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6
May 2008 |
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| I
arise in the morning torn between a desire to
improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.
Elwyn
Brooks White
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Life
loves to be taken by the lapel and told:
"I am with you kid. Let's go."
Maya
Angelou
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Don't go around saying the world
owes you a living. The world owes you nothing.
It was here first.
Mark Twain
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The
Five Barriers to Asking
(an excerpt)
Jack
Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen
1.
Ignorance
Many
of us don't know what to ask for. Either we
don't know what is available to us because we have
never been exposed to it, or we are so out of touch
with ourselves that we no longer are able to perceive
our real needs and wants. Some of us have become
so numbed out that we are simply unaware of our
natural yearnings and desires. We no longer know
what we really want.
Most
of us don't know how to ask. We have never
learned the technology of making an effective
request. We have not seen these effective
communication skills modeled in our homes and we were
not taught them in our schools or at work.
Many
of us don't know whom to ask and when to ask. We
have not learned how to identify likely prospects who
can deliver what we ask for whether it be a hug, sage
advice, or an order for something we are
selling. And many of us have never learned to
read the nonverbal cues that people send us that tell
us "I'm with you" or "not now."
2.
Limiting and Inaccurate Beliefs
The
second barrier to asking for what we want are the
limiting and negative beliefs that have been
programmed into our subconscious and which now
silently control all of our actions.
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We
are born with an empty data bank that has to be
programmed. Many of us are hindered in our
asking for and getting what we want by the negative
and limiting beliefs we have taken on from our
parents, teachers, churches, peers, and the
media. We can become constricted and even
paralyzed by this parental and cultural conditioning.
We
are taught that it is better to give than to receive;
that if he really loved me, I wouldn't have to ask;
and that being needy is a weakness. We have
learned from our failures and our traumatic
experiences in life that if you don't want too much,
then you won't be disappointed; don't expect too much
from men like your father; and it is safer to keep
your mouth shut and appear the fool, than to open it
and remove all doubt.
3.
Fear
As
a result of the negative, painful, and shameful
experiences of our childhood, we become afraid to
participate, afraid to go after those things we truly
want and desire. We become afraid of rejection,
looking foolish, losing face and being vulnerable and
hurt by others. As a result of those fears, we
become passive. We settle for less than we
really want and we sit in judgment of others who are
getting what we want. We don't have the courage
to ask for or the self-discipline to create. We
end up using all of our energy to protect ourselves
against boogey men we have created in our minds
instead of using those energies to create what we
want.
We
face fears such as the fear of rejection, the fear of
looking stupid, the fear of being powerless, the fear
of humiliation, the fear of punishment, the fear of
abandonment, and the fear of endless obligation.
4.
Low Self-Esteem
According
to several recent studies, only one out of three of us
has high self-esteem. "Look to your right
and look to your left. Only one of you is
okay!" is the standard line we use in our
seminars. One out of three! We are
suffering from a national epidemic of low self-esteem.
Most
of us feel unworthy of love, happiness and fulfillment
and inadequate to create the kind of life we
want. We suffer from inferiority complexes,
neurotic guilt, and a lack of self-confidence.
As a result, we don't believe our needs and wants are
important and worthy of pursuing. We become
codependent from our belief that other people's needs
are more important than our own--especially the needs
of men, our children, our aging parents, our boss, the
homeless, and the needy. We sacrifice our own
fulfillment on the altar of taking care of others.
5.
Pride
Many
of us, especially men, get stuck in our pride.
We become too arrogant to admit we need anyone or
anything. We will not stop to ask for
directions, advice, or help. We are convinced we
need to do everything ourselves--usually perfectly and
usually on the first try--or we risk the loss of
respect, friendship, and our own sense of adequacy.
~
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Think
of the benefits of knowing how, when, and whom to ask
for everything you want: fewer disappointments
in relationships, more effective team efforts at work,
cleaner negotiations at the bargaining table, the
money you need to start a business, fewer fights with
your parents and children, the extra instruction and
support you need, less suffering in the silent despair
of loneliness, and the causes you support receiving
funding they need to continue their good works.
Literally a whole new world can open up to you and
everyone you care about.
You
can ask for a hug, comfort, listening, forgiveness,
attention, time, intimacy, caring, respect, love,
nurturing, a massage, healing energy, prayers, an
explanation, loyalty, sexual fidelity and a 100
percent commitment.
You
can ask for a helping hand around the house, a favor,
someone to keep a secret, help with your homework, the
loan of a sweater or jacket, private tutoring,
information, help with a project, your kids'
cooperation, someone to baby-sit, swimming lessons,
money for the movies, participation in a car pool,
help with a flat tire, the loan of the family car or
compliance with rules.
Don't
wait until everything is just right. It will
never be perfect. There will always be
challenges, obstacles, and less-than-perfect
conditions. So what? Get started
now. With each step you take, you will grow
stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and
more self-confident and more and more successful.
Everything
you want is out there waiting for you to ask.
Everything you want also wants you. But you have
to take action to get it. The time for dreaming
is over. It is time to get up and start asking
for what you want. Start slowly and build up;
jump right in and start with bold and outrageous
requests. Either way is fine. Do what
feels right for you. Just get started.
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Personal
happiness. Creative fulfillment. Professional
success. Freedom from fear--and a new promise of joy
that's yours for the asking. We have the ability at
our fingertips to achieve these things. It's the
Aladdin Factor: the magical wellspring of confidence,
desire--and the willingness to ask--that allows us to make
our wishes come true. The Aladdin Factor helps us by
pinpointing the major stumbling blocks to asking--and
teaching simple techniques to overcome them. With
inspirational stories about people who have succeeded by
asking for what they want, this book shows us how to turn
our lives around--no matter what kinds of obstacles we
face. |
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Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week. |
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| When
we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we
see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a
grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see
children in a moment when they are really children,
when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like
the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land
in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such
times the awakening, the turning inside out of all
values, the "newness," the emptiness and
the purity of vision that make themselves evident,
all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
Thomas
Merton
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10
Signals You're Not Living to Your Fullest Potential
Louise Morganti Kaelin
We
talk a lot about living life to our fullest
potential, about being our best self. For many of
us, it's the primary goal and focus of our life, to
be the absolute best we can be, right here,
right now. The most intriguing part of the process
to me is that it is a moving target. As good as I am
right now, and in fact, I am the best I've ever
been, I know I can continue to evolve and be even
better.
Sometimes
in the journey, we get stuck at a particular place.
Here are 10 signals you're not living to your
fullest potential right now and some ideas for
moving out of these "stuck" places.
1.
You find yourself using phrases such as "I wish
I could," "If only," "I really
ought to," "I should do," "As
soon as (I lose weight, find another job, find a
mate)." If thoughts control who we are,
then words are the primary tool we have to redefine
ourselves. The more you repeat the phrases above,
the less energetic and more powerless you feel.
Antidote:
Find new, powerful words to replace the ones that
are bringing you down. A very powerful phrase is
"For whatever reason, I am currently choosing
to (or not to) xxx." No matter what the
action you are doing or not doing, the moment you
acknowledge it's a choice, you put yourself in a
position of power. You also put yourself in a
position to make a new choice.
2.
You feel overwhelmed, overworked, undervalued and
under-appreciated. In fact, you feel like a
victim. It seems like things are being done
"to" you
(or a group of people you belong to) and
nobody appreciates you.
Antidote:
These feelings springs from a sense
of scarcity, so the best antidote is to start feeling
grateful. Once you begin to feel truly, sincerely grateful for
all the gifts you do have in your life (and everything in
your life is a gift), your energy levels increase and you
start enjoying your life again. Don't forget to feel grateful
for yourself, your strengths and abilities, what makes you
uniquely you.
3.
You need to buy a new bookshelf just for
your self-help books. I smile as I write this, since I probably have
one of the best collections around. It's not so much that
you have a large library, but that you are constantly
seeking for a magic answer, for the one single piece of
information that is going to lift you up and put you back on
the road to being your best self.
Antidote:
Go within. Use meditation, journal
work and prayer to seek the answers that are already within
you. Use the writings of others as starting points if you
will, but recognize that their writings are the answers
they came up with when they went inside themselves.
Start
with five minutes twice a day if that's all you have, but the
peace you are looking for already exists within you.
Become
friends with it once again. The easiest tool I can
recommend for this is the 3-Breath Miracle. Engage your mind in
following your breath for three long, deep, slow breaths, holding
them as long as possible and expelling air when you exhale.
Pay attention to how you feel once you do this completely.
This is the energy you are going for.
4.
The only reason you go to work is to keep a
roof over your head and food on the table.
This has nothing to do with the nature of the
work you do, but with how you feel about how you are using
your gifts and talents, and whether or not you feel you are
doing the best job you possibly can. Do you feel respected at
work? Do you respect the work that others do around you?
Antidote:
Remember that people around you
primarily serve as mirrors for how you feel about yourself.
When
you start giving 100% of yourself at work, when you
strive for excellence in all you do, and when you value
your contribution to the team/effort, others will
start reflecting that back. You cannot find work
that you love if you can't find the joy in the work that you
currently do. Again, it starts from within.
5.
You don't have a clear sense of who you are
or what you stand for. You find it difficult to make choices and you
feel like you are drifting from one life situation to
another. What seems important one day seems inconsequential the
next.
Antidote:
Identify your values. When you know
what you truly hold important in this life and allow yourself
to make choices in alignment with those values, you
gain tremendous freedom in your life. Being true to what you
believe in is very liberating. A simple way to get some
clarity is to ask yourself "What do I want to role-model for
others?"
If this confuses you because you thought you
were clear about your values and what is important to
you, you may be in a transitional mode where the priorities of
your values are shifting. This happens at different times
in our lives as we mature, get older and experience
different life events. For example, having children is a time
that many of us experience a shift in our priorities, as is
getting older and experiencing health problems.
As a rule,
allowing yourself to be "in the present" and seeing
that you are not giving up on a value, but reassigning it a
number will do much to let go of the confusion.
6.
You are more worried about being right than
about being happy. This is an easy game to get caught up in.
We
often look for life experiences that vindicate our opinions,
and not the other way around. The lure of being
"right" is
very seductive and it is very easy to sabotage
yourself with this game.
Antidote:
Ask yourself "Where in my life am I
letting my need to be right to take over? Am I willing to
let go of being right? Am I willing to be happy?
What
would it look like to be happy instead of being
right?" The
key point here is being willing to choose being happy over
being right. Once you make that choice, you will start to
notice where your need to be right is getting in the way.
7.
Before you go to sleep at night, you find
yourself wishing you had spent your day doing something
other than what you did. If you find yourself doing this on a
consistent basis, it's time to look at the choices you are making.
Also, this is different from not getting to something you
meant to do because something else required your
attention. This is about doing non-productive things on a regular
basis, then wishing we'd done something else.
Antidote:
There are two suggestions for this
item. The first is to not wait until you go to bed to review
how you spent your time. Look at what you are doing on an
hourly basis. The other suggestion is, once you are looking
at this hour, make a conscious choice about what you want to
be doing. You can choose to watch TV or play on the
computer, but at the end of the day you will be able to honestly
say you did what you wanted to do. You can also try to spend
five or ten minutes of each hour doing something that will make
you feel good to get done. Allow yourself to build on small
successes.
8.
You spend a lot of time doing things that
keep your mind occupied (so you don't have to think about
you). While related to number seven, this is the actual
activity that keeps you from producing your best effort.
When we are really determined to sit on our greatness, we
usually don't get to the point of wishing we'd done
something different. The primary focus of this activity is to not
think about you or your life. Therefore, it must engage our
mind and keep it occupied. It might be TV, the computer, the
news, what the neighbors are doing, anything that can grab
us and keep us.
Antidote:
Many of these activities are
designed to deaden the thoughts that make you uncomfortable (see
number one). Often, when we get tired of the negative
messages, our first response is to try to stop thinking.
The more
we don't think, the more energy we need to spend on not
thinking. Some down-time is good, even essential.
The
key here is when big chunks of time are lost to these
activities. The first thing to do is to give yourself permission to
do the activity you are doing. Again, it's bringing
it into the realm of choice. Then, let yourself make
different choices from time to time.
9.
You feel an underlying sense of sadness
(when you let yourself feel). Part of the reason
we don't want to let ourselves think or feel
is that we are afraid we will be overwhelmed by the sadness. We are petrified to go down that
road.
Antidote:
If you feel sadness, something is
going on and it is critical to release the tears.
Give
yourself an opportunity to cry in a safe environment.
For
example, although we may not be able to give ourselves
permission to cry about what we need to cry about, we can
cry while watching a sad movie. One of my favorite
movies to use for this purpose is "Pay it
Forward," but you
probably have your own favorite. It's really important to free
yourself from this emotion, and allowing it out is actually
the way to not being overwhelmed by it. Once you allow the
tears, don't be surprised if you have a real burst of energy.
10. You keep all conversations at a
superficial level. Safe topics are the weather, the news, TV and
movies. If you find yourself steering all
conversations away from you, you may be in emotional hiding.
Antidote:
Find an outlet so that you can allow
yourself to go inwards safely. Try journal writing,
writing a letter to God, or some other format for getting in touch
with what's going on.
Louise
Morganti Kaelin is a Life Success Coach who partners
with others to help them turn their dreams into
reality. Phone: 1-617-984-2868 or
1-866-COACH-99 (continental USA)
Email: louise@touchpointcoaching.com
Web: http://touchpointcoaching.com
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Eyes
Wide Open
tom walsh
Your
Own Path
Paths
in life are sometimes difficult to get a grasp
of. I think that we all often get the idea
that life is a journey and that we're traveling on
some sort of path to get where we're going, but do
we really know what that path is like? Do we
really know if the path that we're on is one of our
own choosing, or one that someone else has somehow
pushed us down, one way or another? It's a
fascinating question, and one with potentially a
very important answer.
Since
we get on most of our paths from other paths
originally, perhaps the best thing that we can do
for ourselves is to ask, "How did I get on the
path I'm on? Did I choose to take this path,
or did someone or something else push me onto
it?"
I
knew a man once who wanted to be a teacher.
While he was in college, he took some classes on
administration. He was hired at a pretty small
school, and within a couple of years he was
encouraged to apply for the assistant principal
position. Then he was hired for it. So
before he even got the chance to develop his skills
as a teacher fully, he was doing a completely
different job, one that he wasn't truly prepared
for. Because of the job, he had to start
taking graduate classes, working towards his degree
in Educational Administration. He had little
free time, and he was working harder than ever.
And
he missed teaching. He missed working with the
students in his classroom. He missed the free
time with his family that was being eaten up by the
extra classes he had to take. And all because
he went along when he was "encouraged" to
apply for a position that he hadn't really
considered to be something he really wanted to
do. He often wondered why he felt so
frustrated and unfulfilled with what he was
doing. Eventually, he gave up his position and
returned to teaching, which was probably the best
thing he could have done for himself-- putting
himself back on the road of his own choice.
There
are many movies and books that have characters who
are pushed to live out the dreams of their fathers
and/or mothers--young people who are expected to
become doctors or lawyers, so that's just what they
do with their lives. While this sometimes
works out okay--such careers aren't necessarily
awful, are they--it often turns the young person
into an unhappy and cynical person who isn't able to
show real love for life because of built-up
resentment and regret.
I
have a friend who met a woman a few years ago and is
still going out with her. He's doing so not
because he thinks that she's the love of his life,
but because as time goes on he feels more of a sense
of obligation to her. After all, she's a great
person. They'll probably end up getting
married, even though he doesn't have extremely
strong feelings for her, and he often wonders if
there might be someone else who might make him feel
more love and desire and passion. His is one
of the more difficult paths to choose, and there are
no clear answers for him. And he knows that.
What
kinds of paths are you traveling right now?
Career, friendships, romantic relationships, family,
hobbies, travel, being homeowners. . . there are
many different paths for us all to choose, and not
each one is right for each of us. Because of
this fact, it's important that we make an active
choice about these paths--and in order to do that,
it's important that we be aware of things such as
what the path entails, what it will ask of me, how
it will make me feel, and most importantly is it a
path that I freely choose to go down?
Only
when we can answer yes to the last question will we
find that we're ready for all the obstacles and
trials that each path in life will offer to us.
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The
price of anything
is the amount of
life you exchange
for it.
Henry
David Thoreau
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Promise
Yourself
(The
Optimist Creed)
Promise
yourself to be so strong that
nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To
talk health, happiness, and
prosperity to every person you meet.
To
make all your friends feel
like there is something in them.
To
look at the sunny side of everything
and make your optimism come true.
To
think only of the best, to work
only for the best, and expect only the best.
To
be just as enthusiastic about the
success of others as you are about your own.
To
forget the mistakes of the past and press
on the greater achievements of the future.
To
wear a cheerful countenance at all times
and give every living person you meet a smile.
To
give so much time to the improvement of
yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
To
be too large for worry, too noble for
anger, and too strong for fear, and to happy
to permit the presence of trouble. |
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What
is life? It is the flash of a
firefly in the night. It is the breath
of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the
little shadow which runs across
the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
Crowfoot,
1890
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