Paradigm Shift Publishing

Archive for March, 2010

We are looking for happiness – from our jobs, our loved ones, our lives. The truth is happiness has to come from yourself. Its hard for other people to love you when you don't.

At times, we forget how great we are. So here are a couple things you can do to feel good now.

1. Do Something Nice For Someone – without expecting anything back. This can be doing a favor for a friend, volunteering or donating your time or money to charity. Not only does it feel good to give, it reminds you of how much you have to offer other people.

2. Forgive – Holding grudges is the most draining and tiring thing you can do to yourself. When you hold negative feelings towards someone, it begins to own you. When you can forgive and let go – of the past and your ego- you will truly be free and happy.

3. Treat Your Body – With proper nutrition! Its hard to feel good if you are tired, sick or in pain. By getting all your essential vitamins and minerals, not only will you instantly feel better, but over time you will look better. Learn how to heal your body and start improving your wealth now.

4. Have a “complain” free day – Give up complaining ,just for a day, and you will instantly see the positive boost in your life.  Complaining is not only negative, draining and annoying, but it also stops you from solving problems. So the next time you are about to complain about something, try thinking how you can solve the problem instead.

5. Meditate – Meditation is the best thing you can do for yourself – inside and out. The benefits of stress relief is that you become more calm and at peace. When you spend time actively relaxing, your body will also receive the benefits of renewed energy and better circulation. You can try the silva method or any method of meditation for these benefits.

6. Plan to have a good laugh – Whether its spending time with your funniest friends, TV show or movie. The act of planning is the most important part of this step. The anticipation of having a good laugh will boost your mood just as much as the activity itself.

7. Spend time on yourself – Whether its getting a new haircut, reading a good book and just spending time pampering yourself. Its important to make time for yourself to reinforce how important you are. If you love yourself, you will love your life.

If you look up synonyms for ‘changeable’ you will find words such as: ‘uncertain’, ‘volatile’, ‘unsettled’, ‘unstable’. All of those can make us feel ‘vunerable’, ‘unsure’ and / or ‘insecure’.

There is a part of us which likes to feel secure and safe and change is not compatible with that. Yet, after change has occurred, we very often call it ‘evolution’, ‘progress’, ‘expansion’, ‘growth’ or ‘advancement’, and this throws up a far more positive set of emotions.

Therefore, it seems that it is not change itself which makes us anxious so much as the transition process that it entails. We like the stability of things as they presently are. Now is somehow comforting because we know what to expect; yet our ‘now’ is changing every day.

Perhaps it is not change that we fear so much as the loss of control that we associate with change. Change always carries an element of risk. Sometimes that fear, that perceived risk, is so big that it prevents us making changes that we need to despite our unhappiness with our current situation.

At the other end of the scale, there are times when we have probably all been guilty of change for change’s sake. We change our hair color, we change the layout of the living room furniture, we may even change where we work.

Why? We do it to avoid making the changes that really matter in our lives. Deep down, it might be our choice of career that is making us unhappy, but we will change the color of our hair ‘just to make ourselves feel better’, because that is an ‘easy change’.

Seeing as change is inevitable, why not embrace it? Use change as an opportunity to evaluate what is going right or wrong, and course correct. Use it as your master key to success. How else are we going to grow?

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This article was edited and distributed by Mark Walters on behalf of Mandy Swift, who was the original author. Next : Secrets Of Success

According to the research, one of the most common cause of worrying for most of the people is not to accept the reality. I just recently ended reading Dale  Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (for the 6th time) and discovered (again!) the four main questions that helped me realign my thoughts.

How to stop worrying and start living is not really a rocket science. On a contrary note, it is simple. Literally. All that one needs to do, is focus on the right set of thought. I know by now you would be like ” Yeah, Riiight! ” Well I get that too. I know its much easier said than done. For this reason, I have this really simple exercise for you. It helped me immensely to get over my habit of unnecessary worrying.

Believe it or not, but you can banish 90 percent of your worries by taking these four steps:

1. Writing down precisely what you are worried about.

2. Writing down what you can do about it.

3. Deciding what to do.

4. Starting as soon as possible to carry out that decision.

If you analyze it little more closely then you realize that by completing this exercise you end up confronting the problem. You are not in the denial mode anymore. For that matter, now you have acknowledged the problem and have committed yourself to take action against it.

The science behind this is pretty simple. Now you are more deliberately putting your thoughts in the right direction. Instead of being part of the problem (by worrying about the worry), now you are part of the solution!

Here’s an awesome quote from the book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie “I know with conviction beyond all doubt that the biggest problem you and I have to deal with—in fact, almost the *only* problem we have to deal with—is choosing the right thoughts. If we can do that, we will be on the highroad to solving all our problems.”

Stress is not created by problems, but the reaction. It’s safe to say that the majority of us face the same day to day challenges – with our health, family, money, career or just the daily stresses of life.

But its really up to a person whether to decide a situation is a “stressful” one or merely a challenge. The attitude you take when approaching obstacles in your life with affect the outcome- a positive attitude will bring you positive outcome – and the reverse is true.

Here is something to keep in mind when approaching un-ideal situations.

The 5 Rules Of Happiness:

1. If you like some­thing, do it, enjoy it and savor it. This goes for hobbies, tasks, food – anything. If you think and believe something is good for you – it is.
2. If you don’t like some­thing, don’t do it and avoid it. If you hate grocery shopping – pay extra to shop online – think of what you could do with the extra time! If there is a task at work that you don’t particularly like doing – mention it to your boss and suggest that your talents are best used focused on a different task. You will soon see that not everything is set in stone.
3. If you don’t like some­thing and can’t avoid it, change it. Unfortunately, you can’t avoid some things, like going to the dentist, having an unhappy spouse. So its up to you to CHANGE it. But remember, you can never change a person, only yourself.
4. If you can’t or choose not to avoid or change some­thing you don’t like, then accept it. Inner peace comes from acceptance. If you have problems accepting certain things in your life and finding inner peace, try meditating (try out guided meditation or the silva method if you are a beginner).
5. You accept some­thing by chang­ing your per­cep­tion of it. How you perceive reality IS your reality. Simple as that. If you perceive being stuck in a traffic jam as a waste of your time, it will be. If you perceive it as the time of day to balance your checkbook and schedule your next day, then you will perceive traffic jams much more differently.

Sounds pretty sim­ple right? You would be surprised at how fast most peo­ple for­get these 5 sim­ple rules when faced with a dif­fi­cult situation.

Most of the time, its easy to forget that we do everything by choice. We choose who we hang out with, where we work, what we do and how we feel.

So next time you find your­self in an unhappy or stress­ful sit­u­a­tion, run through these 5 rules in your head and see if you’re break­ing any of them. Trust me, they’d really help you see what you can do to rem­edy the sit­u­a­tion and be happy.

There are many techniques for increasing the power of the mind. Even simple habits like asking a few crucial questions anytime you consider something can make for more productive thinking. But there is one approach that can probably do more than all the other techniques to boost your mind power. It is being ready to be mistaken at all times.

Be Ready To Be Wrong

We like to be right. It’s very satisfying on a certain level of consciousness. So much so that we feel better having argued our point well than having learned something new from another person. Really, when you look at it for a moment, wouldn’t it be more valuable to us to learn new things from others rather than prove to them how right we are? Yet how often are we looking to be taught by a person when we enter an argument or even most casual discussions?

This bad habit of the ego level of consciousness is not limited to our direct interactions with others however. It also shows itself in how easily we identify with ideas as our “own,” and how we feel pride in those ideas. Once we are enamored of an idea that we either worked to arrive at or even invented, we don’t want it to be wrong in any way. But isn’t it obviously an impediment to the power of the mind to attach so much value to an idea that better ones are not allowed to be seen?

A great example of the right approach can be seen in Stephen Hawking’s first idea about information loss in black holes. He proved that there was no way for information to survive entry into a black hole, and for many years nobody could show any flaw in his work. Don’t worry about the technical aspects of this, since they are not important here. The point here is this: Hawking was the one to finally prove his own theory wrong many years after the fact.

Now that’s a true mind of a scientist. It is crucial to the advance of science not only that ideas and theories are overturned in favor of better ones, but that individual scientists look for truth above all else – including above being right. That is also the approach that we all need to have a more powerful mind.

More than just being ready to be wrong, we have to always accept that there may be better ideas just beyond whatever is in our minds at the moment. A good idea often kills creative genius, because once accepted as “the idea,” it stops further exploration. It stops the process that might have lead to truly innovative thoughts, theories, products, inventions and knowledge.

Be ready to be wrong and be ready to look a little further at all times. Challenge what you think you know to see if there is some truth that you aren’t seeing. Argue against your own ideas in order to see what others are possible. This is how you practice your thinking skills and increase the power of the mind.

Many people nowadays don’t know how to look at life and learn to live it in all the positive ways that are available to them. They feel as as if they’re caught up in a rat race that they never really entered in the first place. But, there are ways to alleviate the effects of the race through positive activities that can help bring just a small amount of beauty to an individual life.

For example, many people who have the resources these days — and who love to cook a little bit — sign up for private cooking classes. And before anybody thinks that these classes are extremely expensive, in truth they’re really not. At least, as long as one isn’t looking to sign up with a locally famous chef or even somebody like Wolfgang Puck.

It’s well to keep in mind, though, when it comes to cooking instruction that just about any chef or instructor willing to pass along the secrets of the trade can be very demanding. In part, they are artistes mixed in with a little Marine drill sergeant. However, the end result (great food that’s beautifully prepared) can make it worthwhile, so check out the Internet for one of these classes.

Another way to relieve stress and actually bring a fair amount of beauty to one’s life is to think about how one organizes and holds onto memories. Sure, digital photos can be taken and stored on a memory stick but that’s a far cry from something like a scrapbook album, which not only can have photos but also personal mementos that can never be scanned in and turned into ones and zeros.

It’s a well known fact that these kinds of albums remain popular through thick and thin because basically, people are nostalgic creatures. And though they can look at a computer screen and gaze at photos they took on their digital cameras, sometimes the sheer act of opening a beautifully prepared album that has a myriads of precious mementos and it can make all the difference in the world.

Now, this isn’t to say that building a good album will be easy, because it can take a little bit of work to learn how to do so. But, there are a great many classes and community education courses available to teach people how to make scrapbook pages that are part of albums, with both turning into works of art when they are created with the right spirit and feeling.

This is why people should constantly be looking at ways to live life in an interesting and memorable fashion. It not only can be done on the cheap, for those who are not beneficiaries of trust funds and the like — but it can also be done in ways that are bound to take a person’s outlook and improve it greatly just from the doing and the learning of the activity.

In actual fact, life is a talented instructor. It gives to people numerous and diverse kinds of schooling that will remain until they are learned. A lot of people have become familiar with life’s course as fortune interweaves and changes direction to stop a comfortable idleness from taking over and keep us learning.

As an alternative to rebelling against the lesson, searching for telltale signs as to what the feeling is really all about may be the answer to end all the episodes. The earlier it is dealt with the less difficult day to day living will be. Grab the disney scrapbook to write down observations daily. A sense of what is happening will emerge given enough time. Every thought and feeling recognized and accepted gives healing to the past so the present is lived more clearly.

Not everything in life that is experienced is a controllable occurrence. Some things are innate and others have just not been worked out yet. Childhood experiences can leave an impression that imposes itself upon us throughout the rest of our lives. These fearful experiences need to be overcome and life obligingly provides the opportunity.

For instance, a bully may have pushed a smaller child into a hedge. This could lead to a fear of people that look the same as the assailant, or have some similarity to the situation or the bully. This exact same experience will never happen again, but it will be replayed in different variations using new people until the fear has been resolved.

Meditating is a great way of bringing back memories. Clear the mind, relax as best one can, even to the point of falling asleep if necessary, and let go of all thought. Focusing the mind on a keyword and allowing images or memories to come to mind may reveal the reason as to what one’s part is in the drama playing out in real life.

Observing a graphic lcd can be a relaxing pastime and behave like a drop out zone for tired minds, liberating it from the uncertainties and troubles of daily living. To maintain consistent communication between the conscious and sub conscious can be done with a notepad and pen. Whenever something significant comes up it can be kept for an appropriate time.

Taking time off from working on the internal communication system, it is a good idea to pick up the alvarez acoustic guitar and play a little music. This is honey for the bee. Gentle feelings to support a growing self.