Friday, December 31, 2010

Thank you notes.....great exercise for appreciating all the help you have

In my last post, I mentioned a tweet that I received fro Tom Peters about using the normally slow week between Christmas and New Years to hand write 25 thank you notes to individuals that helped me this past year. What a great idea, so I bought 25 thank you notes and sat down to start writing. The usual suspects came to mind quickly, but I was distracted somewhat......which is my way of telling myself I was not fully aligned for this task. So I do what I always do when I recognize any resistance and got quite and cleared my mind and got curious to see what might emerge. A list, just like that, the thought came to make a list to insure that I included everyone that had been of help to me this year. Now I know a list is not earth shattering for many people, but I could tell there was a very good reason for making a list, I could feel it.

Well, "The list" now required another twenty five thank you notes. I'm fortunate to have a lot of people that were willing o be very helpful to me this past year. Once I had my list of peeps to thank, I began writing the notes and for each person that I wrote to I was reminded of great effort, sometimes sacrifice and always good will offered in interactions I had with them. Talk about a rampage of appreciation!!! The process took several hours but very enjoyable hours.

Appreciation is for you more than it is for the person or thing you are appreciating. I intend to appreciate things much more in 2011, and so should you. Appreciation is a good place to be, when you are appreciative your setting the tone for more things to be appreciative of in your future. By the way, I appreciate each of you readers for the views this year, you in Russia, you in Sweden, Slovenia, Germany, China, The United Arab Emerates, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and of course throughout the US.

In case you are interested, the most viewed post was "Ending of a relationship" followed closely by "Aligned Parenting". Have a great New Year and make it what you want it to be.......You can, you know!!!

Friday, December 24, 2010

You chose to be here at this time in these circumstances

Do you believe that? That you chose to be here right now with the intention of experiencing everything that is going on right now? At the end of the day, most people don't believe that. Do you believe that you are a divine, eternal being and that you are experiencing this world but are not of it? If you are like most people, you do not. Now how can I say that most people do not believe these statements? Look around. We get what we are, and not necessarily what we want!

Most people act as if they believe life happens to them, that life is bigger than they are and they have very little control over the experiences they have. It would be very difficult to believe you chose to be here right now if you believe life happens to you. On the other hand, in one moment you can change your perspective and embrace the knowledge that you in fact did choose to be here right now. And that everything that you have experienced so far was for a reason. Which perspective is more empowering? Which perspective is adding to life and not subtracting from life? Which perspective is coming from Love and which is coming from Fear? Which perspective is expansive and which is contracting? Which perspective is deliberate and which is happen stance? I think you get the picture!! At least I hope you do.

As we come up on the new year, 2011, I challenge you and myself to be much more deliberate in creating the experience that you live on a daily basis. Even on a momentary basis, just think "Is what I am doing right now adding to the expansion of life in general?", and if not rethink why your doing it and if just changing your perspective can make it so. It can, you know!!

For instance, I got a tweet from Tom Peters (one of my favorite people) this morrning that said to use this normally slow week of the year to hand write 25 thank you notes to people that have helped me in some way this past year. BIG IDEA!!! Tom is full of BIG IDEAS!! Think of how each person will feel, especially when I articulate how what they helped me with meant to me? And better than that, how good I will feel?

Get deliberate about what you want to accomplish in 2011, and think about what you want to be, then be that!!

In the meantime, one of the things that I want to be in 2011 is more deliberate and proactive in giving back in a meaningful way, and I am soliciting ideas for projects that can accomplish this.......could be an existing charitable organization that needs some help in accomplishing their mission or it could be a completely new project that can contribute in some meaningful way to peoples lives.........I'm looking for ideas, so let me know any ideas that you may have, I plan to pick the one that resonates most with me and my highest goal and then set out to make it happen and using this forum to report on the progress being made.........so get creative and forward me ideas, please.

Monday, December 20, 2010

What are your thinking habits?

"Even people who are not geniuses can out think the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits" ~ Charles Darwin

What are your thinking habits? Most people I talk with never even think about their habits of thought. Their thoughts have them rather than the individual being deliberate and having thoughts that support their desires. Why is that? Because we are lazy and sloppy when it comes to thinking. Yes, that's the bottom line, we are lazy and sloppy. But the good news is that lazy and sloppy can be transformed to deliberate and focused. The key to the transformation is what you believe about yourself, which is nothing more than habits of thought.

The woman that I wrote about in the last post that was trusting in fear rather than trusting in Love, had a habit of thought that she couldn't trust, even though she was in fact very trusting, she just trusted in fear rather than Love and well being. When she realized this, she was amazed and could not understand why someone would do that to themselves. I told her that she was engaging in another thought habit that was not serving her, that being victim rather than owner. She got a little miffed at the victim comment until I said, "Just own it, don't ponder it or devote time to wondering what is wrong with me that I would do something so lacking in self respect". We discussed that her trusting in Fear could actually be a springboard for her experiencing a Love and well being that she could have never imagined because she now knows the opposite of that Love and well being.

I asked her to think about a relationship in which her partner was not verbally, emotionally or physically abusive and talk about what happened. She said that her relationships were always abusive in some form. I probed a little more and asked her to tell me about one that was not physically or verbally abusive. She related that her partner was having an affair and it was devastating when she found out. I asked her how she found out, and she said she never actually caught him but he had many female friends and she knew he was being unfaithful, she could feel it. He was not emotionally or intimately available for her, and she felt betrayed. She said the moment she realized it, she had always known that it would happen.

I asked her "what if it were not true? What if he was not having an affair, and he was committed to you?". She just shook her head "no". What if it was just your trust in fear creating a reality for you that was in fact not accurate? She finally, conceded that If that were true, then she and her trust in fear created the emotional abuse that she relegated to her partner. I told her that regardless of the fact that he was having an affair or not didn't matter, because she did not know for a fact, but she created the experience based on her thoughts that she was being abused again and that is what she got.

At this point she asked, "but if I just trust blindly in Love and trust, aren't I just opening myself up to be hurt again?". I told her there is nothing blind about trusting in Love. When you rest in Love and know that Love is what you are and that it is expansive and creative and where growth comes from, there is no room for deceit or abuse. Those situations don't exist in the presence of love, but they very much exist in the presence of fear, and mostly in your thoughts or perceptions. Just think about it, what seems more reasonable, trusting in Love or Fear? And trusting in each, what kind of thought environment are you creating?

Monday, December 13, 2010

Brazil's economy.....what global economic crisis

Most people wouldn't know it but Brazil has an economy growing at 7% a year, practically full employment and a two term president that has a fourth grade education! That's right a fourth grade education. Twenty years ago, Brazil had 2000% inflation. Today, full employment and the third largest GDP in the world. Oh, and did I mention, they have not fought in a war since 1870?

How does a country do that? Alignment, that's how. No conflicts in over 140 years is a good start. In general, the collective of Brazillian people are chill, "let's go to the beach" is a mainstream attitude. They don't get caught up in stupid stuff that takes them out of alignment. They don't worry about stuff and they don't care what other people think about them.

For instance, the outgoing President, when he first took office 8 years ago, the first thing he did was give the poor a stipend of $150.00 if the parents took their children to doctors and made sure they attended school. His critics said it would never work, they said the parents would buy drugs and kids would not go to school. He proved them wrong, kids went to school, and the parents gave the economy a huge jolt because they began buying goods with the money and not drugs.

The President was true to his own feelings about what the country needed and acted on those feelings, most of the time in direct conflict with the pundits and some of his advisors. He wasn't worried about politics or if he would be reelected, he just did what he felt needed to be done and the country is thriving, though still not without it's critics. Oh, and this is the President with a fourth grade education that was labeled a socialist. He jokes now that for capitalism to work in Brazil, it needed a steel worker socialist to make it work.

So, what would you do if you were not worried about what others think? What would you do if you followed your intuition or your gut feeling rather than what you are expected to do? Try it on one small thing and see what happens.

You don't get what you want, you get what you are. Be true to yourself, not to what the norm is or what your expected to be. If you are compromising on what you truly want because that is what is expected, your only getting a fraction of the life you deserve. Be real and be true to yourself. Period!

Last week I was talking with a lady that said she was having trouble trusting men. She had been hurt and betrayed in past relationships and knew that in order to have true love she needed to be bale to trust and let a man in. She said she was most frustrated by the fact that she couldn't trust. I Told her that wasn't true, that she absolutely could trust and she was actually trusting every moment of everyday. She looked at me like I was crazy (which can happen occasionally). I told her that she was trusting in the fear of being hurt and having history in her relationships play out. She was stunned as she realized that in fact was the case. She was getting what she was not what she wanted. By being afraid and actually trusting in the fear of being hurt, that is exactly what happened. Sometime by the men she was involved with and other times by her sabotaging the relationship. She got exactly what she was, a woman that trusted fear rather than Love.

It all comes down to perspective, and the solution is always the same as the problem. As in trusting in the wrong thing when you don't think you can trust. Or not following conventional "wisdom" on economic reform. If your not getting what you want, ask what beliefs you hold that are getting what you are getting and how they need to be changed.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

We see things as we are!!

Anais Nin said "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are" and she was right. And what you are is what you believe to be possible or what you take to be real. And what if what you take to be real is not true......better yet, what if what you believe does not serve you? Change what you believe to be real.

This truth about how life works came up in a conversation I was having with a friend who was lamenting about politicians in Washington. If you know me, I couldn't care less about politics, but the political arena does provide great examples of how we get what we are and not necessarily what we want. My friend was talking about how the two political parties don't work together for the betterment of the nation. So I pointed out that the reason for that is, what they are. They are anything but what they want. They are not confident in their ideology.

I used Barack Obama as an example. He campaigned on bringing the two parties together for the people of the United States, that's a little simplistic, but that's what it came down to, governing to improve the lives of Americans. I'm not judging him, but he has lost his credibility with the Republicans and many of his own party as well. Take the Tax breaks enacted by the Bush administration that are set to expire this year. He caved on what he wanted, which was to extend the tax breaks for the middle class but not the rich. Why did he do this? Because he did not believe he could make it happen. He postures that the middle class were being held hostage by the Republicans, so he accepted extending the tax breaks for everyone including the rich. He got what he was and not what he wanted.

In contrast, take Ronald Reagan back when the air traffic controllers went out on strike. He told them to report back to work by Friday or he would fire them all. And he did just that, he fired everyone of them that did not report back to work. What was he? Reckless with no regard for the flying public? No, he was confident that they could be replaced with little disruption to commercial flying and he was right. But more important, was the fact that politicians sat up and gave him respect on difficult issues that he dealt with as the President. I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that the Soviets looked at him a little differently as well. The iron curtain came down while he was in office in the midst of the cold war.

Clinton did the same thing, basically said he would let the government be shut down if the budget wasn't balanced, and what happened? Not only was the budget balanced, but it was the last time we had a surplus. He was a leader and confident in his decision making. He got what he was which then resulted in getting what he wanted. Don't confuse his leadership of the country with his indulgences with an intern.

Sounds like I'm taking political stances, but I'm not, Reagan and Clinton from two different parties provided great example of creating from the context in which we come from. Seeing things as we are rather than what they are. Obama, same thing but from the opposite end of the spectrum.

Your life experience everyday, every moment really is the sum total of what you believe to be possible, as it is Obama, and was for Reagan and Clinton. Make sense? So what do you believe to be possible? Look at what you are experiencing right now, that is your answer. If it's not exactly what you want, ask what beliefs need to be changed in order to get what you want?

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Aligned parenting 1.3

My son, his two friends and I went to the Jazz game Friday night. Then his buddies spent the night. Saturday morning was very quite which is not unique, kids tend to stay up late, but when they merged from the room, I asked them what they were going to do......and Nick was cleaning his room.......without even being asked!!!

Then my neighbor across the street arrived with his truck loaded with insulation and sheet rock for finishing his basement. The three boys went over and helped him unload the truck and take it down to the basement. Now that was impressive!!!

Saturday, November 20, 2010

What are you willing to be or have?

What are you willing to be or have or do? The answer is always available to you.....the answer is exactly what you currently have, are or are doing!! You get what you are and not necessarily what you want. This is why self awareness is so monumentally important. Self awareness can be a challenge and can be deceiving. Most people say that that they are fairly self aware, but when it comes right down to it, they are not and mostly because they think they are. By thinking that you are self aware, you run the risk of being closed off to new realizations about yourself. You run the risk of being delusional about what you are.

Let me explain. I was working with a woman that was in an abusive relationship. Her boyfriend was controlling, verbally and emotionally abusive and generally not a nice guy. I asked her why she stayed in the relationship. She rationalized that he provided well for her and her family loved him and he was successful. So I asked her why are are you willing to be treated so badly? She didn't answer, but offered "I don't want to be treated badly and it's not constant mistreatment", and I replied again "why are you willing to be treated badly?". She didn't know. She wasn't self aware to the extent that she realized she was choosing to be treated badly, she was coming from a perspective of victim rather than a woman with a choice.

When you compromise, are you giving away something (a part of yourself) or is it a case where it's just not that big of a deal and you concede? Big difference!! How does it feel? If there is any angst or discomfort, you are giving part of yourself away. My friend and mentor Robert Quinn calls this "living a slow death". Refuse to live a slow death. And this can happen in every stage of life, personal, work, family, school......and it's all about relationship, your relationship with others, but more importantly your relationship with you.

In the work place it is rampant, and the core reason why the global economy is in the precarious state that it is in. I watch it happen everyday in my office, and it's really sad. People don't even know to the extent that they are giving themselves away. I was talking with a colleague the other day about this very topic and he asked "how do you know people are giving themselves away? Maybe they are doing what is true for them". So I said, "the next staff meeting we are in, just observe the body language and nonverbal behavior and tell me what you see". He did just that and admitted that he could see the resignation in people. The apathy of the group when the person(s) in charge spoke or espoused their opinion.

When it comes down to it, are you willing to pay the price to be true to yourself? There is always a price and a payoff. The price is that some people may not agree with you and may tend to drift away from you. In the work place you may be punished for being true to yourself and not compromising your character and integrity. But the payoff is that by being true to yourself, your true potential will be realized and you will accomplish things you could only dream of. And you will not measure your success by the accolades or promotions you receive, but rather by the relationships you build and the resulting outcomes of those relationships.

Being self aware is measuring success by how you feel about what you do. Are you willing to feel the creativity, wisdom and expansiveness of pure Love or are you willing to play small and feel empty about the work that you accomplish? There is a very small difference in these two states of being, and that is you and what you are......true to YOU, or compromising and giving yourself away for the desired result.....it's not what you achieve, it's how you achieve it.........Be willing to be true to YOU! And see what comes!!!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Aligned Parenting 1.2

One of my favorite teachers reminds me that "The world is the Self writ large". This is important to remember in Aligned Parenting because our intentions or what we take to be real (our beliefs) can very much have an influence on our children. Asking ourselves some important introspective questions about what is showing up in our lives can enlighten us to what our intentions are and if they are serving us or not. These questions also reveal to what extent we are aligned or not aligned. Is the SELF and the self in alignment or not?

The same teacher that reminds me the world is the self writ large, related a story of a coaching session that took place. A couple had a young son, a toddler that when it rained the child would go outside and remove a plant from a planter in the yard and bring it into the house and drop it right in the middle of the carpet leaving a muddy, dirty mess. The parents related how they had tried everything from gently convincing the child not to do this, to stern scolding and time outs, all of which had no effect at curtailing the behavior. The coach, having no preconceived notion of what the issue might be, but being aware that the world is the self writ large asked the parents, "what have you been sweeping under the rug and not dealing with?". The father immediately answered, "finances". The couple had been avoiding dealing with an impending financial issue. They immediately addressed it and worked through it rather than avoiding it and the toddler never again brought a muddy mess into the house.

Now, some people would say that's ridiculous, how could that be, a toddler tapping into the unconscious behavior of the parents and why would the child resort to that behavior even if he did tap into the unconscious of the parents? Because children are very intuitive, especially at that age, they sense angst or uneasiness and their SELF (the tapped in, ineffable eternal Self) then acts in ways to provide insights. Why else would a toddler behave that way, and only when it rained? To make a point, but all too often as parents we don't take the time to stop and ask "What does that mean?" or "What is that trying to mirror for me to understand?"

My inner being or SELF is very goos about getting me messages, and brought to me the story of the toddler in light of my son's school work challenges and the writing that I have been doing about intentions, and being aligned. And like a brick upside my head it dawned on me that "the world is indeed the self writ large". For me, and my son not turning his school work in, even in some cases when he had completed it was the analogy that I was not completing my work. I'm not talking about my job, but to an extent even that is true. My work is ME!! I have not been taking care of all the different areas of my life....and I'll spare you the details.

How could I be certain of this? By how it felt, the moment it dawned on me what his school challenges meant to me, it was energizing, and really of no great surprise. I had been thinking I needed to get busy with this or that, getting myself back into physical shape, spending more time productively moving myself forward, etc. I have a list of things that I have wanted to complete but have put them off for no apparent reason. Of course I know the reason now and can't wait to see what comes from this.

Why bare my soul in this forum? Because that is what his blog is about. Recreating yourself at any given moment. Adding to life rather than subtracting, being deliberate in the life you desire to create and viewing the world for exactly what it is, "The self writ large"!!!

Monday, November 8, 2010

Aligned Parenting 1.1

Just an update on my efforts at being aligned in my parenting. First note, it is much more of a challenge to be aligned in this arena than in almost every other area of life. Why is that? Well, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that as a parent you want nothing but the best for your children. The second most prevalent reason is that we are conditioned to think that as parents we know what is best for our children, and in most cases if not all, that just is not true. Nobody knows better for anyone than your true self and that holds true for our children as well.

So back to aligned parenting. What it is not, is having your children do whatever they want whenever they want, or is it? Let me clarify. You have desires for and of your children. They have their own desires that will hopefully take precedent over anyone else's desires. If their desires are relegated as secondary to yours or anyone else's, they will become pleasers and become so out of alignment with their true self that nothing good can come from their pleasing. How could that be? Because nothing lasting or creative comes from a place of out of alignment. That could be a whole post topic by itself and probably will.

Back to aligned parenting 1.1. My son's Mom and I have the desire for Nick to do well in school and learn while having fun with it. Aligned parenting for me is that when I talk to him about his school work, I need to be in a good place free from frustration. Essentially I need to be aligned with my true self and be in a high vibe tapped into my infinite potential. Why? Because that is where I am most creative and influential in a positive way. That is where easy dialogue takes place between me and my son or anyone else that I may be interacting with. That is where I am most resonant with my desires. Remember, you don't get what you want, you get what you are.

By me interacting with Nick from alignment, it becomes easy for him to be in alignment. Alignment comes much easier for kids because they have not had years of conditioning that tends to take them out of alignment. When they interact with someone that is aligned they tend to slide right back into closer alignment, and when they are in alignment, they tend to attract others that are in alignment.

So how do I know he is in alignment when we are discussing his school? The way he engages me in the dialogue we are having. It's easy dialogue, we are enjoying the moment, we are even laughing. He isn't shut down and or withdrawn like when I am the least bit frustrated. He offers information about his classes or teachers, he isn't placing blame on the teachers for not giving him credit. He is engaged in the dialogue. And what I mean by dialogue, is I have no agenda to accomplish, I'll ask him a question and then see what comes from both of us with no preconceived notion of what I want from the interaction.

Oh, and he cleans his room, does his work around the house.....well, I might have to ask him to pick up the dog poop, but not more than once and he does it. And this weekend, he asked me if I had the movie "What the Bleep do we know" and the book "The Secret". Which tells me he is tapping into his True Self and wants to learn more. Luckily he has a wealth of information and resources available to him. He can tap into me, his Mom and others that will allow him discover for himself how things work and how what he thinks and feels affect his experience. I'll be here as a resource when he wants to ask or dialogue on deliberate creating.....and by me being an aligned parent, he will spend more time in alignment himself and find his way with my help or on his own.....but on his own terms.

The best way for me to teach him is to be the best example of what being in alignment can mean for me and everyone I interact with. Words don't teach!! Aligned living teaches and understanding that everything is about relationship......the relationship you are having with YOU.......I'm nurturing my relationship with myself, and once again one of my son's has taught me a very valuable lesson.......time to step up my relationship game!!!

Friday, October 29, 2010

Adding or Subtracting, which are you doing?

Your doing one or the other at any given moment! Are you adding to life or subtracting. Are you growing or not? When you are out of alignment are you growing or subtracting? That depends what you do with it, do you use it as an opportunity to learn and move forward by understanding it for what it is or do you let it go......many times, just to repeat it at a later time?

Problems are the polar opposites of the solution. When in resistance or out of alignment, your mired in the problem. When in alignment and allowance your emersed in the solution. When your frustrated with somebody else, your definitely out of alignment with yourself. Why do we allow others to frustrate us so much. Well, if we can see it for what it is, the opposite of the solution, we can easily move from the frustration to the solution. Part of the problem is that we get such tunnel vision about what the solution is that we close off the unlimited potentialities that we have access to.

Helen Keller has a famous quote that is relevant to this issue, and I'm paraphrasing the quote, but it is something like this, "you see a man made world, while all I can see is a God made world". What this means to me is that we lose touch with our true potential because of what we see in front of us as real and true, we get caught up in the material world, while Helen only saw what she thought and her thoughts were hers to have. If they were not serving her, she let them go and replaced them with thoughts and visions or interpretations that did serve her. What if you did that?

What if when mired in frustration, you just changed your thoughts, even just a little bit? You would move from frustration towards alignment and allowance. Sounds obscure and a little aery faery, I know, but what's the alternative? Sitting in frustration.

I have been getting a slew of e-mails and facebook messages about Voting in the upcoming elections. I don't vote, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that politics just is of no interest to me and no politician has ever done anything that has ever affected me. Other peeps hold the notion that by not voting, I'm not patriotic or then I can't complain about the laws we live by. I don't complain about the laws, I don't even think about them. My actions are determined by what feels right or what my desires are. And those guiding principles serve me very well, I generally don't break laws, because most of the things that laws govern don't feel good to me to do. But my thoughts are not governed by laws, i don't wear a seat belt and it's a law. Am I a rebel? No, I just don't like seat belts on me. And I don't get pulled over for it either......I wonder why? Because I don't even think about it. Get it?

What you give your thoughts to you activate. So do you want to add or subtract with your thoughts? Add, grow, expand with your thoughts!! Get deliberate about what your thoughts are and what state you spend time in. See a god made reality rather than a man made one and see what happens!!!

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Aligned parenting version 1.0

Yes, version 1.0....this is an ongoing evolution with many iterations. So this week, my son's Mom received news of more missing assignments and grades slipping. Frsutrating for her, she gets all the bad news from school. But I am committed to being an aligned parent and know that change does not happen overnight, or does it?

Yesterday afternoon, when my son arrived for the weekend, I made sure that before I spoke to him about his school, I was aligned.....meaning I was anything but frustrated or anxious. I was at ease, I know he is a tapped in, tuned in old soul and there is nothing to worry about especially when I am deliberate in where I am when I interact with him. It's all good and with the right approach his grades will turn around in a heartbeat. Oh, and they are just grades!!! Okay that one will send some peeps over the edge, but I call it as I see it. Am I being irresponsible as a parent to take that perspective? NO!!! I'm being very responsible for my well being, which is where I am most responsible for my parenting.

So a little perspective on interactions about school in the past with my son. By me being even a little out of alignment with my true tapped in Self, the interactions were text book conventional parenting.....ie; parent talking at the child, making attempts to connect with the child, but ultimately the child is shut down. Now this doesn't mean I was yelling at him, I don't do that, I was talking calmly about how important school is and even throwing in a little strengths coaching to allow him to use his natural talents to make it easier for him to do the work. His answers were generally the same, he didn't know why he didn't do his homework and then that eventually escalated to his teachers are not keeping track of his assignments and then nobody is doing well in the class, placing blame on the teacher.......which resulted in what, parents frustration level heightening (moving further out of alignment) and nothing changed. Oh he might make some baby steps, but the issue keeps escalating. Not the desired outcome, but conventionally I was being a responsible parent by grounding him, taking away privileges, his phone, etc..........all of which did not work to achieve the desired result.

It's not about the school work, it's not about the grades, it's about my relationship with myself and his Mom's relationship with herself. It's always about that, that's all we have. It comes down to, do we want life to be easy or painful? That's it, nothing more!!! And where does easy come from? Tapped in alignment with your True Self, with the divine, the infinite potential that we always have access to when we allow it.

So, the aligned parenting conversation with my son went something like this, well exactly like this. I asked him how school was doing? He said pretty good, he had a D and some missing assignments but was working on getting them turned in. I asked him what class the D was in, he said reading......and I smiled with no angst on my part, just amused by his story of how all the kids were struggling with reading. The conversation evolved to an open dialogue (with smiles and yes, laughter) about how easy it would be if he just did his homework and turned it in.....and both of us were smiling the entire time. At one point, I made the comment that his teachers would think about him differently which would impact the way they graded his work and wouldn't think about him as a "flunky". He laughed and said he couldn't believe I called him a "flunky"........the point being we had an open dialogue with both of us coming from our true tapped in aligned Selves......not the contrived concerned parent using an authoritative or punitive approach to force the child to conform.

So we will see what happens, but my approach will always be coming from the aligned parent which then makes it easier for his actions to flow naturally from the aligned Nick, which is where his best actions will always come from. We don't get what we want, we get what we are! Aligned parent doesn't want anything but for their child to be aligned, and that is what the aligned parent gets because that is what they are!

Oh, and it works for pets as well.......because it works for everything. There is nothing, and I mean nothing more important than your well being!! For you and everyone you interact with, because where you are coming from very much can impact those other people, especially if they are out of alignment. And when you are in alignment, the impact is always positive, but not always obvious. So the next time someone is "pissing you off" think about where that is coming from. Is it really them, or is it you just being out of alignment with your True Self? It's always you, and the relationship you are in with yourself! Period! And thank goodness, because you always have control of that!

Friday, October 15, 2010

Take control of the one and only thing you do have control of.....

Your alignment with your TRUE SELF. And the beauty of this is that alignment with your TRUE SELF is all you need. So why do we try to control so much other stuff? Because we think if our mate or our child or anyone we interact with meets our expectations we will feel better. And how backwards is that? If things outside of me conform to my desires then I will feel good? Ugh!! Sorry, but that is victimhood 101. How I feel is determined by how things are happening in my experience? Really? Is that the model that you want to operate from. Thanks but no thanks.

I like the wisdom of Abe "if you knew your potential to feel good, you would ask nobody to be different so that you can feel good. You would free yourself from all that cumbersome impossibility of needing to control the world or needing to control your mate, or child. You are the only one that creates your reality, for nobody else can think for you, it is only you". And thank goodness it is only you, except that very often we turn it over to anyone or anything but ourselves......stop that!

As a follow up to my post about aligned parenting and my son's grades. Here is in essence what is happening and this can be applied to any situation. The following is dialogue that takes place.....and ts dialogue taking place from the aligned TRUE SELF as well as the out of alignment self.....hopefully I can delineate clearly enough for you to follow and it makes sense.

Out of alignment parent: "My son is not doing well in school. I want him to do well in school, it's important for him to get an education so he can be successful. How can I best change his behavior so that he does better in school? I'll set consequences and impress upon him how important it is for him to do well, and if he doesn't comply I will take away privileges and ground him and punish him until he complies with my desires". That is being a responsible parent!"

Aligned son, TRUE SELF: how best can I show my parent that they can't control me, and that really all they are doing by forcing me to do my schoolwork is keeping themselves out of alignment with their TRUE SELF? If I comply with their dictates, then they will think they can control me or anything else and that will not serve them in anyway, it will actually harm them, but if I continue to resist their controls at some point they will learn that their efforts to control me will never serve them or me and are not successful. Yep, that's what I will do, I can't control them, I know that, but I can provide them with an opportunity to see that trying to control me is not and will not work".

Out of alignment son: I know I should do my schoolwork and turn it in, but I just don't always do that, not sure why, and I don't like that my parents are coming down on me and I am losing some of my privileges, why am I not just doing what I know I can do? Weird! Why can't I just do what I want, and school work just ain't what I want to do. And what's the deal with my parents anyway, they get so uptight about it, it not that big a deal"

Aligned TRUE SELF parent: I can't control my child, the one thing I can control is my thoughts and being aligned with my true self, and when I come from that place I can model for my child how best for them to create the life experience only they can imagine. Rather than trying to control my child, which isn't working anyway, I will make sure that my interactions with them are from alignment and not resistance, I know that by doing so, my child will naturally move in alignment with their TRUE SELF and their actions will be congruent with what is best for them. And I can guide them to understand that life is a journey and they will move in and out of alignment but they can recognize when they are out of alignment and then easily move back to alignment. This is responsible parenting that teaches my child how to be deliberate in their creation of their life experience"

Aligned son: Ah, when my parents are in a good place, it's so easy for me to do what is best for me, schoolwork is easy, and if it becomes a struggle to get it done, my parents are always ready to help me and they model for me how life can be easy by going with the flow and not resisting. Schoolwork is a piece of cake!! I do it effortlessly and then have all this free time to do other easy enjoyable things, and I have learned from my parents that life is ebbs and flows but how I think keeps me in the flow and when I get out of the flow, which I will, it's up to me to get back in the flow and that is easy to do. I model how my parents do it and life just seems to work better"

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Intentions for other people, do they work?

You can always intend for others but the effect of the intention is always up to the individual based upon resonance and where they are. Someone asked me what I mean when I say intention. Is it using will power, or are they affirmations? For me and the purpose of intentions is to determne the state of mind you want, they are where you are, they determine the "what you are" of the mantra "we don't get what we want, we get what we are". And inasmuch as that is what they are, they are always in play and they can very much have an effect on other people. So it's wise to be deliberate in what you are as defined by your intentions.

An example that presented itself to me is in parenting. My youngest son is not doing so well in school. It's not because he isn't smart, it's because he isn't turning in some of his work assignments. His Mom and I have both talked to him about just turning the assignments in and his grades would be fine. It's become frustrating (make a note of this) for his Mom and I both and we have had to resort to restricting his activities. His Mom, who is one of my favorite people of all time and I have talked about how best to help him get back on track in a empowering way, identifying some intrinsic motivation for him to turn in his work some of which he completes, he just doesn't turn it in.

It's clear that his actions are not congruent with what he says he will do and the restrictions of not being able to see his girlfriend or have his friends over are not working as well. I came home Sunday night and found his backpack in his room at my house which is where he stays on the weekends. I sent him a text asking him if he needed his backpack and he repiled "No, I'll just use my back pocket to carry stuff". I took the backpack over to his Mom's house and dropped it off for him to have. I told him very calmly, that he needed to have his grades up by the end of the month or he would lose his phone. He agreed, but the moment I said those words, I knew that didn't feel right. It just didn't sit well with me and I thought about it for awhile. I knew the approach we were taking was not working, yet I had just escalated it (conventional parental conditioning).

Then Bam, it hit me and the energy associated with the thought was so palpable I knew it was the answer. Ade, my son's Mom is a very tapped in, tuned in soul and it became very obvious that mine and her frustration with the situation was having an effect on Nick, and not the influence we wanted. It was so inexplicable that he would actually do some of the work that was missing and then not turn it in. Well, we were getting what we were......frustrated and concerned with our son who was not turning in school work and he was reciprocating with behavior that was resonant with our state, or intention surrounding his school work.

So the answer is, and this is a work in progress, so I will keep the blog updated, but it's for his Mom and I to get in alignment with our True Selves and have that state influence Nick in a manner that he becomes aligned with his True Self when we are talking about school and his work. For me that means getting quite and having aligned thoughts about him and how tapped in he is and how wonderful it is for him to have parents that while they are divorced are very close friends and want to parent him in a guiding manner that allows him to know himself and what he is capable of. I think about the awesome things that he has done and the lessons (like this one) that I have learned as his father. I think about the divine being that he is and his infinite potential for experiencing life and all it has to offer, both the contrast and the flow of life, resting in knowing that he will be fine and that as I keep myself aligned with myself and life that is the best parenting that I can do for him.

The point here is not to just let him run amuck, I know he won't do that anyway......the point is for me and his Mom to be aligned with ourselves when we talk to him about his school work and progress, for us to be in the state that will allow for a positive influence from our intentions rather than one that does not sit well for us or him (an influence that is not resonant with his tapped in divine being). It's all about state and the influence that we want to have is the one that comes from aligned parenting.....from the heart.

Now, trust me, I know this is not easy.......and I am struggling with it after I actually applied this approach to my older son when he moved in with me several years ago, in six months, he went from failing classes to making honor roll in his high school. We have been conditioned to parent from an authoritative state and have consequences in place when expectations are not met........the issue is this, if you parent from your own aligned, tapped in Self, the consequences are irrelevant because your child will be in correspondence with your alignment and do what is best for their alignment.

Think about it, when you were young and under your parents roof, you were told what to do......and if you were sternly told what to do.......what did you do? Exactly what you were told not to do!!! Because the person who told you sternly was out of alignment which then had an out of alignment influence on you.......align with life and life will align with you...........and yes your intentions can influence others, so be deliberate in the state that you are spending time in as much as possible.........get what you are, an aligned experience of Life.

I love you Ade, and trust this will resonate with you and we will discuss further!! And much Love to everyone else as well!!!

Friday, October 1, 2010

What would you create today if you expected it to happen?

What kind of question is that? One that challenges or at least makes you look at your model of beliefs. And why is that important? Because your model of beliefs creates what your reality is. What you believe is what you expect and what you expect influences very strongly what you are (the state you are in) and what you are is what is what you get.......what you are is what attracts your experience to you.

I had a gentlemen call me the other day and say that he had heard that I do life coaching and wondered if I would help him figure out what he was doing wrong with his life. I asked him why he thought he was doing something wrong and he told me that he was in bad health, his wife was in bad health, and a number of other scenarios that were not pleasant for him. Of course we are going to work together but it's not a case of doing something wrong in life when we are not getting what we want. It's always a case of a perspective that is not serving us.

Whenever I am coaching with another person, my single goal is to facilitate the individual to tap into their true self and true potential. That's what this blog is about and hopefully that comes through. And what is that true potential? It's infinite potentiality that is unlocked by our thoughts or closed off by our thoughts. And it only takes a change in perspective to unlock that potential.

Think about this. A Russian scientist conducted an experiment where he injected light photons into a chamber of complete vacuum. In other words, the photons were placed in an enclosed space without any influence and when he measured the photon disbursement they were completely random in their location as was expected. He then injected human DNA into the chamber with the photons and when he measured the disbursement of photons again, they had moved into an ordered pattern. The DNA influenced the randomness of the photons to become an orderly pattern.

And what is the building block of Human existence? DNA!! Is it really that much of a stretch to look at DNA as the manner in which the divine infinite source of all that is makes itself physical from the non physical? And is it really that much of a stretch to think that our individual DNA that makes up our physical body is part of that divine infinite source? Of course not, but how often do we eliminate that as a possibility with our limited beliefs about how life works? Indeed, too often.

So back to the title of this post, what would you do today if you expected that thing to happen? What would you do today if you knew that you could accomplish it like you know the sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning? Expectation is an inner state and is not discerning about what it will create so be deliberate in what you expect! Expect remarkable and you will get remarkable, expect what you got today and yep, that's what you will get.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Stephen Colbert testifying before a Congressional hearing on illegal aliens = LMAO

So, the chair of a Congressional committee on illegal aliens taking jobs from Americans invites Stephen Colbert to testify before the committee to use his celebrity to bring attention to the hearings. He was actually one of sixteen Americans that accepted a challenge by the United Farm Workers association to work a day in the fields of a farm and see what it's like for migrant workers. I guess they thought that experience qualified him as an expert witness and he would actually be serious in his testimony.

Well, he was in rare form making comments like, "picking beans requires you to bend over all day, if we can put a man on the moon, why can't we make the earth waist high.....where is the funding?" or "I don't want a Mexican picking my tomato, I want an American and then a Chilean to slice it, a Argentinian to make my sandwich with it and a Honduran to give me a Brazilian!". His comments were funny, but the looks on the congress members were priceless. They were clueless as to what was going on.

In the end when answering questions he did get serious and talked about maybe we should give these immigrants visa status and allow them to do these jobs that Americans don't want and the abuse of these people will be reduced. Stuff that just makes sense, but if we did it then the politicians wouldn't need to spend time talking about all these issues the country is facing.

My point about this topic is we make way too much out of stuff that does not serve us. A Congressional hearing on farm jobs that Americans don't want while 26% of the American population is below the poverty line? Really? Stephen Colbert put that in perspective!! LMAO!!

So what are you making too much out of that if you just dropped it, all would be fine and you would be more in alignment with your true self and life itself? Think about it and change your thoughts.

Today I am planning how to allow the last quarter of 2010 to be a springboard for a 2011 that will surpass any imagination I may have had for how good life can be. I'm going to tap into some of that vibrational escrow that I have built up and do some remarkable living, yep that's what I'm going to.........but first, my youngest son just asked me to cook up some of that fabulous breakfast faire he loves.......I love that he loves my breakfast cooking......it's the little things!! Literally, it's those little things that can bring you in alignment which then allows those big things that please you to come into your experience. Can't wait to see what comes next!!!

Monday, September 6, 2010

Desires and Beliefs.....are they resonant?

Everyone has desires for their life or material desires or desires for what they want to achieve, but how many of these desires are realized and if not , why not? Desires are just one component of deliberate creation, they reside in the asking portion of deliberate creation. The leverage for manifesting your desires into your experience is what you believe because what you believe is what you expect, and what you expect is what you get. That's the rub of "we don't get what we want, we get what we are".

Think about beliefs and desires as two different operating systems. Your desires are what you would like to have come to fruition or reality and they are born for the most part out of the contrast that life provides you, or the things you don't like or don't want to happen. Beliefs are what you take to be real, based on your experience or what you were conditioned to believe as you progressed through life. Every experience that you have had was input into your belief system and to some extent into your desire system.

If those two systems are not congruent, not in sync, you are stuck with what is. How can you have what you don't think is possible? You can't because what you are is someone that does not believe what you desire is possible. That's why I like using the question "What if it were different?" when I come up against resistance. That question when pondered genuinely and openly from your heart with no preconceived notion of what might be, opens you up to be someone different than what you believe. It goes along with "I'm excited to see what I might become!".

In the most simplistic terms, have you ever seen a child in a store tugging on their parents leg or arm telling them that they want a toy or candy bar.....and the parent turns to them and says something like "No, you don't deserve that, your not being a good boy/girl". Well if they hear that enough along with other seemingly harmless comments like "we can't afford that" or "what do think, money grows on trees!" they begin believing that life is hard and money is scarce or you have to work hard for abundance.

Think about it, how many wealthy people do you know that their children go on to live wealthy and abundant lives? Most of the ones I know have children that lead abundant lives and give freely of their time and resources because that is what they learned and their belief system supports. Abundance is nothing more than energy! Why? Because everything is nothing more than energy, your thoughts and beliefs and desires are nothing more than energy. When your desire energies and your belief energies are resonant, buckle up because you are in for a ride!!!

So, but how do you get your beliefs synced up with your desires? Well, your can rewrite them energetically, I do that for people, but you can do it yourself as well, it just takes more work. Develop a discipline of thinking outside the box, just one different thing a day that you make a habit and then develop another one, like questioning something that you take to be real. Beliefs always have payoffs, otherwise you wouldn't keep them, the tricky thing is the payoffs of some beliefs don't serve you in expanding, they keep you locked in a small model of how things are or how life works.

Take for instance, a work place where a person believes that the way to get ahead is to meet the expectations of the decision makers. That belief creates a payoff that once "I" as the person that wants to get ahead pleases the decision maker, I get ahead. How that cannot serve you is that generally speaking, the "I" that wants to get ahead, compromises themselves for the sake of getting ahead to please the decision maker and the more they do this, the more they lose themselves and become less of who they truly are. Corporate scandals and Wall Street bail outs are the resulting outcome. But worse than that grandiose scale is the average Joe just trying to get ahead. And the prevailing belief becomes "to get ahead, I have to comply" or "I'm not talented enough to get ahead on my talent, I need to play the game". I see that one allot, and one of my favorite mentors calls that living a slow death, to which I must agree.

Now trust me, I know taking the high road and speaking your mind or living your talents and not being concerned with being "in line" with your boss has consequences, my "career" stalled the day I made my mind up to live authentically and walk the walk rather than just talk the talk, but the funny thing is, I have learned more from taking the authentic path, I love what I do, and I'm successful in spite of those that feel I'm a cowboy! I'm not getting promoted, but frankly Getting promoted would take me away from what I love. I have opened up to a new model of who I am, what is most important to me and I still have my corporate job and very good income, but outside of work is where life has really opened up. Most people reside in a belief that their job is who they are! And how many of them can say, I love my work?

What if it were different? Or my favorite question to anyone that finds themselves stuck in a problem or phase of life is this, "what bad thing happens if....?". Not what bad thing might happen, and when I ask that question, I'm not even looking for a particular answer, the question acts almost like a re-boot, takes them out of their model of thinking and opens up different possibilities of what might be. For instance "What bad thing happens if your not frustrated by your spouse not having dinner prepared when you get home?" or "What bad thing happens if you deserve to be loved?"

More to come on this in a few days, this post is too long as it is.....Be Well!!!

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Open....an autobiography by Andre Agassi

Have yet to read it, but I bought it as a kindle edition for my Ipad. I generally don't read autobiographies except "Ben Hogan" but that another post I need to get to later. Last night I saw an interview clip of Agassi on AC 360 (one of my favorite shows) and Agassi was talking about how much he hated playing tennis during his career. Anderson Cooper asked him "but you were so good, how could you hate something and be so good?". Agassi's response very humbly was "I never reached my potential"......well you don't have to be a huge tennis fan to know what a great tennis career he had, tumultuous at times, but very accomplished and decorated.

The book accounts for his upbringing and manufactured tennis game and loss of his genuine self until later in life and then what he is doing now which is more aligned with his souls desire. As he was talking to Anderson, you could see he was in a good place, connected with his spirit and not hanging on to any Judgements or ill will toward his father for his childhood. He is at peace with who he is and his life has taken on a new direction through his alignment with himself and life itself.

Lately, I have had many conversations with individuals about parenting and what the best approach is. Generally speaking, parents don't believe that their children know what's best for them, so they lay down rules and things they should do and things they should not do. Children are tapped into life and who they are yet in most cases as they grow up and spend more time adhering to the "ground rules" of being good children, they lose touch with their true selves and begin adapting to the norms of their parents or society.

Studies have shown that infants know what nourishment they need for well being, when they are presented with a variety of food choices, they will always choose the most nourishing food and stay away from things that are not as nourishing. Whole food sources are always chosen over refined food sources or those that are not as sustaining. Until that is, when their systems are maligned with refined sources or sugars, treats and such. The point is they know what is best for them!!

My oldest son, who is one of my favorite teachers, smokes pot, I know it, he knows I know it and we have talked about it. He knows I smoked weed when I was his age and he knows that I don't now. His mom thinks he should be drug tested randomly, I refuse to do that, and he knows my expectation of him is that he does not bring it into the house or property. Some of my colleagues at work are flabbergasted to know that I know he smokes and "do nothing" about it. My approach is to help him make the best choices that he can make for himself, and learn from the choices he makes.

Abe uses the analogy of when a toddler is learning to walk, and they take a few steps and then fall, you "don't say "get up you little dummy", they are learning and you try to help them but ultimately they have to learn themselves. We as parents need to let our kids learn for themselves and be themselves which includes making the best decisions for themselves. Think about it, when you put all these controls on kids, what do you think happens when they are away from you? They do what they want, and if the controls are too restrictive, they just do everything that is opposite of the controls you have placed on them.

This is not to say they need consequences, talk to them about what contributions you would like to see from them and what latitudes you give them because you trust them to make good decisions and then let them live and make mistakes, and when they make mistakes don't get pissed at them. Sit down and talk to them about what they learned. Making mistakes and learning from them is what life is about, and it's what allows for growth and transformation, and children are on a fast track of growth and transformation if allowed to be.

Now some people will say, that's just irresponsible, you can't just let kids do whatever they want. I say, yes you can, if you assist them in making sense of the experiences they have. That's the most responsible thing you can do as a parent, help teem make sense of their world, so when your not with them they have a foundation of how life works that allows them to align with life and be in love with life!!!

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Ending of a relationship!

The ending of a relationship means one thing and one thing only. You grew and expanded past which the relationship could further provide you with the opportunity for growth. Now, this is just my take, actually it's the take of many sages and teachers over the ages that I just happen to agree with.

But what about if the person was my soul mate? Most people believe that their soul mate is the one that they spend the rest of their life with in and out of total bliss. Most people also believe that they have but one soul mate! And how limiting is that? That is not to say that you can't spend your entire life with one person and be in bliss, you can!!! The most important soul mate connection you can have though is with yourself. You don't have a soul, you are a soul....connect with it, align with it, and life aligns with you.

How do you do that? Align with your soul and Life? Well, being sad that a relationship has ended or is not working out the way you would like it to is not the way. Okay spend a good 15 minutes, feeling sad or hurt or depressed about not being wanted by the other person or the other person not meeting your expectations, if you need to, but get over it. And I don't mean toss aside your feelings for the other person, good lord, you just had a relationship with the person, they obviously have some positive aspects to them. What I mean is, get over the fallacy that your sad or upset because the relationship didn't work out, it's never about that. Your sad or upset or even down right pissed off because you are not aligned with your true self and your using the relationship as just your excuse to be. Choose better thoughts!!!

How much more empowering is it to think, well the relationship ended and while it would have been great for it to continue in the mode when things were blissful and all was well, it didn't! And while it has ended, boy was it enjoyable when it was good, I experienced love and bliss like never before, and I grew from being in the relationship and I will always have the Love that I realized I am from having had the relationship!!! And I know that what I learned from this relationship has allowed me to grow and my next relationship will be even more enjoyable because of this one.

I am certain of having numerous soul connections in my relationships. I know because of the feeling that I was immersed in during those relationships, and while the intimate physical relationship has ended, I still have that close connection with each of those beautiful women and they have their own experience of the relationship as well. I connect with them frequently with my Love energetically. One ended in a not so nice split at the time the relationship ended and one ended and we never skipped a beat, we just went our different paths. The one that ended not by design has since been repaired and we are close, have great respect for each other and what we have brought into this world. The one that ended without skipping a beat while we are connected, we are on different paths and have the occasional reconnect via text or e-mail. We served a purpose by hooking up and are both better for having been together and grew as each of us needed. That's what soul mates do. Sometimes for a short term, sometimes for the long term in physical proximity but eternally in spirit. It's up to you how to play out the growth gained from your soul mates.

So when one relationship ends, relish it as the growing experience that it was for you and the other person, see it as a stop in your journey called life that added to YOU by allowing you to grow by remembering more about who you have always been. And keep perspective of how life works, it's suppose to be easy and flowing, not hard and painful and that's not some Pollyanna philosophy, it's true!!

Now in closing how do you want to create your next relationship? From cherished thoughts of how blissful, enjoyable and rewarding your past relationships have been (even if only at times) or anything less than that? Go with the cherished positive thoughts and your next soul mate will be who you create your next blissful rewarding relationship with.......the alternative is, well I'm not going there.

By the way, when your coming from your aligned self, sex transcends sex......it's ecstasy that takes you to another space!!! Go there!!

Thursday, August 19, 2010

What we resist, persists!!!

I'm not a news junkie at all, as a matter of fact, the only news I watch or read is AC 360, kind of unbiased fact reporting with good guests and not deterred from taking on any story. I use some of the stories for being deliberate in creating my perspective based on how it feels as opposed to getting wrapped up one way or another on the emotion or past conditioning around the topic.

Lately there has been much ado about the proposed Mosque to be built two blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. The vast majority of people apparently oppose it being built there, not that it's built, just the location of being so close. It is being labelled as insensitive to those that were killed in the 9/11 attack as well as to their surviving families. I can understand that position, but do not agree with it and not for political reasons, and not even for the constitutional reason of religious freedom that many have taken, including President Obama.

I don't agree because I like to be deliberate in my thinking and how my thinking creates my own experience and how it co-creates with the collective. Resisting or pushing back on anything is not progressive and does not achieve the elimination of the thing that one resists, it actually keeps it in play. How is the war on drugs working out, or the war on illegal immigrants, or the war on terrorism? Yeah, not all that well, Congress just passed a bill to spend another $200 million dollars on border containment!!

Yeasterdays post was about utilizing negative thoughts to your benefit, and it's not some polyanna philosophy, it's actually science. Physics, to be exact!! Your thoughts measure or act upon the infinite waves at the quantum level of all material potentiality collapsing into existence things that are resonant with your thoughts and feelings. Hence, the axiom, you don't get what you want, you get what you are!!

So, once again how do you know what you are? Look at what is consistently showing up for you in your experience!! It's that simple. The organization that I work for wants to win the JD Power and Associates award for Customer Service, we consistently come in second place to One of our competitors and yesterday we found out that once again we came in second to them again. The leaders of the organization "want" to win the award, but they do not lead the organization in a way that that is what we "are". The reason I stay with the company is because everyday I get to learn about and play with the approach of becoming what we want as opposed to "wanting" what we want. I'm there because I use the environment to grow, learn about myself and be progressive.

Every moment of everyday is an opportunity to recreate yourself into what you want, so what are you doing about it? Be deliberate, make those small changes in your daily routines that support you being more of what you desire to be, do or have. Establish those small disciplines that change who you are to be more aligned with your desires and more of those desires will align with you, that is Life!

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Negative thoughts and how to leverage them

Everyone has them, but how can you leverage them. Use them for what they are there for. They identify for you what you don't want, which allows you to better know what you do want. Be curious about them, don't judge them, don't banish them or beat yourself up for having them...be curious about them. What I mean by curious is this, be open!! Open to what might be, or what might come next after having these thoughts.

Many times when someone finds themselves at a point of transition or transformation in their life, there is a tendency to look back and judge their past, like "how did I ever get involved with that person" or "I feel like I have wasted so much time" or "what have I really accomplished?". It's easy to do this, but those thoughts in that context don't serve us or moving forward into the future and what might be, they can actually have the opposite effect and allow the future to be a similar repeat of the past. Being curious about these types of thoughts creates an open door for inspiration.....or "in spirit". Changing them just slightly to "what was the meaning of me getting involved with that person?", or "what have I learned from my time being involved with that person?" allows for insight into who we truly are and who we are becoming.

Life is a process of progression or it is not, the choice is always ours. Life is progressive, expansive and ever changing and we facilitate the becoming more of who we have always been by being open, loving and curious......being excited about what we may become, what insights we will have, what we will create next. Be progressive, not stagnant. It's never about the other person, the job or the situation, it's always about how we think about the other person, the job or the situation. And how we think is always our choice. Choose progressive curious and loving thoughts, and you will have more of them.

And when you have judgmental or negative thoughts, embrace them as an opportunity to explore the contrast that they provide for you. I like to tell myself when I catch myself in the middle of a negative thought, "that's interesting, I wonder what that means?". It never fails to deliver me a new and curious way of seeing things, which generally leads me to a more expansive and positive perspective of the situation. And isn't that what we want at the end of the day, and expansive, progressive and loving state of being?

Yeah, I think so.......be the Love that you are, embrace those negative thoughts as an opportunity to expand your thinking by being curious and open to what you may become for having had them and then transforming them to what you do want as opposed to what you don't want!!

Every moment of everyday is an opportunity for you to become the greatest vision you have yet to have for yourself, or it isn't, make it so!!

Monday, August 2, 2010

What model is your life operating in?

Model of life? Yes, Model! Everyone has several that are in play at different times depending on where you are in your thinking. Auto pilot or working from your subconscious and the beliefs that reside there is much more powerful than most people give it credit for being. Then there is deliberate consciousness which is where you question or are curious about what could be. And at times varying widely from person to person, there is the super conscious that we allow to guide us in doing things our subconscious is conditioned not to believe are possible.

One of my mentors uses the following story to demonstrate the difference in models or modes of thinking (or life). An anthropologist was working in Africa with a Pygmy aboriginal tribe of people. On a walk in the bush, he comes across the tribe's leader with his right foot raised up on a fallen elephant. The leader not much more than five feet tall was proud of his trophy. The anthropologist asked the leader, "how did you bring down the elephant?". The leader said proudly, "With my club!" to which the anthropologist asked, "how big is your club?". The village leader replied "About 300 members".

Most people think in the context of that story that a club is a big stick or tree branch used to hit the elephant, as opposed to the entire village working in numbers to down the giant. That is because of the model we operate within, which is based upon an accumulative sum of all our past experiences that make up what reality is for us. Some people may call it a paradigm. But in truth, at the quantum level which makes up everything that exists materially, that model of beliefs collapses the infinite into the finite, in other words, it reduces what could be to exactly what we believe things to be. What we take to be real.

Now many things that we take to be real, or some of the components of the model we operate in do not serve us in accomplishing what we desire. Luckily desire is not creative, willingness is. You can have all the desire in the world to have whatever, you can want it more than anything in the world, and not achieve it. But if your willing to become the person that can have what you desire, it will be yours. You don't get what you want, you get what you are.

One of the most common desires that people talk with me about is more money. They usually phrase the issue with one of the following statements, "I'm in debt and want to be debt free" or "if I could just increase my income by X amount, I would be set" or "I want to have enough money to not think about if I can buy something". Each of these statements has a belief embedded in the basis of the statement that is not supportive of the desire, a contradiction or counter intention that overrides the desire. I never try to imply the limiting non supportive belief is wrong or bad, resisting it will only reinforce it. What I try to do is get the person to see it in a different way, looking at as either reasonable or unreasonable.

Take the last statement, "I don't want to have to think about if I can buy something", implies that they have the money to buy it, but believe they shouldn't or at least they need to think about whether they should. Now there are myriad reasons that this belief may be taken to be real, but at the root of it is a belief that the source of their income may end or is limited. And is that reasonable just based upon how long they have been generating that income? The amount of their income, be it $20,000.00 or $2,000,000.00 a year is not the point, it's the stream of income and the fact that they may have worked in several different jobs earning that stream, but here they are, with a stream of income.

Think about the planet, is there a shortage of water, is there a shortage of plants, or animals, or sand on the beach? Is there a shortage of bacteria to digest the oil in the gulf and within a nanosecond relative to the age of the planet restore the ecosystem back to healthy? Don't think so!!! The universe is abundant and expanding every second, How about you?

My point in this post is to question your thoughts as being reasonable in light of being the divine being you are, or are they unreasonable. Limiting Beliefs in and of themselves are not bad, they just don't serve us when we take them to be real. Something not working out for you? Question your thinking, do you have a contradiction in what belief you are operating from and what your desires are? If so, change your model by working with that contradiction or belief and see what can be different......what can be different is always you!!! Always, so choose the you that serves your desires.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Success and Failure

Success is created (yes created) through the completion of a few small disciplines that add up over time to produce outcomes that otherwise you could never have dreamed were possible. These small habits are so simple and easy that most people think that they won't make a difference and so they don't act upon them, they don't do them.

Failure is nothing more than the outcome of the consistent neglect of a few simple habits that over time create (yes create) the feeling that something can't be achieved.

So what are these disciplines that over time produce what most people only dream about? Well, my belief is, they are the way you think! How do you think about your life, your job, your family, your relationships, and the most important mode of thought is the ones you have about you. So in the first paragraph when I said people don't act on them or they don't do them, what I mean is they don't have their thoughts, their thoughts have them. David Bohm said that and he was right. Most of the time our thoughts have us, rather than us thinking the way we want to.

When you allow your thoughts to run without check, you are a victim to yourself, to your ego or small self. You create the life you live by the story your thoughts tell. So do you want your story to be small or ginormous....love that word, giant and enormous combined. I love made up words!

Play BIG!!! That's our purpose, not to play small and bounce around like a pinball that's direction is determined by the bouncers it is thrown into. Choose through your deliberate choice of your thoughts what you experience, your doing it anyway. Choosing not to be deliberate is still a choice and it's infectious, the more you choose to be sloppy in your thinking, the more sloppy thoughts you have. Consciousness, the Universe is inclusive, not exclusionary, so the more of one line of thinking you have the more of that line of thinking you have or create.

The Good News is that the more deliberate your thinking is, the more deliberate thinking becomes a discipline, small and huge at the same time. You can be, do or have anything you want, Abe is good to remind us of that and truth be told you are, do and have everything you want based upon your thinking.....you don't get what you want, you get what you are, and what you are is your thoughts, and the feelings derived from those thoughts. So are you getting what you are? Yep, every time!! Can't escape that truth, and think GOD, otherwise we would be the pinball just bouncing around.

Sometimes it's easiest to be deliberate in your thinking by changing your perspective. You know, like asking yourself "if today were the last day of my life, what would I like to experience?". Another good one to ask is "in one sentence, how would most people that know me describe me?". The ultimate perspective changer for me is "When I leave this physical experience, have I contributed in meaningful way to all that is?".

No regrets, knowing that perfect is what we are at our essence, be in this and every moment what you want!! The difference is being in the state of what you want through your thoughts rather than being in a state of wanting. You and I don't need anything, we have it all!! And where is it? Right where it is right now, we just need to allow the where to be us. Sounds like a play on words because it is, words can't describe the infinite, because words are finite. You are not, you are eternal, infinite Love and wisdom here to be creative. Be deliberate in what you get by being deliberate in what you are. Be ridiculously and unreasonably deliberate in what you are, Life and the living.

Christ said "let the dead bury the dead, I haven't the time". What he meant was be expansive in your thoughts, live big, ginormous, that is life, living small is being dead!! His lessons were living life without limits, without limiting thoughts. His lesson was to be not want. The "miracles" he performed were him allowing those that were healed to be healed rather than wanting to be healed. Think about it, the lame that walked after interacting with him, did so because he told them to get up and walk. They believed and got up and walked. What Christ did was facilitated a change in their being, their perspective.

So be what you want and have it, pretty simple!! Be success by being deliberate in expansive deliberate thinking which will cause you to be successful in what you think. Make it the discipline you practice everyday!!!

Saturday, July 24, 2010

In the stillness beyond our beliefs everything is known!!

Love Byron Katie, who wrote the title to this post!!! So true, when we get past what we believe, all is known, because beliefs collapse the infinite to finite. Knowing this is liberating and allows us when we choose to know all that we need to know in any given moment. Allow the infinite wisdom and knowledge of the Universe to align with you and just see what happens. No expectation, no preconceived notion, just see what happens!!

Our true self, our higher self, our divine self, whatever you want to call it, is always on board for flowing with the Universe. When you have that high vibe feeling that anything is possible, pure love and positive energy, your allowing, anything short of that is an indication of resistance. Your either allowing or resisting your true self and when you allow, that is when the miraculous happens, life aligns with you and all is well.

When you resist, ugh!! Not so much fun!! Everyone spends time there, it's not necessarily a bad thing unless you pitch a tent and make it home. Michael Beckwith tells a funny story about people steeped in victim hood and how everyone travels through the valley of death and darkness except victims, they set up camp and call it home!! Anyway, it's not a bad thing because resistance if looked at in the right light allows you to better know what you do want and enjoy it when you attain it. You enjoy what you have when you know what it's like not having it. As a divine eternal being of pure positive energy and love, it's hard to appreciate what you are without knowing what it's like not being that. Make sense?

The point is, we vacillate between resistance and allowance, its very much like the cycles of life, and if we are deliberate and observe our thoughts from a curious position, we can fully leverage the allowing times, and actually us the resisting times as a platform for our next experience in exercising our creativity. Not an exercise in creating, and exercise in creativity. Resistance is creating, just not what is aligned with our true selves, creativity is divine and expansive and progressive and nurtures that high vibe we have all experienced at times. By becoming creative, we deliberately move ourselves into that state of being......and if your ready for this, we begin ascending to a higher dimension that the great sages and mystics have all experienced. 4th and 5th dimensions are spaces we have ventured to at times, some more than others, some deliberately, some without a clue as to what happened.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Release your Talents?....: Your Job....To Know Yourself

Release your Talents?....: Your Job....To Know Yourself

Your Job....To Know Yourself

How do you not know yourself? Someone asked me that recently, and followed saying, "of course you know yourself, you can't get away from yourself". In a sense that is true, but a very limited sense. Most everyone for most of the time we spend are playing small, very small. And if that is true, and it is, then think about the axiom that we get what we are, not what we want! If your playing small, that's what you get!

So how do you know yourself? Simple, not easy! The next time you feel frustrated or anxious, see if you can just observe your thoughts. Be curious about it, not about what you think is causing the frustration......it's not about that. Just start being curious with your thoughts about what happened. It's never the event, it's your thoughts about the event.....and your thoughts about previous events that condition you to react as similar situations come to your experience. Key word in that last sentence, "come". Those situations or events or people don't just randomly appear, you create them from your thoughts......you bring them to you or you attract them into your experience.........because you get what you are.

Reaction as opposed to Creation.......or haphazard sloppy thinking as opposed to deliberate thinking. Reacting to something said to you or an experience you had or even your own thoughts is nothing more than you coming from your beliefs about the way things are, your model of reality......and you re-act the same behaviors that you always do when faced with similar situations from your past. So, if you can catch yourself going down that slippery slope of reacting in a way that does not serve you, coming from auto pilot.....if you can catch yourself and stop and get curious about it. Maybe you even say to yourself, "that's interesting" and then ask yourself "What if it were different?" "What if my reaction were different?" and you don't have to work to find the answer, because you have the answer. Just ask the question and see what comes.

This is important to understand. Your thoughts collapse the infinite potential into a very defined small model of what is, that's why we experience similar situations over and over, and that is creation, but not creativity. In the above paragraph, when I said you don't have to work to find the answer.....that is big, because if your mindset or intention or belief is that you need to find the answer, what your thoughts have created is the scenario that the answer is not at hand....you have created the scenario that an answer is not with you......and you get what you are.....someone without the answer. But when you ask "What if it were different?" or "What if I was different?" you are creating an opening for the infinite alternatives of "different" to drop in and change the situation in a heart beat. Try it!

Fear is the root of all perceptions that do not serve you! Fear of getting hurt leads to what? Yep, getting hurt, because you collapse the infinite possibilities of love to a model that allows you to only experience "hurt". Sometimes it is gradual, like in a relationship. At the beginning of the relationship, all is well, fear is not in play, because the pleasure and newness of the other person is in play, but as time goes by, and the relationship becomes a part of your "normal" routine, fear begins to creep in and affect your thinking, begins to collapse the infinite possibilities of what could be to a small model of "what if's", you know what if this happens, or what if he/she is not who they say they are, or what if they are fooling around.....and invariably either the other person meets those expectations or you just think and believe that they are and Bam, your fears become real and you are hurt.

It's never about the other person or situation, it's always about you! And what your thoughts are about the person or situation.....so do you want to be sloppy and haphazard, or deliberate. Align with life and life will align with you, and Life is progressive and expansive, not protective and contractive......open up to the infinite potential of life and get excited to see what might come or better yet, what you might become.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Morphic Fields

Someone asked me what a Morphic field is the other day. The Biologist Rupert Sheldrake developed the term out of his research on animals and nature. You have likely seen flocks of birds that move in unison or schools of fish that all move in the same direction at the same time. Some people might say they have really good reactions, but in most cases, there is no reaction time, they are connected and "know" when and how to move in unison. The place of their "knowing" is a morphic field. They are connected in consciousness and at a quantum level.

Sheldrake did studies with animals to see if they could sense when their owners were coming home, and sure enough the animals knew before the owner arrived at home, sometimes as much as ten minutes before the human arrived at home, the dog or cat of the house would behave distinctly different. The animal was entangled in a morphic field of the owner and animal, and "knew" when the owner was on their way home.

Actors get into the morphic field of the characters they are playing, Heath Ledger got so deep into the morphic field of "The Joker" he struggled getting out. What is the Morphic filed of a comic character like the Joker? Well, it's every comic, movie and even conversation that includes that character. Even thoughts for that matter. Ideas, thoughts, emotions, concepts, are nothing more than energy as is everything, and they exist before someone has them and they exist forever after someone has them. Linearity or time based perspective does not exist at their level, they have always been and always will be. And we can tap into them at any time we decide or choose to.

There is a morphic field for fear, confidence, even stupidity.....that's a big one!! There is a morphic field for Jesus Christ, actually many of them. The biggest one is the Jesus from the Bible, as the chosen son of God, sent as the savior for all the sinful humans, ugh!!! And as unappealing as that one is, people steep themselves in ti and for them it is their truth. Persoanlly I prefer the Morphic field of Jeshua Ben David, the mystic that was no different than you or I that tapped into God consciousness and taught others to do the same. For me he was the master of Metanoia, not perfect nor flawed, just growing to become more of who he already is.

Ervin Laszlo, the scientist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee says that "things in the real world are not entirely separate from each other. Not only are they linked by flows of energy, but they are also linked by flows of information.". We are all connected through morphic fields, think about when you walk in a room, and you can sense something is not right, or you can sense something less than a. Good vibe. That's you tapping into the field of that room and generally the people in it. Think about it, you know you have done that.

When you read a book for the first time, you get what you get out of it, but invariably the next time you read it, you get something in addition to what you got the first time you read it. What you got the second time was there the first time you read it, but you weren't ready to get it, or maybe more accurately, you weren't open to it. What happened is that while reading it the first time, you became entangled in the morphic field of the book, the author, the research, the potential, and your model of how things are changed, maybe just slightly, but it changed. Then upon reading it the second time, Bam!! Something you were not previously open to made so much sense and you can almost feel it. I read books over and over at different times and almost always get some new insights.

What's really fun is when faced with a challenge or dilemma is to get quiet, get still, and let something come to you, many times it will be an impulse to pitch up a particular book off the shelf open it up to a "random" page chosen by inspiration and Bam!! Just the insight I needed to resolve the challenge. Really what happens is that I open up to a different way of thinking that provides better clarity.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Growing versus Doing

If life is expansive and progressive, and it is, then it involves growing and learning. Take work, or career for instance, you may even have a career path, corporations like those and they call it growth in the sense that you get promoted. You do your job, you perform better than your peers and you get promoted.......growth, right? Not necessarily!!!

The growth I am talking about is becoming more of who you already are at the essence of who you are, aligned with the divine spirit that is eternal and in this world but not of it. Think of it this way, people go to work or a job for what? To earn money in most cases, some people go to work to earn money and even make a difference. But for most people, work is a means to an end, the money to survive and buy the things that are necessary for "living" like food, shelter, clothing, and to varying degrees the luxuries we desire. The work that they do is the function of their job, be it an office worker, a waitress, even the President of the United States.

The work should be you!!! Yes, YOU!! Everyday, ask yourself, "How did I grow today?" "How am I different" "What did I learn about myself today".....when you answer those questions, that is growth!! That is expansion, and as you expand growing from your heart not your head, because those questions are from the heart, the Universe expands with you and aligns with you. You are part of the Universe and when you drop down into your heart, you merge with all that is, and you can feel it when you do. You know that high vibe, anything is possible feeling. That's our natural state of being

So why don't we spend more time there in that feeling? Why indeed!!! Sloppy haphazard thinking, that's it. Pretty simple, huh? Most people associate thinking as the thoughts you have at any given moment, but that's really just mental activity, the mind processing observations based upon your past experiences and beliefs, judgements and models for how things are. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that is a bad thing, it just does not serve our true selves, our essence in growing unless we look at it as an opportunity for growth. It is what it is, and that sloppy thinking is contributing to everything you see, everything began as a thought, and then the thought was acted upon.

By being deliberate in our thinking, becoming what we want, being curious and excited to see what will come next is where transformation happens, Metanoia, or a change in vision of being, that's being deliberate. That is what I see Meister Ekhart as meaning when he said "Let god be god through me". Don't you just love that? If you can't reconcile being an extension of God, use Universe, or source or Tao, or any other word that means the divine. You are a divine being, eternal and in this world but clearly not of it.

It's a process, it's life, live it!! Become more of who you have always been by making yourself your work, your job is you, what you do everyday is just the canvas from which you create yourself. So, what will you become today? What will you learn about yourself? How will you be different tomorrow because of your thoughts (not mental activity) today? How was the Universe the Universe though you?

Monday, July 12, 2010

Metanoia...changing of the mind

Metanoia comes from two Greek words, meta and noia. Meta means after or beyond, as in transformation, as in metamorphosis. Think about the the transformation that a caterpillar makes when it turns into the butterfly, not just a change, a complete transformation. Noia loosely translates to meaning, and I use it in terms of meaning for being.

So I use metanoia to mean a transformation of being, or vision of being. In tune with the question, "what if it were different.". We are in the process of metanoia, a transformation in the way of being. Moving from a paradigm of lack and struggle for accumulation to well being in knowing we are infinitely abundant. Aery fairy stuff? Well it is what you believe.

In our normal daily lives, our experience is shaped, check that, our experience is determined by the sum of our beliefs, or what we take to be real. And how do we know what those beliefs are that shape our experience? Look what consistently shows up, and it's never bad, it is what it is. But if it's not meeting your desires or creating the inner feeling or condition of well being, it's up to you to change it. So is it what you want?

Ah, the million dollar question, "What do you want?". That one question creates more challenges than any other thought form, because we don't get what we want, we get what we are. This is where metanoia can be miraculous. Transforming your very being to be in alignment with life, be in love with life.....and life aligns with you. What happens when life aligns with you being in alignment with it? What comes to you provides that inner condition of bliss or grace.

Life. What is life? Ponder the meaning! Growth, Expansion, Progress, Consciousness, Energy, all that is? What is the Universe? Growth, Expansio, Progress, Consciousness, Energy, All that is? What is source or G.O.D. (grand organizing design)? What is Love? Yeah, I think so!! So, how big a stretch is it to "Know" that when you are aligned with life, you are aligned with source, you are life, you are Love, you are Devine?

And, when you are Love, Life, Source, what do you get? Who cares!!! But it is pretty freakin awesome!!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

We don't get what we want, we get what we are!!!

I've written about this often and the most common question I get about this statement (fact really) is "how do you know What you are?". That's easy, what's showing up in your experience.

First things first, do you believe you can have, do or be anything you decide on? You can you know! Do you take full responsibility for every bit of your experience? That's a tough one and we are conditioned not to, which is our stumbling point. Your thoughts, beliefs and the feelings derived from those thoughts and beliefs are what you are. It comes down to quantum mechanics.

Take your body for example, you have this human body that is made up of trillions of cells, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of sub atomic particles like bosons, leptons, and bunch other weird names. These sub atomic particles are not really particles like a grain of sand, as a matter of fact humanity does not have the technology to even see what they look like. The only way scientists know they exist is by the trails that they leave, the only evidence we can identify that they exist. And at that level, time and space are not in play.

These quantum entities are probabilities of potential, without limit. How they become a particular potential is when they are acted upon, measured, observed, and affected by consciousness.....yours and mine. When they're acted upon or affected by our consciousness (thoughts, feelings and emotions) they collapse into matter based upon our model of what is real. Wave forms collapse into particle matter.

So what you get is based upon the internal state of what you want. If you want to lose weight, conventional wisdom is to reduce the number of calories that take in under what your daily activities burn. This works as long as you do it and your beliefs support your actions. For most people, they have beliefs that are not congruent with this approach, which is why so much of our population is overweight. These beliefs are unique to the individual but can be reduced to......eating less food is not comfortable and exercise is entirely too much work! But, what if it were different? What if the food you ate was viewed as fuel that your body collaborates with perfectly and provides your body with just the right nutrition and energy, and what if exercise was viewed as energizing and beneficial in endless ways that provides you with the ability to do whatever you can dream. What difference do those two different sets of beliefs have on the quantum potentials that make up your physical form?

What if it were different? Love that question! Ask that question about anything in your experience that you would like to change, and see what comes to mind, practice this and pretty soon you become the difference through your oughts, feelings and emotions and that is exactly what you get!

Here is a practical application. A smoker wants to stop smoking. They ask the question "what if it were different, what if I didn't smoke?". Thoughts come to mind like, I would have more spending money, My clothes would always smell fresh, I could feel the energy when I use the full capacity of my lungs, I would exercise with my increased lung capacity, I would stay at the restaurant table with my friends after dinner, etc, etc. You get the point,your thinking changes, which changes the way you feel and the emotions you experience which affects and collapses into reality the condition of being a non smoker.

Same for drinking, drugs, whatever you want different. It's all about beliefs, and how do you know what your beliefs are? Look at what is consistently showing up.......and if your not satisfied, choose different!