Start From Where You Are – Personal Development In Action
There are many teachings that underpin the raft of personal development opportunities available to you. The teachings of Eckhart Tolle around being in the now, among other things. Those of Buddha about how you interact with others or the Dalai Lama on compassion, harmony and peace. Or you can look to the Abraham-Hicks interpretation of the Universal Laws, particularly the Law of Attraction. All of this can be a little overwhelming to the new-comer, however, to make it easy, each teacher always says “start from where you are right now”.
That alone can be difficult to interpret but the meaning is as simple as the words. You just start right now, from where you are, from what you are doing and who you are being and take a step to where you would like to be. Just do one thing that will help you on that path and you can be sure that taking one step after another will open up a whole new world to you.
It does not matter what it is about self development that you would like to achieve. It may be that you want to have more money, get that amazing promotion that you have been after for so long or become a better person giving back as well as taking. You will not make an almighty leap without making a start and that start comes right now from this place that you are in.
Lets say that one of your aims in life is to have money and the freedom to travel anywhere that you want to. Right now, you are surrounded by small children and a mortgage is big as the ocean. How can you possibly see a time when you will have excess money and freedom. So you pick up the latest best seller on making a million dollars and read it avidly but it does not give you any clear idea on how to get started. My advice is to do something. If you loved the book, read it again or go and get another by the same author or another author who takes your fancy.
Keep going, start to talk to people about what you want in life, listen to what they are saying about their dreams and before you know it, you will be thinking more about what you want than what you have. Now is the time to get really active about the Law of Attraction and I recommend “Law of Attraction – The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don’t Want” by Michael Losier. It is a small and easy read filled with exercises that you can really use. And it helps you to start from where you are at just as you would for any journey.
Key to getting started is to take action in the direction that you want to go. So apart from learning more about how to get onto a self development plan of your own, you must also be prepared to do something yourself to get you there. Dreaming helps and action is the vehicle for having the dream in your hands. For more on getting started see my blog about working out your life path.
Just Know Your Own Life Path And Get On With Creating It
I can not speak strongly enough about the personal development process of knowing your life path; knowing what you want and how you will get it. Well knowing anything really since that is one of the absolute basics. Just know for yourself, be well learned, well read and open to new and exciting information and then make up your own mind about what you believe in and which to make a part of your life. The process of life is all about this; deciding on your beliefs and not just taking on beliefs because they are available.
To give you an example, for years I have held on to the belief that my life is somewhat mapped out, a course over which I have some but not all control and that there is an inevitability to life. Over the later years of my life I have read enough, watched enough and heard enough to form the new belief that I am the master of my destiny. I now decide what I will and will not do and how I will create my life to my personal desires and within my own integrity. Well, that is what the life path is all about – deciding how you will live your life, what fits with what you want and knowing the action you will take to get what you desire. Action is everything – see my blog of simple tips for more on taking action.
Sounds easy when I say it like that and I know from personal experience that getting in touch with your own beliefs, personal integrity and passions can take some time and can need some help. You can get started on your own goal setting using my following tips:-
- Reflect on your childhood dreams (hopefully they are not that long ago that you can not remember), recall what you always thought as a child that you would be, do, have.
- Reflect over all of your previous work, jobs, businesses. Which did you enjoy the most and what was it that you enjoyed?
- Ask your family and friends what they see as your special talents and write your own list of things that you like about yourself and what you do.
- Read the business opportunities and jobs section of your newspaper – watch yourself carefully to see if there is any positive emotion attached to anything that you read. That might give you a hint about what you would like to try.
- Talk with lots of people about what they are doing and see if anything appeals to you.
- Think about all areas of your life; employment, family, living, travel, loving, money, happiness, prosperity and ask yourself what you would like to have in each of those areas.
- Explore yourself as a person. Are you the kind of person you can like, be friends with, trust. Is there some area that you would like to improve.
Use these ideas to guide you to a place where you start to just know yourself and your desires a little better and then start a list of what life success you want to achieve in this lifetime. And be prepared to change those goals because the more that you think about it the more you will get clear. The more you have what you desire on your mind, the more opportunities you will see as they present themselves. The more things that you try out, the clearer that you will be about what you do want and what you do not.
It is really helpful to be clear on what you do not want because the opposite to that is likely to be what you want. Start to focus on what you do want now that you have an idea. And wait to see the passion. Oh, and visit my Hot Tips For Success page to see the advice of other smart, sassy Australian women. And if you like, talk to me about how you are going.
Use the Law of Attraction to attract success towards those things that you now know that you desire.
Inspiration In The Air, Inspiration Everywhere
Seriously, I think that I can smell and feel the inspiration all around me, not to mention with the people I meet, books that I read and music that I listen to. And I think that I know the reason. I have been focusing on inspiration and am attracting it like crazy. I love the whole inspiration effect and I love how the Law of Attraction works.
Some months ago I was reading a “Business Bullet” written by Andrew Griffiths and he said that we all need to get a daily fix of inspiration just as be do exercise and good nutrition. Well, I took his words to heart and started to be active about my daily fix. And here it is, just arriving in my life. Inspiration in the air, inspiration everywhere.
So here are 5 quick tips on how to get your daily dose of inspiration!!
- Keep your mind, ears and eyes tuned for it; look for it in the people you talk to, the mountains and plains around you, the birds and animals and your own thoughts.
- Read poetry again. It is just amazing what poets write.
- Stop tuning in to the mainstream media and do something different like read blogs, get self improvement books out of the library, beg or borrow some cd’s and listen while you drive to work. I just love “Conversations With God” and “Beyond Freedom“.
- Google some of your favourite gurus and read some of their web page or watch some of their YouTube. Try the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra or Brian Tracy.
- Listen to some different music and step out of your comfort zone there. Try some music from a different country or cultural group. I am loving Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu right now; it just touches my soul.
No doubt you will come up with a list of 5 for yourself as well, just do it, because life is so much more exciting when you are getting your daily dose of inspiration!!
Get Ready For 2010
With Christmas upon us and the New Year fast approaching, are you stuck in the same old rut? New Year’s resolutions made and broken, job changed and yet still life is not what you want. Not enough of anything; time, friends, money, love. Well, get ready for 2010 and change all of that. Create the life that you have always wanted, take charge and cause things to happen and don’t let life happen to you while you were busy making other plans.
In the lead up to Christmas, do everything possible to experience enjoyment and happiness, no matter who you are with, what you are doing or where you are. Make your experience pleasurable rather than a grind. Life is meant to be fun, watch out for fun and just enjoy each moment.
Start to think about what you want from life next year. Seriously, think about what you want, not what you have and get ready for 2010 with that in mind. Ponder the prosperity that you want to achieve in your finances, relationships, physically, emotionally, lifestyle and time. Prosperity is about more than money, it is about every part of your life.
And while you are having fun and shamelessly enjoying yourself, dream a little about what life could be like and get ready to make it happen.
Turn Your Worst Problem Into Your Best Opportunity
Many people have the aim in life to attract success like a magnet, however everyone has their share of problems that move into and out of life. What havoc or beauty they bring with them is really up to the individual. It is possible to choose your action or reaction to obstacles and adversity and determine how you will approach each situation. Take the negative view and see each as a problem, sometimes insurmountable, or the positive view that each is an opportunity that has a solution. It is all a matter of perspective.
First, try to understand how you normally react when you experience hardship. You must know whether you fall back and stay back and therefore see the situation as negative or whether you quickly recover, take a positive perspective and look immediately at solutions. The one thing that is definite is that overcoming hardship is a skill that you need to get through life. Positive or negative, you decide.
If you have taken note of how you react and know that you get up quickly and start looking at the situation as an opportunity and find solutions, then you are functioning from a positive perspective. Well done, stay on that path. You have probably also found how much easier it is to get around barriers when you are thinking about solutions and what it is that you want to happen.
If, however, you have identified that you fall away and stay away, reacting to adversity as if it is a problem then you hold yourself in a negative state and it is unlikely from this point that you are going to easily find ways to get on with what it is you want to do. No doubt you spend a lot of time thinking about what you don’t want, how hard life is and wishing that it could be a lot simpler. Well it can be and it is all up to you and how your choose to act.
Having identified that you see problems and not solutions or opportunities, take a little time now to start to work on changing that habit. First, make a pact with yourself to stop talking about problems and start talking about solutions. Language makes a big difference as does your silent mind chatter. If all that your mind hears is how impossible the situation is, then that is being reinforced continuously. If all that your mind hears is what you do not want, then that is what you will get. Remember, the powerful Law of Attraction says that you get what you focus on.
Additionally, the people around you will hear how hard it is and will reinforce that to you and to themselves and possibly even to your customers. Almost everyone these days is looking for what can be done, not what can not be done and quite frankly, if they are paying, then that is reasonable. So stop with the talk about problems and start with the talk about solutions.
Then, sit for a moment and write down a list of all of your problems. Alongside that, list all of the possible solutions, even if they seem a little crazy. Go over those solutions and see what you need to have at your disposal to make it work. Ask your self a few questions such as – can I get those things? What do I need to know to do this? How can I get that knowledge? Who do I know who has it?
Right now you are in solutions mode and doesn’t it feel great?
When you are swamped by a problem, seeing only the negative, you can bet it feels pretty bad. As soon as you move to solutions, you mood will lift, your brain will fire off ideas and you will start to get motivated. Great, stay with that.
Last, and most important, take action. It is not enough to see a way around a problem or to see any event as an opportunity. The next and sometimes most difficult is to get active. Go and get those things that you need to make something start to happen, persist, do not give up, every day decide what you will do towards your solutions and just keep on it.
Stay with the basics – decide what you are going to do, take action every day, persist and keep an eye out for when you have succeeded. Celebrate that moment.
