Tag Archives: power of now

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Don’t try and change what exists. Instead create a new space for your dreams.

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Each and every one of us has the option to live as an Extropist, someone who steps powerfully towards chaos and transforms the energy into a usable form. The Extropist often is working towards creating their purpose, as purpose is one of the greatest motivators that we can use to materialize our dreams. However, many of us have spent much time chasing dreams only to find that they constantly slip through our fingers. Why is it that our goals can be so slippery, and what can we do to help our chances in realizing these elusive manifestations in our life?

One thing that may help you along your path is the fact that everything that you see has already happened. That sounds a bit confusing, so let me further explain. The time it takes for light to bounce off an object to reach our eye and then be processed by our brain is milliseconds past the actual occurrence of the event itself.

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This is important to note because what it means is that you will always be one step behind the event you are trying to change. This is why it can be so difficult to catch a rabbit with your hands, because the goal you are trying to reach has already moved. Therefore, don’t try to change what already exists. Instead create new conditions to move into.

The hunter knows not to chase after the rabbit but instead to create the right conditions in which the rabbit will come straight into his grasp. This is the same for catching your dreams. Know what things you need to do to have your dream come to you. If you are attracting a partner, don’t chase them around instead create the person that you need to be in which the partner will come to you. What type of person do you need to be to attract your dream partner into your life? If it’s a job, if you simply turn up to job interviews, chasing any open position, the job will already be gone by the time you arrive instead, what are the things you need to do to be an employ at your perfect job? What do the other employees of this job do? What is the company passionate about and how can your actions better create an inspiration of similar interests?

We can create changes in our lives to use our energy efficiently and effectively so that we can harness the chaos that surrounds us and use it to our advantage. This is further emphasized by the famous physicist Niels Bohr, who said, “Nature abhors a vacuum”. He meant that if there is a condition in the Universe where nothing exists, the Universe will work with great urgency to fill this space. This works all the way from quantum states and the zero-point field to more classical Newtonian states such as diffusion. What this means to our story, is that by setting up the right conditions, the Universe will actually push our dreams towards us in ways that not only seem improbable but actually impossible. But this is how some of the most amazing and magical loves have been ignited and baby businesses have boomed. It is all by setting up the right conditions within oneself and the entity than trying to chase down an elusive goal.

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When you know what your dream is, instead of spending the time running around chasing it, spend some needed time to understand what conditions you need in yourself and the situation in which you can allow the dreams to come to you. Start with a piece of paper and write down exactly what your life will be like when you are living your dream. Then try and action as many of those conditions as possible so that you are beginning to create a space for your dreams that needs to be filled. In this way, Life will turn on its axis in the most unusual ways to have you realize your dreams in order that it will fill the space that you have created.

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Dream Big, Think Small

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So often we find ourselves asking the question what does it all mean? Why am I here and what am I doing? We usually find ourselves asking this same question in the same place. A place that is the most relevant to be asking and more often than not the most depressing space, and that is… our job. So often our careers are the most dissatisfying element of our lives, yet they are where we spend the most amount of time. We spend in fact, outside of sleeping, the majority of our day at work. So what is work and what can it be for us? It can be that which truly fulfills and nourishes who we are inside. It is not just a proxy to our dreams, it is the real thing. Our work is the space where we can step forward and fulfill our purpose. This is a very important idea, because it answers the age-old question why are we here? Well each person is here to answer their own question. Another way of saying this is that there is no meaning to life except for the meaning that you give it. That meaning is your dream!

The bigger the dream you choose the harder it will be to fulfill, but also the more meaning you will receive from life. Taking meaning from life fulfills you as you step towards that dream. For instance, if your dream goal is to make $1000, you will work towards it and reach that goal and then what? You will have to make another goal. There is nothing wrong with this and it is actually a very effective method, when you know what the FINAL outcome is. The big dream that you are trying to reach. This may be daunting to think what this dream could be, but once you select it you can then begin to take steps towards it. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the father of optimal functioning, said initially the goal justifies the means but ultimately the means justifies the goal. What this means is that while you originally thought the luster of the treasure at the end of the rainbow is what will give you the satisfaction in life, in fact it’s the journey that you went on to get to the that makes the dream and the life all worthwhile.

So why tell you all this? It’s because while you have to dream big you have to also think small. Because if you try to contemplate the magnitude of your dreams you will become overwhelmed and literally become nauseas from the great heights you will have to climb. What I mean by ‘think small’ is only focus on the step in front of you and give everything you have to that one step. Think about everything that you will need to do and break them up into smaller packets of events. If those seem too big then break those down. Each one is like a brick in the wall. Instead of focusing on the wall and the thousands of bricks you have to lift up and put in place only focus on the brick itself and make sure that you really put it in place properly. If the brick is too big break it up. It’s more important that you can handle the brick than get to your goal quickly. As my friend said to me, “you don’t have to eat the elephant in one go”.

Remember what Aesop told us about the hare and the tortoise. Life is not a race, you are running only for yourself. Find patience and pace yourself by what you need to accomplish to reach the finishing line of your dream. If you compare yourself with those faster than you, you will be overwhelmed and doubt yourself and your chances. If you compare yourself with those slower than you, you will become arrogant and sloppy. Focus only on the tasks in front of you and give to them. You won’t waste your resources thinking about other people or your performance capabilities. Keep your attention outside on what you have to accomplish.

Slow and steady wins the race.
Aesop (Greek slave & fable author, 620 BC – 560 BC)

What does this mean in a real-life application? If you were talking about a dream job? What are the things you need to do to get the job? Know the job you want. Know the person you need to be for that job emotionally, mentally and physically. See yourself in that job and understand the things that you will do. Know the reason why you want the job. Understand that it is in your planning that you will become clear on who we need to be now to reach our dreams. Sun Tzu (Chinese General – The Art of War, 500 BC) said “Now, the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought.”

We must understand the person we need to be for our dream. Whilst we have patience for the dream we have to embody the person that we will become. We have to take an active role in our transformation of becoming the hero of our journey. To take the planning further and create a greater belief of the hero in you. So know what you will do when you get the job. Know who you will tell and how you will feel. Know what this job means to you and write it down. Write it all down and take action where you can. Take action and give powerfully to every life detail of your big life dreams. Life wants you to take the reins and give the meaning that only you know it can have for you, because when you are the main actor in your life… Well then, all the world is your stage!

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The Stress-Free Present

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Often we lose control of our thoughts like a runaway train. We simply notice something, a feeling, a thought, and within a blink of an eye that thought has built up to some moment of impending doom. The momentum is so powerful that you are left feeling so overwhelmed by the power of this thought, that all you can do is take it as truth. But something deep inside you knows that this thought isn’t real – that this thought is one of a trillion possibilities. So why do you want to give this thought any more power than it already has?

It’s time to bring this illusion of the overwhelming thought to a stop. It may not necessarily happen as a grinding halt but there are ways that you can help yourself relax into a place where you can get a handle on your thinking and ultimately your reality. First and foremost, you can relax by bringing your mind back to the present. The present is a present to you. Take a deep breath and focus on that breath. Feel the air rush in and out over your lips. Feel your belly flow with the to and fro of the moving tides of your breath. With each breath cycle in and out, count that as 1, and then do it again for a second time all the way to 10. Then repeat this cycle of 10 breaths ten times for a total of 100 breaths. We take around 30,000 breaths a day, so you don’t have to feel overwhelmed by this, but just do as many as you can.

It is with presence that you find your power. When you allow your mind to move out to all the infinite possibilities of things that may or may not happen, your evolutionary nature will typically focus on the negative in order to help you be able to pre-empt future threats. The problem with this is that our mind often believes that our thoughts are real. This unintentionally leaves you stressed about things that don’t actually exist like when you were a child and believed there were monsters in your cupboard. Breath is the most powerful way to create space for you to blow away the conjured illusions about the fog of the futures impending doom.

Science has begun to provide clarity to this process of thinking by exposing what are called mirror neurons. These neurons help to create the same physiological experience you may have by thinking about something as you may have if you were actually experiencing the event in real life. For example we wince when we see someone get hit in a boxing match because our mirror neurons have us partially experience what we are observing. This is what also helps us build relationships and be the social animals that we know ourselves to be.

So it is important to remember that these thoughts are not real and that you will be more powerful in your creating if you bring your mind into the present. Emotional stress often causes the creative centers, which are also known as the executive functions, of our brain to shut down. Cognitive inhibition happens so that we can allocate the most amount of mental resources to protect ourselves, which involves either fighting with, or taking flight from the danger. Neither of these reactions typically help us deal with a problem in the most desired manner when we consider our current lifestyle and stressors. Therefore we often result in less than desired creations and outcomes when dealing with stressful situations.

SO again I ask you to bring your mind to the present. Focus on your breath or the things around you that you are grateful for and this will help change the perspective of that which stresses you to that which simply is. By looking around and noticing all the great things that surround you it helps you change your focus to that which you have control over and that which you love.

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Failures are openings to our Greatest Creations

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Many times throughout our lives we try to create an opportunity, an idea, a dream but end up without a ‘positive’ result. We look at the outcome as a failure either on our own part or that of the external world. But, what if this was not a failure but an opening? What if you actually believed whole heartedly that everything you experienced was your own creation and that embedded in the outcomes that you think are “bad” are actually such greater gems of wisdom that you could have only gained by not having a dream realized.

In this world we are taught to win and have more, have the most. However, do you really think your highest purpose, the meaning of your life, is to accumulate physical wealth and leisure or do you think that there is something far greater in store for you that you are unconsciously working toward. Do you think you would have greater life satisfaction with truly loving and knowing your life purpose or being able to afford a trip to Hawaii? I’m not saying that this definitely exists in your experience, but I am saying that if you spend the time to look at your life mishaps you may find understandings that are far more valuable than the trip itself.

I like to think about it like this, if a toddler was given everything they asked for would they gain all the lessons they needed in life? Or do you think the fact that they learnt about things like delayed gratification, about being thankful for what they have, that then they will have a far more balanced look on life.

If you have become discouraged, that is fine, but the very fact that you have become discouraged means that you didn’t truly believe. You may be able to visualize Hawaii but that doesn’t mean that you have a knowing that you are going there. We most powerfully create our lives when we have a true belief that we are not attached to the outcome. When we know something is going to happen that we don’t even question what the outcome will be.

The same way a pen falls to the ground we know that we can pick it up. We don’t even question that the pen can’t be picked up. And even if we had a sore back, something that limited our progress and couldn’t quite reach it we still trust completely in ourselves that the pen will be picked up. We understand that despite our limitation of not being able to pick it up now that once moving through the limitations we are experiencing we will again be able to complete the task we began earlier. Remember we have the soreness in our back to protect us from further injuring ourselves. Our limitations are often our greatest teachers. Love the lessons and you will gain the greatest knowing.

Hold more than a belief, hold a knowing within yourself and trust in your dreams, as if they are as possible as picking up a fallen pen. Look for the truth in the ‘limitations’ that we create that temporarily stop the reaching of our dreams because with the greater understanding of ourselves comes the greatest experience of life and the richest expression of our dreams.

So please KNOW this despite the long journey ahead: Dreams Come True! They really do!!!

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/40000072 w=400&h=225]

Caine’s Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

This impressive 9 year old boy followed his dream fearlessly with a true knowing, and undoubtedly with life’s help, he made his dreams come true!

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Choose what you ‘C’

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While flipping through the entertainment pages, I saw that another celebrity had an experience with substance abuse in which they felt their life was spiraling out of control and thankfully gave out a cry for help. Their experience made me think about how we so often are faced with a perpetual stream of challenging situations in our lives. How do we stand the constant barrage of chaos?

The most common way for handling our problems is through unconscious behavior programs that either defend or distract us from the issue at hand. Born from our experiences of the past, these programs are ways we found to protect us from hurt. However such approaches typically only help in the short-term, resulting in the problem resurfacing again and again. We all distract ourselves, some drink, some watch TV, some try a new fad, there are millions of ways to distract ourselves from actually looking at the problems in our lives. But sure enough, until we face our demons they keep knocking on the mind’s door, getting louder and louder. But maybe there’s a different way to respond to our emotions that may serve us better. And there is! It is all dependent on choosing what you C.

Choosing what you C is obviously a play on what you ‘see’ but more importantly it means taking a breath and getting present. Choosing what you C is about creating your life the way that you want it. Creating it from the moment of now rather than the faults of the past. Your life unfolds from two perspectives: Reaction and Creation. When we look at these two words we see that the only difference between them is choosing what you C. When you are coming from reaction, you C what happens after the causal event and then respond to it. When you are an agent of creation, you are the beginning cause that dictates your action.

When a person is overwhelmed with emotion they typically want to remove themselves from the confronting emotions as quickly as possible. Our automatic and unconscious reactionary programs are initiated, which are typically not the most creative and insightful parts of our mind. This is similar to our fight or flight mechanism developed in our ancient mammalian ancestry to protect us from being attacked by a predator on the prairies. But in the modern world it is our ego trying to protect itself from change and the danger of loosing control. Therefore we simply distract and defend as a short-term solution. For example, you attempt a new project in your life but suddenly you have stopped and you weren’t even aware why. Without realizing it boredom, anxiety, worry bubble up to distract you and your emotion knock you off the road from your desired destination to suddenly get lost in the irrelevant.

A more progressive way our life can unfold is through creation. From creation we choose to C from the start and become the creator of our lives. We can be the true creators of our lives by choosing how we experience it. Be the creation, not the reaction. When you are presented with something that produces an emotion that is confronting, don’t immediately react through distraction or defense. Instead give yourself a beat. Pause and create some space. Take a deep breath in and exhale powerfully. Look at the emotion and instead of identifying with it by saying “I am anxious”, change it to “I am FEELING anxious” and then imagine how you want your story to unfold.

This battered celebrity, like so many of us, felt overwhelmed, at times by life, as though it was spinning out of control, and so initiated a behavior program of substance use to distract from the emotions of being overwhelmed about past experiences and future outcomes. Instead of the reaction of distraction, STOP!! Breathe and acknowledge in yourself what would be the ultimate outcome right now. Look to how you want your future to be rather than reacting to the assumptions of the past. Take your time, there is no rush. Give yourself the space and time to acknowledge your needs, because by choosing to C from the start and be the cause of change you will create the life you’ve always wanted.

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Beauty exists even in Chaos, when we take the time to look.

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Dream Bigger than the End

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So often we do things so that we can be the best at something, just for the sake of being the best, but very soon on we lose our motivation and commitment to the cause, finding it very boring. Why do we reach for these goals of being the best at something? So we can think of ourselves as better than other people? So we can think we are a “good” or “smart” person? These lofty ideas can really be thought of elements of our personality. No matter what you do, whenever you compare yourself to someone else you are always afflicted with personality. The personality builds itself on experience relative to the world. You know yourself relative to the world and therefore if you can only know yourself in reference to something you are limiting yourself. You are limiting yourself because you can only grow as big as the person or thing you are comparing yourself to and that is a limiting mind frame that you are holding. Sometimes you reach that goal and you sit around feeling good about yourself until you realize that there is someone else bigger or better and so now you compete with them. Forever competition. Never satisfaction.

By only trying to be the best, not only are you trying to climb to the top of an unreachable mountain, you are stealing the joy from your experience. To truly excel you have to do something, or look at something, in a way that has you do it for the joy of doing it. For instance, if you are doing something just to get good grades or you are working just so you can get money, you are naturally sucking the joy from what you are doing. It is a limited reference frame and won’t inspire you beyond what you are doing, so then why do it?

It is important to look at the thing you are doing from different angles and different perspectives. A good way of doing this is through gratitude for the opportunity to be following this path, for what it involves and for what got you there. You think that what you are doing isn’t relevant now but how do you know in the future it won’t be one of the most relevant things that you did. Find a way to identify with what you are doing. Recontextualize it. What is the relevance of what you are doing to the world? To the rest of your life? Find a way that it is relevant to you so that you can connect with it as something outside of the moment – rather than as a means to an end.

How could anyone be inspired by reaching the end?

It is our reference points that bring us down. I had a friend who grew up in the fields of Mexico. He didn’t know what rich and poor was because there was no one around to compare himself to, so in those days he was blissfully happy. But then he came to America and he saw the difference of his situation, to all the wealth around and how different he was from them. With this new reference frame he felt limited and sad. One day he realized something that lead him to reframe his situation. Instead of focusing on himself in relation to the people above him, he focused himself to his dream which in his mind was well beyond and much more relevant to what he wanted for himself.

In this day and age people will often change with the wind their career, their directions and their idea on who they think they should be and what they should be doing. People soon become lost in the hurricane of choices trying to grab on to as many things as they can whilst they find themselves swirling around in the frenetic digital trends of the day. We often become fixated on these ideas like a rabbit in headlights, copying paths that people have already begun to cut, leaving us more often than not overwhelmed and stuck in the rut. People typically prefer to walk a well-worn road where they will find safety and certainty but they may not find purpose. This may very well be because we are travelling the road well travelled rather than the world less travelled.

So spend the time to work out your big dream. Plan the path ahead. The only reason we choose to focus on other things and people is because we don’t take the time or don’t know what dream we want for ourselves. When you try to reach another persons dream you won’t have the same passion about it; to reach where they did. You won’t be able to muster the same level of enthusiasm needed to go the long haul, and thus everything you do becomes boring and tedious. If you want adventure, if you want excitement, if you want inspiration you may need to do something inspired. If anybody could have done it, it most probably would have been done. Some times all that takes though is simply getting down to business on your dream and believing in it and yourself.

Take the time to work out what your dream is. If you don’t know yet, then find gratitude for the things that you are doing, because in positivity and your higher frames of mind you are opening your frame of reference to a place of greater possibility and opportunity than if you have a closed and resistant mind. Give thanks for the dreams that you do have even if they are modeled after someone else’s and be open and aware for the moment when you realize what you really want to do. So dream big and get exited about your dream. Because when you find your dream, when you find your purpose you wont be doing things for a limited reason, a momentary accolade, a meaningless end, you will be doing things for the joy of the rest of your life.

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The Science of Gratitude and the Creation of Dreams

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In getting clear on what our dream life looks like I would like to offer a suggestion on how to best create an emotional and mental space that will most certainly get you there. I say this because so often we talk about what we want and what we are going to have. We spend a lot of time and energy thinking and working hard to get to this dream place. We may even be really excited by the possibility of it but there is something that we always miss out on that has our efforts and energy get lost in the winds of time. And that is… it is so important to ensure that you are grateful for what you have NOW. 

By only being passionate and grateful for what you are getting in the future, you are not grounding yourself in the present. It is in the present moment from which we create our futures. It is the solid ground from which things grow. The material world only exists in this moment. Really think about it: What solid thing exists in the future? Nothing! It is only a possibility. What exists in the past? Nothing! It is only a memory. Even if that moment was only one second ago, you think back on say your plant one second ago, and that memory is only an electrical impulse in your brain, not a material thing. Nothing material exists in the moment outside of the present moment and so we cannot grow things from any other moment, but this moment. The only moment is now. So when you are intending on things in the future, do it from a place where you are firmly grounded in the moment of now.

Over the last hundred years scientific studies have confirmed that there is only the moment of now. Einstein said, “…for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.”  Dr. Richard Feynman, one of the most famous quantum theorists, then went onto describe that the probability of an event is determined by summing together all the possible histories preceding that event. This means that the direction of our journey through time is simply a path in space heavily influenced by our preceding actions, which makes one outcome more probable than the more fantastic journeys time might have otherwise taken us on. Therefore in conjunction with advancing theories over the decades it has been shown that each and every moment is a completely new Universe, with infinite new possibilities in its own right and it is our consciousness (thoughts and feelings) that helps bind time into what appears a simple cohesive journey. 

Why have I gone into this? Because I want you to realize that in every moment you have the ability to create your own reality. That fresh possibility exists in every moment and that moment is only now. So the way that you can direct the most probable outcome is through the sum of the histories of the event in which you are trying to create. By being grateful now for what you have and being grateful for what you WILL have, you help create the most probable sum of the event because you are trying to create an event which makes you very grateful. 

The first thing to know about guiding ourselves to our dreams is based on another quick moment of science. As shown by the Institute of HeartMath, feelings generate particular frequency patterns in our hearts and positive feelings of gratitude generate a very even sinusoidal wave, while negative emotions usually elicit quite erratic patterns. Our heart is the largest generator and emitter of frequencies in our bodies. If every moment is now (even the future) and we are trying to create a moment outside of now for the future then by harmonizing our frequencies of the moment of now with a future moment of now we are helping to couple and connect the moments of now and best create the resonant reality of our choosing. By feeling gratitude intensely we are further creating a stronger signal which will better reach and harmonize with what we are trying to create.

The second element of creation is to be committed. The more gratitude you add to your life and the future event, the greater the probability will be and the more chance you will have of reaching your dream. Every time you give thanks for both now and the future, you add another moment to the history of events that will lead to a greater summation of the probability of that event. So choose what you want now and give thanks for it and remember to give thanks always and often for what you have, because without being grateful for who you are and what you have you are negating your own creative powers and thus leaving you and the connected Universe impotent.

It doesn’t matter if you are surrounded by negativity; remember that every moment is a fresh moment of possibility, in which you can begin to change the direction of your life. You can have lost your job, lost your partner, been diagnosed with an illness, but if you choose what you want and start giving, and truly feeling thanks for what you have received and what you want to receive, you will surely have it. You can give thanks for your family and friends that surround and support you. You can feel love and gratitude for your partner and children. You can think of all that has been given to you and that has kept you alive to this moment. You can be grateful about your health. You can think about your dreams and passions. You can smile about all the things you have accomplished in life. Write them down and keep a list. If only a few every night of what you are grateful about in your day. Give thanks. Feel it and Commit to it and your dream life is surely waiting in the next moment.

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Seek happiness and success will find you – 21 days to retrain your brain

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We are constantly seeing, hearing and reading about people having break downs, how our friends are feeling sad, celebrity couples ending their relationships and the world generally dissatisfied with their lives. Even Heidi Klum and Seal broke up. Seal ended it with a woman who has been consistently thought of as the most beautiful women in the world. How can someone not be happy with the most beautiful woman in the world you may ask?
We know what happiness feels like, because we have all had it but then it just seems to slip away and we are left dealing instead with stresses and pressures rather than basking in the glow of the glory of our happiness. So what is it that constantly leads us to our state of disillusionment with the world? The answer is… The view!

We keep on looking outside ourselves for happiness. Jobs, partners, possessions. However our external world only has about 10% to do with our happiness. Where we need to be looking is at the 90%. This is where the real view is: our inner world. We spend all our time trying to fix up what we see in that outside 10% and leaving the large majority of how we see the world from the inside as unkempt and in disarray. How do we beautify and create an amazing internal landscape? How do you change your thinking?

Oddly enough your happiness and success doesn’t really have anything to do with your head, it has to do with your heart. Back in medieval times the heart was considered the center of consciousness and there may be good reason to start giving some thought to that again. 75% of personal success and happiness has been shown to be accounted for by three things: 1) Optimism, 2) Social Support and 3) Your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of a threat. These three things are what you need to be looking at rather than your bank account and the car you have or the job title or partner that you are showing off currently. This is where our focus is backwards.

Every time we reach a success, we are aware of an even better goal that we want to reach. Got a job, want a better job. Got a car, want a better car. Got a trophy, want a bigger one. The end points are constantly shifting, like trying to catch a rainbow. Happiness seems to be sitting on the other side of that rainbow but this is really a hamster wheel that leaves you eternally chasing. The real truth about happiness is the exact opposite to what we think it is. We have to reach happiness first in order to find success. And lucky for us psychologists and scientists have found some simple exercises that utilize those three elements of optimism, social support and reframing stressors in order to retrain our brains to be able to look at the world and change the view to leave us happy and in control of our lives.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. Albert Schweitzer (1875 –1965) Nobel Peace Prize Winning Medical Missionary

Change you brain in 21 days

Every evening, for the next 21 days:

• Write down 3 things you were grateful for. This starts to retrain your brain to begin to look for those things that leave you feeling good.

Every morning for the next 21 days, rotate each day between these following 3 things:

1) Write a journal entry recalling something good that happened the day before.
• This allows you to relive and remember that your life is filled with good experiences.
2) Meditate – Sit cross-legged with your back against the wall for 15 minutes and only focus on your breath going in and out your nose. Notice as your mind gets caught on a thought and then bring your mind back to your breath.
• This allows to teach your body that behavior matters and helps train your mind to focus on one thing rather than your mind bouncing around.
3) Perform a random/ conscious act of kindness – Send a friend in your social circle a thank you note. Buy someone you don’t know a coffee. Invite a friend out to lunch.
• This will remind you that you are not alone in this world, but that you are loved and you are a relevant member of society. By giving you will open yourself up to receive and you will gain much greater insights into your life and your happiness

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Shifting paths – Shifting lives

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With any relationship, we walk beside that person on our own path. Often these paths will ride along each other adjacently, but over time these paths will eventually change and diverge as the people creating these paths change. We see them over yonder in the distance but it can be so tiresome yelling the whole time so that they can hear and often so much gets lost in translation by something as simple as the wind catching our words and carrying them away. We can often be resistant to change as the familiarity is so easy and safe. We become used to this concept of who we are in relation to that person and wrap ourselves in that fabric of “this person’s partner” or “that person’s friend” so that we can then present ourselves to the world in such a way that we feel good about.

It is important to note though that as the paths get off track we have a choice: we can either acknowledge that the path has changed and we will feel to work to build new paths that will bring us back together or we can acknowledge that we don’t feel to put the added energy into building the path to be walking side by side again. The point is that either way is fine and that as long as we can see the person for the amazing person that they are on their path, and that it doesn’t necessarily reflect the direction of your path, you will not hinder yourself from creating a pathway to a life filled with friends that may be going the same direction as you now. By resisting that person you will find that you wont move forward to creating a life of new friends as you are spending your time focusing on that relationship that didn’t work. It is in this that you will then naturally create a cycle, a pattern of relationships, which you have unconsciously created in your life so that you can finally be fine to let them go or resolve. The point is that you can only create anew from the present not the past. The past begets the past the past, the present begets the future. We don’t need to regret the past but embrace it for it both helped us be the people that we are today and at the same time it know longer exists. So why not cherish the experiences that you shared for all that they gave you and you grew through.

I have included this video of Christian the Lion as i feel that while the characters of this amazing story had to go there different paths they truly retained their love for each other from all that they gained from each other.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btuxO-C2IzE&feature=related]

The final point I would like to make is that we assume that our friendships are old because we have known someone for a long time. We assume that we know that person. But every time we come back to that person we are creating a friendship completely anew because we are completely different people. When we try to maintain a relationship on the falsities of the past rather than the reality of the present we will ultimately lose our way with these partners because we take them for granted and miss out on seeing who they are now as they can do with us. So look into your friends eyes and see who they really are today and acknowledge and appreciate them for that. You will see who that person is today and if you look deep enough you will see from this present moment, who they will be tomorrow.

Hope this helps 🙂

EXPLORE

Truth has no answers for you

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Truth has no answer. There is no form that Truth can take. Truth exists in a space outside of form. It can only be realized in the silence.

It is in this infinite potential of Truth that we see resemblance of the universal structure. Truth (akin to and interchangeable with the words Love and God) is formless and infinite. It is Absolute and ALL. It cannot have form because the second we give it form it collapses into a single perspective and Truth cannot have one perspective it can only have all perspectives. This infinite multitude of perspectives is needed because consciousness is always evolving and changing. Advancing and growing we take one truth for a while until we drop it for another. It is the freedom of Truth that affords growth and movement. So what we typically conceive of, as “the truth”, is really only an element of truth from a particular perspective, in a particular place, at a particular point in time. Thus, all life and its truths are really a subjective experience.. We try to tell ourselves that life is objective by getting many people on our side to look at the piece of truth from our perspective. Because we have all these people now agreeing with us, we determine that this is the real Truth because everyone agrees with us. Over and over again we have seen throughout history that what we believed was the Truth, and agreed upon by others, really was the truth of a group of people until it wasn’t. Whether it was that the earth was flat, the center of the universe or that races are superior to others. Time and time again these truths are shown to be untruths. Please watch the video to have this illustrated for you.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBqgr5xZLz0&feature=related]

It is our minds that creates the fracturing of Truth into relativistic perspectives. The mind operates serially, from a linear perspective, one point in time after another, after another, another and so on. This means that ultimately our mind creates the conscious experience of our relative world, in which things are defined as different from each other. This difference is what gives things lines and a timescape in which events can be before some and after others. It affords us definite answers, but it slows down our processing, when we work in a world built on lines. What happens when we shut off the conscious mind? Let us consider a person in a state of extreme danger. Their body will release adrenalin; their body and mind is completely centered in the moment of now for survival. This is apparent in the mind, as there is no chatter, no mind that exists outside of the moment (this is often evidenced by the person unable to recall what happened during the actual escape). The person will experience many different perspectives simultaneously and the world may have a warped feeling of time.

This is different from our normal lives when we have the space to think. Our mind chatter can exist outside of the moment. This chatter takes you into the future or feeds back to the past. It is here that our resources are divided and dwindle as we assess how to handle the situations that may or may not occur in the future or ruminate on the past. Our cognitive energy is spread out thin into many directions unfocused and ineffective. It is this chatter, this activity of the mind that gives form to Truth and limits the perspective our true self can take. The true strength lies in our focused energies of our feelings in the now. Trust in the intelligence that will appear from the silence felt in the space of only the now.

We can see the mechanics of Truth in the comparison of the quantum world with the physical world. Every possible perspective exists for a photon until we measure it; because once we measure it we define it in space and time, which gives it form. The second the photon collapses into a physical form, by being observed, it is forced to have a particular perspective of the universe. The photon now only knows the universe as one element of the universe in a particular space. This photon is now only a single element of the Truth. The reality for that photon is akin to the form each human consciousness takes. Consciousness collapses life and concepts into a relative form in order to give a perspective of truth. When we observe ourselves and our existence we immediately collapse our perspective into only a single element of the truth. Our consciousness affords us only a limited perspective of the world, it observes the world like a flashlight that can only see and comprehend the elements of the world that are illuminated by conscious thought and attention. When our minds look into, and acts from, the potential of the future or perspective of the past, it immediately collapses those times into a form that exists in space and time. It has been recently shown by a group of Harvard scientists that people spend 50% of their time mind wandering outside of the moment and the task in which they are meant focused on. This mind wandering outside of the present has been shown to typically leave people unhappy and unsatisfied. The mind is best used to allow for the experience of the moment and trust in the outcome. Therefore the trick is to exist in the moment in silence.

It is in silence that we can have a greater experience of Truth because silence is experienced not in the mind but in our feelings. Our feelings, unlike our mind operate from that which is called our subconscious mind. This mind does not follow the same relativistic rules as our mind does, in that it processes experiences not serially, as one event after the other, but from what is called a parallel process. This means that there are many different lines of information being processed that are coming in at the one time. This subconscious mind therefore doesn’t have to obey the rules of time relativism but can experience the past, present and future all at once. It is worth noting that our subconscious mind is extremely logical and powerful to the point of being more than ten thousand times more powerful than our conscious mind. This superior processing is due to the parallel processor but it has one limitation. Words are too limited for the subconscious mind to communicate with the conscious mind so it uses feelings and images (a picture is worth a thousand words) in which to convey its understandings of the world.

Feelings and intuitions are very subtle and this is why we need the silence in order to properly hear the greater wisdom from our deeper selves. Therefore it is here in our feelings that we may truly connect to greater perspectives of Truth not forcing us to view the world from a particular place but instead from a much higher parallel perspective. It is from this higher space that we can see all people’s perspectives. That we can experience empathy. That we can show compassion. That we can love unconditionally because our view of the Truth is not limited to one particular perspective but is able to see from all sides. Our heart is the metaphorical and energetic feeling center of the body and enables us to utilize the full power of our beings. It is through our feelings and their higher perspective that we can live to our full potential. It is not the physical form that our answers come in but the shape of our feelings that give us true insight to what we need to know from the questions we ask ourselves.

We realize our true self when the mind is aligned with, and centered in the body, and its happenings in that moment. The moment of Now. It is here when our mind is in the space of now that it allows for the silence of our heart to be heard by our body. It’s the body’s enactment and activation of the full potential of the holistic organism that we can then enter into these ultimate states of our True self and really know the meanings of the TRUTH.