Ever hear somebody say you’ve got to “find your passion”? I used to hear that, and they almost made it sound like passion is some kind of colored rock – just lying out there under a bush – waiting for the lucky day I’d somehow stumble across it.

Well, passion is a funny word to begin with, and we use it pretty loosely. We often say “passion” to mean a strong, uncontrollable fit of emotion.
……….“He flew into a passion of rage at the insult.”
……….“The lovers were swept away by their passion.”
……….“This murder was a crime of passion.”

And I don’t know about you, but that kind of passion doesn’t sound very desirable or trustworthy. Passionate love, or passion in my work aren’t bad ideas, but it all sounds so unmanageable – sort of like a thundering herd of wild and fractious horses.

Little wonder, then, that many of us can’t bring ourselves to go out and “find your passion.” Heck, who wants unbridled emotions sweeping us away at the most inconvenient times?

Complicating things further, we’re also told that nothing great is ever achieved without passion. So here we sit, stuck between a rock and a hard place, with the rock being a fear of murderous rages and the hard place being our right and proper desire to do big things in life.

Rewording the Meaning of Passion

Right here I’m going to offer what I think is a logical solution. How about we retire this troublesome word “passion” but keep the desirable qualities it stands for.

This first crossed my mind a few years back.

I was in a coffee shop, eating my burger and fries and eavesdropping on two guys at the next table. I still remember their names – Frank and Eddie. Their conversation went like this:

Now, I suspect that Frank’s wife was responding the way she was because Frank was also not being very eager or enthusiastic. Everything in their relationship had probably become routine, un-adventurous, un-exciting. The problem was, Frank could clearly see what he was not getting. But was almost certainly blind to what he was not giving.

Making Passion More User Friendly

Hearing that conversation, I had a sudden realization. Sitting there chewing my burger, I saw what had been missing from my life. My work – in fact, most of my life – was as flat as Frank’s situation. I began to realize, dimly, that I was trying to get life to give me all the good stuff, while I was investing virtually none of my own eagerness or enthusiasm. And without these qualities, there was no fire in any of my day-to-day experiences. Life was rolling over and saying “Well… okay…” but it wasn’t excited by my advances.

Life was meeting me halfway, but I didn’t like where the halfway point lay.

From that day I gradually began injecting extra enthusiasm into my dealings with other people. And you know, the darndest thing started happening. Others began showing more enthusiasm in return.

At work, I deliberately looked for and found reasons to be more eager. And there too, results changed for the better.

Life was still meeting me halfway, but now the halfway point was in a much better neighborhood.

So the next time you hear an expert advising you to “find your passion,” you may want to simply rephrase it into “find your eagerness and enthusiasm.” I suggest that just changing the words will make things feel more manageable, more doable, and give you an armload more confidence.

It worked for me.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

But have you ever had a teacher come tapping on your shoulder, ready and eager to reveal to you all the secrets of the ages? Most people will laugh and tell you that, no, their teacher is really, really late for their appointment.  Don’t be too hasty, however, to answer this question. If you’re like me – like most people – you may have unwittingly turned away more teachers than you’ll ever realize.

In the first place, have you ever wondered why a teacher would even appear and take you on as a student? Anybody can understand why you’d welcome a teacher to guide you forward. But how do you know when one appears? And what does a teacher look like, anyway? Well, it’s probably not like you were expecting.

If you’ve been thinking of a wise looking personage draped in a bedsheet and carrying a little wad of flowers, you’re almost certainly going to be disappointed.

In real life, most teachers aren’t even people. When was the last time you over-ate and got indigestion?

Or drank too much and felt hung over the next morning?

I’ll bet you never thought of those feelings of discomfort as your teachers. But there they were, tapping on your shoulder, offering you their wisdom, and you may have ignored the lesson they wanted to give you.  Instead, you may have downed a quick stomach-soothing potion or popped a headache pill – some kind of “quick-disconnect” to keep from suffering the results of your own actions. Well, pay attention here. As long as we use quick-disconnects between our actions and their results, we’re refusing to learn from the most common form of teacher.

So do we really welcome lessons?

We all say we’re trying to learn, to improve, to master life’s lessons. We claim that we’re seekers after truth. Yes, that’s what we say…  But not all of life’s lessons involve noble-sounding eternal truths. Life has lots of things to teach us. And so it scatters lessons everywhere amidst our day-to-day affairs.

Often the most important lesson we can learn today awaits us in the humble, nitty-gritty details of life, down in the dirt. And we never have the opportunity to meet that lesson till the day we stumble and fall, and we’re lying face-down in that dirt where the lesson is waiting.  For a lesson like that, we won’t ever learn it until we’re reduced to that level. Only then are we in a position to receive that particular wisdom from life.

Even then, we may not be ready. We may actually meet that problem again and again, each time treating it as an annoyance brought to us by the perversity of life. But that problem can teach us important lessons.  Something has to change, however, before we’re ready to learn from that teacher. Only when something changes – something within us – only then can this “problem” become a teacher.

We all have lots of teachers waiting patiently to teach us their lessons. In fact, there’s a whole faculty crowding around to share their lessons with us. These teachers are all dressed in the rags of problems. But their lessons involve wisdom about:

• Money,
• Love,
• Honesty & honor,
• Confidence,
• Persistence,
• Self worth,
• Health,
• Habits,
• Appetites, and
• Trust.

Although this list is not complete, these ten areas cover most of the problems we all wrestle with on a daily basis.

For years we have probably been trying to avoid, weasel away from, or eliminate problems like these. For years we may have been treating those problems as unwelcome, unfriendly inconveniences. Something to be escaped from as quickly and painlessly as possible.

In fact, I’ll bet you have never looked at your money problems as a teacher. Nor ever seen your marriage agonies as a kindly instructor of spiritual growth.

Well, life’s teachers may not always be gentle, but they ARE endlessly resourceful. And the only reason they ever seem harsh is because they are simply bringing to us what we unwittingly ask them for.  That upset stomach, or that hangover… admit it now, don’t we know – before we start – that this sometimes happens? But we go forward anyway, gambling that this time we may not have to pay the price. Or thinking that there’s always a “cure” that will cancel out the results of our own careless, unwise actions.

We do this everywhere, whether it’s in matters of money, love, or personal relations. We deliberately ignore the results of our own actions, refusing to take responsibility for what we bring on ourselves.

So if we want a real, live human teacher to appear and instruct us in the mastery of life’s mysteries, we’re going to have to meet them half way. Because they’re the advanced teachers. First, we’ll have to graduate from the simple stuff before they ever appear.

But the truth is, we may never see one of the flesh-and-blood teachers. Why? Because we so resolutely resist the ‘simple’ lessons that the Universe may be thinking, “Why waste a ‘real’ teacher on the bad students? These bottom-of-the-class dunces are constantly whining, complaining, dragging their feet, and refusing to learn from the results of their own actions.”

But the real teachers are there. They’re standing back waiting for us to become ready. And what does it take to be ready?

First, are you still ignoring the teachers you already have? If so, you might consider paying more attention to your problems and listening to the lessons you’re already being offered.

That’s it… just listen

Stop the constant, desperate struggle, and just be still. It’s amazing what you can learn when you’re not fighting, not resisting and struggling to escape, not denying.

Every problem we have is a product of our own thinking, our own feelings, our own actions and habits. And that problem is there to do us a service. Its intent on one thing only.

No, not to torture us, but to teach us.

The teaching, however, will seem like torture for just as long as we continue to struggle against and resist the lesson embedded in the situation.

Fortunately, there are a couple more shortcuts to recognizing the face of these teachers. There truly are simple ways for finding the lessons, for learning them and for leaving the struggle behind.

Mastery Method #1

I’ve already mentioned the first way. That’s simply to stop fighting and listen. Just asking in simple honesty, “What is the lesson in this situation?”

You already know about any number of spiritual or mental practices. You’ve read about meditation. You may be doing it on a daily basis.

But how are you using it?

For the longest time, I was trying to use meditation as a tool for solving my problems. That approach did not work consistently.

Then one day I realized that meditation is not for solving problems. In fact, as long as you’re focused on solving, you’re not receiving anything. You’re not learning.

Try this approach instead and see how much more effective it can be.

Go into your meditative state in your favorite way. That may be chanting, centering, self hypnosis, or repeating a mantra silently. However you like to do it, spend a few minutes becoming still.

Now, instead of floundering around, trying to create the solution to your problem, simply imagine yourself PAST the problem. The difficulty no longer even exists in your life. Feel the peace and the simplicity of your life without the struggle. Let this feeling of being past the problem wash over you and fill you. Feel how you would be living your life when the problem doesn’t even exist.

Then give thanks for this feeling. Let waves of gratitude roll through you, then open your eyes and go about your business. Every time that problem confronts you, just remind yourself that you already know how it feels to live with that problem behind you.

What happens to the problem? Sometimes, believe it or not, it’ll just dissolve and disappear from your life – never even requiring you to solve it.

This most often happens when you find you’ve lost interest in the behavior that causes the problem. Somehow, you are no longer attracted to overeating or drinking too much. Whatever behavior is connected with your particular problem, it may simply fade from your life.

Other times, the solution will come to you during the daily routine of your life, and it will always be far simpler and easier than you ever imagined.

In any case, the best approach to learning from problems is to recognize that you are the one who supplies the energy to them, and you are the one who can withdraw the life from them. You are the source of their power. When you begin ignoring them, you starve them, and they go away.

This approach is simple and elegant.  And it’s vastly disappointing to anyone who loves to talk about all the drama and difficulties in their life. You’ll need to get past this addictive need for drama.

Mastery Method #2

One of the basic truths of psychology is that each person is nearly blind to her or his own weaknesses, even though others can see them clearly.

You can see others’ peculiarities, and they can see yours. Most people, therefore, try to avoid being unmasked by others.

However, there’s a better way to use this principle.

Why not form a mutual aid group dedicated to helping each other see themselves through the eyes of the rest of the group?

This type of group is, in fact, extremely common among highly successful people.

It’s called a MasterMind Group, and virtually every successful man and woman who ever lived has formed or joined such a group.

Let’s say you’re struggling with the marketing aspects of your business. You know your product or service extremely well, but you don’t know the best way to reach the public.

As a member of a MasterMind Group, you find that everyone freely shares their skills and insights with each other. So when you belong to one of these groups, it’s a simple matter to ask the other members for advice on marketing. In effect, you’ve just told the group, I have a weak area that I need your help with.

The strong marketers in the group, on the other hand, may have a blind spot in the area of product development, so you freely help them.

Everybody gains because everybody is there to help the entire group to grow.

Thus, you have access to a whole group of teachers. And your only obligation is to serve as one of THEIR teachers.

Hah! I’ll bet you never expected to discover that you’re somebody’s long-awaited teacher, did you?

Life’s funny that way. Everything you think you know sooner or later turns out to be backwards: your problems are your teachers… you are someone else’s teacher… what else is waiting to be turned upside down?

Why, next somebody may be telling us that life can even be beautiful.

Cheers,
Charles

Even apart from the new year period, the fact is, most folks spend their time focusing on the ways things go wrong: What didn’t get done; what I don’t like, can’t do, am not suited to, wouldn’t be interested in, and anyway it’s just an awful lot of bother. That’s the best worn pathway in most of our minds.

Two main ways most folks talk about new year’s resolutions: One way is with great resolve and hope. The future gleams before us anew, and we’re giddy with the thought of making a fresh start. A start in which we won’t be shackled by any failings and weaknesses that might have hobbled us in the past. This attitude is most common around the first week or two in any new year.

The second way we talk about hopeful new ambitions is with a wry, not-quite-cynical-but-close-to-it grin of dismissal. We may be apologetically pushing away our own pretensions of optimism, or we might be discussing someone else’s obviously overblown and hopeless ambitions.

However, as the Buddha said,

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”

And in another place,

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”

Notice what I wrote above? That the most common habitual way of thinking about ourselves, about our hopes and our aspirations is dismissive, even slightly cynical? Indeed we are what we think.

Notice also that the other way, the optimistic and hopeful way is on the right track, but it has little staying power. At the first signs of opposition it usually cools like stale steam and drips away in tiny dribbles.

So in the spirit of the new (possibly world-changing) new year, I have a different suggestion, one that I like to call New Year’s Realizations.

More about that in a moment, but first, I’d like to share with you some extremely well-thought-out observations and suggestions from guest author Peter Vajda on ways we use to keep ourselves inside the failure fence.

One Way We Might Subvert Resolve in 2012
By Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C.

New Year’s resolutions are on the tip of most everyone’s pen and tongue. Thousands of suggestions, “how tos,” and “best ways” are being offered to help folks make, and carry through on, their New Year’s resolutions. Sadly, as in past years, 98% of those who make resolutions will have given up or failed by Valentine’s Day.

Three major causes of failure are:

When we understand the nature of the “victim consciousness,” we gain insight into how true and real change occurs.

The victim is rife with self-limiting and self-sabotaging habits and patterns of living, working and relating. It is these self-limiting patterns that prevent us from do-ing and be-ing from a place of integrity, responsibility, maturity, accountability, dedication, and commitment. It is our subconscious drives that cause us pain and suffering.

When we look deeply inside, honestly and self-responsibly, we uncover our shadow self – a self, feeling victimized, that lives a life of greed, ruthlessness, egocentricity, blind ambition, irresponsibility, inaction, and/or self-sabotage. Choosing to reflect and become conscious of these habits, patterns and programming in an effort to release them supports us to evolve to a place where clarity and a truthful picture of our inner and outer realities will serve us well.

When we look deeply inside and reflect, we become more able to transmute the energies of our self-limiting habits and patterns into the energy of authenticity, integrity and trustworthiness – supported by our inner qualities of courage, commitment and steadfastness.

Four characteristics of a victim mentality are:

• lack of clarity about our goals: ping-ponging between and among realistic and unrealistic or illusory expectations and goals, and blaming others for our lack of clarity;
• inability to deal with time and resource limits and constraints and blaming other people and events for our inability to use time and other resources effectively and intelligently;
• confusion around the law of cause and effect – lack of awareness about how we are creating/causing the current events in our life and a lack of clarity about how we can change our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, intentions, behaviors and actions to effect positive change, believing that my issues are not about “me” but about others who are responsible for my issues; and,
• denial that my life choices have positive or negative mental, physical, emotional and spiritual effects on my overall health and well-be-ing, and that my pain and suffering are caused by some external event or circumstances.

Mired in the quicksand of victimization, we find ourselves constantly projecting our anger and negativity on to events, circumstances and others for our predicament. We project our (unconscious) inner frustration with ourselves out towards anyone or anything we feel we can blame for our state in life. Sadly, we’re actually creating our own universe but blaming others because it’s not what we want.

Taking time for honest and conscious self-reflection supports us to take responsibility for our self – including our “dark side.” Self-reflection sheds light on the “stories” we make up to avoid taking responsibility for how we project our “stuff” on to the world. Self-reflection supports us to identify how our emotional programming – anger, fears – create our lives at work, at home, at play and in relationship.

When we are honest and clear about our wants and needs, and what we are willing to do, we can create a solid foundation for our personal growth and development. We attract and relate with others who share the same self-empowering life view.

When we understand the lessons we need to learn from our current situation, what we need to do becomes obvious. Then we have to choose to take action. However, this understanding requires focus, commitment, consistency and compassion for our self.

Spending time in our inner world through meditation, silence, journaling, etc., is both emotionally and spiritually nourishing. This nourishment supports awareness of the “how” and “why” things appear in our lives – how we are creating our personal universe. Time in our inner world nurtures our capacity for self-love and self-kindness – which support us to create and inhabit a love-based, victim-less personal universe.

In this place of safety and protection, we begin to extricate our self from a victim mentality and move forward from a place of positivity and steadfastness. In our inner world, there can be no victimization as it’s a place of neutrality – a place of soul qualities – clarity, peacefulness, groundedness, stillness, surrender and allowing.

Self-reflecting helps us observe how we use our emotions to create our inner and outer worlds, our worlds of victimization. For example, are we being “nice” to accommodate others in our attempt to feel acknowledged, seen and loved or because we authentically wish to engage in adult, heart-felt, mature relationships – are we holding our physical, emotional and psychological boundaries with others or allowing others to threaten and abuse our boundaries so we can feel wanted and liked?

Once we have cultivated support, self-love and solid ground within, we can expand our space to include others. But we must be very conscious not to include any event, circumstance, idea, thing or person who will take us away from our center, from our self-love and move us back into feeling the victim.

When we surrender to someone else’s agenda, at work, at home, at play and in relationship, we enter their universe as a victim. The important question is why we allow others to control us. Perhaps,

Inner work and self-reflection, done diligently can often support us to

Inner work and self-reflection can support us to focus on what really matters, to let go of what holds us back, to trust our soul and Spirit for guidance and to use our core, inner strength (not “willpower” which hardly ever works) to take positive action for our self instead of engaging in self-destructive and self-sabotaging actions, releasing our self from the stranglehold of victimization.

Many “resolutions” are not conscious choices. They are knee-jerk reactions to something we don’t like about our self – and it’s usually about our “packaging” or some surface issue. True “resolve” requires a deep, inner, and conscious process. The start of 2012 is a wonderful opportunity to change our experience of failed “resolutions” to one of true and lasting change and transformation. We can choose to release the victim within and see what being in true control of our life is really, really like.

So, some questions for self-reflection are:

• Who or what is my guiding authority? How is this authority working for me?
• What are my core values and how do they direct my choices and decisions at work, at home, at play and in relationship?
• How do I choose and implement my personal standards?
• Am I self-reliant? How so?
• Do I ever explore the dynamics of my inner world?
• What bright light shines in my inner world?
• What does not shine in my inner world? Do I know why?
• What feelings and thoughts inhabit my inner world? Are they supportive or limiting?
• Who’s in my personal world? Are they supportive or toxic? Do I want them there? How have I attracted them into my life?
• Did I (or others in my family) experience being a victim when I was growing up? How so? What was that like?
• How can I create a more nurturing, loving and compassionate inner world for my body, mind and emotions?

SpiritHeart – Coaching for Essential Well-BE-ing
— at the intersection of body, mind, emotion and spirit
Values-Based Coaching, Counseling and Training
Phone: 770.804.9125 (Atlanta, GA, USA)
E-mail: pvajda [AT] spiritheart [DOT] net
www.spiritheart.net and www.ahchiyo.com
“What makes you think work and meditation are two different things?”
— Buddha at Work

Back to Charles:
….. We’re not beginners here. We know that our thoughts create our reality. Our thinking forms our path beneath our feet even as we’re stepping forward into it. Yes, we know it, but…

So the question is, why don’t we see more change in our lives, more satisfaction, more positive achievement?

And in that very question lies the answer we’re seeking so desperately. To be satisfied, we find ourselves needing more, more, more.

However, what if we decided to put some of that dissatisfaction on hold for a bit, and – just for a little while – dip a tentative toe into the pool of satisfaction instead?

Rather than keeping that so-elusive satisfaction far, far away, out there in the future somewhere, couldn’t we – just for a little while – find something we have right now to be satisfied with? Even one little thing?

After all, if we’re what we think, what are we thinking? What are we thinking?

New Year’s Realizations

So my big suggestion is really quite small and easily accomplished. Instead of our usual frantic, frenetic round of doing, of running in this and that direction, what if we just think a few of our thoughts differently – just for a little while – and watch what happens?

Now, the conjoined twin of cynicism is impatience. They always walk in together, a matching pair, and where you see one, you’ll find the other as well. Of course it has to be that way. Isn’t it obvious that cynicism and low expectations cannot bear being in the presence of patience? And vice versa?

The other day I mentioned to a friend that this year I’d be doing New Year’s Realizations rather than the traditional resolutions. She asked, do you mean realizations as in “new awarenesses” or realizations as in “things that become real”?

My answer: why make a choice? If we’re doing the new awarenesses properly, then the new things becoming real will follow quite naturally and easily.

That’s why, in 2012, I’ll be spending more time on my thoughts and mental processes, and I’ll be spending less time thinking about all the stuff I want more, more, more of.

Instead, I’ll be directing my thinking toward all the things I’m glad about, all the things I’m thankful are already in my life, all the ways I already have so much joy and happiness and fulfillment and health and friends and family and satisfaction in my life.

I hope you’ll join me – just for a little while – in these New Year’s Realizations.

Cheers from the end of 2011,
Charles

P.S. Leave a comment below and tell me what you think. Even better, tell me what you’re going to do?

This ebook (originally titled Your Cosmic Cash Pump) has been freely available to my subscribers, and the subscribers of many of my writer friends, since 2005. Now it’s time to open it up to a wider audience. So I’ve rewritten parts of it, reslanted it to a more specific readership, given it a spiffy new cover, and turned it loose on Amazon. At an amazing price, too!

If you already have a PDF copy of that original ebook, it may be time to take it out and re-read it. After all, the A.S.S.E.R.T. system is just as effective as ever.

But when you search for it, don’t be too surprised if your copy has gotten misplaced or even lost in the course of various computer upgrades. If you’d like to read this classic again, maybe take another, more serious run at ASSERTing your success, or just get the latest, most up-to-date version, simply click on the cover graphic. It’ll direct you to the correct page.

Here’s Amazon’s Product Description:
What if You Could Attract All the New Business You Want… on Total Automatic?

As a business owner, Charles Burke had to deal with all the same problems every business person faces. Clients who pay slow or late… regular customers who suddenly quit sending work… bankers who don’t understand freelancers or entrepreneurs… workers who would rather not work… in other words, all the usual stuff. But Burke had started his new business was in Japan, and he was isolated, without a wide support circle of friends, so it was sink or swim. The short version is, he didn’t sink. In fact, against all probability, he thrived. And that was largely a result of his unraveling the Law of Attraction and how it really works.

A Private Quantum Cash Pump

Time was, only the mystics claimed that the world is an illusion, spun out of constantly changing energy and light. But now even the hard-headed, “materialistic” scientists have started saying the same thing.

Nuclear physicists tell us that, according to Quantum Theory, matter (as we think of it) doesn’t even exist. They also say that by observing things, we measurably change the way those things act. Now, if we can “observe” something and change the results, Burke wondered, why not put this to work? Why let physicists have all the fun? So He started observing (visualizing) events that he wanted to happen. But he did it in a special way, with a very particular mindset. And gradually, as he gained skill, his results seemed to confirm that he was influencing events.

From Potential into Reality

Every event, so the theory goes, is only one of countless potential realities. They all exist equally in the quantum realm of potential. Then, we make a choice and bring one of them into actual being. Believe it or not, this wild-sounding babble comes out of the serious study of quantum physics. But the practical application of this theory is, we should be able to “Attract” an event or reality by choosing it.

But would it work? Turns out it did… more and more frequently. Nor was it as hard as he’d expected. Of course, Burke didn’t go out and try to influence the results of a lottery. Instead, he concentrated on win-win situations. Attracting things that would also benefit another person too. For his copywriting and editing services, why not – for example – attract more companies that needed the exact services he provided? That worked especially well.

In his own mind he called this his “Quantum Cash Pump.”

The Pump could bring him cash, of course, but other things too, as long as it was a win-win. His biggest discovery was that during his younger, unsuccessful years, he had been leaving out important steps in the Attraction process. It was like trying to bake a cake but forgetting the flour.

Eventually, Burke’s little Quantum Cash Pump became very dependable, even running on semi-automatic most of the time. After the first couple of years, he had so internalized the Attraction process that he only had to think, “I’d like more business,” and the phone would start ringing within the hour. It became that automatic.

Click here to get Quantum Cash Pump as a Kindle ebook from Amazon now while it’s only $.99 (introductory price).

Special Note: You don’t need a Kindle device to read Kindle ebooks. Amazon has free software for your PC, for your iPad and other handheld devices so you can grab an ebook and read it anywhere. Oh, and many of the book prices are amazingly low right now.

Free download: Kindle Reader software for the PC – click here to get it straight from Amazon. And did I mention – this software is free.

The Business Owner’s Quantum Cash Pump

Warning: You could be forgiven if you mistake this “free report” for a full-on book. It’s that good.

It all started when I got an email the other day from long-time friend Alan Tutt saying that he’d just put the finishing touches on his latest report, and would I like to see a copy. Well of course I would. I’ve found that if Alan writes something, it’ll be well worth reading.

His next email brought an attached copy of Treasure Map to Online Riches. I opened it up, and >> Holy Cow! <<  it’s a manual for starting your own Internet business. I repeat – a manual. Not what I’d call a report at all. For example:

There’s a section telling you exactly how to choose a focus for your new business that will fit your ambitions, needs and personality type. Choosing whether to provide products, services, leadership or so-called utilities comes down to knowing what people want to buy, and what satisfactions you want from investing your time.

Alan has also included a section on persuasion. Naturally, you’ll be telling prospective customers about your product or service, but the language you choose for telling them makes a huge difference in how they react to you. Learning to put things into your target reader’s own words and phrases instantly gets you a bigger share of their attention.

Oh, and there’s also an entire section on how to write your own sales letter. Yep, that dreaded “S-word” document that so many have approached with so much dislike and dread. (Just as an aside, let me ask you a quick question: if you needed to write a sales letter today, would you know where to begin?) If you’re not sure, then that alone is reason enough to download this report and dig in.

Frankly, if you’ve been wanting to start up an Internet business but didn’t know where to start, didn’t have enough money, didn’t have any connections, and didn’t really like the idea of selling anyway, then you’ll find Alan Tutt’s little 165-page “report” a useful manual for getting started by sidestepping all those blocks, barriers and gut-twisting fears. (Another aside: the info on communicating and motivating is so complete you could actually take it as a guide for becoming a pro copywriter, turning out sales letters for other businesses at five hundred to a thousand bucks a pop. And up.)

Please remember that, after all, there are only two basic rules for success in anything:

• Rule 1 – Start…
• Rule 2 – Don’t stop…

Of course, there’s an unwritten third rule: somewhere along the way, figure out what works and do more of that. The first two rules have to do with motivation and resolve. You and I are working on those together here at BullsEye Living.

And now this free report takes care of that third rule. Click to download your free copy of Treasure Map to Online Riches. Then start. And don’t stop.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

At one point he told me a wonderful story about his first venture into the job market. He was fresh out of college, after majoring in finance, and he interviewed with a major consulting firm. The salary they offered was excellent, the benefits were awesome, and the interviewer all but said, “Can you start right this minute?”

But something niggled at the back of my friend’s mind. He asked his interviewer, “Do you have a swimming pool?”

“Yes,” … proudly.

“Do you ever swim in it?”

“Oh – well, no. I don’t have a lot of time for that. But my kids love it.”

“So you spend your weekends with your kids?”

“Oh – well, no. I work some pretty long hours.”

And that little exchange set the course of my friend’s entire working life. He thanked the interviewer for the offer and the opportunity, but said he didn’t think he could bring himself to live with that much separation from the people and things that were important to him.

That one decision probably saved him from a life swamped with frustration, job dissatisfaction and burnout.

Then this morning, synchronistically, I received the following article from frequent guest author Peter Vajda, who discusses much the same subject from the other side of the experience. Here, Peter asks us the question…

Compared to Who(m)?
By Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C.

While many folks are “making a living,” at the same time they sense a lack of significance, meaning, in their work. But, rather than exploring the nature of their dissatisfaction by reflecting, going “inside” and discovering the “root causes” of their frustration, they choose to find fault with externals: education and training programs, health and pension programs (albeit, today often quite justifiable), management, or workplace conditions.

These folks are driving themselves to their own spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical poorhouse in new automobiles, eating at swank restaurants, watching plasma TVs and the like, all the while suffering from increased stress, overwork, overwhelm and an environment polluted by industry. They allow themselves to be devoured by the corporation and spend relentless amounts of energy and time (a lifetime, for many) scratching and clawing their way up the corporate ladder to achieve corporate success; to be(come) “somebody.”

On the way, they set aside their dreams (once, actually, real dreams) and tailor their lives and personalities to what the “market” demands. They practice the arts of “power dressing”, power lunching, having or creating “winning personalities,” all the while mired in the quicksand of emptiness, leading to unhappiness, dissatisfaction and some flavor of dis-ease. In order to be “somebody,” they burn out without ever having been on fire.

What is it about work that leads so many to be so dissatisfied, so unhappy?

A while back, a special issue of Time Magazine had an article about what is known as “reference anxiety” “keeping up with the Joneses” constantly comparing one’s self and one’s “stuff” with someone else’s. Much of this contrast/comparison dance takes place in work environments and is characteristic of many of today’s workplace cultures.

This “reference anxiety” syndrome even accounts for the widening gap in income distribution. The Time article states:

“Paradoxically, it is the very increase in money . . . that triggers dissatisfaction [. . .] clinical depression is 3 to 10 times as common today than two generations ago . . . money jangles in our wallets and purses, but we are no happier for it, and for many, more money leads to depression. [. . .] millions of us spend more time and energy pursuing the things money can buy than engaging in activities that create real fulfillment in life . . .”

Perhaps the dissatisfaction element lies on a much deeper level of the psyche – it’s about the inner person, not about the externals.

In other words, it’s not the work that’s at cause when it comes to worker dissatisfaction.

It’s curious that of the thousands of business books that are published each year, there’s hardly one chapter devoted to friendship in the workplace (real and true friendship, not the “good-old-boys-back-slapping stuff”, that is a faux substitute).

Relationships rule the world, even the world of work. Finding meaning rules one’s deeper sense of happiness, fulfillment, and well-being, even in the world of work. It’s relationships first with yourself, then with others, that must be examined to explore the true and real root causes of employee dissatisfaction.

The spirit of an organization begins and ends with the spirit of each individual. When we come to life with the right values, we are grounded on a foundation of truth, honesty, sincerity, integrity and self-responsibility, and from this place, dissatisfaction can more easily morph into satisfaction.

So, really, really, why is worker satisfaction continually falling? Perhaps it starts with “me,” not with “it,” “him,” “her” or “them.”

So, some questions for self-reflection are:

• Could I be contributing to my own dissatisfaction at work? If so, how? Honestly.
• Do I have an expectation that my company or manager is responsible for my happiness at work?
• What is it about work that excites me? If nothing or, “not much,” then why do I choose to remain there? How might I proactively turn this around?
• What personal and professional goals have I set for myself at work this or next year? If I don’t have any, could that contribute to my unhappiness?
• What lessons did I learn about myself at work last year? I did learn some lessons, didn’t I? How can I leverage these lessons to increase my satisfaction at work this year?
• What mutually-supportive relationships do I want to develop at work?
• What self-defeating habits do I want to eliminate?
• Are there toxic people in my life at work (or at home) who contribute to my unhappiness at work?
• Who can I serve, support, coach or mentor that will bring me satisfaction or increase my happiness at work?
• How have I grown at work during the past year? I have grown in some positive way, haven’t I? If not, why not?
• What one or two baby steps can I take this week or this month that can increase my satisfaction at work?
• How did my parents relate to work as I was growing up? Has that influenced how I relate to work?

SpiritHeart – Coaching for Essential Well-BE-ing
— at the intersection of body, mind, emotion and spirit
Values-Based Coaching, Counseling and Training
Phone: 770.804.9125 (Atlanta, GA, USA)
E-mail: pvajda [AT] spiritheart [DOT] net
www.spiritheart.net and www.ahchiyo.com
“What makes you think work and meditation are two different things?”
— Buddha at Work

Back to Charles:
….. We all know that by using a few simple techniques such as visualization, NLP, self hypnosis, EFT and others, we can charge ourselves up and achieve pretty much anything we aim at. But what are we aiming at?

And if you find yourself unable to motivate yourself toward the goals you’ve chosen, one possible reason may be that you have self worth issues.

OR…

That may not be it at all. It may be that you’ve chosen goals and bitten on bait similar to that which was offered to my new friend – things that sparkle and impress, but which don’t satisfy your inner self. He was sharper than most, my friend… he recognized the warning signs and didn’t bite the bait. Instead, he took a pass and ended up living a life that was arguably even more financially rewarding, but that also fed his inner needs.

So if you’ve been suffering from chronic discontent over the conditions of your life, it might be that you’re spending all your waking hours on crap that you don’t really like, don’t want, and wish you could live without. If so, what are you prepared to do about it? (Yep, this is a deliberate in-your-face challenge.)

To recap, let me again ask the opening question: What are you aiming at?

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

Most of us probably aspire to be somehow different twelve months from now. Maybe richer, or healthier, or happier, or more in control of our lives. Maybe all of those. Well, here’s the good news: if there’s anything we’d like to change about ourselves there are things – very effective things – we can do. On the flip side of the coin, however, we probably haven’t been doing the effective stuff.

It’s been said that what each of us becomes is decided almost entirely by the books and the people we spend our time with. Let’s think about this for a moment, because it might be possible to mine a little gold out of that old proverb.

For example, every wise man throughout history has told us that we become what we think about all day long. Our thinking – where do we get those ideas and concepts that continually run through our heads?

Mostly from the people and the reading matter that are all around us.

We are constantly exposed to ideas, beliefs and mindsets in the books, newspapers and magazines we habitually read. And we absorb another big portion of our mindset from the people we regularly associate with. This includes not only our family but also our co-workers, our friends and even the people in the media we watch or listen to. That newscaster, that radio DJ, that talk show host, and even those sitcom characters – their views and attitudes are continually rubbing off on us.

So let’s say that in the coming year we don’t change anything. Instead, we continue on in a straight line, changing neither our associates nor our reading matter. Then what can we expect from next January? More of the same, right? And that’s a good thing if we’re already aimed in a direction we want to go.

But what if we’re not?

What if we’re not aimed anywhere? In fact, what if we’re plodding along in a rut, endlessly looping through the same unvarying daily cycle… work-home-sleep, work-home-sleep.

The only direction we’re going is down. Deeper into the rut.

So we get inspired and decide to change our life. This time our intentions are strong… we’re going to do it for sure this time… we have enough inspirational dissatisfaction to drive us powerfully forward this time.

And we get ourselves yet another inspirational book, another how-to course, another self-help manual. And we begin.

Okay… good. Now we’re taking charge of the ideas and the concepts that are filtering into our thoughts. We’re bent on changing things. This is a great start. But…

If past experience is any indicator (and it’s important that we face ourselves here…), virtually all do-it-yourself self-help tends to quickly run out of steam. Ever wonder why that is? I mean, the success rate for DIY self improvement is miniscule.

Of course every case is different, but there are some repeating patterns here. And one of those patterns is this: the people around us are usually a more dynamic, more influential source of mental reinforcement than the books we read. Even the very good books.

Fact: the people who go beyond books and add a coach, a mentor or a circle of success-minded associates are far more likely to succeed than the person who attempts it with books alone.

Yes, books are good, but virtually everyone needs more. Those people who have a real live human mentor, coach or role model to help them – those people tend to be more successful in staying the course they’ve set for themselves. If we have ongoing access to somebody experienced, somebody who actually walks the talk and can share their real-life experiences as we encounter obstacles – if we can have that, we’re much, much more likely to get where we want to go.

It’s the difference between having a guide as we climb Mount Everest, or clawing and staggering up the north face with nobody but ourselves.

So what’s the point here? Simply this. If we ever want to change something about our life, we’ll need to accept that going it alone is not a very promising success model. Not impossible, but the odds are microscopic.

Sure, we trot out the old standard excuses:

• What successful person would want to mentor me?
• I don’t have the money to hire a coach.
• What if I fail anyway? All that money wasted.
• I’d rather do it myself… maybe I’ll really do it this time.
• I’m not sure what I want to change, and a mentor would pressure me.
• Plus a hundred other limp-wick excuses…

But the facts remain. More people succeed with a live person helping them reach their objectives. And fewer people succeed when they try to do it on their own.

So if we have any desire to change our lives, we can vastly improve our results by getting ourselves some help. That one difference will drastically multiply our chances of succeeding.
____________________________________________________________________
……….
……….
Now, about your dream to become an author… to write your own book…

This is a very good time to start because my Rocket Write Your Book workshop is about to begin. And through midnight Saturday, you’ll get a very special rate when you sign up for my coaching because you’re one of my readers.

I’ve mentioned before the advantages of having a book of your own. The respect you gain from others, the prestige, the connections and the doors it can open for you. Not to mention the renewed surge of confidence and self esteem you get to enjoy. These are powerful reasons.

But undermining those reasons is the un-reason of:  “I’m not sure I can do it….”  Or maybe it’s:  “What – me write a book? I wouldn’t know where to begin”.

But remember what we were just talking about, the advantages of having a coach or a mentor? Your chances of success go way, way up when you have somebody to guide you up that mountain. Somebody who’s already done it and knows the way.

So if you’re even a little bit interested in writing a book of your own, know this – I’m here to help you do it. Now’s the time… click here to sign up for the Rocket Write workshop because with me guiding you every step of the way, you really can do it.

Find out how achievable this dream of yours really is, with the right kind of help. But you want to move on this right away… that special price disappears tomorrow night, Saturday the 22nd.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

And I’m going to need your help to accomplish them. My primary target is to turn out products, products and more products this year. But not just any old products. I don’t want to turn out the same-old-same-old stuff you can get anywhere.

So that’s what I need your help with… I want you to give me your problems.

Whatever your biggest, meanest, hairiest, scariest challenges are, whatever the things are that you’ve never-ever been able to get past – whatever they are – I want you to hand them over to me. (I ain’t scared.)

Please give me your worst difficulties, your biggest nightmares, your roughest, most stubborn blockages – I’ll be more than happy to take them off your hands.

And I’ll even thank you for them.

Just share with me what you need and I’ll build solutions for you that’ll work straight-up, exactly like they’re supposed to do. And I won’t quit till they DO work.

Now, at this point, I could probably offer a list of suggestions to get things started, but rather than prattle on about what I think is on your mind, instead I’ll just stay quiet and listen to you.

Send me your problems here…

First, a disclosure: I am not an enlightened being (probably), nor do I play one on TV. I am, however, a guy who has wasted many years of my adult life and untold ergs of energy chasing one mistaken incarnation of enlightenment after another. So I may be slightly biased, but stay with me for a bit, and I think you may pick up some useful ideas.

Hah? Did he say useful? Yeah useful, as in – Hey, dang, my life just got a little easier here, Mabel.

Would enlightenment really cure what ails you?

I’m convinced that ‘enlightenment’ has been seriously over-sold and under-understood. Now, I’m not trying to tell you the Buddha got it wrong – only that most of the world have, perhaps, got the Buddha wrong.

If you’ve ever felt dissatisfaction with your life, I can tell you the two things you did about it. For the longest time you obsessed over what you believed was missing from your life. Then you moved on to taking measures – trying to fill that gaping hole with some of whatever you believed would fill the gap.

Problems come in only three varieties: health, money and relationships. If you’re depressed, it’s because you feel deprived in one of those areas. If you’re angry, it’s because you feel deprived in one of those areas. If you’re afraid, it’s more of the same. It doesn’t matter what form your discontent takes, it’s always about something you don’t have, and you feel like it’s difficult or impossible for you to get. In a word….

Lack.

Any feelings of dissatisfaction with your life arise from the idea that your life just doesn’t measure up, that you’re missing something. In other words, what you want is still out there somewhere, and you feel incomplete without it. Again, this is an incarnation of lack.

I can also tell you exactly what happened next. Whatever action you were taking, it didn’t work… at least not for very long and not very well. So you chased even harder and faster, trying to get something else – thinking it was the rest of whatever you thought you needed to make you happy.

The missing part… the ‘rest of yourself,’ as long as it’s out there somewhere, can make you really, really frustrated. So you keep on chasing whatever that missing ‘rest of you’ is (and to compound the problem, your ideas of what’s missing keep shifting).

Eventually, if you’re at all introspective or spiritual-minded, you’ll come around to positive thinking, affirmations, law of attraction and other inward directed efforts. These are virtually always used for ‘attracting’ whatever it is you want.

And there’s an endless variety of things you want, but they all boil down to three areas: health, wealth and relationships. These areas are the yardstick we measure ourselves by as we judge how we’re doing.

It’s like measuring your height. You’re nine years old and you’ve grown an inch since last July. If you’re a nine-year-old girl, and you’re already towering over all the other girls, making a mark on the wall that’s another inch higher is not a happy occasion. For boys, it’s just the reverse. In either case, however, that mark on the wall has no meaning at all… until we compare it to other people’s marks. That’s when we decide that we’re doing better than or worse than other people.

We do pretty much this same dance when we compare our money ‘marks on the wall’ too.

So we try this and we try that, and if we don’t get satisfying results, we eventually run through all the physical problem-solving measures we can think of (or all of them that we feel capable of doing).

And then, sooner or later, we turn to ‘spiritual’ measures to try and repair our shortcomings. We pray. We program. We affirm and treat and meditate and visualize and chant, all in hopes of persuading some higher energy or greater being to join the game for our side.

We hear urban legends of this person’s friend or that person’s mother who attracted home and car and lottery winnings. We don’t know the person directly, but a friend of a friend has assured us it was true. Or such-n-such guru relates the successes of many of his own followers.

So we pick up a belief in a higher mind (I’m not saying this is incorrect, only that we gradually learn that it exists). Usually, however, we get many of the finer points wrong at first. All the new knowledge and ideas, as they come in, are still being filtered through our current wishes, hopes and feelings of lack.

So we latch onto the idea that there’s a higher energy. And if we can only master that higher energy – become enlighted – then we can use the power that comes with it to get all the money, good health and romance we’ve always dreamed of. Never mind that our dreams are all skewed. Yep, they’re skewed badly by that same old idea that we need something or someone ‘out there’ to complete us.

But What if You Don’t Need Completing?

What would happen if you suddenly saw – very clearly – that no amount of money could complete you, that no lover, no matter how devoted, could make you more than you are right now, or that your health, no matter whether you’re robust, ill or even dying, can make you more complete than you are right now? Tell me, what would happen if you suddenly grasped the full clarity of that reality… the reality that you’re as complete right now as you’re ever going to be?

No matter what you find yourself desiring right now, what if it were totally irrelevant to your worth, your value, your completeness. And further, what if it never has been relevant?

The Japanese have a phrase: ‘This is this, and that is that.’ This cryptic phrase is a warning to never fall victim to your own muddy thinking. Just because we think two things are related, that doesn’t mean it’s so.

And just because you’d like more money, more health or more love, and just because you’re feeling frustrated, that has nothing at all to do with your worth. Nor your completeness. This (the missing ingredient) is this, and that (your actual value) is that. They’ll only appear related if you MAKE them related.

But since we haven’t yet learned to separate ‘this’ from ‘that’ in our thinking, we continually flounder off in this direction and that, searching for some kind of higher ability – enlightenment – to help us become a ‘better’ (richer, healthier, more attractive) person.

If only I were rich, I would be more complete. If only I had better health. Or more sex. Or lots of friends. Or were able to do – whatever. If I had that, I’d be happy and content.

Well of course that’s all a bunch of BS we’re feeding ourselves.

When I was in my late teens and all through my twenties, I stayed overwhelmed and intimidated by life and its unpredictable nature. Life didn’t work the way I thought I’d been told it did, and I just couldn’t understand what was wrong. I really believed that my missing ingredient was courage… the guts to stand up, face life, and hit life harder than it was resisting me. Everything appeared to take more courage than I had, and so I was convinced that courage was the one missing ingredient I needed to ‘be successful.’

In fact, I often wished there were a book titled How to Have Guts. I even vowed that someday, when I’d become successful, I’d write that book myself.

It took me years to figure out that I didn’t need more guts. In fact, I probably had more courage than most people because I kept on, day after day, year after year, ramming myself face-first into all the ‘obstacles’ that seemed to block my pathway (rather than simply and easily strolling around them).

I was seeking enlightenment, but it was a flawed concept of enlightenment. I still thought that the only way to reach what I wanted was to command more force, more power, more courage to charge fearlessly into the jaws of fierce opposition from the Universe itself. To dominate and beat down all those ‘obstacles.’

What a joke on me.

By now you’ve probably figured out that I’m using this word ‘enlightenment’ as the solution to whatever your current obsession might be.

If you’re feeling, right now, that money is your problem, then the power to make lots of money will be the color of your enlightenment. Or if you have health challenges, that will be the main focus of your brand of enlightenment. Failing at love? Then the power to attract more love is what enlightenment looks like to you.

See what we’re doing to ourselves here?

Whatever is standing in the way of our instant gratification is a ‘problem’ to be solved, an ‘obstacle’ to be surmounted, an ‘opponent’ to be beaten and demolished.

In short, we’re still being impatient and childish, refusing to focus on anything beyond immediate gratification of our own desires.

Take money, for example. Maybe you have a high degree of skill in something. Let’s say you’re good at meticulously painting famous proverbs onto tiny grains of rice. Wow, that’s an amazing skill.

So you decide to write books, make DVDs and give seminars on how to do rice paintings. And you’re going to be rich!

But…

What if the rest of the world isn’t terribly interested in rice painting? So you advertise and market and knock on doors and write articles and books and reports. But the world yawns at you. They ain’t buying it.

You have several options available at this point. You could:

1. Get desperately depressed and shoot yourself,
2. Give up and feel sorry for yourself for the next few years,
3. Keep right on doing what you’re doing now, hoping something ‘out there’ will change,
4. Switch to doing some other money project that you’ve heard about from a get-rich guru,
5. Look for the reasons why people are not buying,
6. Research what they DO want to buy, seeking something related to your skill, but much more in demand,

Now clearly, some of these strategies are less likely to lead to success than others. But often we become so fixated on what WE want that we never stop to ask what our prospective customer might want. Total self-absorption.

Resolutions, Goals and Other Things We Throw against the Wall

Okay, so we’ve looked at one common way we misapply our efforts. Another way is when we set goals (or New Year’s resolutions). We really feel like our life would be better if we only lost that last 5 pounds (or 50).

But we do remember, don’t we, that nothing ‘out there’ in our world (or in our future) is really able to make us more complete than we are right now. So if you’re waiting to impress others before you can like yourself, the truth is, you’ve unwittingly given all your power and self esteem away to other people.

So most of the time, our resolutions and goals are two-bit, small-time and small-minded. They’re very often aimed at getting something to impress other people, and once they’re impressed, that’s how we know we’re okay.

That benchmark – how much we impress others – that’s the most common way for us to judge our own self worth. It’s a piss-poor way, but it’s nearly universal, nonetheless.

But What Could We Use Instead?

We already know the answer to this, but knowing and doing are two different things. The fact is, we have many gurus and truly enlightened people trying to point the way for us. They tell us and tell us how important it is to release our identification with the things we think we lack. They remind us to practice being in the present and to stop listening to our monkey mind.

They tell us… and we learn all about what they say. But learning (knowing) is still not doing.

They point the way and we, idiot-like, stare at the pointing finger rather than the truth they’re trying to show us. Or as the old Buddhist proverb says, ‘The master points at the moon but the fool stares at the finger.’ The teaching is not the truth; it’s the pointing finger. And nor is the master the truth; he also is the pointing finger.

At some point our awareness must leap that gap between the pointing finger and the moon. Between the master (and his teachings) and the truth.

This all boils down to one thing: at some point you’re going to have to reach beyond all your knowledge, take a deep breath and step off into the gap where you don’t know squat, and experience the thing for yourself.

We do this all the time, but we don’t realize it. The day your father took the training wheels off your bicycle, you did it. The day your mother left you at school with the teacher and all those other kids, you did it. The day you started your first new job, you did it.

Your first sexual experience, your first dive into the deep end of the pool, the birth of your first baby… all of those things were steps into new, uncharted territory.

Sure, you knew about some of those things from watching others. But only when you stepped up and started doing it yourself were you really doing it.

And this enlightenment thing is exactly the same way.

If your current concept of enlightenment means more money, or better health, or a happier love relationship, then the only way to get there is to stop learning about it and start doing it. That means dive in and experiment with real events, people and actions.

Did you get that? Dive in… take action… do stuff… not just meditate about it. Visualization and meditation are fine. They’re important. But alone, they’re not enough.

How to Let the Non-Working Crap Go

Ready to release the things that keep you from being effective? Ready to let go of the time and energy wasters in your life? (Right about now, you may be starting to feel just a bit anxious. After all, it may be starting to sound like I’m suggesting you give up some of the comfortable little time-killing routines that fill so much of your day.)

I can almost hear the protest: ‘Hey, if I can’t have my little routines, I might be forced to stay insanely busy all the time and never get any rest… sounds like too much pressure… I need my leisure time, my familiar little busy-ness.’

If anything like that briefly flitted across your mind, then you’re in good company because most of the world is wired the same way.

Now, the things you use for filling your day, your actions and your thoughts… something like ninety-five percent of those things are out-and-out habits. And another three or four percent are habit-based, with only a little room for variations. In other words, virtually everything you do and think – they’re all habits.

YOU are habits.

There’s not really anything wrong with that – it makes survival in day-to-day life easy and relatively automatic. But… as soon as you decide you’d like to change your daily life a bit… those habits make it hard to alter your behavior or your thinking. All your thoughts and actions have been running in well-worn grooves for years, and that’s where they want to stay.

So it takes some effort to carve new grooves for yourself. It’s entirely doable, but at first those new routines won’t feel as comfortable as your currently established grooves. And this matter of “it takes effort,” well… that’s what derails most people seeking to reroute their lives.

Mostly, we let our habits take care of themselves. We get comfortable driving our car, and we don’t try to change anything until we buy a different car. Then we climb in, sit down and find that our old driving habits are slightly out of place in this new vehicle, and for the next week or two, driving feels odd. But with repetition we gradually grow accustomed to the new vehicle, and soon we’re comfortable again. We’ve adjusted our habits to match our new circumstances.

We do the same thing if we move to a new neighborhood, or change jobs, or trade in our old computer for a new one, or suddenly find ourselves single again after several years of marriage.

We cope.

But that’s event-initiated change.

What if we try to change something just because we want to?

Like shedding weight, or standing up straight after 20 years of slumping, or thinking of ourselves as prosperous and rich.

We’ve heard that affirmations work. Or hypnosis. Or visualization. Or dream boards. We’re not exactly sure why, but “they” say these things work, so we dive in and try them.

And these techniques may work for us, but more likely they don’t. The fact is, these techniques fail to produce the desired results in a large majority of cases. If they do fail us, we usually don’t know why. We go skulking off wondering “what’s wrong with me.” We’ve heard all the stories about other people getting what they want. And we didn’t. So it must be us.

Well, yes it is us, but not for the reasons we assume.

Here’s a well-known fact about habits – well-known, but almost nobody takes it into account when they start trying to change their life. Ready? Here it is:

And I hear you thinking, “Well, duh… of course you make habits with repition.”

However, if it’s so obvious, why do so many people fail at changing their thinking and acting? Their habits of thinking and acting.

It’s well known that breaking a habit is super hard to do. Ever try to stop yourself from saying “uh” or “you know” in your conversations? That’s not easy. And yet, to change your driving habits, all you need to do is get into a different model of car and simply drive it for a few days. That IS easy.

So here’s how you change things in your life… the big secret…

You don’t suddenly try to make drastic changes in your behavior. Instead, you take habits you already have and think of ways to gradually shift your old behavior into new channels. In other words, you add on to an old habit, gently reshaping it, until it’s something new entirely.

I’ll write more about this in another post, but for now it’s enough to know that your current habits are not particularly rigid. They’re not walls holding you trapped in your present situation. On the contrary, they’re more malleable than you’ve ever realized, so instead of walls, your habits represent bridges you can use to reach any new behavior you desire.

Imagine that… your habits are the very thing you can use to bridge the gap between what you know can be done and what you do.

Living Without Lack

As soon as you really “get” this, and begin feeling it in your bones, you’ll never feel trapped again. You’ll always know that you have a clear straight path to the life you want. Just take one of your habits and redirect it in the new, desired direction. And with simple repetition, you’re there.

You’ll no longer feel separated from the objects of your desire. You’ll no longer be frustrated by the feeling that “it works for other people but it won’t work for me.” And you’ll no longer feel like you’re helpless in the world.

Once this sense of real, practical empowerment takes hold within you, you’ll never feel lack. After all, everything is now within your reach. All it takes is a new habit of thinking or of acting, and what you desire is yours.

With this new factor at work inside you, what’s the coming year going to look like for you? What’s possible? Pretty much everything, right?

And enlightenment, in whatever form you conceive it, will take you there because you’ve finally gotten it right.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

On the other hand, maybe you’re on fire with your goals, intentions and objectives. If so, how high do they reach?

Is your highest goal to lose five pounds? To save enough to buy a new pair of shoes? To be promoted up to assistant file clerk? Or do you envision yourself running a big and successful company? Standing onstage addressing thousands of wildly cheering people? Making decisions that could affect lives far into mankind’s future? Where have you placed yourself on this scale?

Your goals are arrows pointing toward your life’s purpose. Pull out your list of goals, and look it over. What are those goals telling you about the magnitude of your purpose? Is your purpose still living, or have you gradually strangled all life from it?

Today’s guest author AnneMarie Berukoff suggests that we examine…

Who Can Destroy Your Life’s Purpose? The Solution May Surprise You.
by AnneMarie Berukoff

Outside perspectives can become chains that enslave in the dungeon of mediocrity…
– Greg Fullerton

One of the most popular current best sellers is a book by Geneen Roth called Women, Food and God. It is described as an eye-opening perspective at the connection between food, weight control and life style.

It was relatively simple to make a comparison between Women, Poverty and Self-Beliefs. The theory is, compulsive eating and overweight problems are not about food, but rather filling up or satisfying an unhappy self-image or deficiency. The inner dialogue goes like this: “I accept my state of fatness and blame it on lack of will power to make me fatter and unhappier… so eating more is like a drug to keep me numb and justified why I need to eat more calories I know are fattening.”

Now think how this theory can apply to being poor. Similar words may sound like this: “I accept my state of poverty, not because I’m not able to make money but rather it helps to self-fulfill an unhappy self-image. I’m nobody special and I don’t deserve to be rich. I’ll just find more excuses to justify my job, my debts, stress and lack of success.”

The PROBLEM is not lack of money but your acceptance of it. “It’s about the fact that you have given up without saying so… ”

“Accepting problems and limitations creates a small focus, a narrow life, of hiding and shame ‘like dying without ever living’.”
– Roth

Do you ever feel overwhelmed, misunderstood, circumscribed, and victimized by an ever-changing economy and society? And there is only CORE SOLUTION. You see it every day when you look in the mirror. You just need to look deeper.

First, let’s compare being poor to being overweight. Both are undesirable. Both are by-products of controllable actions. You learn to live with self-misery and make up stories about lack of money. You worry about bills, job security, a dead-end job, or not affording the special extras for your family. You scour sales, discounts, food stamps, drive into junk-food restaurants, abide an unreliable old car, live in an insecure neighborhood, work for a tiresome boss, face congested long commutes, retract from educational opportunities.

“You assume that it’s not possible to live any other way… and you’re using ‘lack of money’ to act that out without ever having to admit it.”

This is described as a flat life.

Whether you try to control overweight or eliminate poverty, there are at least 3 choices:

One, keep doing what you’re doing… easiest.

Two, find a better routine… This is a little harder. But motivation comes from understanding the reasons to be better… better than a plate of fatty French fries or a minimum wage job and high interest bills.

Three, find those powerful feelings that nothing will destroy your life’s purpose. Know your true spirit that nurtures fidelity, gratitude, justice, physical vitality, self-development and potential. This is your true self-concept or value you must also see when you look at yourself.

Note that there is no duty to be wealthy other than the single value of money in your bank account is not for its own glory but for all the generosities it allows for you and those you care about.

What do you really see when you look at your self-worth? Would a strong, positive self image suffer the consequences of a greasy hamburger or graceless lifestyle?

The ONE SOLUTION is up to you and your core values…

If the main problem is lack of self-belief then write out this statement on a card and repeat it as many times a day as you can:

Can you see it is about who you believe you are? It is your self-dialogue that will imprison you. It is your habits that will pre-condition you to stay fixed while missing out on everything in life that is not related to poverty.

It will take new experiences to liberate you.

So it may be easier to see how a plate of food can create a burden to what your body is meant to be. That glossy creamy donut, that cheese saturated burger will manifest itself as extra poundage. That excuse “I can’t do a simple 3-steps home business plan” will prolong a paycheck to paycheck existence.

It takes more practice to see how a new and revolutionary home business concept can help you become financially secure. You already have everything you need. You are Someone Special versus No One in Particular. What you need is right in front of you and you may not realize it unless you take the first steps and watch a valuable webinar.

Shortage of time is not your problem. Let top professionals tell the story for you.

Shortage of money is not your problem. You can start with a free shopping application and save money on everything you buy.

Shortage of Self-Belief should not be the problem. You have ENERGY… with body, heart, brain, nerves, and muscles. You have INSPIRATION, if neccessary, with the previous statement repeated daily. “I want to be the best that I can be. I want to do and have and live in a way that is in harmony with my idea of the greatest goodness of life.”

In fact, let’s accept the theory that the real issue about any fear, suffering or lack of self-image may have NOTHING to do with a bad economy, a bad childhood or bad eating habits. It ALL has to do with you. And, specifically, with your connection to your Highest Self, Source, God, or Whatever-You-Want-To-Call-It.

Greg Fullerton’s speech about Who Set the Rules sums your freedom and core values the best:

I sincerely hope a great life for you.

Annemarie Berukoff is retired teacher and professional networker whose motto is a return to basics with 3 concepts for a fair, democratic home business that every family deserves. http://www.increasehomebusinessprofits.com
Discover a revolutionary home business program to shop, save and earn money by giving away a free valuable shopping service. http://www.shoppingforneweconomymoney.com 1.512.404.1270

Back to Charles:
Living bigger takes some daring, some willingness to take chances – though not very big chances at the beginning. True, not everybody can be a captain of industry like Bill Gates, Richard Branson or Steve Jobs.

But failing to try because “everybody” can’t get there? That’s a pretty lame excuse for a solitary person to use – after all, what’s “everybody” got to do with you or with me? Each one of us is a single individual, not “everybody,” right?

Or we could admit that “it seems like too much work for me,” which translates to “I don’t think I can do it.”

Or “That doesn’t appeal to me,” which also translates to “I don’t think I can do it.”

Or any of a hundred other excuses, all of which also come out to the same translation.

Of course, if you’ve been studying self help material for any time at all, you can recognize the failure thinking in that phrase. Ready to get rid of it and move on to some power-filled thinking that’ll reshape your entire self?

Now’s a very good time to jump in and start. So let’s do it, shall we?