When a Butterfly Flaps its Wings, Give Thanks

give thanks

I recently celebrated my 40th birthday. It was a real challenge. Everyone tells me its just a number but I believe it is a significant milestone to reach in one’s life. Whilst being flooded with love and attention from family, friends and work colleagues, I took a few minutes out to visit my local animal shelter with food and toys to share my good fortune. I have been quietly giving thanks in this way for the past year. Very few people know that I do this, although by publishing this article I am probably about to change that. I am not looking for praise or credit for being “good”, I just want to share with you a simple little thing you can do to make a difference in your own life.

The Interconnectedness Of All Things

In early 2008 both my husband and I had a strong desire to change jobs. We were both ready for a change of career. This desire became a very strong intention for both of us. Before long we both got the new jobs we desired and started them on the same day.

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The 5 Keys to Transformational Success

success

What separates the average person, from the super successful? I’ve spent most of my life uncovering the differences between the mighty and the mundane. I’ve discovered the following 5 keys which cause the great, to be great. I believe if you practice these keys they will literally transform your mind and your life.

1. Meditation, Affirmation, and Visualization – Every successful person I know either meditates, visualizes, or makes affirmations. If you want to see transformational change in your life, begin by taking 15 minutes to meditate, affirm and visualize the life you desire. This doesn’t work because of its strange “mystical” powers; it works because it reprograms your thinking. “As a man thinketh, so is he.”

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How to Change for the Sake of Your Relationship: Why it’s Not as Taboo as You Think

relationship change

We’ve been taught that changing for the sake of another person is in direct conflict to the preservation of our own identities. Changing to make someone else happy won’t make you happy, just as you can never truly change someone else to make yourself happy. But to sustain a mature, productive, long-term relationship with someone, both parties need to grow. Pride and stubbornness often get in the way of a relationship that still needs to develop in order to last, and if you’re unwilling to make a few changes in order to keep your loved ones close, you may end up losing them altogether.

The following are some tips on analyzing your personal development for the sake of your relationship, and reasons why making small changes for someone else isn’t as bad as you think.

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Why You’re Staying Where You Are (& How to Move On)

unhappy

Have you ever been in a situation in life where you weren’t happy with where you were at – but you somehow couldn’t get up the motivation to change? I don’t mean cases where there are good reasons (such as financial ones) to hold back from change, but when there’s not really anything stopping you except yourself.

Here are a few, very very common, examples of where you might be stuck.

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How to Make Your Dreams a Reality: Forget About Them

dreams a reality

All right, I know that title sounds massively depressing, but I wanted to get your attention. Because I’ve got something important to say, I promise.

If you’ve ever looked at the shelf of the self-help section in your bookstore, you’ve probably heard of a guy named Stephen Covey. He’s only slightly famous for writing The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People- voted #1 as one of the most influential books of the 20th Century.

So, in the book one of the habits is “Begin with the end in mind.” Good advice, no doubt. But there’s a slight problem — a simple misinterpretation really — when you take this advice too seriously.

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How to Unleash Your Creative Brilliance

creative brilliance

Creativity can save the world. Creativity can save your life. Yes it’s that powerful. It can make you a millionaire; enchant the lover of your dreams; take you around the world; or fill your days with joy and wonder. Creativity is one of the most in-demand skills required for the jobs of tomorrow. And yet we get almost no creativity training in school. It’s expected that you either have it, or you don’t. Read on to find a simple method to begin unleashing your own creative brilliance.

The Incredible Power of Creativity

First, let’s take a moment to look at the value of creativity. I consider creativity one of the biggest keys to living an extraordinary life. Creativity is essentially the ability to think about things in a new way – to take the available resources and find new ways to use them. It can be used in a variety of artistic ways to create profound new experiences for you and your audience. And it can also be used to solve difficult problems – like how to design an amazing new product, how to get out of debt, how to cure malaria or how to arrange the most memorable, romantic date ever. Whenever you have a goal, creativity can help you figure out how to get from here to there faster, cheaper and easier.

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5 Ways To Learn On The Go

learn on the go

“Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can – there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.” ~ Sarah Caldwell

If you’re reading this article, I’m sure you readily accept the importance of continual learning. However, because modern life can be so busy you may find it challenging to find time to devote solely to learning, whether it be sitting down to read a book or attending an evening class. In this article I will give you 5 ways even the busiest of people -those who are always on the go – can find time to learn.

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Awakening with the Two-Step Dance of Awareness and Release

dance

I write books (www.beyond-karma.com) for two reasons.

One, there is a simple and easy way to release depression, anxiety and the unease of being.

And, two, because awakening is simple.

And what is awakening? Awakening is awakening out of the world of fear and sadness. Leonard Jacobson says, “To awaken simply means to awaken out of the world of the thinking mind into the world of the present moment.” Buddha said very simply: it is the end of suffering. It is finding the joy of being. It is a fundamental shift in consciousness which opens up the world. It is flow.

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Switching to a Bold Mindset

boldness

The person who makes decisions quicker and more resolutely flies ahead of the person who is slow and weak in their ways. Notice that I didn’t point out that the first person was always making the “right” decisions. That point is irrelevant in the longer-term. Using simple probabilities, the person that makes more decisions in the face of pressure from others will have more options on the table, and having more options is always more advantageous than having less options. This is true because the person with more options has just as many as the one with the lesser amount, with the advantages that come with them, and also has others that can only add more in terms of value.

Preparation Is A Component Leading To Boldness

Now that this is shown to be the case, how can you become the person who makes decisions quickly and resolutely? The idea here is to see what slows you down, or stops you instantly, when decision-making time comes around. When you go to a store to buy apples, and then see the apples at the store, the decision to pick them up is nearly instant. On the other hand, if you see oranges you didn’t plan on buying, your decision of whether to buy them or not will be slower. The difference between the apples and oranges here is the preparation you made before going to the store in planning for what you would want to buy.

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How to Succeed at Anything

how to succeed

Success is very simple. But it is not very easy for most people. In fact, success boils down to two simple steps.

Set goals – have an intention to do, have or be something
Keep acting in a way which is consistent with your goals
Just doing these two things will almost certainly bring you success. The trouble is that most people don’t do either of them. Most people drift along aimlessly, not really knowing where they are going and having no clear vision of the future. If you ask most people why the get out of bed in the morning, why they work, what is the purpose of their life, they won’t be able to tell you. The few people who actually set goals are way ahead of the crowd. And those who take the second step, and keep acting to support their goals make up the tiny minority of people who are successful in life. In fact, the second step flows naturally from this first. If you’re serious about your intention, then you cannot help but act in the direction of its fulfillment. The action is effortless.

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3 Ways to Take More Personal Responsibility

personal responsiblity

English culture, especially North American culture, does not like the idea of personal responsibility. If I got drunk at a bar and ended up in a car accident, I could sue the bar for serving me. If I broke into your home and tripped over the dog, I could sue you for damages.

Pop psychology and daytime television have filled our heads with the idea that it’s never our fault. We can blame our parents, the system, or (more recently) our genetic makeup.

And what have we ended up with? A couple of generations of people who refuse to take responsibility for their lives, saying “but it’s not my fault” every time something bad happens.

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