Take Charge of Your Life

"Consciously following a path towards your goals instead of blindly drifting through life really is the secret to success..." So concludes this
post from Matt Inglot that explains how an entrepreneurial wake up call rescued him from a career of "writing boring code for stuffy monolithic corporations..." More of the post follows:

"I had a[n]...experience several years ago which completely derailed me from my current path, which at that point was simply going in the direction life took me in. Sure I was making “choices”, such as planning on going ahead with a degree that I deep down knew wouldn’t be right for me, and planning to somehow be happy working in a cubicle the rest of my life (despite having had a chance to briefly try it and strongly hating the idea of being in front of a computer all day doing someone else’s work).

After all programming was my talent, so why on earth would I want to be anything other than a programmer graduating with a computer science degree? I had goals too, or so I thought. Surely a Ferrari was a goal? I mean it wasn’t humanly affordable on the salary of a corporate computer drone, and I had no plan to attain it otherwise, but yes that was my “goal”. I completely didn’t understand that where I was letting myself drift in life had nothing to do with what I actually wanted. To make things worst this direction was highly encouraged through high grades in “smart people” courses and congratulations from others on making such a great and rewarding choice.

Luckily the entrepreneurial bone in me activated and... I was exposed... to a strange freedom that was offered nowhere else. I read some extremely positive literature from people that seemed...happy. This was a world that my programming books had never exposed me to. Never before had I seriously read about ideas like goals, personal development, financial planning, and the idea that becoming truly successfully was something other than luck or born talent...

It’s not that I disliked programming - I’m having an absolute blast putting my skills to use with my website development company - it’s that I enjoyed working on projects of my own devising and not some insigificant cog in an obese software application. I took a year and a half off instead of going straight into university during which I awakened consciously further and further.

In the end I chose to enter a business program and because I had the opportunity I chose to go the double degree route and end up with a computer science one as well. My end choice in degrees is not important however, what is important is that for the first time in my life I had honestly been able to step off the beaten path, consciously examine my surroundings, figure out where I actually wanted to go, and then go in the direction that would actually take me there.

It’s possible and relatively easy to get to where you want to be in life if you stop long enough to start moving in the right direction..."

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Random Color Splashed Around

"And then I saw this, the random color splashed all around. No one had painted it and still it was so beautiful. I guess the beauty of randomness."

-Soumya Soumata speaking about this photo taken yesterday at the Three Rivers Arts Festival and part of the Pittsburgh Pool on Flickr.

The photo also demonstrates something about living: Open to possibilities - You find what you look for - Look for beauty and you find it - Be ready.

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Kill the ANTs Invading Your Brain

"The thoughts that go through your mind, moment by moment, have a significant impact on how your brain works... Happy, hopeful thoughts have an overall calming effect on the brain, while negative thoughts inflame brain areas often involved with depression and anxiety. Your thoughts matter..."

So states Dr. Daniel G. Amen in this excerpt from the book, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life" in which Dr. Amen offers 7 ways to enhance the functioning of your own brain and enhance your life.

Dr. Amen identifies four species of ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) that can invade your brain, distort incoming information to make you feel bad:

"Mind reading --- predicting you know that another person is thinking something negative about you without them telling you...
Fortune telling -- predicting a bad outcome to a situation before it has occurred...Unconsciously, predicting failure will often cause failure...
Always or never thinking - this is where you think in words like always, never, every time, or everyone...
Guilt beatings -- being overrun by thoughts of "I should have done... I'm bad because…. I must do better at… I have to…). Guilt is powerful at making us feel bad. It is a lousy motivator of behavior.

Dr. Amen continues:

"You do not have to believe every thought that goes through your head. It's important to think about your thoughts to see if they help you or they hurt you. Unfortunately, if you never challenge your thoughts you just "believe them" as if they were true. ANTs can take over and infest your brain. Develop an internal anteater to hunt down and devour the negative thoughts that are ruining your life...

You can learn how to change your thoughts and optimize your brain. One way to learn how to change your thoughts is to notice them when they are negative and talk back to them. If you can correct negative thoughts, you take away their power over you. When you think a negative thought without challenging it, your mind believes it and your brain reacts to it...."

The other steps Dr. Amen recommends to optimize your brain include:

1. Protect Your Brain...from injury, pollution, sleep deprivation, and stress...

2. Feed Your Brain...lean protein, complex carbohydrates, and foods rich in omega 3 fatty acids (large cold water fish, such as tuna and salmon, walnuts, Brazil nuts, olive oil, and canola oil)...

3. Work Your Brain
Your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more you can use it. Every time you learn something new your brain makes a new connection. Learning enhances blood flow and activity in the brain. If you go for long periods without learning something new you start to lose some of the connections in the brain and you begin to struggle more with memory and learning...

4. Make Love For Your Brain..
Appropriate sex is one of the keys to the brain's fountain of youth.

5. Develop A "Concert State" For Your Brain..."a relaxed body with a sharp, clear mind," much as you would experience at an exhilarating symphony. Achieving this state requires two simultaneous skills: deep relaxation and focus...

A technique for developing clear focus is the "One Page Miracle." On one piece of paper write down the following headings:

-relationships,
-work/school
-money
-physical health
-emotional health
-spiritual health.

Next to each heading write down what you want in each area. For example, under relationships, "I want to have a kind, loving, connected relationship with my children." When you finish writing all of your goals make multiple copies of it and prominently display it where you can see it several times each day. Frequently ask yourself, "Is my behavior getting me what I want?" This exercise helps to keep you focused on the things that are most important in your life...

6. Treat Brain Problems Early...

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Live Authentically

From this excellent and inspirational post by Ann Ronan, Ph.D and Certified Career Coach:

1. Know your purpose
Are you wandering through life with little direction—hoping that you’ll find happiness, health and prosperity? Identify your life purpose or mission statement, and you'll have your own unique compass that will lead you to your true north every time.
2. Know your values...
3. Know your needs...
4. Know your passions...
5. Live from the inside out...
6. Honor your strengths...
7. Take time to play...
8. Be aware of your self-talk...
9. Surround yourself with inspiration...
10. Serve others...

When you live authentically, you may find that you develop an interconnected sense of being. When you are true to who you are, living your purpose and giving of your talents to the world around you, you give back in service what you came to share with others—your spirit—your essence.

Via Brewed Fresh Daily

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the Neuro-Science Behind "the Secret"

Call it the power of positive thinking on steroids, call it the "law of attraction." No matter what you call it, "The Secret" has become a publishing and DVD success by pushing a simple premise -- love, money, health — you can have them all, simply by thinking it. And while critics have rightly questioned the breadth of the claims of the proponents of the Secret, at least one aspect of the process is squarely grounded in neuro-science - the positive power of affirmations to effect change.

As explained in this article by Hal Williamson and Sharon Eakes published in The Systems Thinker Newsletter, proper use of the affirmation-visualization process creates new neural circuits and conditions the brain to detect information in your environment that helps to turn the affirmation-visualization into reality.

Quoting from the article:

When our mind creates thoughts that are inconsistent with our experiences, habits, attitudes and beliefs, we experience mental pressure. The subconscious pushes back in an effort to maintain system equilibrium...

So how can we overcome these forces that work to maintain the status quo? One way is through affirmations...

An affirmation is a declaration that something is true...When tagged with emotions, affirmations create strong, new neural circuits. These new circuits have the capacity to alter old, unwanted behaviors in favor of new, desired behaviors...

By visualizing something repeatedly, we stimulate our subconscious to search for neural circuits that will evoke behaviors to bring about the very thing we have visualized. Positive results from practicing affirmations come from our natural urge to reduce the cognitive dissonance that is created when we compare current reality with the future state we want to achieve...

The three-step affirmation-visualization process that will drive new neural circuit development is:

1. Craft an affirmation that you will repeat mentally.
2. Visualize an image of the way the world will look as viewed from your own eyes when the affirmed fact is a reality.
3. Recall simultaneously an event that triggered positive emotions in order to chemically tag the new neural circuit formed by the affirmation and the visualized image.

To be highly effective, the words of affirmation need to follow six basic guidelines:

1. Be Personal
2. Be Positive
3. Use Present Tense
4. Express Positive Emotion
5. Be Realistic
6. Be Specific

The affirmation-visualization process has enormous power. Some of the results you can expect include:

*Secure the quality of life you want by activating existing neural circuits to change your behavior and relationships with others.
*Neutralize unwanted emotions, eliminate limiting attitudes and beliefs.
*Condition your brain to detect information in your environment that is of special importance to you.
*Solve problems by utilizing subconscious processes.

The article is derived from Hal's recently published book, Liberating Greatness: The Whole Brain Guide to an Extraordinary Life. The book uses the latest in neuroscience to illustrate how to rewire your brain to create the future you've always wanted. By understanding how the brain's neural pathways work, learning basic systems principles, and using simple mental tools, you can unlock your inner capacity and liberate your own greatness.

The book is available from Pegasus Communications, which graciously granted permission to use the Systems Thinker Newsletter article excerpts in this post.

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the Power of the Myth of Race

One of the unfortunate realities that the Don Imus debacle underscores is that racism and bigotry continue to live and breathe in our society. When I look at the above picture, of twins, beautiful children with different skin colors, born to the same parents at the same time, I realize that so much more is possible. Race is an illusion from a biological standpoint. We are all of one race – the human race. We are all African. We are one and connected, not separate and unequal.

As explained in the ground-breaking PBS series, RACE - The Power of an Illusion:

Race is so fundamental to discussions of poverty, education, crime, music, sports that, whether we be racist or anti-racist, we rarely question its reality. Yet recent scientific evidence suggests that the idea of race is a biological myth, as outdated as the widely held medieval belief that the sun revolved around the earth. Anthropologists, biologists and geneticists have increasingly found that, biologically speaking, there is no such thing as "race." Modern science is decoding the genetic puzzle of DNA and human variation - and finding that skin color really is only skin deep.

However invalid race is biologically, it has been deeply woven into the fabric of American life...

As Professor Joseph Graves, Jr. teaches:

The traditional concept of race as a biological fact is a myth...Nearly everything you think you know about race is a social construct. You don't have to be a racist to be wrong about what race is. That doesn't make the effects of a belief in race any less damaging, or the situation any less perilous. Most Americans still believe in the concept of race the way they believe in the law of gravity—they believe in it without even knowing what it is they believe in...

We have paid dearly for the policies of racism, and are continuing to pay in a currency of despair, unfulfilled dreams, and blood...We are paying now with academic underachievement, the drug epidemic, health disparities, unequal justice, urban malaise, and the ongoing social and political division that still exists between the socially defined races. Every time we pay, we slide closer toward hell on a road paved with our racial misconceptions. We will continue to pay until we reject the notion that there are biological races in the human species, and that race determines an individual's worth...

If we can understand that all allegiance to racism is ideological, not scientific, then we may be able to silence the bigots once and for all. We may be able to construct social systems that allow all of our citizens to actualize their biological potential. If we can live up to our creed of equality for all, then maybe we will have a chance to finally actualize the true spirit of democracy and the American dream...

Racism is not a neccesary feature of human society...People ask, 'Professor Graves, you say biological races are not real?' I say, 'Yes. Biological races are not real, but socialized races are real as a heart attack, and do not confuse those two.' There are no genetic barriers to dismantling racist ideology; it is a question of whether we want to.

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Happy Easter from Sewickley Pennsylvania

Among the many wonderful traditions in our Sewickley neighborhood, each year on Easter morning, in the front yard of one of our neighbors "appears" the scene pictured in the above photo. Occasionally, I forget about it and am delightedly surprised by this joyous sight as I drive by. Hope you enjoy the whimsy as much as I do. Happy Easter.

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Finding "You Time"

"Within each of there is a well of energy that must be regularly replenished. When we act as if this well is bottomless, scheduling a long list of activities that fit like puzzle pieces into every minute of every day, it becomes depleted and we feel exhausted, disconnected, and weak. Refilling this well is a matter of finding time to focus on, nurture, and care for ourselves, or 'you time.'

"Most of us are, at different times throughout the day, a spouse, a friend, a relative, an employee, a parent, or a volunteer, which means that down time, however relaxing in nature, is not necessarily "you time." Though some people will inevitably look upon "you time" as being selfish, it is actually the polar opposite of selfishness. We can only excel where our outer world affairs are concerned when our own spiritual, physical, and intellectual needs are fulfilled.

"Recognizing the importance of 'you time' is far easier than finding a place for it in an active, multifaceted lifestyle, however. Even if you find a spot for it in your agenda, you may be dismayed to discover that your thoughts continuously stray into worldly territory. To make the most of 'you time,' give yourself enough time on either side of the block of time you plan to spend on yourself to ensure that you do not feel rushed. Consider how you would like to pass the time, forgetting for the moment your obligations and embracing the notion of renewal. You may discover that you are energized by creative pursuits, guided meditation, relaxing activities during which your mind can wander, or modes of expression such as writing.

"Even if you have achieved a functioning work-life balance, you may still be neglecting the most important part of that equation: you. 'You time' prepares you for the next round of daily life, whether you are poised to immerse yourself in a professional project or chores around the home. It also affords you a unique opportunity to learn about yourself, your needs, and your tolerances in a concrete way. As unimportant as 'you time' can sometimes seem, it truly is crucial to your wellbeing because it ensures that you are never left without the energy to give of yourself."

Reprinting today's meditation from DailyOM - Nurturing Mind Body & Spirit.

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Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll (a.k.a. Charles Dodgson) is generally considered to be the greatest of all nonsense poems in English. It is so well known that a number of its nonsense words have entered the Oxford English Dictionary. Alice (of Wonderland fame) here, in the paragraph following the poem, puts her finger on the secret of the poem's charm:

'... It seems to fill my head with ideas -- only I don't know exactly what they are.'

These pages are dedicated to all who have come to like and love this poem which Alice discovers in a book. The poem occurs in the first chapter of Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There "

For more see Jabberwocky Glossary and Jabberwocky - Wikipedia.

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And they've been working all day

Up at eight, you can't be late
For Matthew & son, he won't wait.
Watch them run down to platform one
And the eight-thirty train to Matthew & son.
Matthew & son, the work's never done,
there's always something new.
The files in your head, you take them to bed,
you're never ever through.
And they've been working all day, all day, all day!

There's a five-minute break and that's all you take,
For a cup of cold coffee and a piece of cake.
Matthew & son, the work's never done,
there's always something new.
The files in your head, you take them to bed,
you're never ever through.
And they've been working all day, all day, all day!

He's got people who've been working for fifty years
No one asks for more money cuz nobody cares
Even though they're pretty low and their rent's in arrears
Matthew & son, Matthew & son,
Matthew & son, Matthew & son,
And they've been working all day, all day, all day!

MATTHEW & SON
Cat Stevens --1967

From the wonderful website of Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, Mountain of Light. If you, like me, were touched by the spiritual songwriting and style of Cat Stevens, or are otherwise a seeker of peace, you will want to explore the site, listen and watch the interviews at Yusuf Islam : Mountain of Light audio & video where Yusuf notes:

"I discovered that the human soul does not live only by means of material success and acclaim, it needs contentment, which actually requires a person to be normal sized. Stardom is not normal; everything has to be bigger and be better, you have to be competitive. Getting out of that race, quite frankly, is what I did. I was given a chance to find my own way to happiness; each person must choose whichever road he or she wishes to follow."

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So Much Depends on My Attitude

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, gift, or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.

---Charles Swindoll

Hat tip to The Positivity Blog

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Meditation is Good for Business

"Researchers are beginning to show that meditation directly affects the function and structure of the brain, changing it in ways that appear to increase attention span, sharpen focus and improve memory...

The forms of meditation...scientists are studying involve focusing on an image or sound or on one's breathing. Though deceptively simple, the practice seems to exercise the parts of the brain that help us pay attention...

Not surprisingly, given those results, a growing number of corporations—including Deutsche Bank, Google and Hughes Aircraft—offer meditation classes to their workers...Making employees sharper is only one benefit; studies say meditation also improves productivity, in large part by preventing stress-related illness and reducing absenteeism.

Another benefit for employers: meditation seems to help regulate emotions, which in turn helps people get along...So, for a New Year's resolution that can pay big dividends at home and at the office, try this: just breathe."

Read more in How to Get Smarter, One Breath at a Time -- TIME
Also see Meditation goes to work

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You Can Teach an Old Brain New Tricks

"For decades, the prevailing dogma in neuroscience was that the adult human brain is essentially immutable, hardwired, fixed in form and function, so that by the time we reach adulthood we are pretty much stuck with what we have. Yes, it can create (and lose) synapses, the connections between neurons that encode memories and learning. And it can suffer injury and degeneration. But this view held that if genes and development dictate that one cluster of neurons will process signals from the eye and another cluster will move the fingers of the right hand, then they'll do that and nothing else until the day you die. There was good reason for lavishly illustrated brain books to show the function, size and location of the brain's structures in permanent ink...

But research in the past few years has overthrown the dogma. In its place has come the realization that the adult brain retains impressive powers of "neuroplasticity"--the ability to change its structure and function in response to experience. These aren't minor tweaks either. Something as basic as the function of the visual or auditory cortex can change as a result of a person's experience of becoming deaf or blind at a young age. Even when the brain suffers a trauma late in life, it can rezone itself like a city in a frenzy of urban renewal. If a stroke knocks out, say, the neighborhood of motor cortex that moves the right arm, a new technique called constraint-induced movement therapy can coax next-door regions to take over the function of the damaged area. The brain can be rewired."

Read more in How The Brain Rewires Itself--TIME

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Resistance is...Automatic

Nagging spouse? You may have an excuse for not responding

New research findings now appearing online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology began with a professor’s desire to understand why her husband often seemed to ignore her requests for help around the house.”My husband, [Gavin Fitzsimmons] while very charming in many ways, has an annoying tendency of doing exactly the opposite of what I would like him to do in many situations,” said Tanya L. Chartrand, an associate professor of marketing and psychology at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business...

Working with Duke Ph.D. student Amy Dalton, Chartrand and Fitzsimons have demonstrated that some people will act in ways that are not to their own benefit simply because they wish to avoid doing what other people want them to. Psychologists call this reactance: a person’s tendency to resist social influences that they perceive as threats to their autonomy.

The team found that people do not necessarily oppose others’ wishes intentionally. Instead, even the slightest nonconscious exposure to the name of a significant person in their life is enough to bring about reactance and cause them to rebel against that person’s wishes...

Read more in this post from Press Esc.

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Wisdom from Warren Buffett

Darren D. Johnson shares five things he learned from spending 6 hours in Omaha with Warren Buffett:

1. Be Grateful
2. Be Ethical & Fair
3. Be Trustworthy
4. Invest in your Circle of Competence
5. Do What You Love,

Found via Warren Buffet Gets It and evelynr's favorites on del.icio.us

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Apple Over the Fence

A little girl saved the life of Hermann Rosenblatt during the holocaust. Fate brought her back into his life. Later, he had heart bypass surgery and his mother came to him in a dream, saying "You've got to tell your story, so that your grandchildren will know who their grandfather was." And what a story. So we will never forget, read about it in this aish.com article.

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Martin Luther King

Accurate information should be a goal for a search on Google for Martin Luther King. 

So... let's do a little Google-bombing:

Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King

If you want to know why we are doing this, have a look here.  Even better - join in the project and do some good.

Thanks to Scoble for raising the profile of this project.

As suggested in this Rethink(IP) post.

Technorati tags: MLK, Martin Luther King, Thanksgiving, Do Good

 

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The Transformative Power of Thanksgiving

"Gratitude can be a powerfully transformative practice...Practicing gratitude can actually improve our emotional and physical well-being...

Here are daily practices anyone can try.

1. See the giver behind the gift...

2. Ask yourself three questions every day... 'What have I received today? What have I given? What trouble have I caused?'...'As we become aware that we've received so much more than we've given, not only does that cultivate gratitude, it also cultivates often a sense of wanting to give something back to the world.'

3. Practice even when you don't feel like it. 'One of the mistakes people often make in our culture is thinking you have to feel grateful to practice gratitude...You can practice anytime'...

4. Make thank-you your mantra...

5. Create a simple family ritual. 'In our family, every evening when we have dinner, we say our thank you's...I's not a formal prayer of any kind, but just what we're grateful for in the moment, and that's all. It brings us back, it's a touchstone to the miracles of life that we may have been overlooking.'

6. Bow to life. 'I do three bows in the morning...The first bow is to my self as part of the universe. The second bow is to my family, children, and friends to acknowledge and appreciate them. The third is bowing to the universal life force and what is. Doing this helps me let go of controlling, and instead open to the flow of life...'

Read more in this article from Beliefnet.com.

Happy Thanksgiving to All

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Honor the Fallen in Flanders Fields

Poppies
TigerTigerTiger.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


"The poem 'In Flanders Fields' by the Canadian army physician John McCrae remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915.

The most asked question is: why poppies?

Wild poppies flower when other plants in their direct neighbourhood are dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, but only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout.

There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him bloodred poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before."

Find much more on this poem and its author here.

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"When You Come Home" Honors Troops

Beliefnet honors the men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan with this presentation featuring photos from Beliefnet readers.

You may also with to visit WhenYouComeHome.com to share your pictures, video, audio, and messages. You may find yourself or your loved one in one of Beliefnet's upcoming tributes.

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