiences are what creates the most vivid, powerful, and lasting memories.

Experiences can create a wealth of joy greater than riches.

Scientific research supports the idea that experiences bring people more happiness than do material things, and if spending time creating experiences is not an option, the mere anticipation of future experiences ranks a very close second. What does that mean? It means the anticipating of an upcoming trip, a night out with friends, concert tickets, or even a visit to the movies this weekend, gives us something to look forward to. An anticipated experience. The experiential beginning of a potentially wonderful memory.

The value any experience or memory begins the moment we begin thinking about it. We all possess the ability to create such memories and experiences with people we love and enjoy, and once such a positive idea is seeded, it is our responsibility to nurture and grow that seed into reality. We should set a conscious goal to create strong and positive memories that can be cherished and enjoyed forever, for ourselves and the people we like and love.

There is no amount of money that would tempt me to trade the precious memories and moments shared with my father and family, for so many reasons. But most importantly because those memories make me happy, bring me peace, and authentically resonate an irreplaceable quality of life worth living. If I ever have to choose between spending money on creature comforts vs. creating a positive lasting memory with my family or loved ones there is no question which direction I’ll be leaning.

While many memorable experiences unfold naturally, the creation of lasting memories can take planning and be intentional. It simply takes a little time and effort, and maybe a well-thought out expenditure of money, but it does not need to be a lot. If you struggle with planning ideas to create amazing experiences and lasting memories, here are five super suggestions that may help jump start your creative juices:

  • Throw a party – for any occasion. It doesn’t need to be a big party. Do it for someone you care about, or just to gather friends together for the sake of having a party. Use a theme, have a camera, food and beverages, games and fun.
  • Spend quality time – with your parents, spouse, children, friends, or others. Ask others about themselves, get them talking – people love to talk about themselves. This naturally builds rapport and relationship. Remember details and ask about irrelevant details next time you talk to them.
  • Gift experiences – instead of things. How about theater tickets or golf lessons instead of candy or a bottle of wine (though a bottle of wine my lead to some pretty interesting experiences too!). Think of an experience someone would normally not do. If it’s expensive and a mutual friend is involved, suggest others pitch in and make the experiential gift truly worthwhile.
  • Travel – it doesn’t need to be some far off, exotic location, though that’s certainly something to shoot for. Travel or holidays can be a day trip, or even an experience in your own city or area that you normally would not have
  • Spend time in nature – this has a number of tremendous health benefits, including calming .and focusing the mind and connecting us with the sense of a Higher Power. Being in nature can also contribute to well-being, creativity and happiness, along with providing a sense of simplicity and fulfillment.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of material wealth (even a lot of it) and attaining possessions, but we must remember that living a quality life is more about balance and perspective. At the end of the day the billion dollar CEO is buried in the same earth as the penniless pauper. In death we take no material possessions with us.

I’m not sure who said it first, but I believe they said it best, “Fill your life with experiences, not things.  Have stories to tell, not stuff to show.”

Be mindful and intentional about making great memories, then enjoy them for a life time. Experiences create the most amazing memories.

Wishing wellness and empowerment your way,

Dr. J

The Power of Envisioning A Higher-Version Of Yourself

Posted on by drjuneau

blackdirtonions2

As a child growing up near the shore of Lake Erie in Canada, I used to marvel at the rich, black soil found a mile or two inland from the water.  On hot summer days my father would drive our 1976 Chrysler Imperial along the shoreline, windows wide open, and the saturating smell of sweet onions growing in the fields would permeate every breath. These farms produced some of the best green onions in the nation. In the entire world. The reason? That dark, rich, nutrient-filled soil nurtured those plants to their maximum potential. In many aspects, the human mind is exactly like that soil.

Your Mind Is Like A Garden

The nourishing soil of a garden possesses the potential to grow most anything planted in it, good or bad. A garden may be cared for by a responsible, constructive caretaker, or neglected to grow random and unpredictable, but inevitably it will bring forth growth of some kind – this is an irrefutable law nature. If no beneficial seeds are planted in a garden, then a bounty of useless weed seeds will find their way into the ground, and these weed seeds will germinate, grow, and ultimately wind up producing more of their own, choking the life from anything positive attempting to grow.

If you are the gardener of your mind, just as a good gardener continuously monitors their plot of earth, removing harmful weeds that choke the roots of the vegetables and flowers they are attempting to grow, you are responsible for removing the weeds of negativity, fear, non-growth and decline from your mind. Destructive thoughts must be replaced with constructive thoughts, otherwise the destructive thoughts will flourish. When the weeds of destructive thoughts are removed, and the flowers and plants of right thinking are cultivated, nourished and pruned, useful thoughts will grow in abundance, spawning the effects of peace, joy and success in life.

As a person thinks, so shall they become has been a lesson taught with certainty through the ages by some of the most enlightened teachers our world has ever known, including Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Moses, Krishna and more. It’s a powerful statement embodying much more than utopian-sounding ideal; it’s a blueprint for peace, joy and success, yet remains understood, believed and practiced by significantly relative few.

All things visible in our world today were first created in the realm of thought, without exception.  Before computers, the Internet, electricity, someone first had the idea they could exist in their mind.  The greatest beauty of an idea is perhaps its indestructibility. Ideas can exist forever, whether manifested or not.  Ideas harbor the potential of what we may one day become. Potential means possibility, not positively. So, once a positive idea is seeded it is our responsibility to nurture it to reality. If the idea is not positive, we have a choice to terminate it at its root.  In time, our reality will become a mirror of our thoughts, beliefs, knowledge and attitude. Whether realized or not, this is how our individual realities are created.

We are first defeated in our minds, and victorious there as well.

Most of our lives we are taught to think in terms of lack and limitation, dependence and low risk. We are first taught these values in good faith and unintentionally by the perceived authority figures in our lives….our mothers, fathers, teachers and preachers. As children growing, most are constantly conditioned with phrases like, “You can’t do that,” or “Don’t speak until spoken to,” or my personal favorite, “We can’t afford that…money doesn’t grow on trees!” As a result of this subconscious pre-programming most people naturally seek a level of existence well below their true potential. This is scientifically proven. The good news is that a habit of right thinking, with potential unleashed, can be developed through knowledge, repetition and proven techniques. A few simple techniques I’ve learned through the years to retrain the subconscious mind include:

  • Goal Setting: One of the most exciting and rewarding habits we can acquire, setting short and long term goals allows us to develop the attitudes, habits and thinking necessary to move in the direction we want to go. Having goals allows us to see ourselves as we want, as compared to how we are, and helps shape a step-by-step progress toward completion of our goals. Goal setting is a habit that should be worked on, updated, and developed over time.
  • Affirmations: Much of what we think and feel is determined by how we talk to ourselves, and using affirmation on a daily basis is one of the simplest, easiest ways to guide our “self-talk” in a positive way. Affirmations are repeated statements which stimulate our mind with an attitude of expectancy. By choosing what thoughts we allow to start our day or dominate our mental space, we effectively choose what we want to manifest in our reality.
  • Visualization: Vivid visualization goes hand-in-hand with consistent goal-setting and affirmations. Visualization is the process of holding a thought in our mind until that thought creates a mental picture or image of “being there”. The human brain cannot distinguish between a thought that is imagined (visualized) in vivid detail vs. an actual event that occurs. The human brain is that powerful.

It is a duty of our existence to instill in ourselves a strong sense of belief-in-self daily, and our thoughts manifest this duty. This vein of thinking is an absolute truth, and the sooner we accept it as such, the sooner we begin to attract into our lives the blessings we so desperately desire.  Literally, we become what we think. We must be intentional about creating a habit of positive, growth-inspired thinking. Try it…and revel in the eventual result. You, and the world, will be better for your effort.

Wishing Wellness & Empowerment Your Way,

-Dr. J