Monthly Archives: February 2009

Unresolving Ducks of Confusion

This morning I was talking to a friend of mine in the UK, over the phone. I haven’t spoken to him in a while, but he is one of those friends that you just can pick up where you left off, you don’t need to keep up a lot of maintenance. Like if you have a pair of skis, you can just throw them in the garage when the winter thaws out and wait until next year.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s better to rent skis. I don’t think I use them enough to warrant buying a new pair every year, but some people get away with it. It’s like when you decide to try something new, and you put all kinds of effort and energy into it, and make big plans, then later decide that it wasn’t something that was as good as you thought it might have been back when you first started thinking about it.

But my friend was telling me about these new neighbors that he has, and they are keep strange hours. Not that they are loud or anything, it’s that they seem to be up half the night doing odd things. My friend wouldn’t really elaborate, but I got the idea that it had something to do with a new business they might be thinking up. His father, the guy next door, was telling him that they hope to corner the market on the particular niche that they are hoping to invest in.

Anyways, I was more interested in hearing if my friend was still married, because last I talked he was having some problems. Something about not being able to communicate very well. A lot of times people that are in relationships say the other person doesn’t’ communicate, until they remember that in order to understand what people are saying, you need to really pay attention to them when they speak. And it can be a lot more deeper than just words.

For example, my friend kept telling me that she didn’t like unresolved problems. Now those are two words that can mean pretty much anything. If someone asks me if I have any unresolved problems, I’d say of course I do. Everybody has unresolved problems. The problem with unresolved problems, is that in order to solve them, you need to make sure you are talking about the same unresolved problems, otherwise you might solve something that wasn’t even a problem to begin with.

When she started going on and on about unresolved problems, I thought she was talking about how her father treated her when she was a little girl, and she had all kind of deep emotional issues to deal with whenever she got close to being intimate with somebody. It turns out that her unresolved problem, at least when we were having the discussion, were about a phone bill she had called to inquire about, and the person was rude to her and hung up on her.  But then again, that might be related to her childhood after all, you never know these things unless you can really communicate in such a way that everybody knows exactly what you are talking about.

I was at a seminar once, and the teacher was illustrating this very point. She told everybody to think of a duck. And then she went around and asked everybody what duck they were thinking of. Some were thinking about a rubber duck. Some thought of a duck flying home for the winter. One guy thought of the AFLAC duck.

The point was, that even when thinking about a simple noun like “duck” a room full of people came up with a roomful of different ideas.

Now that is something to think about.

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Swing Free of Fear

Once upon a time, not too long ago, maybe even yesterday, there lived a monkey. He lived with his fellow monkey troops in their monkey village. His name was Larry. He was a young monkey that still kind of followed the grownup monkeys around, as he wasn’t sure how to be a complete monkey all on his own yet. He could do a lot of monkey stuff, like swing from branch’s, and peel bananas, and even find the best trees to hide in when the tigers came.

The tigers lived in the next jungle over. They were friendly tigers, at least when they didn’t want to eat you. But when they were hungry, they dropped all pretence and went after anything and everything that looked like it might be chewable and digestible. And if you ever had the opportunity to examine the digestive track of tigers, you’ll surely find that they can eat pretty much anything. Like that shark in jaws (not the bad shark, the other one) that ate that license plate and all that other junk.

Humans on the other hand, can’t eat everything, but this story isn’t about humans, so never mind that.

So there Larry was, sitting on his haunches one day, when his older brother, Bill, said “Larry, it’s time you need to find your own food. You can’t follow me around all the time. I need to find a lady monkey and make a monkey family. You need to figure out things for yourself. You need to find your own way. You have to become independent.” Larry understood. He had realized for quite some time that it’s better to be independent than to have to depend on others.

But there was one problem. One big problem. One giant, scary, terrifyingly seemingly unsurmountable problem. The monkeys had this ritual. Before being accepted as a grown up monkey by the rest of the troop, you had to perform a task. Kind of like a ritual, if you will.

You had to cross many jungles, through many dangerous areas, filled with tigers and elephants and sharks and piranhas and go to the cave of the mighty boar. And in this cave was a special tree. A special banana tree. They looked like bananas, except they were supposed to be a lot smaller than all the other bananas. At least that’s what all Larry’s friends said. They always talked about this banana tree, and the boar that guarded it. They all knew that someday, they would have to pass the rite of initiation into adult monkeyhood, and go steal a tiny banana from this gigantic and horrible boar, that liked to eat monkeys for breakfast. And lunch, and dinner.

The more the young adolescent monkeys talked to each other about this horrible creature, the more they became afraid of being his next breakfast or lunch. Or even his dinner.

Finally, the day came. Larry had to set off, all alone, to go face the evil boar, and steal one of the magic bananas. None of the adults gave him any advice. The adolescent monkeys were to afraid to talk to him. The baby monkeys were too busy playing with their ABC blocks.

So off Larry went. For days he swung through the jungle, branch to branch, vine to vine. Sleeping in trees, hoping they would keep him safe from the tigers and the leopards and the kangaroos.  With every passing night, the horrible boar transformed himself more and more into a unfathomable creature in poor Larry’s mind, and the banana’s became smaller, and less yellow, and less tasty.

Finally, the day arrived. The cave was in sight. Larry crept slowly to the cave. Trembling in fear. He knew now why they adult monkeys didn’t talk to him before he left. He knew now why the adolescent monkeys shunned him before his departure. He was not expected to live. Perhaps it was a big joke, a lie, a ruse. Perhaps there was some hideous monkey god living in the cave that demanded regularly sacrificed young monkeys to keep from bringing his wrath to the monkey jungle.

Larry crept closer to the cave opening. Slowly, carefully, almost devoid of any remaining hope that he would return alive to his happy monkey jungle.

He peeked into the cave.

There it was!

It wasn’t a lie. The tree was right there, in front of him. Filled with bananas. Hundreds of bananas. Huge bananas, rich in color, and even from where he was he could smell the delicious aroma wafting across the cool floor of the cave. Surely he could run, grab a banana, and return without being spotted by the evil boar.

Where was the evil boar, anyway?

Larry crept closer, slowly, slowly. He stopped, ever so quietly, and reached up and quickly snatched the lowest hanging branch. No boar in sight. He grabbed another banana, and another, and another.

“Please don’t eat too many,” said a voice from behind him.

Larry turned, and to his horror, was the hideously large boar, readying to pounce and devour him where he stood. Sort of. Actually, not at all. The boar was not even a boar. He was just a tiny field mouse.

“But…” Larry began.

“You thought I was a hideous boar did you?”

“Well, yea. What happened? Why did you change?”

The tiny field mouse rose up on his hind legs to his full height.

It is you that changed. It is you chose to see things differently than before. Something happened to you on the way here. You were able to make a decision. You were able to forget those thoughts that you had before, and see for yourself what was really in here. Because when you choose to approach your fears, with caution, as you did, you will realize that which you are afraid of is seldom as big and scary as you think it is. And that which you hope to achieve by facing your fears is a far greater reward that you will allow yourself to imagine. That is nature’s way of making sure you walk into situations with caution. You see Larry, fear is your friend. Fear helps to warn you of possible danger, and those feelings you feel are really just the extra energy which allows you to see better, to hear better, to think more quickly and more accurately. Fear is the juice of life. Fear is your friend, your guide, your helper, letting you know that you are on the verge of glory.You are never truly an adult unless you can accept and embrace your fears.

“But why the stories, why the lies?”

“No monkey can be an adult unless they face their fears. Today you are an adult Lawrence. Today you shall swing free.”

Larry turned and walked away. His arms full of the sweet bananas from the magic banana tree. They were the sweetest bananas he’d ever eaten.

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Exposure Yourself to Wonderful Success

I have a friend who is a fairly successful person. He is the area manager for a particular large manufacturing company. We were talking over lunch a few weeks ago about our lives, and how we came to be where we are. One of those lazy conversations on a Saturday afternoon, when you don’t have any specific plans, and are content to allow the conversation to flow wherever it wants to go, you can decide to just go along for the ride.

He used to be a line manufacturing technician. These are the guys that work on the assembly line, and are in charge of only one aspect in the larger manufacturing process. He had noticed that there were changes they the company could make, that would save them a lot of money. And not a lot of money in the long term, possible future. A lot of money, right here, right now.

And he went home and told his wife, and his wife of course suggested he bring it up at the next meeting. After all, he was pretty well regarded at his job, since he’d been there for a few years, and had a good record. But my friend was worried for some reason. He kept coming up with excuses why he didn’t want to express himself at the meeting. Luckily for him, and his company, his wife knew him well enough to see that these were merely excuses, and not the real reason. And his wife was also wise enough to let him discover the real reason in his own time, without any extra pressure from her.

Some people, when they notice a friend or loved one making a mistake, or living life less than with complete resourcefulness, tend to pressure the person with short term tactics that usually backfire. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Many times it’s better to discover things on your own than to be told about them.

So my friend kept going to work, and the more he saw that his ideas would definitely improve the bottom line of the company, the more anxious he got. When I asked him about he said that if he told them, they would almost surely promote him. Why would that be a bad thing? I asked him. If he got promoted, then he would be a supervisor, which would the next level above where he was. Then he would have to conduct meetings, and speak in front of people, and people that were new and were being trained would watch him as an example, and so on.

When he finally explained all this to his wife, she was very understanding. She said to him:

You are much more knowledgeable than you think. You have great talent. You are not doing anybody any good by hiding your talent. You may think that by bringing more attention to yourself will bring discomfort and unease, but in reality, when you express yourself, people will know how smart you really are. People will know how much you really do have to offer. And that’s important, isn’t it?

My friend said that he was really moved by his wife’s faith in him. The next day, he went and explained his idea to his foreman. They used his suggestion, saved money, and of course, promoted him. And he said a strange thing happened, something he didn’t quite expect. Because of the extra attention he got, he actually had a lot more good ideas that he was aware of. And not only that, people were more than willing to help him improve in areas where he expressed an interest, because he was quickly being recognized as somebody that was a great source of knowledge to other people.

So what you are saying, is that you owe all your success to your wife? I asked him. He just smiled, and drank his coffee.

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Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

“All riches have their origin in mind. Wealth is in ideas – not money.”

-Robert Collier

“Wealth is the ability to fully enjoy life.”

-Henry David Thoreau

Would you like money? Would you like a lot of money? What could you do if a thousand dollars appeared out of nowhere, and you had only an hour to spend it? What would you do? Where would you go? How about ten thousand? A hundred thousand? How much money would you need to invest safely so you could spend the rest of your life doing what it is that you always dream you wish you could?

The core teaching of the classic book Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, is that thoughts are things. Take a look around you, right now. Since you are reading this, you have a computer right? Before this computer existed, it was only a thought in somebody’s mind. Before the chair you are sitting in existed, it was only a thought. Perhaps not an altogether original thought. Perhaps the chair you are sitting in is a slight modification of a different model. Nevertheless, before it was a thing, it was a thought.

How about before there were computers? Somebody had a thought that they could do much better than what they had, right? How much money do you think there is in the world right now? Trillions of dollars? More? How much money do you think there was in the world five hundred years ago? Not nearly as much, right?

Where did it all come from? Thought. The power of thought.

The classic book Think and Grow Rich has been read by so many people it scarcely needs and introduction, or even a description. Written in a beautiful form, unlike many get rich quick books today, it requires the reader to discover for yourself what the secret is. Told in fifteen chapters, each devoted to a specific topic, Hill uses stories and metaphors so make it almost impossible not to miss the secret that lies within. So powerful is the principles in this book that later revisions (it was originally published 1937) were edited for fear of falling into the wrong hands.

That it was published first near the end of the great depression, and still managed to sell 20 million copies is a testament to the powerful principles that lie within. This book is simply a must have for anyone that wants to tap into the basic principles of abundance. And as Thoreau so eloquently stated, wealth is a lot more than money.

Of course, you don’t need to buy this book. If you simply google Think and Grow Rich pdf you will find many websites that allow you to download it for free. But there’s something about having this handy paperback to take with you whenever you want to skim through and read a chapter here or there. They are fantastically organized and can be read all at once or in short bursts of absolute wisdom. Even if you’ve read it before, I highly recommend that you either find your old copy, or buy a new one. Either way you absolutely cannot go wrong by learning and applying the principles in this book.

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Use The Right Angle for Lasting Results

The other day a friend of mine was complaining to me about this recent diet she was on. She has been struggling with weight for a better part of her adult life, and tried diet after diet after diet. She lost quite a bit of weight on the low carb diet, but whenever she started to really see results, she got an unbelievably strong craving for chocolate. Rollo’s to be specific. Personally I find rollo’s to be pretty tasty, but I’d be hard pressed to eat more than a couple.

She was telling me that she has a tremendous amount of willpower at the beginning, and she is able to maintain this willpower, but for some reason it begins to fade after a couple weeks. She says it’s like a contest in her mind between the positive idea of seeing herself in the mirror a little bit slimmer, and the intense physical cravings that start to grow out of control when she has gone a couple weeks of really sticking to her diet.

Diets are an amazing thing, when you think about it. If you walk into any major bookstore in the United States, you’ll a huge section of diet books. Low carb, low fat, the Hollywood diet, the popcorn diet. You name it, and somebody has written a book on how get thin when you try their diet. Most Doctors (and most people) realize the simple truth that if you limit your food intake, you will lose weight. Many have noticed that all these fad diets are merely a tricky way of limiting your intake.

One of the things I think they miss out on is how you should pace yourself, whenever you start a new lifestyle change, which any certified dietician will tell you that is exactly what a diet is, a lifestyle change. But the problem most people run into is they start off too quick. Like when you go to the gym, and you haven’t worked out in a long time. If you try really hard the first day, you are going to be sore. So naturally, most coaches, and fitness trainers will tell you that it is important to start slow.
People really want to get in shape, and that’s fantastic. If they use this desire to train too hard, too early, they will become sore, and stop training. So their strong desire can have the paradoxical effect of thwarting their progress. I was overhearing a personal trainer coaching a new client at a gym once, and I heard her say:

“You need to start slow. The most import thing is to do something, anything. Don’t make the mistake of going for too much, too soon. That is what people that get stuck in that yo yo effect do. If you start slow, and increase your activity slowly over time, you will build up an incredible amount of momentum that will slowly but surely become part of your lifestyle so much, that you will feel completely lost if you don’t do something physical every day.”

I could tell this girl was a fantastic trainer, because she was incredibly fit herself, and her new client was exclaiming how excited he was because the trainer had such a long waiting list. She must have discovered some secret someplace that kept her in so much demand.

I guess it’s kind of like when I was in high school physics, and I learned that to get the maximum distance from a projectile, you need to launch it at a forty five degree angle. If you throw it steep, it will go high, but won’t go very far. If you throw it too shallow, like a baseball pitch, you will get a lot of speed, but it will fall to the earth rather quickly, and you won’t get much distance either. The secret is to throw it at just the right angle, to maximize the distance. If you don’t take the right angle, you will put in too much effort at the beginning, and it will fizzle out too quickly, and not give you the distance that you need. Balance is key.

So I suggested to my friend that she set her sights a little bit lower, instead of trying to lose 10 pounds in two weeks. When I suggested that she lose ten pounds in six months, she looked at me as if I was crazy. When I asked her to imagine herself two years from now, and what her life was like after she’d made it a habit to live so losing ten pounds every six months was a piece of cake, she smiled.

“I’d be in pretty good shape, for life!”

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What To Say When You Talk To Yourself by Shad Helmstetter, Ph. D.

Today’s book recommendation is a another classic that hardly needs any introduction, but I’d thought I’d give a heads up to the maybe two or three people left on the planet that haven’t heard about it yet.

Are you aware that you have all kinds of voices running around your mind, telling you to do things, and not do things? Don’t worry, you’re not crazy. Well, probably not. When I first heard this, I was quite skeptical, because usually when you think about hearing voices, you might imagine “Get Out!” voices from the Amityville Horror (or the Simpsons.) But the voices I’m talking about go largely unnoticed.

Imagine this, if you will. You are three years old. You are about to try something that you think might be fun. Your mother sees you (as you happen to be leaning way over the railing at the mall or somewhere) and she shouts “Stop! Don’t do that! It’s Dangerous! It’s Dangerous!” Now because of the urgency in your mom’s voice, and because she’s your mom, you listen to her, and trust her that it’s dangerous. The problem is when she did that (and saved your bacon btw,) your mind made an automatic connection between the “this might be fun” feeling, and the authoritative “Danger!” voice from your mom. How many times do you think this played out in your childhood? Likely hundreds, if not thousands.

This can be one of the biggest roadblocks to success as we grow into adults. We still have that “this might be fun” feeling once in a while (hopefully.) You see a cute girl, you think of a fun thing to do, you want to sing out loud in front of people you’ve never met before. These voices can stay with us our whole lives. And one of the reasons they are so insideous, is that most of the time, we don’t even know they are there. We usually just switch (rather quickly) from the “this might be fun” feeling to a “maybe not it might be dangerous” feeling without even realizing what happened.

But don’t fret. There is a way around those old voices. You can reprogram them. You can change them. You can tell them what to say, and in what tone of voice, and what speed, and everything. Imagine what it would be like to have the “this might be fun” feeling followed by hearing Achilles’ voice from the movie Troy, as they were about to land on the beach for the first time saying “It’s YOURS! TAKE IT!”

There is a simple way to do this. There is a fantastic book called What To Say When You Talk To Your Self, by Shad Helmstetter, Ph.D. It’s a fantastic book that goes into the theory and practice of rewriting your own programming. I’ll admit, it is kind of funny because it was published in 1982, so there are all kinds of references to tape players and the like. I create my own sound files using windows media player that came with my operating system, which easily converts to MP3’s that I listen to on the subway or train. This way I can create all kinds of positive inspiring messages for any occasion.

Because one of the quickest ways to let these new messages sink in is to listen in the background while doing other things, I usually listen while I’m reading a book or strolling down the street window shopping. And not only are there several examples in the book of exactly what to say, there are basic outlines if you want to create new statements to run your brain automatically based on your own indiviudal preference.  One thing that I do that is also helpful is to have different voices talking in the right and left ear.  This way they really go in deep, for even more immediate and efficient reprogramming.

There are several websites and articles online for creating your own self talk, but this book was one of the original sources that kicked it off, so I can’t recommend it enough.  This book is just another example of the great truth about human development: The more you start to consciously create the thoughts that go on in your brain, the more satisfying your life will become. This book is a great starting point.

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Shifting Road Rage into Scrambled Eggs

The other day I was riding my bike down to the supermarket. I was only going to pick up a couple of things. Dozen eggs, loaf of bread, maybe some peanut butter. I was trying to remember what it was that I was after when a car served just ahead of me, almost knocking me into the light pole. He didn’t even honk or turn and see if I was ok. People like that really make me mad. I get really angry when people are out driving around, and cut people off right and left, without even looking around to see if they are causing any danger to anybody else. It’s like they don’t care if other people live or die. The whole world belongs to them, and you’d better get out of the way. These are the things that can lead to road rage, rights, high blood pressure, and if something like this happens to you in the morning, it can ruin your whole day.

Like sometimes I’ll be driving to work, and the traffic is just totally backed up. And the interesting thing is, is that sometimes there really isn’t a reason for the traffic to be what it’s like. And no matter what you try and imagine, now, it’s hard to come up with a reason for this. And that can be totally frustrating. You are just sitting there, not moving, and you don’t even know why. The radio doesn’t help, they just say try to use this exit, or that exit. But it doesn’t really help because since you aren’t going anyplace, you can’t very well take the next exit anytime in the next three hours.

Which is why I usually bring some audio books in the glove box. I don’t usually like to listen to music in the car unless I’m driving at a reasonable speed. If I’m stopped, and can’t get anywhere, I usually prefer to listen to people talking rather than upbeat music. I’d read the paper if it wasn’t so dangerous. Sometimes I’ll pop in a language tape, sometimes I’ll pop in a lecture. Once I put in a lecture that was about the great tonal shift in the English language. Supposedly it happened about a generation before Shakespeare. Which is interesting because he wrote all these fantastic plays, and was using a language that had recently undergone a drastic change. Had Shakespeare lived a generation earlier, or had the great tonal shift happened a generation later, Shakespeare’s plays wouldn’t be as accessible as they are today. When you find something like this that is really fascinating, and really appreciate the coolness of it, it’s hard not to be amazed at how much stuff there is out there to discover.

Similar to people who make it their life purpose to discover things. Like scientists, doctors, and artists, and certain types of engineers. Some people can get so involved into what they are looking for they seem to use lose track of where they are going. Like when Edison was discovering the light bulb, he burned through about seven thousand different filaments until he found one that would be economically feasible. Because he was able to lose himself in search for new information, and be able to apply it in ways that would help a great amount of people, this tends to happen.

Which is why I enjoy doing things like this. And sometimes I totally lose track not only of time, but of how many eggs I have in the refrigerator. Which is kind cool because sometimes when you run out of eggs, you can find other things that are just as healthy that you hadn’t noticed before. And it’s important to stay healthy, so you won’t have to rush to the hospital, like my neighbor did when he almost hit me. He later apologized, and told me that he didn’t turn around because he knew I was ok, and he knew that he would have plenty of time to apologize later. And I was glad the heart attack he thought he was having turned out to tendonitis, from doing too many pushups.

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The Five Tibetans by Christopher S. Kilham

The book I’m going to recommend in this post borders slightly on the esoteric, so if you don’t believe that you can find benefit and value from things of this nature, I would recommend that you do not continue to read this article, because if you don’t believe that those things are possible, then you aren’t likely to receive any benefit.

If you are of the mind that there is always something useful to be found in most anything, read on. 

The book I’d like to bring to your attention in this post is called The Five Tibetans, by Christopher S. Kilham. These are five simple exercises to learn and to do. The book itself is rather slim, but at just over eighty pages, it is absolutely packed with these simple yet ancient exercises that can help you whatever you esoteric or spiritual orientation.

The book covers five exercises called, of course, The Five Tibetans, or sometimes as the Five Rites as they are sometimes called. The story goes that a retired British army officer “discovered” them from the local Tibetans in the early twentieth century. How long they’ve been practiced before that is anybody’s guess.

Christopher S. Kilham is an accomplished teacher of yoga, meditation, and natural healing. He has traveled extensively giving talks on television, the radio, and in front of live audiences.

The first five chapters of Kilham’s concise work is an overview of the background of the Tibetan exercises. He also includes a brief but extremely comprehensive overview of energy, and the relation to the body and the mind. He also discusses Kundalini energy, and how it relates to breathing.

The sixth chapter gives and overview of each Tibetan, with easy to follow photographs. Chapter seven gives you the basics of when and where to practice, and discusses matters of importance such as clothing, time of day, what to wear, etc.

It is the eighth chapter that I personally found the most rewarding and insightful. In this he talks about Yoganidra, which is the control of all the energies that are flowing through the body. Another name for this is yogic sleep. Here he teaches you how to calm the mind and reach states of relaxation so deep that you can start to control body functions that are thought to be wholly unconscious, like your heartbeat, and brain waves. That these advanced techniques were put in after the main exercises, almost as an afterthought is a testament to the absolute power of these simple but profound practices.

The ninth and final chapter is a fascinating introduction to Kundalini energy and Kundalini meditation. Both chapters eight and nine are worth the price of the book in their own rite.

He tells you to start off slowly, doing only one iteration of each exercise, and increase gradually. Similar to beginning a running or weight lifting program. The most iterations he recommends is twenty one of each exercise. That is only one hundred and five repetitions, so they will take you only a few minutes.

If you don’t believe anything about controlling brain waves, or Kundalini meditation, that’s ok. By doing these exercises simply for the physical benefits you will reap the fantastic rewards of better flexibility, improved circulation and digestion, and even deeper sleep every night. You don’t need to buy any equipment, or pay any gym membership dues. These exercises are truly one of the economically efficient and metaphysically profound I’ve ever run across.  When you realize how much you will easily improve yourself after doing these exercises for only a few short weeks, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t discovered them earlier. Go on over to Amazon, and have a look. You won’t be disappointed.

 

 

 

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Remember to Forget for Fun and Happiness

I remember once I was watching my niece in a dance club performance. They were all doing some pre practiced dance moves that was choreographed to a popular musical number. In case they forgot their steps, their was a giant dancing bear on stage to follow for guidance. They were three and four years old, and the dancing bear, or the person dressed in the dancing bear costume, was eleven.

They had these ornamental neck wrap necklace things. I’m sure here is a technical name for it, but since I’m not that into three year old dance fashion, I’m not really sure what it is. It is kind of a long, frilly decorative thing that you loosely wrap around your neck, and it is supposed to enhance your dancing movies by trailing from behind.

What happened was that this girl stepped on her trailing frilly thing, and in the process knocked her stool over. Of course she naturally bent down, picked her stool up, and re wrapped the frilly thing back around her neck so that it wouldn’t happen again. And looked around at her friends, and once or twice at the dancing bear, and she was back in sync again with all the rest of the kids.

And then a thought struck me. She hadn’t yet learned that you are supposed to be nervous on stage. She hadn’t yet learned that you are supposed to be self conscious, and dream up a bazillion terrible things that can happen whenever you are standing up and talking or performing for other people. She hadn’t learned yet that there is many more important things in life than to simply have fun and express yourself. She hadn’t learned that mistakes are cues from nature to feel guilty and embarrassed. She was somehow under the impression that a mistake was something that you just lean over, grab and re arrange and then look around to see how everybody else is doing and then do your own thing.

And then I wondered about how I used to believe in Santa Clause, and now I don’t. And there was a time that I didn’t even know what a Santa Clause was, let alone worry about whether or not he was a concocted fantasy. I didn’t know who he was, then I was told about him and decided to believe in him, and later decided to discard this old belief. I began to wonder how it is possible to do the same thing with stage fright.

There was a time, obviously, when you didn’t know you were supposed to be afraid on stage. Then for some reason, some people learn to be afraid. What happens when you realize that fears are just a concocted myth, like Santa Clause, that you can easily learn to forget so that you can go back to being a kid again?

And that is when you can really start to find the cool stuff in life.

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Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting, by Lynn Grabhorn

If you’ve ever heard about the so called Law of Attraction, but have tried with mixed results, fear no more. Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting: The Astonishing Power of Feelings by Lynn Grabhorn might just be the book for your. Filled with logical explanations, practical exercises, and many examples, this book can easily shape your reality to fit exactly what it is that you want to create in life.

It’s not about intelligence, or the right background, or the right ethnicity. It’s not about whether you went to college or not. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve ever been successful before. This book will show you that the key is to pay attention to your feelings. When you learn how to manage your feelings correctly, you will begin to really change your life in so many positive ways that you will be completely amazed.

Feelings are incredibly powerful, but for some reason, most of  us are taught to ignore or suppress our feelings. Anger, fear, nervousness, desire. We are told early in life that it’s not ok to show anger. You shouldn’t ever let them see you sweat. You shouldn’t try to get things that you don’t deserve. Be a good little boy or girl, and good things will happen to you.

Unfortunately, or fortunately if your are beginning to smell a rat, that’s not how it works. Ignoring your feelings is the opposite of what you want to do. You want to embrace, accept, and appreciate your feelings. When you do this, you will really understand how easy it is to apply and benefit from the law of attraction.

Some have called Grabhorn’s’ work similar to Abraham Hicks. They are similar in some ways.  Lynn Grabhorn takes ancient ideas and expresses them in a way that you will not only logically understand how and why they work, but will easily be able to apply them in your life right away.

What is it that you want in life? Imagine one thing right now. What will it be like when you have it? What will you see? What will you hear? What will it look like? Most importantly, what will you feel like? This simple procedure may seem strange at first, because so many of us are uncomfortable tapping into our feelings like that. But the more you practice, the easier it gets. And Grabhorn’s book will show you the way to do it naturally and easily.

Can you imagine now, what it will be like when you apply the easy to understand and simple to apply principles in this book? Can you imagine yourself being able to join the thousands and thousands of others around the world who’ve made the decision to buy this book and begin to benefit now? It’s as easy as a feeling.

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