HOW TO TURN STRESS INTO SUCCESS

11:05 PM Add Comment



What if you could take stress and turn it into success. Wouldn’t that be a better way to use your energy? Sometimes a simple shift in the way we direct our energy and focus can radically alter the way we experience life.

Often times, we don’t really need more time and energy. We just need to shift the way we are using what we already have. Let’s look at three specific ways that we can create such a shift.

Accept the fact that some things can’t be changed

We can’t change the past, period. Worrying about it will only create stress. One of the best things you can do for yourself is accept that fact. Everything that has happened in your life up to this point is history, it’s completely unchangeable. One of the biggest ways to waste your time and energy is to fret over the past; it’s gone so let it go.

Looking back at missed opportunities won’t recreate them. Feeling guilty over past mistakes doesn’t serve you. Harboring any kind of negative energy toward yourself or others over things that have already happened will only leave you feeling drained and frustrated. It is a complete waste of vital force to hang on to any negative emotional anchors from the past.

Action step: Make a list of any past events, situations, relationships, or mistakes that you feel bad about. Write them all down along with the negative feelings attached to them. When you are done, read each item and then ask yourself: “What do I need to do to get closure here?” If you need to apologize to someone, go do it. Most of the time all you need for closure is to let it go.
Once you’ve answered that question for each item, tear the list up and throw it, and those negative feelings, away. It’s trash and that’s where you should put it. The next time you are tempted to revisit those feelings or events, tell yourself “no emotional dumpster diving.”

Accept the fact that some things can always be changed

One thing that you can always change is your perception of, and reaction to, everything that happens in your life. It’s your life, you own it and that means that you have the power and the freedom to decide the meaning and value of every experience.

Many people are so locked into reaction mode that they fail to recognize their own ability to control their response. This mindset is a huge source of stress. Nobody makes us mad or happy, we choose those feelings. When we decide to exercise the ability to choose our emotional response, we tap into a huge source of personal power. We are not victims of our circumstances unless we choose to be.

Action Step: The next time you feel like “reacting” instead of responding, ask yourself: “What else could this mean?” Then come up with three alternate meanings and choose the one that feels the most empowering. Now respond to that. Doing this will transform a stressful reaction into a successful response.

Don’t let other people’s problems become your problems

Some people are just a disaster looking for a place to happen. One way to avoid getting stressed out along with them is to simply get out of their way. If someone is in a bad mood, do your best to stay away from them. If the driver behind you is tailgating, pull over and let them pass. It’s their problem, but taking it personally will make it your problem too.

If you go out to eat and there are loud, obnoxious people next to you, change tables. If someone tries to vent their anger at you, excuse yourself without taking personal offense. By staying alert to potentially dangerous situations you will be able to avoid them most of the time.  You can’t control the way other people behave, but you can control whether or not you allow their problems to become your problems.

Action step: Review the most common scenarios where you have allowed other people to stress you out. Now devise an alternate strategy that you can use the next time that situation arises. Make sure it is a strategy that allows you to remain emotionally neutral. Rehearse that strategy in your mind so you can easily implement it next time.

Choose success over stress

As you can see, we all have opportunities to redirect our personal resources toward success and away from stress. Isn’t it great that we each have the power to choose where our energy will go and how it will be used?

HOW TO BE KNOWLEDGEABLE

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§  Learn on a daily basis. Every fact or skill you learn adds to your knowledge. You can learn tips on how to cook from someone making dinner, or you can master a computer game that you play in your spare time. Make a point to learn something new as often as possible and then apply what you learned as soon as possible.

§  Pick an area of study. Most knowledgeable people work to gain knowledge in a specific area like english, history or computers. Find something that interests you and then research the topic. If possible, take classes or attend seminars. Another way you gain knowledge is by finding a mentor who can teach you.

§  Share your knowledge. You can be the smartest person in the world, but if no one knows you have knowledge, it won't matter. You have to show your knowledge by teaching others, writing papers, hosting seminars or participating in events like Knowledge Bowls.

§  Look for different experiences. This may mean you have to get outside your comfort zone. Each experience can teach you something and provide you with information that connects to things you've already learned. A new experience can help you look at an old experience in a new way and lead to a new discovery.

§  Ask questions. Make sure that you fully understand what you are learning. When you ask questions, listen to the answer. Allow yourself time to assimilate the new information. Continue to ask questions until you fully grasp the concept.

§  Use different sources. You can become knowledgeable by learning from people, reading books or surfing the web. Experimenting can lead to new insight as can observation.

DISCIPLINING YOUR MIND TO BECOME AT MANIFESTING

11:03 PM Add Comment



A key to the intention-manifestation model is that you must keep your thoughts focused on what you want and avoid thinking about what you don’t want.  Even if you’re skeptical about the power of intention, it shouldn’t be hard to see that a disciplined mind brings benefits.  Improved mental discipline is sure to be a useful skill regardless of your current model of reality.  It’s hard enough to achieve goals via direct action if your mind is cluttered with negative or distracting thoughts.  But with intention-manifestation, it’s nearly impossible.

I’ve found that in order to improve my results with this model, I’ve had to put significant effort into disciplining my mind.  I consider this time well spent, regardless of the outcome.
Yesterday I saw the movie Peaceful Warrior, which is based on The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman (one of my favorite books).  In the movie there’s a scene where Dan is able to hear his friends’ mental chatter.  Even as they’re preparing to practice their gymnastics routines, their minds are filled with distracting fears and worries.  When Dan is able to clear his mind of all distractions, he performs at his best, and in the end he attracts what he wants.

Even as you read this article now, what other thoughts are passing through your mind?  Is 100% of your attention focused on reading this, or is your consciousness split?  Is any part of your mind churning over work-related issues, emotional stress, physical discomfort or hunger, noise from the next room, or past or future events?  It’s often the case that less than 50% of our attention is directed to the task at hand.  That isn’t focus — that’s blur.

When our mind is cluttered and we attempt to introduce new intentions, it’s like throwing pebbles into a stormy sea.  The ripples will still occur, but they’ll just be absorbed.  The calmer we can make our background thoughts, the cleaner will be our intentions’ ripples, and the more readily they’ll manifest.

I think anyone who’s attempted intention-manifestation in earnest can attest to the difficulty of staying focused.  How can you hold a thought of financial abundance without succumbing to worries about paying the bills?  How can you focus on attracting a new relationship when you still harbor thoughts of being alone?  How can you manifest health when you keep thinking about your ailments?  In my opinion you can’t… at least not right away.

I think a good solution to these problems is to build your mental discipline, your ability to stay focused on whatever it is you consciously decide to think about.  We spend a lot of time thinking, but how much effort do we put into consciously managing our thoughts?  How skilled are you at choosing your thoughts?

If you decide to think about a lemon, surely you can do so.  The mere suggestion may bring that thought into your mind.  But what if I asked you to allow no thoughts of fruit other than lemons to enter your mind for the next 30 days?  Could you do it?
Now what if after issuing this challenge, I come to you and say, “Don’t think about an orange… or an apple… or a bunch of grapes.  Don’t even imagine them.  Don’t even read about them.”  You’ve already failed, haven’t you?

But what if you took this challenge seriously?  What if you didn’t need to be absolutely perfect, but you wanted to ensure that during the next 30 days, of all the time you spent thinking about fruit, at least 90% of it was focused on lemons?  Could you do it?  How?
Of course instead of lemons, you can substitute whatever it is you wish to manifest.  Suppose you want to manifest financial abundance.  Of all the financial and money-related thoughts that go through your mind over the next 30 days, what can you do to ensure that at least 90% of them are in harmony with financial abundance?

I’ve been considering this question, and I’ve come up with a number of practices that have been very helpful in keeping my thoughts focused on what I want and away from what I don’t want:
  • Giving up TV.  If you want to stay focused on what you do want, it would be wise to start blocking sources that flood your mind with thoughts of what you don’t want.  TV is filled with negative images, especially TV news programs, so it’s a prime killer of positive intentions.  I’ve noticed that after doing without it for about four weeks now, my thinking has become noticeably more focused.  I’m technically still doing my 30-day trial, but I see no reason to re-addict myself when the trial ends.
  • Consciously focusing attention on the task at hand.  Throughout the day I try to perform a few tasks with 100% of my attention on what I’m doing.  When lifting weights at the gym, I focus on the current muscle group I’m training.  When eating a meal, I focus on the taste and texture of the food.  When driving I focus all my attention on controlling the car.  This means staying in the present moment, not thinking about the end of the workout, the work I’ll be doing after the meal, or my driving destination.  This not only improves my concentration, but the secondary benefit is that it keeps my mind off of would-be negative thoughts that might creep in while I’m not paying attention.  If I’m thinking about the weight I’m lifting, I know I’m not accidentally thinking about financial lack.
  • Index of distraction tests.  Occasionally I test myself to see how long I can hold a single thought in my head without experiencing a distracting thought.  This is a great exercise for raising your awareness of just how easily your mind can drift.  The first time I did this, I lasted only seconds.  It took a lot of practice just to reach three minutes.  Try this for yourself to see how long you can last, and train yourself up to improve your concentration endurance.  Just start a timer and imagine something simple like a lemon.  Hold the original thought of the lemon as long as possible.  If any non-lemon thought breaks into your awareness for even a split second, stop the timer.  The elapsed time is your score.
  • Focused environment.  Creating a relaxing workspace reduces stress, which makes it easier to concentrate on what is desired instead of worrying about what isn’t.  A clutter-free environment is particularly important, since the sight of clutter can trigger distracting thoughts.  Even photographs should be used sparingly if they tend to distract you when you look at them.
  • Improving finances first.  I find it much easier to concentrate on what I want when my finances are in good order.  Unpaid bills, debt, and financial lack can be an enormous distraction, making it incredibly difficult to focus on what you want.  Erin and I currently enjoy a situation where our monthly income is more than double our expenses, so our basic needs are easily met.  Our financial situation was the first area where we began consciously using intention-manifestation, and we’ve been delighted with the results.  As we see it, the main benefit isn’t material wealth because neither of us are particularly materialistic.  The primary benefit is that we eliminate financial lack as a distraction, which makes it easier to focus even more attention on our other intentions, especially those that are much more important to us than money.
  • Setting aside time for conscious intending.  Simply increasing the amount of time spent thinking about your intentions is beneficial.  I currently spend about 20-30 minutes a day thinking about what I want.  I pick a few intentions and let my imagination chew on them for a while.  If the intention-manifestation model is accurate, I believe I should see an improvement in the success of my manifestations.  And in fact, there are already indications that this is working.  Perhaps the most noticeable is that the pace of change Erin and I experience in our lives has increased dramatically.  Life is moving much faster now than it was last year, almost like our goals are racing toward us.  If we simply compare our lives today with how they were a couple months ago, the difference is monstrous.
  • Recreation.  Even simple recreation is helpful because it helps you focus on something positive, which at least helps prevent you from succumbing to fear and worry.  I’ve been playing disc golf with a friend lately (early in the morning before it gets too hot), and even though I’m not thinking about what I want, I’m definitely not putting any mental energy into fueling my problems.  My mind is on the game and the conversation.
  • Sex.  Consider this a subset of recreation.  It’s hard to think of something better at eliminating negative thoughts than sex (unless you really have it bad and start worrying about how you look naked or how you’ll perform).  And after sex when your mind is calm and relaxed is a great time to put out some new intentions, or even discuss some of your desires out loud with your partner and intend them together.  You heard it here first! 
I’m sure if you give it some thought, you can come up with your own processes that help you to 1) spend more time thinking about what you desire, and 2) spend less time thinking about what you don’t want.  In fact, the whole second half of the book Ask and It Is Given covers 22 different processes you can use, many of which are very simple, such as cutting out pictures of your intentions and putting them in a box.

I still consider myself a baby at intention-manifestation, but I’m immensely pleased with the results I’ve been getting so far, more than enough to justify the time I’ve put into it.  I’ve been seeing across-the-board improvements in my life since I started experimenting with this.  Compared to just six months, my income and net worth have gone up significantly, I have a new car, my web site traffic has doubled, I’m more physically fit (faster and stronger), 

my relationship with my sweetie is better than ever, I’m happier, my motivation is sky-high, my social life has improved, my purpose is even more clear, my intuition is more accurate, and I’m having more fun and finally enjoying some vacation trips.  Some stagnant areas have finally come unstuck and are moving forward again.  Without a doubt the past six months have been the most positive and growth-producing of my adult life, and I know my sweetie will say the same is true for her.  So it’s rather easy for me to justify continuing to put more energy into these experiments.  Even though intention-manifestation can require a massive belief restructuring to successfully utilize, I think it’s well worth the effort.  I can’t say I fully understand the mechanism by which it works, but that doesn’t prevent me from continuing to test it.

DIFFICULT LESSONS: HOW TO LEARN WHAT YOU NEED TO AND MOVE ON

10:47 PM Add Comment


“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chodron
I’ve been self-employed for many years now. This is no accident. I’ve always liked to do things my own way. I like to arrange my diary in exactly the way I want to, and make my own mind up about how I do things. I like to work without having to justify anything to a manager.
I’m not always comfortable in working relationships where the other person is “higher up” than me—when they’re in authority. You could say that I’m a teensy bit of a control-freak.

I used to work for a big corporation, and my relationships with my managers weren’t always easy. I was very critical of the way they did things, and if they criticized me I sometimes got very defensive. I learned a great deal from a couple of good managers, but I also spent a lot of time resenting being “told what to do.”

  to become a Buddhist minister. This involves having a “supervisor” who is responsible for my spiritual training, and who will ultimately be responsible for deciding whether or not I “make the grade” and ordain.

Last month, my supervisor asked me a question in an email and I felt immediately attacked and defensive. I felt annoyed. I complained to my friend. I sent her a long and rambling reply, outlining all the reasons why she shouldn’t be asking the question. We exchanged a few emails, and the situation got more and more confused.

I thought I’d managed to avoid conflict with people senior to me when I became self-employed. I didn’t have a manager anymore, so what was the problem?

The problem is that, as Pema Chodron says, nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

This difficult situation arose with my supervisor because I had avoided dealing with my control issues by becoming self-employed. It was only a matter of time before these issues might have appeared in a different place in my life—with a colleague, perhaps, or in a disguised form in a relationship with a friend.

After trying to sort things out by email, eventually my supervisor phoned me and we had a conversation about what had happened. I was still feeling very defensive, and quite angry. We spoke for a while. She was patient and encouraged me to be open.

Eventually, I admitted that I sometimes found it difficult to be in relationships with people who hold authority over me. This was a turning point. Once this was “out in the open,” it was more possible to look objectively at what had happened between us.

By the end of the phone call I felt a huge sense of relief. I had challenged my supervisor, and she had survived. She could see my point of view, and I could see her point of view. She did have a good point with her question!

I haven’t suddenly become the ideal employee, but I do feel that I’ve begun to make progress in how I deal with authority. I can now feel grateful for this incident, however uncomfortable it was at the time.

If you feel trapped by a difficult situation that keeps re-appearing, no matter what you do, the following suggestions might help:

Be kind to yourself.

We can often end up in similar situations with different people, after promising ourselves that we won’t. This is because we are human! It can be easy to beat ourselves up, but it isn’t helpful, and it only adds misery to an already-miserable situation.

Be honest.

Once you’ve been kind to yourself, it’s helpful to be as honest with yourself as you can. It’s natural to want to blame the other person when we’re in conflict. Begin to take some responsibility for your part in what has happened. If you can do this, then change is possible.

Be curious.

Do you recognize this pattern from your history? From elsewhere in your life? What happens? How does it start? What hooks you in? It might help to discuss this with a good friend, or to write some notes.

Be aware.

Try and catch yourself when you find yourself in a similar situation. When something starts hooking you in, notice, “Ah, here I am again!”

Be experimental.

This is where you can try behaving differently from the way you usually behave.
This might be holding your tongue, or it might be being more honest with the person you’re speaking with. It might be feeling things you’ve been avoiding, like sadness or anger. It might be taking some time away from the situation to consider what you’d like to do, rather than diving in feet first. Keep being curious, keep talking to your friends, and keep experimenting.

Be grateful.

If you can find a way to learn something from what is happening, then you will change for the better. You are also likely to feel the same relief I did when I “came clean” with my supervisor. Pause and feel grateful for what happened, and for the lesson you learned.

None of us like learning lessons about ourselves. None of us like to be wrong, or to acknowledge a part of ourselves that is flawed or frightened. This is why our lessons have to keep coming back over and over again.

Rumi says, “Until you’ve found pain, you won’t reach the cure.” When I look back over my life, I realize the most important lessons I’ve learned have often been a result of some kind of pain—whether the pain manifested as disappointment, or anger, or fear. I would never think so at the time, but I can feel grateful for that pain now.

Without this pain, I wouldn’t be the person I am now—a teensy bit less of a control freak! More humble. Hopefully, more loving. And definitely more grateful for life and all that it gives me.