ActionPlan For BlazingSuccess: Defining Your Goals

The goal is a concise, measurable result that you want to produce at a determinable time in the future. Your goals are the stepping-stones toward the materialization of your dreams, the second critical element in the blueprint of your life.

Goals are experiences you have not yet seized, places you have not yet been, people you have not met, a level of income you have not achieved, a type of relationship you are not now enjoying, or having something you don’t currently own. Like your dreams, there is no limit to the number of goals you can set other than the limits of your imagination. And although goals identify what you intend to achieve in the future, they are always set and worked on in the present.

A study of university business school graduates who had been out of school for ten years was conducted to determine how they were progressing toward their goals. Amazingly, 83 percent of the graduates had set no goals at all. This 83 percent reported that they were working hard and staying busy but had no specific future plans. Another 14 percent had goals, but their goals were mental, not written. However, this 14 percent was earning on the average three times the income of those who had no goals at all. Only 3 percent of the entire graduate group had written goals. That 3 percent was earning a whopping ten times what those with no goals were earning.

The message is clear: goals, particularly written goals, make the difference in your overall level of accomplishment. Among the business school graduates in the study, the short time they spent establishing clear, written goals made a dramatic difference in their income levels.

Establishing goals has a positive impact on your life. But if what you hope to achieve in life is based on your expectations, rather than on working to reach established goals, you are setting yourself up for the possibility of disappointment. Expectations have to do with how you believe other people should behave, and how the world should bend at your command. Your expectations may result in a large amount of grief, whereas established goals will result in a large amount of satisfaction and success.

The superlative choice is clear: develop your goals, drop your expectations. It is a mistake to expect that you will accomplish any goal because you deserve it or because there is something in your past that entitles you to it. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as “deserve.” You end up achieving in life because of planning and control, not because you have “paid your dues”.

Among the different people I’d met years ago was a man whose name was Gideon. Today, as I sat quietly on the porch gazing at the trees in the backyard, he came to my mind once more. Gideon was a very special person, indeed. I first met him in a parking lot not far from the Big City where I used to live. Together we shared some special adventures and through him I was introduced to some of the most exhilarating experiences of my life.

I had often wondered what became of him. Through the traumatic and trying times of the recent past, I always hoped he would appear again, sharing more secrets of the universe, as he had done long ago. Both he and his colleague, Marla, had been a comfort during my times of financial difficulties, but it had been a long time since I’d seen either one. The last time we met was somewhat like a dream where Gideon, Marla and I attended a party with some noted guests.

Time and distance take their toll on memory. I could vaguely recall mingling with the guests, all the while listening to their ideas about life on Earth, God, the Universe and individual purpose. But that was a long time ago, and so many changes had occurred in my life since then. No longer did I share the company of my wife of many years. My children were growing up, and it seemed that Gideon and Marla dwelled in another time and space far, far away. Yet, there was a part of me that knew I would meet them again one day.

Days dragged slowly into weeks, and weeks into months. The emptiness that enveloped my life seemed to precipitate inertia. My only desire was to do nothing but sit and stare blankly. There are many things we know intellectually but do not believe in our hearts. What would it be like, I wondered, if Mardai appeared to me and told me how she was and what she was doing?

To read the rest of the story visit http://www.spiritual-simplicity.com

The Power of Love

All of us – young or old, poor or rich, salt of the earth or intellectual, battling grave illness or enjoying phenomenal health – all of us want the same things in our lives. We must take care of our survival needs by providing shelter from the elements, food and sustenance for our bodies, and protection from dangers. Because we are social in nature, we need to connect with others in various ways. We need to belong, to be part of something larger than ourselves. Most of all we need love, and the more there is in our lives to enjoy, the better off we are in all ways.

In a very real sense, love is what powers the universe. Love is behind the benevolence of the creator(s) in our stories about where we came from. Love is the one uplifting force that empowers us and allows our consciousness to grow. Our culture recognizes and honors the power of love in thousands of ways, each with endless permutations:

Nothing stands in the way of a mother’s love for her children
Spiritual love is the highest power of all
Because of love, I am made whole
Love me, love my (parrot, car, crooked smile, kids, etc.)
Love makes the world go round.
Can’t buy me love
I’m a fool in love

The Music of Love

Where would Etta James, the Beatles or nearly every country western singer be without love to sing about? The lack of same, the loss, the regaining, the denial, the requited and the unrequited. Indeed, where would music itself be without love? It is love, after all, that stirs the heart to passion and the voice to sing. The Do-Re-Mi of love is equally qualified to express our sweetest feelings to our children as it is to let our mates know in no uncertain terms just how deeply felt our biological imperatives are on Saturday night after the kids have gone to bed. Love is such a complex and ubiquitous subject that our civilization, just as all the thousands before us and the millions more yet to come, our thoughts and feelings are filled with the artifacts of our discussions, songs and images about its various manifestations.

Love is.

And yet, love is not, also. In fact, love, so freely and unself-consciously given and received through all our connections, is the one thing we often lack for ourselves at our core level of being. We often do not love ourselves. How amazing!

The Dance of Love

A lack of self-love is first felt in very similar ways to that ballroom dance class you were forced into as a teenager in which you pretended to actually enjoy a kind of rhythmic spasm that could loosely pass for dancing. The shaky feet, the sweaty palms, the cracking voice. When it comes to self-love, there you are, quivering with your partner on the dance floor, ready to accept death as a suitable alternative to the foxtrot or the waltz.

Despite your best intentions, your two left feet probably goofed you up socially for years, if not forever. You’ve compensated by finding other ways to appease and delight your dance partners. You’ve proven to each of them that they are indeed the objects of your affections and worthy of your most undying love. Just so, you’ve never really come to grips with what it takes to feel your own love of self.

The most glaring way a lack of self-love shows up in someone’s life is in the failure of one’s intentions to manifest in desired ways.

Nothing seems to work. Despite all the books and CDs on self-improvement, all the workshops, all the inner work, all the best intentions – your life is still not where you want it to be. Maybe your job really bites. Perhaps your relations have become stagnant and uninspiring. Maybe you’re just tired of the day-to-day routine that you’ve grown accustomed to over the past twenty years or so.

Where Are You?

Your best intentions seem to have proven to in fact be your most mediocre ones. What happened?

The answer is incredibly simple after all. It’s been staring you in the face like the one that looks back at you every morning in the mirror. The answer is you!

You need to fall in love with yourself! You need to quit shaking and sweating, forget about your quivering voice and your two left feet and begin to glide and swoop like your life depended upon it. Because it does. Your life – at least the one you’ve dreamed about – depends upon your spirit soaring to every greater and greater heights, something it cannot do if you cannot love yourself.

The Feathers of Intention

Intentions are the feathers that allow you to catch life’s thermals. Love buoys them up and makes them defy the earth as they waft ever higher and higher on the currents of your life. Trying to set an intention loose upon even the most gentle breezes, let alone the mighty gales of your at times tumultuous life, without the mastery and awareness that self-love brings, is simply an exercise in futility. Without self-love, your intentions won’t fly. They remain undirected and unmoving, stuck to earth like so much fluff plastered to a rock in a rainstorm.

Fluff yourself up. Dry yourself out. Become as light and airy as the most ethereal down you can imagine. Prepare for takeoff. You are ready to launch your beautiful intentions into the glorious great beyond. You’re cleared for take-off. Have a good flight.

Still here? Ah, yes. There’s that issue of self-love. Let’s take a moment to recap.

What do we know for sure?

We know that love empowers the entire world
We know that self-love empowers us personally
We know that intentions need empowerment to manifest

Self-love Empowers Your Intentions

We must quickly come to the conclusion that given that the above statements are true, the most surefire way (actually, the only way) for us to manifest our intentions is to tune into our love. If, however, our love is only a one-way affair, if we can only effectively give love to others but not to ourselves, no matter how hard we try, we’ll never be able to empower our intentions enough to create the vision we have for our life.

I’ll say it again, because it bears repeating at this point:

The most glaring way a lack of self-love shows up in someone’s life is in the failure of one’s intentions to manifest in desired ways.

We all know how to visualize. We’ve been to all those workshops and read all those books, right? Some of us have accumulated many, many hours meditating and visualizing and praying and intending and sincerely trying to be worthy of having a good life.

It’s all about self-love.

It’s simple, really. Love yourself. Treat yourself at least as well as you would any other lover. Coddle it and cuddle it. Give yourself a big hug! Show your self that you care! Empower yourself and your intentions will start to float about as they were meant to. A beautiful, fluffy life is the life you’re really after, and you can’t get that kind of life being harsh with yourself. Lighten up! Let the feathers of your intentions land where they may.

When you were a teenager, your friends maybe started smoking, and all of them want you to smoke with them. They make fun of you because you don’t want to smoke, and they’re generally giving you a hard time. Every day. Some kids resist, but others may cave in to the peer pressure. They finally break down and start smoking.

When you do, here’s the process: Most people say that they smoke to release stress. Especially when they get really anxious or really wound up about something, people will run right outside and start smoking a cigarette.

What’s interesting about that is that cigarettes dramatically add to your stress level. Your blood pressure rises, your heart beats faster—your body is showing every symptom of stress, but smokers still believe that cigarettes reduces the stress level in their bodies.

What really happens is that you’re squirming and guilty. You aren’t happy with yourself. Your mind goes, “Great. I’ll go smoke a cigarette.” So, you grab the pack. You take out a cigarette, put it up to your lips… You’re getting ready to light it, but before you even take your first drag, your brain remembers: “My friends aren’t going to pound on me anymore. I can relax. I can be happy.” Neuro-chemicals are released into your body because you aren’t getting a hard time anymore. It’s not the cigarette that’s doing that… it’s you!

Before you take the first puff, you’re feeling better. From then on, the smell of a cigarette, the feel of a cigarette, the look of the cigarette, and even the smoke from the cigarette tell your brain to relax. Your brain starts relaxing the body or gives you the illusion that your body’s relaxed. Bam! You think it’s a stress reliever and you continue to believe that for the rest of your life. Thus, every time you get stressed out, you want to go and you want to smoke a cigarette. Make sense?

When you’re talking about these habits that are so quickly ingrained, you really have to sa,y “How can I change a habit, or create a new habit?”

You just have to create a positive, better, more powerful habit.

You need to identify what the old habit is that you’re replacing. I’d like to give you an example of this, just to really drive the point home and explain how this whole thing works. Let’s say you’re driving a 1986 Oldsmobile, four-door sedan and it’s leaking oil like a sieve. It’s blowing thick, black, smelly smoke out of the back. It gets about three miles to the gallon. Max speed is about 35 miles per hour and you get AM radio. Those are your wheels.

Let’s say you work as a part-time nurse. You have low income. You’re just barely scraping by. You’re working in a hospital. You’re on call that night and somebody gets rushed into the hospital. It doesn’t matter what the situation is really, but one way or the other, you end up being responsible for saving their life, and you do it.

You saved his life, right. Your self-esteem just went higher, but still, it’s just part of your job. Right?

A couple of days goes by, and you are coming home from a 12-hour double shift. yuo’re exhausted! But when you get to your driveway, there’s a beautiful BMW, sitting out in your driveway, or whatever your dream car is.

What happens if you see that this vehicle is clearly intended for you? There’s a greeting card tucked underneath the windshield wiper with a key taped inside. It has a nice note from the person whose life you saved. They say, “Listen, without you I wouldn’t be alive today. I did a little investigating. I found out what your dream car was and I bought it for you. Thank you, so very, very much. By the way, insurance is covered for the rest of your life. It’s completely legal and ready to drive right now. I already cleared it with the hospital, so we’re not violating any of your employment rules.”

You pull up. You park your Oldsmobile right next to that vehicle. It’s been a long day. I mean, you are wiped out. You decide to take it for a spin tomorrow. You get up in the morning. You look out the window of your apartment and you see that, in fact, there it is. It wasn’t a dream, right?

Now, which car would you drive to work? The new one, right? And the following day, which car will you drive? The new one! I think anyone would do the same thing.

Here’s why: You’re now excited. You’re pumped. You’re ready to go on driving the new car. It’s perfect. It’s all about intensity. You don’t have to think about it and you don’t give your old car a second thought. Your new, souped-up car is perfect for every situation.

Habit is like that. The only way you’ll beat an old habit is to create a new one that’s much more satisfying.

We’ll discuss that in a future article.

One of the most important steps in consciously using the Law of Attraction is learning to change our expectations. Why? Because the Universe delivers exactly what we expect to see. Our expectations are formed on the foundation of our existing beliefs.

If we believe ourselves to be lacking financially, we will expect to see a bigger proportion of bills than income – and the universe delivers. If we believe we are sick, overweight or weak, we expect to feel pain and fatigue – and the universe delivers. If we believe ourselves to be unworthy of love, we expect not to be loved – and guess what the universe delivers?

Think back to the experiences you’ve had in your past and ask yourself if you got what you were expecting. Have you ever uttered statements like these?

I just can’t get ahead!
I’m so sick of struggling.
Everything always goes wrong for me.
If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.
This is too good to be true, something’s going to go wrong.

Words like these are actually self-fulfilling prophesies. You are, in effect, placing your order with the universe at the moment you begin feeling the feelings behind the words (yes, even before you SPEAK the words!). The universe doesn’t care what words you use, it pays attention to your vibrations – the energetic signal you’re sending out. That signal is formed by your beliefs and expectations.

So how do we change our expectations? Is it possible? Absolutely!

One of the most powerful things you can begin doing is consciously expecting the best. Throughout the course of your day, take a few moments to pause and expect something wonderful. Say to yourself, “Today is going to be a great day!” Try to find the positive expectation in every experience. If your boss asks to speak with you privately, rather than expecting him to reprimand or fire you, expect him to praise you and give you a pay raise! Rather than expecting to see bills in your mailbox when you get home, expect to see a check.

The more you can keep this feeling of happy expectation in your heart, the more often you will see results that directly mirror your expectations.

Does it sound unbelievable? Far-fetched? Try this little experiment:

Before leaving your home one morning, say to yourself, “Sometime today I will see the image of a bumblebee (or any image you choose – it should be something you wouldn’t ordinarily see during your daily activities). I choose to attract this image into my awareness, and it will jump out at me so I don’t miss it. I KNOW I will see this bumblebee, and that will prove to me that my expectations DO affect my experiences.” As you speak these words, infuse them with power and conviction! Believe with all of your heart that you will indeed attract this image to yourself. Then let go of it and continue with your day like usual.

If you don’t see the image you’ve chosen, you know you didn’t put enough power and faith into your expectation!

The first time I tried this experiment, it didn’t work for me. Looking back, I’m aware that I didn’t really BELIEVE I would see a bumblebee. I hoped I would, but I was doubtful. Still, I decided to try again the next day. That’s when I really energized my expectation with unshakable faith and conviction. I was DETERMINED to see a bumblebee sometime during my day, and I wouldn’t accept any other outcome. Boy did I get what I asked for! All that day, I saw bumblebees wherever I went. Bumblebee logos on passing trucks, references to bees mentioned on the radio, a cashier wearing a bumblebee pin when I did some shopping, and my husband watching a television special on bees when I got home!

Once you begin to see that you can influence your experiences even in small ways, imagine the sense of empowerment you’ll feel when you decide to expect something better in the bigger aspects of your life. Try it, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!