Tools For Your Mind, Soul and Spirit

by Linda-Ann Stewart

This week, I was reminded that “We don’t have control of our past or our future. But we do have control of today.” The past is over and done with, and we can’t change it. We can change how we perceive it, and learn from it, but the events are over. And the future is yet to be. So right now is all we really have.

The future is created by the ideas, beliefs and attitudes we have today. If we want to see what our future will hold, just look at our current concepts. Planning for the future is one thing, as long as we work the plan one moment at a time.

Unexpected events could throw off the plan. A loved one dying, a company collapsing, war, these are out of our control. However, we have control over how we respond to what happens.

Viktor Frankel, psychiatrist and World War II concentration camp survivor, said, “The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” We can resist or resent the situation, or we can find a way to learn and grow from it. It’s our choice.

Each moment, we have control over what we think, believe and do. Those moments add up and create the future. As long as we keep our focus on the positive possibilities in the present moment, then the future will take care of itself.

Copyright 2010 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved

self improvement, self help, personal growth, personal development

In some recent studies, researchers have found the people don’t like to work with others who are selfish. No surprise. But they also don’t like to work with people who are unselfish.

The control group, normal people, judge givers through their own filters and believe the altruistic ones have an ulterior motive. That somehow, the givers are doing so for some gain. Or that they broke the rules of everyone claiming the same reward, even if giving it up benefited the group.

The biggest complaint, however, were the unselfish people made them look bad. Their reputation somehow suffered because of the selflessness.

So it wasn’t so much about the unselfish ones, but was about how it affected the control group. They saw themselves as lacking in generosity, recognized how it made them look, and took it out on the people who were giving. Instead of using it as a model, they rejected the person who could make a true difference.

It’s a lesson that many creative, generous, compassionate people have learned all too well. We have to conform and hide our gifts or people will condemn and spurn us.

So we crater to survive, conform to what the average person does and avoid rocking the boat. Unfortunately, this means we won’t live up to our potential. It just bolsters the attitudes of the average person. We give them our power, and it means that the status quo thrives.

It’s interesting that in a society that teaches unselfishness, that very virtue is reviled. Our society may value it in theory, but in reality, it’s considered a vice. As children, we receive conflicting information about this issue. Is it any wonder that our culture is screwed up?

If we want to change our society, culture, or business, we can’t just cave into the people who are more invested in their egos than they are in progress or prosperity. “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

It takes courage to stand up to them and realize that their discomfort and accusations simply arise out of their own inadequacies. To fulfill our potential, we have to let our light shine and be authentic.

As more and more people have done this, it’s become more accepted and appreciated. The idea of practicing random acts of kindness has swelled in recent years. So, although the average person may shun the generous one, kindness has become popular.

To read about the studies, visit WSU Study Finds People Really Don’t Like Working with Unselfish Colleagues and Too good to live: People hate generosity as much as they hate mean-spiritedness.

And check out Random Acts of Kindness to see how it’s gained in popularity.

Copyright 2010 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Over and over again, we’re told that we can only focus on one thing at a time. When we think we’re focusing on two ideas at a time, we’re really switching our attention from one to the other and back again. That is a waste of mental energy.

It’s a myth that we can multi-task without some decline in our ability to focus and be effective. Multi-tasking actually slows us down and erodes our ability to concentrate.

A study from the University of Michigan has actually found a reduction of 40 percent in production when we try to do two things at once. It also causes us to make mistakes and creates the problem of being burned out.

A Microsoft study found it can take up to 15 minutes to re-focus after an interruption. This can deplete internal resources and reduce creativity. Distractions take the place of true accomplishment. Just because we look busy doesn’t mean we’re achieving anything.

The solution is to shut out the interruptions, distractions and focus for an extended period of time on the project in front of you. Corporations are beginning to create these distraction-free time zones.

Not only does this free up time, but it reduces stress and allows space for creativity to flow. When we’re not busy dealing with the latest crisis, we can begin to move forward.

Establish one or two times a day to check email, let the phone messages go to voicemail, shut the door to be able to concentrate. These are boundaries we set around our time and workspace to allow us to be more productive and feel more peaceful.

Learning to set boundaries isn’t just important in our personal lives, it’s important in our business lives, as well. It forms a structure that we can count on and help us to be more calm and relaxed.

Inspired by the article E-mail is Making You Stupid from Entrepreneur.com, and gives more ideas of how to reduce your distractions.

Copyright 2010 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved

motivation, productivity, inspiration

by Coco Fossland

Through the ups and downs of life, it can seem at times, as though the quality of our lives is dependent on the people, situations, and conditions of the world around us. Yet, to become the powerful creator of our lives, we must be willing to see beyond this short-sighted view of ourselves and our lives.

Whether we are aware of it or not, the choice each of us is constantly making is the choice of picking between heaven or hell. The truth is, every moment, each of us decides. There is no outside force that decides. We choose it every moment.

The comedy is that even though we have the choice — usually people pick the experience of hell over heaven.

To see whether you are currently living in heaven or hell, look around your life. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being hell and 10 being heaven, where would you rank your life?

This week, observe your thoughts and words.

How often and about what do you complain?

How often and about what are you disappointed?

At what frequency do you wish things could be different than they are?

How often are others letting you down and not meeting your expectations?

How often are you letting yourself down?

Focusing on complaints, disappointments, should be’s, and unmet expectations creates the illusion of hell.

To have a life a bliss, you must be willing to challenge the assumption that the root of our dissatisfaction is really about the complaints and unmet expectations that dribble out uncontrollably out of your mouth.

Step One: Clean up your thoughts and language.

Catch yourself before that same old complaint indomitably burps out of your mouth. Choose your language carefully.

Before you tell yourself, “I have to wash the dishes,” notice that you really don’t have to. Even if you’re at gunpoint — which I entirely doubt you are — it’s still a choice — to do the dishes or not.

Adjust your language to be both more accurate and empowering. An example would be, “I choose to wash the dishes now rather than later, because I know how great it feels to walk into a clean kitchen.”

Step Two: See the real issue beneath the illusion.

The subject of your complaints and unmet expectations are a facade of the deeper issue that is really the culprit for your life feeling more like struggle and pain than joy and bliss.

The culprit lies inside choosing self-worth over self-hate.

Step Three: Expose underlying beliefs and assumptions.

How you make the choice between heaven or hell — or self-worth and self-hate depends on your assumptions and beliefs of whether you feel worthy, good enough or deserving of happiness.

To take yourself from hell to heaven, you must consistently choose to find inner value and inner worth. To do this, you must be willing to become deeply aware of your Self. You must see what overshadows your feelings of worth, so you can send love, kindness and compassion to those places. Otherwise, your experience of life will always be painful.

Step Four: Accept that you already live in and deserve heaven.

Much of our socializing has taught us to believe that “life is hard,” and “you have to suffer,” and “you must endure this life” to get the bliss of heaven in your next life.

Challenge these beliefs.

Rather than living this life trying to earn your way to heaven in the next, begin today and every day grounded in the assumption that not only are you are already worthy and deserving of heaven — but you are already there. All you have to do is claim it.

Step Five: Illuminate your worthiness.

if you want to “go to heaven,” it is your journey to illuminate your worthiness of bliss today. The amount of pain and struggle you feel in your life is inversely related to your feelings of worthiness. The more self-love and self-worth you have, the less the pain and struggle you will experience.

Every moment, you are the one who decides heaven or hell. When you decide that you are not worthy of heaven, by default you will experience hell, and thus so will be color of your life.

Step Six: Make self-love your #1 responsibility.

Self-love occurs when you recognize your value and worth. It becomes who you are, when you set your life in alignment with your inner wisdom

Copyright 2005 Coco Fossland
All Rights Reserved

The author of the forthcoming book, The Power of Trust: Trust Yourself, Transform Your World, Coco Fossland is a nationally recognized expert in personal transformation, self-empowerment and self-healing. Blending a decade of technology and strategy consulting with her expertise in self-trust transformation, Coco’s business is focused on supporting people passionate about creating businesses that make a difference in the world. She helps her clients fuse their higher path with their businesses, creating institutions and organizations that profoundly impact the world one person at a time. Please visit CocoFossland.com for more info.

I was introduced to this website that offers free online books on metaphysics, mind power, law of attraction, abundance, prosperity, success, manifestation, dream interpretation, self-mastery, joy, visualization and many more. The authors are legendary: Emile Coue, Thomas Troward, Henry Thomas Hamblin, Charles F. Haanel, Napoleon Hill, Wallace Wattles and others. There are even courses and videos available. I have many of these books in physical form and some in electronic form. These are the books that have inspired current best-selling authors. If you want to go to the source of where today’s writers have gotten their foundation, use this wonderful resource at PsiTek.com.

self improvement, self help, personal growth, personal development, motivation, productivity, inspiration

This is my very first video. I wanted to address the issue that most people want to turn over a new leaf at the beginning of the year. Unfortunately, they completely overwhelm themselves with wanting to change everything in their lives. They try to uproot the whole tree. When you prioritize, and create tiny steps for a single goal, then you have a much better chance at being successful.

Copyright 2010 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved

self improvement, self help, personal growth, personal development, motivation, productivity, inspiration

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

So happiness - isn’t that the thing that all of us strive to find and keep? Nobody is happy all of the time, but some people are definitely more fulfilled than others. Studies on what makes people happy reveal that it doesn’t have much to do with material goods or high achievement; it seems to whittle down to your outlook on life, and the quality of your relationships with the people around you. If you appreciate your life you are sure to be a happy person!

1.    Be optimistic. In the 1970s, researchers followed people who’d won the lottery and found that a year after they’d hit the jackpot, they were no happier than the people who didn’t. They called it hedonic adaptation, which suggests that we each have a baseline level of happiness. No matter what happens, good or bad, the effect on our happiness is only temporary and we tend to rebound to our baseline level. Some people have a higher baseline happiness level than others, and that can be attributed in part to genetics, but it’s also largely influenced by how you think.[1] So while the remainder of this article will help boost your happiness, only improving your attitude towards life will increase your happiness permanently. Here are some excellent starting points for doing that:

• How to Be Optimistic
• How to Be Laid Back
• How to Live in the Moment

2.    Follow your gut. In one study, two groups of people were asked to pick out a poster to take home. One group was asked to analyze their decision carefully, weighing the pros and cons, and the other group was told to listen to their gut. Two weeks later, the group that followed their gut was happier with their posters than the group that analyzed their decisions.[2] Now, some of our decisions are more crucial than picking out posters, but by the time you’re poring over your choice, the options you’re weighing are probably very similar, and the difference will only temporarily affect your happiness. So next time you have a decision to make, and you’re down to two or three options, just pick the one that feels right, and go with it.

• How to Follow Your Intuition
• How to Stop Hesitating

3.    Make enough money to meet your basic needs: food, shelter, and clothing. In the US, that magic number is $40,000 a year. Any money you make beyond that will have negligible effects on your happiness. Remember the lottery winners mentioned earlier? Oodles of money didn’t make them any happier, and it won’t make you any happier. Once you make enough money to support your basic needs, your happiness is not significantly affected by how much money you make, but by your level of optimism.[3]

• Your comfort may increase with your salary, but comfort isn’t what makes people happy. It makes people bored. That’s why it’s important to push beyond your comfort zone to fuel your growth as a person.
• Don’t assume you’re the exception, as in “Sure they didn’t use their lottery money wisely, but if I won it, I’m spend it differently, and it’d definitely make me happier.” Part of the reason many people are unhappy is because they don’t think research-based advice about happiness applies to them, and they continue chasing more money and achievement and material goods in vain.[4]

4.    Stay close to friends and family. Or move to where other members are- so you can see them more. We live in a mobile society, where people follow jobs around the country and sometimes around the world. We do this because we think increases in salary will make us happier, but the fact is that our relationships with our friends and family have a far greater impact on our happiness than our jobs do. So next time you think about relocating, consider that you’d need a salary increase of over $100,000 USD to compensate for the loss of happiness you’d have from moving away from your friends and family.[5] But if your relationships with your family and friends are unhealthy or nonexistent, and you are bent on moving, choose a location where you’ll be making about the same amount of money as everyone else; according to research, people feel more financially secure (and happier) when they’re on similar financial footing as the people around them, regardless of what that footing is.[6]

5.    Find happiness in the job you have now. Many people expect the right job or the right career to dramatically change their level of happiness, but happiness research makes it clear that your level of optimism and the quality of your relationships eclipse the satisfaction you gain from your job.[7] If you have a positive outlook, you’ll make the best of any job, and if you have good relationships with people, you won’t depend on your job to give your life a greater sense of meaning. You’ll find it in your interactions with the people you care about. Now that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aspire towards a job that’ll make you happier; it means you should understand that the capacity of your job to make you happy is quite small in comparison to your outlook on life and your relationships with people.

6.    Smile. Science suggests that when you smile, whether you feel happy or not, your mood will be elevated.[8] Moreover, studies show that happiness is contagious.[9] With this in mind, consider the implications for happiness that the very act of smiling at another in passing has on not only our psyche, but that of the larger good. More importantly, when we smile at another, it shouldn’t be with the expectation of having a smile in return. Sometimes the people we are smiling at who don’t return the gesture may be the ones who need the smile the most. Just the act of doing something positive — sharing a smile — might be enough to send our neurochemicals in the right direction, regardless of the response.

7.    Don’t take things to heart. Just because one person tells you something doesn’t mean it’s true. Even if it is try to be optimistic about it. Remember - just because one person is against you doesn’t mean the whole world is. Sometimes people don’t know what they are saying.

8.    Practice Acts of Kindness. When we treat others in ways we would wish to be treated, a certain type of synergy develops. The altruistic actions on our part plays dividends in fostering positive relations and forging an upbeat mental attitude. There is an unspoken return to acts of kindness, in which they can manifest in various forms, such as a returned gesture, a happier mental state, and/or improved circumstances for one’s life. It ties into the law of karma, which implies that the merit of actions or deeds come back to the individual who performs them. Given this, acts of kindness are a way to move our lives in a positive and more fulfilling direction.

9.    Exercise, exercise, exercise. For a boost to the immunity system and for an increase in overall wellbeing, exercise provides a healthy means for relieving stress and anxiety. Studies show that people who suffer from depression and other psychiatric conditions benefit greatly from engaging in physical exercise, and those without these conditions stand to benefit just as significantly. Rigorous physical activity can help defuse any stressful thoughts, returning the individual to a healthier equilibrium. Exercise also has the double benefit of making the individual more productive in day to day tasks, and as evidence of this, employees who exercise can generally carry more value in terms of productivity than those who don’t.

10.    Take a vitamin B supplement. For a simple suggestion for increasing one’s level of happiness, a vitamin B supplement can carry a huge health dividend in positively impacting the mood.

11.    Meditate. Meditation is a source of release from the pressures of cumulative, worrisome, and/or troublesome thoughts. Spending even as little as 5 minutes a day engaged in deep breathing exercises can help signiciatnly ease the pressures of the build-up of tension that happens to everyone on a daily basis. Meditation also provides the individual with a useful means to detach from negative thoughts, which prevents distressful thoughts from manifesting in the psyche.

12.    Practice forgiveness. There is a tendency for people who are experiencing distressful circumstances to pass blame onto others. Children, for instance, may commonly blame their parents for the life challenges that they are facing. However, when we practice forgiveness, with it comes a sense of relief from burdensome thoughts in addition to the ability to forge healthier relationships with others. When forgiveness becomes a conscientious practice, anger finds a resolution and true healing can commence. Anger is counterintuitive to happiness, and any incidence of it is best resolved through positive emotions - and forgiveness helps provide this necessary release.

13.    Love yourself. You are here on this planet for a reason. Your very presence is an act of beauty and a gift to humanity. Never undermine the good that you have given and that you stand to give. In saying and thinking positive things about one’s own inner value, tremendous feelings of joy can begin to manifest in even the most depressed mind. Remember that everyone has issues — everyone has something to contend with — and you too have obstacles and challenges. In loving yourself sincerely and humbly you can find a great deal of comfort and joy in knowing that no matter how badly the world may treat you or how badly you may feel about yourself at any given time that you are worthwhile and intrinsically good. Your presence here on Earth signifies your value and worthiness, and your interconnectedness with everything else on this planet signifies your importance in the grand web of life. So love yourself because your love is felt by all of those around you, and your love for yourself is just as important as anyone else’s, especially in times of distress and trouble.

Tips

• Just because something seems to make other people happy doesn’t mean that it really does. People are very good at pretending they’re happy, especially when they’ve invested so much into the things that are supposed to make them happy; it’s hard to admit that you’ve been placing all your eggs in the wrong basket.
• Don’t hold grudges against anyone.
• Don’t ruminate over past mistakes.
• Don’t hold onto material things too dearly; you cannot keep them forever.

Warnings

• Happy people aren’t happy all the time. Everyone has times when they feel sad, frustrated, guilty, angry and so on. Happy people are just better at bouncing back to a state of contentedness. We may all feel negative at some moment in our lives, but try to bounce back and live in the moment, and be content with everything you do.
• Some people may question why you are always happy/complain about you always being happy.
• You might be considered strange or even odd. They might ask you what you have been doing and who it concerns.

Sources and Citations

1. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-lasting-ha&page=1
2. The Social Animal by Elliot Aronson
3. http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2004/08/01/you-only-need-40000-to-be-happy/
4. http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/01/23/test-yourself-to-find-what-you-need-to-be-happier/
5. http://www.powdthavee.co.uk/resources/valuing_social_relationships_15.04.pdf
6. http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/05/21/how-to-decide-where-to-live-2/
7. http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/01/16/the-connection-between-a-good-job-and-happiness-is-overrated/
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_feedback_hypothesis
9. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,462265,00.html

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Be Happy. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

More and more, science is catching up with what many of us have known for years. This discussion between Dr. Wayne Dyer and Dr. Bruce Liption touches on many of these facts, showing how science is proving that the mind is powerful. It was recorded on December 11, 2008 on the Hay House Radio Stage at the I Can Do It! Las Vegas.

by Linda-Ann Stewart

I recently read someone state that you will manifest what you want 100% of the time if you write it down, affirm it out loud and visualize it happening. I’m not sure how true it is that you’ll be 100% successful by doing this, but I do know that you will be much more likely to accomplish what you want if you do.

Businesspeople, stars, athletes, and high achievers all know the secret of visualization. A Russian experiment showed that athletes who spent 75% of their time in mental training, and 25% of their time in physical training performed better than those who spent their time in any other combination of physical and mental training.

1. Writing down what you want helps you to clarify your goal. It increases your motivation and inspires you to begin taking action in that direction.
2. Affirming it, out loud, gives direction to the subconscious mind. It activates it to begin looking for, and creating, opportunities, information, and anything else you need.
3. Visualize it, as if it’s actually happening now, in detail, using all the senses impresses the subconscious. Since the subconscious can’t tell the difference between the imagination and reality, it thinks that what you’re imagining is going on now. That gives it the guidance of what to formulate in your life.
4. Feeling it being real and happening in the present turbocharges the subconscious mind to find the way to bring your goal into reality.

It may not happen immediately. Keep the faith, keep up with your practice every day. Your subconscious and the Universe know how to bring it about.

Many people find it easier to be guided through a visualization. Some use a life coach or an audio. As a life coach, I can help you in this. And each of my Spiritual Self-Hypnosis CD’s has a track that leads you to visualize your goal and then to let go of the concern about when it will manifest.

self improvement, self help, personal growth, personal development, motivation, inspiration

This is a wonderful poem by Mahatma Gandhi and one that I try to keep in mind all the time. It shows the progression of what you think eventually becoming what you experience.

Your Beliefs become your Thoughts
Your Thoughts become your Words
Your Words become your Actions
Your Actions become your Habits
Your Habits become your Values
Your Values become your Destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi

inspiration