"LIFE files"

I FEELgood

2010-04-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of these three: body, spirit and soul? Well, if you haven’t these are the main components of a human being. Forgive my over simplification of these very sacred entities, but I wish to draw your mind to an aspect of one of these; the emotion, which forms part of the soul. Others call it MOOD, nowadays.

Did you know that your EMOTION is designed with tendencies to either empower you or weaken you. To achieve success on any endeavor, it is expedient to have the right emotion (MOOD) for it. Starting an enterprise with the fear that you might run into debt, won’t help your goal of profit making; taking an exam with the uncertainty of scoring high sets you for a far worse grade as compared to if you had confidence; going to the hair stylist with fear that you might not like your hair-do gives room for a very unsatisfactory salon service; put a champion heavy weight boxer who is depressed (bad mood) – that’s to say: wrong emotion – into the ring and see how badly he performs. That’s why anytime the bells rings their coaches come around speaking words targeted at their emotions? Emotions are crucial! Why? They make or unmake you.

A good friend of mine rightly said “emotions control us”, and she is right. But if we knew how to control emotions, LIFE will be exactly how we want it. Emotion is so powerful it dictates what we have and what we don’t have. A friend complained to me that she never gets what she wants. I told her, your emotions might be attracting something else. Your emotions must agree with what you want, if you will get them. If this sounds like motivation, you are right.

“LIFE – motivation = FAILURE”

Zig Ziglar, one of my mentors said: “You Were Born To Win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and EXPECT to win”. Planning and preparing are very important but you couldn’t plan well or prepare adequately without a firm expectation for a successful outcome. Your emotion or mood has actual and calculable impacts on the mental faculties for decision-making. We need to learn and know how to use “mood” to optimize our decisions, because decisions are nothing but choices; and as we all know choices come with consequences.

STRONG Expectation (HOPE) is a powerful emotion that sets you on the right foot for greatness and it attracts the desired.

There are a lot of materials out there on how to understand and use your emotions. I suggest you lay your hands on any to start educating yourself about this rather powerful aspect of your personality. Just for coming on my blog let me give you some clues:

First of all YOU can take control of your emotions. Yeah, that sound funny, but I am very serious, “YOU CAN CHOOSE HOW YOU FEEL”. What I mean is YOU decide to stay in a particular mood. In my previous article I talked about choices – well, letting external occurrences select your mood / emotion is a choice. Decide (make a choice) on what emotional state you want and engage in activities that arouse that feeling in you. You will feel good, you will be in control, and your life will be better.

Someone rightly said: “The most important factor in any endeavor is how you feel about it.”

Hope you’ve learnt something.

LIFE files . . .

IS IT DESTINY or CHOICE?

2010-04-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

Is the outcome of an endeavored venture predetermined? Is failure a choice or destiny? The quality of life you have now, do you think it is a result of destiny or personal choice?

It is said that questions are the answers to life.

More often than not after observing their lives people conclude that it is all a matter of fate and destiny. But to honestly think that you were made by the creator to just go through life preprogrammed without options to simply act in automatic ways is morally unsound.

One major responsibility of yours is to exercise your power of choice and to live in the outcomes of those choices. If our choices come with consequences then it means the quality of those choices will directly play on the quality of our lives.

There are those who due to their longing for a radiant life of success choose to save and invest what they have today for greater benefits in the future. Others adopt the cross-finger theory to let everything slide and hopefully turn out right whiles they conveniently disregard their power of choice to sooner or later agonize about the consequences.

There are consequences to every choice we negotiate for ourselves.
But where does it all start from? What is the origin of our choices? Your choices evolve out of the set of values that govern your life. So to arrive at productive choices that shape a better life for you, it is expedient to painstakingly search for and learn those values that you lack.

Identify the environments that foster the model you desire to live your life by, and expose your mind to them. Build a network of friends and acquaintances who live their lives around your new core values; identify those whose lives model patterns you hope to build your life around and make them your role models and mentors; constantly monitor your progress in the new direction you have chosen; build a contemplative life that seeks for wisdom and guidance for all the choices you make, look for books that advocate for the standard you want to position your life on and read them; quickly make amends and get back on track when you fall short of your new values.

Like it or not, success and achievement is a matter of choice, and only you can make the choice to be outstanding. Remember, becoming a new person with regards to choices is the beginning of a whole life process of developing a new set of values and new ways of thinking about life.
Life files . . .

Have You Been TRICKED Before?

2010-03-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

Tricks – gimmicks as most will call it, is something we hate to fall victim to. Needless to say it always leaves you feeling down and quite foolish. But please do me a favor, cast your mind back to once when you were tricked, and ask yourself - what made me fall for it?

I know our world is full of tricksters today and they wont be leaving anytime soon. But it's my desire to make it easier for you to identify one of the most successful trickster of all time, and I can't emphasize it enough how helpful this will be to you.

The most successful trickster of all time happens to be a segment of our own personalities, it is canning and can be dangerously vicious in full gear, and as always leaves us with deep regrets. A watch out for this buddy will so improve the quality of life each one of us enjoys on a daily basis.

So what is it? - you ask. I will tell you. It is ANGER.

Anger is an emotional response most of us have no control over. Rephrase- anger controls most of us! Yet anytime you are angry it is said that 99% of your judgement is wrong. I don't have to tell you the consequences of acting on wrong judgements, do I? Well, maybe i should.

It is the worst means to accomplish any purpose whatsoever. I know a friend who gets angry when somebody tries to steal the right of way from him when he is driving his car. The other afternoon a man rushed past him, cut in short ahead of him and crowded him out of his rightful place in the traffic. My friend "got mad." When the traffic opened so that he could, he speeded up, caught up with the other fellow, rushed past him, and in the process threw a cup of coffee at him. Little did he know that a cop was right behind him. However he had also caught the other fellows front grail leaving a dent on his nice and expensive car. But the other car was an old rickety. He was pulled over, given a ticket and also left with the burden of fixing his own car. I bet he never budgeted for that. Also he knew that he had narrowly escaped worse, for that sort of thing is playing with disaster, as we can always see plainly enough afterwards.

When a man gets angry (mad, they call it these days) he sometimes does irretrievable things, tragic, fatal things! What he does always ranges somewhere between silliness and crime. The young man or girl who "talks back" to an employer, the teacher or parent or man or woman who gives rein to hot passion and says lacerating, cruel things or deals blows with a fist or a weapon, simply surrenders to an emotion and lets it run his life--usually to the point of shame, sometimes to the point of disgrace, and sometimes--once too often --to murder! That's the way murders are done--letting madness rule instead of intelligence!

But the worst of it all does not lie in the deed you do when you get mad. It lies in yielding the MANAGEMENT OF YOUR LIFE to emotion or passion instead of intelligence and patience.

In a lecture, Norman Angell, once said: "Most of the troubles in the world are caused by the fact that men act under the sway of madness rather than of intelligence. Every sort of disagreement, from private quarrel to world-wide war, comes from this tragic vice of men."

I guess you've been around for a while and you know well enough to follow the truth of this, I bet you can find enough stories in the news these days to illustrate it better. Also my guess will be you know your own life well enough to see revealing examples of it.

So my dear friend don't let anger trick you again. It's not worth it. There's no need to retaliate in life, its a waste of energy and valuable time. An ancient compilation says "you were created to have dominion", so take control of your life.

Life files . . .

RICHnation - POORnation

2010-03-29T00:18:00.000-07:00

Isn't it amazing that some of the poorest nations in the world are also, strangely, the most richly endowed in natural resources?

The land mass of their nations have vast deposits of gold, diamond, oil, platinum, fertile forest and good weather conditions. They also have a large work force of citizens who are ready to sweat in the fields from dawn to dusk for very little pay and yet their presidents and government officials spend much of their time going round begging from nations who do not have a fraction of those natural resources and labor force.

I bet you are wondering why it is so. But the same scenario plays out at your job place; probably you are smarter than your boss yet he pays you one tenth of what he makes of your labor.

A wise king once said: "In addition to all that you get, get understanding."

"Life files . . . "