Thirty Days To Change Your Life

Thirty Days to Change Your Life
Michael Miles
effortlessabundance.com
Our life is what our thoughts make it. Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil. Marcus Aurelius

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This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved: you are not allowed to give or sell this Guide to anyone else. If you received this publication from anyone other than effortlessabundance.com, you've received a pirated copy. Please contact us via e-mail at info@ effortlessabundance.com and notify us of the situation. Please note that much of this publication is based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence. Although the author has made every reasonable attempt to achieve complete accuracy of the content in this Guide, they assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Also, you should use this information as you see fit, and at your own risk. Your particular situation may not be exactly suited to the examples illustrated here; in fact, it's likely that they won't be the same, and you should adjust your use of the information and recommendations accordingly. Any trademarks, service marks, product names or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if we use one of these terms. Finally, use your head. Nothing in this Guide is intended to replace common sense, legal, medical or other professional advice, and is meant to inform and entertain the reader. So have fun with the 10 Quick Steps, and get your stuff done. Copyright 2008 effortlessabundance.com. All rights reserved worldwide.

How to Use this Book Why? The essence of life is change. Change is the only constant. It seems surprising that we tend to resist change, but I believe that we should embrace it. It is going to happen to us in one form or another, so why not take control of it and proactively shape ourselves? We are always moving either in the direction of growth or the direction of decay. So why not decide to grow and become better than we are? I do not suggest that we berate ourselves for not being perfect a healthy self esteem is essential for proper growth. In fact, the less perfect we are, the more exciting and interesting the journey, and the more we will be glad when we see how much we have achieved. How? There is only one way to change your life, and reading a book (however good it is!) will not do it. Only you can do it. A book can help you; it can give you ideas and support you; it can send you off down new avenues. But it can only help if you are ready and willing to change. This book contains thirty short chapters. You can read the whole book from cover to cover, just as you would a novel, but this isnt the best way to approach it. The best thing is to read one chapter per day for a month. You can read the chapters in any order, but the first five days form a sequence so I suggest you read these first. Dont be tempted to go onto the next chapter. Read slowly and let the message sink in. You might like to make a short summary of each chapter as you go. The more interactive you can make the experience of reading, the better. I have always subscribed to the dripping tap approach to selfimprovement. Just a little each day and, in a surprisingly short time, you will have changed a great deal. As Charlie Brown so wisely said, Nothing seems to change much from day to day, but pretty soon everythings different. Many drips fill a bucket. Finally, I came across a notice recently. It seemed to capture the essence of what self improvement is all about. It simply said, In a year from now, you may wish that you had started today. So why not start today? Its the only day you have.
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Day One: Who are you? There is a story I never tire of telling. Or of reading, for that matter. I first found it quite by accident in a bookshop in Birmingham, England. It was many years ago and I was browsing through the shelves when I came across Awareness by Anthony de Mello. The book struck a chord in me and I loved what I was reading so much that I bought it there and then and read it from cover to cover sitting in the city center. The first page tells the story; here it is (paraphrased by me). An eagle lays an egg but somehow the egg finds its way into a chicken coup. A chicken incubates the egg with all her others and when it hatches, she rears the eaglet as if it were one of her own chicks. It learns to peck the dust for food, to flap its wings and to strut around the farmyard. One day, an eagle flies by overhead. The little eagle looks up and sees this, and says to himself, I wish I were an eagle how majestic, how free, how beautiful to be like that and have such a life. The eagle lived like a chicken and died like a chicken, because thats hat he thought he was. Eckhart Tolle tells a similar story in The Power of Now. It goes something like this: Theres a beggar sitting on an old wooden box, and hes been sitting there for years he sits on it on the street and begs for money. One day someone walks past and tells the old beggar that he has nothing to give except a piece of information. The stranger tells the old man that his wooden box is full of money and treasure. The old man laughs and soon forgets what the stranger told him. He dies without ever opening the box. The American write Henry David Thoreau said most men live lives of quiet desperation, and the above stories are supposed to shock you into realizing that you are not what people have brainwashed you into believing you are. You are more wonderful than anything in the universe, spiritually whole and abundant by nature. Just as a drop of water contains all the properties of the ocean, so you contain all the spiritual properties of the universe, of God. You dont need to live a cowering, servile life, scrimping and scratching around for a pittance, doing a job you hate, cow-towing to a boss you dislike.

Before you realize this, you cannot amount to anything. You can try all the techniques, all the programs, go to seminars and buy self-help books, meditate and visualize, say affirmations, set goals. These are not bad things, but without a clear and basic understanding that you are the eagle, that you have the treasure inside you, you will be building a house on the sand, and the edifice will fall apart when the wind blows or when the tide comes in. You can have a wonderful house, a mansion! You can have it all. But your foundation needs to be solid. Abraham Lincoln said If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the axe, so why not spend some time getting to know who you really are?

Day Two: Why are you here? Henry David Thorea said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation, and Miguel Torga, the great Portuguese writer, said that life has the meaning we give it -- our richness, our enthusiasm, our pride -- or our cowardice. Once we have seen that we can change our own life and construct our own experience, we are able to orchestrate things so that we experience greater meaning. But what gives meaning to our lives? Is it money, property, a successful career, a big car, an attractive spouse or partner? Im sure most people would agree that these things in themselves do not add lasting and profound meaning to us. Albert Einstein said that only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile, and I believe that a life of service to others is what truly brings meaning. I prefer to use the term adding value, since this describes what I mean more accurately. The term service suggests that we have to give up our jobs and money to go help the poor and destitute. I know several people who have done just this, and they have certainly found happiness and peace in their choice of lifestyle. But a life of adding value does not mean abandoning your own needs and desires. It is not the same as sacrifice. Far from it when we truly add value to the lives of others, we cannot help but receive value ourselves. Examples of this kind of synergy abound in nature. For example, tree roots are often surrounded by fungal growths that take nutrients from the trees. Having no chloroplasts of their own, the fungi cannot synthesize the precursors of respiration, and so they piggyback on the trees ability to do this. In return, the tree gets to use the fungis vast subterranean network, extending its own reach and sucking in more nutrients from the soil. The soil, of course, gets this all back and more when the tree dies. Adding value is the only real way to live a meaningful life. But the question remains, how can we add value? I believe the answer to this is surprisingly simple. In a commencement speech delivered in 2005, Steve Jobs said that your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you havent found it yet, keep looking.
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Through Apple, Steve Jobs has undoubtedly added immense value to the world. He did it by following his heart and has been richly rewarded for it. The same can be said for many famous, successful and wealthy people. The formula is simple. Find what you love. Do it. Add vale. Be a success. Perhaps the first step is the hardest. Do you know what you love? There is little more important in life than finding out. Finally, some food for thought. In Making a Life, Making a Living, Mark Albion cites a study carried out by Srully Blotnick. The careers of 1,500 business school graduates were tracked from 1969 to 1980 and were split into two groups: group A said they wanted to make money first so they could do what they really wanted later, and group B said they would follow their interests first, regardless of financial considerations. At the end of the study, there were 101 millionaires. All but one came from group B.

Day Three: You are pulling the strings Austrian psychiatrist and survivor of the holocaust Victor Frankl tells us in Mans Search for Meaning that between stimulus and response there is a gap, and in that gap lies the whole of our experience. Unlike Pavlovs dogs, we are free to choose our responses to the things that come our way. Many perhaps most people go through life on autopilot, reacting in the same habituated ways they have learned over the course of their life, often rehearsing the scripts they developed as children. In adult life, many of these scripts are maladaptive and only serve to impoverish our experience and damage us and those we love. When we react defensively to a criticism, when we start to get angry because we are stuck in a traffic jam, when we keep on smoking despite knowing how bad it is, we are ignoring the gap and abdicating our freedom. But the truth is that we are free we are not robots, we are not like dogs salivating when a bell rings. We are pulling our own strings and when the stimulus comes we can take control, change our response and hence change our life. Of course, the power of our habits is strong and keeps pulling us back, but the gap is always there, even after a long lifetime of unconscious behavior, and over time we can expand the gap and become more free. In The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Steven Covey calls this being proactive, the first step towards a life of meaning. In truth, we have always been in control, but we need to realize this before can move on.

Day four: Everything is created in the mind first Steven R. Covey, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, tells us that all things are created twice, once in the mind, and once in the world. Although this idea that thoughts become things (to use Earl Nightingales expression) has been widely disseminated by self-development books and movies such as The Secret in recent months and years, most people do this without any conscious awareness of the process. It is happening all the time, but most of us simply create our experience by default through reactive and habitual thought patterns that we have picked up from parents, friends and society at large. Successful people are conscious of this process and use it more deliberately, but there is another, vital aspect to our ability to orchestrate our own experience, and it is this life is all about flow. We need to give and we need to receive, and Covey tells us that paying attention to the development of self in the greater perspective of improving ones ability to serve, to produce, to contribute in meaningful ways will enable us to create in a sustainable way. To ignore this give and take is to cause stagnation and decay, like a pool with no outlet stagnates and dies. I am reminded here of the story of the goose who laid the golden eggs. The farmer focused too much on the eggs and, in his greed, killed the goose. We need the eggs (what we create) but we also need to keep the engine of creation going, and we do this by honoring the fact that all life is about giving and receiving. Bringing these two basic truths together that we create twice, and that we must work with the flow of life brings us to the point where we must think deeply about what we want and where we are going in life. If we fail to engage at this point, we will continue to drift along, either experiencing by default (as most people do) or creating our life in a way which ultimately leads to stagnation and decay.
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Day five: You can only change form the inside You can have anything. You can do anything. You can be anything. But you cant do it. At least your conscious, thinking mind cant. You cant do it through effort and control and work. In truth, The subconscious mind does everything. It creates your whole world. Through its interaction with the conscious, thinking mind on one side and the vast universal intelligence which pervades the universe on the other, it orchestrates our experience of life. Where we are now is a result of the activity of our subconscious mind. Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and holocaust survivor, recounts an interesting story. We know a case in which a violinist always tried to play as consciously as possible. From putting his violin in place on his shoulder to the most trifling technical detail, he wanted to do everything consciously, to perform in full self-reflection. This led to a complete artistic breakdown. Treatment had to give back to the patient his trust in the unconscious, by having him realize how much more musical his unconscious was than his conscious. Know who is in control Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Viktor Frankl First, we must realize that we are in the driving seat. Unlike Pavlovs dogs or other animals who respond only by instinct, we humans have the power of choice. The Austrian psychiatrist and survivor of the holocaust Viktor Frankl wrote that between stimulus and response there is a gap, and inside that gap lies all of our experience. When we realize that this gap exists and that we can use it, we have tremendous power. Most people have given that power away. They go straight from stimulus to response without a thought, reacting in the old, habitual way over and over again. It amazes me that people go through life running the same script for year after year, decade after decade, never seeming to realize that they have a choice. But this is the reality you have free will, you are responsible for how you react, and you have the power to change I must into I choose.
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It all starts in the mind Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose ones own way. Viktor Frankl The most important area in which we operate our freedom is our own mind. We are free to control our thoughts and change our own perception of things. This is a revelation to many people, who believe that thoughts happen to them. In reality, you generate your own thoughts all day long and you can be the master of them. Changing our beliefs is not instantaneous, but our beliefs do change throughout our lives and we can be active in controlling this process. The way we act, of course, depends on what we believe. It makes sense that changing what we believe will alter the way we behave. Rich people tend naturally to think about money and abundance and so they tend to attract more money by naturally acting in accordance with their beliefs. Poor people often tend to think about lack, and so they attract this experience. The inside-out We create our own reality in two ways. One is our self-talk. We talk to ourselves all day long. You can often catch the moment shortly after you wake up when the script kicks in for a short while after you wake up, your mind is blank; youre not thinking anything in particular. But suddenly you will remember what happened to you yesterday or last week (good or bad) and your internal talk will begin. If youre not very conscious about it, this script will just run in the background all day and you will react to situations in your usual conditioned manner. But if you can become aware that this is happening, you can start to replace to old script with a self-talk based on conscious choice. The other is our visualization. We see ourselves in certain scenarios in our minds eye. Again, if you are conscious, you can replace the default visualizations (of being a victim, being poor etc.) with new ones about abundance, happiness, confidence and control. Start visualizing what you want to achieve, how you want to feel and what sort of person you want to be.
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The subconscious ensures that our images are translated into reality. A change in our mind will work its way out. Our subconscious mind believes what it is told by the thinking, self-talking, visualizing mind and does not recognize any difference between a real experience and an imaginary one. So we need to be careful what we think about and talk to ourselves about, and what we see in our minds eye. These words and images will be turned into reality as sure as day follows night. In the end, we see the world as we are.
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Day six: Making money Being rich is a state of mind. Your mind is like a garden which contains rich, fertile soil, and it will bring forth whatever you sow in it. You can sow a mentality of lack and poverty or a mentality of abundance. The harvest will be a life of poverty and struggle or one of ease and comfort. Which one would you prefer? The answer is obvious, but it is surprising how many people choose the former. The rich have sown an abundance mentality, and here are ten ways you can start to tend your own garden of riches. Think more about money. Our experience of the world starts in our mind, and what we focus on will expand and push its way out into the physical world. If we focus on lack and poverty, this is what we will experience, but if we concentrate on wealth, it will start to appear in our lives. I have noticed that the rich spend a lot of time talking about money. So do the poor, in fact, except that they are talking about the lack of it. Admire people who have money and associate with the wealthy. How do you feel when you see someone who you know is rich? Whether it be a movie star, the boss at work or a guy who lives down the road, if you are jealous about the success and wealth of others, you are never going to attract it into your own life. You need to admire these kind of people and ask yourself what can I learn from them? The best way to learn from the wealthy, of course, is to be around them, so you should try to associate yourself with successful and wealthy people. Be comfortable carrying money around. What do youy find when you open your wallet? I used to withdraw money from the ATM only when I needed it and I was habitually running short of money. The message an empty wallet sends to your subconscious is got no money. So sure enough, this will play out in your life. Maybe you say to yourself I cant carry money around or else Ill spend it! Well, if you cant trust yourself with cash on the hip, youre never going to be rich. Get used to spending money and buying nice things. If you have a poverty mentality, as soon as you get some money you will spend it. People who think like this cannot trust themselves with cash. Having an abundance mentality means spending money and enjoying it. It does not mean living above your means and getting into debt, but its also important not to scrimp and save. Your money is there to be enjoyed, and so long as you are sensible, you can go out and treat yourself. Go to a nice restaurant, get your hair done at an expensive salon, buy a designer suit or bag. These things will send out signals to your subconscious mind (and

other people, and the universe) that you have an abundance mentality and that you are comfortable with money. Get into the habit of investing. Hoarding money and spending all your money are signs of a poverty mentality. Both cause stagnation and an end to wealth. But growing money is at the heart of an abundance mentality. Money is like a living thing it has to move and it to grow. If you win $100 in a competition, what would you do with it? The rich would think about how to turn it into $1000. The poor would just spend it or bury it. Theres an important difference. Dont be too attached to money. Hoarding money is also symptom of a poverty mentality. Because everything in life is in flux, money as well as all other things cannot sit still. It cannot lie dormant. It has to move. Either you can move it or it will move of its own accord. If you try to hoard it, it will find a way of moving on anyway an unexpected bill or other expense, a car or house repair that needs to be paid for so keep your money flowing. Put it to work in investments, spend some of it on nice things, be generous and, above all, enjoy it! Otherwise, whats the point? Feel that you deserve to be rich. Dont feel guilty about it. Many people have been deeply scripted in a mentality that equates money with guilt. How can the rich live with themselves when there are starving people in the world? Why dont they give their money way to help others? These are the things I used to say to myself, until I realized the truth: if all the money in the world were redistributed equally, in a matter of months, there would once again be massive inequality. And this is because poverty is a disease of the mind. Of course we should support the needy, the homeless, the sick and the hungry, but giving a person with a poverty mentality a large sum of money will not make that person rich, because so long as the poverty mentality is running, their subconscious autopilot will find a way of bringing them back to poverty. Associate money with a healthy, balanced life. Many people think that money is tainted. They use phrases like filthy rich and associate making money with dishonest practices and unsavory ways of living. But the reality is that money is not bad: its just money. And theres no more or less reason to acquire it than there is a reason to be happy, healthy or successful. Money is good and necessary, since it can allow you to experience more of life and to help other people. Take responsibility. Dont blame anyone or anything for your situation. There are other people in that same situation who are making it!
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It is not your parents fault that you are poor. It is not the governments fault. Its not your age or education. None of these things have stopped others from getting rich. Many people just stay poor because its easier they dont have to face up to their part in creating their own reality. But if you truly want to be rich, stop making excuses and take responsibility. When you have done this, it clears the way for amazing things to happen. Believe that anything is possible. Henry Ford said, Whether you believe you can or believe you cant, youre probably right. People have come from abject poverty and made billions. Others have started at the top and lost it all. Anything is possible in this world. So start believing it!
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Day seven: Why the rich get richer For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 13:12) When I was a child, I used to look out at the world, watch the news, and think to myself how unfair it is that some people are so rich and others so poor. But now I have come to the conclusion that if all the money in the world were divided equally between everyone, within a short time, the rich would be rich again, and the poor would be poor again. Why? Simply put money is a symptom or an effect. The cause of money is our attitude, our thoughts, and our self-image. We attract more of what we focus on. We create our own financial condition. Being rich is the effect of our thoughts, not the cause. Most people have got this the wrong way round. As in all spheres of life, what we sow is what we reap. Our thoughts create our reality and if we sow good, positive thoughts, thoughts of abundance, these thoughts will yield a harvest of money and abundance. If we sow thoughts of poverty and lack, we will manifest that in our lives. Some peoples minds are like rich, fertile soil where the crop can grow strong and healthy; others minds are more like rocks and dust which will not support a good harvest. Many people spend their lives building a money monster, made up of the negative thoughts about money and wealth. Many of these thoughts came from parents, teachers and other influential figures which they were exposed to when young, and those thoughts get built on and expanded until eventually they become a huge and terrifying monster which, eventually, turns around and devours them. Others, however, spend their life building a powerful and obedient genie, an unshakeable collection of positive thoughts and convictions which free you from worry and lack; the genie does your bidding and you are always rich. We must realize that money doesnt control us, we control it money is our servant, not our master. We must take responsibility for this. Where we are now is a result of what we have thought and how we have acted in the past. We must accept this. Either we are responsible or we are not which is it to be? Do you want to carry on feeling that youre at the mercy of chance? Maybe you do maybe you get something out of that. But know this if you do not accept
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that you are responsible for your financial condition, you will always be poor. That more gathers more is true on every plane of existence and that loss leads to greater loss is equally true. Charles E. Haanel (1866-1949) Many people have self-defeating beliefs about money (which I have written about elsewhere). We cannot be wealthy if we think of money in a negative way. Money is just a way to be free, and creating financial abundance should be top of our list of priorities. Clear out your old ideas about wealth and fill your mind with new and positive thoughts about money. Flaunting wealth is a sign of insecurity and tells of a poverty mentality, but to wish and strive for financial freedom is a good thing as someone once said, the more you know, the less you need to show. Know that whatever your beliefs, the world will support them so think positive and abundant thoughts, and these will be played out in real life. One of these self-defeating beliefs is that there is a shortage of money. But in reality, there is not a limited supply of wealth and abundance if I go out in a boat and fill a few buckets with water, does that mean there is less water for everyone else? If I pump water from the sea night and day, does that mean the ocean will run dry? Hardly! There is so much of it that it can never run out! Even the wealth of the richest person in the world is just, well, a drop in the ocean! Another reason the ocean never runs dry is that water is constantly on the move. Water evaporates, it forms clouds, the clouds release water as rain, the rain falls into streams and rivers, and the rivers flow back into the sea. Just like water, money needs to flow. If you try to hoard money, it will stagnate, like a pool with no inlet or outlet. But if you keep money circulating, it will grow, just as a pool with a constant flow of fresh water sparkles and teems with life. In fact, money flows whether we like it or not, since that is its nature. If you try to hoard it, it will find a way of moving on a big tax bill, an unexpected expense so keep things moving, keep your money flowing. That doesnt mean give all your money away or keep buying and selling investments; it means dont let your money stagnate and die dont kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Its also important that you dont try to control the process who knows through which wonderful channels money and wealth will come to you? Your subconscious mind is wiser than you can know, and will orchestrate events in a marvelous and unexpected way to
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bring you what you desire. It is also important that you be ready to receive. Sometimes you dont get what you want you get something better. So be ready and be open to all possibilities. Making money is not hard work its easy when you do it right. Like all things in life, see which way the wind is blowing and sail with the wind, not against it. Sailing against the wind is madness it will take all your energy and youll stand still (at best). So sail with the wind, go with the flow of life, and you can be effortlessly abundant.
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Day eight: The importance of your beliefs Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself. From The Matrix The story of the four-minute mile is one of those things that tells us about the way the world works. For years, people tried and tried to run a mile in under four minutes but just kept failing. However, as soon as Roger Banister did it in 1954, the floodgates opened and within two years, about 350 others had done the same. When people really believe that something is possible, then it is. As Henry Ford famously said, Whether You Believe You Can, Or You Can't, You Are Right. I read recently that beliefs are neither tight nor wrong. I disagree if you dont think that your beliefs are right, then I cant see how they can be called beliefs. This doesnt mean you should arrogantly try to foist your beliefs on other people if youre right, then all well and good; let others find out in their own way, and by all means present and discuss your beliefs but beliefs should be held strongly and with power. They have the ability to empower you or limit you. Examples of the empowering effect of belief are found everywhere. For example, in her book Imagery for Getting Well, Deirdre Davis Brigham (W.W. Norton & Co. 1994) reports several instances of the mind appearing to have amazing control over the body. She cites some cases of people with multiple personality one personality has flu symptoms or even diabetes; the other personality has no sign of illness. She also mentions Clove Backster, who found that skin from his patients actually reacted chemically when Backster simply thought of damaging the skin. Dr. Madeline Daniels has written about studies of the self fulfilling prophecy where, for example, different teachers were told that their classes consisted of under performers or bright students and, by year end, there was a significant difference in the quality of the classes work. Needless to say, the students ability was the same in all classes. This study from researchers at Stanford University suggests that pain can be controlled by thought. There are many documented instances of individuals appearing to defy nature because of belief people walking over hot coals, people being buried for days and coming out alive and well, people not eating for weeks or even years and appearing to be in normal health. The examples are endless.
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I read somewhere recently that a belief is nothing but the generalization of a past incident. This seems to ring true. When I was a child, I was outgoing and gregarious. Then something happened I was openly criticized and, generalizing this experience, I started to see those around me as hostile and unwelcoming. And so I spent many, many years carrying this belief, feeling insecure and threatened, terrified of public speaking. I had to recognize that I had been carrying this belief around with me all those years and consciously decide to change it.
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Day nine: The importance of self-image The image we have of ourselves is the most important thing in determining what we experience in the world. We spend our days acting out the kind of person we think we are, and eventually, as Earl Nightingale observed, we become what we think about. We experience what we are convinced is true and so, in a very real sense, we have each created ourself from our own mental image. And we can recreate ourselves from a new mental image if we choose. Whoever you are now, you have chosen it. And in a year, five years, ten years from now, you can be the same person, or you can choose again and become someone different. Who we are First, try to realize that we are spiritually whole. Just as a drop of water contains all the properties of the ocean, so we contain all the spiritual properties of the universe, of God. Since this is so, we should love ourselves with no strings attached. Whatever we have done or failed to do does not change what we are and what we are is perfect. Rejecting yourself or a part of yourself or hating yourself for something you have done is pointless. Self-acceptance is the first step and the most important part of choosing your experience and being successful. You need to separate what you have done, how much you earn, the things you own, and everything else about you, from who you are. When you see yourself for what you truly are, you can experience your own magnificence right now and then you can choose your life. How to change Many people think that the only way to do something worthwhile is by sheer hard work. But no amount of willpower can change us into something we think we are not. If I see myself as unfit, then no amount of going to the gym and trying to eat well is going to change that image and, eventually, I will stop going to the gym and I will start eating the wrong kind of food again, and I will remain unfit. If you want to change, you must start the process in your mind first. When you see yourself as being fit and healthy, then going to the gym and eating well will be natural and easy. If you see yourself as a non-smoker, then not smoking will be easy and natural. If you keep saying to yourself, Im going to give up smoking, but your subconscious still sees you as a smoker,
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then youre going to fail because you always live up to your subconscious expectations. Your growth will cause others pain. You are in control, you are pulling the strings, and so you must take responsibility for your life. When you accept this and you take control of your life, this is bound to make some people unhappy. You are becoming more powerful, and you seem to make some others shrink they dont understand why you are difference, they dont see themselves as being in control and they wonder what you have that they dont. When you decide to change your life, some people will have values which conflict with yours, and so they may feel threatened and try to attack you or control you or turn you into something else. Isnt this whats behind some peoples attempts to convert you to their religion? Dont be afraid You dont need permission from others to change your life. You can never get the approval you seek from others, so just relax, love yourself and decide who you want to become. The only authority you need is within yourself. Dont worry about whether youre perfect youre like a house under construction, and so is everyone else. Theres nothing wrong with this its the way things are and people who criticize you are only throwing stones at themselves. Dont be afraid to expose a weakness and make yourself vulnerable. This is how you learn about yourself, its how to change and grow. If you know that you are spiritually perfect, you will not be threatened by the beliefs of others. Dont fear or resent others for being wealthy or successful. Learn from them and admire them, support them in what they have and more abundance will come to you. The right kind of selfishness Why is it wrong to have things just because others dont? Will it help the poor if you are poor yourself? You are naturally and effortlessly abundant. You are powerfully orchestrating of your own experience. I believe that nothing happens to us that we dont permit at a deep, subconscious level.

What is happening within us is in deep alignment with our outside experiences. So delve inside, choose what you want to become, choose the abundant, prosperous and successful life, hold on to that image of yourself, and then you cannot help but become that person. And the best part of all it will happen effortlessly.
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Day Ten: The Importance of a Mission statement The image we have of ourselves is the most important thing in determining what we experience in the world. We spend our days acting out the kind of person we think we are, and eventually, as Earl Nightingale observed, we become what we think about. Successful people have a clear direction, a sense of where they are going and, as importantly, why they are going there. This sense of direction is a compass which keeps them on track, and it is often expressed in a mission statement. The most important step is to identify your values, those basic principles which are most important to you. In Mans Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl suggests that we detect our meaning in life, so it is worth spending some time seriously reflecting on what values we live by, what really moves us. Steven R. Covey, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, suggests that we imagine ourselves attending our own funeral and listen as we hear the eulogies being reads out about us. Do we like what we are hearing? What do we want to hear? How have we been remembered? We need to identify what is deeply important to us. If these values can be distilled and concretized into a personal mission statement (what you want to be and do, based on your personal values), then we can live out each day deliberately creating an experience which leads to sustainable growth and happiness. We need to decide where the focus of our life is located. People have many focuses work, money, family, friends and so on but the truly creative person has his or her core values at the center of life. Steven R. Covey identifies four features which flow from this center and which need to be in harmony in a truly creative and successful life. First is security, our sense of worth and emotional anchorage. In an valuecentered life, change should seen as an exciting adventure and an opportunity to learn and grow Secondly, guidance, our sense of direction. Here, we should be detached from lifes changing landscape and guided internally by our core values. Thirdly, wisdom, or how we respond to events. In a value-centered life, we do not respond reactively to the vicissitudes of life but proactively make decisions, not being acted on by others but acting independently and skillfully in the world. Fourthly, power, our ability to achieve. Here, we should recognize that what we achieve is
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our own responsibility and is not determined by the beliefs and behavior of others. Most individuals dont have a mission statement. They dont have a clear idea of where they are going in life. They dont know what they want to achieve. They just drift along, year after year, decade after decade. Most people live like that and they die like that. Napoleon Hill, in his famous book Think and Grow Rich wrote that most people did not have a goal, did not now where they were going. He also presented a six step plan by which anyone could achieve financial success. This plan does not involve a lot of effort, incidentally its essentially a method for clear about what you seek to achieve. If you want to find out about the plan, its presented in chapter 2 of the book, but the key element in the plan is clear statement of purpose, and a mission statement can be a powerful way of achieving this. A mission statement cannot just be thrown together. It needs to be carefully crafted. Here are the elements of a good mission statement. Your goals should be specific and clear What are your values? What do you stand for? What are you going to achieve? What are you going to contribute to the world? This isnt about what you want to achieve its not a wish list; its a definite statement of intent, its your order from the menu of the universe, its what is going to happen. When you start to get bogged down in the details of daily life, think back to your mission statement it will act as a compass to keep you on track; your decisions and actions will be guided by it. In this sense, it provides you with a wide angle lens through which you can keep the bigger picture in view. Your goals do not need to be (SHOULD not be) realistic or attainable weve all heard about SMART targets which have to be measurable, realistic etc., etc. The point here is that the universe can do anything, however unbelievable or unrealistic it is. It should indicate how you are going to achieve your goals this does not contradict the previous statement. You must not include a specific, detailed plan, but a statement about what you are going to offer in exchange for meeting your goal. For example, your goal is to be the best sales person in your company you will achieve this goal by giving outstanding service to every customer. Theres nothing here about sales targets, how many clients you need to see, how many sales you need to make etc. Once you have written down the how in general terms, the universe will do the rest.
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It should be short some organizations produce long rambling mission statements which nobody ever reads! Napoleon Hill suggests you read through your mission statement every morning and evening; youre not going to do this if its going to take twenty minutes. And the ideas arent going to be as powerful if theyre not focused. So keep it short, focused and powerful, like a laser beam. It should make you feel good If you know where youre going, youll live a life of eager anticipation and joy. Just as if you are sailing somewhere on a ship you know youll get to your destination and in the meantime youre enjoying the view. This attitude of anticipating a future you have already chosen (you bought the ticket, you got on the ship, the ships moving) whilst living in the present moment (youre looking out at a wonderful sunrise, enjoying the view) is, to me, the only sensible way to live. Taking time to write and regularly review your mission statement is one of the most important things you can do in life. Next time you get bogged down in the day-to-day detail of life, stop and think about your mission statement. It will keep things in perspective; it will clarify your vision and it will keep you moving on the right course. Your life is like a ship of course, you need a crew, busily working away to keep afloat and keep moving, but even more importantly, you need a map, you need a compass and you need a captain. Without them, your ship just wont get anywhere.
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Day eleven: Goals Did you make any new years resolutions in January? How many of them are you still on track with? We all have goals. And we all set them for ourselves all the time. But usually we dont know it - were not being very conscious. In this article I want to discuss a few ideas which may help you to set goals more consciously and also introduce a practical way to actually get them achieved. Create specific goals I dont think Ive ever read a self-improvement book or anything on the law of attraction that didnt emphasize in some way the importance of goal setting. Actually, we all set goals all the time, its just that usually we do it unconsciously, and most of the goals people set are pretty odd. Im going to be exhausted by the end of the week. This meeting is going to be boring, Im never going to get through all this work and so on. Why would anyone set these goals? Your goals dont have to be like this so stop doing it! You need to try to be more conscious about your goals, and to this end it helps to write them down. Goals written down are like a compass that guides you through the chaos of daily life. Written goals send out a powerful message to the universe. Its the first step in a process that will lead you wherever you want to go. Start to achieve your goals right NOW! The law of attraction works in the following way: thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to things. Most people think that events and circumstances are reflected in your thoughts and feelings. In fact, its your thoughts and feelings that draw events and circumstances into your life. So you need to start acting as if you already have what you aim to achieve in order to draw it into your life. Weve been taught that we all good things come to those who wait and that delayed gratification is better than having it all now. In some ways, this is certainly right. The young couple that buys a house thats too expensive for them and fills it with push furnishings and all mod cons is going to get into desperate trouble with their credit line because they couldnt wait. The
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child (or the adult!) who stuffs his face with chocolate instead of waiting for dinner is going to suffer as a result. This kind of delayed gratification is a necessary and healthy thing. But what were taking about here is not putting off your goals any more were talking about getting them achieved. You can have what you want immediately, but not in full perhaps one might say that you can have the quality but not the quantity. What you have has got to be real, but it just wont be the whole thing. An example given by Raymond Aaron in his book Double Your Income Doing What You Love, is making a $1000 deposit into your savings account each month. This is a goal. In order to achieve this goal you need to give the law of attraction something to work with. You need to start acting as if its already happening. So, decide on the date each month when you will make the deposit and go right ahead but you dont have to deposit $1000: you can make it $25 or even $1 just get into the habit of doing it, and calling it a $1000 deposit. Telling people about it will also help. But the main thing is to do it every month without fail, to build up a habit and to keep thinking of it as a $1000 deposit. As another example, maybe you want a chauffeur thats your goal but you cant achieve that right now. So start by taking a taxi once a week, or as many times as you can. This is something I have done when I travel, I usually get a driver to take me from the airport to wherever I am staying and I take taxis to and from work. I rarely use public transport these days and I do not drive. Maybe you want an extravagantly expensive new home. So go looking around new places every month spend an afternoon looking at luxury homes and show flats, imagine that its yours. Keep on doing it, keep holding the thought and the universe will move to attract a wonderful new home into your life. Examples are endless, but the point is to start behaving as if your goal has already been achieved, as far as you can. What will happen is that the real thing the full, unabridged version will start to appear in your life. Occasionally you will be able to make that $1000 deposit. Because you have built up certain habits, before you know it, youll be living in a different way. This is how the LOA works you need to give the universe something to work with, so start behaving as if you already have what you want and pretty soon it will be yours.
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Small things can make all the difference When you change your life in a small way and keep on doing things in this different way, after a surprisingly short time, your life will be different. A boat that changes its rudder by one degree will soon enough be headed in the opposite direction. Intentionally changing little things will be the start of a process that will radically change your life. Whether its learning a language, writing a book, building a website, having a great marriage, building a career or getting rich, persistently acting in a small way is key - a dripping tap soon fills the bucket! This isnt just a mind trick. It is a game, as is all of life (in a sense). So go out there and start playing!
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Day twelve: Wu Wei Youve always been told that making no effort is bad, right? Perhaps at school you got a grade for effort and were berated by teachers and parents for being lazy. Youll never make anything of yourself if you dont put in more effort. Theres no such thing as a free lunch. Weve all heard things like this a million times. But we should distinguish between effortlessness and doing nothing or being lazy. If you dont exercise because you cant be bothered, or if you eat junk food because its to much effort to cook something healthy, or if you dont revise for your exam because its too much trouble, then of course youre heading for an impoverished life. But there is a certain way of doing things - or rather a certain way of getting things done - by which an excellent result is achieved with the expenditure of very little energy. It sounds wrong, counterintuitive - but it just means going with the flow. I remember my dad telling me how to saw a piece of wood: he said you had to follow the woods natural grain, if possible, and then let the saw do the work - dont push and pull too hard, just hold loosely and let the saw be your guide, almost as if the saw is an extension of your arm. Its like water or electricity moving - it travels easily and effortlessly, always finding the easiest route, the path of least resistance - there is motion, there is action, but it is effortless motion, and it is powerful motion because energy is not being used to overcome. The ancient Chinese philosophy of Wu Wei is the best description of this kind of achievement without effort. An interesting and very accessible introduction to this idea, along with many others which will crop up time and again in this blog, are contained in Benjaminn Hoffs excellent book, The Tao of Pooh. Just How do you do it, Pooh? Do What? asked Pooh. Become so Effortless. I dont do much of anything, he said. But all those things of yours get done. They just sort of happen, he said
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Day thirteen: Adding value to the world Many of us have been brought up to think that there is only so much to go around and we must grab what we can before other people get our share. Competition and selfishness pervade our world - we have been schooled in the ethic of me first. But there is another paradigm which insists on helping others, giving something of ourselves and helping out wherever we can. This is called adding value. But why would anyone want to do this? Here are my top seven reasons. 1. When you add value, the whole that you produce is greater than the sum of the parts which produced it. Unlike the not enough pie to go round paradigm, the adding-value paradigm insists that when you enrich the life of someone else, the pie gets bigger and there is more for us all. 2. If youre not adding value, youre taking it away. You cannot stand still you can grow or die; you can add value or you can take it away. The doctor who learns no new skills is falling behind and being carried by her colleagues; the teacher who is unenthusiastic about his classes is damaging the students education. Do you want to grow, or do you want to die? you have to choose. 3. It makes the world a better place for all of us. When you help someone, you add value to their life and you make the world a better place. Whether youre teacher who helps a student to pass an exam or encourages him to apply for university, or an author who writes a book that helps thousands of people, you make the world better for all of us, including yourself. 4. Youre going to get a whole lot in return. This is not the reason for doing it, of course, but its a fact when you give you receive. Maybe not in the way you think, but when you really try to add value with no expectation of reward, the rewards start rolling in. Life is strange like that! 5. It makes you feel good. Steven Covey, in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, speaks about an inner darkness which is created when you live a life without integrity. Living a life of integrity and value is the only way to truly feel good about yourself. 6. It brings opportunity. If you become known as someone who always helps, always tries to find a solution, youll win friends and influence people. There are two kinds of person, my friend (can you guess the movie?), problem people and solution people. Which are you seen as? You future success could depend on being in the right category. 7. Its the meaning of life. The bottom line is that adding value is the whole point of being alive thats what were all here for; thats what

its all about. Adding value is what you were put on this earth to do. Ever wonder about the meaning of life? Adding value thats it! The rewards that come from adding value are immense and unpredictable, tangible and intangible. Mostly, adding value is all about being creative in situations and seeing how you can use your skills to make a difference. Now, here are seven ways of making sure you are adding value in every situation as much as you can. 1. Make sure you know what you can do. What are your skills? What are you good at? These are the tools which will allow you to add value. Of course, the best way to do what youre good at is to 2. Do what you love. When you do the things you love, adding value comes naturally. Look at Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Madonna, or any number of rich and successful people: what do they have ion common? They do what they love! And they are successful because they add value naturally. 3. If youre not adding value, get out! If youre in a job where you dont feel youre systematically adding something, wither you need to change the way youre doing things, or its time to quit. You can do better. 4. Adding value will guide you to the right job or enterprise. If you have a choice of two or more paths, be they career paths or anything else, always choose the one that allows you to add the most value. This will keep you in alignment with your true purpose in life and will, ultimately, bring you greater happiness and greater reward. 5. Keep on learning new things and expanding your comfort zone. This is how you learn more skills which will enable you to add more value. Go on a course, do a part time degree, put together a website, write a novel but do something new. 6. Dont be sacred to fail. When you do something new, youll do it badly and you might even be afraid to do it at all. If and when you do fail, you might not want to go through the experience again. But if you push through that initial failure, pick yourself up and keep going, youll start to improve and eventually youll be good at what youre doing. 7. Encourage other people. Try to get the best out of people encourage them to be the best they can be. This will inspire them to take their own risks and add their own value to the world.
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Day fourteen: Dont worry Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. Glenn Turner We live in a culture where everyone seems to worry. Turn on the news someone got shot, theres mercury in the fish we eat, the cows have got BSE, a new super-flu is coming, terrorists are regrouping, On and on it goes. If you take all of this stuff seriously, its likely that youll never go out, never eat, never travel, or never take any kind of risk at all. But in fact, worry makes no sense at all. Here are some reasons why worry really is a pointless and damaging activity, though I suspect we all know this deep down. Things never happen the way you imagine. When you worry, you are predicting the future. You are saying I know that things will turn out badly. But this just isnt the case. You have no idea how the future is going to turn out, except to say that it will not be what you think it will be. So why worry? Worry means you give away your power. Some people are so entrenched in worry that they cannot see any other way to live. But worry robs you of your power to be proactive. The truth is that you are in control and you can choose how to react to situations, so why choose to give that power away so easily and so unconsciously? Worrying is completely unproductive. Why waste your energy doing something that gets you nowhere. On a treadmill at least you get some exercise, but worry is a truly pointless activity. Spend your time and energy on something more useful. Worry distorts reality. We live in an age where people live longer, have better access to health care, have more opportunity for personal and professional growth, more chance to travel, greater access to information and lifelong education, and many other wonderful things. Yes, there are risks and potential dangers, but worry magnifies these disproportionately and blinds us to the wonders of our age. Worrying is bad for your health. Worry is not a normal state of mind, and it adversely affects your health, even your physical health. When you worry, physical changes are happening in your body which are very
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damaging. It increases stress which can increase blood pressure, cause higher levels of stomach acid, cause muscle tension and headaches, among many other things. Worry is not natural. Do little children worry? Do animals worry? Do all adults worry? There is nothing inherent in being human that means you have to worry. Worry is a pathology, a distortion of our natural, healthy state. Do you know the most frequent instruction given in the Bible? Surprisingly, it is not love one another or love God or anything like that. It is simple do not be afraid. I dont know how many times it appears, but Ive seen estimates between 100 and 366 times. You dont have to be religious to realize that this is good advice. So how can we break out of this worry habit? Like all habits, it might not be easy to do, but there are some clear, simple and effective steps you can take to eliminate worry from your life. Realize that you are in control. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey tells us that the first step to a better life is the realization that we are free to choose how to react to circumstances. Worry is a choice its inside our own head and, as such, it is within the sphere of our own influence. Recognize that worry is a habit. Like all habits, there is a momentum to worry, and it might not be easy to break away from this, especially if youve been a worrier all your life. But its possible to change any habit. Keep things in perspective. E. Joseph Crossman said, If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today. Are you still worrying about those things? Will all this stuff matter in 100 years from now? Face your fears. When you face Nelson DeMille said that Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face. After you do something that scares you, youll probably find it wasnt as bad as you thought. With time, all your worry will dissipate. Stop trying to be in control of everything. You cannot control the whole world. Things happen that are truly outside our circle of influence, and so
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we need to relax and accept that sometimes things just happen as they will. This is part of life, and worry will not change it one little bit. Stop taking yourself so seriously. If you fail, so what? If you screw up, is it the end of the world? Are you really so important that the world will stop turning if you get things wrong? Life is not that serious. Worry is a dangerous and poisonous thing. You must not let it eat away at you. Finally, one of my favorite quotes from the master of quotes, Mark Twain. I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
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Day fifteen: Never give up Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. Winston Churchill Have you ever failed? Did you feel bad about it? We are usually conditioned to think of failure as a bad thing, something to be avoided, something to be embarrassed about or ashamed of. But if you look back over you life, when were the times you really learned? Which were the situations through which you grew the most? Like much of our conditioning, we have got this one all wrong. Not only should we not fear failure, we should embrace it, because failure is the necessary precursor of success. Failure teaches us how to succeed. Just look at this list of famous failures. The first Xerox copier was a flop. Now virtually every office in the world has a machine. An unknown Harvard dropout bought a piece of computer technology from an unknown person for $50 and started a bunsiness. His name is Bill Gates. Isaac Newton was regarded as stupid by his teachers. His work on gravitation secured him a place as one of the greatest Scientists in history. Thomas Edison was told by his teachers that he was too stupid to learn anything. He failed 9000 times before successfully inventing the light bulb. Michael Jordan was cut from his school basketball team because of lack of skill. Colonel Sanders talked to 1005 people before he could find one person willing to try his recipe. A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney for having no good ideas Winston Churchill was a failure at school. He is widely regarded to be one of the most important figures in modern world history. When Albert Einstein was young, his parents thought he was mentally retarded. His grades in school were so bad that a teacher asked him to leave, writing, Einstein, you will never amount to
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anything! Of course, Einstein was one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. Henry Fords first two automobile companies failed. He became one of the richest men in the world. J K Rowlings first Harry Potter book was rejected by a publisher who said theres no money in childrens books. Stephen King was so disillusioned with his first novel Carrie that he threw it in the bin. His wife rescued it and sent it to a publisher. We could go on (and on, and on, ) The absurdity of seeing failure as a bad thing and taking other peoples opinions about us too seriously is clear. Take the advice of Samuel Becket: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
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Day sixteen: Dont let other people run your life for you Why you shouldnt care what other people think about you (and why you shouldnt expect anyone else to care about you) Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde Who is in control of your life? Whos pulling your strings? For the majority of us, its other people society, colleagues and friends, family, church or other religious community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. We didnt want to be singled out by the crowd for being different because this wasnt such a nice feeling. We learned this way of being so well that, as adults, we continue mostly through mutual peer pressure to keep each other in check. Like sheep without any need for a sheepdog, we keep each other in line. It works both ways. First, we are afraid of disapproval. Am I dressed right? Will people laugh at my accent? Will I look stupid? Will I make a mistake? When we feel that others think badly of us, it makes us feel bad and so we try to avoid this. Second, we all want to feel important and so we crave the positive attention of others. This is one of our basic needs, according to Dale Carnegie, author of the multi-million best seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And so when people stroke our ego and tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We crave this good feeling like a drug we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. We are so desperate for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, denying huge swathes of ourselves and failing to do the things we really want to do because were worried about what other people will think. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live impoverished lives to keep getting their fix, so we impoverish our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval. The drug is so addictive that most people will not give it up they will keep looking for approval because the hit is so intense. But, just as with any

drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom the freedom to be ourselves. Do you want your drug or do you want to be free? You cannot have both. If you want to pull your own strings, you need to stop giving away your power you need to genuinely stop caring what other people think about you. The truth is that its all an illusion anyway you cannot control what other people think. People have their own agenda, they come with their own baggage and, in the end, theyre more interested in themselves than in you; in fact, theyre thinking about themselves morning, noon and after dinner, as Carnegie wrote. If we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process. So how can we take back control? If we are truly ready to give up the drug of approval and importance (which most people are not), I think theres only one way make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think. This doesnt mean that you should start to treat people badly, step on them or use them. Why would it? I read somewhere recently that the world would be terrible if nobody cared what other people thought of them. But why so? We all know whats right and wrong. I have written before about guiding your life by means of a set of values not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life. We will be actualized and successful. Only one question remains do you really want to be free?
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Day seventeen: Affirmations I first came across the idea that our subconscious mind is the key to fulfilling our dreams when I was a teenager, and in the (many!) years since then I have been an avid reader on the subject. I have read dozens of books and read many accounts of how thing the subconscious mind has led to untold benefits, as I believe it has done in my own life. I am absolutely convinced that the subconscious is the key to everything - the strangest, most powerful and most misunderstood thing in the universe. One of the best reads is Joseph Murphys classic book, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. In the book, Murphy sets out how, through the power of your subconscious, you can (to use Murphys slightly old fashioned language!)

Win riches and prosperity Regain former youthfulness and vigor Work real miracles in the lives of others Find new peace of mind
There are many ways to tap into the power of your subconscious mind, but I believe that there are three techniques which have more power and are more effective than the rest. In a series of articles, I will be exploring these three techniques. The first technique is the proper use of affirmations. What is an affirmation? When you affirm something, you are saying that it is true or a fact. So an affirmation is simply a verbal statement which you regard to be true. Our view of the world (and of ourselves) springs from our subconscious. It is here that we keep a picture of the world; here lies our happiness, our confidence, our success; here lies all our truth whether we think the world is a caring and nurturing place or lonely and cruel it all comes from our subconscious mind. Unless you have worked deliberately to change it, the picture of the world you have created came mainly from your childhood. It has been there for a long time and you will believe that it is the truth. But the real truth is that you are projecting your image of the world onto the world which is, largely, a neutral environment to be interpreted. For example, some people see money as a wonderful, beautiful thing, while others see it as filthy lucre. But money is just money inanimate, passive, neutral. Our views about it are entirely our own creation.
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If you make affirmations which are incongruent with the picture of the word you have created in your subconscious, you will experience some resistance and may feel foolish saying things to yourself which you do not believe to be true. But as you keep repeating positive affirmations, you will chip away at this resistance, and eventually your inner picture of yourself and the world will change accordingly. Its a kind of conscious brainwashing. As with many things, growth happens in fits and starts. There can be a period of time when nothing seems to be happening. You might keep repeating your affirmations with no apparent results, and many people will get discouraged and give up. But this period is like a plant growing under the surface if the earth it takes time to grow, but eventually it erupts from the soil and, soon, there is a riot of color and growth. After a fallow time, the results of affirmations can be sudden and startling. So what makes a good affirmation? There are two simple things to remember. First, affirmations must be positive. Dont say I am not sick. Say I am well. Instead of saying, I am not poor, say I am wealthy. You get the idea. Second, affirmations must be in the present tense. For example, dont say I want to be happy or I am going to be happy. Say, I am happy. With these two things in mind, go through the following simple process to construct your own affirmations. First, think about your life and write down the areas you would like to improve. Think carefully about this and be honest with yourself. You dont have to share this or discuss it with anyone, but being candid with yourself is important. Second, for each area, write down several positive, affirming statements. Think about what you want your life in these areas to be like, and write down positive, affirming, present tense descriptions of the picture which emerges. There are many ways to work with affirmations. You could, for example, work with subliminal affirmations. When you consciously re-script yourself by using techniques such as this, you will experience abundance flowing into your life in an effortless way. You might like to try the Sculptor 3 Affirmation Program, which will teach you more about affirmations and manifesting techniques.
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Day eighteen: The power of visualization Imagine a lemon. Look at it the color, the dimples in the skin. Feel the waxy texture, the smooth shape that tapers off at either end. Smell it take in that faint lemon smell coming through the skin. Now imagine youre cutting it open. Use a knife and cut into the flesh. Bring it up to your nose and smell it again. Its a much stronger smell. Now bite into it. Bite deep into the flesh of the lemon. Can you taste that? By now, your mouth should be watering. And who said thoughts cant influence reality? In order to change the world, we need to change ourselves first. Our mind has been programmed over the years, usually without our being aware of it, and our subconscious programming dictates our experience of life. What we believe to be true at a deep, subconscious level shapes our reality. For this reason, it is vital that we have the right belief systems operating at this deep level, and affirmations are an excellent way to take control of this process. Some of us (myself included) are verbal learners and we respond well to linguistic cues. But many people respond better to visual cues, and for this reason visualization is another important tool which can be used to change our experience. A visualization is simply a mental image of what we want to achieve. We are constantly creating pictures in our head playing back things that happened to use earlier in the day and imagining what things are going to be like in the future. Even if, like me, you are not a very visual person, you are still visualizing all the time, so the process is not difficult or esoteric. There are, however, some important things to remember. Its best to set aside a time for this. Even ten minutes is fine. Go to a quiet place, not too bright. Sit or lie comfortably, close your eyes and relax. Visualize the object or situation that you desire. This one might seem obvious, but only visualize what you really want. If you find your mind wondering off into more mundane or negative images, bring yourself gently back to the object of your visualization. Dont berate yourself if you lose concentration just come back to your image.
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Be as detailed as possible. Use every sense, not just sight. Smell that new car interior. Hear the door close behind you. I even read somewhere about imagining licking the leather upholstery. Strange, but it does get you to really be in the moment. Put as much feeling as possible into your image. This is a key ingredient. Try to get really worked up about the experience. Put yourself in the picture. Otherwise, what youre imagining might come true, but you wont be there! Use soundtracks. You can download visualization MP3s and buy CDs with nice sound tracks. I personally use these because I always think my imagination is weak and I need a bit of help. Use them if you need to. Finally, keep an open mind. Sometimes things dont happen exactly as we expect and imagine, but youll be amazed at the results of this if you practice regularly.
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Day nineteen: What death can teach us Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. then your time on earth will be filled with glory. Betty Smith, novelist (1896-1972) Today as I was eating lunch, a shiver ran through my body. My mother used to say that when this happens, someone has walked over your grave. Not a pleasant thing to say, you might imagine, but it got me thinking (again) about death, something I havent done for a very long time. Youre going to die. Of course you are. Everyone over the age of about ten knows that. And today we are nearer to our own death than ever before. Last week we were further away. Yesterday we were further away. But today is the closest we have ever been to that moment when life finally gets snuffed out. We dont know when death will come to greet us. Its quite possible that today will be our last day on this Earth. Worldometers.com maintains a meter which clicks up how many people are dying all over the world I cant keep up with it: its more than one per second anyway. Only two things re certain: one day well be one of those numbers, and we have no idea when that will be. Whats your reaction to this? Is this morbid? Why dwell on death? Shouldnt we think about more happy and positive things? Part of our reaction comes form the fact that our Western society tends to look at death as a negative thing, and we are largely insulated and protected from it dead bodies are quickly swept away into mortuaries and funeral parlors and encased in coffins. But keeping our mortality in mind can greatly enrich our life. Imagine today is your last day on Earth. In his wonderful book Awareness, Anthony de Mello suggests a meditation where you imagine you are lying in your coffin or your grave. He even suggests imagining your body decaying and rotting away. He calls this a lovely. Lovely meditation, and says that to think of it as anything less than lovely is a sign that you are hiding from reality. When youre ready to loose your life, he writes, you live it.
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So what would your life look like if this were your last day on earth? What would you do? How would you treat people? Would you take more risks? How would you see things? Wouldnt they be more vivid, clearer, more meaningful? Wouldnt you be more grateful? Strangely, thinking about death can make us more alive: it is, as John Hegley writes in Dog, our reason for living!
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Day twenty: Why you shouldnt care what other people think about you Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde Who is in control of your life? Whos pulling your strings? For the majority of us, its other people society, colleagues and friends, family, church or other religious community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. We didnt want to be singled out by the crowd for being different because this wasnt such a nice feeling. We learned this way of being so well that, as adults, we continue mostly through mutual peer pressure to keep each other in check. Like sheep without any need for a sheepdog, we keep each other in line. It works both ways. First, we are afraid of disapproval. Am I dressed right? Will people laugh at my accent? Will I look stupid? Will I make a mistake? When we feel that others think badly of us, it makes us feel bad and so we try to avoid this. Second, we all want to feel important and so we crave the positive attention of others. This is one of our basic needs, according to Dale Carnegie, author of the multi-million best seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And so when people stroke our ego and tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We crave this good feeling like a drug we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. We are so desperate for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, denying huge swathes of ourselves and failing to do the things we really want to do because were worried about what other people will think. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live impoverished lives to keep getting their fix, so we impoverish our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval. The drug is so addictive that most people will not give it up they will keep looking for approval because the hit is so intense. But, just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom the freedom to be ourselves. Do you want your drug or do you want to be
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free? You cannot have both. If you want to pull your own strings, you need to stop giving away your power you need to genuinely stop caring what other people think about you. The truth is that its all an illusion anyway you cannot control what other people think. People have their own agenda, they come with their own baggage and, in the end, theyre more interested in themselves than in you; in fact, theyre thinking about themselves morning, noon and after dinner, as Carnegie wrote. If we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process. So how can we take back control? If we are truly ready to give up the drug of approval and importance (which most people are not), I think theres only one way make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think. This doesnt mean that you should start to treat people badly, step on them or use them. Why would it? I read somewhere recently that the world would be terrible if nobody cared what other people thought of them. But why so? We all know whats right and wrong. I have written before about guiding your life by means of a set of values not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life. We will be actualized and successful. Only one question remains do you really want to be free? We are so socially conditioned that we often need some help in becoming more authentically ourselves. There are many excellent self-help pro grammes available. Check out the Silva Method. Its a world famous, tried and tested method to take back control. Countless people from all walks of life have been benefiting for decades. Check it out for free here.
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Day twenty-one: Cooperation The world seems to be full of competition. Kids at school sit exams, compete for grades and try to get into the best universities. Universities compete for the brightest students. Sports teams compete for the trophy or cup. Political parties compete for power. Democrats compete to become the presidential candidate. Businesses compete for customers and market share. You get the picture. Darwins Origin of the Species has been very influential, perhaps not least of all because it promulgated the idea that competition was a natural and normal part of life, that nature was red in tooth and claw, and this way of thinking has impregnated our culture at every level, to the extent that we now live in a culture of competition. We think in these terms all the time, though a change seems to be taking place we are starting to see a new way of thinking, reflecting a different paradigm. This paradigm is focused on cooperation, not competition. In a provocative talk, Tom Asaker argues that, although we are asking the same questions, the answers have changed, and that successful businesses no longer think in terms of competing but of simply being unique. Examples of cooperation in nature abound. Indeed, symbiosis is essential to life on Earth without this form of cooperation, there would simply be no life at all. A striking example cited by Anne Fausto-Sterling is the case of the flashlight fish, which lures luminescent bacteria into chambers inside its body and then uses the cultures to light its way through the dark ocean and signal other flashlighters about sex and danger. She goes on to describe many other, less showy, but widespread examples of such symbiotic systems, in particular the subterranean network of roots and fungi which support each other. The fungi have no chloroplasts of their own and so feed off material manufactured by the the plants to which the roots belong, while the plants use the vast underground networks of fungi to increase the amount of territory they occupy and hence the amount of nutrients they can absorb. Its case of the whole being greater than the sun of the parts, the true win-win situation, where 1 + 1 = 3. Perhaps most obviously, your own body is a vast system of complex, interconnecting and mutually cooperating systems, all working together to produce a truly amazing entity.
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This principle applies in social and business activity, too. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey tells us that the best results come not from competition, and not even from compromise, but from the win-win solution, where both parties get a result which is better than either could have achieved alone, even when starting from apparently opposing positions. With the event of online social communities and blogging, the potential for cooperation and the benefits to be derived form it have become enormous and transparent. If I submit an article to another blog, that blog gets more content, I will (obviously) link to the blog which will, therefore, get more traffic; traffic coming to the blog where my article is posted will probably visit my own blog, so Ill get more traffic, too. Readers might add both Sites to their social bookmarks. In the end, we both benefit. The online community is, in fact, a huge symbiotic network, and we should approach it with this mentality of cooperation. What benefits others, benefits me! I leave you with a wonderful story I heard as a child. There exists a tale, handed down from times long ago, of two travelers on a pilgrimage. Hungry and tired from a long days journey, they come to a small, impoverished, village, where they decide to rest by the side of the road. One of the travelers built a small fire upon which he placed a large pot, while the other, having drawn water from the town well filled the pot and placed into it a simple stone. As the two men sat by the fire, bringing their stone soup to a boil, the local villagers became inquisitive of the curious antics of these strangers. Eventually, several townsfolk decide to investigate the matter and approach the two travelers to engage them in conversation. Shortly thereafter, there was heard the sound of merriment, as the visitors, who turned out to be quite friendly, shared their tales of the ands and people they had met throughout their journey and pilgrimage with the local villagers. Finally, a young boy asked the travelers But why are you boiling a stone? One of the travelers replied, So we may eat stone soup. It must be terribly bland! said an old woman. But I have a cabbage, which will add some flavor! And I, some carrots, which will add color! said another villager. Some potatoes! offered another, until, shortly, by the contribution of a little by many, a hearty stew was made, upon which the entire village and the weary travelers dined and while doing so, shared their tales, talents, and camaraderie throughout the night. The very next
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day, the travelers (who by now could be called strangers no more), continued their journey, leaving the little town, and its people, behind. But the villagers never forgot them, and the lesson they had learned. In fact, during the hardest of times, in such a time as this tale, that little village thrived, because he townsfolk never forgot how to make stone soup.
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Day twenty-two: Be grateful Many others have written on the subject of being grateful. Showing gratitude, they say, is a way to true happiness and peace of mind. But why is gratitude such a powerful thing? Life tends to give us what we subconsciously expect. Our experience of life is a reflection of our inner world. So in order to attract good things, we need to feel that we already have them. And this is just another way of saying we need to adopt an attitude of gratitude. If it is your belief that you lack things, then that will be your experience of the world. If you think you are missing out on something, then you will not attract opportunities into your life. You will fail to be in the right place at the right time. You will not see the significance in certain things coming your way. If you value something very highly, if you treasure it and are grateful for it, then it is likely that it will grow and become more powerful. This is true of everything in life friendships, health, happiness and wealth. All the great spiritual teachers have shown us that we need to be grateful for what we have. The grace before meals, for example, which I used to recite parrot fashion as a child, goes, for what we are about to receive may the lord make us truly grateful. As a kid, I never understood why it was so important. And I guess many adults still dont. You might say, there are genuine problems in my life. I really dont have XYZ. Well, this may be true, and I am not seeking to demean your problems or trivialize the difficulties you are having. But life is what it is at the moment. You cannot have it any other way and to kick against it just causes more pain. The only sensible thing to do is to see the positive things see what is good. Is the glass half empty or is it half full? Viktor Frankl said that between stimulus and response there is a gap, and within that gap is our whole experience of life. He discovered that happiness does not lie outside in the world; it lies within. And this is a man who lived as a prisoner in a Nazi death camp, so he does have some credibility! So whats it to be? What will you focus on today?
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Day twenty-three: Combing the mirror I owe this wonderful expression to David Icke. He is quite famous now (or should that be infamous?) but in case you dont know him, heres a potted history. David grew up as a working class boy in the midlands, UK, and was briefly a goalkeeper at Coventry City soccer club. He left the sport due to ill health and became a well-respected sports commentator on the BBC. As a teenager in the 1980s, I remember him presenting the snooker. He then joined the Green Party and campaigned to become an MP in the British parliament. As this time he came to the little town where I lived and, just by chance, I met him on the street. I remember he shook my hand and told me that, although I wasnt old enough to vote, I could influence those around me. All very fine and sensible. But then something odd happened. David had a mystical experience and started saying that he was the son of God and took to wearing a turquoise tracksuit because he believed this color brought him closer to heaven. Everyone started to laugh at him, and his name became synonymous with all that was loony and new-age. He has since developed a big following and speaks to large crowds. He believes we are being controlled by the illuminati, shadowy figures who are enslaving humanity for their own ends. Why am I telling you this? I dont believe most of it, but David does subscribe to a set of beliefs about the nature of reality which are becoming more and more accepted. Reality, he says, is essentially an illusion. We perceive the world as we do because of the way we are made up physiologically. We can perceive certain energy frequencies as light, colour and brightness, sound, pitch and volume, and so on. The universe is what it is, but it is essentially inaccessible to us as except through our limited senses. We can change the way we see the world we can change our own experience of life. But not by trying to change that which is outside of ourselves. The whole world lies within us. And the only thing we can change is ourselves. The phrase combing the mirror reminds us that if we want to make a difference in our lives, we have to change ourselves. If we try to change

reality, we are only going to be frustrated. If you want to comb your hair, you dont try to comb the image of yourself in the mirror the image is just a reflection of yourself. The image will change naturally when you work on yourself. This is a view which many people fail to understand. But until we learn to change ourselves, we will always have the same experience. To quote the spoon bender in The Matrix, Dont try to bend the spoon thats impossible. Only try to realize the truth. Then the whole universe will bend.
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Day Twenty Four: Be Yourself How to be yourself He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away. ~Raymond Hull Be yourself! This is a common piece of advice, often given before an interview or a date or some other occasion when we need to impress. Sounds like a strange piece of advice, though. How could you not be yourself? Strange at is seems, we have been conditioned all our lives to behave according to other peoples expectations, to dance to their tune, to let them pull our stings. The truth is that most of us unless we have really thought about it and made an effort to change are puppets, controlled by the world around us. We crave approval. We need to fit in. In many ways, this is just a characteristic of being human we are social animals and need to fit into the group to survive. But this natural and healthy tendency has taken over our lives to such an extent that we are often paralyzed by a fear of the outside world and obsessed by how others see us. But what would things look life if you could really be yourself? Dont give away your power The King is angry. See, he gnaws his lip ~Shakespeare, Richard III It is impossible to really be yourself when you are worried about how other people perceive you. We all care (at least a little bit) what other people think we have been raised to believe that the approval of others is important. And in some ways it is other people do have power over us. But the truth is that it doesnt matter as much as you think; usually it doesnt matter at all. Sometimes youll be flavor of the month; other times you might be public enemy number one. But you cannot control what other people think of you, so why even try? Let them think what they will. To give the opinions and thoughts of others so much importance is to make your own life a misery. When you stop giving your power away to other people like this, your life will be so much lighter and easier. To genuinely not care what others think is an amazing and enlightening experience. Try it.
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Live with integrity The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. ~Boris Pasternak Living with integrity means being an open, honest person. It means saying what you think not in an arrogant, conceited way, which is usually a sign of an inferiority complex but because you shouldnt hide what you believe. If you are not true to yourself if you are dishonest, if you hide part of yourself, either as a defense mechanism or to get a promotion or make money, you will create what I have heard called an inner darkness, and this will haunt you. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the most widely read and influential self-improvement books or f all time, Steven Covey writes that truly successful people operate from a principle-centered paradigm, steering their lives by means of a clear compass of integrity. You might be able to succeed in some senses by being dishonest and duplicitous, but in the end you will be unable to face yourself, and if you cannot look in the mirror with a clear conscience, how can you be yourself? Dont take yourself so seriously When you can laugh at yourself, you are free. ~ Ted Loder Will the world stop turning if you screw up? Believe it or not, the world got along fine without you for millions of years, and will do so long after youre gone. So keep things in perspective. Will any of this matter in a year, ten year, 100 years? In many ways, the world is a ridiculous place, full of crazy things that make no sense at all. You cant make sense of it all however hard you try. It is what it is, and so are you, with all your contradictions and faults and failings. Remember the old saying: laugh and the world laughs with you. So relax, lighten up; dont get things out of proportion. Dont worry: accept things as they are The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. ~ Gautama Siddharta (Buddha)
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We have a tendency to think we are in control. But the truth is that there are surprisingly few things we can influence directly. I read somewhere recently that life is no about avoiding the storm but about learning to dance in the rain, and I think this is a wonderful truth. We spend so much time trying to change our world, but in reality we can only change ourselves. If the rain is coming, it will come; if the sun is setting, it will set. Accept these many, many things which are outside our control and, whatever comes along, learn not only to live with it, but to embrace it, to love it to live any other way is madness. Do what you love The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ~Eleanor Roosevelt Finally, and perhaps most importantly, dont let other people tell you what to do and how to live. In the end, you are responsible for your experience of life, and if you dont follow your dreams, you only have yourself to blame. Youre a long time dead as the saying goes, so dont waste time with worry or regret . Dont be a puppet dont let the world around you pull your strings. You cannot control it, so dont let it control you either. If you are true to yourself and live with integrity, honesty and without fear, then you will, perhaps, begin to see the answer to that most perplexing of questions: Who am I?
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Day twenty-five: dealing with procrastination Procrastination is putting off living your life now, often by planning for the future. I work in an environment where people are constantly talking about the future will look like and how they are going to make it happen. Theres nothing wrong with having a vision of course. But we must not allow planning to become the primary focus of our life. Wasnt it John Lennon who said that life is what happens to you while youre making other plans? These days I find it alot easier to get things done, and you can do the same. There are a few simple pointers to remember. 1. Plan. Having said that we can get obsessed with planning, it is still a necessary activity. Plan your monthly, weekly and daily must-do activities. Draw up a to-do list; preferably, write it down or set up a spreadsheet. And, include all the MUST dos in your list. These are things that must be done today. Period. 2. Prioritize. Set up the activities in order of importance, the more important ones taking precedence over the less important. If there are urgent things to do, but not important enough to be worried about if not done, put them below the important ones. The idea is based on the established principle that 80% of rewards come from 20% of effort directed towards accomplishing important work. This also relates to the idea of proactively spending more time on important activities than on urgent ones. Steven Covey writes about this in his Seven Habits. 3. Begin. Even if the deadline is a month from now, even if there is no deadline. Say you want to starg a business. No one is going to force you to do it - you need to be a self-starter. When it does come to deadlines, some people seem to like stress, but Im not one of them. Starting out on an important project will help you avoid stress and do it well. When you start a major project just the day of the deadline, you will most likely feel stressed and do a worse job. Get into the habit of starting things before the deadline. When I was a trainee teacher, one of my mentors told me about her one touch approach - whenever something came across her desk, she dealt with it immediately, either herself or by delegation. I dont use quite this approach myself, but it can be a good idea if you habitualy procrastinate
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4. Start small. what seems like huge mountain at first can be climbed one step at a time. Just start working on the project or task on hand and dont worry about getting it perfect. You still have a lot of time to iron out the details. Remember to start well before the deadline so you can focus on finishing the task and then ironing out the details. Trying to get everything right on first attempt is the best excuse used by procrastinators! Procrastination is a deadly disease and it not only kills motivation but also your chances of success. Stop procrastinating right now and start achieving your goals. Of course, we can go into much more detail. You can learn more about getting rid of procrastination and how to manage your time to achieve all your goals by checking out the Time Manual.
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Day twenty six: Live with integrity In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey gives some timeless insights into living a truly effective life. The key is, before anything else, you must have a good foundation. This foundation is a private victory, a self-mastery which comes before the success we aspire to achieve in our interdependent social environments our work, our business, our family. This foundation is twofold, consisting of habits which constitute the cornerstone of our lives. Without practicing these habits we build our life on quicksand, on the shifting, uncertain tides of a complex and ever changing world. But when we have mastered ourselves, when we have this foundation, we need not fear change. Indeed, we can embrace it and use it creatively, integrating new learning and insight into our lives, building greater synergy and reaching higher peaks of personal and social achievement. What Are These Twin Foundations? First, we need to realize that we are in control. We are in the driving seat. Life does not happen to us, we happen to life. Between what goes on around us and how we respond, there is a choice we are not Pavlovs dogs, conditioned by our upbringing to respond automatically to our environment. True, we have been shaped by our childhood and those who were dominant in our lives at the time we have learned to respond in certain ways to certain stimuli, but it is a tragedy that so many of us go through life acting out the old scripts we learnt when we were young. One of the greatest human attributes is our freedom to choose our response we are not robots! and, as such, our ability to consciously orchestrate our own experience of life. In truth, we are pulling our own strings, we are the creators of our own reality, we are the captains of our lives. With this power, of course, comes responsibility. The sign of living an ineffective life is the abdication of responsibility to someone or something else, blaming our past, our parents, our spouse, our kids, our background, or any of a million other things. To play the victim is to give away our very humanity, our freedom. So before all else, we must accept that we are, in the words of A Course in Miracles, powerful beyond measure, and must take responsibility for where we are in life. If we cannot get to this point, we cannot make progress, and all our attempts at success in business, family or any other area will either fail or be temporary and reversible.
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Second, we need a sense of direction. When we recognize that we are the captain of our soul, we naturally need a compass to navigate through the world. This compass is a clear set of values, guiding principles by which we live. We need a clear and constant paradigm out of which to operate, and this is one thing we must do for ourselves there are no off the peg solutions here, and no number of self-help books and courses will do us any good unless we take this message to heart. Mission Statements A mission statement is a good way to crystallize these values, and the very act of writing such a document can force us to look deeply inside ourselves, let the mud and chaos of daily life settle and identify what really matters most to us. This statement gives us a centre around which to construct our life. All of us has a centre from which we operate, though this centre often changes as we are buffeted around by the changing course of our lives and as we react to the emotional demands made on us by our significant others. Many of us inadvertently take work, money or family as our centre, but unless we are anchored in a value based paradigm, we can never truly achieve anything. The Ego The most pernicious of all centers is the self or the ego. Much modern self-help material emphasizes the cult of self, suggesting implicitly that, so long as its alright for you and it feels good, then go for it! You can have money, cars, houses, a great relationship, anything you want the universe is a smorgasbord of delights and we need only choose our experience. This is true, to some extent we do control our experiences and there is nothing wrong with money, a car, a nice house or a great relationship. Far from it, these things are intrinsically good. But when they are achieved from an ego-centered paradigm, they do not give us satisfaction and lasting happiness. What is missing here is the maxim, what comes around, goes around. We reap what we sow, and if we sow the cult of self, we reap isolation and defensiveness. By giving, by being generous, and by valuing others, we tap into the natural flow of the universe. Things come our way money, possessions, and all that but we de not need to cling to them. We possess them, they do not possess us. We can let go and, in so doing, the natural flow continues and more comes our way. To focus on self is to hang on, to become acquisitive and miserly and, ultimately, to cause stagnation, decay and death.
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A knowledge of our own creative nature and a clear, values based compass will not, in themselves, make us successful, but without them we cannot even begin. Without them, we will be like a ship caught between a thousand lighthouses, not knowing which way to turn, impotent and stationary. Real change, real growth is possible only with this foundation in place.
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Day twenty-seven: Be healthy Without your health, you cannot enjoy your career, your success or your relationships, so you must pay attention to this area. Here are ten simple things anyone can do to make a real difference to your level of health and fitness. Doing all thee simple things will probably add years to your life, too! As with all things, good health starts in the mind and then takes form in the real world - opportunities arise naturally and we must take them, acting in a natural and easy way to achieve our goals. Know that you are in control In The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Steven Covey tells us that between stimulus and response there is a gap, and within this gap lies all our happiness. Between what happens around us and our response to it, there is a choice. Yes, we have been scripted through our childhood to respond automatically in certain ways to certain events, but we can unhook from our scripting and switch off the autopilot. We can assume manual control and take charge of our own experience of life. Realizing this can be frightening, but it is also immensely liberating and, ultimately, it is the fist step to a successful, abundant and healthy life. You must decide to get up and do something! Live in Easy World Easy World is a phrase I have borrowed from Julia Rogers Hamrick. In her blog, she writes, when you are in the Easy World reality, harmony and ease prevail and things work out as if by magic and as long as you relax and allow yourself to align with Easy World, you are there. This is a nice way of saying that life should not be a struggle. Effortlessness is our natural state and, whatever our circumstances, we should relax and go with the flow of things, not out of laziness and apathy, but out of a realization that to swim against the tide is tiring and futile there is a grain to the universe and we should go with it. The benefits of a low stress life are enormous and scientifically validated those of us with less stress in our lives live longer, healthier lives. Exercise three times per week Its vital that you take some time to exercise several times per week. Do some weights and then either some cardio or interval work. This will build muscle and increase your metabolic rate. The benefits of exercise are astonishing. You will be less prone to diabetes and, since your
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gastrointestinal transit time will be reduced, it lowers your risk of colon cancer. Exercise strengthens bone making you les prone to osteoporosis and you will also be less likely to suffer lower back pain. It also increases your HDL (good) cholesterol and lowers your blood pressure. People who exercise regularly live several years longer than those who do no exercise. Sort out your sleeping habits Not getting enough sleep gives you a poorer quality of life. Of course, it makes you feel groggy and tired, but it also affects your memory and cognitive functioning your ability to process information. People who dont get enough sleep have twice the risk of being injured at work and The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 100,000 deaths are caused each year because of tired drivers. How much sleep you need is a very individual thing, but not getting enough can damage your health and even reduce your life expectancy. One study recently suggested that the reason women live longer than men is because they sleep better. One helpful suggestion for getting enough sleep is to always get up at the same time but to go to bed when you are tired. Some days you will get more sleep, and some less, but by doing this you will always get the amount of sleep you need. Meditate Like sleep, taking time regularly to relax and unwind is very beneficial to health. Regular meditation can reduce back pain, headaches and depression. It can lower blood pressure and boost the immune system. It can help improve sleep quality and, above all, it promotes a relaxed and restful state of mind and helps with concentration and focus. Eat a handful of mixed nuts every day Eating 30-60 grams of nuts per day can do wonders for your health. Regularly eating nuts reduces the risk of stroke, diabetes, dementia, macular degeneration and heart disease. Nit eaters live two years longer than the rest of us, according to a recent study. Nuts contain vitamin E, copper, magnesium, boron, folic acid as well as manganese and plant sterols. They contain a lot of unsaturated fat and very little saturated fat, and nut eaters do not put on weight from consumption of nuts. Nobody knows why nuts are so good for you, but eating them regularly will do wonders for you.
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Eat a salad every day A recent study by the UCLA School of Public Health/LSU Health Sciences Center found that eating a salad every day has significant health benefits (as if we didnt know already!) Try to go for a mixture of dark, green leafy vegetables (not iceberg lettuce which doesnt contain much by way of nutrients). Salad provides many important vitamins and minerals, and even better news is that salad dressing contains chemicals which help the body absorb cancer-fighting nutrients called free radical scavengers more effectively. Stop drinking alcohol The health benefits of drinking small amounts of alcohol on a regular basis have been well documented. However, most people who drink alcohol tend to drink too much and there are many negative health effects of this kind of drinking. I have found personally that it is just a lot easier to be very clearcut and decide that you will never drink under any circumstances. Of course, you need not be too evangelical about this eating a tiramisu or some brandy sauce wont hurt you, but a black and white rule makes life a lot easier. Cut down sugar and caffeine Again, you probably dont want to be too evangelical about this, but its worth cutting down on refined sugar and caffeine. I have found that having sugar-free days to be a very useful way of cutting back. Once or twice a week I will have a sugar day, when I allow myself to eat sugar. I dont binge, but I allow myself a small amount of chocolate or desert. I also recommend having caffeine-free days, too. Even on days when you do drink coffee, tea and coke, only have one or two cups. This will improve your quality of sleep and make you less tense. Coming down from a sugar high can make you really tired, so staying away from sugar can keep you alert. Try to go for less refined sugars, such as those found in fruit, honey and, especially, maple syrup. Go to church! Recent research has shown that people who attend church or some other form of corporate religious activity on a regular basis live between 1.8 and 3.1 years longer. So youll need to wait a couple more years before getting your reward in paradise!
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Day twenty-eight: Hypnosis It is my belief that hypnosis is the most powerful technique for changing our subconscious programming. We have been conditioned since childhood to see the world in a certain way, and the beliefs under which we operate at a deep, subconscious level have been scripted into us by a process of which we are largely unaware. If we are to seriously change our experience of life, then hypnosis is a must. To some people, hypnosis might conjure up images of stage shows or thoughts of people being forced to do crazy things against their will. Like anything, hypnosis can be abused, but in fact it is the most natural and normal thing in the world. Normally, our mind is in a state called beta quite active, with the conscious part of the mind in the driving seat. But when we relax, as we drift off to sleep, when we daydream, we enter another kind of consciousness called alpha. This is a different state, sometimes called a trance. Hypnosis is simply the deliberate induction of this trance state. In the alpha state, our conscious mind is less to the fore, and our subconscious is able to take over to a much greater extent. The subconscious, where all our beliefs and scripting lie, is then susceptible to suggestion, and we can take advantage of this openness to introduce new beliefs directly into our mind. Affirmations and visualizations are good, but in hypnosis we can go more deeply and directly to the place we need to work on. So do you need to go and make an appointment with a professional hypnotherapist? Well you can do, and if you have serious problems I would suggest you seek out a properly qualified therapist. But there is a lot you can do to without the help of such a person. It is fairly easy to put yourself into a trance state and make hypnotic suggestions to yourself. Even a very light alpha state will have benefits. Personally I like to use hypnosis scripts on CDs and MP3s. You can download these from the Internet for a few dollars or buy them from a shop. You can also record your own scripts. The best products have music, which contains subliminal messages to reinforce the hypnotic
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suggestions. I have personally used these and can attest to their effectiveness.
Day twenty-nine: Take action Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyones task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it. Viktor Frankl When you do what you love, the whole world comes alive. It starts dancing to your tune it becomes your puppet. When you are doing the thing you love, you will naturally draw the right people and resources towards yourself to ensure that you accomplish your goals. Taking action is important without it you will probably never achieve anything. But the action must be easy, effortless even. And action can only be effortless when you are in the flow of the universal stream. To do a job you hate is to swim against the tide; to get up every day and go to a job you feel no enthusiasm for is a waste of life. The way we are now is a result of our past thoughts, our self-talk and visualizations. But every moment is a new beginning. Our future depends on what we are thinking about right now. So to create the life we desire, we should dwell on thoughts about the things we love and trust the universe to take care of it.
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Day thirty: The meaning of life Miguel Torga, the great Portuguese writer, said that 'life has the meaning we give it -- our richness, our enthusiasm, our pride -- or our cowardice. The search for meaning is a constant theme in our lives and we try to find it in many different ways. But in the end, I believe that meaning can only be found in the way we add something to the world. What is adding value? Ask 100 people what they think gives meaning to their lives and you will get 100 different responses. Money, property, a successful career, a big car, an attractive spouse, partner, But Im sure most people would agree that these things in themselves do not add lasting and profound meaning to us. Albert Einstein said that only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile, and I believe that a life of service to others is what truly brings meaning. The term service may suggest that we have to give up our jobs and money to go help the poor and destitute. I know several people who have done just this, and they have certainly found happiness and peace in their choice of lifestyle. But a life of adding value does not mean abandoning your own needs and desires. It is not the same as sacrifice; far from it. When we truly add value to the lives of others, we cannot help but receive value ourselves. Adding value is the only real way to live a meaningful life. Love what you do So the question remains: How can we add value? I believe the answer to this is surprisingly simple. To quote Steve Jobs in a speech he gave in 2005: Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you havent found it yet, keep looking. Through Apple, Steve Jobs has undoubtedly added immense value to the world. He did it by following his heart and has been richly rewarded for it. The same can be said for many famous, successful and wealthy people. Loving what you do means starting right here, right now. Whatever you are doing, you can start to love it.
Of course, youre not suddenly going to love a job youve hated for years. In fact, if you hate your job so much then you probably ought to leave. But its unlikely that there is no aspect of your job that you like. The trick is to identify these good bits and focus on them, making them more central to your experience. And the things you dont like? Can you find any redeeming qualitative in these things? Can you change your attitude so that you see these tasks as useful or meaningful? If you can start to love what youre doing, then youll be adding value in some way. Do What You Love Interestingly, Steve Jobs didnt say do what you love. He said love what you do. You dont have to quit your dull nine-to-five job and start all over again. But doing what you truly love certainly has its rewards. In Making a Life, Making a Living, Mark Albion cites a study carried out by Srully Blotnick. The careers of 1,500 business school graduates were tracked from 1969 to 1980 and were split into two groups: group A said they wanted to make money first so they could do what they really wanted later, and group B said they would follow their interests first, regardless of financial considerations. At the end of the study, there were 101 millionaires. All but one came from group B.
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A final word: Real happiness I hope you have learned something from this little book. It was a labor of love, and I hope it amused, entertained or enriched you in some small way. It wont change your life, of course. Only one thing can do that your own decision to keep improving. I encourage you to learn a little more every day improve slightly every day and soon the dripping tap will have filled the bucket. We can learn a lot from other people. Thats why Im going to end with a selection of my favorite quotes about happiness from my favorite famous people. Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence ~Aristotle You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life ~Albert Camus I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve ~Albert Schweitzer The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature ~Anne Frank Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy -- because we will always want to have something else or something more ~Brother David Steindl-Rast In the end, life cannot be reduced to a formula or a quotation. So the most important question remains and only you can answer it what is happiness?
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