Monthly Archives: February 2010

Forcing Your Goals Versus Empowering Your Dreams

Many people understand the concept of setting goals in life to empower themselves. What most people don’t know is that goals require a constant stream of force behind them to keep them alive. In other words, you need to push them all the time to make them come true.What do I mean by force and push? To force something is to compel through pressure or necessity. To push a goal is to apply enough force to the goal to keep it fresh and empowered.

This constant pushing of your goal, while necessary, is also a detriment to effective manifestation of the goal itself. Goals are artificially created by the mind and backed up by concepts and beliefs in order for them to work. Take away the concepts and beliefs that give them the foundation to live and they will evaporate in no time.

How does this look like in practice? Let’s assume you have a goal to lose weight. As you may already know, it is important to set your goals precisely. So let’s say you want to lose 25 pounds over the next 3 months, starting today. This goal needs a foundation to work. You need to have some sort of motivation that encourages you to do this.

Let’s look at some reasons you may want to do this:

* You want to look attractive to others
* You want to look attractive to your partner
* You believe that you are overweight
* You want to fit into your favorite dress or pants again

Whatever the reason is, you absolutely need to have one, otherwise you won’t have the motivation to start. And the mere act of starting is the challenging part as you need to change some of your usual behavior and concepts in life. We all know what a challenge changing your behavior and concepts can be!

Behavior is changed in the physical domain, concepts are changed in the mental domain. This double whammy of physical and mental change is what makes a simple thing like weight loss such a challenge to bring off successfully.

Successful goals always come from a corresponding change in the mental domain. Why is this? Simply, it is because your mind and your thoughts are what create your reality. If you change only your behavior, you will have only short-term success. In time, you will fall back to your old pattern of behavior – the very thing you tried to change in the first place!

So lets assume you are in the second month of your weight loss goal and your partner leaves you. What happens to your goal about losing weight? It doesn’t work anymore, it vanishes and evaporates into thin air. You just took away the foundation and the motivation for your goal. As you can see, the problem with goals is that they depend on life circumstances – and they are always forced by mental concepts.

How About Dreams?

Your dreams are powered by source, by the ultimate power of consciousness. Your dreams are the recognition of what you can do with your unique gifts and talents you have brought into this life. Every person comes with a unique set of talents. These talents lead to a unique way of expressing themselves through various forms of creativity. Universal creativity is really what powers everything behind all manifestation.

Occasionally, we utilize unique properties of this creativity in specific ways. With this creativity you are able to serve other people and in return you get rewarded with a form of energy. In our western civilization, the most common reward is often money.

In summary: You discover your strengths, gifts and talents. You find ways to use them that very practically enrich and support society. You are in service to others. By the way, being in service in this way is life’s ultimate purpose.

Your dreams are powered by your unique creative abilities. These abilities are like a never-ending fountain, the wellspring of your life. They will always be with you, in good times and bad. They are completely independent from mental concepts. They are powered by your true nature. You can deny them, but you can’t get rid of them.

Even on the worst day of your life, your dreams still exist. If you don’t live your dreams, you must constantly suppress them by mental concepts like:

* I am too old to start
* I don’t know how to do it
* Nobody will be interested in it
* My friends will hate me when I do it
* You name it!

I have used the words force and power to associate them with goals and dreams. To understand the concepts behind these words I highly recommend David Hawkins book “Power Versus Force. Here are a few definitions from the book that help define the idea of power versus force:

* Force is associated with the partial, power with the whole
* Force must always be justified, power requires no justification
* Force always creates counter-force and its effect is limited by definition
* Force is a movement, power is a skill
* Force always moves against something, power doesn’t move against anything at all
* Force is incomplete and therefore has to be fed energy constantly
* Power is total and complete in itself and requires nothing from outside
* Force constantly consumes while power energizes, supplies and supports
* Power gives life and energy, force takes these away
* Power is associated with compassion, force is associated with judgment
* Force requires proof and support, power is inarguable and not subject to proof

People who fulfill their dreams are the happiest people on earth. They do what’s in their nature. It is completely irrelevant what kind of dreams you have. Dreams don’t need to fit into anything. They don’t need any approval. They don’t need any money to start.

Goals are temporary fixes of your mental desires that do not provide you with lasting happiness. The new car will get old and rusty, the new house will lose its charm over time, and if your goal is to create the perfect partner you will begin to see your partner’s imperfections over time as well.

Your dreams are a recognition of what you truly are and how you can contribute to this world. You will never do anything else in your life but this. There is no true retirement from the contributions you can make in this life. You live this dream to your very last breath.

Embrace the dream! Be the dream!

Control Your Fear Before It Will Control You!

“Fear Factor” has been one of my favorite TV shows. It highlights the courage of the participants to engage in the most fearsome and disgusting acts.

Most of the contestants are willing to sacrifice their dignity for the sake of the prize money. So what does that imply?

It implies that with the proper mindset, determination, and will power, you can conquer your fear.

Everyone has some sort of fear. It may be brought about by any one or more of the following reasons.

1) by a traumatic past incident (like being bitten by a dog)
2) by the influence of other people
3) by their own negative way of thinking

But are you going to let fear take over your life? Will you remain a hostage of your fear forever?

You must take the necessary steps to overcome your fright. It’s all in the mind.

Do you envy other people when you see them enjoying wild rides, and you’re just stuck in a corner because you’re too terrified to give it a try?

My suggestion is to face your fear head-on. Imagine yourself enjoying the experience instead of exaggerating the things that make you worry. (Unless of course you
have health problems, then taking wild rides may not be a good idea).

Do you want to be a doctor but you’re afraid that your intellect can’t handle the pressure or you’re worried about financial insecurity?

Well here’s the good news. If you’re really determined to achieve your deepest desires, a powerful force will enable you to reach them amidst every obstacle that comes in the way. I’m not kidding.

Someone or something will always be there to help you attain your goals. Just have faith in your abilities. Your will power have the utmost capacity to accomplish anything with the proper mindset.

You could use visualization to help you in defeating any kind of fear.

Are you afraid of heights? Then imagine yourself being on top of a mountain, overseeing the magnificent sights. Enjoy and feel the moment. Take away all worries and anxieties.

Then just do it! Face it head on! Go to the top of a building and savor the great feeling of being able to face your fear.

This applies to whatever thing that triggers your fear factor. Just imagine being able to defeat it, then confront it with the definite belief that you have the capacity to do everything you want if you just put your
mind to it.

Face the thing you fear the most and you’ll never have to fear anything again in your life.

Manifest the Life You Want

Have you ever known anyone that just always seems to get everything they want? They have that perfect job, perfect spouse, perfect house, etc. and they are always happy and very upbeat. You’re probably saying, “Sure, I’d be happy and upbeat too if I had everything I wanted. Let’s look at the other side of this coin for a moment. How many people do you know that it just seems like everything goes wrong for them? Her car was vandalized, her home was broken into, lost her cell phone, bounced a check, and broke a finger all in the same week. “Talk about a bad week” you’re saying. I’d like to show you how both of these people are manifesting their reality.

There are a set of principles called the Laws of the Universe that affects each one of us every single day. You have all heard of the Law of Gravity. You are governed by this law whether you understand it or have even heard of it. The same is true with the Laws of the Universe. The first law is the Law of Attraction. This law says that what we think about we attract to us. Thoughts are like magnets. The next law is the Law of Deliberate Creation. This time we want to add emotion to our thoughts to speed up the process. The Law of Allowing is the third law I want to cover. This law says we must allow the universe to fulfill our desires. You know, “let go and let God.”

These three laws make up a concept called manifesting. You decide what you want to create, you add emotion to it, and let the universe bring it to you. Can you now see how those people with the “good life” are focusing on the good and positive things they want and they receive them. The other person with all the problems is constantly telling everyone about what bad things happened yesterday. Each time she tells the story, it gives more creation power to more of the same kind of stuff.

So with that in mind, let’s consider the possibility of manifesting the life, career, partner, etc. that we desire. Even if you know these principles how do you keep from reverting back to what you normally do? It is a process of controlling what we think about. Here are some examples. If you find yourself thinking about how tired you will feel tomorrow because you are going to bed, you can bet that’s how you’ll feel. If you are dreading the drive to work because of all the traffic, chances are there will be lots of traffic accidents, stalls, etc. To control our thoughts we sometimes just need to trick ourselves. Let’s go back to the situation where you are going to bed late, how about telling yourself that tomorrow you are going to feel great because your body requires less sleep than it used to? It sounds silly but it works! It’s all a mindset.

We have all heard about goal setting but few people talk about manifesting the life you want. Remember this, thoughts are like magnets.

Let’s create lives full of health, wealth, and vitality.

Karen Kelley

For more information and your free downloadable copy of “Manifesting Mindset” please visit our web site.
http://www.universallawstoday.com

How To Overcome A Fearful And Scary Situation

All most everybody worries about what will happen if they are in a stressful and scary situation. The prospect of not knowing what to do can be frightening. As a result, here is a list of techniques and suggestions on how to manage the fear of an upcoming situation

The first thing a person can do is to visualize yourself doing the scary task in your mind. For instance, you and your team have to play in the championship volleyball game in front of a large group of people in the next few days. Before the big day comes, imagine yourself playing the game in your mind. Imagine that your playing in front of a large audience. By playing the game in your mind, you will be better prepared to perform for real when the time comes. Self-Visualization is a great way to reduce the fear and stress of a coming situation.

Try to find the motivation from within before performing the task. You will be more successful if you have a solid reason for doing the task. If you are not sure why you are doing a certain task, then the fear will get the best of you. Having the motivation and enthusiasm will help you to manage the fear and increase your chances of success.

When encountering a scary situation that gets us all upset, always remember to get all of the facts of the given situation. Gathering the facts can prevent us from relying on exaggerated and fearful assumptions. By focusing on the facts, a person can rely on what is reality and what is not.

Take it one step at a time. Don’t try to do too much at the same time because you will be easily overwhelmed. Take it slow and go at your own pace if you are able.

Don’t forget to Pray and ask God for help. A person can only do so much. Asking God for help can give us additional resources to help manage our fears and anxieties. It is not always easy, however God is in control and he will help you if you ask him.

As a Layman and author of an anxiety book, I have faced many situations that made me anxious and fearful. I realize it is not easy to deal with the fear of the unknown, however sometimes the fear can be worse than the situation. If you have trouble managing your anxiety, then talking to someone who can make you feel better.

Achieve Instant Calm – the Wise Woman Way

For instant calm, Susun Weed suggests one or more of the following simple calming exercises, herbal allies, or movements, and can give you more details on how and why they work:

Unfreeze yourself: Curl up in a fetal position (on your side with keens drawn up), breathe deeply, and hum. You may want to rock back and forth. Concentrate on what feelings want to emerge. Do not be surprised if grief is what you are really feeling.

Focus your eyes: Look at anything, steadily, with concentration, and breathe deeply. Feel a warmth in your upper abdomen; breathe; focus.

Conjure an image of safety: Imagine a huge image of safety, such as a cowrie shell, the palm of Buddha or Christ, a giant mother’s lap, or a cloud of pink light. Surround the object of your anxiety with this image. Fear locks up movement and speech; a clear visualization can unfreeze you.

Take an herbal calmative: Tincture of red clover is a profound relaxer and soothing calmative. Its salicylic acid content (similar to aspirin) makes it an excellent pain reliever, too. Motherwort is also effective. Motherwort is not sedating, but calming, leaving you ready for action, not flying off the handle or bouncing off the walls. Try 10 to 20 drops as soon as you feel your nerves starting to fray or just before a stressful event. Repeat every five minutes if needed.

Try yoga postures: Yoga postures, yoga breathing, and quiet, focused medication soothe the sympathetic nervous system instantly. Regular practice alleviates anxiety, often permanently.

Susun Weed

PO Box 64

Woodstock, NY 12498

Fax: 1-845-246-8081

Visit Susun Weed at: htp://www.susunweed.com and http://www.ashtreepublishing.com

Connecting the Past and the Present: Healing Abandonment and Abuse through Awareness

Many people I work with in therapy or in my writing-as-healing classes discover stories that surprise them stories about the mistakes they felt their parents made, power imbalances in the family, or stories about physical or sexual abuse. The darker stories are often a surprise: when writers sat down to write, those issues were not directly on their minds, but deep, revealing stories erupted from the pen. Though they were unexpected, for some they were a relief. People who have been in therapy have had the same kind of experience the subject matter in the forefront of the mind is not the material that “accidentally” arises during the session. The therapy session begins with a particular subject in the present for example dissatisfaction at work or trouble in a relationship, but often travels back in time with associations to parents, school, or past relationships.

It has become a clich

Self-Motivation: How to Keep Yourself Motivated

Keeping one’s self going is a difficult thing to do. There are a million distractions that occur every day and that can mean that we do not stay on track with what we should be doing. Self-motivation is something that does not come easy to a lot of people and that means that there are some steps that need to be taken before you can become motivated to the fullest extent. Of course there are some other matters that first need to be taken care of. If there are a lot of distractions that keep you from doing what you need to be doing then you need to make some changes. This is really the first step towards becoming self-motivated in any form.

To be self-motivated means that there is no outside force or person pushing you to become what you want. The whole concept of succeeding lies within yourself and that means that you will need to make the effort yourself to be who you want to be. The doing away with the distractions means that you need to be completely self-reliant. If you have many distractions then you will not be getting the things done that need to be so you are not being self-motivated in that sense. Take the effort to make sure that you are completely absorbed in what you are doing, especially when it comes to work. This will mean that everything else takes a back seat and you are working to the best of your ability.

If you are a person that needs a push to get going on something then you will need to devise a plan to become self-motivated. If you are one that requires the motivation then you will need to be sure to have something nearby that reminds you of what you need to be doing. For instance, a photograph depicting an event will be sure to move you along whenever you look at it. The same goes for a saying by a famous person that has succeeded in the way that you wish to succeed.

To be self-motivated is to be the one person that gets it done without having to be told to do so. Moving along through the ranks and being the one person that succeeds where others fail is above all the rest. Take the time to become self-motivated and you will be much happier with yourself to say the least.

Burning Desire — Golden Key or Red Herring?

Acres of Diamonds… you’ve read the famous story, or at least had it related to you.

A farmer hears tales of diamonds and begins dreaming of vast riches. He sells his farm and hikes off over the horizon, never to be heard from again. Rumors say that years later he died destitute, never having found the diamonds he spent his life seeking.

Meanwhile, the man who bought that farm found a large and “interesting looking” stone in a stream that ran through the property. He put the stone on his mantle where a visitor recognized the large stone as a rough diamond.

It turned out to be the Hope Diamond, the largest such stone ever found. That stream bed was littered with diamonds, and the new owner became fabulously wealthy. No doubt he also lived happily ever after.

But doesn’t something in that story set strangely with you?

What about the guy with the burning desire and the grand vision? He ended up disappointed and broke, dying far from his family and friends. Not a happy ending.

Meanwhile, the guy who just wanted to do some farming got all the riches. Make no mistake, the new owner already had money, or he could not have bought the land. There’s nothing in this story to make us think he was dreaming about riches, vast or otherwise. No burning desire. But he got the goodies.

Was this just another little prank, courtesy of a mischievous Universe?

Or is it possible to get good things coming your way with only mild desire — maybe even a calm indifference?

Many inspirational writers, including Napoleon Hill, have assured us that a burning desire is one of the prerequisites of acquiring a fortune. I’ve even said it myself, although I added the qualifier that the powerful desire is not so much for the Universe. It’s for you, to help you overcome and battle past your own doubts and resistances.

But haven’t you seen people who seem to coast into good things, like the farmer who found the Hope Diamond? I’ve known people like that. In fact, after I’d been in Japan for a while and had set up a “channel” for business to flow through, I could just think about receiving more money, and I’d get an immediate surge of business within hours.

This pattern went on for 16 or 17 years, till I shut down my writing and editing business. So it wasn’t an occasional fluke.

Now, I must admit I had a burning determination to stay in Japan, and for the first year or two I never knew if things would work out for me or not. Then, things started shifting my way, and they stayed that way. Why?

Truthfully, I don’t think the deciding factor was the desire. Lots of people come here to Japan, but never quite find out how to stay. Many, many foreigners who come here end up losing their toehold and slinking back home.

On the other hand, the ones who do stay are often not especially hard working, dedicated, sensible or qualified. More than one long-time English teacher or copywriter remains here because they enjoy the hard drinking culture, the many women who like foreigners, or the feel of being a round peg in a square hole.

Achieving their dream doesn’t appear to have a lot to do with burning desire.

Instead, it seems to be more a matter of what they can allow themselves to have. Some people call this a sense of deserving. Others call it a sense of entitlement. No matter what term you use, it’s basically the same thing. Either way, it’s governed by who you think you are and what circumstances you accept as appropriate for you.

In other words, it all starts from who you are in your own mind.

Always Think Positive, There Is Always Somebody Worse Off Than You

This article is about learning to think positive. There are far too many people walking about in a state of gloom and depression. I have to admit that I was one of these people until I managed to turn my whole life around at the age of twenty-two by taking a different approach. I hope you find the article beneficial and enjoyable to read.

From around the age of eleven when I started high school to the age of twenty-two I was not exactly a happy person. One person actually mentioned that I walked around like I had the weight of the world and its problems on my shoulders.

I was always looking at other people in my class for example and thought that they were so much luckier than I was. They did not seem to have half of the problems that I did. I was jealous of them as they were seemingly cruising through life where as it was one huge struggle for me.

You may be wondering what my troubles were. I had a stutter which had affected me from the age of four. Stuttering put a huge dent in my confidence and made me withdraw into my shell.
I had a weight problem which was mainly caused by comfort eating when I was depressed. Since birth, I have had a bald patch on my head, it is not a large area of baldness, however it was big enough for people to notice and mock me. I was always the shortest person in the class and for a male I am well below the average height at five-foot four.

At the age of eighteen, I was having a conversation with one of friends who is called John. John was one of the people I had always been jealous of for many different reasons. On this particular evening we were both fairly drunk and John had became quite emotional. During our conversation he told me that his father was an alcoholic and that at certain times when he arrived home worse for wear that he would hit his mom. He was very worried about this and was not sure what to do.

Over the next few years, I found out aspects of other people’s lives in my circle of friends, which I had not been aware of. The issues I had were very visible, where as their problems had been hidden and kept secret.

I have become more and more interested in world affairs since the age of about twenty. Certain events from around the world have really shocked and I find it hard to imagine how I would cope living it various countries. I am now very grateful that I was born in the UK.

I have learnt that we all have problems and that in most cases there is always people worse off than ourselves. I now try to think in a much more positive way and am very happy with the cards I have been dealt.

Be Happier In A Month

Sometimes very simple techniques are the most powerful.

Each morning the minute you wake, write down three things in this day you have to look forward to. If you are having difficulty doing this, look for very simple pleasures, like: having a cup of coffee or tea, playing with your pet, experiencing a sunny day, reading, or talking to a friend.

Each evening at the end of your day, write down three things that were good today. They might be things you are grateful for, like your health, a friend, or a meal. Or you might think of highlights in your day. Perhaps something lucky happened or you received a compliment.

These techniques may seem too simple to work, but they are actually perfect for helping you change your focus. While you are thinking of good things in your life, it crowds out the thoughts that are making you depressed. And by choosing things to look forward to in this day, you notice and appreciate them much better when they come. Happiness does not lie in circumstances as much as it does in our thoughts. There are wealthy people who are terribly depressed, and poor people who are happy. There are some who feel lonely even though they are surrounded by loving family, and others who live alone who feel blessed by the love in their lives. Some people have lost so much in their lives, and yet live each day overflowing with joy, because they focus not on what they have lost or don’t have, but rather on what they do have.

It won’t take long for you to see that these two simple techniques improve your moods and happiness the more you practice them. If you like them, start adding new moments to your day. You could for example, think of three reasons to feel good about yourself each day, or each day answer how you know you are loved.