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August 25, 2010

Personal Development – Do Self Affirmations Actually Work?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — User2 @ 3:52 am

Do positive self affirmations really work? The short answer is ‘No’ – unless you’ve got a few years to spare and a heavy-duty supply of perseverance. The problem is that self-affirmation is directed at the conscious mind and, sadly, your conscious mind has absolutely nothing to do with how you behave, how you react to people and situations, how you see life in general or, most importantly, the way in which you view yourself. However, as we’ve said, if you throw enough muck at your conscious mind, sooner or later – in fact, definitely later – some of that muck will eventually stick and make some kind of reasonable impression on your subconscious mind. However, you’d have to stick at it religiously and, even then, you’d be facing an uphill war of attrition because your subconscious mind will simply not believe what it’s being told if its view of reality is contrary. How come? Your subconscious mind controls your beliefs, behaviours and reactions and actually creates your very own version of reality. Self-affirmation is like trying to throw snowballs at hell’s fiery furnace!!

However, if you really do want to change your life, some part of your life, or change yourself, your own self esteem or some distasteful behaviour or bad habit, it’s your subconscious mind that you must impress. It holds all the keys, has its hands on all the levers and its feet on all the pedals that either get your life moving forward or, more often than not, grind to an absolute and juddering halt.

In order to impress your subconscious mind, you will have to become just like a little child again – not childish but childlike. When you were young you paid full attention to the reality of the here and now, using each of your five senses – that is how you learned your current set of beliefs about the world and who you think you are. As an adult, you now pay little or no attention to reality today – your subconscious mind kinda makes your reality up for you as it goes along! – with all the normal consequences. You’ve got to get real, to relearn how to pay more attention to what is before your very eyes, instead of paying attention to your subconscious baggage that’s weighing you down.

The normal subconscious mind is wallowing in the past. And the key to your future is to be found in the present. You must understand that the present moment is the only place and time where life is truly lived. In other words, you have to re-learn how to pay attention to what’s really going on, not what your subconscious mind, looking through its dirty lens of past events, thinks is going on. This re-learning process means training yourself how to pay attention to what you see, feel, hear, smell and taste. This training must be undertaken in a quiet place so that, when the wheels starting coming off in the so-called real world, you’re fighting fit and ready to perform in a way that will lead you onwards and upwards towards the life that you really want.

August 24, 2010

Personal Growth And The Oneness Of Spirit, Mind And Body

Filed under: Beginning Recovery — Tags: , , , , — User2 @ 7:18 am

I often find it difficult to explore some of the central ideas in what might be termed personal development or self improvement given that everyday language and words prove inadequate. For example, do the words ‘universal energy’ adequately capture the fact that you and I are energy, living in a world and universe comprised solely of vibrating energy and that energy is responsive? Does the sobriquet ‘Law of Attraction’ mean different things to different people? And where are the boundaries between mind, body and spirit?

In fact, of course, there are no boundaries between mind, body and spirit in the same way that there are no limits between us individually and the universe of which we each comprise an indispensable and intergal part. We are not just part of a whole, when it comes to us as individuals, there is just one – mind, body and spirit are simply artificially imagined aspects of the one. This is important because, when you consider the facts in this manner, it is obvious that our thoughts have an immediate impact on how we feel physically and mentally. For example, when one dissects the problem of stress and its very real physical results, we realize that our thoughts directly cause shifts in body temperature and heart rate, changes in the creation and release of a whole range of chemicals all of which, if unchecked, lead to serious illnesses – such as heart attack and stroke – and, if seriously out of control, will lead to untimely death.

My point us this. Our state of mind has a direct impact on the mental state of others around us – this has been proven many times by research in the field of psychology. How much more does our state of mind affect us, ourselves? Your health, fitness and wellbeing are all direct consequences of your mental state. Even your weight – your inclination to put on too much of it or a variety of eating disorders from bulimia to anorexia – is a direct consequence of what is going on in your head.

And what is going on in your head is directly within your own control – or can be if you make the effort to make the simplest and, ultimately, most liberating decision that we can all make as responsible adults – choosing your own thoughts. The normal mind is tortured by ineffective thoughts, most of which emerge from the subconscious. Research concludes that the normal subconscious focuses on the events of our childhood years and is more likely to focus on the more negative events. That is our default state of mind. That is not to say that we can’t choose what we’ll pay attention to, however.

You’re your own boss. Your life, in all its aspects, is created by what you’re paying attention to – whether you know it or not. The ultimate and powerful choice that I’ve just mentioned can be taken, day to day, each moment, by deciding to pay attention to the actual sensory experience of the here and now. This is the only cast-iron way of stopping your own subconscious wallowing in self-sabotaging thoughts. No other way is as effective, no other way gives you the power to completely transform your fitness, your health, your wellness, your personal effectiveness and, ultimately, your ability to live a life of peace, happiness and unbelievable success.

August 20, 2010

Practical Self-Help Ideas: Taking A Breather

Filed under: Beginning Recovery — Tags: , , , , — User2 @ 8:51 pm

Once our day swings into action it’s very easy to get swept away by the routine, the urgent (as distinct from the important), the latest minor crisis or, most common of all, unproductive thought. And even though you may have started your day properly, it is simply so easy to become submerged and go back to our default state of unfocused mindlessness.

So, for a start, what does starting your day properly mean? Well, we make certain that we don’t leave the house physically unprepared for the day ahead. We shower and dress ourselves – shaving or applying the odd dab of make-up as required! Conversely, most of us unwittingly set out every morning mentally unprepared for what is lying in waiting. Starting the day properly means making sure that, before you leave the house, you’ve taken the appropriate action to clear the mind and focus your energy. I suggest five to ten minutes mental preparation for the day ahead. Find somewhere where you won’t be disturbed, sit and focus on what your senses are telling you – one sense at a time. This will enable you focus on what is really happening as distinct from the subconscious programs that otherwise run your life – the latter being your default state of mind.

OK, let’s say that you’ve got your day off to the perfect start, you’re tuned in, focused, alert and ready for action. Insignificant things like a delayed train, like heavy traffic, like someone asking you for something unexpectedly – so many little things can rough us up. To say nothing of the big things! It can be so easy to slip and slide mindlessly into mental oblivion as the day unfolds. What we need to do is make sure that, during our day, we pause to catch our breath – literally.

Ancient wisdom emhpasizes the opportunity that our breathing offers us to clear the mind of useless noise and distraction and, in doing so, focus our energy. So, here’s a simple, quick and entirely practical tip – because, after all, you’ve got to breathe anyway! Take a few moments – moments is all that it takes – at various points during the day to turn your attention to the reality of your existence as you breathe in and out. Pay attention to what it feels like to breathe, how your body behaves with each breath that you take, how the air passes through your left, right or both nostrils. Give thanks for the reality that you are alive and breathing. Focus on nothing else for these few moments. If the hassles or useless thoughts of the moment start crowding your mind, take three deeper breaths to focus your mind. With each breath, realize that whatever might be doing your head in right now will be completely forgotten in months, weeks, days or even hours. Understand that, with an focused, alert and ready mind, anything is possible.

Self Improvement On Those Days When You Simply Feel Flat

Filed under: Beginning Recovery — Tags: , , , , — User2 @ 7:19 pm

There are occasions when we just feel energy-less – perhaps not disillusioned, dejected or depressed, just plain flat, energy-less and disinterested. And even though I’ve been teaching my many personal development clients how to start each day by tuning in their minds – and I do it myself – sometimes, within no time at all, one ends up feeling, like, ‘I wish I wasn’t here!’ or ‘I just don’t feel like doing this!’ I’m not talking about things going wrong during the day, I’m simply referring to what one client described like this: ‘I get into my office, full of energy, I sit down at my desk, start going through my emails and, suddenly, it’s like I’m in a kind of daze.’

What is it that takes the wind out of our sails so easily? How can we be so fired up one minute and then suddenly so flat? Well, the answer is all too simple – flat is your default state of mind. Yeah, believe it or not, research proves that only the very rare person is tuned in sufficiently to actually be adequately focused and attentive to get all that can be gotten out of the normal day. As if that wasn’t enough, research also confirms that, left to its own devices, our minds slip towards negativity. It’s the way we’re wired – and all the personal development or self improvement in the world won’t personal development or self improvement isn’t going to change that wiring.

But personal development will change the programs that we run. Again, if we do nothing, our subconscious mind is content to watch reruns – to keep running the same old irrelevant programs that make our daily lives uninteresting, mundane, repetitive and boring. You need to get control of the channel changer! Self Improvement will teach you how to change channels so that you stop watching the old programs. It will teach you how to tune in to reality TV – the real reality of the here and now.

Sadly, the feeling of mindless-couldn’t-give-a-damn simply invades our minds by default. And that will forever, for the rest of our lives, be our default state of mind unless you set about developing a mindful, focused, tuned in state of mind – and not only must you do it every single day, you’ve got to find a mechanism to ensure that you can call on that state of mindfulness when you feel that you’re slithering down the inevitable slippery slope towards mindlessness – because, as sure as night follows day, you’ll start slipping and sliding the moment your back is turned.

OK, I’m mixing my metaphors, between computers, televison and slippery slopes – but you get the picture? Our mind is always waiting to mug us – we’ve got to be on alert as much as is humanly possible.

June 5, 2010

Self-Help: Wake Up From Your Trance State

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — User2 @ 10:35 pm

Your mind is anaesthetized. In my personal development work I’ve come across people who cannot stop themselves from doing things that they simply know they shouldn’t be doing. Things like examining every single email when it arrives even though they’re supposed to be focused on something important and they know that most of the emails that they read are a total waste of energy. Things like lying transfixed by the television in the evening with the remote control controlling them, not the other way around. Things like wasting valuable energy surfing the internet looking at porn when it’s gone beyond whatever kick it might have first produced. People re-reading news stories from half a dozen different sources when they have better things to be doing. Make up your own list.

When we were children, we lived for the moment. As adults we don’t even turn up to the here and now. As the physiology of our brains changed as we moved through adolescence, we became anaesthetized by automatic responses and reactions and by fifty thousand random thoughts that now whizz through our head every day. Consequently, we end up wasting time and energy on things that we know we shouldn’t be doing – not content to waste our time on things like I’ve already mentioned, we’re also driven demented worrying about things that we don’t want to happen, worrying about what kind of an impression we’re making (or not making!), worrying what other people think of us.

In the process, we’re simply not all there! We’re missing in action! And, until we wrest control of our own state of mind, there’s no point in wondering why our life is ‘not-so-bad’ or the way it is – it’s that way because it’s our own fault. You’ve got to be interested enough in your own well-being to put in an appearance in your own life. If you do, it will change your life.

Turning up isn’t half the battle – in fact it’s all that you need to do. Because if you’re present, your very presence will make a difference, to your own focus and to those around you – they’ll know there’s a difference but won’t even be able to put their finger on it. How do you turn up? How do you put in an appearance? Isn’t it obvious? Where is life lived? Where is the only place and time that you can be at any moment in time? Wherever you are – in the here and now. You’ve got to gain control of your wandering mind, you will have to stop it forcing you to sit in front of that TV or PC, you’ve got to snap out of the trance you’re in. And the only way you will do that is by paying attention to what is actually going on in the present moment.

But, as a normal adult, you’ve simply never done that, so you’re going to have to do a little training. You can start by taking or making a few minutes each day to sit down where you won’t be disturbed and very mechanically look, feel, listen, smell and taste what’s going on. It has to be mechanical for a start – you’re going to have to relearn what it’s like to pay attention to the exhilarating sensory feast of the here and now – something that you haven’t done since you were a child. If you do, you’ll snap out of your trance, you’ll wake up, smell the roses and realize the beauty and opportunity of today.

May 28, 2010

Personal Effectiveness: The Meaning Of Awareness

Filed under: Beginning Recovery — Tags: , , , , — User2 @ 2:33 pm

I get these strange comments to some of my posts. I recently posted a piece on the importance of paying attention to the here and now, which made the point that it’s the only time and place that you can be – and if you couldn’t be bothered to turn up to the reality of the here and now, how can you reasonably expect to get anything much out of life. I received a comment – from someone who signed themselves as a “personal development expert” said that, OK, the here and now is all very well – but really personal development is about choice and awareness.

So, here’s the big question: What is Awareness? Let’s make it even easier – what can you be aware of at any particular point in time? Of course, you could be aware of your thoughts – most people aren’t because, as decades of research prove, most people aren’t aware of anything much at all. You could be aware that you’re feeling frustrated or fearful – but these so-called emotions are nothing more than the product of the thoughts that you’re not aware of in the first place. You could be aware of how you feel about yourself – your own self-image – but that’s not awareness, that’s getting involved in the continuous internal power struggle between you and your personality (remember, personality is dervided from the Latin word, “persona”, meaning a mask and your personality is simply the amalgamation of all the personal “snapshots” you took as a child).

Real awareness is being aware of the here and now. To paraphrase the Buddha, when I am walking, I am aware that I am putting one foot in front of the other. Only in the present moment will you find reality. In fact – scientific fact as probed by quantum physics – only in the present moment does anything exist and all that exists is changing moment to moment.

And what of the choice we must make? We have a stark choice that has a fundamental impact on our lives – we can choose to be aware or we can (and this is the mindless choice made by normal people) choose to live in a make-believe world created by our own, predominantly negative, thoughts. This is a choice that we must make time and again, in each moment because no one becomes aware and stays aware – it is a continual in exactly the same way that the reality of the world in which we live is an ongoing process.

The life you are living is how it is as a result of your action, reaction or inaction in the present moment. The normal person reacts to their own thoughts and perceptions. The extraordinarily successful person acts on the basis of the facts in the moment and, as a result, creates a life that is exciting, spontaneous, adventurous, fulfilled and successful. Now, do you think you might be up to making that choice?

May 4, 2010

Self Motivation

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — User2 @ 2:37 pm

For over 14 years, in my two-day workshop, I’ve asked my clients if they think that they’re perfect. Everyone answers “No” . It’s pretty difficult to motivate yourself if there are things about yourself that you don’t like. And, indeed, chances are that there are things that you don’t like about yourself that you’ve been meaning to change but never do. In fact, research shows that most people have the same New Year’s Resolutions from one year to the next! And, as if that weren’t enough, people then read so-called self-help books and try to talk themselves into feeling good and being motivated.

Self-affirmation is pretty much a waste of time. Positive self-talk peppers the conscious mind with feel-good statements that don’t make the conscious mind feel good! Because the conscious mind feels nothing – it just thinks – approximately 50,000 random thoughts each day. And most of those random thoughts are either useless or self-destructive. You’re barking up the wrong tree!

It’s your subconscious mind you want to get in touch with. That’s where you’ll find your self-doubts and your misconceived self-perceptions. Your subconscious uses those incorrect self-perceptions to create your everyday behaviour – your perceived strengths, your perceived weaknesses and their related self-defence mechanisms. Your subconscious was programmed with your view or yourself during your formative years. Today, it’s your subconscious mind’s out of date self-view that creates your reality.

Your subconscious mind, which is visual, took snapshots of the things that impressed you when you were young and impressionable. Those snapshots are programs that run today to enable you behave automatically through what psychology calls automaticity. Automaticity is wonderful when it comes to getting habitual repetitive tasks done without you having to think about them. Unfortunately your entire life is habitual and repetitive, your work colleagues and your nearest and dearest are so familiar to you that everything you do to them, for them and with them ends up being habitual and repetitive. So, in fact, automaticity “enables” you do almost everything without thinking about it. You don’t even have to bother to turn up!

Research confirms that you only put 1% of you into the here and now. No wonder most people don’t love themselves – they don’t know themselves. How could they, they’re not all there!

Therefore, to motivate yourself you need to stop behaving automatically. Let’s make it simple by starting small. Stop doing little things automatically and, sooner or later, you’ll start doing really important things mindfully too. Tonight, brush your teeth with the hand with which you don’t habitually brush your teeth. The result will be that you will be more “all there” than normal and you will have started to disrupt your repetitive pattern of normal mindless living. This will attract more of your subconscious mind’s attention into the here and now, so that you’ll begin to pay less attention to the snapshots that have been dictating your automatic behaviour.

Talking yourself into being motivated won’t work – the normal person isn’t listening anyway! You simply have to be a little more present than normal – that’s all! Then you’ll be more effective, more productive, more tuned it – about yourself and life. And, when you’re more turned on, more alert and more present, you have presence. Presence will make you more impressive. So, not only will you motivate yourself, you may well motivate others around you too!

February 4, 2010

Seeing As Change Is Inevitable, Why Not Embrace It?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — User2 @ 7:30 am

The issue with change is not so much what we think of change, but rather how we react to change. In all honesty, there are probably few words that throw up such a kaleidoscope of emotions and differing interpretations for us.

In some ways, change is exciting. We all want our lives to improve, after all, there is no progress without change. However, the word also holds some very negative connotations.

If you look up synonyms for ‘changeable’ you will find words such as: ‘volatile’, ‘uncertain’, ‘unsettled’, ‘unstable’. All of those can make us feel ‘insecure’, ‘vulnerable’ and ‘unsure’.

There is a part of us which likes to feel secure and safe and change clearly goes against that. However, after change has occurred, we very often call it ‘progress’, ‘evolution’, ‘advancement’ or ‘growth’; words which bring out far more positive emotions from within us.

Therefore, it appears that it is not change itself that scares us so much as the transition process that it entails. We like the stability of things as they are ‘now’. Now feels safe because we know what to expect.

Perhaps it is not change that we fear so much as the loss of control that we associate with change. Change inherently carries an element of risk. Sometimes that fear, that perceived risk, is so daunting that it prevents us making changes that we need to despite our unhappiness with our current situation.

At the other end of the scale, there are times when we have probably all been guilty of making changes just for the sake it. We change our hair color, we change the layout of our bedroom, we may even change jobs.

I used to change jobs every 4 months, as I couldn’t find the ‘right job’ for me. At some level, I believed that when I found the ‘right job’ I would be happy. However, it was then pointed out to me that you can move to the moon if you want but nothing will really change because you are still taking ‘You’ with you.

Why do we do that? We do it to distract ourselves from making the changes in our life that really matter. In reality, it might be our choice of career that is making us unhappy, but we will change the color of our hair ‘just to make ourselves feel better’, because that is an ‘easy change’.

Seeing as change is inevitable, why not embrace it, analyze it and use it? Use it as an opportunity to measure what your life, and course correct. Seize change as your key to success. How else are we going to grow?

As a final point, I will give you a quote by Charles Darwin: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
—
This article was edited and distributed by Mark Walters on behalf of Mandy Swift, who was the original author. Learn More : Secrets Of Success

November 10, 2009

Eliminating Your Addiction With Self-Help Tapes Asap!

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — User2 @ 6:30 am

Self improvement tapes help you to achieve your goal of quitting by detailed instructions. Full audio support can make a difference when you don’t have the time for lengthy therapy sessions and just don’t have the privilege of affording them. I have included some of the data’s which the tapes features and what it could do to help you along the way.

Hypnosis is an amazing tool for self-help. There is nothing as pleasant as allowing yourself to sink into a nice and easy trance and meditation from hypnosis and guided imagery. This self-esteem hypnosis tape is dedicated to helping you gain control over your life and your health by just sitting back and allowing the guided imagery to lead you to a healthy life and general self-esteem.

This self-esteem hypnosis tape is a safe and effortless way to aid in your goal to better health by inducing a trance state. It should be used at least a couple of times a day. It is important to find a quiet and secure place to listen to this hypnosis tape. It should never be played while operating a car and works best in complete isolation.

Pets often find a trance inducing tool such as this self-help tape intriguing and will try and be part of it so make sure they are out of the room before listening. I would also suggest that you keep the room semi-dark for the best trance quality. Allow yourself not to work hard at “doing it right.” All you need to do is let yourself go and enjoy the meditation trance state that develops naturally.

The self help tape or a CD “Attain and experience Inner Peace with -Tools For Balanced Living”. Is an example. “Tools For Balanced Living” is a Mindfulness Practice that guides you toward personal insight, body awareness, yoga postures and meditation. The Sedona Method will show you how to tap your natural ability to let go of any unwanted thought or feeling on the spot even when you are right in the middle of life’s greatest challenges.

This will free you to quickly and easily have all that you choose including the following: unshakable inner security, more money, better relationships, more radiant health and well being, more effective goal achievement plus break bad habits and other self-sabotaging behaviors, lose weight, stop smoking and sleep better.

THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY by by Susan Jeffers. Arrow (1987) 1991. How to turn your fear and indecision into confidence and action. As well as “OUR OWN HANDS – A BOOK OF SELF-HELP THERAPY” by Sheila Ernst and Lucy Goodison describes all kinds of therapy, from bodywork to psychoanalytically-based therapies, shows with sensitivity and clarity how to use those techniques which can actually free us and help us, and gives exercises to use in a self-help situation.

It is also important to realize that this meditation self-help and self-esteem tape is only one highly effective aid in your plan to induce self-esteem successfully. A good dietary program, exercise, and acupuncture will make your self-help program permanent over time. All you need is to assess the problems you need to focus on first as there are a lot of self-help topics which these audio books have.

Due to the fact that they all do have good results doesn’t mean you don’t need to chose which is right for you. Handpicking your choices can make a better difference and you can do it at your own home.

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6 Tips For Quitting Smoking

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — User2 @ 12:15 am

If you are currently a smoker, quitting the habit could be one of the most important things you will ever do in the next part of your life. In fact, if you quit now, you will most likely be adding seven years to your life.

While many people try to quit and fail, it is not an impossible task. Thousands of people, just like you, have decided to quit and have succeeded. You too can be among the successful former-smokers. Here are six tips that will help you to quit smoking once and for all:

1. Make a vow that you are going to quit smoking from today onwards

Success in all spheres of life begins with firm determination. If you are wishy-washy you can never do anything. However, if you make up your mind, once and for all, that you are giving up the habit, whenever a craving comes, you will remember your vow and not give in.

2. Exercise more and get your body in shape

If you sit idle there is more chance that you will light up your cigarette and relax. Fill your spare time with sports and vigorous activity. Try to feel how good it is to get your blood circulating and breathing the air deeply. If you are not the athletic type, then brisk walking will have the same benefit as other kinds of sports.

3. Avoid places and pastimes that put you within reach of cigarettes

If going to a bar or pub means that you are going to have a drink and then light up, maybe it is better to avoid that place for the time being. Once you have truly stopped smoking and you feel how good it is, you can go anywhere and not be tempted. But while you are in the transition phase it is better to carefully choose where you will spend your recreational time.

4. If you have to put something in your mouth, drink water or eat healthy snacks

Whenever you get a desire to put a cigarette in your mouth, replace it with something that will help you rather than harm you. Drinking small amounts of water throughout the day is not only a good way to help you quit smoking, but it is also a great way to stay healthy. You should drink 4 litres (quarts) of water per day, if you can. If you need to put something solid in your mouth, then eat a piece of fruit.

5. Get support from your friends and family

Tell them that you are giving up smoking for health reasons. Your true friends will support you and not offer you cigarettes. Your family and loved ones will similarly support your efforts and help you to avoid situations where you may feel obliged to smoke out of social pressure.

6. Strengthen your will power with yoga and meditation

Very few people are born with perfect will-power. Like anything else, practice makes perfect. If you want to strengthen a physical muscle you may work out with weights. If you want to strengthen your “mental muscle” you need exercise as well. Yoga and meditation are disciplines that enable even complete beginners to build up their capacity to concentrate and firmly accomplish whatever they set out to do. Try it out and see for yourself.

Follow these six tips and you will be well on your way to quitting smoking.

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