Meditation Made Easy
People frequently tell me that they can not meditate, they have tried, can not do it and have given up. So they miss out on all of the benefits that meditation can bring. Learning to meditate is like learning to do anything else; you begin knowing little or nothing and practice until you can do it without thinking. Start right now, find out why meditation is worth doing and follow these five steps that will make meditation easy.
Recently I was working with a young woman who told me that she was extremely stressed and unhappy with her work. She said that she had no time to herself, no time to think and her mind raced constantly. In an average day she had information overload from the time that she woke until she went to sleep. She would rise in the morning to the television, took her iPod when she went for a walk, listened to the radio to and from work – you get the picture. Sound familiar?
To start, we found some time during the day when she had zero information flow. The TV was turned off in the morning and no radio in the car to and from work. Just quiet time to contemplate. We then moved to meditation. “Well”, she said, “I have tried that. I can’t meditate and I hate it.” Turned out she had launched into an hour long session, could only last a short while and decided it was not for her. An all too common a story.
What is meditation and why bother? Meditation is a process or technique that you use to clear and calm your mind. You can use meditation just for that purpose or you can focus your meditation on something that you desire such as prosperity or well being. Meditation has been scientifically shown to be a powerful healing tool and a self help tool for achieving stress reduction and better sleep. Many people enjoy the personal development, self awareness, inner peace and freedom that results from meditation. Successful entrepreneurs often claim that meditation creates clarity of mind which in turn effects their success.
So how do you meditate? The following five steps will help you to get started:-
1. Learn something about meditation, just as you would with any new pursuit. There is an unlimited supply of books, web sites, free classes and resources available. Start at the beginning and get to know a little.
2. Be very patient with yourself and release any expectations that put you under pressure to perform. In meditation you are quieting and clearing the mind but the mind may want to keep right on thinking. Be patient and just keep drawing your mind back to focus upon the meditation.
3. Start with a short time, try five minutes, and increase the length of time over a few weeks. Even a few minutes will make a difference so see step one and just be patient.
4. Before you begin to focus on meditation, I highly recommend the use of a relaxation audio program. You can download podcasts and other resources free, from meditation sites on the internet. Start with some of these and learn to relax and then lead into meditation. When you become adept with your meditations you will continue to commence every meditation with a short relaxation.
5. Try this simple meditation, starting with a short time. Get into a comfortable position; sit on a chair with your feet flat on the ground, try sitting cross legged on the floor or lie on your back well supported wherever you need it. Close your eyes and feel your body relax. Take several deep breaths and release your breath with a deep sigh. Relax more and feel the tension float away with every sigh. Now imagine that your body is a vessel full of water and feel the water draining from the top of your head down through your body to the soles of your feet. Just slowly, let it drain downwards and then feel it moving slowly from the soles of your feet to fill up your body, up to the top of your head. Feel this happening, imagine it happening and let it happen naturally. Should your mind wander off, just bring it back to the water and gently move back into the meditation. Do this for as long as it takes for your mind to give up and just be empty or for as long as you like. Each time, see if you can do it for longer until eventually you find your mind calms and stops thinking. At that time you will find that you can feel every part of your body at the one time. You should just feel that feeling for as long as it lasts or as long as you like.
Keep it simple! This is a great principle when learning relaxation and meditation. Be patient with your self and move to higher forms of meditation when you are comfortable to do so. You are your best teacher when it comes to meditation which is a great way to learn about yourself. Have fun, create yourself a little head space achieve success with meditation.
Five Success Strategies For Positive Thinking
Read any self help or personal development book and you will find advice to maintain a positive attitude and approach to what you are doing in life. However, the world that we live in abounds with negativity of one kind or another. Bad news stories apparently sell well and anyone is more likely to tell you about what is going wrong than what is going right in their lives. How do you become and stay positive and optimistic? It is possible; try these five tips for positive thinking.
1. Provide yourself with a weekly inspirational fix from a positive, self development source. You could consider subscribing to a journal of excellence such as “Success Magazine” or an online site such as Napoleon Hill’s Mastermind. You could spend some time on inspirational blog sites or buy/borrow books from such authors as Brian Tracy, Zig Zigglar or Jim Rohn. These great investments into yourself will help you to work with the only person over whom you have direct motivation – yourself. Invest in yourself to stay positive.
2. Commence a prosperity journal. Join those who keep a daily journal or diary and create the opportunity to look back over where you have been and how far you have come. This is a delightful way to track your progress and give yourself your own positivity fix. For this particular exercise, you do not even need much by way of equipment, expense or time, just a little discipline until you have created the habit. Get yourself a notebook and each day, at a time that suits you, make entries about the good things that happened to you over the preceding period of time. It can be as simple as having been shouted a coffee or someone let you into the line of traffic. If it was nice, then write it down, regularly read back over your lists and savor those moments. Soon they will become very common for you.
3. Move outside of yourself and do something for another person; a random act of kindness. Such acts will give you a feeling of well-being and satisfaction and it is hard to hold a negative thought while feeling this way. Do this as often as you possibly can and watch your positivity and optimism grow.
4. Play, have fun and enjoy yourself lots and often. Use as much creativity in this pursuit as you can muster up. Building your enjoyment in life and developing your creativity is a great thing even if you are not concentrating on becoming and staying positive and optimistic. It is just fun and I beg of you, try to be negative while having fun.
5. Seek out the positive in every facet of your life, but most importantly, mix with like minded people. If you are on the path to positivity it is much easier when you are with positive people. That may mean that you create a bit of space away from your negative friends and associates for a while until you are well and truly in your positive mind set. Once you are confident in holding your positive stance you will likely be a great influence on them and others around you. Being influential is great, go right ahead and enjoy it.
There are many, many other actions that you can take to gain and maintain a positive attitude and these five are great to start with. There is no need to overload yourself; if this is all that you ever do, you will find that it works. The trick of course is to be committed and consistent until you have embedded these as daily habits. Above all, enjoy the journey to positivity and have fun with these five tips.
Backyard Bird Watching
According to the Law of Attraction, life is meant to be fun, filled with enjoyment; a pleasure and for me, and backyard bird watching is all of that. I have built a garden in Cairns that is attractive to birds and butterflies so I get to indulge in backyard bird watching all of the time.
Normally, in my own garden I am watching our sunbird pair, a variety of finches, orioles, doves and honey-eaters as well as an endless array of passing birds. Right now, though I am visiting family in western Queensland, the dry country and enjoying very different species to those at home. But there is one thing that has not changed. Each of our families has been adopted by a pair of birds who have taken over a part of our homes to nest and raise their chicks.
In Cairns, our sunbird pair own our back veranda and come to us for assistance just as they need it. They have nested twice there and raised countless chicks in our garden before seeing them off to start a life of their own. We watch with avid interest as each new pair of eggs is laid and the chicks hatch, fledge and become independent. Along the way the parent birds entertain us with their scolding, cajoling and finally their meanness as they send the new young birds off to other territory, they achieve success, before commencing the whole process again.
Here on the farm, it is a willy wagtail pair who have taken over a part of the downstairs laundry, building their nest on the water pipes there in a very protected area where they are raising their first family of three. Not only do they provide sustenance for the chicks they also contend with a malevolent magpie with a family of his own to feed. The magpie clearly has his eye on the chicks and even went so far as to go in under the house for a look see.
The willy wagtail parents had other ideas though and through persistence and their combined efforts have seen the magpie off each time that he has arrived. The two small birds swoop and dive the magpie, putting their lives on the line until the magpie is unsettled enough to go away. This business of raising their chicks is extremely hard work for the parents who are up early, to bed late and on the go all day.
Apart from being entertaining and relaxing, there are life lessons here for anyone who wants to find them. Without trying I have found the following:-
- Keep your eyes peeled for every opportunity – the world around you abounds with them
- Put a lot of effort into growing and nurturing your young and then give them independence to go their own way
- Be persistent in your efforts to get what you want
- Be prepared to work hard for the time that it takes
- Show no fear for the predator, even if they are bigger than you
- One plus one equals more than two – you need a team to make some things work
- Live like there’s no tomorrow, fly like you know how and enjoy everything that comes your way
Miracles
The very basis of personal development is to challenge and be challenged around your beliefs; looking for those limiting beliefs that are holding you back, preventing you reaching your fullest potential. Such beliefs come in many forms and one common limiting belief is that we must have proof or evidence that a possibility is real, that it is an absolute truth. It might take a miracle or miracles to shift from that.
Yet many entrepreneurs achieve success based on their intuition and a belief that they have got something special. This poem deals with the issue of miracles and proof in an inspirational and delightful way.
Miracles
These things that they call miracles
Seem few and far between.
Are they for the specially blessed
Whose lives have been pristine?
And what by chance is a miracle?
An event of great sanctity?
Or simple things like the breath we take
That gives us life and possibility?
Some say they do not happen,
That there’s scientific proof.
Some believe their all around
And some remain aloof.
For all that want scientific proof
That’s all that they will find.
They only create what they want to
And to miracles they are blind.
The aloof are neither here nor there,
Upon the fence they sit.
They aren’t quite sure what to believe
And so never will commit.
And then there are those of us you see,
Who see the golden thread.
The thread made up of miracles
By which each day our life is lead.
Small or big there is no size
To the miracles of today.
They happen every moment,
Every minute of the day.
Some are splashed across the news
And some we will never know.
They take place every moment.
Take heed and we will grow.
So what you do from here
Is up to you alone.
But take life not for granted
And the miracles will have grown.
(by Hayley Hohn, A Slice of Life (With All The Cream Filling), 2008, seekerpublishing@iinet.net.au)
In the end, only you can decide; to reach for the stars, to proceed with an idea or to even get an idea, enjoy a miracle or do nothing at all. Do you believe in miracles? have you personally experienced a miracle? I would love to hear from you.
Using Contrast To Achieve Success
I am currently visiting Canberra – the cold Capital of Australia – and thinking about how contrast helps to achieve success. In the week that I have been here the temperatures have bottomed out with the coldest September day for 40 years and snow falls just 30 kilometres away ranging up to a very warm 24 degrees yesterday. I am used to a fairly stable tropical temperature of 20 to 30 and have now realised just how that has left me with little variation. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the tropics. However I have discovered once again that contrast is pretty exciting.
But how do you use contrast to achieve success? Most of the elite writers about personal development, whether writing from their own experience or channeling the wisdom of others, write about contrast or duality as it is sometimes called. Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch is deals with this subject throughout the series. These writers are referring to the learning gained from knowing one side and then the other of an experience. So how can you know happiness if you have never known sadness. How can you know courage if you have never known fear. The way that I am thinking this through at the moment is that it is very much about feelings and getting familiar with your own feelings; being able to detect constantly how you are doing.
Feelings have a great deal to do with the path to achieve success. Esther Hicks writings on the Law of Attraction and almost any book that you choose to read on this subject will refer to the ability to get to know and understand your feelings and the ability to change those that you do not like. My own professional colleagues use this on a moment by moment basis. Feel something that they do not like – they simply reach for a better feeling thought. Getting used to and interacting with contrast/duality is one way of experiencing your feelings on that particular situation. This week I have found that the deep contrast in the weather has heightened my sense of feeling around a number of matters and reminded me to welcome such contrast into my life.
So instead of finding the weather a nuisance, I am now looking at it as a beautiful way to experience contrast and therefore my feelings. I am sort of back in the zone a bit, dragged away from the constancy of business and back to the real business of life. If I use this experience well, I will be in a state of great vibrations and definitely attracting into my life those things that I desire. Still in the zone to achieve success.
Do you have any special tips and tricks that keep you in touch with your feelings and the way that you are vibrating at any given moment?
