Month: November 2020

Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, a weekly series dedicated to the importance of expressing gratitude in my life, which for today is for finally getting my new website up and running and the person who made it all possible, my dear friend Debbie Coon.

Many of you might not know that I have another website out there besides this one. It’s my personal website, www.andrewarthurdawson.com. I built it originally all the way back in 2012 using a very old tool on my hosting company that became outdated not more than a year after I had completed it. Beginning in late 2013, my hosting company started asking me each time I called technical support for help, whether I wanted to upgrade my personal site to their new tool. I always responded by asking them if the tool I was using was getting discontinued. The answer was consistently no. Years would pass until my site would become so outdated in technology and in appearance that the idea of updating it became one of utter dread. I simply avoided the subject and never dedicated any energy to it. More years would pass until finally this past spring, a tech support person from my hosting told me he was going to give me two free years of their website builder tool to help motivate me into migrating my site off the old tool into the new one. For as much as this became my first moment of gratitude in this process of upgrading my site, the next came when my dear friend Debbie, a genius when it comes to computer programming, offered to build it for me herself. In all honesty, I should have asked Debbie long ago to help me complete this, but my pride and ego of wanting to do it myself always got the best of me more times than I can count, even after my domain stopped getting listed on Google’s search results, all because it had gotten so outdated.

By the time Debbie started working on my new personal website, I wasn’t in any rush to complete the process given how long I had put the task off, as well as how long my hosting company had given me the tool for free. Even so, I gave Debbie some basic specifications and slowly, but surely, it started to come together. Unfortunately, I kept putting the task off of reviewing her work until I received a notice one day a few weeks ago from my hosting company that said my old tool that was still running my personal website was officially being discontinued on December 31st. Suddenly, the timetable to getting this done had to be pushed to the top of my to-do list. After several days of review and making minor changes, Debbie and I were able to finalize my site. After doing so, we then contacted my hosting company, where they did the leg work of taking my old site down and moving the site Debbie had built for me onto the Internet.

While I honestly thought the whole process would have taken a ton of my time, in the end, it was an entirely painless process that actually took very little of my time. I’m so thankful for this and for the fact that the task is no longer looming over my head anymore. But I’m even more thankful and filled with plenty of gratitude today for having a true friend like Debbie who remained so very patient with me all along the way until the process was complete.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Thought For The Day

Quote #1

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” (Arthur Ashe)

Quote #2

“Accomplishments will prove to be a journey, not a destination.” (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

Quote #3

“Sometimes it’s the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination.” (Drake)

Bonus Quote

“Happiness is a journey, not a destination. It is to be found along the way, not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it’s too late. The time for happiness is today not tomorrow.” (Paul H Dunn)

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

When An Impatient Driver Reminded Me That Life Is More About The Journey Rather Than The Destination…

I’ve lived in many cities across several states, visited plenty of places around this country and the world, and been in awe of the many unique differences amongst them all. But, if there’s one thing I’ve seen that’s been the same no matter where I’ve been, it’s the presence of impatient drivers.

While many people might claim their city to have the worst drivers in the world, no matter where I’ve been there always seems to be drivers riding on other car’s bumpers, angrily beeping their horns, flipping people off, and swearing profusely. Thankfully, I’m not one of them anymore, because I’ve learned that life is far more about the journey rather than the destination. Unfortunately, most drivers though are more concerned about their destinations rather than the journey.

I was greatly reminded of this just recently when heading home one afternoon while taking a right turn onto a bridge. Once safely on the bridge, a car suddenly raced up behind me mere feet from my rear bumper. With headlights flashing, they abruptly doubled their speed and passed on my right, then immediately cut me off to take the same turn I was about to take. A minute later, I found myself behind them, as they had gotten stuck behind another vehicle going the speed limit like I had been. In the end, the impatient driver arrived at their location no faster than if they had just remained behind me. Ironically, there’s been numerous studies done of this over the years, where two drivers leave for the same destination at the same time, with one driver doing the impatient type of driving, while the other doing the speed limit. In almost every case, the impatient driver arrived mere minutes ahead of the other.

In light of that, why is saving mere minutes so important to so many drivers all around the world? The amount of stress and tension in doing so, as well as all the missed opportunities for mindfulness is inconceivable. Personally, based upon my old aggressive patterns of driving, I tend to believe impatient driving is based upon the sole desire to gain some semblance of control in life, control of something because life often feels so very out of control for so many of us.

Regardless, while I know there are times in life where drivers might truly have an emergency that leads them to impatiently drive somewhere, the majority simply do it for the perceived notion that it’s far more important to get to their destination as quick as possible, rather than to experience the journey there.

I’ve struggled with my partner quite a bit with this over the many years we’ve been together, as he tends to be very impatient with other drivers on the road. His impatient driving usually puts him into bad moods and at times even causes him to miss out on having spiritually connecting moments with me. While I once was just like him on the road on a daily basis, it changed after I spent 10 days in silence on a meditation retreat back in 2005. There, I learned all about the importance of slowing down and paying attention to the journey rather than always racing to some destination.

So, while I may be more successful now with patient driving because of that retreat, I am learning that this lesson  can be applied to many other areas of my life as well and tend to believe that the more I focus on being present on the journey instead of racing towards my destinations in life, I’ll probably be able to experience far more peace and joy along the way…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson