Doing The Dishes, Kaizen, Boundaries, more

Originally posted 2008-12-04 11:30:07.

As difficult as dirty dishes can be, they’re even worse when you let them sit for a while. And the longer they sit, the harder they are to clean.

This is life. Something that is potentially easy to clean up right after it happens – an unkind word to your father, a lie to your best friend, an insensitivity to your girlfriend – can become a difficult mess if you don’t deal with it now.

Do the dishes today. Continue reading “Doing The Dishes, Kaizen, Boundaries, more”

Trying To Connect to Source? Not Sure If You’re Connecting?

Originally posted 2011-05-24 13:36:06.

Trying To Connect? Not Sure If You Are Connecting? Some Answers For You…

Here are some questions and some answers to issues people are having:

In my conversations with some of the Pioneers, I muscletest if they connect and the muscletest often says “no.” Continue reading “Trying To Connect to Source? Not Sure If You’re Connecting?”

Motivation and Fear: The Importance of Both

Originally posted 2011-05-24 04:30:24.

What is motivation? It is the desire that moves… People say they are not motivated, but the truth is that every time you do something to fill a desire: sit down, watch tv, order a pizza… there is a motivation.

People like to say that they are not motivated, but what they are saying is that the action that is required of them has less power, less motive power than the fear accompanying it.

The truth is that every action that is taking you to an unknown, unpredictable area of life, future, is going to be accompanies with fear. Our reptilian brain makes sure of it.

Fear is our constant companion. As humans that got off the trees, were at the mercy of their fear to keep them alive. Every sort of danger was waiting them out there, and fear was a useful tool to keep them alive.

But, as you can see, humans used fear, instead of being paralyzed by them: they got out there and hunted, and gathered, and built shelters… and the ones that survived formed your ancestors.

The art is to consider fear and consider the danger, and then choose to move.

As long as fear is to be obeyed, for you, you are never going to amount to much, and you will live your life in quiet desperation, like billions of others.

I teach the art of looking, observing, considering and choosing. Look up my classes, my products, my coaching… because living a life of quiet desperation is a horrible excuse for a life.

Robert Kennedy once said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” This profound statement may seem simple, but there is much more to it than meets the eye. This statement hints at the reality that motivation and fear can be closely linked.

It is common to fear failure. As humans, we do not like to lose. We do not like to be wrong. We do not like to be embarrassed. We do not like to be rejected.

And yet, the most successful people throughout history failed many times en route to their greatest achievements. Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team at first. Thomas Edison failed thousands of items in his attempts to make some of his greatest inventions. Christopher Columbus was rejected several times in his attempts to get approval for a voyage across seas.

Great success often requires failure, for failure teaches you how to do things better. Failure makes you wiser. Failure makes you better equipped to take on greater challenges.

But you must meet failure with respect. You must appreciate all that it holds within it. All the power within failure can be yours if you can see it beyond the surface.

Yet most people do not appreciate failure. In fact, failure repels most. Further, the fear of failure keeps many people from even attempting things at which they might not initially succeed.

If you want great things in life, you have to be willing to fail. And you have to be willing to fail many times over. Failure is a part of life. It is what makes us better. It is what makes us stronger. It is what makes us wiser.

We often seek motivation to get over the fear of failure. Instead, we should be motivated to seek out failure and learn from it. We should not hide from failure, for it is one of the most valuable teaching tools in life.

If you want motivation to face your fear of failure, try something that you most likely will fail at. Then take a closer look at your failure and try again. It is likely that you will do better the second time. Even if you fail again, you will be closer to success because of your efforts. Now you will know two ways that don’t work and can find another way that might.

By not trying, you will never succeed. By making yourself willing to fail, you will open up many great doors that were previously closed to you.

Dare to fail. Expect to succeed.

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What Is the Difference Between Alcoholism and Addiction?

Originally posted 2011-05-23 19:00:06.

This is an article that I copied over to my blog… so I can talk about some of the differences between how main stream handles alcoholism and how I handle it.

In my work, alcohol is an avoidance strategy: the person with the drinking would rather feel positive emotions, than deal with what there is to deal with: life, thoughts, emotions, relationships, problems.

Moving away and doing something that distracts one from an unwished for situation, thought, or feeling is called: obeying an urge.

Unless a person is taught different ways to relate to thoughts, feelings, memories, emotions, they will just continue to avoid them. Even if they become sober, they will just replace the alcohol with other behavior or substances: nothing changed inside.

Simple behavior modification doesn’t do it. A whole inner change is required, a superior skill to control one’s attention, that can be developed with practice.

Most humans living today are addicts and avoiders, one way or another. TV, internet, facebook, reading, sex, work, exercise, politics, sports… you can use any activity to avoid what you don’t like… and people do it, while they languish, and stop growing.

Check out my programs, courses, coaching, audios… they work.

The distinction between alcoholism and addiction is a dying one. For decades alcoholism has been classified separately from addiction even though both have identical symptoms and treatment options. These differences can be seen in the development of huge groups dedicated to one substance or another such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. However the fact of the matter is that alcohol is simply a substance like any other. Because addiction is not classified according to the drugs the person uses, it’s only logical that alcohol be treated in a similar manner.

Many addiction professionals are beginning to classify alcoholism simply as addiction. This is because no distinctions can be made between how addiction forms, progresses and is treated and how alcoholism is formed, progresses and is treated. This is described below:

How Addiction Forms Versus How Alcoholism Forms

When a substance such as cocaine, marijuana, heroin or alcohol causes the reward and pleasure center of the brain to be stimulated, the brain creates a “log” of associations concerning the events that led up to the “reward” of using the substance. When these associations are solidified with continued use, neurological pathways are constructed in the brain that facilitates the entire process. These pathways become permanent over time, and because they were developed in response to a substance, they can cause powerful urges that will compel the person to use the substance again and again. This physiological process doesn’t care what the substance is- the result is the same whether you’re talking about alcohol or drugs.

Signs and Symptoms of Addiction versus Alcoholism

Whether your substance of choice is alcohol or any drug, the symptoms of addiction are the same. While the physical symptoms might vary according to the substance and severity of the problem, the behavioral symptoms are universal:

1.) Loss of control- this presents as an inability to remember how much or what type of substance was taken, when the last use was, what other substances are involved, where the substance is located, or by overdosing.

2.) Obsession- an addict’s life is centered on substance abuse. They think and talk about it constantly and always seem to be planning when to use next, how much to use, who to use with and so on.

3.) Continuation despite serious consequences- this is an important distinction and one that applies to all substances. Addiction is most noted as a disease of compulsion. People who are addicted do not stop using even when their lives are falling apart.

Treatment of Alcoholism versus Addiction

There is no difference whatsoever between treatment for alcoholism and treatment for addiction. Most rehab centers make no real distinction and patients are generally a mixed bag of alcoholics and drug addicts or both. Treatment includes detox (especially for dangerous substances such as benzodiazepines and alcohol) and residential inpatient or outpatient treatment. Therapies employed at most rehab centers apply to both alcoholism and addiction and include individual, group and family therapy.

Ultimately, alcohol is just another substance. If you’re suffering from addiction to any substance or know someone who is that needs help, you should know that you can pick up the phone right now and get the process started with a free, no-obligation professional consultation.

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Life Is Like a Bruce Lee Movie – winning first inside

Originally posted 2011-05-22 18:15:05.

Life Is Like a Bruce Lee Movie – Create Positive Outcomes and Adventure With Your Mind

The gist of this article is to go within. Within really means: go to the vertical, instead of staying and living on the horizontal plane with all the drama, all the conflicts, all the bumping into this and that. Continue reading “Life Is Like a Bruce Lee Movie – winning first inside”

Why Knowing Yourself Is The Foundation Of Personal Growth

Originally posted 2011-05-20 13:15:08.

Know thyself… said the Greeks, and I can’t agree more.

Unless you are clear about where you are, what are your limitations, what are your inner pulls (conation), your results in life will be puny, in every area of life.

Know Thyself If men would search diligently their own minds, and examine minutely their thoughts and actions, they would be more cautious in censuring the conduct of others, as they would find in themselves abundantly sufficient cause for reproof. “It is a good horse that never stumbles;” and lie is a good man indeed who cannot reproach himself with numerous slips and errors.” “Every bean has its black,” and every man his follies and vices.

The adage also teaches us to set a proper value upon ourselves, and to be careful not to do anything that may degrade us. It is not known to whom we are indebted for this golden rule; we only learn that it is of very long standing, and was held in such high estimation by the ancients, that it was placed over the doors of their temples, and it was also supposed by them, that ” E coelo descen- dit,” it came down from heaven. ” ‘Man know thyself!’ tins precept from on high Came down, imagined by the Deity; Oh! be the words indelibly imprest On the live tablet of each human breast.

But how do you Know Yourself? Know yourself as others know yourself? Know about yourself? Know what psychologist made up as a category for yourself? Do the test that was devised for testing privates sent to fight in the VietNam war?

People want to know themselves to make it easier to win… to make it easier to beat bad habits. To justify why they are the way they are.

My experience (as a coach, 30 years and thousands of people), has been that you do best when you know your machine. Your machine has a bent… an inclination, and if you know it you can be successful… with any machine.

Some 30 years ago I had a car I didn’t have to lock, because only I could drive it. It would stall for everyone else. I drove it another 100 thousand miles. I got it after the previous owner gave up on it. It had 160 thousand miles on it.

The knowledge: know yourself, here, with that car, applied to the car and myself, together. The car was seriously flawed… but no one could have guessed from the outside, when I drove it.

I have dyslexia, serious, but I read one or two books every week. I also write for a living.

I had two major episodes of brain damage: you wouldn’t know it. I know how to drive my machine.

My soul correction is arrogance and condescension. It’s taken me longer to drive my life with these horrible afflictions, but knowing it made it possible.

When you know all the quirks of your machine, when you know what is your unscratchable itch, when you know what the machine will do unless you compensate for it, you can take your machine anywhere, any heights, any distance, any achievement.

As you work to grow in different areas in you life, it is important to really know yourself. The concept of not knowing yourself may sound preposterous to some people, but hear me out. Because we live such hectic lives, it is important to take time to become reacquainted with ourselves. It is very easy to get so focused on living life that we lose ourselves in the hustle and the bustle. With every phase in life, we change and evolve, and if all goes as planned, we should not be the same person we were five years ago. This is not to say that everything about us has to change, but it is perfectly natural and healthy to mature and grow in different areas.

Knowing yourself can help you improve your work ethic because you can really understand your limitations and know when you are pushing yourself too hard. If you are a self starter like me, you would probably work for 24 hours a day if you could. In fact, you’ve probably had to make yourself step away from your work one more than one occasion. While this self starting attitude is a good thing, it can also be a problem. If you aren’t careful, your desire for success can drive others away from you and actually ruin relationships. You may be thinking, “I thought we were supposed to be able to accomplish everything.” That is true, but sometimes you can bite of much more than you can chew, and running yourself into the ground to accomplish goals in not healthy. The beauty of accomplishing goals and achieving personal growth is discovering the balance of work and play.

While it is important to know your limits, knowing yourself helps you to know what you can’t accomplish as well as what you can accomplish. Many times, people don’t push themselves to accomplish real goals simply because thy think don’t think they’ll be successful. Once you really know yourself, you will know what you can accomplish. However, if you never try, you’ll never know how much you can truly accomplish.

When you know yourself, it is easier to keep yourself motivated. It you met someone for the first time, and they asked you to encourage them without giving you any details about their life, you would have a hard time encouraging them. By being aware of the types of things that keep you motivated, you will be less likely to reach that rock bottom point where you feel like your world is crumbling around you. It is best to constantly encourage and motivate yourself as your grow and mature.

How do you react to disappointment? What do you do when you’re sad? How often do you need to take time to truly relax? In order to maintain balance in your life, you have to constantly ask yourself these types of questions. Not only do you need to know yourself in order to have a strong foundation for personal growth, but you also have to be willing to motivate yourself when things are less than ideal.

Spirituality and Personality: The Psycho-Spiritual Controversy

Originally posted 2011-05-14 05:00:06.

If you have been involved in either therapy or counselling, or spirituality and meditation, in recent years you have probably encountered two basic, polarized viewpoints concerning personality. Essentially it amounts to this: therapists are pro-personality (and its improvement through healing neurosis etc.) while spiritual teachers proclaim personality a big waste of time, since neurotic or not, you are more than your personality.

This is not particularly surprising, since therapy and counseling tend to be concerned with the individual, while spiritual practices are concerned with higher matters. But it does lead the novices and beginners into a quandary where they are faced with the decision of what to do about personality. On the one hand, therapy could be an expensive, futile effort to better the personality, whereas, on the other hand, spiritual practice may offer an excuse to leave personal problems behind, with the justification that you are moving on to more lofty concerns.

In the extensive time I have been engaged in therapy and spirituality I can say that I have discovered the answer to this controversy! And I don’t say it without reluctance and a certain caution, since my answer is liable to offend both camps — therapists and spiritual teachers. Perhaps my answer is less a rejection or abandonment of one viewpoint for another and more of a synthesis. This may be an answer of the best kind – the kind that doesn’t marginalize or dismiss anyone’s experience or viewpoint. For my answer, while radically new and innovative, does not fundamentally disagree with either point of view, but considers each appropriate to the complex, total unfolding process of our human nature and potential.

My answer to the dilemma is to propose a third band of human experience. I call this “the authentic self” and since I am not using any unusual words I need to define this term, because I do mean something specific. The authentic self, in the way I use the term, is the bridge between the personality and the spiritual self. It is arrived at usually, but not always, after a lengthy period of intensive, deep, applied and consistent inner work. This inner work consists of a journey of self-discovery in which one circumvents the self, becoming increasingly aware of the conscious and unconscious material that comprises one’s sense of self, or ego. This involves character, which is essentially defensive strategy or an intelligent, protective reaction to early conditioning, which becomes increasingly calcified and adapted throughout adolescence and adult life. Character is composed of the way in which we survive and protect ourselves from inner and outer stimuli and ultimately avoid really meeting life. It creates a self-imposed prison — limitations in which we feel falsely safe.

Self-discovery also involves cultivating our awareness of personality, or the way in which character (defenses and strategies) is experienced. Both inwardly and outwardly we erect a barrier to experience — life events and other people — which is a mask, façade or persona which eclipses the real person, or our true nature.

We also raise emotional and behavioural patterns out of the murky stratum of the unconscious, out of unawareness, and see just how much our life is lived automatically, as an automaton without real human response, emotional feeling, resonance, empathy or even awareness.

The process of self-discovery involves witnessing, reliving and remembering, practicing awareness and releasing pent-up emotions, returning the bodymind, through self-regulating, self-healing and self-referral, to a natural state of balance, ease and relaxation, and opening to insight and experience. In the short-term the experience is enriching, enlivening and full of dramatic changes. In the long-term through achieving personal wholeness, soul nourishment and insights we reach a threshold, a bridge, a chasm – all variously transitional metaphors that signify a quantum leap, a fourth dimensional change that I have termed “the threshold of transformation”.

The significance of this threshold, and what distinguishes it from all the changes that have gone before, is that is effects are irreversible — it is a step from which there is no going back. Once taken, this step across the threshold will lead you to the condition of authenticity and intimacy with your own true nature.

This insight renders the controversy about personality redundant. But it does depend on our ability to clearly distinguish the psychological from the spiritual.

How To Play An Active Part In Your life, your fortune

Originally posted 2011-05-11 13:15:05.

In a Landmark Education Course I took back in 1987, I learned that it is possible to live life from a new context: “Life is a conversation”

It is quite simple if you can wrap your mind around it, incredibly difficult if you are attached to the way you see the world. Continue reading “How To Play An Active Part In Your life, your fortune”

Affirmations to Keep You on Track in Life

Originally posted 2011-05-07 23:30:04.

If you know me, you know that the misery I experienced in my life for 50 years drove me to many modalities of relief, including affirmations.

Affirmations don’t work for me. Never did and never will.

Why? Because affirmations are spoken from the mind: and the mind says so many things, a nice word here and there won’t make a difference. Just watch how much difference and how long a pat on the back does to you: not much, correct?

Life started to change when I learned different ways of speaking. I learned that there is descriptive language, and that includes the affirmations: the ordinary way of speaking of most people.

Then there are the active ways of speaking:

requests, promises, and declarations. This way of speaking does not come from the mind: it comes from your higher way of being: your vertical plane, your vertical self.

This kind of speaking creates a context that is inescapable.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that people won’t use request or promise sounding sentences, that come from the mind, a casual tool of babbling. They may even seem to declare something, but the power is missing.

I measure the power of your word in the Starting Point Measurements

The power of MY word is 70%… But even with that much power you need to know that what you say matters. If the mind says: ‘you are lying’, then it doesn’t matter how much power your word has… does it?

Any speaking that comes from the mind is mere chatter, and any speaking that comes from the Self is a command.

So then why do negative statements seem to have disastrous consequences: what the statement says seems to come true? Because those statements, when spoken in the absence of a commitment, the absence of a higher context, are the true description of where the speaker’s world is heading.

I often say: this won’t work… this is going to fail… but my actions are not consistent with those ‘affirmations’, they are consistent with making it work.

Your most important job, if you want your word to have power, is to learn to connect to your higher self (not god! not Jesus! but your own higher self), and speak from there.

Until then you are just littering the world with your affirmations.

‘What changes your focus: changes your faith. What changes your faith changes your outcome.’ ~ Jesse Duplantis

Let me start by saying that everything you say is some kind of affirmation – either positive or negative. When you complain to your friends, ‘nothing ever goes right for me,’ you are affirming to the world and the universe that nothing should go right in your life.

It’s true, you know. You are where you are today because of your beliefs, attitudes and words.

What you say today becomes your reality tomorrow. What you believe about yourself and your situation creates and maintains your world.

You may not like where you are right now. You may not think you deserve all the hassles, stress and problems. And you are right. But you are the only one who can change your life with affirmations.

It was a revelation to me that my lack of money, bad attitude and poor relationships were my own fault! It was life-changing to learn that I could change my circumstances by changing my words.

Over the years, I have learned to say certain things – affirmations – to cancel negatives and attract positive results. Here are six affirmations that changed my life.

1. ‘I will not be defeated and I will not quit.’ It is so easy to throw up your hands and say, ‘I tried.’ But ‘try’ is never enough. To win in any situation, you have to be prepared to stay with it until you do win! It’s a philosophy that applies to everything. Michael Jordan is perhaps the greatest basketball player ever. But he freely admits that he has lost more than 300 games and missed over 9,000 shots. But he never quit. Whatever you want, whatever you need to accomplish, don’t let your circumstances win. Don’t quit.

2. ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ Yes, it’s a Bible verse. But I use it all the time – when I’m tired and just want to give up (see #1!), when I’m faced with a problem that I don’t know how to solve, when I need physical strength to just get through the day. Sometimes I partner it with ‘I rest in God’s energy,’ drawing strength and resolve from the Eternal source of all energy and ability.

3. ‘I have the mind of Christ.’ The power here taps into Divine wisdom to solve seemingly unsolvable problems. God has answers to every situation. Affirming that connects your spirit with His wisdom. Patience allows Spirit to work on your behalf to bring the answers or change the circumstances to bring the solution you seek.

4. ‘I am rooted and grounded in Love.’

This one is particularly effective when I’m NOT feeling very loving. When someone interrupts ‘my’ routine, wants something from me that I don’t really want to do, or when I’m feeling selfish, I remind myself of my higher calling. I am rooted and grounded in love. I can set aside my wants and focus on the other person. God will take care of me. Use that as an affirmation, coupled with appropriate action to line yourself up for greater blessing.

5. ‘There is nothing lost in God’s world.’ Use this one where you are looking for lost keys, glasses or any misplaced item. It may take some time, but if you will let this work, a thought will pop into your mind to look… somewhere. And you will usually find exactly what you are looking for.
6. ‘God loves me and has a good plan for my life.’ Use this all the time, but especially when circumstances seem aligned against you. This affirmation helps to line up your thinking with the divine plan of blessing and abundance. It helps defeat stress by acknowledging the power of Divine assistance and direction.

Remember, you must stay consistent with your affirmations.

Think of your words like a bucket of paint.

If you are filling the bucket with negative (black) words, complaints and mumblings throughout your day, how much white (positive) words will you have to speak to get the color you want?

Don’t just think of affirmations as things you speak sometimes. Watch your everyday words to make sure you are speaking what you want. God explained it this way: call those things that be not as though they were (Rom. 4:17). By following His method of creation, you can re-create your own world with your words.

Words have power. They have the power to change your mindset. By changing your mind – your beliefs – you change your attitude. That leads to a change in your actions. Use the ‘A-team’ – Affirmation, Attitude and Action – to change your life.

Obviously this wasn’t my article… it was quoted by some god-fearing person. You need to find what YOU have faith in… if you don’t have faith in Christ or whatever….