01.30.07
Posted in Paths to Bliss, Quick Tricks
at 1:14 pm
Screw guilt: Order Dessert
My birthday is coming up and one of the things I have traditionally loved about my birthday is guilt-free dessert ordering–because everyone knows that birthday calories don’t count. It occurs to me now though, that it’s important to have more than one guilt-free day a year! We all need breaks from our internal critics on a regular basis until we can put him or her on permanent hiatus.
Today’s Trick
Commit to ignoring your internal critic for a whole day. Instead of worrying about what the critic says or what other people will think, do what makes you happy. Wear, eat, and do things that bring you bliss. It’s ok to put yourself first. Try doing this at least once a week. And remember to order dessert!
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01.29.07
Posted in Manifestation, Paths to Bliss, Visualization
at 11:38 am
Speaking of visualizing and living intentionally, I ran across* a wonderful application called the Intention Engine. It is a free tool that helps you flesh out your desires and set an intention to manifest them. Sometimes I say that I want something and I picture myself having it, but I don’t spend a lot of time really thinking about it, creating affirmations for it, or putting the time into the manifestation. The Intention Engine is a great way to spend some time and really focus on what you’re trying to manifest. You name it in several ways, you speak intention for it, set a time frame for it and you can describe a scene for it. The Engine then helps create affirmations and gives you tools to focus on what you want and then release it to the universe.
Good stuff!
[*Jodee Bock posted about the Intention Engine on her blog Miracle a Day, thank you!]
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Posted in Paths to Bliss, Visualization
at 10:35 am
I’ve been thinking about the ten steps in yesterday’s post since I ran across them. I think they are a wonderful way to evaluate how we’re approaching our lives and help us make a conscious choice to take charge of them. It’s easy to fall into the pattern of believing that our lives just happen to us while we abdicate responsibility for the good and the bad that we see around us. When we fall into that mindset, we live defensively and reactively to the situations in our lives.
The best way to draw what we want into our lives is to live intentionally rather than reactively. Acknowledging that we’re responsible for the good and bad around us lends energy to our creation process. We can become accustomed to intentionally creating our lives by turning that creation into a daily practice. It makes sense–we develop most skills by practicing and developing intuition for them by discovering techniques that make sense for us. We should put at least the same amount of effort into living fulfilling lives.
Here are some suggestions for turning your life into a daily practice:
- Before you get out of bed or during your morning routine, actively create your day. Thing about the things you want to happen or a way you’d like to feel and visualize what it would be like. Remember to ask for a sign to affirm your creation process so you can see it working.
- Choose positive energy by avoiding the negative. There’s a lot of fear in the world these days and it’s hard not to lose focus if we surround ourselves with news and information playing into it. I have been training myself to be allergic to negativity. If I encounter negativity as I go about my day, I reject it by changing the channel or the subject or my direction. I choose to believe that life is a positive experience and I find dwelling on negative things distasteful.
- When something signifigant (good or bad) comes into your life, take a moment to think about how you drew it into your life. If it’s a good thing, incorporate what you did into your daily practice. If it’s a bad thing, think about ways to avoid drawing that energy into your life again.
- Incorporate joy into each day. Make sure that you do something every day that you love to do. Joy is one of the most powerful manifesting forces in the universe and if you choose to bring it into your life on a daily basis, it will bring that power to you.
- Be grateful!
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01.28.07
Posted in Paths to Bliss
at 11:10 am
Liz Strauss has some great advice on how to start living your life:
The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life
Life either happens to us, or we take hold of life and live it. Here are 10 Ways to get a life and start living it.
- Give yourself permission to claim your life. That’s right — permission. You’re the only one who can decide you are in charge of your life. Even though it feels like you’re not supposed to do so, turn off the internal editors, the old tape recordings, the “shoulds, have tos, and mustsâ€, and the rules that didn’t come from you.
- Define what living means to you. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Just picture yourself at the end of your life looking back. What words would you want to describe how you lived your life and who you are as a person?
- Stop living in the future. Every time you think “someday†or “when I have time I will,†stop. Ask yourself, “Why not now?†Think about this sentence, “I always wanted to, but never did.†Start doing the things you always planned to do. Choose your life every morning. Plan one thing you will do that day to feel alive.
Read all ten of her suggestions by clicking the link above.
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01.26.07
Posted in Paths to Bliss, Visualization
at 6:30 am
Susan Velez has a great reminder about the power of our thoughts and our ability to shape our world:
Something amazing happened to me yesterday. I was sitting in the Borders parking lot writting in my journal. I wrote down what I expected to happen in the next 6 hours of that same day.
Amazingly everything that I wrote down in my journal took place that same night.
It is amazing that I created my day yesterday, just like I wrote it down on paper. Talk about power.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that our thoughts are having a profound impact on our lives. It tends to be easier to feel guilty about having negative thoughts than to feel really great about using them to manifest what we want. Here’s a wonderful exercise described in the What the Bleep Do We Know movie by Dr. Joe Dispenza:
I wake up in the morning and I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen. Now sometimes, because my mind is examining all the things that I need to get done, it takes me a little bit to settle down and get to the point of where I’m actually intentionally creating my day. But here’s the thing: When I create my day and out of nowhere little things happen that are so unexplainable, I know that they are the process or the result of my creation. And the more I do that, the more I build a neural net in my brain that I accept that that’s possible. (This) gives me the power and the incentive to do it the next day.
Read the rest of this entry »
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01.25.07
Posted in Quick Tricks
at 12:51 pm
What do you think when you look in the mirror? Do you notice lines, bags, and bulges? Or do you notice sparkling eyes, a smiling mouth, and someone who looks and feels good?
Today’s Trick
At least once a day, try and block out negative thoughts when you look in the mirror by replacing them with a compliment. Instead of taking a mental inventory of things you don’t like about yourself, tell yourself how good you look and how great you feel. As with any new behavior, “fake it ’till you make it”. If you don’t feel great, smile and pretend you do until you convince yourself.
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01.24.07
Posted in Make Your Life Easier, Paths to Bliss
at 2:51 pm
If you’re like me and searching for paths to bliss, you’ve probably read a lot of books, surfed a lot of websites, and watched a lot of videos looking for tips on how to make your life better. Over the past six months in particular I have been a fiend for suggestions about how the world works and how to get what I want. I want to know how to tap into unlimited energy, I want to know how to connect with my body and my spirituality, I want to know how to keep in touch with signs and messages. All of that is great–and a good way to get energy moving in the right direction.
I’ve noticed, though, that my enthusiasm comes and goes in cycles for me. I’m riding high for a little while and grooving along really feeling the possibilities, and then I feel a little stuck again and have to push myself to get in the groove again. Life interferes with my quest for a better life. I then realized that a critical step on the road to happiness is making our lives as easy on us as possible. I will be sharing some tips for easier living periodically on this blog and hope you’ll share some ideas as well as the inspiration strikes you.
In Part 1, I’m going to talk about rethinking some assumptions you may have about what you can and can’t do. Future installments will include better living through technology, tips for easy organizing, giving yourself a break by taking shortcuts, the importance of taking timeouts, and resources that will help you brainstorm on how to streamline your life.
Reinventing What You Can Do
We all have stories we tell ourselves about what we can and can’t do. My prototypical limitation story was that I have a terrible sense of direction and can’t find my way around. This story started out reasonably enough: I do have a horrible sense of direction. I made it worse by believing my sense of direction controlled my ability to get where I needed to go easily. I was so used to my “I always get lost” story that I didn’t notice when it wasn’t actually true. I was letting myself get lost and remain apprehensive when I had to go somewhere new by reinforcing the story that getting lost was inevitable. Once I changed my attitude and let my internet directions and cell phone be my safety net, I realized I was pretty good at getting around when I paid attention. Of course, that didn’t stop me from buying a GPS for my car, but I see it as a way to make my life easier not as a way to keep myself from screwing up because I can’t get anywhere without getting lost.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Have a Laugh
at 10:56 am
Apparently today is Belly Laugh Day:
Don’t forget that January 24 is Global Belly Laugh Day. The concept is simple: Wherever you are on the 24th. at 1:24pm local time, throw your arms in the air and laugh.
In honor of this special day, I offer this video of a baby completely losing it. It makes me laugh every time.
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01.19.07
Posted in Paths to Bliss
at 3:37 pm
Slow Leadership has a great post about how to take stock of what makes you happy and how to try and bring that to your job.
Most people make decisions about their life and work based on what is generally considered “right†and “good.†This is living from the outside in: letting others people’s expectations, rule your life. You do what you do because that’s what you have been told to do. It’s a good recipe for frustration and stress. Living from the inside out means finding your own innermost values and basing all choices on those. That’s the best way to increase your happiness with whatever you do for a living.
[Link courtesy of the Chief Happiness Officer]
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Posted in Gratitude
at 12:26 pm
Gratitude is a funny thing. Sometimes it’s the hardest thing in the world and sometimes we can feel so overwhelmed with it that it stops us in our tracks. Gaining perspective on gratitude and seeing what a powerful and positive force it is is important if we want to draw positive things into our lives. At it’s core, gratitude is the way we acknowledge the blessings that come into our lives. We take a conscious moment to think about how fortunate we are that something has happened and connect to the positive energy that is flowing towards us. The more grateful we feel, the more energy flows in our direction and brings us the things we want. That sounds great, right? Why would it ever be hard?
When Gratitude Is Hard
I can think of three reasons why it can be hard to be grateful: 1) We feel obligated or indebted to someone for helping us; 2) Someone else has more than we do and what we have just doesn’t feel good enough; 3) We don’t really feel like we deserve what we have. Let’s break these down.
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