In a recent one-week period, I received invitations to watch free videos totaling nearly 18 hours. That’s insane. And that’s when I said “enough!” No more damn videos already (long ago I stopped mentioning any of them here).

Then today – a pleasant surprise.

I heard of a nice, simple launch that didn’t offer a single video. And it’s not going to tell me how to kill my competitors, steal all their customers, nor assassinate the search engines. No fostering of my (already testy) insecurities, no taunting me with pictures of pricey autos, uselessly huge mansions, or faked-up screen shots of astronomical sales at Clickbank. And no attempts to cynically pump up my desperation through artificial scarcity.

Just a straightforward (and believable) offer… elegantly simple. A new website that offers how-to for positive living. The host of that website? My long time friend Susan Minarik. Well of course…  she would do things in an elegant and sensible way. Here’s what she wrote about her new site:

If you have read my “about” page, you know that I began this first blog (www.HighonHappiness.com) by asking myself the question, “Why am I so happy now?” Since then, I’ve been sharing all kinds of things about happiness—what it feels like, stories that illustrate it, some advice to point you in its direction, the views of life that being in a state of happiness have brought me.

But for quite some time now, I’ve wanted to do more.

I want to share with you the “how to” of happiness, to provide you with solid, practical things you can do to discover more happiness in your life.

To get in on the very beginning, just go to Positive-Living-Now and sign up for the updates. I’m putting the finishing touches on a survey you can take to help me tailor-make the site for you. And I have a thank-you present I’ll send you, too, that needs just a tad more attention. So get your name on my list and watch your email. The orchestra is warming up in the pit, the house lights are beginning to dim, and before the month is out, the curtain will rise.

I’d love to know that you’re in the front row when it does.

So I’d like to share Susan’s offer with you, too. Go and sign up. That’ll put you front row center when the show starts. (Naturally, if it’s not quite a fit for you, there’s an unsubscribe link in every email.) But I expect you’ll find something of real value there. After all, how often do you receive a launch announcement from a sensible person, without all the long, rambling, time-wasting videos and the desperate, scream-y, spittle-spewing mania?

Just quiet, dignified good sense. Positive-Living-Now.com

~Charles

And when she writes, it all comes out sounding like poetry – all of it. Here’s a recent post of hers that illustrates the point beautifully.

Enjoy.

Happiness Like a River
By Susan K Minarik

When it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter what you know about happiness. It’s how much happiness you feel that counts. Well, maybe not how much, as how deeply, how purely its river runs inside you.

And maybe not even that. Maybe we’re inside the river. Maybe it’s right there all the time, right this moment, crystalline clear and just waiting for us to taste its fragrance, to feel it lapping against our eyes, pretending to be light.

Maybe it is light. Maybe we’re like fishes, swimming in a river of light. Maybe we’re made of it, our organs and hairs and atoms all sloshing merrily in its time currents and jubilant waves.

What if we knew? What if we knew we were inside happiness all the time, and it was inside us? How would it feel? What would we do?

Would we celebrate its still places? It’s warm and quiet pools? Would we see how far we could dive into its depths? Would we cavort in and out of its waves to touch the sunbeams and starlight of its next velvety dimension? Would we test our strength by leaping up its cascading falls?

What colors would we wear? Would we swim alone or in happiness schools? Would we play in the forests of seaweed, or glide through flows of glistening ice?

Oh, the choices we could make! The wonders we could see! If only we knew. If only we knew.

Susan K. Minarik is the creator of the High on Happiness blog, where every day brings yet another way to discover that happiness is waiting and ready to be enjoyed.

Back to Charles
If you liked this brief piece, I’d like to recommend one more. It’s a delightful little fable titled Opening to Happiness – A Happiness Tale.

But I have to warn you. Once you start reading Susan’s writing, it’s hard to stop. You might even become addicted, as I have.

At any rate, it’s all fun. And happiness.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

We see the beautiful people of the world – the superstars on the playing field, on the screen, and in the business arena – we see them with their messy divorces, their drug addictions, their blowups and crashes, their swindles and suicides and murders, their stupendous mood swings – we see all this every day in every kind of media, and yet we persist in believing unquestioningly that more money would bring us the contentment we presently lack.

Now, I’m not going to trot out that tired old Biblical quote that the love of money is the root of all evil, because frankly, that’s a load of bull. Evil was around long before money ever even came on the scene. Old Paul just got carried away in that particular instance.

But be that as it may, there is an awful lot of evidence suggesting that money and happiness are totally independent variables. Not connected at all. And lately, we’re seeing some interesting studies that dig even deeper into this whole idea.

Sharing some of these insights with us today, guest columnist Peter Vajda pulls back the curtain and discusses the alternatives in…

Happiness – Money Vs. Inner Work
By Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C.

“Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.” – Henry David Thoreau

These are tough times. Millions of folks are experiencing pain and suffering – lost jobs, reduced wages, foreclosures, bankruptcies, lack of health care and on and on. According to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the most basic need is that of survival. These folks are experiencing that desperate state – simply looking to survive.

Curiously, there’s another group among us which is surviving, has covered their basic needs, but who experience a similar state of desperation – namely, unhappiness. It’s those who feel that more money is the one element that will bring them happiness.

Recently, researchers from the University of Warwick have found that, for many of this latter group, some form of inner work – therapy or counseling, rather than an increase in income is 32 times more effective in reducing or eliminating emotional and psychological unhappiness and distress, that once our “basic needs” (a la Maslow) have been met, income increases don’t do a whole lot to increase our experience of happiness and well-being.

In their study, the researchers found a four-month experience of therapy or counseling produced a greater impact on folks’ sense of well-being than an increase in income, e.g., pay increase, or even winning the lottery. Even the monies won for “pain and suffering” in lawsuits do not repair emotional or psychological harm.

What I find interesting when I read about the state of our country’s health, is that many base their assessment of “health” on the basis of the GDP and similar economic and financial statistics. Me? I choose to look at the country’s mental health statistics – e.g., rates of obesity, cancer, heart disease, depression, suicides, abuse, addiction, etc. Why? The results of the research also point to the phenomenon of a steady decline in mental health and happiness in developed countries over the past fifty years. Individual and collective economic growth has not increased national happiness.

On a personal level, Daniel Gilbert, author of the recent book “Stumbling on Happiness,” suggests that “by and large, money buys happiness only for those who lack the basic needs (Maslow). Once you pass an income of $50,000, more money doesn’t buy much more happiness. Our culture implores us to buy bigger, newer, better things, but research shows “stuff” does not buy happiness.”

In the end, there’s a vast segment of our population that spends their lives doing things that they hate to make money they don’t want to buy things they don’t need to impress folks they don’t like, all in the attempt to experience happiness. Is that you? And if so, to ask the ultimate trite but important question, “How’s that working for you vis-a-vis experiencing true and real happiness?”

“If all the gold in the world were melted down into a solid cube, it would be about the size of an eight room house. If a man got possession of all that gold — billions of dollars worth — he could not buy a friend, character, peace of mind, clear conscience or a sense of eternity.”
- Charles F. Bunning

So, some questions for self-reflection are:

• What do I want money to do for me?
• What is happiness to you?
• What things, qualities, service, purpose do you value in life?
• What is the role of money in your search for meaning? Does it even have a role?
• How do you relate to money?
• Does money scare you?
• How does money rule your life?
• Is money your servant or your master?
• What was your and your family’s experience around money like when you were growing up

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:
Abe Lincoln once observed that, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” If he was correct, and I suspect he was, then money is absolutely unrelated to your state of happiness… except in one tenuous way.

If you’ve made up your mind that you’re definitely going to be unhappy, then the excuse you choose to blame it on may be “a lack of money.” In that case, it’s still not really related, but the lie you’re telling yourself makes it seem like it’s the cause.

So how do we stop hiding behind this belief in the power of money?

Actually, the steps are not hard. But taking those steps can be. An excellent place to start is to ask yourself the questions that Peter suggested above. And I don’t mean flip out a two-second response to each one. We really need to sit and explore deeply the ideas and feelings these questions can stir up within us.

Here are a couple more questions you can play with:

• What if you could go ahead and be happy right now, without waiting for a change in money status?
• What if it were not the lack of money causing those feelings you get?
• What if the unhappiness you feel were just a long-standing habit that you learned at an early age, and it’s not really even yours?
• What if your belief in what’s causing your unhappiness was something you started doing because you needed some kind of reason to make sense of feeling that way, so you invented one?

Remember, the secret to asking good questions is to stand outside the situation and look back in, as if you were a stranger seeing the whole thing for the first time. This gives rise to a lot of “what if” and “how” questions – the best kind.

But don’t ever let yourself get sucked in to “why” questions. They’re not so bad (in principle), but from long habit, we mostly use this type of question to blame somebody or something for what’s happening.

So what if you could be happy right now – with nothing added… just by making a simple decision?

What if?

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

P.S. – Do you even think this is possible?

Susan Minarik is a member of my mastermind group, and her blog High on Happiness always leaves me with a little glow of … well… happiness. And fun. You see, Susan has discovered how to infect others with her bouncy, joyous attitude that life actually is kinda fun, and that all you have to do is look around a bit and you’ll see it there, grinning right into your eyes.

Her latest post suggests that we…

Weave a Little Joy Song
By Susan Minarik

Susan Minarik's High on Happiness blog

Everybody’s got their troubles, some tiny enough that they’re no more than a sneeze, and some so big their owners drag ‘em around like burlap sacks full of wet sand. There’s nobody who can’t use a little strand of joy poked through the fabric of her day – a smile, a kind gesture, a word of encouragement and support.

It takes so little to make a difference in somebody’s day, to beam a little sunlight on it.  Why, a simple hello, spoken with genuine gladness wakes the spirit and warms the heart.

Oh, I know you have troubles of your own.  And maybe you wonder why you should be the joy weaver.  Why can’t George do it?

Well, he could!  As a matter of fact, he ought to!  Not because he’s without his own little pack of stresses, frustrations and groans.  But because it would do the same things for him that it will do for you:  Let him get his groove on, his beat going.

You know, you start singing a little joy song and pretty soon it echoes back at you from all the walls and halls and faces around you.  Happiness is potent stuff.  One little whiff of it, one little beep of its horn, and people perk right up.  They can’t help it; it’s part of their wiring.  And that’s a fact.

Lord knows we got us plenty of gloom and grumbles.  We don’t need any more.  What we need—what we really, really need–are a few good joy weavers out there spreadin’ it around, stitching grins through the cloth of the day, bringing out its sparkle and its light, adding some bright woof to its warp.  What do you say?  You want to sign up?  It’s easy.  And the pay’s great.  Give it a shot.  Get out there and flash that smile.

Recently I mentioned the following quote from a book called Bring Me the Rhinoceros.

Happiness requires a certain surrender…. Your unhappiness is threaded through your idea of you. Happiness would overturn some things you know about yourself. Happiness asks, “Are you willing to be a different you?” Or, “Are you willing to be not you?”
– John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros, pg. 147

As each year ends, I like to reflect back on my life, my relationships, my career, and my writing. One of the things that’s occurred to me is that “Into the Centre”, our old e-zine, was first published in 1999. There’s 10 years worth of writing in the archives. I’ve been spending some time making the old articles over into the format of the website, which means a better chance to read some of the old stuff.

I recognize that many of the themes that I present on the blog are in a sense rehashings of things I’ve written about before. So that quote from last week, when I first read it, it kind of stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t just that it was a clever sentence – and it is – but that it frames the whole thing in a way I’ve never thought of before.

I don’t know about you, but in my life, these kinds of insights tend to stack up. So a couple of days later, when the January 2009 edition of Shambhala Sun showed up, I really wasn’t surprised to find a pile of quotes that helped to unpack what it might mean “… to be not you.”

About Letting Go

My clients use very specific language when addressing what they think to be their issues. Often, they’ll say,

• “I really need to let go of… ” or
• “I really need to stop holding onto… “

And then, they’ll give me a list of one or more of things that they think they need to let go of.

They get the drift that there are certain things they’re doing that are causing the misery. It’s as if they think that if only they could drop those specific behaviors they might just be happy.

Their experience, however, typically is that even if they do manage to stop one or more of those behaviors, they really aren’t that much more happy or content. Happiness, it seems, is always a couple of steps ahead of them.

I mentioned some issues ago about another quote I’d read, where the writer used the term, “cheerful melancholiac”. I said something to the effect that this perspective fit for me – that my tendency is to be a bit sad, and if I don’t watch myself, sad can turn into really sad, and things can rapidly go downhill from there. I’ve noticed, over the last few years, that I’ve gotten over myself to a great extent, and don’t sink very far at all into this odd little pit.

It never occurred to me, however, that viewing myself as a cheerful melancholiac was just another choice. It felt so real. Thus my surprise when I read the line, “… to be not you.”

I think, prior to that, I got it intellectually that what was going on in my head – my stories, my emotions, my delusions, and all the other nonsense up there – was no more substantial than bubbles atop a rushing stream. They sure felt real – and when I was caught in the middle of all the drama, that was all I could see.

I think I am now really understanding, however, that this is just me doing what I normally do – in this case, making myself miserable. While it’s a great improvement to simply let all of that and be – in other words, to be sad when I’m sad, and not to beat up on myself over it – another, more interesting alternative, would be to really let go.

In other words, the way we all go off the rails is by thinking that certain aspects of our personality, emotional or physical condition, or the behaviors we engage in are somehow etched in stone.

Here’s the truth: The contents of my mind, much like the bubbles on water, are the game my mind is playing. They’re not me.

The January 2009 issue of Shambhala Sun is their 30th anniversary issue. They’ve grabbed sections of amazing past articles, and that’s where the following quotes are from.

To begin with, here’s one from the Dalai Lama:

The actual process by which mind creates our unenlightened existence and the suffering we experience is described by Candrakirti in his Guide to the Middle Way, where he states, “An undisciplined state of mind gives rise to delusions which propel an individual into negative action, which then creates the negative environment in which the person lives.” Page 78

Unenlightened existence [samsara] is getting caught on the wheel of life. In other words, we think that what we see is real as opposed to something we make up in our heads. I’ve written about this a lot–and about exercises to shift this.

Although it’s a lot to swallow, everything you see, hear, feel, think, all of this stuff, is simply things going on in your head. The things you see, for example, are nothing more than electrical impulses in the back of your brain.

The real point, the essential point, is to fully understand that how you view the world is how you view the world.

The Dalai Lama has it in the correct order: we go up into our heads and tell ourselves stories, act upon the unsubstantiated stories, and then notice that the world we’ve created fits the stories we’ve created. And then we say, “See! It’s just like I thought it was.”

Lame eh?

This is what each of us does, this is what each of us has been trained to do. This is me, being me. This is you being you.

On page 79 we read a quote from Pema Chödrön:

The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality, like changing our DNA. We are undoing a pattern that is not just our pattern. It’s the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution. We can have whiter teeth, a weed-free lawn, a strife-free life, a world without embarrassment. We can live happily ever after. This pattern keeps us dissatisfied and causes us a lot of suffering.

It’s all in our training. We all know that buying stuff makes us happy, because that’s what the marketers tell us. We all know that we can live happily ever after, because that’s what the movie makers tell us. And yet, when we try to live this way, we find ourselves bumping our noses against our wants, our needs, and our dramas. We believe that happiness and contentment somehow lies outside of us, and we seek after it like Don Quixote tilted at windmills.

What we believe something is, and what something is, is never the same thing.

So, now I am going to combine what I’ve always written with the “… to be not you” line.

Not only do you have to notice the games you play between your ears, but you have to actually do something about them. I think I can pretty easily get you to watch what goes on in there – certainly we do that when we teach meditation or mindfulness. Doing something about it, or actually not doing something about it, is the tricky part. Many people think that mindfulness equals calmness. What it actually equals is presence.

Presence means being with whatever is going on, with total awareness, and full permission.

The same article, new quote.

For example, if somebody abandons us, we don’t want to be with that raw discomfort. Instead, we conjure up a familiar identity of ourselves as a hapless victim. Or maybe we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is. We automatically want to cover over the pain in one way or another, identifying with victory or victimhood. Page 80

This would be being you. Being not you would mean simply sitting with the pain, watching the stories go by, and not attaching to any of it. The nonattachment part is a characteristic of the Middle Way.

Another quote:

When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.

Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideas of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment. page 80

The Middle Way is the balanced perspective. This is how we develop our core. Our self identity expands and loosens. We let go of identifying, not only with what does not work, but also with what does. We are not any of it.

If, for example, I identify with my 30-year-old solid and healthy body, I’m in deep trouble in my 60s. If I think what happened to me in the past dictates how I am right now, I’m stuck. If I think what I imagine ought to happen is anything more than the story I’m telling myself, I open myself to disappointment and heartache.

If I watch myself, and watch others, and in an openhearted, caring, and detached way, then what is, is what is, I am who I am, and what’s going on becomes a moment in time, as opposed to a life sentence.

Last quote, From Taizan Maezumi Roshi:

I am not devaluing thought. I am just mentioning that we shouldn’t mix up the fact of our life with our thoughts about our life. What we think and what actually is — that’s what Buddha talks about as constant change. Anything and everything, constantly changing. That’s the real life, which is, in a way, unknowable. And that unknowable, impersonal no-self — unfixed by any kind of values, attachments, detachments — works perfectly. Knowing nothing, it works completely. That is what this life is. That is what is expressed as no-self. When you don’t see this, suffering is waiting for you. When you see it, there is Nirvana, or peace. Page 81

Darbella and I wish you an elegant, present, and mindful end of the year.

Wayne C. Allen is a Psychotherapist in Private Practice in Ontario, Canada and the author of several highly regarded books. As a therapist, he teaches his clients to be self-responsible. He uses directed, Zen-based, cognitive and humanistic therapy to work with the mind, along with bodywork, breathwork, and chakra energy work to address the body. Read more of Wayne’s articles at his Phoenix Centre Blog.

Or… maybe you feel somehow stuck at the bottom end of the scale and don’t know how to get out of the self-esteem basement.

Much of our self-worth derives from what we’re doing with our time and our life. If we feel that the things we’re doing are significant and meaningful, our self esteem goes up. And vice-versa.

So how do we uncover the unsatisfying areas in our life? Short answer – we go prospecting. Today’s guest author Peter Vajda gives us a valuable guide for finding…

Your Value; Your Worth
By Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C.

“Only by much searching and mining are gold and diamonds obtained, and a person can find every truth connected with his being, if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul.”
- James Allen, As A Man Thinketh

In the classic book Acres of Diamonds, Russell Conwell tells about a person who sold his home and land to travel far and wide in search of diamonds — only to die penniless. In the story, the new owner of this man’s land discovered diamonds on the very property that the former owner had ignored.

In my coaching work, I’m often struck, initially, when I come across folks who act as the farmer did whenever they try to “fix” something in their lives — at work, at home, at play or in relationship.

Whether they are seeking happiness, peace of mind, or a greater sense of self-worth, self-esteem, inner security or love, many of these folks spend an inordinate amount of time, and emotional and psychic energy, looking “outside” themselves for the “quick fix” — that person, place or object that will bring them happiness.

Looking in All the Wrong Places

These folks look to their spouse, their partner, their co-workers, their friends, children, parents, or to “objects” (such as a new, expensive car, boat, home, pet, clothes, food, alcohol, sugar, plasma TV, gambling, the country club membership, etc.) to fill the “hole”, the void, to soothe their inner feeling of deficiency, of feeling “not enough”.

Many of these folks become workaholics or became obsessed with activities such as exercise, shopping, or “going out,” continually hoping that in the activity, poof!, the “answer” will appear. Sadly, and fortunately, they come to understand nothing “outside” can or will ever satisfy their “hunger” for inner peace, well-being, or a feeling of value or worth.

Like the poor farmer in Acres of Diamonds, their search comes up empty-handed and they continue to sleepwalk though life, at work, at home, even at play, with a sense of emptiness, often experiencing a low-grade-fever-type of agitation and frustration. They continually experience anger, sadness, depression (anger turned within), emptiness — feeling isolated from life and from themselves.

And just like the story, diamonds are waiting to be discovered right in their own back yard. The reality is that the only way to find the gold and diamonds is to “dig deep into the mine of the soul.” To go “inside” and stay there for a time; in one’s own company, and explore.

One of my most favorite authors, Jim Rohn, says,
“The greatest source of unhappiness comes from inside.” Conversely, that’s also where the greatest (and only) source of happiness comes from.”

Instead of searching far and wide, perhaps spend some time every day exploring inside. Instead of expecting something outside to fill you up, learn to fill yourself from within. Make a commitment to read more of the material that will help you discover who you are. Make a commitment to journal some every day to explore your self and your life — what’s working and what’s not in this adventure of yours called life? What would you like to be different? What would different look like? How might you move in that direction? Not from a self-critical or judgmental perspective, but from a place of curiosity, self-love and compassion.

A steady diet of books on business, leadership, supervising and managing is fine; but like any diet, there needs to be variety. Make a decision to grow your Self, over and above your role and position.

So, our Food-for-Thought questions are:

• Do you take time to grow yourself, over and above work, on a consistent basis?
• Do to take time for meditation, reflection, contemplation, journaling, or walking in nature?
• Do you find yourself constantly searching for happiness “out there?”
• Do you read for self-improvement, self-growth and self-development outside of your “business-related” readings?
• Do you ever feel empty inside, lacking in some way, feeling deficient in well-be-ing and inner peace?
• Are you comfortable being alone in your own company for extended periods of time?
• Do you find silence to be soothing or to be deafening?
• Do you really, really, really know yourself? How does that question make you feel?
• Are you resistant when it comes to exploring and discovering who you are “inside”?
• Do you like yourself?
• If you were broke, would you still have value and worth?
• Can you list 10 qualities, skills, or competencies that reflect your value or worth?
• Do you identify your self-worth by your net worth?

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

When we go mining for gold, we don’t expect to strike it rich on day one. We understand that, even if we should find gold on the first day, there will be much, much more to uncover and that we should just keep right on digging.

Our inner riches are exactly the same. The more we dig the more we’ll find, so we go forward, learning more and more about ourselves, growing more content, coming to like and appreciate ourselves more every day.

This is the kind of job that’s best done steadily, day by day by day. A fitful, start-and-stop approach to self discovery can lead to a life of exhilerating highs (alternating with desperately depressing lows). A stable sense of self worth, without the drastic ups and downs, is usually a direct result of a steady, stable approach to living.

If you do a little exploring within yourself and find that you’re still addicted to wild, dramatic swings in mood, conditions and circumstances, it might be time to start imagining what life would be like without all the disappointments and fear.

So… maybe you’ve always believed that a life free of drama would be boring? Hah! Not on your life!

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

Gladys wrote me back an email enumerating a long, long list of complaints and problems she was NOT thankful for, so she couldn’t be happy. I responded that she’d gotten the assignment quite backwards and should try again. I even suggested a few ways to look at her situation differently.

Back came more complaints – this time more forceful, more insistent, more angry. Without saying it in so many words, Gladys was insisting on her RIGHT to be pissed off at the world. It was treating her roughly, and she by-gawd wasn’t going to let it pass.

After a few more emails, I realized – all over again – that all self help is SELF help, that it must come from within. And some folks, like Gladys, simply are not ready to change their minds about life or anything else. They’re too busy enjoying their anger and self pity. They’ve practiced it for years, and they’re GOOD at it.

If you’re also doggedly hanging on to your anger, resentment and hate, no website is going to help you. It’s only when you start turning loose of all that STUFF that you’ll begin to find some joy in life.

That said, if you’re ready to make some changes and leave Gladys behind, we have some excellent advice on how you can turn loose of stinkin’ thinkin’. Today’s guest author Valery Satterwhite, the superstar mindset mentor and coach, asks us…

Life Stinks? How to Detach From Your Garbage Truck
By Valery Satterwhite

Life stinks!!

If that statement bubbled up in your thoughts recently then you may be attached to life-decaying, garbage-truck thinking. Simply put, if you stuff your mind with garbage you will create stinky outcomes. If you focus upon all that is bad in your life you will only add to the garbage dump that is becoming your daily experience.

Garbage in, Garbage out

Let’s say you’re rushing to get to work on the 405 freeway when another driver cuts in front of you and slams on the brakes. You toot your horn forcefully to give him a warning as you avoid a whopper of a fender bender. He responds with a slew of obscenities and the ubiquitous finger punctuator. It happens – a lot – if you live in a busy metropolis such as Los Angeles.

In that moment you have a choice. You can raise your fickle finger of fate in response or smile and count your blessings that you’re not that guy. Yikes, what a miserable way to live. By smiling you have kept negative feelings and energy right where it came from – from that guy. If you responded with your own favorite flip off gesture you would have taken on his garbage as yours. Pissed off, your focus is negatively directed. You will cloud your vision with so much dust and dirt and wonder why you cannot see.

“You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.”
- Ziggy, Tom Wilson comic strip panel

Where Focus Goes, Energy Flows

Some people are like garbage trucks. They run around packed to the hilt with garbage. Their life energy is full of anger, frustration and disappointment. Their conversations are filled with complaints. They find excuses and reasons why they can’t be, do or have what they want, blaming others for their misfortune. The acronym for Finding Excuses And Reasons is FEAR and when you’re in fear you Fight Everything And Reek of stinky experiences.

With a mind full of garbage these car wrecks waiting to happen will constantly seek places to dump their load. And they will dump it on you. They can dump all they want. It is up to you whether or not you take on their garbage for yourself. If you take on the garbage that can be found in the misguided lives of many people and events in your life then you, too, become a stinky garbage truck creating rotten experiences spreading your trash and stinking up your life. What’s worse is as queen of your own compost heap you’ll get used to the smell.

Be mindful of your thoughts. Pay attention to the words that come out of your mouth. Are you a trash talker? I’m not talking about using a four letter word or two to add a little color to your expression – as long as it’s positive. Are you focused upon what’s not right in your life and in your world? What you lack instead of what you have? Are you finding a lot to complain about? If so, you’re attached to a stinky garbage truck life perspective picking up and dumping more trash every where you go.

“Thoughts are things; they have tremendous power. Thoughts of doubt and fear are pathways to failure. When you conquer negative attitudes of doubt and fear you conquer failure. Thoughts crystallize into habit and habit solidifies into circumstances.”
- Bryan Adams, Canadian rock singer-songwriter and photographer

To let go of the garbage bags you’ve been carrying around to stink up the place, find the value in every experience, good and bad. This gem is often disguised as a life-affirming lesson to be learned. Take the note and apply the lesson to clean up your act or create more of the good stuff. Speak and act in the direction of your dreams and your days will reflect the sweetest smelling rose in the garden of life.

Valery Satterwhite is a Superstar Mindset Mentor & Coach who teaches people to tap into their inner power & wisdom, get out of their own way & fully invest themselves in their creative endeavors. Clients also learn how to root out self-sabotaging behavior that can land them in the National Enquirer! Empower the Wizard Within http://www.InnerWizard.com Get Free tips!

Back to Charles:
Yes, there are ways for looking at life and seeing the good stuff. And it doesn’t take rose-colored glasses. All it takes is looking for the good… even in the worst situations. And believe it or not, it IS there. It’s always there, just waiting for you to open your eyes and see it.

How else can we explain all those people who are happy in the self-same world that makes so many others so UN-happy? (Hint – it’s got nothing to do with luck.)

Happiness or sadness. Joy or discontent. Everything comes down to making a choice, and then sticking to that choice through whatever comes your way. True, sometimes we have to defend our choice. That’s part of sticking to it. But it’s worth it.

Example – happily married couples always say the same thing: they have to work at making a successful relationship. In other words, they defend their choice and make sure it keeps working FOR them instead of against them.

So why not do the same for your entire life? Smell something reeking in your mood? Make an instant decision and go to work changing it. Simple as that.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

This is good advice, but there’s also another kind of speed that the Universe loves as well. This kind is even more fundamental than the speed with which we implement our plans.

This other, more basic type of speed goes hand-in-hand with enthusiasm and inspiration, and we wouldn’t achieve much without it.

Today’s guest contributor Thea Westra explains exactly why…

The Universe Loves Speed
By Thea Westra

I’ve often heard it said that “The Universe loves speed” and this of course includes the speed of your own personal vibration.

How the world responds to you, and therefore the results that you produce, is reliant on the vibrational energy that you put out. You have likely observed it yourself, many times. One person can walk into a room full of people and everyone’s head turns and notices. Another person can attend a public event, yet when a friend asks where they’ve been their reply is, “I’ve been right here!”

The energy that we emit either makes us super attractive and highly visible or else obscure to those around us. There are people who we want to be near all the time and there are those we tend to avoid, and we can’t always quite put our finger on why. It is all related to vibrational energy.

Individuals Vary

How does that connect to your personal success and happiness? That of course depends on what you define as success and on what you say makes you feel happy. Once these are determined, you then must generate the kind of energy that would move you toward producing that result.

You will know that you are experiencing success and happiness by the emotions you feel. Emotions are your measures. Yet, they are also your access.

Some put the cart before the horse e.g. when I have ______ then I’ll feel happy, or then I’ll be successful.

When you get into action on projects that would bring you closer to your definition of success, some activities with which you engage will intrinsically provide you high energy and excitement, you’ve already associated them with fun and the things that you love to do.

Energy Drains?

Then there are the other activities, they may be things you cannot avoid in bringing your plans to fruition, yet you’re not excited by those activities and your vibrational energy drops just thinking about doing them. You say you want the result, yet you cannot seem to drive up the level of personal energy required to engage fully with that particular activity and so you never get started, or you take action with one foot on the brakes.

Essentially, three types of energy exist: universal, personal and physical. Energy is not good or bad – it is simply just that, energy. We, and all other matter, are made up of little atoms and it’s the nucleus of these atoms that generate energy, creating electromagnetic fields. Thought controls their movement, and the fields surrounding one of these impacts each of the ones alongside.

To feel the emotions of happiness or the feelings that we associate with success, we want to go to work on finding ways of creating those types of energy vibrations. It is our thoughts that we want to be focused on. And directly connected to those thoughts are the words we use when we speak and in turn, the associations that we have connected to those words.

Positive or Negative Associations

One person can say the word “mother” and feel completely at ease, yet another person speaks or thinks that word and will feel an emotion with a highly negative charge. We would then either want to replace that word with another that holds a positive charge and is therefore more personally empowering, or shift the associations we have with this word to bring us closer to a desired energy state.

For example, imagine you are in a business of your own and things are not faring well. What are all the thoughts you have when you say the word ‘business’. As Dr Phil would say, “How’s that working for you?” If you are not producing your desired results, could you attach some new thoughts to the word ‘business’ or give it another label that empowers you? This will help raise your personal, vibrational energy so that your personal actions and results will begin to reflect those newly created electromagnetic fields and attract the kinds of things you’d like.

Continue to work on your personal experience and understanding of what James Allen meant when he said, “All that we achieve and all that we fail to achieve is the direct result of our own thoughts.”

© Thea Westra is the senior thought leader at her Forward Steps site. She resides in Perth, Australia with her ultra-supportive partner Greg. Thea publishes a monthly ezine (among many other publications and products) at http://www.forwardsteps.com.au Enjoy her life success blogs at http://www.timeformylife.com/blogs.htm and get personally connected here, http://www.ask-thea-about.com

Back to Charles:
The frequency (or speed) of our energy vibration is greatly influenced by the kind of thoughts we think. Not just the words themselves, but the feelings and emotions attached to the words we’re thinking. We say they are “associated with” the words.

The good news is, if you have words with negative associations, you don’t have to take that lying down. No need to be a victim of the feelings that words pipe into your head.

We can actually re-program the feelings and meanings attached to words. If you’ve grown up with a belief that rich people are ruthless, cold and uncaring, you can change that belief. It takes a little time and effort and attention, but once done, you can have warm, fuzzy feelings every time the phrase “rich person” crosses your mind.

Think how much less inner resistance you’ll face, how much easier it’ll be to start thinking of yourself as rich, once you have this enabling new attitude. You’ll have literally raised your frequency (or vibration speed) to a new level, where you match a richer, happier, safer life experience.

Doesn’t that seem useful?

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles