Friday, July 31, 2009

Changing state

I don't give any credence to biorhythms but I must admit there are days where I am more charged and enthused than others. This would definitely be a 'down' day.

I am still maintaining my own 10 day challenge, so I'm being diligent to now allow my thoughts to wonder into negativity. Which is great, especially on a day like today. However, I still have a general feeling of malaise that I'm all too eager to get rid off.

Blogging is one way I am using to put myself back into positively charged territory. And I'm thankful for it because it's a blog on success and motivation so it's forcing me to be thinking on those lines.

I have gotten to a point where a positive enthusiastic state is my natural state and where the one I'm currently in feels unnatural to me. That alone is a great relief for once upon a time the very opposite was true.

Now, how do I get out of this state?

First, it's helpful to know why you're in it in the first place. As I've mentioned many times, our emotions act as an alarm system of sorts, letting us know when our thoughts are out of alignment with our desires. For myself I believe a large part of my current state is due to uncertainty in a lot of areas of my life. I'm procrastinating on several things, including some major life changing decisions. Procrastination itself is due to a lack of a clear set of values and goals. If you have clearly defined values, prioritized so you know what's most important (a lot of competing values will cause endless procrastination) with clearly defined goals that you're passionate about then procrastination simply cannot exist. You immediately know what is important to you and move in that direction. So obviously, I need to sit myself down, revisit my values, revisit my goals and then apply those onto the various issues currently confronting me.

God, I do love this blog. How often do we know what to do but don't apply it? Writing in this blog forces me to self-medicate. To do what I know, otherwise I'm just being hypocritical and that is simply not acceptable.

In the short term I need to take a page from Tony Robbins. In Awaken The Giant Within, Robbins teaches that the mind and body are linked. If you are in a negative state of mind, you tend to slouch, move slower, frown, look down and lack energy. If you're in a positive state you have more bounce in your step, move quicker, smile, look people direct in the eyes, stand up straight, etc. You can look at most people and from their posture alone know the state they are in so it's obvious that the mind affects the body.

However the opposite is equally true. If you force your body to move in ways that are associated with a particular state, your mind will be pushed into the corresponding frame of being. Don't believe me? Try it. Sit down, slouch, frown, droop your arms and legs and then try to enthusiastically scream 'Happy Birthday'. It's possible but you'll immediately know it wasn't done with the same intensity it would have been if you were standing and moving normally. It would just feel off.

So if you find yourself feeling down, get your body moving!! Lots of energy, smile, big movements, and do something silly like skip around or do pinwheels with your arms while singing 'I'm the very model of a modern major general'. You won't possibly be able to remain in a negative state.

In fact, I'm smiling just thinking about it.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

What Are You Thinking About?

It's pretty basic really.

Whatever you are focused on is what is getting the bulk of your energy and attention. And regardless on if you want to look at that in the metaphysical 'Law of Attraction' way of calling that into existence or just the purely phyiscal reality that while you are fixated on one thing you cannot be constructively doing anything else it all boils down to the same thing.

You are what you think about.

But what are you thinking about?

People, by and large, are not in the habit of monitoring their thoughts. They just let them flow wherever they want and after a time, like water running over loose soil, your thoughts start to flow into well worn tracks. You have a habituated pattern of thought whether you realize it or not.

Are those thought patterns serving you? Do they inspire you? Or merely frustrate?

For the vast majority of people, their thoughts are focused on the things they do not want. They see the world as it is, complain about it to themselves, tossing and turning it over in their minds, contemplating it's unfairness, before sharing their discontent with other likeminded people.

This is pointless and worse, distructive. It goes without saying that if the situation makes you unhappy then you should be seeking to change it but if all you are doing is looking at what you don't like, then no energy is being spend on creating or moving yourself towards what you do like. You're merely wasting your energy, time and life.

Take the 10 day challenge!

Over the next 10 days I want you to be conscious of what it is you're thinking about. If you find you're thinking in negative terms, immediately change it into the positive. So instead of complaining about how it's wrong, try to see how it could benefit you, or on what you could change to improve your situation. If nothing else, force your mind onto another, positive subject altogether.

Do not let your mind dwell in the negative for more than 1 minute. If you realize you've been dwelling negatively for more than that, restart your 10 day challenge.

Daunting isn't it? But why should it be? Really?

It takes no more energy or effort to think positive, enlifting, productive thoughts than it does negative, disempowering ones.

The purpose of this exercise isn't to make you into a polly-anna person who only sees the cup as half-full. It's to make you aware of your own habituated pattern of thoughts and how limiting they are.

Most everyone who takes this challenge seriously will be stunned by how much they dwell on what they don't want and equally surprised by how much they improve their lives, in many dozens of little ways, by focusing on solutions or what they can be grateful for instead.


I myself am taking this challenge and will report in this blog daily as to my results.

July 30 - Stopped complaining about not being able to reach my girlfriend on the phone during the day and instead reinstated text messenging (I had blocked it because certain people waaay over do it costing me stupid amounts of money - I'm just not telling them it's unblocked) so I could message her and let her know I care.

Stopped complaining work was boring and created this post.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Focus

Focus is an absolutely key element to success. It's also one area where I struggle the most. It's an area where I have always struggled, at least at home. Ever since I was a child I always struggled to focus my attention in the home, particularly on homework, however, take that same assignment and give it to me in class and I would have no problem completing it.

Throughout the years I have always found it easier to focus on tasks when around other people. My book was predominately written on the GO train and Tim Hortons, even though I have a desk and had a PC (now laptop) in my home, I rarely used it for such productive work.

As I write this, I'm reflecting back to what Bob Proctor said about paradigms.

Any set of beliefs that form a habitual way of being is a paradigm. The problem most everyone has is that their core paradigms were established when they were children, and are based on beliefs and values that other people instilled in you. Commonly your parents but also friends, siblings, teachers and an assortment of other people in your life all helped shape your beliefs. The problem is that this is done at an age when you are not able to determine if they are values and beliefs you want to have, or that are helpful to you. You merely accept them carte blanche and have probably never stopped to even think about why you have them.

Now for myself, looking back at my childhood I see that my father never worked when he came home. My mother did all the housework and we lived in an apartment so there was no maintenance required either. So all my father would do when he arrived home was watch tv, eat, regal us with stories of his greatness at work, watch tv and go to bed. Obviously my brothers didn't work either. So have I subconscious just absorbed a belief that says you do not work in the house? That work is only done outside of the house? And it's developed into a paradigm that subconsciously controls my actions?

Best way to break limiting beliefs is to associate great pain with the old belief and associate great pleasure with a new empowering one by using NLP - Neuro Linguistic Programing which is a fancy term for empathic visualizations.

More on this later - when I can focus - lol.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Alone

It's ironic.

The epiphany I've had has so dramatically changed my life and in some pretty ironic ways.

I've gone from being totally emotionally independent to feeling lost without someone to relate too. I've never been in this spot before in my adult life and simply don't know what to do with myself.

Before my lovers would often want to talk about top plate issues all night long and I would grumpily want my sleep by midnight. Now I find myself unable to sleep without having had that emotional closure of nightly discussion.

Previously I used to be able to aptly distract or busy myself when alone but now I'm simply dying to talk to someone, my girlfriend preferably but she's busy, a friend perhaps or even just a complete stranger would be an emotional relief to me at the moment. This is a strange, uncomfortable feeling for me and I can't help but wonder if I haven't swung too far into emotional dependency. Or perhaps this is a normal state to have, it's just new and uncomfortable to me.

In the past video games have been great past time but now I not that interested in them unless I have someone to play them with. Arrrgh. I feel like my whole life has been upended.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Troubling Times

Ever wonder if people who preach success and motivation ever struggle through real problems and letdowns or do they just live blessful lives? Well both.

Of course, life throws hardships and disappointments at all of us, no exceptions. But successful people cultivate a mental agility that allows them to release life's disappointment and embrace what's next.

That's where I find myself now.

Having the woman I love turn down my offer of reconciliation is a very bitter pill to shallow for anyone. If I allow myself it would be so easy to just live in the pain of what I've lost. How I'll never find another woman of her quality and how empty my life will be without her. At times I find myself slipping into that mentality even now.

Last time I found myself in this situation I allow six long years to pass me by while I bemoaned how the one true love of my life had left me. Expecting at any moment that our soulmate connection would bring us back together like outstretched ends of a rubberband snapping back into form. Romantic foolhardiness through and through.

It's a place I have no intention of going back to now, although sheer learned habit wants to pull me back into that patterned way of thinking.

Obviously thinking in this manner will produce nothing but misery and this should tip you off that something is wrong - not with the situation but with how you're defining the situation in your own mind.

Emotions are our guiger counter letting us know how aligned we are with our desires. If we are in a negative state of mind, that tells us that our thoughts are opposing our desires. That is to say the vibrational frequencies are at a disconnect between conscious thought and subconscious desire or to put it simply, you don't think what you want is ever going to happen. Conversely, if we are in a positive state we know our thoughts are in line with our goals and they will be in the process of forming.

If we hope to have any sort of success we need to remain in a positive state of mind.

But how can you possibly feel good when the woman of your life has brutally ripped your heart out and stepped all over it? - Not that this is the case with me at the moment, mine has gently taken out and set aside but still... it's disheartening -

By keeping your END goals in mind. It's not THIS woman (or guy) that you want (they are causing you pain after all), it's the way that they make you feel. If you could find someone else, someone even more beautiful (handsome), more giving, more in tune with you, to enter into your life and make you feel the same way, or better than you would be in a state of bliss as opposed to misery. Naturally you would mourn the loss of that particular person you had grown attached too but before long you would be ready and willing to embrace the new.

Fortunately for me at this particular time, Law of Attraction has already brought another wonderful woman into my life (see earlier posts, yes we're still together, yes I know!) for me to focus my attention on. For this I am eternally grateful. However, even if there's no one to replace the love lost take solance in the fact that you are now available to meet someone better. Be grateful for the love you had experienced and rest assured it won't be your last. Another will come and the sooner you embrace that reality, even if it feels like a lie, the sooner it will, in fact, become reality.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Ephifany

It's been a while since I posted and I've been quite busy in that time.

Got back together with that still unspecified girl from earlier posts only to break it off again.

However in discussing the reasons why with her afterwards she spoke a few words that have forever changed me life.

"You're hard to manage. You have a heartness in your heart. Me, I'm tender. I hurt easily but you can become stubborn and cold..."

I immediately realized she was right. That a defense mechanism that I had set up years ago had betrayed me. What I had thought was a strength because it kept me from harm, was now revealed as a weakness because it kept me from true emotional intimacy.

While I was all loving, open and giving on a surface level, beneath that I was cold and hard - and I didn't care about other people, only my own self at that level.

I immediated reject that hardness. It was in complete opposition to everything I identified myself as being. With that expurged from my being, it was as if a light went on and all suddenly became clear.

I had been in a nearly 1 year relationship with a wonderful woman which had fallen apart. I had blamed her and her fears and they did contribute but now I saw the fault was primarily mine. I failed to be there, on an emotional level, so many times. I was so fixated on being totally emotional self-sufficient, I just thought she, and everyone else, was too. I loved her but I didn't safegaurd her heart. Not ever.

It sickens me looking bad over the years. It's overwhelming really. How could someone so sweet and nice also be so compassionless? I hurt so many people and it was the ones I loved most that I hurt most. Never intentionally, but I drew them to me, to love me, trust me, depend on me but I never thought to look after their emotional well being. And when something hurt me, I grew cold and compassionless while still loving on the surface but never giving my heart to them or taking theirs underneath.

No wonder I'm still single, I've never been available. Until now.

Since then I've been busy making amends and trying, and failing to rekindle my love affair with my ex-girlfriend, even going so far as to do what I should have done when I had the chance - propose.

She, wisely, said not now. Not no, never but no, not at this time. Which is fair enough considering. I don't regret it. I didn't expect a yes. Would have been welcomed though. But I did want to give her the honour, validation and memory that I had denied her before.

So now what? Armed with a whole new perspective on relationships I'm now ready to give myself to a woman like never before (or at least like I never have since I first got married 21 years ago in my naive bliss of youth). But do I want to? I do, yes, but I also want to pursue a career with renewed vigor and much more focused determination and dating and relationship building can be extreme distractions that could consume most of my limited available time and energy.

Shame I didn't propose six months ago. My life would be completely different now. Or would've been had I seen then what is so painfully apparent to me now.
But there's no point in living in regret.

The future beckons and looks brighter than it ever has before.

Friday, July 10, 2009

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated"

If my budding relationship could speak that's what it would be saying.
There are still complications and a lot of uncertainy but things are progressing.

This leads to an interesting dilemma. I really like this girl and am growing very fond of her but why continue this if it's only going to lead to complications? It would be easier to just have a relationship with someone who I like less but who's life is simple and straightforward to deal with. But where's the passion in that?

We are only born once, only have one chance in life so there's two ways to go through it: Safe but dull or risky and thrilling. Which is better?

Bob Proctor recently quoted out of a book a study that had been done where 50 seniors in their 90's were asked what they would do differently if they could do it all over again.

Top answers were: Reflect more and risk more.

Based on that it seems they had wished they had maintained a broader picture and not been afraid to take risks.

In my mind, ultimately, I would rather take risks and possible fail than failed to have even tried. In the end at least I know I lived as best as I was able even if I didn't reach the heights I wanted.

However, there's a difference between taking considered risks that have a large potential for payback and taking foolish risks.

Which is where I find myself now in this relationship - determining the risk and potential payback involved.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Brief love affair

Havn't written in a while, largely because I was waiting to see how certain things pan out. One of those is the ultimate fate of my house (looks like I'm selling) and the other was a budding relationship with a beautiful woman.

As the title suggests it appears that relationship has resolved itself, perhaps for the best. Without getting into too many personal details I was very delighted to see the Law of Attraction, fate, God, luck, whatever you wish to define it as, bring such a top tier woman into my life. Beautiful face, tight, slim and sexy body, young and a wonderful personality to match. Alas, she came with significant complications in her life and ultimately she decided not to get involved with me because she would fall in love with me adding more complications.

It astounds me how often I have this problem of women NOT wanting to be with me because they'll fall in love.

She was a delightful girl and I am feeling rather bummed out at the moment over it not working out. However, I recently listened to a Q&A session with Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame and one of the most enlightening things I learn was when applying the law of attraction you must have high intent but low attactment.

That is to say, you must focus on what you want and how it'll make you feel but not attach that to a specific job position, person, specific dollar amount, destination, etc. Especially when dealing with other people, you can not create in their reality so no amount of Attraction is going to bring them to you if they are not on the same vibrational tone - IE: They are focusing on something completely different than what you're offering.

So I'm not sweating this loss. Instead I am thrilled to see the quality of women I am attracting to be very high. While it may be disappointing this particular one didn't last, that doesn't ultimately matter as long as I can continue to attract such high quality girls. Eventually, one of them must be a match for me and those that aren't are still damn fine company indeed!