And how do I know – perhaps things have changed and corporate networking events have become easy for everyone.

Recently I joined up to an online networking experience that is a lot more fun. No more donning of the corporate attire, the sickly smile or the determined look of a warrior.  No, this way I get to sit in my lovely home office and tool about other’s websites/blogsites and offer warm and genuine comments of encouragement.  I can relax and send love across the miles:)

Well, that feels pretty nice and is enticing me to go on. And why, you may well ask?  The reason is that these lovely folks come visit me back, they do kind and generous things to help to elevate my websites in the google-o-sphere and they generally lift my spirits.  And as if that is not enough, it is a well known fact!!!  Yessirreeee Bob, a scientific fact, that doing good deeds is good for your health and general well being.

So now, when I start up my hot IMac (love it you know) on a Sunday afternoon, and I go networking, I am lifting my spirits, feeling pretty damned good because I am doing something for another soul and excited about all of the visits that I can expect over the coming week.  Oh and advancing my health and well being.

Hmm not too bad for a bit of fun. Doing good, attracting good, more good, good fun.  Yep, that’l do me.

I have just one thing further to say on this subject Imaginif’s new Secret Santa Networking, SEO and Pay It Forward business just rocks!!!  It truly does and if you are reading this and you are not a part of it then I can only say hop to it.

The law of attraction is one such law. The law of attraction is the belief that anyone can determine their destiny through the power of their minds.

“The Law of Attraction attracts to you everything you need, according to the nature of your thoughts. Your environment and financial condition are the perfect reflection of your habitual thinking.”  Joseph Murphy

The History of the Law of Attraction

Before we go too deep into the modern applications of the law of attraction it is important that you understand that this is not simply New Age nonsense (most descriptions of the law of attraction refer to it as a product of a New Age Mentality).  The principles of the law of attraction date back far beyond the new found popularity of the New Age.

The immortal Buddha was actually one of the first to introduce man to the law  of attraction. He said, “What you have become is what you have thought.” This was a principle that the people of the east were acquainted with for centuries before it began to sweep into the western hemisphere.

The concept of karma also may have drawn its roots from the law of attraction. Karma states that you will eventually be revisited by that which you have sent out into the universe. If you have practiced kindness and compassion you will receive in kind. If you have been deliberately cruel to another you will receive back into your life that cruelty which you have sent out. Your actions and thoughts morph into physical entities, causing the universe to react in kind.

The law of attraction began to gain popularity in the western hemisphere in the 19^th century, as people began to appreciate the power of positive thinking and apply it to their life. This new concept was first introduced to the general public by William Walker Atkinson, the editor of New Thought magazine, who published a book called Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World in 1906.

As you can see, the law of attraction is not new. The concept that thought can have a predominate affect on the course of a man’s destiny has been taught by wise men  throughout the ages, and has given rise to a whole new era of beliefs.

What is the Premise of the Law of Attraction?

The theory behind the law of attraction is the belief that energy attracts like energy in the vast expanse of space and time that comprises our universe. Each person’s being is constantly radiating energy out into space; the type of energy being radiated is determined by the emotional state of the individual in question and may differ from day to day-sometimes even hour to hour!

This emotional energy is what is commonly known as a “vibe” and is referred to as a vibration by scientists studying the law of attraction. Chances are that you are familiar with the term. Have you ever been with someone who is so happy they seem to be radiating a “glow which inspires happiness in all those around them? By the same token, have you ever spent time with someone who was so critical and unhappy that they consistently gave off a “negative vibe” which seemed to suck the life and happiness out of all those around them?

You do not have to possess psychic powers to be able to feel the vibes that people emit; this energy is very real on a psychological plane and will affect anyone, anywhere at any time. Our vibrations are usually an unconscious response to some form of environmental stimulus; something has happened which has caused us to feel happy, or sad, or scared, or confused, or stressed, etc., and our subconscious response to this (because vibes are generated and projected from the subconscious rather than the conscious) is something that is beyond our control.

Chances are the person who is emitting a negative vibe does not choose to be unhappy, nor do they wish to inflict their unhappiness on all those around them by the simple fact of their presence. (Before you say what you are thinking, yes,  there are some exceptions to this rule. Misery does love company and there are many who take a great deal of delight in inflicting their pain on other people. It is important to understand that this is not usually done in a desire to cause others pain but out a desire to not feel so alone in their unhappiness. But we digress…)

There are a number of feelings which lead to positive and negative vibes being emitted, and it is important before we continue on any form of discussion about the law of attraction that you understand what each of these are (you’ll understand the reasons for this a little later).

Positive vibes Positive vibes are generated from good feelings, such as:

• Joy
• Love
• Excitement
• Abundance (of anything that causes a positive response)
• Pride
• Comfort
• Confidence
• Affection

Negative vibes Negative vibes are generated from negative feelings, such as:

• Disappointment
• Loneliness
• Lack (of any of life’s necessities or luxuries)
• Sadness
• Confusion
• Stress
• Anger
• Hurt

What do Vibes Have to With the Law of Attraction?

As we mentioned earlier the fundamental principle of the law of attraction is the belief that life energy attracts like energy. This means that if a person is emitting positive vibes they will draw good things to them and if they are emitting negative vibes they will draw bad things to them.

”You are a living magnet, attracting what you want.”

You have seen this principle in practice before. Have you ever known someone who was always upbeat and positive and seemed to be too lucky to be true? On the flip side, you have certainly known someone who loved to complain and look on the darker sides of life that always seemed to have something new to complain about because things were always going wrong in their life. These examples show people attracting the results of the energy they are giving off.

“Remember, you attract to your life whatever you give your attention, energy and focus to, whether wanted or unwanted.” Michael J. Losier

Does this mean that all of the bad things that happen to you in this life are because you subconsciously wanted them to? This is one of the most common arguments against the concept of the law of attraction and it often the hardest to refute because people have not yet recognized that the law of attraction is not a pipe dream or something that someone dreamed up while sitting on their porch one hot summer night. It is a fact of life, and its effects are far reaching.

In answer to your question, no, not everything bad that happens in your life is a result of you subconsciously wishing for it to happen. Sometimes it is a result of someone else wishing for it to happen. To quote an example from a website pertaining to the law of attraction a child or a spouse who is abused is not abused because they wished for this abuse to happen. This abuse happened because the abuser allowed their negative thoughts concerning their child or spouse to creep across their subconscious until they eventually began to dictate their actions.

The mind is a powerful thing, and where the mind goes the feet will soon follow. The foundation of any success you are going to encounter in lie is not the ability of your physical body to overcome the obstacles but of your mind to believe that a way lies around them. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Where your mind can believe that there is a way for the body to achieve its heart’s desire a way does exist.

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.

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:-

1. 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.
2. Reflect over all of your previous work, jobs, businesses.  Which did you enjoy the most and what was it that you enjoyed?
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Talk with lots of people about what they are doing and see if anything appeals to you.
6. 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.
7. 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.

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!!

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.

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.

I am not suggesting that anyone should completely discount world events that cross our paths but we do all know that such things are likely to occur. When considering your life path, it is possible to take into account that major world events will occur and decide how you will cope with them.  If you have a business that can be impacted, have some idea what you need to take into account.  If your work takes you around the world or through airports, have something in mind for how you will manage that.

The thing is that reacting all of the time is not good in many ways. It is not good for your health and well-being; it is stressful and unpleasant for all around you.  It is not good for business and it is not good for the whole Universe.  Take the GFC in particular.  Much has been said about how bad it is for businesses, how businesses are likely to go under and not recover, how high unemployment is and so on.

Now all of this is true for those affected but it is not true for everyone and all business. In fact, I am hearing from more and more business people that they have had the best turnover in this year to date that they have ever had!  If those same people had listened to all of the doom and gloom, reacted to it and done things differently they may have had a very different outcome.  It all comes back to making your own decisions about what you will so and when you will do it.  Decide for yourself how you will engage with the information that comes via the media.

Act or react; it is up to you. Keep your eye on what it is that you want in your life and put your attention there rather than on any number of things that will occur regardless.

I have planted trees specifically for the purpose of feeding birds and butterflies and providing a bird friendly habitat. In the main these are native trees, however I have found through my reading that citrus trees and many non-natives work wonderfully as well.  I now tailor my gardening life to the birds that are resident or visitors.  For example I would never prune or trim the Justica’s during spring because all of the honey-eaters that are growing up their young and need as much food as possible.  My garden is a food factory for them.

You will also find in my garden, a couple of watering holes for the birds. Even though it took them a while, they eventually got used to them and now bathe and drink there throughout the day.  This makes it possible for me to be working in my home office and watching the birds come and go as they do.

The habitat it very important because all types of birds seek refuge for nesting and each seems to need something a little different. The sunbird pair need a sheltered place and a rope; the finches need a dense tree with a lookout nearby, the doves need a dense tree with peace and quiet and so on.  Over time, we have created two secret gardens to serve all of these purposes.  Additionally, our elderly terrier does her best to see any marauding cats off the premises!  Even so, cats managed to destroy the nest of a willy wagtail which was a sad loss to all of us here.  We were very excited to have this sweet little bird nesting on our deck.

So if you also love all things nature, and you live in town on an ordinary sized piece of land, you too can do your bit for the various species and create a wildlife refuge and habitat. Next time I will write about our animals and I am very happy to answer questions about how to create you own piece of heaven in your backyard.  In the meantime I am off to feel the joy – happiness really is birdwatching in my backyard.

I suggest that you start your journey back to sleep by purchasing a small, simple but wonderful book called “Tired of Not Sleeping” by Dr Sandra Cabot. It is a short but excellent read and was the beginning of my own getting back to a good night sleep.  The second thing to do is to visit your doctor and ensure that you have a simple problem that will respond to simple measures.  Serious stress reactions and depression need to be ruled out and or treated before you begin to manage your own sleep disturbances yourself and sleep better forever.

My success factors for a good night sleep included:-

1. Exercise in the morning and not the evening.
2. Manage the stress.
3. Go to sleep and awake at the same time every day and do not nap during the day.
4. No caffeine after 2pm – in fact I gave it up altogether.
5. A small amount of carbohydrate shortly before bedtime.
6. When I started, I used a natural sleep medication and got 6 hours straight sleep from that.
7. Have a massage occasionally, as late in the day as possible.
8. When I woke during the night, I got up, went to another room and listened to relaxation cd’s until I fell asleep.
9. Start yoga and or meditation and persist until you see results.
10. Reduce television watching in the evening and go to bed when you feel tired.  Do not wait as you might miss the sleep cycle and have to wait for the next one – maybe up to an hour.
11. Do everything possible to keep on having fun.  I love the bush and spent as much time there as possible which helped greatly.

Finally, do not keep reinforcing to yourself that you have a sleep problem by constantly thinking or talking about how hard it is to sleep.  Do everything that you can to apply the Law of Attraction and think about the good sleep that you do get, think about how lovely it will be when you sleep a full night, imagine yourself in a year sleeping soundly every night and celebrate every little achievement on the path back to a good night sleep.  Most importantly, take charge of your own issue and create the solutions.