February 2, 2022 by Brian Weiner No CommentsChanging The World One Thought At A Time., Lessons From The Mountain

The ultimate source of my mental happiness is my peace of mind. Nothing can destroy this except my own anger.

The ultimate source of my mental happiness is my peace of mind. Nothing can destroy this except my own anger.

DALAI LAMA

I am humored sometimes by how I choose an aphorism to write about and as I am writing about it, circumstances in my life start to manifest around me, trying to get me to use the wisdom I am writing about, or to admit I am being fraudulent in my approach.

Yesterday, as I was musing about letting an argument go and not continuing it, I got a text from a colleague who was continuing a heated discussion from a few days earlier. I looked at my phone and started to laugh because they were hooking me into the same stupidity as before, while I was writing about not allowing that to happen in life. Rather than engage, I went silent and that only caused more text messages to arrive. More silence on my end. I wanted to finish what I was writing.

Today, since I was a day late in acknowledging Lunar New Year (it doesn’t matter, they celebrate for a couple weeks!) I was choosing a quotation from the Dalai Lama and while I had chosen the aphorism last night, I was on the phone this morning trying to get a hold released on a large Cashier’s check I had deposited yesterday in my business account. As I weeded through all of Bank of America’s artificial intelligence (presumably designed to make my life easier, but really to save them money) and then finally getting to a human who passed me to another human, who then said I had to wait until after 10A so that there is a full 24 hours from my deposit, only then could they help me. My anger was brewing at full boil.

BUT…. I am pleased to share that I had the maturity to be genuinely extra kind, humorous and understanding while I absorbed the platitudes that the bank employee shared, I was genuinely even charismatic in the methods I was using to BEG THEM TO GIVE ME MY FUCKING MONEY. But, I stayed super polite and it ended with no resolution and I would have to call back.

Zero anger expressed, and to be honest, since I mentally prepared for something of this degree of stupidity, I allowed for the fact that my call was probably going nowhere.

Anger is totally within your control. Sometimes it is so intense that it would appear that nothing would ever be capable of quelling it. I am sure you can conjure examples. But to the point of the Dalai Lama, if you want peace of mind, it is always there, waiting. The choice is always yours to opt into emotion, or to remain placid and still in your approach to the variables in life that most wish to suck you into an engagement and cause you emotional duress. Anger has its place as an instrument of change, but it is equally capable of being just an instrument of destruction. It is all in how you opt to channel it.

It is the Lunar New Year. The year of the Tiger!!! It is a prosperous year, and life would appear to be going in the correct direction.

With that in mind, I leave you with a Tiger song to start off your Wednesday with a roar!!!

Xīnnián hǎo!! 新年好

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Written by Brian Weiner

When I was 5 years old, I discovered that the lemon tree in the backyard + dixie cups + water and sugar and I was in business. I have been hooked on that ever since. In 1979, I borrowed $14,000 to create a brand new product... photographic greeting cards with no text on the inside, called Paradise Photography. That was the start of The Illusion Factory. Since then, The Illusion Factory has been entrusted by all of the major studios and broadcasters with the advertising and marketing of over $7 billion in filmed, live, broadcast, gaming, AR, VR and regulated gaming forms of entertainment, generating more than $100 Billion in revenue and 265 awards for creativity and technology for our clients. When I took a break from film school at UCLA to move to Hawaii, my mother did not lecture me. Instead, she took 150 of her favorite aphorisms and in her beautiful calligraphy, wrote them artistically throughout a blank journal. That is the origin of the Lessons from the Mountain series. Since then, on my journeys to the top of a mountain to watch the sunrise, I have spent countless hours contemplating words of wisdom from the sages of all races, genders and political persuasions, constantly accumulating the thoughts to guide me on my life path. I hope you enjoy my books. Please let me know your thoughts, as I highly value your feedback!