Photo by anomalous4

Riding the Money-Mindset Choo-Choo

To illustrate what I mean, imagine that you are riding on a train for your vacation. You decided to take the train so that you could see all the pretty scenery of the country side on the way. As you get on the train you notice that there are no free window seats. Sure you can see the windows okay from another seat, but you wanted a full view so you set off up and down the cars in search of a free seat by the window. You search for hours, find nothing and finally give up by the time the train rolls into the station.

The point is this: you could’ve seen the scenery just fine, which was your original goal, but you became obsessed with finding the seat, which is just a means of looking out the window. This is what tends to happen with money. We want the freedom and the peace that having ample money can give us, but we get caught up in the process of trying to get more money instead of trying to get more peace. We miss the forest for the seats, so to speak.

You Need Outcome, Not Goals

This is one of the fundamental differences between how the rich and the poor view their money. For the rich, money is rarely ever a goal unto itself. More often than not the actual goal they work toward is what the money brings them. They focus on the outcome and the money comes to fill in the blanks when needed. Poor people focus on not having enough money and wanting more. They do not focus on attaining more, they focus on how they WANT more. This just breeds a mindset of lack that keeps them in debt and unhappy.

In my last article, How to Sell Yourself, I talked about what I call “selling from the end.” I’ve spent some time as a salesman and I’ve learned that people do not respond to talking about what you are selling unless you sell them an outcome. People don’t give a damn what your product is or why it’s a good product, all they care about is the end of the story; the bottom line. No matter what your product is, or how good it may be, the question is always: “What will it do for me?” Bells and whistles are always fun, but outcomes are what sell.

So What’s Your Money Going to Do For You?

If you want to make more money you have to start from the end of your goal, not the beginning. Describing all the money you want and why you want it are all bells and whistles. The bottom line is what you want that money to do for you. Most people haven’t thought of a concrete reason for wanting more money. Or at least a concrete reason that isn’t “because I don’t have enough.” That’s not a reason, that’s a worry and a mindset of lack. Learn to sell yourself from the end and you’ll start to understand what all this means.

Instead of thinking about how much you need money to pay the bills, imagine how good it would feel to never have to worry about the bills again. Imagine what it would be like if your bank account was so robust that you could set your bills to automatically draft without noticing the missing cash. You’d never have to see another bill in the mail again! How would that make you feel? That feeling is an outcome. That’s not a thing, it’s a mindset, a lifestyle, a habit.

Outcomes Are Always Intangible

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that things are outcomes, that’s a common misconception. Things, material possessions, are not the bottom line. Outcomes are always intangible and ethereal. They are feelings and lifestyles instead of cars and jewelry. Jewelry, cars, televisions and toys are what accountants call liquid assets, meaning that they are easily turned into cash. These toys are great and fun to have but they are just another form of money, which means chasing after material things is going to lead down the same path of lack as chasing after cash. You’ll end up disappointed at how little you seem to have and you’ll just keep getting more “not-enough.”

So, with all this in mind, how do you cultivate your making-more-money mindset?

photo by luismi1985

1. Sit quietly and comfortably and close your eyes. Yes, you have to do this.

2. Imagine being in your favorite room of your dream house. Imagine it in the greatest detail you can. Imagine the lighting in the room, the smell, the sounds. Run through these details until you forget where your body really is. You should feel calm, confident and energetic in this room.

3. Now run through scenarios like checking your bank account, or paying your bills just the way you expect to perform these tasks when you are in that physical reality. Notice that you do not feel frightened or tense around your money in this fantasy. If you do not feel free, just keep practicing. Freedom and peace are the feelings we’re trying to cultivate.

4. Now imagine any other part of your day you wish to experience in that reality.

5. Lather, rinse, repeat, as many times a day as you can stand it.

The point of this exercise is to get you thinking about how you want to feel instead of what you want to have. We need to get you into your outcome and away from the pursuit of cash and material things. Materials things and cash will come as a natural result. Give them little to no thought.

So how do you imagine your life to be? What are your outcomes? Leave a comment below and share your ideas.

I’d love to be one of those people who tells you that looks and first impressions don’t matter, but I can’t. They do matter and they matter a great deal, whether we like it or not. People are judging you every second you are in their sight and it isn’t really a bad thing. We have evolved to discern whether or not new people pose a threat to our well being. If our new acquaintances make us uncomfortable, we make a judgment that might lead us away from future danger. This survival tactic can be a very handy strength if you realize that first impressions are usually based on looks.

It really is 90% how you look.

If you were walking through a hospital and saw a man in a white coat walk by, would you question the fact that he was a doctor? Of course you wouldn’t, but why not? Did you see his diplomas? No, but he had a white coat. He looked like a doctor and that was good enough information to make that determination. The same goes for every other area of your life. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a by-god duck. Now your goal is to learn how to look like a duck.

There are universal standards for looks which is a great thing for you because it means that making yourself look a certain way is relatively easy. We all know what “professional” looks like, for instance, and it’s an easy look to imitate. We also know what “suspicious-and-shifty” looks like, which makes it a relatively easy look to avoid.

This brings up a few stories I probably shouldn’t tell but, like everyone, I did a few things back during my younger years that I probably shouldn’t have. Nothing majorly illegal, mind you, but when you’re in high school there are always a few nighttime trespasses to be had. My friends and I were, and probably still are ;), very good at getting away with these night time shenanigans. We knew never to dress all in black because that was a look that screamed “up-to-no-good.” We always dressed in jeans and t-shirts and sneakers, a very “all-American-kid” type of look, that way if we were ever caught it was easier to plead innocent. And it always worked. If we looked like were up to no good people assumed we were. If we looked like good, clean-cut kids, people assumed we were.

And there you have my misspent youth.

All this plays into stereotypes that everyone have. We know what a “trouble-maker” looks like and we all have the image of the “boy-next-door” and that means that we can play off of those images. Stereotypes aren’t necessarily bad if you’re smart enough to use them to your advantage.

I’m not saying you have to trick people.

You don’t have to pretend to be someone you aren’t, that’s not what I want you to come away with. What you need to know is that wearing a t-shirt and baggy jeans to a job interview is a good way to get turned down flat. That is unless you want to work for Google, then you’re their man. If you want that non-Google job, you need to play on the stereotype of the “successful-professional” by wearing a suit, a tie and running a comb through your hair. You aren’t lying, you’re simply not shooting yourself in the foot.

Photo by dogfrog

Sell Yourself from The End

The greatest salesmen in the world will tell you that you never, ever sell from the beginning, you always sell from the end. You never tell the customer why your product is better than everyone else’s and how low your price is until you tell them what your product can do for their business. People don’t care about what you’re selling unless you show them how it affects their bottom line. If you want to sell yourself, you must sell yourself from the end; sell yourself from the position of their bottom line and your affect on it.

When you’re going in for a job interview, don’t harp on about your people skills and organizational prowess. Don’t tell the interviewer that you’re a hard worker who gives 110%, they don’t care about that.

You’re speaking your language when you need to be speaking theirs.

Want to get that job? Talk about all of things you’re going to do for that company. Talk about how you’re going to raises profits and how your organizational skills can make it happen. Tell them about how you’re going get them 1,000,000 new customers this year with your amazing people skills. Now you’re speaking the right language because you’re talking in terms the other side understands. You’re selling yourself from their bottom line. Show them what you bring and make it impossible for them to turn you down.

So how do you sell yourself? When you go out into the world every day, how do you present yourself? How do you sell yourself to new customers, new friends and new employers?

You Tease What You Fear

Ridicule is born out of fear. It is a product of the ego’s fear of annihilation and we are all guilty of it. It is the unconscious reaction to anyone who we feel is closer to success than we are, or who threatens our view of the world. We judge others when we are stuck in the unconscious mode of needing to be, or knowing what is, ?right?. Look around and watch for these types of judgmental actions. You might be surprised how often they crop up not only in others, but in yourself.

When we ridicule someone, be it out loud mockery, complaining or silent scorn, we are doing so out of our own insecurity and fear. That co-worker you can’t stand, annoys you only because you are afraid that he will succeed before you do. It doesn’t matter how annoying that person may be, your scorn has nothing to do with their actions and everything to do with your fear that someone who is “inferior” will be found to be “better” than you.

When we scorn those we do not personally know, it is less out of fear of failure and more out of fear of being “wrong.” This is especially true in the world of science. Research scientists in the field of quantum physics have long had to endure the derision of skeptics who were afraid of being wrong and having to admit that there might indeed be something they did not yet know or understand.

A Ridiculed Discovery in Quantum Physics

In the late 70’s and into the 80′S German biophysicist, Fritz Popp, discovered that cells in living things communicated through fluctuations in the quantum field via what he termed “biophoton emissions.” In other words, light! He found that even humans produced photons of light depending on fluctuations in energy in the Zero Point Field. This, he theorized was the how schools of fish could change direction at blazing speeds and all instantaneously. This is how birds could migrate and navigate together and even how the cells of our bodies could perform millions of operations all at once. His research even lead him to the discovery that illness interrupted the flow of this communication between the cells, hinting that if the flow could be restored, so could perfect health.

By all means, this should have been the discovery of the century. What it earned Popp however was ridicule, the loss of his job and an attempted seizing of his research equipment. Popp managed to spare his equipment, but found himself on the outskirts of the scientific community, laughed at and scorned, though he had vigorously tested and reproduced his findings.

It would take years before Fritz would be backed up by others, vindicated and welcomed back into the scientific community. The ending was a happy one in this case, but the world very nearly missed out on an incredible discovery because Popp’s colleagues feared that he had stumbled onto something unknown. They assumed that if no one else had discovered this, there must be nothing to discover. They feared his findings might nullify everything they had ever written on the subject of cellular biology. They fought against him out of fear and very nearly won.

It is frightening at times how little adults have grown away from their more childish tendencies. If anything we’ve gotten smarter and far more dangerous.

Focusing Teasing Into Creation

If you are experiencing such mockery and derision, know that there is something you can do about it. You cannot control the thoughts, feelings and actions of others, but you can control how they affect your life.

First off, realize that if ridicule is coming into your life there is probably a very good reason. You are being viewed as somehow dangerous. No one picks on the town drunk, because he is no threat to them. Everyone assumes he is a harmless failure. We mock those who appear somehow threatening to our pride, our careers or our health. The dumb scorn the smart, the inept scorn the talented and the weak scorn the strong. It is hardly ever the other way around, that is to say the talented do not scorn the inept unless they are unsure of that ineptness.

Ridicule only goes up the “social food chain.”

Teasing is like a social barometer, the more you are derided, the more likely you are to be on the right track. If you want to turn this mockery into a positive force then start realizing that it is social confirmation for you. The more others ridicule you, the more likely it is that you are heading in the right direction and should keep going. If you were truly heading toward failure, no one would bother with you, it wouldn’t seem worth it. Their fear, however, is proof that you are doing something right. So grow a thick skin and stick to your guns. The Universe evens all things out in the end.

Live Through Principles

If you want to focus your ridicule into a creative force, you must be careful not to fall into the same unconscious trap that your opposition have encountered. You must not lapse into fear or you will find yourself defeated by their jibes. If you can stay your course and live through your principles you will find success.

The difference lies in your motivation. Operating out of fear will create doubts that will torment you. They will whisper that perhaps the opposition is right, you are a failure. You’re making a terrible mistake that you’ll never be able to take back. It will ruin your life. Fear will always exaggerate, be watchful for such tactics. It will blow failure out of all reasonable proportion until it becomes unduly terrifying.

Choosing to operate out of principle is not easy. It requires constant vigilance of your own mind. It requires that you stay conscious for as much of the day as you can manage, especially when confronting ridicule. Stay focused on what is right and true for you and you will not waiver; lapse into doubt and fear and you will fail for certain. Your principles act as the rudder for your ship, choosing whether to take you left, right or straight on. They help you choose a course that is not based on your ego and its fear of failure, but out of your higher consciousness that knows your true abilities.

If you wish to stay your course you must find your principles. Find your values. Find what you would stand up for and what you would die for. Once you have found them, turn to them for every decision and every moment of doubt.

Fritz Popp chose not to give into pressure when others told him his findings were wrong and his method was questionable. Fritz knew that his method was accurate and so were his findings. He was certain that his findings had opened a door that the world needed to step through. The threat of never again having a career was not enough to sway him. The work was simply too important. The work, the principles of science, had to come first. There was simply no other way.

Ridicule is a Sign Post

Ridicule is actually quite useful when you step back and look at it objectively. Certainly it is uncomfortable and often demoralizing, but it is also a sign post to success. If someone finds you so threatening as to take the time and energy to ridicule you, you must be doing something right. Unconscious humans tend toward laziness and wouldn’t bother with you unless you were really doing something that made waves in their little worlds.

View scorn and mockery as a sign post on the road to success. If at any point the opposition should cease their snide behavior, you should begin to wonder whether or not you are still on the right track. As the old saying goes, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a fews eggs. Seek to view teasing and ridicule in the same way. Use it as the social barometer for your life and your work.

If they care enough about you to make fun of you, you must be very important indeed.

I do not believe that anyone has ever risen with the bright morning sun, stretched beneath their soft warm blankets and said to themselves, “My God, I hope this day is as dull as they come!” I can’t quite grasp that anyone could be so complacent as to view this wide world as “the hand they were dealt” and to continue playing such a dull game of cards. The quote above by Leo Tolstoy just seems to say it all, doesn’t it? It says that a life defined as ordinary is a life of the most terrible nature. If that seems strange to you, I would ask you this: are you one of those who feels that life is just a game of chance you have already lost?

The ordinary life can come in many guises and is hard to recognize by those on the outside. If however, you live one every day, I do not need to point out what it feels like or how you know. You just know. You feel in your bones that there is more to you and more to life than you have ever felt or seen. You may also feel that these desires are beyond you, that you could never achieve them. You may feel you are too old, too young, too fat, too thin; there are always a million reasons not to do something. You simply feel that your desires are not a good use of your time and that you should be doing something “useful.”

Stop Trying to Be Useful.

I hate that word, useful. It implies that you could ever do or be something that serves no purpose at all. But how could this ever be? How could you never serve some sort of purpose in the greater scheme of the world? This world and this universe are nothing if they are not purposeful. They work by laws that are unerring and undeniable. Things that go up always come down, opposites always attract. There are reasons and rhymes and there always have been. So how could it be that you or anyone else living and creating within this universe could act in a way that wasn’t of some use?

It will serve you greatly in the future if you realize that everything has its purpose. Not some things, not most things. All things. Perhaps you feel alone, or helpless, or that life is something you are trapped underneath. All of these are warning signs and all of the desires and the dreams that you are denying on a daily basis are the very things that exist to save you from yourself. If you do not accept this fact, you are not yet ready to move on. Your dreams and your desires are the cavalry that are coming to your rescue. To deny them or ignore them is to choose one more minute and one more day in this ordinary and most terrible life.

The NEED for the Material

We ignore them because our wants and our needs have been corrupted by the ego and the self-help community in conjunction. So many books tell you that wanting something more than you have only supports a mind-set of lack. What they meant to say is that the wanting of more MATERIAL THINGS supports a mind-set of lack. Your desires are meant to point you toward the betterment of yourself and your life, but more often than not they point you toward the nearest shiny new toy. Why, because your ego’s fear has stepped in the way. Your true desire is to change your life and begin to operate in a new way. Your ego sees failure written all over that idea and heads it off at the pass. “You don’t want a new job,” it says. “Too risky. Might not work out. You just need a bigger TV. That’ll make you feel better.” But it never does. Your desire for material things is not born from a desire to better your life, but from the need to distract yourself from real improvement.

The things themselves aren’t evil and neither is wanting them. What is detrimental to you is your obsession with material things and the putting of these things before your true urges. Material possessions need to be kept in their place. See them for what they really are: toys to be played with and discarded. They hold no more importance than that. Play with them while you have them and want for nothing more than you have in this moment.

Our true desires involve not the gaining of something new or something we never had, but the betterment of what we already posses. They raise us up and make us feel like more than we ever dreamed we could be. The desires of the ego feel like lack. They make us feel as if we are one step behind in keeping up with the Joneses.

Finding Your Flow

When you feel the pull of true desire there will be no mistaking it. You will feel a rush, a surge of energy. You won’t feel like sleeping, you’ll barely think of eating. It is a frenzied kind of creation that will make you feel electric. It will wash away the old feelings of despair and neglect and replace them with confidence and unwavering focus. You will feel, in a word, inspired.

Many spiritual teachers have written and spoken about the flow of energy through our bodies and that cutting off that energy is what leads to things like lack and unhappiness. I don’t know about that, I’ve never seen this energy and have never seen it blocked, but I think the idea is essentially correct. Rather than your ordinary life being caused by some blockage of energy, it occurs when you block yourself. If we could get you out of your own way, you would experience a world that was entirely new and far more interesting.

When I was a fresh-faced theater student, my mentor used to give me private lessons in Alexander Technique. This involved bringing your awareness to your body and allowing yourself to release unneeded tension. The main point of Alexander Technique is to get out of your body’s way. Your body, when left to its own devices, will return itself to its natural state of balance poise and equilibrium. Most people are so cut off from their own kinesthetic awareness that we have back, neck and many other physicals maladies. Believe me, once you get into AT, you look around at everyone around you, and down at yourself, to realize we’re all just getting in our own way every minute of the day.

It is when you get out of your own way that you get into what we call “the flow” or “the groove” or “the zone.” You feel as if that energy that was blocked is now flowing freely. You feel as if you could conquer the world and indeed, you could. This you see is what the world feels like when you are not twisting yourself into an ordinary wreck. Instead of looking at your desires as things that are meant for others but never for you, you will begin to realize that your natural state is that of the creator. You will no longer stand in your own way when it comes to the successes in your life. You will learn to step back and allow your natural processes to take you to a life less ordinary. From here you will create miracles that will dazzle others but you will know that what you do is the simplest and easiest thing the world.

I encourage you to tap into your playful side when you feel that you life is becoming stagnant. Your desire for change doesn’t need to be earth-shaking in it profundity. It simply needs to be allowed to flow freely through you. This desire might be to drive the scenic route home from work. This isn’t exactly ground-breaking, but it is a new and exciting experience. If you give into it in a playful manner you will discover the magic that lives in that moment. If, however, you keep your focus on how little time you have today and all that important work that awaits you, you will stay grounded in the ordinary.

Return to that bliss you felt as a child when everything seemed to have some mystical importance. You looked at an empty box and saw nothing but its possibilities. It is this type of playfulness that you must reconnect with. Take the seriousness out of life and have more fun with it. Let go of your ego’s need to be DOING something. Release yourself from the DOING of things and learn to connect with the BEING of things. Do your laundry in a deliberate way or feel the tiny movements in your arms as you drive. This is the being of an action. It is the playful acceptance of a task. Return to this sense of wonder and magic and release your need for seriousness. Life was never serious, that was a lie your parents told you. You came into this world screaming and naked, why so serious?

The key to changing a seemingly ordinary existence into a fulfilled and magical one is a shift in how you approach the world. If you learn to approach your tasks with acceptance and fun, you will create magic. If you learn to approach your desires with dedication and step out of your own way, you will find that doors for change open for you where you never expected. You will find help where you never dreamed it could appear.

The universe will begin to work with you, just as soon as you begin to work for yourself.

I don’t want you to make the mistake of thinking that once you make these changes your life will start coming up roses. It doesn’t work that way. There will always be new things to try and those new things will cause uncertainty and sometimes fear. You will try and fail and you will spend countless hours wondering how to do it better next time. Many people call this state of being, unhappiness. Its real name is LIFE. That trepidation you feel when trying something new, that is life. That failure you experience when attempting to succeed? Life. The excitement of success? LIFE. Those emotions are life. Not one or two of them. All of them.

It is when we stop finding things to be excited about that we become depressed and dissatisfied.

Embrace the joy of life in all its wonderful, happy, annoying and downright crappy ways. Learn to see the perfection of it all, for it is all perfect. Learn to internalize the saying “all is as it should be” and you will find that while life may not always come up roses, you will certainly enjoy its not-so-rosy moments more.

Finding You Calling

I do not believe in a life’s purpose. I find the whole notion to be far too simplistic and foolhardy on the part of a creator. Why give us all a purpose at which we could fail, or simply choose not to fulfill? Seems like a tricky proposition for the fate of the universe, wouldn’t you say? The idea of a life’s purpose is a relic from childhood Sunday schools where they taught that God had a special plan for all of us. I’m not saying we’re not all special or distinct, but I don’t think God was dealing out hands in the great card game of life.

All that said, dedicating your life to a purpose is different from a divinely ordained purpose. One was given by a mysterious creator who wanted you to figure it out before the time bomb of life ran out. The other is a personal passion that you have turned into a life’s work. Don’t worry about whether or not you are doing “God’s Work.” If it was so important, God would have been more straight forward about it in the first place. When you find something you wish to do that makes you happy and gives you an inner feeling of peace, you are doing God’s work.

Now you just have to find what you want to do . . . well crap. Not as easy as you were expecting, huh? For most of us, it isn’t. When we were kids it was all too easy to come up with thousands of things that we wanted to have, be and do. Now we struggle to come up with anything at all. Part of this difficulty comes from a fear of failure. Most of it, however, is simply a loss of imagination. When you were a child it was easier to stare out at the world and see it, not in it’s physical form, but in its unmanifested form. There’s a reason.

In EEG studies, Dr. Ervin Lazlo has found that children under the age of five stay in a constant state of alpha brainwaves. These are the same brainwaves that occur in adults when we meditate and connect with the universe. Children are in a constant state of connection and a constant state of imagination. They see the world not as it is, but as it could be. And that’s not some feel-good, Bobby Kennedy-esque slogan, I mean it literally. Children see the world in its unmanifested form! The reason adults feel as if they lose their imaginations as they get older is because of the shift in their brainwaves. As we grow up, our brains no longer work solely in an alpha state, but shift permanently into beta waves. It wasn’t that we fell out of practice or that the world took it away from us. It was a shift in consciousness, or away from consciousness, as we grew.

But the important question is, can we get our imaginations back again? The answer is undoubtedly yes, but it will take some time and effort to relearn what we forgot. I have devised a list, short but sweet, of ways to do just that:

1. Meditate - I have spent, and am still spending, a lot of time on the subject of meditation as I have yet to fully understand and utilize it. There have been times however, when my meditations have been wonderfully powerful tools. Learning to quiet the inner chatter of the mind and sit with rapt attention given to the Universe is invigorating. You come away from the experience witnessing brighter colors and heightened awareness. What also follows is a period of greater creativity. I personally find that my writing comes with limitless ease when I can relax my mind into this state.

Meditation is a means of stepping out of your own way and returning your brain naturally to its child-like state of alpha waves. It moves you from the world of manifested reality into the world of pure potential. It moves you, in essence, from the here and there into the everywhere. You connect into the Zero Point Field of possibility.

I wish I could tell you the best way to meditate, but I have yet to find it for myself. There are, however, no shortages of books and Internet articles that would be glad to detail any number of methods. Pick one and go with it. If it doesn’t do anything for you, try something new. Personally I enjoy sitting comfortably, closing my eyes and actively listening to the silence around me. When you actively listen, your mind cannot interject thoughts or judgments, it’s too busy listening to the unmanifested silence. There is power in that silence.

2. Seek To See Everything Differently - Every day, look around you and start to find ways in which the world could be other than it is. Right now, I’m sitting at my desk look over my computer at the ?Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? poster I brought back from London. Before I started this article, I took a moment to envision how it could be otherwise. Harry could grow horns, Hermione a mustache. I imagined the poster as painted by Dali. It was great fun and it only took a few seconds.

If you can make a habit of this sort of playful thinking in your free moments, it will become like weight training for your imagination; the more you use it, the stronger it will become. Don’t bog yourself down with trying to imagine your life getting better, or visualizing piles of money. That will come later, for now just have fun making the world a strange and wonderful place. No one has to know what you’re doing, just have a good time and see what you can come up with. You will probably surprise yourself with the level of clarity and creativity you will achieve.

3. Suspend Your Disbelief ? It was Samuel Taylor Coleridge who described poetic faith as ?that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment? and I couldn’t put it better. The world has grown more and more cynical with the passing years and that has stunted our collective imagination. We no longer look around at our world and wonder what impossibilities we might make possible. Just think if man had accepted that we could never fly! Or that the atom was the smallest thing! Disbelief is like a virus that can infect you slowly but surely. Squash it now and reconnect with your childish side.

Next time someone tells you their idea, take a moment and suspend your disbelief even for the briefest of moments. Regardless of whether or not it changes your opinion of the situation, wonder what life would be like it their idea would work. Imagine all of the ways in which it could succeed and then make you judgment on its viability. The idea might indeed be ludicrous, but the seconds that you have taken to imagine it differently will change you drastically.

Once you can bring your imagination back to the forefront of your mind, you’ll have no trouble finding your passion. It will seem so clear, it will be ridiculous that you hadn’t thought of it earlier. This may take some time, so be prepared. Let yourself feel easy and free, let your passion flow to you in its own perfect time. I know that this is easier said than done, but no one said living your life on purpose was easy. It will come only when you relinquish your need for it.

Letting It Be

Now that you know what you wish to pursue, at least what you want to pursue right now, let it happen. This is by far the hardest thing you will ever do, but it will seem so easy once you’ve done it. If your goal and passion is to become an oil painter, you must let yourself paint not for the fame or the glory of it, but for the joy of painting. Let your talents flow from you with nothing else in mind but to give them perfect form to give them away to others.

It is when we become attached to the outcome of our works that we find them to be ineffective. When your mind gets bogged down in the ideas of money and success and fame while you’re trying to create something beautiful, this cannot help but taint it. When you focus on the outcome of your actions, you live in the future and seek something better than you already have. You struggle for something you feel you need, which demonstrates a lack. This only brings you more things to struggle over and more things to lack. Remember, that which you think about expands. If you keep your mind focused upon the joy of creation and sheer simplicity of your work, you avoid these thoughts of need and lack. When you accept your now as it is, see it as absolutely perfect and want nothing more from it, you will suddenly being to receive more.

To being to work from this mindset, you must first ask the question, “what good may I do with this project?” If it is a painting, imagine who you are painting it for and the point of painting it for them. What do you wish to give to them? This is important because it is in the giving that you will see your creation come to life. For me, my creation is this website. I offer up these writings because I enjoy writing them and I feel that I might be able to help those who feel lost or trapped in their own lives. When you stop your resistance to your life as it is and your fears as they are, you open up the door for genuine miracle making.

Embrace the passion that you have found as an act of selfless creation and begin to ask nothing of your work but simply to flow through you with ease and joy. Beyond that, let it go where it will. What you give will always come back to you in greater numbers than you empowered it with.

A Life on Purpose

Your life doesn’t have to be lived by the rules of some unseen fate. You have the choice to live your life any way you feel. If you want to deny your passions or refuse to seek them out, there is nothing wrong with that. Your life will continue on the way it is now. There will always be good times, they will never leave you. You will always have enough to get by and you may never feel you lack for anything. But if you are one of Us, who cannot conceive of an ordinary life, then I encourage you to follow me down the path of passionate creation and unabashed giving. It is not always an easy road and it is not always a pleasant road, but you will find that you can create real magic in your life by tapping into the power of your pure potential and living it every day to its fullest.

If this type of collective growth is important to you too, please read through the many offerings at the Personal Power Blog Carnival and share the link with others who you feel might benefit.

–Daniel

*Edit: Yet another of my articles has been featured in the Carnival of Self Mastery at ananddhillon.com. Now there are even more great self improvement articles to browse! Go check out all those wonderful articles here.

If you’ve ever wondered whether or life is passing you by, it probably is. If you had to ask, it’s flying by as we speak. Happy people, content people, passionate people, they don’t ask that question. It’s like being in love. How do you know when you’re in love? You just know. How do you know you’re unsatisfied? You just know . . . if you’re honest with yourself. And most people are honest with themselves, except when it comes to their failures, then they turn to self delusion.

I’m not talking about little delusions like “this dress still fits,” or “the comb-over works.” Self delusion on the scale I’m describing is when you say that your ten year relationship still works, though you can’t stand the sight of each other anymore. You tell yourself you like your job when you couldn’t hate your boss more if you tried. That is serious self delusion and it is always a sign that you are wasting your life on a daily basis.

Here is the test for telling whether or not you fit this category. Do you go to bed every night excited for the coming morning, dreading it, or utterly indifferent? If your answer was indifference, dread, or ?I don’t know,? your life is leaving without you.

Now what are you going to do about it?

Like any addiction, you first have to admit that you have a problem and, yes, it is an addiction. If you qualify for the above categories, you are addicted to something that it wasting your life. Now you must find out what that is and put a stop to it now and forever.

It may seem as if these things are happening to you instead of being brought on by you, but you are always the cause of these addictions. It’s easy to argue that you don’t cause random accidents, but every day that you wake up and walk into a job you hate you are giving life permission to be miserable. Every day that you stay in that stale or unhealthy relationship is a day that you create your own misery. These moments are you choosing to be unhappy.

And you are addicted to this unhappiness. I know it may not seem that way, but when you go to work, you are getting your fix. When you stay with that un-significant other, you are reaffirming your unhappiness. Why? Because you feel unhappy and need a reason to stay that way. It’s a vicious cycle if ever there was one. Our unhappiness leads to blame and complaining and self pity which feel good. We like these things and we want to continue doing them so we must continue to be unhappy.

Admit this to yourself and internalize this knowledge now because it will speed your recovery greatly if you do. Deny it now and you’ll postpone a change you may desperately need. Admit your addiction, but by all means DON’T fight against it. The addiction is a creation of the mind and fighting the mind never works. It can be like quicksand dragging you down, the more you fight the harder it gets. You cannot fight against yourself, you must work with yourself.

The more you struggle and moan about your problems the more power you give them. If you catch yourself in this mindset, STOP. Stop everything you’re doing and take a deep breath. Break the thought process and the flow of energy that is building up to an unhappy crescendo and your mind will have to start over. If you can be vigilant enough to catch yourself every time it happens, you will break the habit of sinking in the quicksand. This is the same method used to break animals of bad habits. Your cat starts scratching the drapes, you squirt it with water. It isn’t so much a punishment as it is a redirection of the animal’s focus away from their habitual behavior. This is what you want to do with yourself.

Depression

There is something you need to get straight if you find yourself unhappy or dissatisfied: it is occurring for a reason. Your mind, your body and the Universe never do anything without a reason. If you are suffering from depression, there’s a reason: your life sucks.

Science has never been able to pin down the true cause of depression, despite many successful treatments, and I believe it is because they have overlooked the most obvious reasons. They looked at serotonin levels in the brain, but that is only a symptom. They examined chemical imbalances, but they found nothing conclusive. They neglected, however, to test whether or not people who suffer from depression do so for a good reason. They didn’t examine their living conditions.

Do you ever see people who are in their dream jobs, are financially abundant and have many friends suffering from depression? No. The simple reason is that they have no reason to. If you are unhappy, there is a reason. Now you must discover that reason and put a stop to it.

Honesty

If you want to change your life, now or in the future, you must start being honest with yourself. Dishonesty with one’s self is how these addictions begin. It’s when you lie to yourself and say that complaining feels good, or the situation warrants it, that you continue a self destructive pattern. That pattern is the reason you are wasting your life. It is the reason you are unhappy and the reason you are going to remain that way.

Break the habit. Break the pattern. Have a happy life.

All it takes is a little bit of honesty and a lot of courage. You have to be willing to stand up and tell yourself and anyone who asks that you no longer like your job. That what you have been working toward has been a waste. That your spouse is not the one for you. It takes untold amounts of courage. People all around the world want to do just this but they don’t and it isn’t for a lack of desire. They want to change their lives and they have the courage to do so, but they cannot bring themselves to admit they’ve wasted time.

If you have ever wondered why people stay in unhealthy relationships for too long, this is one of the reasons.

We don’t want to admit our mistakes because they may be mistakes that have lasted for years and we can’t admit throwing away that much time. You don’t want to say that your job is a dead end because ten years is a long time to spend on a dead end. You don’t want to admit that your marriage is a failure because it would mean all those years together were failures as well. You want to feel as if all that time meant something; that you might get a return on your investment.

The truth is that you won’t and if you don’t realize it now, you will only end up wasting more time. More years will pass and then you will realize that you have wasted twenty instead of ten. Many people put off making these kinds of decisions because they feel they might make them in haste. They say things like, “well I’ve only worked here for a year, maybe if I stay another year it will get better.” It hardly ever gets better.

You are a smart person. You know when the situation you are in is not the right one for you. Now you must admit it.

They identify themselves as stupid, or clumsy. They become a person who is bad at managing their finances, or a person who is socially inept. They strip these attributes of their descriptive powers and wear them like a name tag. ?Hello, I’m Person-Who-Gets-Nervous-In-Crowds, what are you??

Never in the history of the universe was there a dolling out of personality traits. No god dealt you a hand to play saying, “Ah, you got the smart card, good for you but, too bad, Old Sport, looks like you got the clumsy card as well! Bad luck! Well, watch those stairs on your way out!” There wasn’t a sorting ceremony before you came to earth where you were put into the “bad with numbers” house. The attributes that you put on yourself are your creations, your labels and therefore, completely under your command. Believing otherwise is one of the greatest misconceptions of humanity.

When you let any one part of you take on a mind of its own, you are asking for trouble in your life. We’ve talked before about the manifestations that can result when the ego takes control of you, but the rule applies to any part of you. When you let your “clumsiness” take over, you will undoubtedly fulfill your own clumsy prophecy. When you let “moodiness” take over, you will not be happy or very well liked. These are not you and they never have been. They are creations, fabrications of you and the world around you.

Perhaps you think you are clumsy because you were always told that this was so. Your clumsiness only manifests because you internalize it and take it on as an identity. It is not an identity and it certainly isn’t your identity. Whatever you are now, you are choosing to be. Whatever you want to be will also be a choice.

If you are unhappy with yourself, remind yourself that everything you are unhappy with is a creation of your own pure mind, as is the unhappiness you feel. You’ve invented them all.

I understand that this may be hard to digest for many people who have never viewed their world from this perspective before. Right now it may feel as if I am blaming you for your short comings, but I ask you not to view it from such a short-sighted stance. What you have been is of no concern to you right now. The past is gone and cannot be brought back. It is what you choose to be now that is important. I am not blaming you, I am trying to empower you. Imagine what you could do right now if you would only internalize this knowledge.

Could you do something practical like, say, stop smoking? If you have long internalized the identity of a smoker, could you turn it around with a thought?

Could you become less negative and judgmental simply by letting go your self-created identity as a negative person?

This knowledge doesn’t diminish you in the least. On the contrary, it bolsters you, it makes you greater, perhaps, than you have ever made yourself!

Remember that ?all things in moderation? applies just as well in the mental realm of thoughts and feelings as it does in the physical world of manifestation. Just as too much of anything can harm your body, so too much of any attribute can harm your consciousness. Fear can grip you when the ego is allowed to rule over you and anger can grow from internalized insecurities. These attributes should be tools at your disposal, not processes operating without your consent. Think of them, not as uncontrollable forces, but as you would brushes to paint with. You can fill your canvas with poise, grace and confidence or with fear, anger and resentment, all through choice.

They are not done unto you. They do not make you up. They are not you. They are tools that will always and forever be your creations to use as you see fit. If you can internalize this, you can be born anew, happier, healthier and in full control of your own resources.

Being conscious in one’s life means to be clearly aware of one’s self. You may not understand what this means right now, but one day you will experience it and, no matter how short an experience that may be, you will seek it again from that point forward. It is the quiet, still mind that observes itself and knows that its fears and anxieties are a myth of its own creation. To live consciously means living your life from that inner silence without the background chatter of your mind. It means never being overwhelmed by your own emotions and whirling thoughts. It is the silencing of your ego and the opening up of yourself to a deeper sense of identity.

I know all of this sounds like more buzz-word phrasing, but for those who have experienced this, the understanding is clear.

The goal of living consciously is to do so every day. Not just while you sit quietly with your eyes closed in meditation, but when you are sitting in traffic or dealing with your boss or coworkers. It is remaining calm and clear while dealing with stressful situations. It is the ability to be faced with any situation, while never being overtaken by a runaway mind. The ego, you see, can be a trap. It isn’t meant to be and I will always come to the ego’s defense from those who would condemn it as somehow baser and more evil than the “higher self.” Your ego is nothing to run away from and certainly nothing to be done away with. It is a natural part of you. You cannot give up this half of yourself, but neither can you let it overrun you. This is where most people find themselves. They are slaves to the ceaseless and many times vicious voices in their heads. They have become attached to, and ruled by, the ego. If you wish to live consciously, you must avoid this.

Attachment

Attachment is the detrimental alignment of yourself with one thing over another. It is the denial of something for the 100% devotion to something else. It is dangerous and ultimately useless. Attachment is denial and denial is the epitome of unconscious living. The pain that Buddhists link to attachment is the pain caused by being unwilling to adapt and change, being un-malleable. This is all caused by the polarization of one’s self and the unwillingness to venture out from that pole.

When we identify ourselves with the ego, we become ruled by it and it alone. We lose sight and sensation of our spirit or our deeper sense of self. Conversely, when we align only to the deeper self, we loose our sense of pragmatism and individualism and ultimately become lost to the rest of the world. A good example of this are the holy men now sitting on the banks of the Ganges River who have given up everything. They are in poor health, malnourished and have nothing but the rags on their backs. Spiritually they are giants but in the manifested world they are sickly old men. They aligned solely to their higher self and let everything else fall by the wayside.

This kind of neglect has to be avoided. If we choose to shun or deny the physical world it leads to unconscious living and shows a lack of mental strength. It would show far more discipline and character to be successful in the physical AND spiritual life at the same time. Say what you will about such selflessness, but to me it demonstrates only a portion of a successful life; only half the coin.

Denying What Is

Denial leads to unconsciousness because of the nature of consciousness as a calm state of acceptance. The conscious person does not fight against the world they live in and therefore does not resist their circumstances. They understand all life is necessary and all life is purposeful. This understanding leads away from struggle and into peace. You no longer deny the world as it is and wish it were otherwise. You accept it for what it is and find ways to make it otherwise. Do you see the difference?

Accepting what is and moving toward a change utilizes your circumstances to create the desired outcome. Denial fights against reality and attempts to push it away. This cannot succeed and leads only to suffering and self pity which is the work of the ego.

This is why the true test of living consciously is one’s reaction in stressful situations. If you can react with calm acceptance of what is and work with your reality toward your desired result, you are living consciously. If you seek to blame yourself or others and suffer mental anguish because of your circumstances, your unconscious suffering will become a part of your everyday experience.

Staying Conscious Everyday

Becoming conscious for short periods of meditation is easy and can be practiced by everyone. And while these short trips into peace are helpful to be sure, the real goal here is not for conscious living to be an occasional hobby but rather a sustained way of life. The goal is to create a new default pattern to your life wherein you feel peace and joy instead of suffering.

The challenge is to live your life as you live it now, but without the chatter of your mind and without the fear brought on by the ego; to balance your spiritual and pragmatic sides and begin using your ego as a precise tool to shape your life. But can you learn to do this in the middle of a traffic jam? Ah, the real test. You’re behind the wheel of your car in the middle of the highway and stuck behind a never ending line of other cars. You’re late for work, again, and you have that big meeting in an hour. Can you stay in the moment without getting caught up in fantasies about the future? Can you keep your mind inside the car, in the now, and accept the wait or will you rage against your reality and curse the fact that this had to happen on today of all days?

The answer for most people is obvious. They will react with the “why me?” attitude. Instead, what would happen if they let go and allowed the traffic jam to be as it was? What would happen if they simply sat back and said “yes” to their wait and gave no attention to the upcoming meeting and the waiting boss? Would the traffic move faster? Would they be in less trouble with the boss? Maybe not, but they would certainly feel happier and more in control of their own lives. They would shed the suffering of the unconscious mind as it rages against a world it cannot change, because the traffic has never caused suffering. Only the ego can create such pain and only your consciousness can do away with it.

And more often than not, these conscious people are given reasons to be happy. They accept their circumstances and work happily toward even better circumstances and they tend to succeed in their endeavors. On the other hand there are the unconscious people who blame others, wonder why bad things always happen to good people and put their fate in the hands of pure luck. These people tend to be unhappy and are constantly given reasons remain that way.

To stay conscious every day, one must learn to internalize the words, “all is as it should be.” If you can take this thought and turn it into your default reaction you need never again suffer from fear or confusion. This does not, however, mean that you will never experience sadness again. You will of course feel sadness, but you will never be overwhelmed or debilitated by it for you will understand that from your circumstances will arise precisely what you are looking for and that “all is as it should be.”

Live Like Water

The Tao Te Ching compares the all encompassing power of the Universe to water and there is no better comparison. It is fluid and moves smoothly from form to form. It flows in us and around us and is as malleable yet unstoppable as a river. You can bend it, dam it or harness it and yet never hold on to it. If your goal is to live your life consciously you must look to water for you answer.

When I was young, my middle school principle used to have a motto he would repeat every morning over the intercom. “Go with the flow,” he said. I came to hate that phrase. Looking back, I think he might have been onto something. If we can learn to live our lives like flowing water we can never find ourselves at an impasse, for water can never be stopped in its liquid state. It moves with the wind, it flows around rocks and over dams. It can be slowed or diverted but never stopped completely.

Seek to live every day as if you were water, accepting your path as it comes to you. With this mindset you could never find yourself stuck or in complete failure. These states wouldn’t exist for you. Where others see failure, you see a new place to flow. Be that flexible and that relentless, and be unstoppable.

These are easy methods of living. They require little energy on your part and in fact require far less energy than living and suffering unconsciously. All that is required is the reminder and the belief that ?all is as it should be? and that you, too, may flow with the easy and peace of water. Begin to internalize these beliefs now and you will soon find that your life begins to flow more smoothly. Setbacks that would have crippled you, now fall before you as if never there. You will discover that you always had this power for happiness and ease, but had channeled it into fighting against your world and feeding your own suffering and pain. Remove the power from your pain and you will find the will to live consciously every single day.

Photo by Hryckowian

Your instincts, your intuition, your gut, your heart. All things that are supposed to tell you the truth, right? All things that give advice which, when heeded, cannot fail, right? If that’s true then why do we still make wrong choices? Just think if we could discern when the information we’re feeling is “right” and when it’s leading us in the wrong direction. We would never again have to live in fear or in doubt of our own abilities. We would live everyday knowing that we’re heading in the right direction and could never be lead astray. Imagine the freedom that this would grant you! But how do you tell the difference between a decision made out of fear and one made out of intuition? We’ve all experienced moments in our lives when we felt a flash of “insight” and suddenly knew the right path to take in our lives. What was different between that decision and one that failed horribly?

Just think if we could discern when the information we’re feeling is “right” and when it’s leading us in the wrong direction. We would never again have to live in fear or in doubt of our own abilities. We would live everyday knowing that we’re heading in the right direction and could never be lead astray. Imagine the freedom that this would grant you!

To understand the differences, we must first understand how these two methods of decision making manifest themselves. They can manifest through mental symptoms, meaning they both illicit not only different types of emotions but also different types of thoughts. Learning to identify the type of thought is far easier than identifying differences in content. The physical manifestations are far more varied, spanning the gamut of sensations from an ecstatic buzz to total numbness. By going through how each manifests mentally and physically and the differences between them we can identify the larger trends and learn to tell one from the other when they arise in the moment.

For the sake of simplicity in this article we’ll stick to the terms insight and ego. Insight is the decision made from your “higher self” or your intuition. Ego is the fear-based rationalization put forward by your mind.

Let’s start with ego, not only is it more easily recognizable, it also the more often experienced of the two.