Tag Archives: Gratitude

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Gratitude Lets you Lift a Light amongst your Shadows

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So often we find ourselves lost in the stormy seas of our emotions. These ominous feelings tower over us, leaving us blinded by a fog of uncertainty. We try to clamour our way through the shadows but we aren’t able to get a grasp on anything. Who is there? Who are we fighting? We are fighting ourselves – our made up monsters of the past that we are too afraid to look at. We lash out or turn away, we numb and distract ourselves in order to be free from vulnerability. But there is a way to move through these dark moments powerfully. Pick yourself up and shine a light. A light of gratitude.

To stay positive when you are surrounded by negativity, try finding what you can be grateful for about the situation and what you are grateful for in your life. If you can lift yourself higher than the situation then the negativity naturally falls away. If you have ended a relationship, have poor health or lost a job, when we give thanks with every moment to the life and love surrounding us, we will have love and support of life reflected back to us. We see how wonderful the world is by the inspiration we see in the world and in people. It is in others actions that we realize who we are. So I say this to you. You have not lost anything, you have only changed your mirror that reflected how beautiful the love inside you is.

When you are aware of this, the Universe will naturally present an opportunity that you are able to see because you are in the space that will be able to be aware of a more joyous and opportune reality. If you connect into the negativity or even if you resist it rather than reframe it you will not be able to lift above the clouds. It requires you to take a step towards change, a step in which you must exert a moment of effort beyond wallowing in the natural despair of any negative situation. A step of gratitude will infuse the situation with new, fresh energy that will reverse the cycle of chaos toward one of new growth and creation.

It is your Gratitude that will transform the dire situations in your life to shine like gold and open you up to experiences that the average person would close themselves off to because of the fear of letting go from what they have grown to know. These experiences of fear are what typically move us to our more primitive and lower states of consciousness rather than toward our higher selves which is what we need to move to, in order to reach an evolution in our own psyche and person.

These experiences of chaos can be invited as messengers of growth. Were you really happy in that relationship, with that job. Were you really treating your body with love and respect? It is when we act from our highest states of consciousness that we transform dire situations. When people stand tall, true and vulnerable in the face of despair, it is during these darkest hours that people make the greatest leaps in their lives and become the greatest versions of themselves. Our highest versions of ourselves are bred from love and trust. Hold to your gratitude and you are well on your way to success.

Success is not how much you have, but how far you traveled. You might have a million dollars but if you started with 10 million you might not feel that successful. But if you started on the streets and created a life of love, gratitude and respect for the world around, with a roof over your head, food on the table and you end the day with a smile. Then you are one of the most successful people in the world and you are the true 1%.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_urxI9L5Ak&w=560&h=315]

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Compassion is a Tool to Rule your Heart

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There is a great power in compassion, one that shines a light on the darkest moments and most abrasive relationships. I often found myself in situations where I was overwhelmed by my interactions with people that left me feeling emotionally drained. It took all I had to endure these people and their moods and attitudes. I soon realized that what was draining me was not the person themselves but my reaction to them. I was resisting who they were and who they were choosing to be.

We are typically egocentric beings that look at the world from one perspective. This is because it is typically easier to observe the world from your own perspective than every single person you meet. That means when you are communicating with someone you typically assume that they are looking at the world from your perspective, that is unless their experience is beyond the limits of what your mind can accept, such as if they are too happy for you or too sad, then their emotional experience is separated from your own and typically rejected. Nonetheless, our experience of putting ourselves in another person’s shoes is what has enabled our civilization and global community to grow. For example have you ever noticed yourself crying in a film when something bad happens or get excited when another triumph’s, this is because of our natural empathy.

We are naturally empathetic creatures and because of that we personally experience other people’s hardships. We take on their pain and their joys. This is one of our greatest characteristics as humans but it can also work to our disadvantage, if we let it run our lives unchecked, as it can leave us disempowered and disabled. Therefore as we take on others emotions in our everyday lives we can find ourselves resisting and resenting them for the emotional hole that we have joined them in. For instance have you noticed when your partner comes home from work in a bad mood while you are in a good mood, and soon enough you find yourself in an equally bad mood with them without having even spoken to them? This is because we have resisted them because we have empathized with them – a natural part of being human.

You don’t need to resent yourself for resisting them, it just means that you are being an empathetic being. However you have identified with their story as your own, from your perspective rather than acknowledging that they have been on their own journey that have led you both to the current place you are both in. Therefore there are ways to be empathetic that don’t leave you emotionally drained and that is through the power of compassion. Compassion is a powerful way to still keep love for someone without taking on their pain. When we acknowledge the journey someone else has been on we allow ourselves to disidentify from their pain and instead gain a more objective look at their story. We allow ourselves to move out of the narrow view of the present moment and instead broaden our perspectives of their journey and our own to gain an unaffected understanding.

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop (Ancient Greek. 620 BC-560 BC)

When we realize that we don’t have to take on another’s story we are free to acknowledge another truth – People in bad moods are probably having bad days. These bad days may be ongoing for months or years. Think about it, have you ever met a person that sits in the corner with their happiness and doesn’t care to share it with anybody? No. Happiness has to be shared and we all hold a natural inclination to pass it on to every person we meet, otherwise it loses all its value. So when you see a person that you know who leaves you emotionally lower, think about THEIR journey. Ask yourself the question, “what has happened that have left them unhappy?” When we can take a step back from our own perspective and acknowledge someone else’s we are given the amazing power of compassion. We can share with them our heart in a way that doesn’t leave us emotionally debilitated and instead we are able to take a step forward to give to them and help out. When we realize that their story is not our journey our own happiness is highlighted, and by sharing that joy in our actions to help them we are able to further inspire both them and ourselves.

Remember this: It is as important to be as compassionate for others as it is for ourselves. We exist beyond this moment, so remember your story and the journey you have travelled and give yourself a break. Smile at yourself from your heart and really feel the feeling in your heart of compassion, of giving yourself a break and not taking yourself so seriously.

So when you next are in a situation in which the person you are with leaves you emotionally drained because their attitude is poor, think about the journey they have been on, realize it is not your own story and smile at them from your heart. It is important to truly wish them the best possible outcome in their troubles and that they find themselves smiling soon. This mediation may inspire you to step forward and help them or it may ask you to step away, but either way it will help you be the best possible version of yourself for them and yourself. Compassion helps remove stress from your heart, opening yourself to the radiant possibilities of your health and your life. Your compassion enables you to cultivate greater connections with others as well as yourself. It highlights to yourself the good fortune that your own life holds and inspires you to be the best version of yourself and for all.

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The Love Spell: Attracting Love with Love

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Since the time of the 12th century troubadour poets, the concept of romantic love has thrived in the western world. From these early times, Love existed synchronistically with a spiritual connection to something greater than the two individuals. Love was something that connected us all and lead to fantastic adventures and impossible outcomes. Although we now live in a more cynical world that has led us to believe we live in a world without mystery and magic, some things are still left unexplained. One thing in particular is the magic of love, its unbelievable coincidence, its power of connection and attraction over impossible distances, its strength and knowing that is share between partners.

This magic still exists in the world. We have heard story after story about it. We have experienced it first hand having seen the most powerful feats and transformations. The magic of Love is the highest potential of the human spirit with limitless creative possibilities open to it. Therefore, we can learn how to use the power of Love to create our lives in the ways that best guide us to our dream lives. What better way to start than to learn how to use love to attract love.

Before I go on, I must mention a disclaimer. I call Love and all its feats ‘magical’ only out of ignorance of the true science and psychology that underlies this great capacity we have evolved over the millennia to become the greatest creators on Earth.

“Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.” – Saint Augustine (354-430) Ancient Latin Father of the Church.

This teaching helps you to attract your perfect partner by writing the oldest known spell. The love poem. There is a reason why these great troubadorian masters of love were also great creators of it, because they knew exactly what was in their hearts. We must be certain of our creations and feel it deep within our own hearts. Intention is using your imagination to dream up the experience that you want to move into. When you don’t intend its like driving without a steering wheel, you will end up crashing and not making it to your dream destination.

THE LOVE SPELL

This practice involves you writing a love poem about your potential dream partner as if they are already in your life and in your room. Write all the things that you are grateful for in them as if they have already done them. Really feel what you are writing. You will not only get clear but you will help reprogram your mind to become aware of that amazing partner when they present themselves to you in the world. And you will be ready to welcome them into your life and your heart. If you want to take it a step further write a love poem about yourself. We are only able to accept the amount of love into our lives that is equal to the love that we have for ourselves. Write about how wonderful they make you feel and that you feel confident in, and deserving of, their love. By acknowledging yourself as a person worthy of love, you are widening that connection and allowing a greater experience of love into your life.

The reason why this process is so powerful is because the flow of writing a poem has the ability to be more conversational which works more in line with the way that we relate to the world and people. Dealing with your subconscious in a more natural style helps to better integrate your intentions into your psyche so that you can align your actions with your intentions of the poem more easily. To better integrate your intentions re-read your letter every day with conviction and with a knowing of it’s truth. When you begin to become involved with someone, you can refer back to the list and see not only how well they fit your ideal, but also how your ideal may have slightly shifted (or how you may be willing to bend on certain things after being presented with a live person).

I’ve found this to be a very useful exercise in helping to determine not only what you are seeking in a long-term relationship, but also in helping oneself become more self-aware. The amazing thing about the love poem is that you don’t have to use it on people that aren’t in your life but for relationships that are already there and watch the transformation that you will see. You can even use it for material dreams or for jobs and goals in your life. We are all travelling the great journeys of life and as long as we live it with love and passion we can create great moments of triumph that we would have never dreamed possible by ordinary people.

Happy writing 🙂

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/43457382 w=400&h=300]

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Attract Love – Not a Stranger

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Whether you have a crush or want back your ex, by trying to attract a specific person you are limiting Love. You are telling the world and yourself that there is only one person out there that can complete you, that can have you truly experience love. There is only one particular person out of 7 billion. You are telling the Universe that they are the only person that can BE Love. But the Universe knows better and so does your higher understandings.

By thinking that another person is Love you are limiting the experience of Love because you can only ever partly know another person and therefore you will only ever partly know Love. It is hard enough to know yourself so imagine trying to understand and be in control of Love if it is another completely different person. Think back to how broken-hearted you have been when the person you thought is your Love treats you poorly and you feel like Life and Love is broken. You feel like this because of your misconceptions about who and what Love is. So then if another person isn’t Love then who or what is? The answer is simple… YOU!

Love is You

Love is generated in you. You are the person that creates it inside of you and you are the person that feels it. When you recenter Love within yourself you will see that Love is infinite and limitless. You will see that you don’t need a specific person for the creation of Love but instead you only want to share the Love that you have created and feel with someone. And that someone who you ultimately choose to share your experience of Love with, and build an even greater experiences of Love with, is someone who is a very blessed and lucky individual.

Love is Inspiration

That feeling of love is inspiration. Inspiration to be the best person that you can imagine yourself to be. We are communal creatures and we create best as families not as cowboys. When we meet someone who we can see the possibility of creating the best version of the world with, we are inspired to be with that person and build that world. We feel excited by that possibility and want it to be real, so we work with that person to build it. Sometimes we get confused into believing it is that person that is the inspiration rather than our own excitement and passion. We each only hold our own passions and our own Love and not another’s. And in that we are free to attract the many possibilities of many exciting and wonderful worlds.

So don’t think that your Love is unworthy because the person you have tried to attract is not coming. Our idea of love is based on the experiences we have had with love. It’s richness comes from how we open ourselves to it. Sometimes we get hurt and stop ourselves from being vulnerable but it is only by opening yourself to love and all the possibilities that you open yourself to the greatest probabilities. Love is not a game to be calculated, it is a leap of faith requiring trust in yourself and another. To open yourself to the experience of Love, Focus on Love itself. Get clear on what Love is for you – inside and outside of you. About how you want to experience it, The ways that you want to inspire the experience of love in your life and how you want to share it. Don’t focus on a person, focus on the experience of Love.

Love Exercise

A good exercise is to think about your last relationship and give thanks for all the things that you appreciated about your partner and the relationship. Give thanks for how they made you feel and all the great times you had together. Then make a list of all the things that you want to experience in and with your next partner that you are attracting into your life. You may have noticed some things that your last partner didn’t do, well take this as an amazing opportunity to give them thanks for that because now you can ask for what you do want in your next relationship. By now knowing what you want your mind is more aware and perceptive of possible partners that align with your new and richer experience of Love. It might be the person you are currently interested in or you may soon realize that they do not meet your needs and instead you meet someone who is even better suited to creating your dream world with you.

The Love Revolution

Know this – when you are familiar with Love you can move into any situation with an air of confidence and familiarity. You are no longer attached to the result and thereby remove the fear of losing something. When you can walk through the shadows without worry you are much more able to respond and receive whatever is presented to you with the greatest clarity and wisdom. This is your Love Revolution because it will no longer be you looking out at others to be your Love, because it is YOU that is LOVE. With this clarity and wisdom you will inspire the greatest experiences in your life that will have you realize that Love isn’t one person but is part of everything in your Universe.

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Gratitude: Breaking Patterns and Building Heart

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Many people go out and do some form of self-development. Whether mentally, physically, spiritually, or emotionally, they address the development of their inner-selves to have a resounding growth experience and increase their skill set. Normally people will find that both during and soon after the process of their learning they feel very empowered and able to manifest beautiful creations in their life.

The greatest challenge for people who want to live happier, powerfully create and be more in control of their lives, find that soon after learning such teachings these advances are thwarted with the fog of their years of negative programming. Slowly the dust settles and they find themselves falling back into old habits. All that time and effort they gave to their learning is lost, fallen through their fingers. This growth reversal ultimately results in people becoming apathetic about taking an active role in their own life and learning. Our old, non-serving automatic processes often leave people without the will or confidence to actively create in their own lives.

Often this common pattern of negativity about the difficulty of up-keeping these newly learnt ways of being, dampens the power of their intentions and the person drifts back into their unconscious way of being. These new learnings are only recently wired in the brain and like infants needs constant tending to, with a similar love and devotion you would give to a child. Remember that quickly your new-found inspiration gets overshadowed by old life programs of negativity. Our brains are lazy and these old patterns are well carved routes the brain knows well that they can take with little effort. So it takes an active ‘extropic’ effort to redirect these patterns and strengthen them so that they are the new status quo.

By constant daily practice we slowly force a new direction to the currents of our mind. Find and set a routine to help you change to your new patterns. It is the role of our front brain to inhibit impulsivity but sometimes the pull is to great to old patterns so we can anticipate the change of our mind to set up pre-planned behaviours that will nullify our old bad behaviours. This might be things like setting an alarm to get up early to run or meditate. This might be to remove all the alcohol from your house. Whatever your new pattern is, set up routines and plans of action so your lazy brain has to expend the least amount of effort to do the new behaviour. The best scenario would be for it to expend less energy doing the new activity than the old because then you will find very little internal resistance.

I had this experience with learning the power of Thanks. So many people hear and learn the words of the power of gratitude to change their life and feel an immediate rush of inspiration and creative power. They live in gratitude and create positivity through their positivity. But this takes work and the impotence from my old patterns made it difficult to redeem the reawakening to the power of gratitude.

I tried by stopping and being grateful once or twice a day, which would give me a good feeling here or there, but that’s about it. Our life programs of negativity are deep within our minds. Therefore, I learnt how important it was to constantly practice gratitude to increase the richness of life. I set alarms, wrote notes to myself, made gratitude boards and said it out aloud with such conviction I made myself believe it. Gratitude is a muscle and I learnt I needed to work all day every day to make my heart grow. By doing this all the time it changes the automatic (and even evolutionary) programs from one of negativity to one of joy and gratitude. Life was more fun, the colours of my day were saturated, food tasted sweeter and my interactions were richer. I learnt that when you practice gratitude you don’t need to make a lot of money to be happy because you already feel like a millionaire. Contentment is a powerful emotion, because it enables you to create for the sake of having fun. It allows you to create to give rather than take for yourself.

Gratitude is a case, not of seeing is believing, but believing is seeing. By waking up to, and living constantly with gratitude, things to be grateful for will constantly flood into your life. If needs be, fake it till you make it. There is always something to be grateful for and the very act will change your physiology, your chemistry, you perspective and the shape of your daily smile.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj2ofrX7jAk&w=560&h=315]

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The Stress-Free Present

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Often we lose control of our thoughts like a runaway train. We simply notice something, a feeling, a thought, and within a blink of an eye that thought has built up to some moment of impending doom. The momentum is so powerful that you are left feeling so overwhelmed by the power of this thought, that all you can do is take it as truth. But something deep inside you knows that this thought isn’t real – that this thought is one of a trillion possibilities. So why do you want to give this thought any more power than it already has?

It’s time to bring this illusion of the overwhelming thought to a stop. It may not necessarily happen as a grinding halt but there are ways that you can help yourself relax into a place where you can get a handle on your thinking and ultimately your reality. First and foremost, you can relax by bringing your mind back to the present. The present is a present to you. Take a deep breath and focus on that breath. Feel the air rush in and out over your lips. Feel your belly flow with the to and fro of the moving tides of your breath. With each breath cycle in and out, count that as 1, and then do it again for a second time all the way to 10. Then repeat this cycle of 10 breaths ten times for a total of 100 breaths. We take around 30,000 breaths a day, so you don’t have to feel overwhelmed by this, but just do as many as you can.

It is with presence that you find your power. When you allow your mind to move out to all the infinite possibilities of things that may or may not happen, your evolutionary nature will typically focus on the negative in order to help you be able to pre-empt future threats. The problem with this is that our mind often believes that our thoughts are real. This unintentionally leaves you stressed about things that don’t actually exist like when you were a child and believed there were monsters in your cupboard. Breath is the most powerful way to create space for you to blow away the conjured illusions about the fog of the futures impending doom.

Science has begun to provide clarity to this process of thinking by exposing what are called mirror neurons. These neurons help to create the same physiological experience you may have by thinking about something as you may have if you were actually experiencing the event in real life. For example we wince when we see someone get hit in a boxing match because our mirror neurons have us partially experience what we are observing. This is what also helps us build relationships and be the social animals that we know ourselves to be.

So it is important to remember that these thoughts are not real and that you will be more powerful in your creating if you bring your mind into the present. Emotional stress often causes the creative centers, which are also known as the executive functions, of our brain to shut down. Cognitive inhibition happens so that we can allocate the most amount of mental resources to protect ourselves, which involves either fighting with, or taking flight from the danger. Neither of these reactions typically help us deal with a problem in the most desired manner when we consider our current lifestyle and stressors. Therefore we often result in less than desired creations and outcomes when dealing with stressful situations.

SO again I ask you to bring your mind to the present. Focus on your breath or the things around you that you are grateful for and this will help change the perspective of that which stresses you to that which simply is. By looking around and noticing all the great things that surround you it helps you change your focus to that which you have control over and that which you love.

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Giving is the Key to getting all that you Want

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It feels like at times when we think of bad things they so easily come, but when we think of good things, more good things don’t come as easily. This happens because in the Universe there is a natural law called entropy. It means that when things are left to their own accord there is a downward spiral toward chaos and disorder. It is the same way things naturally need up-keep otherwise they will deteriorate and no longer be usable. For example, a coat of paint on a house will only last so long until it begins to deteriorate and more paint will need to be applied to maintain the original coat.

In saying this we say that we see that there is the opposite side of this coin in which we can give energy to something in order to maintain it or even make it even better. This phenomenon is what is known as extropy. It is the process of giving energy to a system in order to, not only maintain homeostasis, but also to put enough new energy into the system to lift it against the natural order away from chaos and towards ever greater functionality, purposeful and organized complexity.

Giving is a powerful tool in which we can create greater extropic cycles. This is done through the process of giving, for the fact that if you choose to give in all your actions you are not only giving more energy to whatever system you are working with, you are also opening yourself up to receive. Sir Isaac Newton gave us this conclusion in his third law of motion, in which every action has an opposite and equal reaction. This means that for every time that you give you are also opening yourself to receive the same amount of new energy back to you. This energetic equation enables you to move beyond the place you were at by introducing more powerful energy patterns in the form of wiser thoughts, richer emotions and more effective actions.

When we think negative thoughts that don’t make us feel good, we are taking energy from our system and leaking it out in the form of stress. This ineffective use of our energy thereby speeds up the degradation of the system towards chaos as that is the natural cycle of the downward spiral. For example we all know that it is much easier to swim downstream, and in a moment of despair it is easy to go with flow of our natural thoughts down to disaster. However when we instead think positive thoughts that serve us in these dire situations, we are in fact putting more energy back into the system that allows us to now swim against the natural downward flow. This reversal of the natural cycle towards chaos allows us to introduce greater order, functionality and organized complexity into our lives. The perpetuation of this giving cycle and the introduction of new energy into the system opens up a space forever more increasing growth and development of ourselves and our lives. This allows for the most powerful and functional version of you to create and manifest all that you desire.

So I urge you to take on the attitude of giving. Give in everything. And know that you are worthy to receive. When you answer a question or are in a conversation make sure that you are not taking but instead give. Smile from within and make sure that your actions are helping the person rather than taking away from them. When we act from a place of giving we undoubtedly neutralize entropy and chaos and create the greatest energetic system in ourselves. This is most pronounced when we feel hesitant to do something. Of course make sure to look after yourself first but giving in all that you do always creates a space in which you welcome the energy of inspiration to create your dreams and make them all come true.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/13573320]

SO GIVE AND BE HAPPY, JUST LIKE MR. HAPPY MAN!!!! 😀

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To Succeed we Need to Consider the Community of our Future Selves

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Life often is about perspective. It is about reframing the shot to bring into focus the things that are really important. We often create the idea of the fairy tale life. We see the way we want things to work out and we don’t want any real hardship as we travel down that road. But what would we really learn if it was all that easy. How would you really progress if life were a series of simple steps that didn’t push you to really know yourself? You would just float through life on a euphoric cloud only connecting ever so lightly with your surroundings and you would never any of it or yourself as real.

We have hardships to create strength. To create growth. To create ever greater versions of ourselves. To learn a difficult math problem is in fact not easy, but with the effort that we put in not only do we learn the solution to the math problem we also learn that we can answer other math problems. Often we need to go and ask people for help to do so, but there is nothing wrong with that as our lives and society is built on communities of people coming together and working on single ideas of ideology, morality, politics, economics and many other more to create great solutions to tough questions.

Often we want to be the knight in shining armour that rides in, solves problems themselves, saves the princess and lives happily ever after however we must not only realize that we are communal, we must remember to strive for community. Most of us are taught to reach solely for the prize as a lone rider but what about if a knight went into the dragon’s lair, this difficult life problem, with a group of knight’s? Not in an effort to attain all the spoils for himself but to share the spoils equally. Rather than chasing the fantasy they instead work together to reach a shared goal. All men would be able to equally share in the spoils and all live well off. This idea is, in part, supported by John Nash’s Game Theory which asks that rather than trying to reach the unrealistic and self focused goal by ourselves we may find a greater and achievable reward with a more cooperative goal.

Whilst this concept takes into consideration often working with other people or cooperative agents, this cooperative goal can also happen closer to home so to speak. That is, cooperation with your present self and your future selves to be exact. Quantum physics has told us that reality and time is an infinite and infinitesimal sequence of moments of now and it is our consciousness that stitches them together to form the flow of experience. Every moment feeds off the next but that is not to say that it is the same moment. It is in fact, in essence, a completely new moment. Your future self therefore is a completely different self to the current self and selves that are reading this. If that is confusing and difficult to digest, when we look at it from the larger perspective and think back to fifteen years ago, it is hard to believe that we were the same person we are today reading this. That is because we are not. Our bodies and minds have completely refreshed and reformed. And so when we think of our future selves in shorter time whilst harder to notice the changes we can know that the present moment we are operating is a different moment from the former and the future.

By working with your future selves for the ultimate goal, you will be able to look at the fact that while you were unable to receive the current prize, you may be able to see that you have worked in collaboration with your future self in order to create a greater future for all of yourselves, both future and present. This may come as an example where you have worked on something but it doesn’t pay off the way that you wanted it. However when you change your perspective, you can see that you have gained a lot of experience, connections and references for your future self in order that they will succeed. You can see that you have sacrificed your past self in order that others will thrive. Sacrifice and surrender is considered one of the greatest, and noblest, gifts a person can give to anyone and to anything.

When you act in collaboration with your future selves you gain a much larger and grander perspective and a much greater vision of what you are doing. You’re your actions have a greater perspective, you then have a greater purpose. You have a meaning and a reason for doing what you are doing. You allow yourself to be more forgiving of actions that didn’t pan out as originally intended for you see that they are only a small, and often necessary bump in the road. You therefore can find a greater appreciation for those little things that do and don’t work out for you, as you and your team of selves are now a step closer towards the greater goal that you are working towards. For with a team you can trust, you know that you will ultimately achieve the dream that all your selves are trying to attain. So please don’t be disheartened by things that don’t happen exactly the way you planned but instead see the bigger picture and be supportive of your greater selves. And remember Aesop’s motto “United we stand, divided we fall” so work in collaboration with your future selves and you will surely be able to reach any goal. GO TEAM!!!

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How to get off the train of thoughts we don’t want

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If we are hounded by a thought or emotional reaction that we don’t want, then we must learn to free our minds from the thoughts that don’t serve us. To gain this freedom we must consider the range of cognitive patterns are playing out in our lives and gain an understanding on how to work with these naturally occurring phenomenon. Everyone has thoughts, and everyone has thoughts they don’t want so it’s about learning how to have these thoughts and still be the version of ourselves.

Unfortunately to free ourselves selves from unwanted thoughts it’s not as simple as saying “No! I don’t want to think about this anymore” because very soon these banished thoughts soon reappear above our mental horizons. There is a saying supposedly made famous by the psychologist Carl Jung that said “what we resist persists, and what we look at goes away”.

Quick test: Read this and then close your eyes – Do not think about pink elephants for a period of 30 seconds!

Most people will surely think of a pink elephant, and so we can see how difficult it would be to not think of things that are emotionally charged. Therefore we have to make sure to be able to look at things and be able to remove the emotional charge from them. Sort of releasing the air out of the pink elephant balloon.

Let us now highlight two main cognitive culprits that appear to always be present in enabling emotional distress and then look at ways of diffusing them in order to regain control of our minds and hearts. Firstly, letting your mind run away with you. Often we may not have enough control over the mind to keep it focused on the things that serve us. Our minds have a natural negativity bias that fills an idle space with the worst-case scenarios in order to keep us vigilant of any dangers. This is great if we are living in constant danger and need to live day by day in a jungle filled with predators. We are living, however in an urban society filled with other social individuals trying to grow beyond survival and therefore we need to instead focus our physiological and mental resources on improving personal functionality. This is the way of the Extropist for the fact that we are utilizing the best use of our resources for our inevitable growth by negating the entropic leak. We need to instead inject new energy into our personal system to elevate us to the next level of personal progress.

The first practice to stop this energy leak is to gain control of the mind and where its thoughts are going. This can be done through the practice of mindful meditation. Start with 15 minutes a day. Sit in any comfortable position that won’t induce sleep. Follow and focus on only your breath. If thoughts come in allow them to be there and then let them move on past you like a train rushing past. Try not to jump onto the thought train. If you do notice that you are on the train – That’s fine. Simply jump off and come back to your focus on your breath.

The second element I would mention is that you are not your thoughts. Your mind is a testing ground for seeds of potential. Each thought you have is a hologram of a potential reality. Holographic servers are able to run multiple programs simultaneously thereby allowing us to test out many realities simultaneously and play these possibilities out. However, these thoughts of your simulated realities are not real. You do not need to identify with these thoughts as real. They are holograms. Illusions. Learn to see your thoughts as that. Instead let them rush on past you. If you begin to see them sneak in name them, either in your mind or out aloud. ANGER…. ANXIOUS. By naming them you are dissociating yourself from them. You are putting them outside of yourself. It is important to remember to keep these thoughts outside of yourself and not identify with them. When you talk about them try not to say, “I am angry”, instead say “I am feeling angry”. This gives you more space between you and the thought to then be free of it by gaining control of your mind and breathing through it. Therefore you are not your anger, you are only running your anger program at that moment you feel anger. Anger is the thought program on the screen but there are many other programs that you can choose to run instead. Patience. Compassion. Forgiveness. Choose the thought that best serves you and your growth.

Source: urli.nl via Josh on Pinterest

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Remember gratitude. It is always a powerful way to neutralize our negative feelings and enable positive programs because often we are upset because of the distance between what we want and where we actually are. However when we practice gratitude we increase the value of who we actually are and realize that there is no real distance between these places. We can realize that we are perfect in the place that we are now and what we have created up to this moment. There is so much more for us to create in our lives which only can provide a true excitement rather than a despair. So find your gratitude for this moment and the next and you will find an easing of any burning despair.

Take control of your mind by letting your thoughts and feelings move through you rather than holding onto them. When you take these steps you will create a space to be free of what you don’t want and instead you will be totally absorbed in what you do want. People really shine not when they are basking in the glow of some happy moment but when they can still smile when they are in the depths of their darkest hours. It is when you can choose to hold a positive program, hold your focus and flow through the moments, rather than resist them, that you best create the powerful processes that serve you through the darkest and brightest times of your life.

Source: youtube.com via Josh on Pinterest

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We can See that it is when he is off the train of thoughts he is able to reach his goal!

ELEVATE

Dream Bigger than the End

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So often we do things so that we can be the best at something, just for the sake of being the best, but very soon on we lose our motivation and commitment to the cause, finding it very boring. Why do we reach for these goals of being the best at something? So we can think of ourselves as better than other people? So we can think we are a “good” or “smart” person? These lofty ideas can really be thought of elements of our personality. No matter what you do, whenever you compare yourself to someone else you are always afflicted with personality. The personality builds itself on experience relative to the world. You know yourself relative to the world and therefore if you can only know yourself in reference to something you are limiting yourself. You are limiting yourself because you can only grow as big as the person or thing you are comparing yourself to and that is a limiting mind frame that you are holding. Sometimes you reach that goal and you sit around feeling good about yourself until you realize that there is someone else bigger or better and so now you compete with them. Forever competition. Never satisfaction.

By only trying to be the best, not only are you trying to climb to the top of an unreachable mountain, you are stealing the joy from your experience. To truly excel you have to do something, or look at something, in a way that has you do it for the joy of doing it. For instance, if you are doing something just to get good grades or you are working just so you can get money, you are naturally sucking the joy from what you are doing. It is a limited reference frame and won’t inspire you beyond what you are doing, so then why do it?

It is important to look at the thing you are doing from different angles and different perspectives. A good way of doing this is through gratitude for the opportunity to be following this path, for what it involves and for what got you there. You think that what you are doing isn’t relevant now but how do you know in the future it won’t be one of the most relevant things that you did. Find a way to identify with what you are doing. Recontextualize it. What is the relevance of what you are doing to the world? To the rest of your life? Find a way that it is relevant to you so that you can connect with it as something outside of the moment – rather than as a means to an end.

How could anyone be inspired by reaching the end?

It is our reference points that bring us down. I had a friend who grew up in the fields of Mexico. He didn’t know what rich and poor was because there was no one around to compare himself to, so in those days he was blissfully happy. But then he came to America and he saw the difference of his situation, to all the wealth around and how different he was from them. With this new reference frame he felt limited and sad. One day he realized something that lead him to reframe his situation. Instead of focusing on himself in relation to the people above him, he focused himself to his dream which in his mind was well beyond and much more relevant to what he wanted for himself.

In this day and age people will often change with the wind their career, their directions and their idea on who they think they should be and what they should be doing. People soon become lost in the hurricane of choices trying to grab on to as many things as they can whilst they find themselves swirling around in the frenetic digital trends of the day. We often become fixated on these ideas like a rabbit in headlights, copying paths that people have already begun to cut, leaving us more often than not overwhelmed and stuck in the rut. People typically prefer to walk a well-worn road where they will find safety and certainty but they may not find purpose. This may very well be because we are travelling the road well travelled rather than the world less travelled.

So spend the time to work out your big dream. Plan the path ahead. The only reason we choose to focus on other things and people is because we don’t take the time or don’t know what dream we want for ourselves. When you try to reach another persons dream you won’t have the same passion about it; to reach where they did. You won’t be able to muster the same level of enthusiasm needed to go the long haul, and thus everything you do becomes boring and tedious. If you want adventure, if you want excitement, if you want inspiration you may need to do something inspired. If anybody could have done it, it most probably would have been done. Some times all that takes though is simply getting down to business on your dream and believing in it and yourself.

Take the time to work out what your dream is. If you don’t know yet, then find gratitude for the things that you are doing, because in positivity and your higher frames of mind you are opening your frame of reference to a place of greater possibility and opportunity than if you have a closed and resistant mind. Give thanks for the dreams that you do have even if they are modeled after someone else’s and be open and aware for the moment when you realize what you really want to do. So dream big and get exited about your dream. Because when you find your dream, when you find your purpose you wont be doing things for a limited reason, a momentary accolade, a meaningless end, you will be doing things for the joy of the rest of your life.