Choose Your Friends Wisely

There comes a time in life when it’s time to let go of all the pointless drama and the people who create it and surround yourself with people who know how to live joyfully and make you laugh so hard you forget about the bad times and focus solely on the good.

Are you mindful of the nature of your friends, family, clients and associates?

Do you often engage with people who take pleasure in spreading gossip, negativity or languishing in the past? Or do you share your time with people who are mostly positive, supportive and creative? If you are surrounded by the former, I recommend weeding your personal garden of joy killers, complainers, controllers and drama queens.

If today is the last day of your life who do you want to spend it with?

What do you really gain by allowing people to hang around who are toxic, living in the past, disinterested in self growth … OR … whom have little interest in supporting you as you improve, grow and change?

A golden nugget of wisdom shared by many wise men and women directs us to surround ourselves with a “healthy and positive” peer group. Why? Because you are most like the people you spend your time with PERIOD.

It’s not surprising that on your journey of personal growth your inner light will illuminate personalities that no longer suit your way of living. Your personal development doesn’t mean that you write somebody off and become an arrogant person either.

If you are serious about positive change, you will naturally stop engaging people who have zero interest in changing their stagnant or negative patterns. You will begin attracting more like minded happy people - naturally.

You have the choice to surround yourself with…

• People who know how to use their heart….love is an ability
• People who make you laugh
• People who are kind
• People who can laugh at themselves
• People who are open minded
• People who are comfortable in their own skin
• People who are positive
• People who are interested in improving themselves
• People who are curious…..have the love of learning
• People who are in love with life
• People who marvel at the beauty of nature
• People who aren’t afraid of being loved
• People who are learning to love themselves

After all, life is just too short to be lived in and surrounded by an environment of doom and gloom.

“Tell me what company thou keepst, and I’ll tell thee what thou art.” Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

“Have no friends not equal to yourself.” Confucious (551-497 BC)

You Are What You Think

Thoughts are powerful. The more you examine your thoughts, the more you’ll realize this is the case. Thoughts are actually a form of energy. Don’t believe me? New science tells us that thinking a new thought creates a structure in your brain, a connection between neurons. Within your mind, you’re able to change reality at any moment right there in your grey matter.

Every time you think the same thoughts, you’ll reinforce the structures in your brain (known as neural networks) just like digging a groove in the sand by walking across it at the same place day after day.

Because your thoughts can change your physical world at any time, you might just want them to be positive whenever possible. Every day, we experience a far greater number of thoughts than we’re aware of, and unfortunately, many of them are negative and disempowering.

Having trouble believing me? Than I dare you to try an experiment. Make a point of noticing the quality of your thoughts today and the intensity of the emotions wrapped around them. If you want to replace your unproductive attitude with a productive one, you’ll have to pay attention to your thoughts and the emotions that strengthen or weaken them.

For example, if you insist to yourself, I’m happy that I’ll be meeting the love of my life this year, you might think that would help you attract him or her towards you. However, if you’re embellishing this particular statement with a negative thought such as I don’t really believe this; it’s an unrealistic goal, then you won’t be affirming your belief that you can achieve the goal. Instead, you’ll be feeling lack and insecurity. The results will not be what you’d hoped they would be. To manifest an aspiration or goal, you have to feel like you can accomplish anything!

You have to feel a powerful sense of abundance, enthusiasm, worthiness, and confidence. If saying “I’m happy I’m making an abundant amount of money this year!” makes you feel a greater sense of passion and prosperity, then use it as your affirmation instead.

Everyone is different. A declaration that makes someone feel unambiguously confident might make you feel unsure, and vice versa, so choose the one that works for you. You’ll find that if you attach enough powerful, positive emotions to your affirmations over a period of time, you too will start to believe them and belief is everything.

To fuel your beliefs with the proper emotions that support them, be aware of the language you’re using too. Thoughts such as I am making a million euros this year! might cause you to feel excited, rich, and full of possibilities. These words help you imagine a stack of cash in your wallet and a flood of checks coming in.

It doesn’t matter if all of this isn’t literally true at the moment, as long as the words, feelings, and images you create in your mind make you feel rich. Positive convictions will propel you toward your goals and give you the magnetic ability to attract what you desire if they’re accompanied by those wondrous, powerful, positive emotions.

“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create that fact.” William James

“The difference between can and cannot are only three letters, three letters that determine your life’s direction.” Unknown

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If you’d like to find out more about “the law of attraction” and how you can learn to think, speak and act in a way that helps you achieve your lifetime goals and aspirations than please feel free to reach out to me on info@inspireyourmind.com

If You Don’t Know Where you’re Going, You’ll End Up Somewhere Else.

As is traditional for this time of year, many of us are beginning to review our past year and to set goals and resolutions for the year ahead. I have created a wonderful tool for goal setting and for tracking progress towards goals, which contains a method for goal setting which commences by reviewing your current situation across different areas of your life. My method outlines a four step approach to achieving what you desire in your life. The process involves asking the right questions first, thinking and reflecting upon those answers, goal setting and finally the creation of your resolutions. If you’re an Inspiring Minds newsletter subscriber, please contact me on info@inspireyourmind.com and I will help you create your own personal plan at no charge. In order to get you started allow me to share a few key tips with you today.

To begin with I encourage you to ask some provocative questions to help you think about what is most important to you at this particular time in your life. With that objective in mind, these are your questions.

1. What are you most passionate about?

Passion is the force that sustains your interest, energy and enthusiasm, and allows you to perform at your peak on a sustained basis. The more passion you express in your professional and personal lives, the more rewarding and fulfilling your lives can be - and the more you can accomplish!

Ask yourself: “What am I most passionate about, both professionally and personally?” Grab a pen and paper, and make a list - brainstorm your passions! This simple activity fires your passions and imagination if you do it with heart. You might also find it useful to rank-order your list of passions. Which ones are most vitally important to you?

Next, ask: “To what extent do I express these passions in my day to day professional and personal life?” The more you can express and align with your passions in your day to day professional and personal activities, the more rewarding your life can be. Is there a way to express each of your most highly rated passions more in your life?

For example, if one of your passions was creative writing, could you spend some time each day (perhaps by waking up an hour earlier each morning) focused on creative writing - and hence fulfilling and developing this passion? You might not immediately leave your day job, but daily activity in your area of passion will leave you feeling empowered and creative at the beginning of each day, and who knows - may even develop into publishing short stories, a book, and perhaps develop into a new inspiring career. Alternatively, you may be able to bring your flair for creativity and writing into developing materials such as marketing copy in your work environment. Similarly, if your passion is people relationships and your job is primarily financial analysis, bringing more of a people focus component into your job can leave you feeling charged and empowered.

Getting clear about your passions is one of the most important activities you can undertake, as your passions can both inform the direction you choose and provide the emotional fuel to take you on the journey to fulfilling them.

2. What are your strengths, and which ones do you most like using?

Your strengths may include assets such as your educational qualifications, your financial position, your mastery of English, ownership of your house, and so forth. What is particularly useful is to be aware of your key skills you like using, as building on these is a powerful approach to realising your goals.

For example, does it make a difference if you are using the skill commercially for profit or with your friends because you care; with particular types of people such as perhaps professionals or perhaps the less well off; whether you perform this activity at the beginning of a project or after its completion; or whether the skill is applied in relation to nuclear physics, alternative sipitual paths, or mainstream economics.

3. Who Are You?

Each of us is a complex individual with many parts or aspects to whom we are. Spend some time at this time of year getting to know you. There are many tools for getting to know yourself, and some suggestions include:

Write an essay or story for yourself about who you are and who you want to be. Such an essay might cover where and how you grew up, the people and events and influences in your life that helped shape who you are, your values, commitments, aspirations, strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, style, and anything else that you may consider relevant. Talk about what makes you happy, your aspirations, regrets, beliefs. Be creative. Be honest. Let yourself give an answer that is different to yesterday or last month or last year - or feel free to write the same. Feel free to write something that might initially conflict with your values or other people’s expectations of you. Spend time with yourself. Go for long walks along the beach, or spend time in reflection and meditation.

Ask others. Ask other people in your life who they think you are. Get them to describe you. See yourself through others’ eyes. Is the ‘you’ they see the ‘you’ you think you are?

Challenge yourself. Put yourself in different situations - if you feel that your life has been rather boring , try something different this year - perhaps scuba diving, abseiling, snowboarding, debating, join a club, learn yoga, practice meditation, donate your time to charity, practice public speaking. Try anything to put yourself in a different situation, to let yourself see who you are in a different situation and circumstance.

The more you know and can say honestly about who you are and what makes you tick, the more you can effectively set goals that you can realise. For example, if you are reluctant to taking risk and value stability and certainty, then you might adopt a different approach towards your goals than someone who thrives on change. Knowing yourself gives you the power to choose paths that suit you perfectly.

These three questions are powerful and important at any time in our lives, and the more we know the answers to these the better the life choices we can make.

Don’t forget though that we are consistently growing and unfolding, and we CAN develop or discover new passions and strengths. Someone totally uninterested in reading or playing a musical instrument can discover a newfound delight in these activities, someone who was previously interested in global geopolitics might suddenly find the topic quite uninteresting. There are ebbs and flows in our lives as well as our passions and interests - and consequently checking in and asking ourselves what our strongest passions and most empowering strengths are on a regular basis can help us adjust and refocus our lives accordingly.

DO YOU KNOW OF SOMEONE THAT COULD USE A SHOT OF MOTIVATION?

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Food for Your Brain

Each week my yoga instructor starts the class by warning the new students that they may feel awkward and that they will be getting the most benefit from attending class, more so than the experienced members.

He explains that muscles need to be challenged with new and different movements all the time. If they get used to specific movements, growth diminishes. You need to constantly be changing your routine to reap the best benefits. Feeling awkward is a good sign that growth will follow.

Isn’t this a great metaphor for life? We need new challenges to grow, and we need to learn how to delight in our awkwardness, whether it involves intimate conversations or learning how to dance.

FACT: We have to train our brains the same way as the muscles in our legs, arms or back. The brain needs new challenges on a regular basis to increase mental capacity. It also needs to be taken care of just as we care for our body to ensure peak performance.

Here are a few tips on how to build a strong and healthy brain.

Avoid chronic stress. Although stressing a muscle will help it to grow, muscles also break down if chronically stressed. The same is true for the brain. Chronic stress comes more from everyday worries than from traumatic events. Yoga and meditation may help with focus and physical performance, but the only way to reduce chronic stress is to learn how to identify the source of negative feelings, then let go of what is not in your control and act on what is. Anybody can deplete stress levels and enhance their brain functions by better managing their worries. An experienced coach educated in emotional intelligence can help you become aware of your emotional states and how to shift them at will.

Balance your work-rest ratio. Body builders don’t work their muscles every day. Muscles need time to heal if they are to grow stronger. The same is true for the brain. If it is constantly working, the result will be frustration, anxiety and loss of concentration. What’s worse, when we feel a little tired, we usually fuel our bodies with coffee? Running on adrenalin only decreases mental capacity. Instead, you should take regular mental breaks. Walk the halls, go outside for a breath of fresh air, or call a friend or loved one. Many studies show that people that take frequent breaks can work fewer hours and get more done. A renewed and fresh brain works more efficiently. Besides, when you are doing something “mindless,” the brain has a chance to activate more pathways. That is why your best ideas come while taking a shower. And while you are on your break, please eat more protein and drink some water instead of sugar and caffeine.

Choose fun activities.The best activities to keep the brain at its peak involve other people. Social activities reduce the body’s level of stress hormones and mastering new skills boosts brainpower. Taking salsa dancing lessons or martial arts classes add more brain cell connections than doing crossword puzzles. Keeping track of more than one bingo card with a group of friends is better than reading alone. The best activities combine mental, social and physical elements.

Change emotional channels. A trainer once instructed me to switch to gratitude every time I was tempted to give into the pain of an exercise. If I was grateful for my legs working and my heart pumping, I could accomplish more than focusing on what hurt. The same is true in life. When we get frustrated, angry or disappointed, if we shift our emotions to gratitude, laughing at ourselves, or creating a challenge to master, the task is easier and solutions are more apparent. Even if you have to fake the emotion at first, your brain will benefit. Acting can produce the same physical effects as real emotions do for a while. Before you face a challenging situation, try to visualize how you want to feel and behave. Then breathe and make the vision real. In other words, if you want to increase your productivity and creativity go out and have more fun. Learn to do the things you avoided because you thought you would look silly. You will be smarter in many ways.

“A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes

An Empowered Workforce

If you love your job and workplace you don’t have to read this. If you aren’t happy, or you are a manager with troubled employees, please read this and pass it on to every other manager or leader you know.

This is not a brain tip. It is a rant. I simply cannot keep quiet any longer.
I have a confession to make. I have been training people in companies around the world for over 27 years now. I describe what I teach as sessions in leadership, communications and personal effectiveness. In truth, I mostly teach people how to cope. In other words my coaching and speaking is focused more on strategizing how to survive than on how to achieve.

During this economic downturn and times of chaotic change, this is only getting worse. I see managers using this excuse to continue to micromanaging, blaming and putting a lid on creative efforts. Isn’t it obvious that now is the time for creativity and revamping the old hierarchical cultures to make them smarter, faster, and stronger through open communications and participation?

Mostly what I teach is how to really see the people we work with…to hear them, understand them, acknowledge them and see their highest potential. From there, team building, leading, and collaborating are easier skills to implement.
Why do leaders who have read all the books, heard all the gurus speak, and attended all the seminars still manage by fear? They don’t include their employees in decision making, they don’t share information (good or bad) about the future, and they don’t trust people to learn from their mistakes and grow. Can we ever change this habitual behavior?

People don’t work well when their managers don’t trust and believe in them. When you take away their feeling of control over their lives and predictability about their future, they lose hope. Without hope, you will never get their best, creative effort. They will cope, survive, and try not to dwell in their fear.

Worst of all, most managers don’t work to develop their employees to be strong and autonomous. Rarely does a company pay money to develop their high achievers (I am thankfully working with a few who do). Most training for managers focuses on what to do with poor to average performers. What about developing the high-potentials? Shouldn’t a company focus their resources on their strengths?

It’s not all bad though…I do work with a few evolved progressive companies that recognize the world has become more networked, collaborative and accessible. They are easing their hierarchies, opening communication and engaging everyone to co-create. They teach their managers coaching as a leadership style. They engage their employees by caring, not by fear.

 

“If you wish others to believe in you, you must first convince them that you believe in them.”

Harvey Mackey

“A great leader’s courage to fulfill his/her vision comes from passion, not position.”

John Maxwell

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We must never lose faith in what we do especially if the intentions are good. I still have hope that collectively we can change our lives and our world to the better, if only we took a genuine interest in it.

Do drop me a note on info@inspireyourmind.com if you still have hope, too. I would love to hear about your experiences in your personal lives or your workplace. Better still pass this newsletter on. I would love to further the conversation, not about what needs to happen, but how we’re going to make it happen.

There is something perverse about wanting more than enough. When we have more, it is never enough. It is always somewhere out there, just out of reach. The more we acquire, the more elusive enough becomes. – Author: Unknown

Why Don’t You Live a Little?

This topic seems to arise in my on-line conversations with clients a lot recently. The psychological sciences behind it are probably too complicated to discuss now, but just to put it simply, when are you going to learn how to ‘live a little?

Think about it for a minute. From the day you’re born you’re given objectives, tasks, things you have to go and get done in order to be able to have that life you’ve always wanted. In fact, there’s always one more thing to do, one more step that needs to be taken until everything falls in its place and you’ll be free to live the life you imagined. I know this is not the case with everyone, but for the average person this is exactly the kind of life we are currently living.

You start school, you always have some test or exam coming up and you need to ace it in order to get to the best secondary school, college or university. Then you will be ‘free’. Not!
Once university starts; you party and have a few laughs for a few years but you still realize the importance of being there. So once again you try to ace your exams, to get your degree. After all that’s what you’re there for, a degree. Why? Because without that degree you won’t be able to get that job you wish for, so that you can make enough money to live the life you’ve always wanted. You study hard, thinking that after your degree you’ll get that perfect job and the life you’ve been waiting for.

You get that degree, and now you need a job, you look for the job. Your thought process remains the same. ‘Let me nail this position’! ‘Please, then I can live happily ever after with my family, once I actually get the job’.

What’s important to understand at this stage in your life is this obsessive pattern that has been developing and reinforcing itself for years. Human nature (Or behaviour? Could it be possible that this ‘disease’ is forced upon us by society?) has reached a critical stage in the world today and believes that we never have enough of anything. How could a farmer live a happy life with a simple plot of land a few life stock and lives in a one room home, yet someone with a luxurious home, car, boat and trophy wife and kids never gains fulfilment.

Now that you have ‘that’ job, your life should be in order, or so it seems. Next up, you’re striving for that promotion, to make that extra money, to get that better car, the bigger house, the cooler furniture and in the meantime life continues to pass you by.

What people fail to see is that happiness cannot be achieved by these means, since real happiness relies on the acceptance of where you are and what you have. Ultimately more possessions become your main and only goal. You seek to make your life better by filling it with more expensive cars, clothes, jewellery, all in honour of your vain attempt to satisfy your ego, so that you can ‘start living that life’, that life you’re always wanted.

The rest speaks for itself, until you’re six feet under. I have tried to use my website as a vehicle to continue to raise awareness about the important things in life. However, you must try to open your eyes and see just how valuable this knowledge that I choose to share with you is. Since most of us never really live our moments consciously, we never really experience and appreciate the happiness that they bring. Therefore, this absence of happiness we are blind to see creates a huge empty hole within us which pushes us to need and seek bigger, better and more beautiful things in order to try to fill that void. This ill-fated mission to gain happiness pushes us into the realm of sub-conscious living; the type of living which never gives us pleasure with life’s simple gifts and forces us to seek something we will never find.

So for one last time, I ask all you readers, when are you going to start living your lives? When you graduate? When you get that promotion or start your new business? When you acquire that new BMW? When you own your own boat or win that lottery?

Why don’t you do our world and yourself a very big favour? Stop whatever you’re doing right now, go outside, take a deep breath and reflect a little on what it’s going to take to stop you from running yourself into the ground. Will there be a better time than this to start living? Tomorrow morning, take the day off and go take a walk at the beach or in the countryside. Give a random person a hug, a compliment or a simple smile. Give some quality time to a loved one. Go right ahead, do something extraordinary for a change. Go sky diving, learn to scuba, paint, cook, sing or play a musical instrument. Take the time to enrich your lives with more laughter, joy, love and compassion.

So for one more time let me ask you, when are you going to start living your life? When you win that lottery, or when you’re finished reading this newsletter.

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, which prevents us from living freely and nobly. - Author: Thoreau

Turning Problems into Potential

How do you respond to the problems that continually surface in your life? If you’re like most people, you feel victimized. You will probably start feeling sorry for yourself; get angry, impatient, blocked and depressed. Why do we resolve to limiting addictions in order to avoid the pain these problems bring us? Why do we consistently choose to believe that problems spoil our life?
For those of us on a self-development path, problems and hurdles are precious gifts that open the door to deeper self-knowledge. Through them, we can identify and release the unconscious fears and negative beliefs that hold us back from higher consciousness.

So what are problems or blocks? From my perspective, they block the natural flow of energy through our being, creating stress and pain. Operating in the mental, emotional and physical realms, they indicate that something within us is out of alignment with the true nature of who we really are - our spiritual nature. Problems involve two different aspects of our human make-up:

• Much of our behaviour is governed by our subconscious mind according to our beliefs and habitual patterns and reactions. Unfortunately, we are generally unconscious of the beliefs that sabotage the best intentions of our conscious mind.
• We also have both a personality governed by our ego and a higher mind or more appropriately called – our soul. I see the soul as a unique expression of a life that bridges our individual physical being with a higher intelligence, whatever you understand that to be. As human beings, we all have some understanding of our personalities. Unfortunately most of us, though, have a limited awareness of our souls.

From the spiritual perspective, blocks offer our best and perhaps our only path to growth. Paradoxically, we can only get to the positive through the negative. Like it or not, pain gets our attention. Pain also challenges the ego’s perception that it is in complete control of life. If we want to be rid of the pain, we must do the work that leads us to greater consciousness.

So please learn to understand that there are great blessings in problems. Our troubles come to us for good reasons — to invite us to connect with our souls and to learn more about who we really are. You will be wise to accept the invitation. Should you choose to continue to deny the pain and strive to avoid, or numb it, the problems will keep on coming; they will also grow in strength and become even more painful. Our lives change when we become conscious that every experience of resistance and fear has meaning and purpose. Working purposefully through our problems helps us become whole, healthy and ultimately happy. Through them, we awaken to and can genuinely express new and more powerful aspects of ourselves.

"In school you get the lesson and then take the test … In life you take the test and then get the lesson." - Author: unknown

"The things which hurt, instruct." – Author: Benjamin Franklin

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For other resources on learning how to grow through your challenges or living a more fulfilled life please log on to our award winning website at inspireyourmind.com. You are also welcome to continue to send in your comments, questions and/or suggestions. I am genuinely interested in what you have to say and would appreciate it if you could continue to pass this knowledge forward and help expand our “Inspiring Minds” network by recommending this newsletter to friends and loved ones. Simply log on to inspireyourmind.com and fill in their details.

Courage grows by daring, fear by holding back

It is important to occasionally reflect on the principles of life. If we remember that the way we respond to fearful situations determines whether we become timid individuals or models of strength, we would choose our actions more carefully. Whenever we are struck by fear, we are standing at a fork in the road. One branch of the road leads to cowardice, the other to courage. One fork leads to our desires and dreams, the other to disappointment and despair.

Fear is a beacon, pointing the way to a new opportunity. It is an invitation to stretch ourselves and experience more of our potential. If we’re not watchful and succumb to fear, it will inhibit our growth. Growth is synonymous with change. How can we make progress by standing still? Yet, many of us resist change, preferring to remain in our comfort zone.
Imagine a developing butterfly refusing to leave its chrysalis (cocoon). Unless it’s willing to spend a great deal of energy to break free, it will not reach its potential and become a butterfly. But for those that make the effort, the rewards are great. The exhilaration of flight! What about us? Are we willing to break through our chrysalis (comfort zone)? If we want to soar badly enough, we will make the effort.

Fear is not to be shunned, but embraced, for it offers benefits. It protects us from harm by alerting us of danger. It is because of fear that we don’t race across a street with heavy traffic. It helps to focus our attention, so if we have to cross a busy street, we will be alert and cross with caution. Whenever we conquer our fear, we are exhilarated. That is fear’s gift to us. That’s why there are people who love skydiving or bungee jumping. Fear can also be a powerful motivator. For example, if a lazy employee is told to start performing or risk getting fired, he or she may make a dramatic turnaround and become a valuable member of the team. To be afraid of what friends think of you is demeaning. But to be afraid of not acting up to standards that you hold for yourself is crippling.

As we have seen, fear should be understood as a positive force. Any negativity associated with it has no basis in reality; it is merely a mirage, a product of our mind. Harmful fear, then, can be called False Evidence Appearing Real (F.E.A.R.). True, we may have to experience some discomfort to reach our goal, but we mustn’t let that stop us. After all, he who fears to suffer, suffers from fear, and advances not. The fear of death casts a dark cloud on the ambitions of some. Why make an effort when life is so short, they argue. However, instead of being afraid my life will end, shouldn’t I be afraid it will not begin? The truth is, that unless I take immediate action and pursue my goals, surely life will not even begin.
Here are some quotes that I would like to share with you all today, they were spoken by some very influential people of out times. If you are the kind of person that strives to take control of your destiny and master your fears then these inspiring words will make your life a little easier on your pursuit to achieving your dreams and aspirations. Enjoy!

Don Miguel Ruiz: “Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”

Dorothy Thompson: “The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness.”

Eleanor Roosevelt: “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”

Gertrude Stein: “Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very frightening.”

Hannah Arendt: “Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival.”

Henry James: “Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

Marianne Williamson: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.”

Rosa Parks: “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.”

William Allen White: “I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.”

Robert Louis Stevenson: “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.”

Marie Curie: “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”

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For other resources on finding and developing your life purpose and learning to embrace change, please feel free to log on to my award winning website on inspireyourmind.com. You are also welcome to continue to send in your comments, questions and/or suggestions. I am genuinely interested in what you have to say and would appreciate it if you could continue to pass this knowledge forward and help expand our “Inspiring Minds” network by recommending this newsletter to friends and loved ones. Simply log on to inspireyourmind.com and fill in their details.

Quote

Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’
George Bernard Shaw

2009. The Year of Many Changes

As we put the holidays behind us and dig ourselves out from underneath all of the holiday huppala, many of us engage in a ritual that any visiting alien might be puzzled by — New Year’s resolutions. Why do humans pick a single point in time each year to try and change certain things in their life, mostly behaviours and attitudes to help improve their lives, careers and relationships and make resolutions about them, and then proceed to fail at them within a three week period? Which brings us to right about now?

So, from a psychological perspective, it might be interesting to ask what exactly determines how many goals people set and how successful they are.

Research consistently finds that people who believe that self-control is something dynamic, changing and unlimited tend to set more resolutions. They believe it is possible if only they can put their minds to the task.

On the other hand people who believe that we all are born with a limited, set amount of self-control that one cannot change and who also have little belief in their own capabilities to carry out their own goals naturally do worse on obtaining their New Year’s resolution goals.

Basically, individuals with high self-esteem attribute failure to insufficient effort, while individuals with low self-esteem attribute failure to their own inability to cope. Higher self-esteem is generally correlated with a greater likelihood of achieving one’s goals.

What all of this means is that you’ll do better on your New Year’s goals if you believe that self-control is indeed an unlimited resource that we all have access to and can leverage with our resolutions. The more you believe in your own capabilities — high self-esteem — the more likely you will succeed as well. It also seems to help to set more goals, because you will be more likely to succeed at them if you do. While people with low self-esteem set fewer goals and always seem to go into the exercise with the self-fulfilling expectation of failing.

Over and above the self-confidence and high self-esteem you’re going to have to build the actual skills to make the changes you’re proposing for your life. For instance, it’s all fine and well to say you want to quit smoking. But do you really have any idea on how to do so? Researching the most effective methods for quitting ahead of time predicts better success in actually achieving your goal and of course, being ready to change mentally also helps. If you don’t want to change and so only make a half-hearted resolution to do so, don’t be surprised by your amazing lack of success.

So are you ready to give up on this year’s resolutions once again or are you going to give them another try? If you are ready to take them for another spin and want to have more success, do make sure you follow the following tips.

• Understand that you do not need to wait until the New Year to set some goals and/or aspirations for yourself. Turn everyday into an opportunity to change, grow, learn and evolve.
• Make a strong initial commitment to make a change.
• Have coping strategies to deal with problems that will come up.
• Keep track of your progress. The more monitoring you do and feedback you get, the better you will do.

Should you want more tips and ideas on how to be successful in coping with your challenges in life simply write to me on info@inspireyourmind.com and I will guide you on how to welcome change in your life.

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“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
Alexander Graham Bell

You Think Therefore You Change

Every time we think, we change. We change the electrical impulses in our brain and we change the probability of what our next thought will be. So every thought we have, every dream we have, every fear we have, every emotional reaction we have changes the probability of what our next thoughts, emotions and reactions will be.

In other words we live in the playground of change for our entire lives, and the moment to moment choice that we have is whether we are going to enjoy the ride or whether we are going to get overwhelmed. It really is that simple. Problem is that the majority of people still believe that they have little to no control over the impact these changes have on us and especially our attitude towards them. What we don’t understand is that by learning to embrace change and flow with it we can have a direct influence all the things that are going to determine our future and also the future of the people around us.

In a sense we all have to learn to become surfers and learn to ride the giant waves of changes that are upon us. The next few years we will all be facing some massive changes to the way we think, behave and live. Being prepared therefore to learn to perceive the changes, and then finding ways to flow with them and compliment them will, in my opinion, become the most critical skills we can ever learn during this particular time. (Continued below)

Embracing Change

As a surfer you learn to monitor the changes in the power and the rhythms of the waves. Years of experience and determination and learning on smaller waves increase experience and the hunger to ride a giant wave.

First you need the motivation to learn to surf – to battle out to sea, pushing against the power and weight of the waves against your body. The sea spray entering your mouth and your nostrils adds to the tension and the anticipation as you watch and FEEL the changing rhythm of the ocean – waiting for the rush of energy before the wave that determines whether or not it is time for you to take it.

If you get the timing right, as a giant wave approaches you will ensure that the oncoming power-source of energy – which could grow to become 20 meters high and dwarf you. Your aim will be to ride the power of the wave and become a part of it. If you get it right, it will glide you along, and you will travel for miles, literally riding the energy of that wave to your total enjoyment, advantage and ecstasy.

If however you get the timing wrong, if you end up on top of the wave, or just beneath its crest, instead of riding the positive energy of the wave you will experience its negative power. The wave will break. The wave will break on you – and below you there will be space, sand or rocks. All the energy of that wave, that same wave, carrying you, on the surfboard, instead of transporting you to new heights, will smash you into the ground. You will have nowhere to go other then down. You will be bruised and grazed – and your ego severely dented.

The only difference between these two outcomes is that one of you went with the energy of the oncoming wave, literally with the flow of the wave and became a part of it. The other one didn’t. The difference in the outcome is absolute.

(Continued) Our relationship with life-changes is similar. Everything has its moment. If we miss that moment, then we may wander aimlessly for a while, or even risk being thrown aside by life. Just as the wave keeps grows and builds it’s strength and power for hundreds of miles, so, too, you build and progress through knowledge. If you learn how to ride these waves of change, learn how to use your self-belief and energy to go consciously with the flow of change, then you will be advantaged. If you don’t, change has the capacity to be highly destructive, and the adjustment can be a much longer and harder learning curve.

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“What we resist persists.”
The Dalai Lama

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For other resources on finding and developing your life purpose and learning to embrace change, please feel free to log on to my award winning website on inspireyourmind.com. You are also welcome to continue to send in your comments, questions and/or suggestions. I am genuinely interested in what you have to say and would appreciate it if you could continue to pass this knowledge forward and help expand our “Inspiring Minds” network by recommending this newsletter to friends and loved ones. Simply log on to inspireyourmind.com and fill in their details.

Allow me to take this opportunity to welcome all the new members to my site. I am so glad that you have embraced my initiative and joined the hundreds of other open minded people from every corner of the world. It is a good feeling to be doing something so worthwhile and so widely appreciated and I thank you wholeheartedly for acknowledging my work.

May I also remind you that it’s your calling as much as it is mine to continue to share the useful and inspirational knowledge I share with you. With such knowledge we have the power to change the world. More importantly, within this knowledge that I share with you, find your own truth and allow it to guide you through this journey called life.

It is also important to point out that I am not a spiritual guru of any kind; I am just a regular guy who would like to continue to plant the seed of love and hope into people’s hearts, which in turn, will grow to self-awareness and truth.

I have finally understood that I am finally doing what I am meant to do and it brings me great joy, so once again thank you for your appreciation and feedback. It is an exciting time to be living, for the search for truth has accelerated more and more in the last few years for so many of us and we are now fast approaching a massive changing point. A new time era is now being born, an incredibly positive one too. But, to get through it we will need to be strong, brave, hopeful, positive, open-minded and above all open-hearted. For you will always find the biggest truths deep within your heart.

Yes, it is time to start challenging your old beliefs, because now is the time to start knowing and not believing

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Ultimately, a true teacher cannot teach you anything, but can only remind you of what, on some level, you already know.

Happiness is Contagious

It is not very often that networks like CNN report on something inspirational and hopeful, however since it did happen I felt it was only fair to share it with you.

New research has shown that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. That means when you feel happy, a friend of a friend of a friend has a slightly higher likelihood of feeling happy too.

The lesson is that taking control of your own happiness can positively affect others, says James Fowler, co-author of the study and professor of political science at the University of California in San Diego.

"We get this chain reaction in happiness that I think increases the stakes in terms of us trying to shape our own moods to make sure we have a positive impact on people we know and love," he said.

Sadness also spreads in a network, but not as quickly, the researchers found. Each happy friend increases your own chance of being happy by 9 percent, whereas each unhappy friend decreases it by 7 percent. This reflects the total effect of all social contacts.

When framing the question differently, the study found that you are 15 percent more likely to be happy if a direct connection is happy, 10 percent if the friend of a friend is happy, and 6 percent if it’s a friend of a friend of a friend.

Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of "Stumbling on Happiness," called the study "a stunning paper by two of the most respected scientists in the field" in a statement he e-mailed to CNN.

"We’ve known for some time that social relationships are the best predictor of human happiness, and this paper shows that the effect is much more powerful than anyone realized," Gilbert said. "It is sometimes said that you can’t be happier than your least happy child. It is truly amazing to discover that when you replace the word ‘child’ with ‘best friend’s neighbor’s uncle,’ the sentence is still true."

If you are the hub of a large network of people — that is, if you have a lot of connected friends or a wide social circle — you are more likely to become happy, the study found. But the reverse is not true.
"You might only have one friend or two friends or something like that, and if you become happy, you’re not going to try to get more friends. You’re probably going to stick with what worked in the first place," Fowler said.

It’s not just happiness that spreads in a social network. Fowler and Christakis have also looked at trends in cigarette smoking and obesity using the parts of the heart study network.

They found that when someone quits, a friend’s likelihood of quitting smoking was 36 percent. Moreover, clusters of people who may not know one another gave up smoking around the same time, the authors showed in a New England Journal of Medicine article in May.

Social ties also affect obesity. A person’s likelihood of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given time period, Fowler and Christakis showed in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in July 2007.

And, like happiness, both smoking behaviour and obesity seem to spread within three degrees of separation in a social network, Fowler said. Beyond three, things get fuzzier.

"Eventually you get out far enough in the social network that you’re competing with all these other cascades of happiness and unhappiness that are sort of battling it out," he said. "Happiness on average wins, but once you get far enough away from someone in a social network, it’s not possible to detect their effect anymore.

Now!Do You Really Want to Be Happy?

Like everything else in life, you have to earn your happiness, stop waiting for it to fall out of the sky because you deserve it. The fact that anyone would cling to unhappiness as fiercely as others cling to happiness is baffling until you begin to learn to look more closely at what you’re doing.

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Please feel free to continue sending in your comments, questions and/or suggestions. I am genuinely interested in what you have to say and would appreciate it if you could continue to pass this knowledge forward and help expand our “Inspiring Minds” network by recommending this newsletter to friends and loved ones. Simply click here to fill in their details.

The level of your success in your career, finances, mental and physical well-being or love depends on this one thing alone - you must make a stronger commitment to yourself. This simply means that by making a stronger commitment to yourself you are telling your subconscious that you want to live your truth.

The most common question I’m asked by my online life-coaching members is:
“How can I stay motivated until I get what I desire in life?”

The answer to this question is not as complicated as many of you would have believed. All I tell them is to develop the discipline to dedicate at least 20 minutes of each day to improve the quality of their lives. Once they commit to doing this, they will become stunned by their sustained motivation and renewed zest for life.

As simple as this technique may sound, the majority of people throughout the world simply go through life with no sense of direction and a complete lack of passion for life. They do not realise that yet another week will be over soon and that if they continue to do things as they did last week, this week will be no better or happier for them than last week. The time to grow and improve is NOW!

Goals are mysterious things too - they spring into our minds motivating us to succeed, fuel fires of fantasy about success and new found happiness, inspire almost obsessive effort to move our lives forward, and then - suddenly the fire goes out. What once motivated you to succeed, drove you to get up early and work late, now weighs in your mind as a failure. Don’t despair. The aftermath of these best intentions often feels like failure, here are a few simple tips you can use every day, they will provide you with the necessary motivation to carry you through until your goal’s completion. However, it is going to take a little dedication from your end. Remember, the greatest athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians, scholars and scientists emerge only after they have dedicated at least three to five hours a day for a decade mastering their chosen field. Now, all I’m asking you to invest is 20 minutes of each day to yourselves.

Tip 1: Convince Yourself

Repeat your goal to yourself again, and again throughout the day. Simple statements repeated aloud often can trigger the subconscious into action. Choose your goal, and pick strong words that inspire you. Say them aloud, pay attention to what the words mean. If your goal is to practice the piano, say aloud "I will practice the piano and make beautiful music!" or "I will make my piano sing!" Each statement rephrases the initial goal, but does so in a way that refreshes and revitalizes the initial excitement of your goal.

Tip 2: Tell a Good Friend

Talk openly about why you want to pursue your goal in the first place, and what you hope to achieve. Talking with someone about possible outcomes and the steps along the way can make the goal more realistic in your mind. Each time you talk to someone, the goal becomes less of a secret desire, and more of a path you have chosen that your friends can encourage you on.

Tip 3: Just Do It!

There are mornings when we all hate getting out of bed, but hitting the snooze button on your alarm once more will not get anything done any earlier, or see you to success.
Feelings are not facts, but they can catch up to the facts in time - doing what you know you ought to be doing NOW will eventually bring you a feeling of satisfaction as well as relief.

Tip 4: Reward Yourself!

When you complete a step in your overall plan, reward yourself. Little rewards along the way can make the overall job seem more attainable. Rewards do not have to be overly expensive to provide a boost. Allow yourself a night off every time you are proactive towards your goal, or treat yourself to a movie or a night out once you have completed and accomplished a major task. The goal is important, but how you choose to do it can be where the fun is. As you think about what areas of your life you wish to succeed in, remind yourself how capable you are repeatedly. Every little step you take towards your goal will continue to reinforce this belief. However, your movement must be focused in only one direction, forward!
Goals are meant to stretch us and push into places we would not ordinarily go. Let this journey help you grow and evolve as an individual. Recognize that, although you will not always feel the same level of motivation, an unwavering commitment can make all the difference here and you can stay motivated to succeed. You already know what procrastination and low motivation is costing you. And you know deep down that nothing is going to change for the better until you learn how to take consistent and sustained forward action towards your goal.

Tip 5. Love Yourself a Little.

When it comes to motivating yourself to be a better person, to do better at work or to create a happier relationship you need to understand the importance of taking control of your self-talk. You really need to know how to motivate yourself through thick and thin. Do you ever pay attention to the thoughts inside your mind? Do you ever notice the way in which you talk to yourself? Now be honest! Is it true that you sometimes insult yourself, curse yourself and say horrible things about your abilities? If you spoke
like this regularly to the people you care about they would probably leave and never talk to you again. There is simply no excuse for treating yourself so badly. Start to talk to yourself the way you would talk to someone you deeply love. Be respectful, patient and understanding. Be slow to anger, quick to praise and be grateful for the opportunity to listen. Therefore remember to be on your best behaviour whenever you talk to yourself and you will find that you treat other people better as well. This in turn will cause people to respond more positively to whatever you say. These very people will be more inclined to help you get what you want.

Tip 6. Turn Up the Passion

Very often we go through our day with an internal dialogue buzzing away in the background. We mutter to ourselves about what we need to do without feeling particularly inspired to do anything other than what we have to do. This is not an effective strategy for self-motivation! What you need to do instead is to turn up the volume, inject some passion into your words and talk to yourself with enthusiasm. You would not have much luck motivating someone else to take action without putting some energy into your words. You need to do the same to motivate yourself and must learn how to be motivated at a moments notice! So, the next time you want to motivate yourself to do something - talk to yourself the same way you would if someone was standing before you waiting to be inspired. Speak loudly with passion and excitement either aloud or to yourself inside your head. The more energy you put into it the easier it will be to light the fire inside you that sparks you into action.

Tip 6. Know How to Feel Good

No matter how focused, positive and hard working you are there will still be days when nothing seems to go your way. It is on days like this that you must take charge of your brain and take control of your self talk. You need a back catalogue of memories you can replay to make yourself feel good. Music does it for me. I have so many songs I love to hear that I just pick one out and listen to it in my mind. In a moment I can listen to sounds that make me feel fantastic simply by choosing to. This is the secret to knowing how to be motivated in a way that works for you. One other way you can break the pattern of negative thinking is to play happy memories of people telling you how much they value and appreciate you. Hear them saying what a difference you are making and soak up those wonderful feelings of appreciation. Your motivation will soar and getting more done each day will just get easier and easier with eager people lining up to help you.

It really is your choice as to how you run your brain. Choose to feel great and your communication with yourself and the outside world will become remarkable. Use these tips repeatedly on a day-by-day basis and you will succeed in taking full control of your life, begin to feel secure and at peace like never before. I guarantee it!

A Passion for Life
Whatever your goals and aspirations may be, the key to success in life is the way you live it. You may not have a choice about exactly how things happen but you do have a choice about the way you respond to what happens.

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Please feel free to continue sending in your comments, questions and/or suggestions. I am genuinely interested in what you have to say and would appreciate it if you could continue to pass this knowledge forward and help expand our “Inspiring Minds” network by recommending this newsletter to friends and loved ones. Simply click here.

“You may control a mad elephant; You may shut the mouth of the bear and the tiger; Ride the lion and play with the cobra; By alchemy you may earn your livelihood; You may wander through the universe incognito; Make vassals of the gods; be ever youthful; You may walk on water and live in fire: But control of the mind is better and more difficult.” Thayumanavar

If controlling your thoughts is the one success that brings all other success, then why keep trying to find success in any other way? Learn how to properly focus and concentrate your mind to attract what you imagine is best and push aside all the barriers to having the life you have always imagined.

Maybe it’s Time to Wake Up!

I’m sure we can all agree that no intelligent, conscious man or woman would ever intentionally hurt him- or herself. No one would choose to ache. Yet the fact remains that all of us do hurt ourselves every day with bursts of anger or fits of depression or anxiety. Even at the simplest level, there can be no doubt: fear and worry take an immeasurable toll on our health and well-being. So, then, knowing intelligent people would never intentionally hurt themselves, but also admitting that we do just that one way or another, almost every day, how do we reconcile this contradiction? There is only one possible conclusion that we can draw from these facts, as startling as it may seem at first glimpse.

We must have been unconscious while thinking that we were awake! In other words, during those times of self-betrayal when we are hurting others or ourselves with negative inner states — even though our eyes were open and all kinds of sensations were coursing through us — we must have been asleep to what we were doing. We could not act against ourselves otherwise. Somehow we have become separated from the real intelligence within us that knows better than to punish itself. There is never, I repeat, never any intelligent reason to feel bad. If you will only let these truthful ideas prove this astonishing fact to you, one day this new understanding will go before you and defeat all that has been defeating you.

Now comes an important moment in our self-questioning. This is what we have been working toward. We are about to win the prize that always follows when we persist with our inner lessons. If real intelligence is incapable of hurting itself, then how can we call any thinking that leads to a stressful state intelligent? Obviously we can no longer continue to call such thinking intelligent unless we want to go on sinking from this present level of thinking.

Let’s review briefly. Intelligence does not cause itself to suffer. Yet, as proven, we suffer. This can only mean that a counterfeit intelligence has been passed off on us and its thinking accepted as our very own. There is only one way that such a sinister switch could take place within us and go undetected. During those all-too-familiar worry-packed moments, we are asleep to ourselves. In this strange psychic slumber we only dream we are awake, so can you see the solution to this sorry state? Since unawareness of ourselves is the only problem, then awareness is the only answer. A sting operation can only work as long as the victim believes that one of the players who is secretly in on the sting is trying to help him.

Looking For the Good in Others – a short story

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After 2 years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream “I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.”

The old woman smiled, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.”

“For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.

You’ve just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.

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Albert Einstein once said that there are two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Which life are you living?

Have you watched the news lately? Have you really watched the news? Turn on your TV, read the headlines….the world is in big trouble.

Having said that, the people who know me know that I am eternal optimist and I sincerely believe that people in general have had enough of this chaos. They’ have had enough violence, the terror and the killing. They have had enough of the quarrelling and fighting between themselves. They are finally beginning to turn off the news, ignore the articles on violence and terror and endless suffering.

They’ have had enough of their own lives not working, of seeing their relationships their families, their relationships fall apart, of watching their children suffer, of having their own dreams delusive and disappear in front of their very eyes.

They have had enough of everything being such a struggle in their lives, with every day filling itself with adversity and difficulty. They have had enough of consistently pushing themselves against the wind.

They are finally beginning to lose patience with themselves and this twisted world that we have created and saying, “There has to be a better way.”
I believe that this is cause for celebration and hope because people are finally beginning to realise that they do have a choice.

They have a choice in the life they are creating and they have a choice in how they are experiencing this life they are now living. They have finally discovered that the answers, the knowledge and the tools are out there for us to use, in fact they have been around for centuries but we are finally beginning to appreciate and acknowledge them.

95% of what we know about the capabilities of the human brain has been learnt in the past 25 years. Our schools, universities, and companies are only beginning to apply this emerging understanding of human potential.

Our civilization stands at the brink of its greatest adventure and its most extraordinary achievement. For those of that believe I am being a bit over-dramatic here, just wait a few years and you will see. You can choose to be a part of this renaissance or you may not. The choice is yours, it always is!.

We need to learn how to think differently, all that is necessary is that you open your mind. For if we do not listen to this wisdom now, we may not have many more chances to fix what we have already broken. We are at the edge you see. We have gone so far as we can go in the direction we have been taking. We need now to change our thinking if we wish to preserve lift as we know it.

Each of us cannot afford more arrogance, anger and indifference. We have found a way to pack the end of the world in a briefcase, to hurt each other in immeasurable ways. We have decided that to have domination over each other means to destroy each other – and then to pretend that we don’t know what we are doing it. We have chosen to allow 20% of the world to receive 80% of the wealth, and we call this the good life.

We are, in short confused. Yet there is a way out of this confusion, and it is through learning new knowledge, to learn how to do the same things differently, with more compassion, with more consciousness. Mother Teresa once said; “ Let everyone sweep in front of their door and the whole world will be clean.” 

If you’d like to know more on what you can do to be more positive in your life and develop a more inspired approach at home with your family, your workplace, your school or your community please send me an e-mail on info@inspireyourmind.com or simply respond to this blog.