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Monthly Archives: February 2007
Monthly Archives: February 2007
As most of you know by now both Oprah Winfrey and Ellen Degeneres have talked about the movie ” The Secret”
I watched both shows that Oprah had about the movie and I was impressed. And how Oprah said that she has been practicing the concept herself for years has a lot to say.
First, this is a great testimonial for how effective the concept is, Oprah has been very successful in many areas of her life using the principles.
And, she set up a second show because of the huge positive reaction to the first one. It is wonderful to see how many people recognize the power and validity of the principles “The Secret” describes.
On her first show she had the creator of the movie Rhonda Byrne along with 5 of the people who contributed to the movie; James Arthur Ray, the Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, Lisa Nichols, and Jack Canfield.
Then on her ‘Reaction’ show she had James Arthur Ray and the Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith to give some further explanation plus they answer some questions from the audience and spoke to some recent success stories from the audience.
I think it is wonderful that Oprah has announced this to the millions who watch her show, she has the ear and respect of so many people – I applaud her, and all the efforts she makes to help people and the world.
But revealing “The Secret” is special because truly the way for the world to ‘grow up’ is one person at a time. The change must take place in the individual – each and every one of us.
I don’t want to tell you to not do things that help other people, you should do these things, and more. But work on developing yourself – become an example others will follow. And help others to do the same. The secret to a better world is individual growth and development. The huge number of people dwelling on fear, doubt and worry is more damaging to the world as a whole than anything else people do. Everything else is just a symptom of this.
Improve your thinking and your behavior will rub off on others.
Hooray for Oprah and Ellen for showing the concept of deliberate creation to their audiences, and hooray to Rhonda Byrne for getting “The Secret” movie made – it’s a good clear way to expose many people to the concepts.
The key is to learn the concepts then apply them in your life, just knowing about them will do you little good. Applying them will be life changing and powerful.
Live and grow – everyday,
John
The people that you surround yourself with have a large effect on your life. They can influence how you think and what you do.
Choose who you want to be around. What kind of life do you want to be involved in? Surround yourself with people that are related to the attributes of the life you want rather than what you don’t want.
Something I have told people for years. “I you don’t ever want to get into a bar fight, don’t go into bars.”
The places you frequent and the people in those places have an affect on you and your behavior.
Everything rubs off on you. Have you ever noticed how you will take on some characteristics of the people you are with and how this changes when you are with different people? You may act one way while at work and a different way with your mother or at a religious meeting. Who you are with and what you are doing has an affect on you at least while you are there. Think about this and what you want in your life, are you involved with the people and activities that are supportive of your deep desires for yourself?
Now you may be thinking, how can I surround myself with the people doing something particular when I am not yet doing it myself. Well sometimes this can be a challenge, but get as close as possible and continue to work your way closer, which you will be able to do as you meet more people and grow yourself.
First steps can be as simple as just spending more of your time doing something involved with what you desire rather than what you don’t. For example, if you work in construction and you normally stop by the bar after work and spend a couple hours commiserating with your work buddies and you really have a desire to be a big time stock investor, why not go home instead and get online and educate yourself and do some research. You may not be able to hang around current investors but you can prepare yourself to do so. Then you could join an investment club who welcomes beginners, and so on. You will start to meet more people as you place yourself in new situations.
In analysis, hanging out with the people at the bar will support you with what you now have in your life, if that is what you want OK then do it. But if you want something else, you must make the change, don’t expect it to just happen. The opportunity of meeting someone who could be a fantastic investment mentor is more likely to come up somewhere other than a bar, you need to put yourself in situations that are better for opportunities to present themselves. This is part of your responsibility in being ‘available’ for the opportunities that the Universal Spirit will offer you to move in the direction of your dreams.
If you keep on with things just as they have been in your life you will just get more of the same, but if you want things to change, you must change – your thinking, your behavior, your perspective, and the people you are around.
This may seem difficult right now from your current perspective, but as you spend some time with the idea, along with a feeling that there IS a way, you will gradually see things that you can do to change.
One of the potentially toughest areas to manage who you are around, is with relatives. Remember that it is ultimately up to you who you are around. You can choose how often and for how long you interact with a relative. If there are people who you see as not being supportive or even destructive to the life you want, reduce your interaction with them. You can even stand up to them and let them know that some of their behavior or what they say is not what you want to be involved. You can tell them that you don’t want to discuss certain topics when you are around. That you understand their views on the subject but that the two of you just need to agree to disagree without trying to convert each other every time you interact.
The bottom line is that just because someone is related it does not mean that you must interact with him or her. Some families seem to have a very caustic core component that is not supportive to personal growth and self-improvement, are you going to let the views of them guide your life? You may need to step away from most interactions with these people in order to get yourself free of their kind of thinking and allow yourself to change yours. The time not spent with these people can be utilized for your development into the situations of your deep desires- grows yourself.
Many successful people have noted that along the path of their growth they had to give up people that were no longer fit into the vision they had for their life. They had to find the people who did. This is part of the change process that some find difficult, leaving people who they know and are accustomed to along with trusting that they will find new people to associate with. WE do need to interact with others, that is part of our makeup, but you can go change period while you wait to discover the new people to relate with.
Another aspect of changing who you are around as you grow is with the people who become threatened by your new thoughts and actions. Many times people close to you will feel uncomfortable with the changing you and express this discomfort. They may try to negate what you are doing in some way or get upset with you because you are not interacting with them in the ways they are use to. Remember that just like you, they get are accustomed to the kind of interaction the two of you have in the past and will feel unsettled or disturbed by any change to that.
This is something that may occur as you grow and change. You must decide to let go of these existing relationships in their current form if you are going to move to a different place in your life, you can reduce your interactivity with a person, you can eliminate it or you can alter it. Much of how a relationship changes depends on the kind of relationship and the flexibility of the other person. But you must take command and do what is best for your continued growth, if that’s what you want.
The saying, “have your cake and eat it too” relates to this. You can’t change your life and keep the life you currently have at the same time, you will just remain frustrated. The inability that many people have with making this kind of change in existing relationships is what holds them back. This is where much anxiety, stress and depression come to be when you deeply want one think but are remaining in another. You may think that you can’t get out of your current situation but you can when you decide to face your feelings and the reactions of others.
Fearing the response of others can be daunting but it must be done for your life to go on. Remember that the reaction and opinions of others should not be taken as guidance for your life. Listen to your inner higher self for this. Of course others will have their opinions, they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t, but this is not the definition of who you are. A hundreds people will have a hundred opinions of you, but the only one that matters is yours.
When the wind blows, a tree will sway, leaves will come off and even branches may break, but does the wind define what the tree is?
Don’t let the ‘wind’ from others define you, go with your inner guidance, it is intended specifically for you. Take the steps you are guided to take and place yourself in position for the opportunities the universe presents you to further your expression of your purpose.
John
“Happiness comes from within. It is not dependent on external things or on other people. You become vulnerable and can easily be hurt when your feelings of security and happiness depend on the behavior and actions of other people. Never give that power to anyone else.”
— Brian Weiss M.D.
“That’s the risk you take if you change: that people you’ve
been involved with won’t like the new you. But other people
who do will come along.” — Lisa Alther
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
— Marianne Williamson
“We need not be afraid to touch, to feel, to show emotion. The easiest thing in the world is to be what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be.”
— Leo Buscaglia
“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have and
only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest
you let other people spend it for you.”
—Carl Sandburg
“Do not choose bad friends.
Do not choose persons of low habits.
Select good friends. Be discriminating.
Choose the best.” — Dhammapada 78
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Why do you want what you want?
How deeply do you want it?
How much emotional energy do you apply to your desires?
These questions point to the energy and power your desires have.
One of the most effective ways for you to support your desires is with clear and strong reasons why you want them. Having a clear vision, pictures in your mind, is great – a good starting point, but positively emotionally charged feelings behind it is where your power is.
Emotionally charged energy is magnetic, your mind and the universal spirit respond to it. In fact if you want to have any affect on changing your current status quo, you will need to utilize this energy.
Have you ever tried visualizations or affirmations, and not found that they have much affect on things? It’s likely because you have not added enough emotional charge to them.
Think about this,
The things that you don’t want to be a part of your life anymore have plenty of emotional energy tied to them don’t they? They usually do.
So, what happens is that what you don’t want tends to win out over what you do want because it has a higher emotional charge.
This is why spending time dwelling on what you don’t want helps keep it around. You project more of the energy describing your ‘don’t wants’ than you do your desires.
To move you into the life you desire is to —
Spend more time thinking about what you DO want than what you don’t.
Continue to clarify what you want, more detail.
Identify what it will do for you, how your life will be with it. What will it do for you and others?
Add emotional energy to these pictures by placing yourself there, in the picture, and feel how you WILL feel. Get excited about it.
Explore all the various emotions involved – let them develop. Your powerful ‘why’ is your deep feelings behind how you will enjoy and benefit from what you want.
Here is a key idea that has helped me.
The only reason you want to think about something you don’t want
– is to use it to identify it’s opposite
– what you DO want.
Then shift your thoughts and attention to focusing on your want.
Your thoughts and emotions need to be in support of what you DO want in order to allow it into your life experience.
Always ask yourself – are my thoughts supportive or un-supportive of my desires?
Move your attention away from the un-supportive thoughts and at least to a neutral place, but even better to emotionally backed thoughts of your wants.
John
“The mind moves in the direction of our currently dominant thoughts.” — Earl Nightingale
“No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore,
you have the power to change anything about yourself or your
life that you want to change.” — Barbara De Angelis
“Your most important asset is the conscious control of your own life.” — Butterworth:
“Learning to be aware of feelings, how they arise and how to
use them creatively so they guide us to happiness, is an
essential lifetime skill.” — Joan Borysenko
Check your thinking all the time-
Is it supportive of your desires?
Or,
Is it furthering what you no longer want?
Train yourself to use the thoughts of what you don’t want to trigger you to think about what you do want. It can be an automatic switch in your mind that links the first thought that pops up to the more desirable thoughts.
When you catch yourself dwelling on your don’t wants –
Ask yourself,
What do I really WANT right now?
Start thinking about it
Gradually develop the idea and add emotion.
How would I feel right now, if it were this way right now
Having one thought link to another is a normal activity of your mind, it is doing this all the time. It’s just the word association that gets set up automatically in your mind linking one thing to another. Now you can use it specifically on your decision, for your purpose – it’s your mind, you are in control! Use this ability to your advantage.
If I say, “home cooking”, what idea pops up? — Whatever is attached to the phrase in your mind. This is one of the many features of your mind that runs automatically that you can choose to use on purpose.
Developing this ‘switch’ connection in your mind for all of your ‘don’t want’ thoughts will get your automatic mind to assist you with moving more of your attention and focus to what you DO want. More time and attention on these thoughts will allow you to develop clearer pictures and deeper feelings, and this is how you will properly influence your subconscious and the universe.
“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single
thought will not make a pathway in the mind.
To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again.
To make a deep mental path, we must think over and
over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
–Henry David Thoreau
“Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.” — James Allen
The Law of focus stipulates that, what you focus on expands.
What do you think about? What thoughts do you dwell on? Where is your attention?
Where your attention is – your life goes, how could it go anywhere else? The universe responds to your thoughts. The more you give your energy towards something, the more you will experience the same in your life experience.
Your thoughts are seeds just like the coding contained within an acorn. If your thoughts are scattered, your life will be scattered. If you are focused your life experience will focused.
I noticed quite some time ago that in my life, if I wanted to something in my life I had to get very involved with it mentally. I had to get intimate with it – with my thinking, and I could not get intimate with a halfhearted effort or thought commitment. I had to invest quality time and focused attention before I could get desirable results.
Many people know that their thoughts are like seeds with the intelligent universe, but do not actually fully understand the entire concept.
The frequently misunderstood component to this concept is, what actually comprises the seeds critical directive component. What is the equivalent to the DNA of the seed – that part within the seed that is the code that the universe responds to in kind.
Actually it is your daily thought. If you can imagine that your daily thought is contained within the shell of an acorn you would be very close. This means all of your daily thought, not just the thoughts you have for a few moments when you think about what you want and make some statements to yourself about what you want.
It is actually the combination of all your thoughts. You are defining the contents of your seed with your every thought. So if you tell yourself that you want to have, be or do something for a few minutes, but then let your thoughts go to some sort of fear, doubt or worry – you are clouding and confusing the contents of your seed.
The universal intelligence responds to your thought requests – the whole group of them as one. Which ones are actually dominant – what you really want or your fears, doubts, worries, complaints and rationalizations.
Your complaining, griping, dwelling on fear, doubt and thinking that you must figure it all out consciously not only creates stress for you but to the responsive universe it is all part of your request – the DNA of what you will develop into. If you are stuck in thinking that you must figure it all out with your conscious mind, you actually close down your connection to intuition and inner guidance.
Think about this: What if your DNA did not contain a clear definition of your eye color? Say there was some doubt as to the possibility of having blue eyes. How could the universe support the something that was not defined? What color would your eyes be? Would you even have eyes?
The universe can’t act on mixed up, unclear messages – it will act on whatever is most predominant, no matter what it is. If you spend more time thinking about doubt, you will get more doubt. If you dwell on a specific fear, guess what you will get more of.
Most think that all they need to do is to think about what they want periodically and occasionally make positive statements supporting their desires and they are planting their request. This is not enough. What you think about in between, most of the time, will have more impact.
If you end up using a greater part of your time thinking about your fears, doubts and worries, they will have more impact on the definition of your seeds. If you think about your desires for about 10 minutes a day and then spend the bulk of the day worrying about what could go wrong, thinking about how difficult it is, doubting yourself, or trying to figure out how it can work – what does your seed look like?
Here is the key to developing the seeds for what you want for your life. What are all of your thoughts throughout the day? They are all contributing to the DNA of your seeds. You can’t let your clearly defined desires get muddied with a bunch of counterproductive thinking during the day. The majority of you thoughts need to support the description of the seed you desire. And a big part of this is to not muck it up.
Sure you find yourself dealing with many things during the day, but the key is – where is your focus? There is a big difference between thinking about something long enough to take care of it and dwelling on it.
Don’t let your daily dealings totally overpower your happiness and your growth and development.
Your thoughts are energy. Whatever energy you project will receive an appropriate response from the universal intelligence, as it must respond in kind to your request -the seed you are defining every moment of each day.
It’s important to be happy as much of the time as possible, otherwise you are focusing on what you don’t have or like – adding these thoughts to your seeds. I will get more into this in another session.
You have command of your thinking, you don’t need to allow any thought that pops into your awareness to take over. Choose to think about something different, more in alignment with happiness and your desires..
John
“Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can
immediately command when we focus all of our resources on
mastering a single area of our lives.” — Anthony Robbins
“Whatever commands our time, energy and resources, commands
us.” — Tom Sine
Whitman says it another way: “Oh, while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me shall ever take command of me.”
“Your daily life is your temple and your religion.” — Kahlil Gibran
Marcus Aurelius: “Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.”
“Let all thoughts be thoughts of noble progress,
For then even failing cannot be called a failure.”
–Tirukkural 596
“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed.
Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be
well.” — Marcus Aurelius
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our
thoughts. And with our thoughts, we make our world” – Buddha
“We cannot always control our thoughts, but we can control our words, and repetition impresses the subconscious, and we are then master of the situation.” — Florence Scovel Shinn
“The universe never says no to your thought about yourself. It
only grows it.” — Neale Donald Walsch
“You are today where your thoughts have brought you;
you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” — James Allen
“You live with your thoughts — so be careful what they
are.” — Eva Arrington
“Every thought we think is creating our future.”
— Louise L. Hay
“Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it.
Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.” — Buddha
“There is a great idea that you will encounter again and again on your quest: you are a living magnet, constantly drawing to you the things, the people, and the circumstances which are in accord with your thoughts. In other words, you are where you are in experience, in relationships, even in financial conditions, because of what you are (which is where you are in consciousness).” — Eric Butterworth
Take command of your thinking. Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want or what just comes up in the day. Train yourself to catch yourself complaining, worrying and doubting, then just stop it. Focus on what you want or even something that makes you happy.
“A man/woman should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph.” — James Allen
“As long as you think the problem is out there, that very thought is the problem.” — Stephen Covey
“The mind moves in the direction of our currently dominant thoughts.”
— Earl Nightingale
Every thought we think
Is like a flower in life’s garden,
And not the permanent possession of anyone.
Let our thoughts then
Be fragrant and beautiful,
Not rank and ugly,
That the memory we have behind us
Be felt as a blessing on this earth.
— Omar Khayyam
“Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” — Alexander Graham Bell
“As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.” — James Allen,
“If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never
hold onto a negative thought. I don’t eat junk foods and I don’t
think junk thoughts.” — Peace Pilgrim