I started a new set of health habits recently, and even though the rules that I have chosen to follow are nothing technically new to me, they’ve been put in a different view pattern that has me looking at it with a new perspective. I guess anything can be that way. You can drive the same way to work every day for 3 years. Then, all of the sudden, a bird flies by your windshield and “all of the sudden” you notice the most beautiful sun setting over the pond that you’ve driven by for the last 1000+ previous days. Did the pond just appear? No. What changed? Your perspective. Learning to apply different perspectives in different or difficult situations may be all it takes to make say a terrible conversation take a better path. Who knows…just by taking the few seconds it takes to back up and take a new perspective can be the difference of having a good or even wonderful conversation vs. a stressful one. Believe me—I have a teenager that is wonderfully passionate and incredibly opinionated, but there are days that the opinion that he has set in stone and mine don’t see eye to eye. This requires me to dig deep and try looking through new glasses, always remembering that it’s my choice—to make this a good and potentially meaningful conversation for both of us, (which will, I hope, be a life lesson for him at the same time), or a complete knock-down-drag-out battle, in which nobody ever wins. Believe me, I’m a very passionate, and opinionated person myself, and like everyone else I am also a work in process, but anytime I can alleviate stress from my life, I’m going to take that path whenever possible and see what happens!

I don’t know about you, but I definitely have to “prune my thoughts”. Just like vines, my thoughts begin in a beautiful winding growth pattern, only to begin to grow into a tangled, overgrown patch with no way of flowering due to overpopulation of the strangling thicket. There has to be a way to see or feel your way back to the original for it to become anything of substance. You may have to use a machete at first to get your path formed, but the more you work on the pruning, removing the dead and lifeless thoughts, the ‘weeds’, and the non-producing plants, it will become more like pruning a bonsai—every clipping being part of a purpose and will create beauty. In the fantastic movie ‘Peaceful Warrior’, Socrates calls it ‘taking out the trash’. He said, “The trash is anything that is keeping you from the only thing that matters…this moment…here…now. And when you truly are in the here and now you’ll be truly amazed at what you can do and how well you can do it.”

For me, writing my thoughts down, whenever and wherever they occur helps me keep track of them, and place them in a holding place until I can hone them into something of value. I didn’t use the word organize earlier on purpose—because I don’t think we necessarily need to focus on organizing our thoughts, per se. Generally it takes a little while for the polishing to take place. Just like a rock tumbler, it takes time, consistency, focus, and commitment to turn plain, dirty, sharp and broken rocks, or thoughts in this case, into beautifully smooth, shiny, polished pieces of art. There are times that I don’t go back to my original thought and complete it until after a year or more. This piece is a prime example. The title of this article came to me about a year ago. I scribbled the title down in a notebook, one of many notebooks that I have around me at all times. I have several notebooks that I keep my thoughts in, but the collections of thoughts are in no particular order. When I came across it this morning, everything clicked into place and I immediately knew that it was time to write about this beautifully polished thought. It’s always fun to find hidden treasures!

I guess everyone likes to consider themselves ‘hip’. Some people don’t care, others say they don’t, and then there are those who go all out to make sure everyone knows them as being hip, stylish & in control. My definition of ‘hip’ throughout my lifetime has changed considerably. It used to be the norm—up with the newest trends and most popular styles, en vogue, modern, fashionable, stylish… and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to look and feel good. However, now my definition has transformed into an acronym… HIP – Honesty Integrity Purpose. Have all three, live by all three, and the word ‘hip’ becomes the mantra of your inner-style, which in turn pours out through you externally, making you one of the ‘hippest’ people around! You become someone that others admire and want to be around. Think of someone you consider one of the hippest people that you know. They exude confidence. Truly confident people live the way they feel they should, they are always looking forward, and good things always seem to come to them almost effortlessly. Their expectation of living on their terms comes from the confidence within. Confidence is a major criterion using either definition of hip, but true confidence comes from an inner source and cannot just be based on what you wear and how you look in a particular style. When you live in honesty, with integrity, and consistently moving toward your purpose you will find that confidence is automatically attained and consistently strengthened through the actions and beliefs that govern your life. Just remember, in whatever you do, be true to you. -Rachel Ringler