Artfully Mindful

New Year, New Beginnings

• D. R. Thompson • Season 2 • Episode 51

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Ever wondered how a simple shift in language could transform your life? Join me, Don Thompson, as we kick off 2025 with an episode brimming with personal insights aimed at sparking positive change. We unravel the unsuspecting impact of the phrase "I don't care," unveiling its potential to lead to unwelcome outcomes. Experience the stirring world of classical music, with Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto as a standout example, and discover how these timeless compositions can nurture feelings of innocence and purity. Together, we'll also explore the importance of speaking well of others and fostering encouragement, particularly within educational settings, to cultivate a supportive environment for growth.

Embark on a journey through the Buddhist teaching of equanimity, drawing inspiration from the sun's impartial warmth to embrace gratitude in all situations. This episode marks a milestone in my personal journey—celebrating three years of podcasting and the joy of sharing these reflections with you. Through these discussions, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to you, my listeners, hoping to inspire a more mindful and uplifting approach to life. Whether you're searching for transformative advice or simply seeking solace in shared experience, this episode promises insights that resonate deeply with our shared human experience.

Note: Don Thompson will be taking a sabbatical from 'Artfully Mindful' after next week. He'll talk more about his upcoming sabbatical during that podcast.

Music: Alchemorph - 'Friendship'

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Note that Don Thompson is now available as a coach or mentor on an individual basis. To find out more, please go to his website www.nextpixprods.com, and use the 'contact' form to request additional information.

Speaker 1:

Hi, don Thompson, here with another podcast for you in this new year, 2025. And I thought I would begin the new year by offering some general advice to my listeners, hopefully not unwelcome advice. Hopefully you take this the right way, which is just that. I'm, you know, like one friend to another, just saying, hey, you know, these are things that I've sort of stumbled on or learned over the course of my life that might be helpful to you to navigate your life perhaps and I completely accept and understand if you don't think that that's the case, that's totally cool with me. But you know, I found these things to be somewhat useful, these ideas, these bits of advice that I'll lay out.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to step through about five bits of advice, pieces of advice for you. The first piece of advice I would have is eradicate the words I don't care from your vocabulary. If I get to a level of a mental state, let's say, that includes the phrase I don't care, things often do not go very well. If you don't care, things are more likely to happen that you don't want to happen, in my opinion. So I would eradicate that phrase from your vocabulary. I've certainly tried to do so from my vocabulary and, you know, I think it's a good piece of advice and I hope you take it to heart. You know, perhaps you have a capability or capacity to say these words and it doesn't impact you, but for me, I know that if I've said them in the past, you know it doesn't bode well. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 1:

The second bit of advice I would have for you is to listen to classical music, and there's a lot of really beautiful music in the world that is considered classical. Now there's classical music that is considered classical classical music, and then there's other music that is considered more modern classical music. So you have anywhere from Mozart to Stravinsky, that type of thing. But I would say that within the panoply of what's called classical music not popular music, but classical music there's so much to be heard and in some of the music I'll give an example Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, for example, which I was just listening to this morning there's, I would say, certain states of mind or certain emotions that this kind of music can evoke that is really unique to classical music. That is really unique to classical music. And if you want to tap into these mental states through music, you know, I encourage you to do so.

Speaker 1:

And some of the mental states that I would you know, I believe are evident in this kind of music, are words that really don't often appear in the vocabulary of most modern people, and things like innocence and purity. You know, oftentimes we have these ideas about religion and you know Puritans and Puritanical thoughts and all of that stuff. But when I say the words like purity and innocence I don't really mean it that way. It's really a feeling of purity, of innocence, of clarity, really, and so when I listen to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, for example, I get these feelings, and other people get these feelings, and other people get these feelings too, and it's not necessarily like as if you're preaching any particular point of view or text or religion or anything like that. It's simply an emotional state, and I think you could be a conservative or a liberal or a Christian or a Muslim or Jewish or whatever, and you can still tap into these emotional states through music, and I think that's a great thing about it. Classical music, or any music, can bring these elements of connectedness within the human family, which I think is a great thing, elements of connectedness within the human family, which I think is a great thing.

Speaker 1:

The third thing that I would recommend is not to speak ill of others. I've noticed in my life and I have friends and colleagues that I work with and oftentimes when you get them into a room and let's say the boss isn't around around, or let's say a certain person isn't around, they will immediately start talking ill of that person or complaining about that person. I would say, along with the words I don't care to eradicate that habit from your psyche. If you're capable of doing so. I don't think it's mentally healthy. It doesn't help the situation. It doesn't help the person that you're speaking ill of. It doesn't help you. There's absolutely no benefit from speaking ill of people behind their back. It absolutely does not have any benefit. I guarantee you there's no benefit. So typically, when I find myself in these situations where people are speaking ill of somebody, I just don't say anything. I just keep my mouth shut and I don't criticize them. I don't say you know, you shouldn't really be speaking ill of so-and-so-and-so. Perhaps I should in some cases speak up and say that, but I don't really. I usually just stay silent. You know, I don't really, I usually just stay silent. You know no-transcript.

Speaker 1:

The fourth thing I would encourage you to do is to be encouraging of others, to try to encourage others to do better, to try and encourage others to be positive and encourage others to take the next step in their life in a positive way. You know I like to teach, I do some teaching and I have to say that one of the things I try and do as a teacher is to be encouraging, and hopefully I'm encouraging on this podcast. I'm sort of a quasi-teacher in this podcast. I'm not really a teacher per se, but I guess some might consider me to be somewhat of an educator or a teacher on these podcasts. But I would say that you know I encourage you to be encouraging to others and you know it's sort of like encouragement, pass it on, that type of thing, you know. So I try and do that with younger people I deal with in the courses that I teach is to be encouraging.

Speaker 1:

You know there's a lot of negativity in the world. There's a lot of people that are telling you you can't do things, a lot of people that are not. It's so encouraging. So what I would say is to not be one of those people. I would say to be an encouraging person, to help others, to encourage people to do better, to encourage people in a positive way. I think it's very self-gratifying. It makes you happier. I'm telling you, I believe so. At least, if you encourage people, it makes you happy, it makes them happy and it makes you happy, so why not? You might as well be encouraging.

Speaker 1:

The last thing I'd like to mention as a piece of advice is to say thank you. I mentioned this in other podcasts, but I married into a Japanese family. My wife is Nisei. She's born in the US, so she's not you know, she wasn't born in Japan, but her parents were both born in Japan and spoke Japanese and were really very, very much Japanese in their outlook, in terms of their culture. So the Japanese culture says thank you a lot, maybe too much, some people would say. They'd say thank you maybe at times when some people feel it's not necessary.

Speaker 1:

But I've sort of picked up the habit and you know I say thank you a lot. I even say thank you to ChatGPT. I mean ChatGPT doesn't feel anything, doesn't care. You know I talk about not caring. Well, maybe ChatGPT does care. We don't really know. It's a mystery at this point. It's programmed to seem like it cares. It's programmed to say you're welcome when you say thank you, it's programmed to be quite nice. If you're nice to it it'll be nice back, and if you're not nice to it it'll just be silent. It won't do anything. Of course it won't respond, but I tend to say thank you to ChatGPT and I know that ChatGPT, you know, on paper, doesn't really have any response. It doesn't really have any emotions. But I do it for me, for my own mental state.

Speaker 1:

I don't think it's good to, you know, treat anything in the world in a sort of a disrespectful way. I mean, I sort of respect all of life. You might say that may sound a little bit lofty and altruistic, but you know, the world and all the expressions of the world are unique and there's so many different expressions of the world. There's plants, there's animals, there's the sky, there's the earth itself, there's the oceans, there's the fish in the oceans, there's the animals on the land, there's the people, the people that are the artists, the people that are the politicians, the people that raise families and all kinds of different people trying to do different things, usually just to help themselves be a better people and to, you know, live their version of what they believe is a good life. You know, I think that that's what most people are trying to do. I wouldn't disparage anybody for that. So I tend to say thank you to everyone and have a sense of respect for everyone, because I believe everyone.

Speaker 1:

In a way. There's a kind of an equanimity. I think to that and it's a Buddhist teaching. You know. Equanimity it's looking at things in an equal light. The sun shines down on all things all people, all beings, all plants, all animals, all you know, everything that we like and don't like. The sun shines on all these things. So in a similar way, I think you know, saying thank you in a comes out of the sense of equanimity and you try to say thank you in all situations and even if you perhaps don't think it deserves a thank you, you might want to say thank you. So at any rate, I'll leave the podcast at that. I do appreciate you listening. As always, I enjoy doing this podcast. I've done it now for two years, moving into year three, and I was debating whether or not to move into year three. But here I am in year three with our opening podcast for the year. As always, again, I enjoy doing it and I hope you're getting something out of it and I'll talk to you soon. No-transcript.