Posts Tagged ‘Personal Growth’

Self Help: Exploring The Law Of Attraction

A great deal has been written and said concerning the so-called ‘Law of Attraction’. It has become popular through videos and bestsellers, like ‘The Secret’ and by television talk-show hosts such as Larry King. And yet most do not understand what this ‘attraction’ actually means. Does it mean that you can attract into your life the kind of good things that you crave? And, if so, how can you actually put the ‘Law of Attraction’ into action to change your life for the better?

First of all, you must understand that the ‘Law of Attraction’ is working in your everyday life already. This may be a big surprise for you but what you need to realize is that the life you lead is an exact mirror image of what is going on in your head. Unfortunately, much of what’s going on in the normal person’s mind is doing them damage rather than good because, left on its own, the subconscious mind is both negative and focused in the past, constantly ‘enabling’ you – and that’s obviously the wrong word – to keep repeating all the learned behaviours that are, right now, creating your reality. In other words, as a result of the normal mind’s inner turmoil, it follows that the normal life is also in turmoil.

It doesn’t matter if you know[spin] [spin]this or not, the ‘Law of Attraction’ is a given fact of life. I’m not sure, from reading some of the reams of stuff – often misleading stuff – on the subject, that you will have fully grasped the extraordinary importance of this situation. But say that you appreciate the situation. Let’s say that you already have a firm grasp of the fact that, to quote ‘The Secret’, your thoughts become things – what’s going on in your mind manifests in your life. Great, you’ve grasped this fundamental concept intellectually – but intellectually understanding these facts and being able to get this ‘manifestation’ working for you, rather than against you, is a totally different ballgame.

If you do not consciously take action each day to make certain that you’re in the right mental state, then it really doesn’t matter how much you understand the way life works, you’re simply deluding yourself into the nice cosy misconception that this ‘Law of Attraction’ can change your life in a positive way.

To truly practice the so-called “Law of Attraction” you need to clear your mind. There’s little or no point trying to fill your mind with thoughts of things that you want – people don’t know what they really want. Here’s a far better idea – fill your mind with the only place and time we have – the here and now. If you do that, you will drag your subconscious away from its obsession with both the past and the negative. You will become extraordinarily focused – efficient, effective, inspired and inspirational. In focused state of mind you will attract the very best in life, enabling you rise to places that normal people cannot go.

Caution: Self Help

I don’t know exactly how many personal development or popular self improvement books sell each year – but I do know that it is the fastest area of growth in publishing with millions of books being sold each year. I also know that, if you tune into your evening news, look at any newspaper or go browsing the web’s chat-rooms and forums, these self help books make little or no difference.

Surveys conclude that we are more anxious, stressed and worried than ever before – even a global war didn’t give rise to such abject fear as we are witnessing in a millennium where we all swallowed the idea that humankind was finally moving to a new level. Indeed, the wartime spirit that galvanized nations into powerful forces during World War II, has vanished from a brave new world where obsession with money – or needing enough of it to feel secure – is the the way most people in the developed world now operate and it’s every man for himself. What the hell has happened – and I use the world ‘hell’ deliberately because it appears to me that everyday life for many is much nearer to hell than heaven.

Bestsellers like ‘The Secret’ and ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ point towards a brighter, better life if you use your mind in the appropriate manner. On the other hand, Barbara Ehrenreich in her book, ‘Smile or Die’, claims that positive thinking has destroyed the US and ruined the world.

Having worked in the self improvement ‘business’ since 1996 – having started out before it was fashionable to confide in your friends or colleagues that you were ‘into it’ – I am firmly of the belief that people who read these self help books are not just fooling themselves but are a danger to themselves and those around them. They read a bit, get high on a little ‘feel-good’ after-glow, perhaps even put something of what they’ve read into practice for a bit and then convince themselves that things are either better or, even more dangerous, about to get better – this is a general excuse for doing absolutely nothing whilst ‘waiting for something to happen’.

Books don’t change your life. Action is what changes your life – real action every day – action that you have to take yourself. And I’ve seen precious little evidence of action. Sure, I see plenty of reaction – but everybody reacts, we’re experts at is and it makes the world we live in worse rather than better.

So, put away your self help books and ask yourself this probing question? What action could you take today that will improve your lot if life? Not knowing your life, I’ve no idea whether major change is called for or, maybe it’s just something small. But I do know this – I am regularly questioning myself, challenging myself making certain that I keep taking the little and large actions that need to be done to push – yes, you’ve got to push yourself – my life towards more and more happiness and excitement. And I regularly see the results.

Want More Out Of Life? You’ve Got To Change Your Life!

Most of us want more out of life. This is not to say that you’re unhappy with what you have. In fact, the secret to happiness is wanting what you have. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be constantly striving to scale higher heights of success and happiness because you can never stand still in life.

And, then, of course, there are people who are desperately unhappy with their lot in life – the majority of people contend that they are unhappy in the work that they do, a frightening number of people worry about their finances and then there are people who are just downright unhappy with who they are.

What you need to understand is that you’ll get precious little out of life by wanting or by being unhappy with things as they stand. The one thing that is stopping you getting something different out of life is the blindingly obvious fact that you tend to do everything the same. Keep doing the same things and nothing’s ever going to change. If you want change in your life, you’re going to have to do actually change your life!

Like doing what? Like all great journeys, changing your life starts with the first step. A small step will suffice because what you’ve got to do is recondition your mind – to get yourself used to the idea that, in everything that you do in life, you have a choice to do something different, something new. Perhaps the most powerful exercises that I suggest to my personal development clients is that they use the very routine that has anchored to their current life to destroy the habitual, repetitive patterns of behaviour that have so constrained them, their view of life and the endless possibilities that life holds for them.

I suggest the same powerful mechanism to you. Break routine by using your routine. Every morning, you are presented with a long list of routine tasks that you’ve done in a routine manner all of your adult life. If you were to brush your teeth with the hand that you don’t normally use, you will have achieved two, potentially life-changing, milestones. First of all, you will have woken up to the obvious truth that, in everything that you do in your life, you can choose. This realization will enable you break every single destructive habit that has been holding you back in your life. Secondly, because you’ll be brushing your teeth differently, you will need to pay more attention to the task. The super-successful call this ‘focus’. Focus simply means paying attention – to whatever it is that you’re doing right here, right now.

Life is made up of moments – every moment that you pay attention is a moment well spent – you relearn how to be fully focused, fully aware of what needs to be done when the big decisions in life call for real action – not the habitual reaction of the normal doomed-to-failure mind.

The Problem With Personal Growth

Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, you are in the company of people who have no idea that their subconscious mind is creating their lives at this very moment. They have no idea that their subconscious mind controls them and, by virtue of the fact that they don’t control their own mind, that they are actually crazy.

In contrast, you, having delved into the world of personal development (if you hadn’t you wouldn’t be reading this!), have some sense that your thoughts create your life. Many books have been written about it, numerous self improvement websites tell you that you can, indeed, fashion your own life experience. And perhaps you already have achieved some results to show for your endeavours.

However, therein lies the danger. If you are aware that your thoughts create your own life, that your subconscious mind can be controlled by you and that your resultant actions, behaviours, interactions and, therefore your life, can be directed by you – you have a weighty responsibility to yourself that you must rise to moment to moment. Because, just in the same way that many books have been written on personal development, much has also been written on just how badly things can go wrong for you if you know how the game of life is played and choose, either by act or omission, not to play by the rules.

Complacency is a far more subtle enemy than worry, stress or fear. It gives us a false sense of security that permits our mind do what it does habitually – slip back into its normal state of autopilot that allows our programmed subconscious mind start to disassemble the benefits that we might have gained from being more focused, more mindful, more present.

For almost everyone in this world – normal people – it is too great a challenge to awaken from the deadly hypnosis that our programmed subconscious mind wields over us. Indeed, for the vast majority of normal people, they will die without understanding that this challenge was even to be taken on. For those of us who do rise to this challenge and succeed, the real challenge is not to awaken but to stay awake and stay focused on a continual basis. We never know when life will throw a spanner in the works – one that will set us off down another path of self-sabotage, so we must do our very best to do what little it takes every day to make certain that our minds are tuned in and that we are as fully present to the best of our ability to the only place and time where life can be lived – the here and now.

Personal Growth: Forget About The Herd

Have you the guts to be different? Have the guts to stand out from the crowd, to stand apart from your own little herd? Have you got what it takes to set yourself apart from all the sad, pathetic people that you hang out with? Normal people are sad and pathetic – and most of us are normal. Years of psychological research and work in the area of personal development prove that the normal mind is out of control, preferring to take its cue from the events of our formative years rather than actually taking real action – the only kind of action that will achieve real results.

The only problem is that most of us are afraid to be different. I’ve come across many people over the years who explained to me that they couldn’t be a success because they’d be afraid of losing their friends! But the other side of that coin is that I know plenty of people who, years later, feel liberated by the fact that they no longer hang out with some of their old acquaintances! It seems that normal people hang out with other normal people as part of some bizarre support mechanism – normal people like being a member of their own little victim support groups!

Herd behaviour is bizarre and you’ll never change your life until you walk away from the herd. Herd behaviour is positively dangerous to both you and all your fellow herd members. Once the herd agrees – albeit subconsciously or by omission – that some bizarre behaviour is alright, anything goes. Some years ago this was proved in frightening detail by what has subsequently become Philip Zimbardo’s infamous Stanford prison experiment – so-called because the experiment took place at Stanford University and involved student volunteers from Stanford. The volunteers were randomly split into two groups – one group would be the prisoners, the other group the prison guards. And, even though the experiment was scheduled to take two weeks, it was stopped after six days – the prison guards had become obscenely violent, the prisoners totally submissive. The outrageous behaviour of the former group, through, was OK – everyone in that little herd agreed with it so none of the guards was behaving, in their little parallel universe, in an unacceptable manner.

All normal people behave inappropriately – because they never behave from a clear and focused state of mind that is fully acquainted with the here and now. Normal behaviour is dictated by the subconscious mind and our normal environment. Normal behaviour could not be appropriate because it has nothing to do with the reality of the present moment.

As such, even though the Stanford Prison Experiment is an extreme illustration of normal behaviour (it is one of quite a number of such experiments that all come to the same conclusion), it does point out just how dangerous it is to run with the herd. More importantly, at a more fundamental level – and one that is affecting your ability to achieve effortless success and happiness – this normal herd mentality is preventing you from doing what your heart desires.

So distance yourself from the herd – once your back is turned many of them will forget about you – and start putting your own life first. Step out of the norms of herd-like behaviour – you will be amazed at how liberating it really is.

Changing Your Life: It’s Up To You

One of my friends recently offered one of his best-loved self-help books to me – it was the most recent in a long list of recommended reading. In talking with him, I enquired as to how he was finding putting into practice his learning from all his reading. I discovered that, in fact, he was a life-long student of living life to the full but was likely to never actually take the plunge. He told me that a friend of his had suggested to him that he “stop reading all the books and starting doing it!”

Bookshops are full of personal development books. This is big business – possibly the fastest growing area of the publishing market. In addition, personal development websites proliferate – offering all types of inducements to buy their package which will change your life in five minutes!

But none of these books or programs will change your life. They could well point you in the right direction, provide you with an understanding that had been absent from your range of experience or knowledge or give you practical ideas on how to get more out of life, change your life, transform yourself or whatever. no doubt about it, there is some top-class stuff out there – and some innovative and practical personal development online help – but it will be no use to you until you put it into practice for yourself and keep putting it into practice.

Only you can change your life. Only you can grasp control of that awesome inner potential that is simply bursting for you to unleash it. The intriguing thing is that most of the advice provided by websites or books requires very little work of you, requires that you make only very minor alterations to the manner in which you manage your mind. Sadly, however, having been in this business for over fourteen years, I have seen far too many people unwilling to take five minutes each day to make the other twenty three hours and fifty five minutes so much better.

And so I come to my main point – one that I’ve already alluded to – you have to keep putting what you learn into practice. No book, program or package will change your life in five minutes. You won’t change your life in five minutes. However, five minutes each and every day is an entirely different matter – if you take or make the time to make sure that your mind is up and running each and every morning then your life will change beyond all recognition. Psychology proves in no uncertain terms that normal people only perceive what they expect to perceive and only experience what they expect to experience – that the normal life is created by the sadly closed normal mind. Open your mind every morning, change your expectations and you will change your life. But, the bottom line is, it’s entirely up to you – no one else can do it for you.

IsYour Own Frustration Destroying Your Own Best Efforts

People get frustrated from time to time. People’s behaviour frustrates us, we get frustrated by our own lack of success, we get frustrated by things over which we have no control – like the weather or volcanic ash! But what of those of us who are trying to do our best to live a better life, or even change our lives, who get frustrated because nothing seems to be happening, we don’t seem to be making the great strides that we expected?

Newsflash! – the guaranteed way of holding yourself back is wondering why you’re not going forward! Frustration is a waste of our precious attention and energy. Wondering why nothing seems to be happening is a useless, negative, self-defeating thought that is tantamount to saying to ourselves “well, I sort of knew that it wasn’t going to happen anyway!”

We have a finite amount of energy available to us and your personal development goal must be to marshal that energy and shine it, like a laser beam, on getting on with the business of both living now and heading in the direction of whatever it is that you want out of life. Frustration, worry or even wondering about when, how or if something will happen is a dangerous distraction, a self-destructive use of your energy – it’s like you’re focusing your powerful laser beam back on yourself! You have to be so careful where you point that laser beam because it can be equally constructive or destructive.

However, if you’re normal, your laser beam isn’t switched on at all. Psychology confirms that the average person pays precious little attention to anything and invests a mere one percent of their energy in doing what they’re supposed to be doing. If you’re not doing what you should be doing now, when are you going to start? The only place and time that you are is now – the only place and time that you can focus your energy is now. Daydreaming, wishful thinking, wanting or needing are destructive uses of your energy because these thoughts have nothing to do with the scientific reality that everything exists only here and now.

Therefore, if you’re getting frustrated that you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, it’s your own frustration itself that’s tying you down. If you feel as if you’re stuck in a rut, it’s that very feeling that will perpetuate your discomfort. You’ve got to re-direct your attention to the urgency of living in the present moment. Now is the time and place that requires your attention – not some of it, like normal crazy people, but as much of it as you can marshal. The very input of an abnormal amount of energy into the here and now will evoke an abnormal response from universal energy. That’s how extraordinarily successful people are so successful – they put their energy into the here and now and, as a result, they have presence. This must be your goal as well.

Normal Living And Self-Improvement: On Your Marks, Get Set, Die

Although many of my clients are business people, as a result of my Personal Development work with aspiring teenage sports people I spend a fair of time with people who have not yet become so inward looking that they miss out on the joys of life. The psychological facts are plain, simple and incontrovertible. Up to the arrival of puberty, the mind functions in a manner that is clear and focused – the immature brain is subjected to greatly reduced levels of electrical-impulse-induced vibration as the neural pathways are still being constructed. Through adolescence, as those neural pathways are completed, electrical activity in the brain speeds up. By our early twenties, with the brain operating at full speed, we become prisoners to our “stored knowledge” that we largely learned prior to puberty. Our perceptions of reality are created by our stored knowledge and our consequent reactions dictated by those resultant misconceptions.

Despite the fact that we were at our most mentally efficient when we were children, our entire childhood was pointed in the direction of becoming an adult. Our education systems are built to ensure conformity to the norms of mindless adulthood. Society at large expects people to better themselves, get a good education and then a good job. Children constantly look forward to what they will be “when I grow up”. And many of the teenagers with whom I work closely, being torn apart, as all adolescents are, by the utter transformation of the brain, suppose that, when they do eventually grow up, all will return to an even keel – all will be well again as it was in childhood. It’s a terrible thing to have to tell them otherwise. As one young guy said to me recently “Some of my friends are behaving really badly at the moment – but, I assume, that, when they grow up, they’ll start behaving properly again!”

How much evidence do we have for adults behaving properly? There is a lack of such evidence because very little is to be seen. As I said, the scientific evidence is clear – and when it comes to stating the facts on the normal adult state of mind, frightening. The normal adult might as well be dead. We went through our childhood and adolescence getting reading to run life’s great race – well, it’s very much a case of “ready, steady, die”! Because our adult minds make “sense” of today based on our stored knowledge, we’re not really alive here and now.

To truly live now, to see life and all its possibilities as they are, to be happy and carefree, we’ve got to become childlike again. We’ve got to slow our minds down, take or make time to calm the mental activity, to tune out the noise in our heads. If we don’t, we will achieve nothing of great worth – least of all peace of mind.

For Your Own Sanity You Need To Come To Your Senses – It’s The Secret To Personal Growth

Maybe your life isn’t the as great as you want it to be, perhaps or if you’re not happy with yourself – what you believe is happening has nothing to do with reality! Decades of research prove that the normal subconscious mind quite literally makes up your reality for you – far removed from the real thing, just a mish-mash of crap (what some people call baggage) mainly from our childhood years.

So, if you actually want to live the life that you really and truly want to live, if you want to really fast track your own Personal Development, you’ll have to stop paying attention to the noise in your head that’s turning your life into some kind of nightmare – you’re going to have to start paying attention to real reality. You’re going to have to come to your senses – and I mean that literally.

Your five senses are your only contact with the “outside” world. Every sound you hear – whether it’s a boiling kettle, birds singing, something nice being said to you, or bad news – is first perceived through your ear, transmitted to your brain, interpreted in conjunction with what psychologists call “stored knowledge” (the crud we discussed a moment ago) and, as a result, made sense of! Same with each sight, each smell, each taste, each tactile feeling.

The fact is, however, that so-called normal people never make sense of what they’ve perceived – they make nonsense of it! Because, rather than paying attention to their senses, they allow their stored knowledge make up their minds for them. And for most of us, that stored knowledge is way out of date – and the older you get the more out of date and irrelevant to the present moment it will become.

Research has found that as a normal adult, you are unable to focus your mind, you simply don’t know how to pay enough attention to what your body is telling you – and, yet, here is where we find real “here and now” information. Instead, an adult lifetime of automatic behaviour drowns out our sensory perception and creates a half-life of mindless living. In effect, normal people are, at best, sleepwalking their way through life, at worst, as good as dead.

From my own work’s perspective, I find that the majority of people are completely unable to pay attention for even five minutes – sometimes when I’ve asked a group to simply sit still for five minutes, the mere suggestion of staying put in the one place resulted in some people almost hitting the ceiling such was their inability to simply appreciate the moment. You need to sit still for a few minutes each day – let it be an exercise in tuning in your mind to pay attention to what you simply see, feel, here, smell and taste. Avoid the normal temptation to analyse what’s going on, don’t add your own interpretation based on the crap we’ve already mentioned. Simply observe – because it is in really see what’s actually going on that the next idea that will change your life will simply become obvious.

Self Improvement – Life’s Ups And Downs – All Things Pass!

Most people struggle with things about which they can do nothing. Most people become upset or annoyed about things over which they have no control. And oh so few people take control of the one thing in life over which you have total control – if you did, it would change your life. Like puppets, we allow our mood to be jerked up or down according to the ups and downs of life.

But the downs – or even just the “not-too-bads” – that happen are what they are. These things are sent to try us and we are invariably found wanting. Like everything else in life – in fact, like everything else in the universe – all the trying times, events or people that we come across in our lives will pass. Everything arises and passes away. And, if we do encounter circumstances that we don’t like then, on the basis that they will pass, we simply need to hunker down and simply get on with it. It is what it is!

On the other hand, there are things that we can do about situations that are continuously intolerable – if your job is truly awful to the extent that no amount of mental self-discipline will enable you focus on just doing the damn thing, then you need to move on and, if you do, like everything else in life, it will have passed. If you don’t then the consequences are the result of your own inactions. If you’re stuck in an abusive relationship to the point that no amount of resilience or tolerance will help you through, move on. Again, if you don’t, your problems are now partly of your own making. If you do, for your own sake, don’t repeat the same mistakes – something that often happens – people jump from the frying pan into the fire.

But apart from ongoing chronic misery, the vast majority of downs in life are no more than minor irritations in the greater scheme of things – they will pass. In addition, the vast majority of those minor irritations are neither of our own making nor can we control them. However, if some of them are of your own making – through act or omission – then more fool you.

What of the one thing in life over which you can exercise total control? Well, everyone, no matter how bad things get, can choose their state of mind. After all – by act, or more often, omission – we’ve already chosen our state of mind. Most of us, without understanding that we have a choice, will allow our state of mind to be as variable as Irish weather – all four seasons can arrive in one day! We allow ourselves be tugged upwards when good things happen, dragged downwards when things aren’t going our way. If you fall into this category, again, more fool you. Grab a hold of your state of mind. Decide to focus your mind, to be calm, focused and present. Choose to pay attention to the reality of the here and now for, in this reality, it will become incredibly obvious that everything arises and passes away.