Uplift Your Soul and see the beautiful forms of life...

Character Traits - 3 Key Ones to Achieve your Dreams

2008-08-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

If you want to achieve your dreams and goals and live a happier life then you need 3 key character traits that we are going to examine in this article. If you can get the right mindset and use them, you can live a better and happier life. So what are they? Let’s take a look.

Desire

Everything starts from desire. You need to want to achieve your specific goal and if you have a burning desire then this is the first step.

You can read plenty of stories where people started with nothing and had the burning desire to achieve and they did. Desire has to be combined with believe to manufacture the goal and make it achievable.

Believe

I have the desire to walk on the moon but I don’t actually believe that I will do it. On the other hand I have the desire to climb Mount Everest and also have the believe that I can do it.

The key is match desire with belief and you are then on the road to achieving it.

Desire without belief will get you no where.

When you choose your goals be realistic about what you can achieve and if one goal seems a little daunting then start with smaller less ambitious goals to achieve the belief to achieve a bigger goal.

Keep in mind the old saying “each journey starts with one step” and it does.

Perseverance

When you have a goal and belief it doesn’t just mean that you will instantly get what you want.

In most instances it means perseverance and hard work to get to your goal and if you don’t succeed try and try again.

Many people just think they deserve their goal or have a talent but there are plenty of people with talent and no work ethic that have never achieved anything and never will.

Life’s not fair

This is the one phrase you hear a lot people say when they don’t achieve what they want and you know what? – Its true but that is no excuse for not setting goals and achieving them.

We can all achieve

Every one of us has the ability to improve our lives by setting goals and have the desire and belief to achieve them add in hard work and perseverance and you will better your life for you and your loved ones.

Ok so you may not achieve everything you want in life but you can achieve a lot and that really is the attitude you need and if you have it you will lead a happier life.

How To Enjoy More Of Your Life

2008-08-05T01:39:00.000-07:00

If your life were a movie, how would you go about changing it, making the plot more amenable to your interests and pleasures? At first this may seem like a hopeless quest, but when you look behind the scenes, you will see a simple and elegant answer.

Your life is like a total immersion movie.

In a regular movie, you sit in a seat away from the unfolding drama, and you can always look away or even leave if you are bored or angry.

In your life, you are in the movie, and it takes a momentum of its own, where all the other actors work to create some kind of reaction within you.

While you may often feel that the way the entire story line is unfolding is not what you want at all, a little insight will show you that not only are you the main actor, but also the producer. In fact, you also finance it. The quality of the scenes depends on your budget and how you manage it.

In other words, your experiences are both a projection of your mind and an interpretation of your mind.

In this movie, most actors have forgotten that they are in a virtual movie because they can never leave or take a break from it. This results in some really superb acting, and everybody appears to be very serious about what they say and do, even if, as often happens, the scene is quite comical.

However, at times, you and others weary of the intensity and try to break away from a scene by moving to a new town, divorcing your spouse, avoiding your friends, wrecking revenge on your enemies, or getting drunk, taking drugs, sleeping a lot, or making yourself sick.

These strategies of escapism seldom work, because before you know it, you’re back where you started, finding yourself still stuck with all the wrong people in all the wrong places. No matter how hard you try to get away from it all, it happens all over again. The scene may have shifted and the faces changed but you find that after the novelty has worn off you’re actually faithfully reenacting exactly the same plot.

After less than a decade on this planet, it gets very confusing what you are making happen and what appears to be happening to you. The momentum of each shifting scene and the impact of each new actor on it may even make you wonder if you have not been entirely swallowed up by the movie and have no real say on what happens next. Sometimes you even beg the invisible producer to give you a break.

What is particularly irksome is the lack of any really good answers on how to solve any problem, even the simplest ones. And after awhile, this can drive you nuts. You find that you either get no straight answers to your questions or so many that you can’t figure out which one is the right one. You, then, make a decision based on desperation and end up with the plot getting increasingly thick and foreboding.

In this movie analogy, is there any chance that you can redo everything and have a shot at living a fulfilling life, where love, money, hope, and moments of pure abandon are possible?

The answer, surprisingly is “yes.” In fact, a resounding “yes!” It is surprising because not many people talk about how to get out of the actor role and slip behind the scenes and make some necessary adjustments.

The way you do this is to slip into the projection room. This place is in your own mind.

Inside this room, you will find a white light that is projecting all your experiences onto the screen.

This white light is consciousness. This white light appears to dutifully project all the images that you are holding in front of it.

You can’t really do much with the white light but you can change the images, and when you do, your entire movie show changes as well. How it changes depends on the new images you select.

Forgiveness: Clearing Out Your Attic Can Lead to Happiness

2008-08-04T05:45:00.000-07:00

"Forgiveness means that you do not hold others responsible for your experiences." ~Gary Zukav

What do you have in your attic (or basement)? Old clothes that don't fit anymore? Paperwork that you'll never need? The children's old toys that they don't care about anymore, but to which you have a sentimental attachment? Maybe boxes and boxes of things that belonged to a deceased relative that you do not need?

Are these physical items holding you back? Perhaps if you long to live a Zenlike lifestyle they are, but most likely, they're just there.

Now I'd like you to think of the things that you're storing in your mind. Sure, there are some great memories of weddings and births, successes and the pleasures of life. There are even some sad thoughts, which are absolutely necessary to create a complete life, the ups the downs, the ebb and flow, the yin and yang. There's knowledge up there, and appreciation of beauty, and ability - the ability to persuade, the ability to change the oil in your car, the ability to build a campfire or make your grandmother's secret soup recipe.

We've also got some junk up there. One of the fastest ways to get rid of this junk is the act of forgiveness. In an upcoming article I'll give you some specifics on how to use forgiveness to dispose of some of this useless garbage.

Forgiveness is not about making yourself a better person or making yourself right with God or working out your karma, and it's not about benefiting the person you're forgiving (those these may all be accomplished as a result).

The real purpose is to clear out your other than conscious mind, to free it up from any negativity that is holding you back and preventing you from achieving everything you ever wanted.

'By beholding be become changed.' That's one of my favorite Bible quotes.

This means, that the more you focus on, the more you are going to become what that focus is. Are you focusing on creating money or on debt? Are you focusing on health or on sickness?

If we're focused on bitterness and challenges and lessons hurt, then a part of us is, all day, every day, bringing a piece of that to our lives over and over. I believe that one of the greatest reasons we are here on planet earth is to learn to understand that we're here to be able to manifest anything we want.

Let's divide up our unconscious mind into sections and let's say that we can lump all of our troubles, our problems, our bitterness, our resentments, all into one area of our unconscious. For sake of argument, let's say we've done that now.

How much space is taken up by that useless garbage?

If you took it all and assigned it a value. . .a percentage, as in, well, 5% of my unconscious, or other than conscious, is taken up by this junk. How does that affect you to think of that large a chunk of your mind is engaged in negativity? What if you had to give 5% of your income to a really negative cause? I'm assuming that would not please you.

When we employ the process of forgiveness, we clear out that 1 or 5 or 15% and make space for more of what we want.

De-Mystifying Clarity

2008-07-31T22:57:00.000-07:00

"In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not." ~ T. S. Eliot

Clarity doesn't seem like it needs, well, clarifying at first glance. But it’s not actually the concept that needs explanation, it's the "how to do it" part that trips us up. So, just to make sure we're clear here (pun intended), what is clarity?

To have clarity in one's life means having a sense of ease, of knowing that all is handled and in its place, the certainty of being able to easily access what comes next, the comfort of feeling like there's "enough" (energy, time, resources, etc.) to live a happy life. Clarity is organization, both physically and emotionally; it is that which allows us to move forward in our lives easily and effortlessly. When we have blinding moments of clarity, we have the answers we were searching for and can take the best action to get us to where we finally know we want to go. Clarity allows us to understand ourselves and our relationship to our world (which is really everything we are creating). The power to create is our clarity. Clarity is our creation in motion.

When we are not clear in some area of our lives, it shows up in the results. We don't feel good, our relationships are sticky, our career or business doesn’t produce, we're not happy, projects go unfinished... in other words, not having clarity is costing you life force energy on some level.

The process of getting clear can be uncomfortable – that's good. Growth happens when we outgrow where we were; just like a pair of shoes that are too small, the clarity we had at one time and that doesn't serve us anymore can "pinch" in the tight spots. And clarity can reveal things we’ve been running away from or that we just don't want to look at because then we'd have to handle it differently. And handling our lives with clarity means we have to show up differently, which is a new state of being or way of living.

Which brings us back to... clarity is the act of creation through conscious change. Where do you want to create something different in your life? The answer to that question is a clue as to where you are missing clarity.

Three Things You Can Do Today:

1. Figure out and release what you are not. As in, if you have clutter in your house, or are holding on to clothes, books, mementos of long-gone or even negative relationships, get rid of it. If you have friends who aren't treating you the way you want to be treated, make a decision to repair or replace. Whatever is in your life but doesn't reflect clearly who you are now is something that needs to be released. By creating "space", you are creating clarity.

2. Don't look for yourself where you are not. We are human – it's unavoidable that we will look to our community, social circle or others to help us learn, get approval or validate our thought process and choices. However, when we look to those external sources, we are giving away our power. We are looking for ourselves where we are not, which can only lead to more confusion over the long run. To stay clear, stay focused on what you know. If you need additional information, go to the cleanest source you can find "out there" and bring that back to your own personal source of clarity "in here". (Please let me know if you have questions on what a "clean source" means – it takes us off topic to explore further here.)

3. Set systems in place. Consider virtually anything you do, and look at how you can make it easier with a system. From washing dishes (soak, scrub, rinse, dry) to handling your voicemails (check them, listen, write down on the message pad, handle immediately, etc.), you can put something together that allows you to minimize your energy on activities or functions that you do repeatedly which frees up more energy to create something new. Having more energy allows you to focus on having greater clarity.

So, now that you know clarity is not a mystery, but rather the essential part of the change creation process, you’re responsible for it in your life from this point forward. And if you're still unclear about why this matters or how it's affecting your life, let me know.

Attitude towards Happiness and Life

2007-10-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

Jerry is a manager of a restaurant in San Francisco. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would always reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!"

Many of the waiters at his restaurant quit their jobs when he changed jobs, so they could follow him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day,Jerry was always there, telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation. Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, "I don't get it! No one can be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?".

Jerry replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, I have two choices today. I can choose to be in a good mood or I can choose to be in a bad mood. I always choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I always choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I always choose the positive side of life."

."But it's not always that easy," I protested.

"Yes it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. It's your choice how you live your life.

"Several years later, I heard that Jerry accidentally did something you are never supposed to do in the restaurant business: he left the back door of his restaurant open one morning and was robbed by three armed men. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found quickly and rushed to the hospital.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body. I saw Jerry about six months after the accident.

When I asked him how he was, he replied,"If I were any better, I'd be twins. Want to see my scars?"

I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

"The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door," Jerry replied. "Then, after they shot me, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: could choose to live or could choose to die. I chose to live.

"Weren't you scared" I asked.

Jerry continued, "The paramedics were great.They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the Emergency Room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read 'He's a dead man.' I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Well, there was a big nurse shouting questions at me," said Jerry. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes', I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live. Please operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.

"Jerry lived. Thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude.

I learned from him that every day you have the choice to either enjoy your life or to hate it.The only thing that is truly yours (that no one can control or take from you) is your attitude, so if you can take care of that, everything else in life becomes much easier.