more color into the mirror by ivan zuber

Flipping the switch is what I call shifting your point of view. The two points of view that I am currently choosing between are scarcity thinking and prosperity thinking—the old glass half-empty or half full. The mind creates whatever thoughts we focus on. If I focus on what I don’t have instead of what I do have, I am in scarcity mode.

One of my favorite teachers for the prosperity thinking is Catherine Ponder. She was a Unity Church minister who wrote in 1958 a great book, The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity. The book was written via a series of sermons during a recession. She established her belief in prosperity being available to everyone by teaching that the Bible teaching of “not serving God and Mammon” was right. This teaching meant not worshiping wealth but to always recognize who the Giver is.

She was the first I knew who recognized that the brain works by the mental images we produce. She also believed in projected positive images to others so that they can prosper also. With prosperity thinking, you focus on what is and what can be added to the wealth you already possess. I think of it as pyramid. At the base of the pyramid, I have the love of the God of my understanding, my health, my husband, my dog, my loved ones, my business, my home, my computers, the Internet, my spiritual program, my experiences, my plants, the canals, etc.

She also taught one of the spiritual laws I believe—giving away surplus to make room for new. When my cup is full, I have to empty it to get more. So it is with possessions, love, experiences, etc. I have to make room for the new.

luckily I had a nice view ..by notsogoodphotography

(1)   Nelson Mandela’s Top 9 Fundamentals for Changing Your World

Quotations from Nelson Mandela in this article:

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

“It always seems impossible until its done.”

“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

“After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

“We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”

“When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.”

“That was one of the things that worried me – to be raised to the position of a semi-god – because then you are no longer a human being. I wanted to be known as Mandela, a man with weaknesses, some of which are fundamental, and a man who is committed.”

(2)  Surrender to Pain-

• All challenges are there to teach us a lesson. But we are conditioned to treat challenge as a bad thing. Challenge is our friend, embrace it!
• We experience what we put out. When we experience and express a feeling towards someone, we ultimately are the receiver of that feeling. When we express anger towards someone else, we feel the pain. When we hold a grudge against someone, our own inner space suffers. Next time you express an emotion, take notice in how it makes you feel on the inside.
• Every day, there are miracles happening all around us, yet, in a state of deep unawareness, we fail to see them. Even the happiest of events, can be diluted when we’re consumed with problems.
• Our minds are naturally and automatically attracted to problems. Even when everything else is going well, our mind looks for conflicts, issues, differences and problems. We can’t handle how happy we actually are, and how there’s really nothing to be worried about. Without problems, our ego has nothing to cling to.
• All problems are rooted in our interpretation of an external circumstance. Thus, all problems are really created in our heads. They don’t actually exist, except in our own projection of a tale we have convinced ourselves of and believe to be true.
• We suffer, unnecessarily, in advance of an anticipated outcome or event. Nothing has happened yet, but because we have imagined the worst case scenario in our mind, we become afraid of what might happen. As a result, we suffer in advance of a possible scenario that may or may not take place in the future.
• There is nothing we can’t handle, even death. It doesn’t matter how much suffering we endure ahead of time, when the anticipated event happens, it happens, and we move on. The actual event is rarely as bad as we had anticipated. We are stronger than we think.

(3)  Finding Hope

“Do you need His hand to steady you today? Do you need to beat on His chest and release your anxiety to Him? He can take the anger, the fear, the hopelessness and give you instead a peace that is beyond understanding… a peace that steadies you in spite of turbulent surroundings. Invite Him….”

“Father God in Heaven,
I am tired and spent from the cares of my life and the circumstances that are overwhelming me. Forgive me for going my own way and not acknowledging You in my life. Today I want to change that. Today I want to invite You to lead me and guide me. My own resources are simply not enough. I need Your strength and Your wisdom to help me know the next step. I want to trust in You. Increase my faith and help me walk daily with You. Comfort me, reassure me of Your love and take my life into Your hands. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.”

sol17 by Peta-de-Aztlan

A

A reader’s strategies for coping with adult ADHD and procrastination

Addiction recovery blog

B

Break out of your comfort zone to achieve success

6 reasons why you should be your own boss

Beyond thinking different to doing different

C

An exercise in changing yourself

Change-here’s how!

Hoping to change careers in the New Year? Try these seven radical steps

Using your decision-making style to improve your career planning

Choose to be gracious every day

Changing your mutual fund portfolio

10 ways to embrace change

Could you achieve more by doing less?

Conscious living–seven tips

D

Seven simple steps to realizing your dreams

E

F

Falling in love with your  life

G

H

I

J

What to do if you are unhappy at your job

Simplify your job search with RSS and Google Reader

K

L

Lessons from Africa: how to stay sane when things don’t go as they should

5 ways of using limits to get more enjoyment out of your life today

How layoffs can sometimes be a good thing

Luck is no accident: 10 ways to get more out of work and life

M

How to create the habit of daily meditation

Ways to keep your mealtime sane

To change the world, change your mind

N

Need help with your New Year’s resolutions

New Year’s resolution: build your strengths

No limit for better

O

P

Find your passion–6 tips to discovering what ignites your fire

Productivity bleeds through

365 day project–explore your potential

6 steps to finding your true purpose

Q

R

S

Setting yourself up to succeed

Sleep tips: how to make going to bed fun

20 powerful beliefs that will push you toward success

T

If it matters to you, keep track of it

My transformation from high school drop out to surgeon

U

V

W

Creating a good work environment and a great brand

5 reasons why you might not want to work for yourself

X

Y

Z

Mosaic of Hamadan Gathering by Hamed Saber

“Play us a tune on an unbroken spinet, and let the bells ring, let the bells ring! Play music now: play us a tune on an unbroken spinet. Do not make echoes of forgotten time, do not strike music from old broken keys, do not make ghosts with faded tinklings on the yellowed board; but play us a tune on an unbroken spinet, play lively music when the instrument was new, let us see Mozart playing in the parlor, and let us hear the sound of the ladies’ voices. But more than that; waken the turmoil of forgotten streets, let us hear their sounds again unmuted, and unchanged by time, throw the light of Wednesday morning on the Third Crusade, and let us see Athens on an average day.”

— Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River

Dr. Tian Dayton writing for The Huffington Post explores the “biology of codependency“.  His study of the neurological findings about codependency found that codependency is fear-based. He further believes that the stress of living in a home where the children learned to be more vigilant to the adults’ moods rather than their own taught the children to access mood from outside them. What happens to the child’s moods? The child loses touch with what he/she is feeling.

Coming alive links:

1.  Give me a break: Are you busy for a reason?

2.  Formation–“to be nobody but myself— in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me somebody else— means to fight the hardest battle any human can fight, and never stop fighting.” e.e. cummings

3.  It’s the perfect day to be alive.–includes “Wonderful Life” by Natalie Grant from her CD Relentness.

I don’t think that we can try to attain the awakening of our soul in any other way than by choosing to put ourselves in the presence of the God of our understanding. Many centuries ago, a wonderful monk lived and wrote Practice in the Presence of God.

He taught me, centuries later, that all I had to do was practice presenting myself to my God. I didn’t have to do anything else but put myself in a place where the God of my understanding could communicate with me.

Prayer is when I communicate with my God and meditation is the practice of listening to God. Although I have tried many times to maintain the principles of meditation to my life, I have never been able to do meditation in the recommended ways.

Instead I set aside time several times a day to “check in” with Him. When I present myself to God for His answers, I come in a spirit of peace and quiet. I rarely “hear” anything. Instead I sense directions or guidances from Him. If my direction is God’s will for my life, the going will be easy. If I am trying to force something to happen, I will become stressed about it.

The difficulty is in getting out of God’s way. If I think that I know exactly the direction of God’s guidance, I have learned that it is probably my ego answering me. Another way that I use to understand God’s direction is to not do anything to force the outcome. I do the footwork and leave the outcome to Him. This is especially hard when all that maybe needed is a phone call.

If I don’t receive some kind of guidance, I realize that the answer may not be no, but rather may be later. This letting go releases great energy and feelings of belonging. “Let go and let God.”

How do you know that someone–regardless of age–is spiritual? Certainly not because they say they are. The best evaluation is to see the fruits of the Spirit manifested by them. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, kindness, self-control, patience, faithfulness, goodness, longsuffering and gentleness as listed in Galatians 5:22-23.

Wikipedia identifies mindfulness as “the practice whereby a person is intentionally aware of his or her thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmental”. Although my faith is based in Jesus Christ, I am thankful that He has given me the gift of openness to explore and implement practices from other faiths.
In 1976, when I began implementing breathing exercise with meditation practices, I immediately knew that finding my center and focusing on my breath in and breath out enabled calm and peace to flow through my body. Being human, I learned in a moment what has taken a lifetime to implement. Transcendental meditation has been found to decrease heart rate and blood pressure because the mind-body connection prospers when one experiences peace and calm.

Polline Del Fiore by eye-of-einstein

Are you in a rut? If you are experiencing a low period in your life, prepare a list of things to do to get up out of it. Some of the things that help many people are:

(1) Always have a plan for getting out of a rut. Continual stress without relief can easily lead to depression.

(2) Move to another project to work on if the lag is happening at the office,

(3) Take some time to do something creative and fun. Many times, creativity will help lead us back to our joyful, playful inner child.

(4) Call a trusted friend and vent out the feelings. Be careful to do this once so that the venting doesn’t take the place of real action.

(5) If your stuck place has been going on for awhile, consider hiring a life coach . An objective viewpoint will often offer new ideas or ways to change the situation or solve the problem.

(6) Maybe you need a whole day for yourself to do exactly what you’d like to do. Schedule these mini-vacations often to avoid burnout.

(7) Now is the time to schedule more meetings, call some new possible customers, or write a new marketing plan. Get moving!

(8) Maybe you need a physical jolt of exercise. Try a new sport, ride a bike, go swimming, go to the gym—whatever works for you,

(9) Get outside and get reconnected with nature. Smell the air, check out trees, listen to the birds, walk on new streets, go to the beach, or visit a local park.

(10) Have restorative hobbies such as volunteering, gardening, or fishing. Over time, they become welcome friends to return to over and over.

Relaxing after meal by lensbug.chandru

Some change topics with links about the topic. Be sure to check out: You Can Change Yourself Today!

Change Yourself:

10 tips to change yourself from a dedicated couch-potato to a gym enthusiast   Written by Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project.

http://blog.liferemix.net/10-tips-change-yourself-dedicated-couch-potato-gym-enthusiast

Fun makes change easy: harness the power of your inner child

(Includes TA)

http://www.evenhappier.com/2007/01/if_you_decide_to_change_get_th.html

Tom Helsen ‘Change Yourself’(You Tube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxr-utCzoI

Do You Need a Life Change?  http://www.squidoo.com/changelife

Resources:

Change Agent at Work:

Fastcompany.com—change agent for years—check archives for article about this resource– http://www.fastcompany.com/search/fc?filter0=%22change+agent%22

Understanding the Change Process

Leadership and Change

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadchg.html

Resources:

Managing change

http://www.work911.com/managingchange/index.htm

Managing Change – Understanding How Individuals Change
Resistance To Change – How and Why People Resist Change
Managing Change – Step By Step Change Management For Change Leaders
Managing Change – Key #1 – Empathy
Managing Change – Key #2 – Communication
Managing Change – Key #3 – Participation

Change Your World:

What do you want to change in the world?

www.change.org

Lists 2057 ways to change our world

Has a changes page to list progress:  http://www.change.org/changes

Main 8 are:

1)    End global hunger

2)    End dependency on oil

3)    Eliminate child labor worldwide

4)    Protect endangered habitats

5)    Promote fair trade

6)    End homelessness

7)    Save Darfur

8)    Stop global warming

You Can Help Change the World! http://www.squidoo.com/changeworld

Photo by Wiseacre Photos

Change is just a decision so changing yourself can begin with one small change. For this post, I have chosen many links about reinventing yourself. Choose one and change yourself today.

10 Life Lessons for Reinventing Yourself

Tips for “Reinventing Yourself” as You Get Older

The Secret to Reinventing Yourself—from Fast Company

Reinventing Yourself—this is a great 20 page PDF file but I don’t know who wrote it. The only clue on the file says Ibarra-CH1 4th  9/24/02. I would be happy to print an author if someone knows this author.

Reinvent Yourself—Take the First Step

How to Reinvent Yourself and Change Your Identity—from Ehow which has several other articles about reinventing yourself

Five Ways Web Professionals Should Be Proactive in a Recession by one of my favorite bloggers, Jeremiah Owyang.

One of my guilty pleasure sites is Econowhiner. Six Quick and Easy Ways to Reinvent Yourself begins with:”We lied. There aren’t any quick and easy ways to reinvent yourself”. It is a great article with 22 good comments.

Another great source is Mashable: The Social Media Guide. Dan Schawbel Writes: 10 Ways Personal Branding Can Save you From Getting Fired.

Gold Mining by muha

I often write about what I most need to know. Emotionally, I am finally moving through letting go to the next step-acceptance of what is to be. I have gathered some quick links and quotations to ponder over. I hope that they will help you, too.

(1)  From WaterPrayer:

“Acceptance is a state of non-reactivity and understanding. Acceptance does not mean ‘approval’ or that you condone what you are accepting. It means that you see something and know it for what it is, without having to need to change it. There are many ways prayer can prepare you for acceptance.”

“God of My Heart, help me to see and to know things for what they are, both inside me and outside of me. Help me to allow things to be as they are, even when I wish them to be different.
Help me to experience the importance of Acceptance: that things as they are hold many gifts, and that if my eyes and heart are open I can learn from what things and people teach me.
Help me to remember that to be in the state of Acceptance means that I can truly move through the world knowing what I can and cannot change.”

(2)  From Jannacrumbs:

“I believe that we see a very clear picture of what causes relationships to break down in 2 Corinthians 7:1-4. Here’s a quick summary:

1. Pride…too much (v1)

2. Priorities…too many (v2)

3. Patience…too little (v3)

4. Perspective…too limited (v4)

The bottom line here is that we all get in the way of our own happiness and what God has intended for us. When we do, we often start blaming other people for the lack of satisfaction or reciprocity in our relationships, when in fact, we may be the ones causing the problem.”

(3)  From journeywithspirit:

“Dear God, in this moment I hold your acceptance.
You love me completely, just as I am.
You see my great potential within,
and you nurture my tender heart of compassion.
In this moment, I let your acceptance be my own.
I accept others as the children of God.
I hold high their inner greatness,
always seeking to serve the highest and best within all people.
And so it is.”

(4)  From selfcreation:

“Self acceptance is being loving and happy with who you are NOW. Some call it self-esteem, others self-love, but whatever you call it, you’ll know when your accepting yourself cause it feels great. Its an agreement with yourself to appreciate, validate, accept and support who you are at this very moment, even those parts you’d like to eventually change. This is important…even those parts you’d eventually like to change. Yes, you can accept (be okay with) those parts of yourself you want to change some day.”

(5)  From Rex H—“What is Your Greatest Fear?”

“My prayer for the day….it has come to my attention yet again that I am trying to control things that are beyond my control. I need to accept that I have certain things in my life that have the appearance of being things I can change when in reality they are things I cannot change. By continually trying to change that which I cannot I am being selfish and not of maximum service to God and those around me. So for today I will pray this prayer and pick up the tools that have been given me to deal with those things…..thanks to those who love me enough to help me see this blind spot and have so compassionately guided me on this journey.”

Splash by eyeofeinstein

Offering solutions to problems is my favorite method of helping others. I believe in letting go of the choices made by the people that I help. Only an individual knows what feels right of wrong for him or her. At the heart of all conflict is the power struggle. If anyone who seeks help from another feels he/she is being controlled, then the help being offered is coming from the helper’s ego. Real help comes from the heart and not the mind. This illustrates the difference between the ego and the soul.

Before you choose an email package, spend some time writing down the direction that you want for the email sessions. For each of the sessions, I will be introducing you to the broad range of mental, physical, emotional and spiritual practices that are available. I will also be sending you websites and blogs that may add to your understanding of the practices that are introduced.

What are the benefits of email coaching?

(1)  Email is available 24/7 so you can study the email suggestions you receive, take the time to read other links I will send you , and/or compose your questions to me at any time that is convenient for you.

(2) Using email has two advantages over regular sessions where you and the counselor meet and talk. The first is that by writing out your questions, you will be helping yourself to clarify the problem. Two, you will receive written suggestions, ideas and links as a permanent record.

(3) It is a time saver as you have no travel time or appointments to keep.

(4)  It is more affordable not only because it is cheaper than regular counseling/coaching but also because you set the frequency of email sessions. One session means you send your problem to me, I email you back with 4-5 page PDF report of suggested solutions, ideas for greater self-discovery, and links covering your problem area topic. For each session chosen by you, another PDF will be sent based on which session you have chosen.

(5)  For your privacy, you may wish to set up a free email account in gmail (my favorite, Yahoo or Hotmail. If you need an invitation to join gmail, send my a request and I will send invite to you. With a separate account for your email counseling, you can access it anywhere you may be and from any computer.

(6)  The monthly member has unlimited email. Time constraints dictate that a 24-48 hour turnaround is reasonable to expect.

(7) Over the years, I have switched from offering counseling to offering coaching. Coaching is shorter-term. Plua I can be more directive of the actions I believe you should make. Of course, the decision to change is your decision.

Please be sure to read my post about Do You Need Therapy.