Conceive and Believe

If you have a daunting task and the mere thought of it overwhelms you, it’s probably too big to implement directly and should be broken down into actionable parts. I find this happens to me frequently — I see the big strategic goal that I want to achieve, but become paralyzed thinking about the size of the project. To accomplish my overall goal, I need to crack this task into small doable pieces. In that way, I keep it simple and focused on one thing at a time.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself to Break a Big Daunting Task into Actionable Pieces

Ask yourself the following questions and write down all the answers you come up with. It works best if you can find a quiet, peaceful, comfortable place to do this where you won’t be interrupted.

1. What is the specific overall goal or task you want to achieve?

Be as clear as possible and include as many dates and or numbers as you can. If you are in business, you may have an overall task to “Create $50,000.00 of revenue from new online products within three months.” You could also identify more details including information about the target market, the type of products, etc. You can also apply this to personal tasks. For example, you may have an overall objective to “Eliminate clutter in three rooms in my home within two months with processes to maintain it.”

2. What information do you need first to complete your goal or task?

I often find I can’t take action until I get further information, especially at the beginning of a big task. For example, if your task is to eliminate clutter and you don’t really know where to start, you might need information on how to eliminate clutter and what tips the experts recommend. To gather this information you may choose to complete an Internet search or visit the local library and searching under organization or decluttering. Or you could choose to hire a professional organizer to provide some personal assistance.

3. What necessary steps do you foresee?

Again, be as specific as possible. This may seem unnecessary, but if you can write down the required steps to complete your project, it can start to feel less daunting. I often find that I end up with around five steps to complete — each of them may take me some time to accomplish, but with only five or less steps, it’s much easier to get my head around the overall task.

4. Who else should be involved, and what do you require or want them to do?

Make sure you consider both required and desired assistance. There will be times when you need support, but don’t forget to also ask for help when it will make the task easier for you and or lighten your load. I find that this step very helpful because we often forget about all the contacts that we really do have — and the contacts that these people have that they could match us up with if necessary.

5. What should be your very first step, and when do you have to take it?

The first step is always the key to getting started. Often I find this is something I have already identified as part of my response to questions two or four above.

Copyright 2004 Donna P. Lendzyk

Donna P. Lendzyk is a professional coach and creator of the Overcome Overwhelm System. She coaches businesswomen to “Overcome Overwhelm and Achieve Their Desired Results.” She is the author of the multi-media “Overcome Overwhelm eProgram.” To learn more about her eProgram and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her website at http://www.overcomeoverwhelm.com

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Both failure and success are good… if you know what their specific purpose is.

Of course we know that success is good, but why? Success is good because it confirms things for us.

Success confirms our plans.
Success confirms our decisions.
Success confirms our resources.
Success confirms our strategies.
Success confirms our hunches.
Success confirms our teamwork.
Success confirms our risks.
Success confirms a lot of things!

So when you are successful, ask yourself the following question:

What does this success confirm in my mind?

Now, what about failure? What is the role of failure and how in the world can it be GOOD?

Failure’s role is to teach us. We learn from failure.
Failure teaches us that we need to change our plans.
Failure teaches us that we need to change our decisions.
Failure teaches us that we need to change our resources.
Failure teaches us that we need to change our strategies.
Failure teaches us that we need to change our hunches.
Failure teaches us that we need to change our teamwork.
Failure teaches us that we need to change our risks.
Failure teaches us that we need to change a lot of things!

But at least now we know one more thing that won’t work! With every failure, we learn one more way we can abandon and focus in on what may be the correct way in the future! When we look at it that way, we set ourselves up for a powerfully successful future! So when you fail, ask yourself this question: What does this failure teach me?

Remember, Success and Failure are both good. They can both be your friend… If you know what role they are to play in your life. Learn From Failure and Confirm with Success.

About The Author:

Chris Widener is a popular speaker and writer as well as the President of
Made for Success, a company helping individuals and organizations turn
their potential into performance, succeed in every area of their lives and
achieve their dreams.

To see Chris “live” at the upcoming Jim Rohn Weekend Event as he speaks on
the subject of Secrets of Influence go to
http://Chris-Widener.InspiresYOU.com/ or call 800-929-0434.

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Effective leaders are comfortable with paradox. They can call on skills and work in ways that seem to be contradictory.

Dictionary.com defines paradox as “a seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true.” As I study the field, I find many paradoxes associated with leadership. I see that developing the skills of a great leader requires us to work in apparently contradictory ways that are nonetheless true.

I often see my clients and seminar participants wrestle with these issues because they present themselves as extreme and contradictory positions. Many people struggle because they view the paradoxical extremes as either/or positions rather than both/and positions.

One dilemma many people have difficulty confronting is, what I call, the Compassion Paradox – As a leader, you must be compassionate AND you must hold people accountable. Sometimes I say it this way: You cannot be too soft if you want to be compassionate. Let me explain.

Depending on their personality style and personal experience, most people fall more on one side or the other of these two extremes. They are great at holding people accountable, but not so great at showing compassion. Or, they are great at showing compassion, but not so great at holding people accountable. Learning to work both ends of this divide is one key to becoming an effective leader.

We normally fail to appropriately apply this principle because we do not really understand the two extremes. People who are comfortable with accountability view compassion as too “soft”. And, people who are comfortable with compassion view accountability as too “hard”. The truth is that neither extreme is either “soft” or “hard”. They are simply different responses to different leadership situations.

Let’s consider the definitions of these two responses

Compassion - deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.

Accountability – the condition of being called to account; answerable.

As leaders, we must be aware of people’s needs and work to meet them – i.e. we must be compassionate. We must also hold people accountable. If we fail to hold people accountable, the organization fails. If we do not address concerns, people work at bare minimum levels or they leave. Again, the organization fails.

Some people are comfortable with this paradox. I find that most are not. My personal challenge is this - I fall more on the compassion side than on the accountability side. With conscious effort, I have improved my ability to hold people accountable. It is still not natural or comfortable for me. I realize, though, that it is necessary.

Whatever your bent, I encourage you to look at your behaviors as a leader. Are you more comfortable with compassion or with accountability? Either way, work to develop comfort with the other. When you can choose your response based on the situation, rather than your personal comfort, you will be skilled at applying the Compassion Paradox. You will be one step closer to acting as a highly effective leader.

Copyright 2005, Guy Harris

Guy Harris is the Chief Relationship Officer with Principle Driven Consulting. He helps entrepreneurs, business managers, and other organizational leaders build trust, reduce conflict, and improve team performance. Learn more at http://www.principledriven.com

Guy co-authored “The Behavior Bucks System TM” to help parents reduce stress and conflict with their children. Learn more about this book at http://www.behaviorbucks.com

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There were four generations sitting at the kitchen table, smacking on Mommy’s delicious meal—somehow we never made it to the dining room. I smiled to myself when I thought of how fabulous this truly was–sitting here, next to my grandmother, my mother, my father, my sister, my children and my niece—celebrating Mother’s Day.

I love it when my family gets together because we always end up having deep conversations about life and about the Bible. We also spend hours telling stories about our past. Of course, some of the stories I’ve already heard, others are new to me.

My grandmother told several stories that I hadn’t heard before.
Recently, she went to my cousin’s (her grandson’s) school (he’s in the 6th grade) for Grandparent’s day. During Grandparent’s day, the grandparent has to tell stories about how life was when they were growing up.

My grandmother told a story about how she was born and raised in Oxford, North Carolina on a farm and didn’t get a chance to finish “much schooling.” After she was married for three years and had her first son (my father) they moved “up north” for a better way of life. She got her first job making .75 cents per week. The children fell out laughing when they heard this. They thought it was the funniest thing they ever heard.

She told several stories that day, but one of the stories she
told—disturbed me something decent. She said that her church wanted to honor her but she refused the honor. I asked her why she refused the recognition. I thought it was for noble reasons or something like that—but the reason was because she was ashamed of her background.

My grandmother said that she has attended numerous honorary dinners at her church and the people they honored all seems to have all types of degrees and honors, but she didn’t finish grade school and would be embarrassed to have her “story” told.

See, my grandmother never finished school. She had to work to bring in an income to help feed her family. As the oldest of six children, a lot of responsibility fell on her shoulders.

When she married and had children of her own, she still had to work to make ends meet and the only work she could get back in the day, was scrubbing floors for Ms. Baine (a doctor’s wife and family that she worked for as a maid for many years.)

This embarrassed my grandmother and made her feel “less than” because she didn’t have the educational background and fantastic career as so many other members of her church presently have.

My grandmother is 85 years old. She wakes up each morning at 3 a.m. and exercises for 30 minutes by riding her stationary bicycle. She then reads her Daily Bread for an hour before she gets dressed and ready to go to work. She works as an aide on a school bus for special education children. She doesn’t work because she has to work; she works because she wants to work. My grandmother has never been in the hospital or even sick, for that matter, in her entire life. She has lived to see her
grandchildren grow up and get married and to have children of their own. She is the best-dressed woman wherever we go (she love her hats, big and tilted to the side). She owns a nice house and drives a new car every two years (she only drives to church and the supermarket so her cars always keep their value very well). She is always there when you need her and goes out of her way to help strangers in any way that she can.

My grandmother lived and continues to live a wonderful life. But as long as I’ve known her, she always had a problem with the fact that she isn’t well “educated”—meaning that she never had any “formal” schooling past the sixth grade.

So many people are like that. They let the fact that they do not have a college degree stop them from being who they can and should be in life. They never let go of the thought that having a college degree somehow makes you a better person than if you don’t have one.

I know where this thought originated—it originated with our parents and with society. Our parents want us to do well in school so they tell us that if we don’t do well in school, we will never be able to make it in college, and if we don’t go to college, then we will never make it in “today’s world.”

We have been brainwashed so much that we simply accept this as a
truth—as if it is a fact. But it’s not.

A college degree doesn’t make a person successful.

Having a few letters behind one’s name does not make you any “greater” than a person without letters.

It only appears this way because so many without a college education BELIEVE this to be so and therefore never live up to their fullest potential. They, like my grandmother, allow the BELIEF that a college education determines their lot in life.

The truth of the matter is YOU determine your lot in life.

There are so many successful people who never had a college degree that I can’t even begin to name them all.

What determines your success in life is YOU and what you choose to make of your life.

Don’t let something as silly as not having a college degree or even a high school diploma—stop you from living to your fullest potential.

Just accept God into your life and lean on Him for your understanding and everything that you need to know to be the person you were meant to be, will be revealed to you—if only you first BELIEVE.

Dawn Fields is a motivational speaker, life coach and author. She teaches how to discover your life’s purpose and incorporate it into a career, in a really, down-to-earth, no nonsense sort of approach. Visit the web site at http://www.dawnfields.com and sign up for Your Life’s Purpose newsletter by sending a blank email to mailto:dawn@dawnfields.com with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Tune in each and every Thursday to Your Life’s Purpose Interactive Internet Radio with at 9 p.m. EST by going to http://www.dawnfields.com/radioshow.htm

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Any day we wish we can discipline ourselves to change it all. Any day we wish; we can open the book that will open our mind to new knowledge. Any day we wish; we can start a new activity. Any day we wish; we can start the process of life change. We can do it immediately, or next week, or next month, or next year.

We can also do nothing. We can pretend rather than perform. And if the idea of having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can remain as we are. We can choose rest over labor, entertainment over education, delusion over truth, and doubt over confidence. The choices are ours to make. But while we curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause. As Shakespeare uniquely observed, “The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves.” We created our circumstances by our past choices.

We have both the ability and the responsibility to make better choices beginning today. Those who are in search of the good life do not need more answers or more time to think things over to reach better conclusions. They need the truth. They need the whole truth. And they need nothing but the truth.

We cannot allow our errors in judgment, repeated every day, to lead us down the wrong path. We must keep coming back to those basics that make the biggest difference in how our life works out. And then we must make the very choices that will bring life, happiness and joy into our daily lives.

And if I may be so bold to offer my last piece of advice for someone seeking and needing to make changes in their life - If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree. You have the ability to totally transform every area in your life - and it all begins with your very own power of choice.

To Your Success,
Jim Rohn

Reproduced with permission from Jim Rohn’s Weekly E-zine.
Copyright 2005 Jim Rohn International. All rights reserved
worldwide. To subscribe to Jim Rohn’s Weekly E-zine, go to
http://Jim-Rohn.InspiresYOU.com

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Change, like almost every other life experience, is a learning process. With each new idea or situation comes the need to learn about it…what is it? How does it work? How do I fit in? What are the good and bad aspects of it? So let’s talk for a moment about the process of learning.
LEARNING is a lifelong process. It neither starts nor ends with formal schooling. In fact, school mostly teaches us how to learn. Experience teaches us what we need to know, but it’s up to us to go out there and get the knowledge and the information. Change is a learning experience (if you let it be). So here are the four skills you’ll need and some questions for you to answer.

STUDYING AND DEVELOPING NEW TECHNICAL AND HUMAN SKILLS

- Do you hold back until you are forced to learn, or do you reach out for the information you need or want?

- Would additional study, perhaps formal courses at a college or junior college or adult education program, help in this situation?

SEEK OUT LEARNERS – people who know more than you do…or are learning

- Do you seek out the advice of people who have already been through the learning process, asking how they did it?

- Are you open to seeking out a mentor…or two…or three?

PUSH YOURSELF

- Do you recognize that you may be trapped in old ways? Can you tell yourself there must be a better way? Remember the old saying, “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.”
LEARN TO ACT WITHOUT HAVING ALL THE INFORMATION IN HAND

- Do you believe in hunches? Can you risk enough to act even though you don’t necessarily (or can’t) have all the facts? You need to assess, at every stage of change, the wisdom of acting, even when it feels risky. The fact is, it is risky, but perhaps it’s more risky NOT to act than to act.
Reproduced below is a “Change Checklist.” In order to give yourself some insight into the level of stress you may have endured recently – and therefore to help you realize what need to change in your life, what process needs to be undertaken. There is a scoring key at the end of the exercise.

CHANGE CHECKLIST

Change comes in many forms — expected and predictable (which
you can plan for — and should), or unexpected (whoops!),
sudden (ouch!!), and unsettling (oh, oh!). Planned change
often doesn’t feel like “change,” because we know it’s coming
and it doesn’t seem to hurt like the other kind.

Then there’s “sea change” — overwhelming change that
envelops us — such as economic or political change, social
change (like the Los Angeles Riots), or natural changes
such as fires, floods, tornadoes, snowstorms, earthquakes.
We need to recognize that change of all sorts affects us —
even when we’re not aware of it. What’s more, change is a way
of life today, and the degree and rapidity of change —
societal, environmental, political, social and personal —
is increasing. For an in-depth look at this phenomenon, read
The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler.

But for the moment, read the list below and check off any
change that you’ve gone through in the last year.

WORK

_ Changed to a new type of work
_ Changed work hours, conditions
_ Increased or decreased job responsibilities
_ Experienced company merger, acquisition, re-organization
_ Had trouble (dispute) with co-workers, supervisors, subordinates
_ Taken work-related educational courses
_ Been introduced to a new technology or work process
_ Fired or laid off
_ Retired

HOME, FAMILY

_ Death of spouse or other primary family member
_ Death of relative, close friend
_ Got married
_ Became a parent or took in a relative
_ Spouse started or stopped working outside home
_ Had serious argument with spouse
_ Separated or reconciled with spouse
_ Got divorced
_ Changed residence
_ Undertook major home improvements or repairs
_ In-law problems
_ Child left home — or returned to live
_ Change in habits of family gathering
_ Change in health or behavior of family member (substance abuse, etc.)

PERSONAL, SOCIAL

_ Started or stopped school, college
_ Realized major achievement (personal)
_ Took a vacation
_ Changed a social activity (joined, resigned from club, et
_ Changed religious beliefs
_ Made major decision about your future
_ Had sexual difficulties
_ Had legal problems
_ Changed political party or beliefs
_ Started a new personal relationship
_ Terminated a personal relationship other than marriage
_ Had loss by theft, damage to personal property (car or belongings)
_ Had an accident (automobile, fall, etc.)

HEALTH

_ Had an illness or injury requiring hospitalization or bed
rest
_ Changed eating habits (including weight loss program)
_ Experienced change in sleeping habits
_ Changed recreational activities

FINANCES

_ Bought a home or made other major purchase (car, boat, vacation property)
_ Had business failure or major uninsured financial loss
_ Had change in personal finances or significant change in income or expenses (up or down)

_____ Record the Total Number of Checkmarks

What your score means:

1 - 15: You’re in good shape, the year’s been easy.
16 - 25: This has been a challenging year. Take a deep breath.
26 - 35: Perhaps you may need a professional counselor to help
you through the changes.
36+: Your stress level is near boiling — slow down,
re-group, get help.

Copyright 2002, 2005 Optimum Performance Associates/Paul McNeese.

Paul McNeese is CEO of Optimum Performance Associates, a consulting firm
specializing in transitional and transformational change for individuals
and institutions through publication. His publishing company,
OPA Publishing, is an advocacy for self-publishing authors of
informational, instructional, inspirational and insightful nonfiction.

Email: pmcneese@opapublishing.com
Websites: http://www.opapublishing.com and http://www.opapresents.com

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You are smarter than you know. In fact, you’re probably a genius. You have the ability to function at exceptional levels in your preferred way of learning and thinking.

Every person regardless of background, education, or social status has enormous mental capacity that he or she habitually fails to use. There is no problem you cannot solve or overcome and no goal you cannot achieve when you learn how to unleash the power of your mind and use it to its full capacity.

Your mind is the most accomplished instrument for goal achievement and lifelong success ever imaginable on this earth. Your creative capacity is unlimited. In fact, years of scientific studies have concluded that the thinking cells in the human brain are equal to all the known atoms in the universe.

People who use their mind more fully are the ones that prosper beyond their wildest expectations. Every person has two different minds. Your conscious and subconscious. Your conscious mind is the one with which people are familiar. Your conscious mind is your thinking mind. It uses logic, deduction, reason, and sound judgment to reach its conclusions and make its decisions. Your choices in life are made by you conscious mind.

If your conscious mind is able to do everything I just told you, then what is the value of your subconscious mind? What can it do for you? How can you use it to your advantage?

Only a small percentage of people ever discover the subconscious mind, understand how it works, and then learn how to use it to achieve complete success in whatever they set out to accomplish.

When you learn how to use your subconscious mind properly, you will discover that the choices you make in life with your conscious mind will be guided, influenced, and directed by the data stored and received from your subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind never acts of its own volition or its own initiative. It must be given goals to reach, objectives to attain, or problems to solve before it will do anything at all for you. In fact, the primary purpose of your subconscious mind is to help you succeed in life by achieving all the goals that you have given to it with your conscious or thinking mind.

By the same token, if you don’t give your subconscious mind any goals to reach or problems to solve, it will never do anything at all for you. But if you give it specific objectives to reach, it will go all out to achieve results for you.

For example, if you want a bigger house, an expensive car, a better job, improved health, better personal relationships with your family, your friends, customers, clients, and business associates, all you have to do is tell your subconscious mind exactly what you want. It goes to work to make your goal a reality. But you must be specific in your instructions to your subconscious mind. It will never act on vague or abstract information. You must firmly establish your goal and then let your subconscious mind help you achieve it.

Don’t get in the way or interfere with its work by telling it what to do or how to solve your problems with your conscious mind. You will only slow down the process or perhaps completely prevent it.

Your subconscious mind is lying there dormant within you, just waiting for you to tap into its power. It is unlimited, infinite, and inexhaustible in its ability to bring success to you. The subconscious mind never rests. It keeps right on working for you even while you are sleeping. All you have to do is just activate it and start its marvelous power working in your life.

Your subconscious mind works much like a computer. It is an extremely intricate electronic goal-seeking mechanism with its functions and actions programmed into it by your conscious mind. However, it is much more complex than the most advanced computer ever conceived by man.

The subconscious mind works less rapidly and not as accurately in some respects as a man-made computer does, because the subconscious mind is subject to all the emotions of the conscious mind. Even the most complex and sophisticated computer is left far behind when it is compared with the subconscious mind’s staggering capacity to do the unbelievably hard tasks. But that’s the way it should be, because the computer originated in the mind of man, not the other way around.

Unfortunately only 5 percent of people ever achieve anything of major importance in their lives simply because it’s easier to fail or to just coast along not living up to your potential to succeed. I believe as Earl Nightingale did, that success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. If a person is working toward a specific goal that he or she wants to achieve then he or she is a success.

Who then, is a failure? Well, a failure is someone who has both the talent and the ability to accomplish much more than he or she has. If a person has no predetermined goal to attain, then that person is not living up to his or her fullest potential, then they are a failure, no matter how high their social or business positions are or how much money they make.

Success requires diligent and strenuous effort as well as perseverance. But it’s a proven fact that most people are lazy but still manage to get by. For example, the person who is a failure does not have to work as hard as the successful one. And he or she can avoid the struggle and pain of that strenuous effort to attain success by just taking it easy and coasting along.

In order to achieve success you must first deprogram your subconscious mind of its failure attitudes and ideas. Once you do, whatever has been previously programmed into your subconscious mind by your conscious thinking mind will be forgotten. Although those memories of defeat and failure will always be retained they will never again surface to enter your conscious mind unless you allow them to do so by actively calling them back. But for all practical purposes, as long as you think positively, and not negatively, they will be forgotten by your conscious mind.

This means that if you or someone else has been feeding thoughts of defeat and failure into your subconscious mind, you are going to get back negative ideas, defeat, and failure, because the output of your subconscious mind always equals its input. Always remember, you are want you think about, most of the time.

However, you can quickly override those negative concepts that you have stored in your subconscious mind when you start programming it with ideas on success and achievement. The instant that you do that, your subconscious mind determines they your conscious mind is no longer interested in defeat and failure, so it buries those attitudes and ideas deeper and deeper into its memory.

How, then, can you accomplish such a drastic and important change in your thinking from negative to positive? By using two extremely simple rules that are really the golden keys that will unlock the door to successful accomplishment for you: Act as if it were impossible to fail, and second, do the thing you fear to do and you’ll have the power to do it.

This doesn’t mean that you will not have to endure some minor and temporary defeats. You no doubt will, as all people who achieve success have.

But that doesn’t mean you have failed, it only means you have encountered a temporary setback. Every time you try something that does not work, you know to cross that that one off your list and try again and even again if that is necessary. That’s exactly what Thomas Alva Edison did when he was working on inventing the first commercially practical incandescent light bulb.

So never give up. You too can survive temporary setbacks and still succeed in life. Just act as if it were impossible to fail and program your subconscious mind with that positive idea. And do the things you fear to do and you’ll have the power to do it. But if you don’t do the thing you fear to do, you will never gain the power to do it. It is just that simple.

Whatever it is that you want to gain the power to do and become proficient at, you must make the first move yourself. Once you do and begin to unleash the power of your subconscious mind, your success will be unlimited.

Copyright© 2005 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. He is the founder and CEO of JLM & Associates, a consulting and training organization, specializing in personal and business development. Through his seminars and lectures, Joe Love addresses thousands of men and women each year, including the executives and staffs of many of America’s largest corporations, on the subjects of leadership, self-esteem, goals, achievement, and success psychology.

Reach Joe at: joe@jlmandassociates.com

Read more articles and newsletters at: http://www.jlmandassociates.com

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Imagine yourself marooned on a vast deserted island. You have been there for years, struggling just to survive, living within the most basic surroundings, gathering food, using only your hands and makeshift tools to scratch out an existence. Most of your days are fully taken up with satisfying the basic needs of life. You find some comfort in talking to some of the local creatures and birds that you have befriended. Having proved to yourself that you can survive with just the bare essentials you resign yourself to the fact that you will never be rescued. Anger turns to quiet desperation, then to acceptance as you carry on with your life.

Several years have passed and you have become accustomed to your lifestyle and feel comfortable enough to start expanding and exploring your island. You have settled in, and your attention lately has been directed towards the mountains and what is beyond.

As you begin to move further inland and away from your comfort zone, you develop a sense of strength and purpose for having survived the years on your own. Along the way you are making many discoveries that will enhance your life and make things easier. You are gathering an abundance of awareness and knowledge about the environment that you live in. By this time you have convinced yourself that there is nothing you can not do, and that there is nothing you really have to do to survive. Everything has been provided for you. You simply reach out and take it as you need it.

After 40 years of wandering the island, you finally reach the top of the mountain and turn away from the direction in which you came.

In the distance and time that separates you, you discover a huge modern city with all the amenities that such a place could hold. You discover that your island was not an island and that the city has always been there. As your mind races over the circumstances of the last 40 years, you fall to your knees weeping. You begin to ponder the ramifications of this discover and what could have been.

I should think that the discovery of your soul is very much the same overwhelming experience. It’s not a religious experience unless you want it to be. It’s natural and simply a discovery of another part of you, that was there all along, that you didn’t know or thought little of. Think of the possibilities. Where there was one, now there are many. Where there was limited possibilities, now they are endless. And there is always that one question, “Why?” How could I have not known. How my life would have been different.

The human species is a three part being, mind, body and spirit. Because our focus is in the physical element; most of our attention is on the body. The mind is what drives us, the spirit is our personality or ego, and the body is loosely the vehicle that is used to experience the physical world.

To experience physicality, one needs to be physical, it’s natural then to be focused on the body and its needs. Most all of our waking hours are centered on what the body wants to experience. The body and the physical world, are a buffet of endless experiences. There is nothing wrong with this arrangement, and it works flawlessly and on auto-pilot throughout our lifetimes with or without our awareness of what makes it tick.

So why am I bringing it up? If the system works perfectly, then leave it alone. Don’t try to fix that which doesn’t need fixing. Is ignorance not, bliss?

These notions of being alone and powerless, limit our experience of the physical world and our own personal growth. With a certain amount of awareness, our lives can be enhanced a thousand fold and more, with the discovery of our souls. Denial of the soul has far reaching ramifications. Awareness of it and communication with it, augments the quality of our lives. It is a vast warehouse of power and abilities that virtually go untapped as we struggle with the day to day elements of the physical world. It’s like discovering that city that was always there, and you are given the key to access any part of it.

I am not talking about some abstract or far reaching, hypothetical element of our person, rather of something that actually exists. This soul that we are all part of, is only available to you on a conscious level when you recognize that it is there, when you discover it. You can not ever, avail yourselves of its wealth and power, if you deny it.

You will survive one way or the other in ignorance of your soul. With acceptance of the knowledge of your soul, brings with it all the benefits, amenities and power that it has to offer, that is rightfully yours.

The soul is self discovery. You do not need another’s permission to find it. There are no rituals or symbols that you need to bring it into your awareness. You do not have to pay penance or get down on your knees to another, to bring it into your awakened life. There is no prayer or affirmation that will bring it to you. The city was always there, you just opened your eyes to discover it. Your soul is yours, it always was. There is nothing you need to do, or say to access the power of what you hold within yourself. It is freely given and must be freely taken. It is boundless and limitless as your thoughts are about it. The only thing that has ever or will ever deny your access is your own thoughts.

Walk on water, turn water into wine, do all kinds of miracles if that is your desire. Set out to prove this wrong and you will succeed if that is your wish. Set out to prove this correct, and that is what you shall achieve. Your thoughts are the key to the soul. As your thinketh, so shall your reap. The soul responds quickest to the purest of thought. Learn to control your thoughts at all levels and you will have the key to the vault.

That which you would call “God,” or anything else, is who you are. You are an individualized piece of that power. You have the power of the whole at your disposal in any given second, through your thoughts. You work together with the other individualized parts to create singularity and en masse all that is your experience in this present lifetime.

You can take the long way or the short cut to the mountain. There is no race, you do it in your own time and your own way. You can do it in this lifetime or another. There is more than one way to the mountain. All the souls in the city came a different way, and from a different time. Your time is when you decide.

Discover your soul and you discover another natural piece of who you are. You are never lost, you just are not there yet. Open the door to discovery and double or more, what you think you are.

Roy E. Klienwachter is an ordained minister,light worker, writer and author of Spiritual New Age Wisdom books written in simple language with the eloguence of Zen wisdom.
http://www.klienwachter.com

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Those living on the highest levels of life have learned to accept life on its own terms. There are some realities about life that we must accept. This is the key to living joyfully in communion with the heavenly while abiding here on earth.

Life, no matter how we choose to look at it, is a challenge. It is the beginning of a struggle that continues until we breathe our last breath. Life is something that we did not request. None of us asked to be born. Neither did we ask to be poor, or Black, tall or short. We did not ask to be a part of one family as opposed to another.

Life is full of risks. There is a certain element of risk taking that is inherent in every venture we undertake; whether it is in business, or in marriage, in a profession or in athletics. We never have complete security within ourselves. For we know that every moment we live, our lives are in constant danger. A stray bullet may hit us, a car emerging out of nowhere may crush us, and a slip of the foot may result in our death. So life is unpredictable. We get no warning, we are afforded no red alert, and we get no second chance at life.

And we might as well face the fact that our life is a dying life. As soon as we are born, we begin to die and every day we manage to somehow survive, we have only gained another step towards our grave. Each morning when we wake up from a refreshing sleep, we have died a little during the night. As we go through the streets of the city, we are dying a little. As we go about our business on the job, we are dying a little. In essence, we are living in the land of the dying.

It will help you to accept life on its own terms rather than struggle against it. Identify and move from the limiting and conflicting, “either/or,” “black or white,” “all or nothing”, illusory perception of life to an attitude that is open to all aspects of reality. We do this by accepting life on its own terms - accepting that pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness are all a natural part of the human experience.

Fighting against life’s realities and adopting a stance of negativism only create unnecessary pain and difficulty in your life. Accepting life allows you to understand your frustrations, grow from them and experience life’s abundance.

You have heard people who make comments such as “I go with the flow.” What they are saying is this: I accept in life what I cannot change. I deal with it as it comes within the framework of my own knowledge and capabilities and spirit. When inner negatives are dissolved, our outer life will be more harmonious and fulfilled.

Understanding life helps you make the unconscious conscious; to see your misguided beliefs and negativity clearly, to understand their roots and causes, and most importantly - to transform them. A complete path, it offers a practical, rational, honest, and above all, gentle and self-accepting way to move from an attitude of you versus the world to one of you and the world; from you versus life to you and life.

Fundamental to accepting life is to give recognition to the supreme life-giver. Whenever we praise God or give God recognition and
acknowledgement, it is for life. Whenever we give God a spiritual applaud or standing ovation, it is for life. Think about it – Life. God has given us life, something so tremendous, potent, and marvelous that no scholar has ever been smart enough to detail its composition or understand from where it derives its sustaining energy. Life – a force so complex that it cannot be duplicated. And, most amazing and thrilling of all, He has given us minds! It is through our minds, the thoughts we think with it, and the impressions we store in it, that we are conscious of living. In short, your life becomes just what your mind makes it for you and just what it tells you life is.

Few people go deep enough within their soul to realize in its entire fullness, breadth and scope the amazing gift of life that enables them to pursue a lifetime of accomplishment. What a marvelous gift. What power! God has endowed us with the power to think, to believe, to create, to imagine, to choose, to feel, to aspire. Having a wonderful sense of appreciation puts all our petty complaints and frustrations, irritants and negativity into perspective. You live on a realm beyond grudges, ingratitude, selfishness and take-for grant-ed-ness. You enjoy and value each moment and are determined to get the best out of every second.

Don’t forget that God is a living energy to quicken, increase, and guide our own energy. The Infinite Power Source is a living elixir to lift up, sustain, and establish our own spirit. Being negative takes the spirit out of you. What is the point of God increasing your spirit while you at the same time decrease it with negatives? If you refuse God’s gift of an abundant life, then you must do without it.

Our minds, which thinks so ceaselessly and insistently, is the most marvelous instrument imaginable; but it is up to us to control it and to choose the kind of thoughts we think, to train ourselves in appreciating all flowers that come into our life, and deal with the weeds.

Yes, we must come to terms with the silent and perennial truth that the field of human life will always consist of the good, the bad and the ugly coexisting together. We all experience the good in our lives, but intertwined with the good is the bad and the ugly. Finding the ugly and unpleasant mixed in with the wheat is an everyday experience and each of us has to deal with the inherent difficulties involved.

But lest we become arrogant, we also understand that not only do we live with and intermingle with both the wheat and the thistles but they exist within each of us. Collectively and individually, we are capable of heart-touching kindness towards one another as well as heartbreaking evil. We are capable of building up and capable of tearing down, capable of great love and capable of seething hatred, capable of horrendous evil as well as remarkable good.

When you are able to appreciate life and accept it on its own terms, you harmonize your mind with God’s mind; with the universal intelligence, power and glory.

Every day lift yourself up in your own mind, mood, imagination, sheer inner conviction. Everyday, give praise to the author of life and glory in its wonders. Every day do something with a sense of freedom and spontaneity, something you have wanted to do or felt you should do, but have shirked because life is not going the way you want it. Every day try to do something to make life pleasant for someone else for no other reason than the joy experienced from it. Then watch as these active, happy, positive inner states increase and grow, to bless you and transform you, to bless and transform the world!

Saundra L. Washington, an ordained clergywoman and social worker, has practiced concurrently in the fields of social work and ministry for almost three decades. She is the Founder of AMEN Ministries, http://www.clergyservices4u.org and the author of two coffee table books: Room Beneath the Snow, Poems that Preach and Negative Disturbances, Homilies that Teach.

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On Apollo 13, the crew staged the first strike in the history of space travel. The date was December 27, 1973. Mission Control had sent more commands than the crew could cope with. Commander General Carr put a stop to this when he radioed in to Mission Control. “You have given us too much to do,” he complained. “We’re not going to do a thing until you get your act in better order.”

He then shut off communications for 12 hours. The astronauts used the time to catch up and enjoy the unusual view.

The Success Principle

Success happens in small steps. Scale down big projects. Go for small victories. Over time, small victories add up to complete the overall goal.

The Principle At Work

In the story, the space crew scaled everything down to regain control of their mission. They reduced an overwhelming situation to a manageable one. Here you have an example of scaling down the element of time. While the projects remained the same size, they were extended over time. They became more manageable, easier to get done.

The key word here is manageable.

Scaling down can also be done in terms of size. A project can be broken down into smaller units, into sub-projects. When the parts of a whole are disconnected, each part can be worked on. A system with fewer interconnected parts is easier to comprehend, easier to control, manipulate, improve. Science, itself, is based on boiling down the vast complexity of nature into small, comprehensible units of information called scientific laws. Gradually, the completed parts are assembled into a whole again.

In your own life, when things get overwhelming, scale them down. Either do less of them, diminish the size; or do them all over a longer period of time. Scaling down means working at a level of competence. It means doing only a few things, and one thing at a time.

Ultimately, scaling down means shunning big wins for smaller wins. Going for big wins creates high stress, confusion, loss of momentum and balance.

When a large problem is broken down into smaller chunks, stress is reduced in three ways. First, a small win cuts the pressure. “This is no big deal.” The price of failure is low. The pain of failure is minimal. Consequently, you are willing to try again and again, until you figure out the pattern which ensures success. Second, it cuts demand. There is less to do. And it is less strenuous. “This is all that needs to be done.” Third, the level of skill needed is sufficient. Performance anxiety is reduced. A sense of competency exists. “I can do at least this much.”

What is a small victory?

A small victory is a concrete, complete, clear-cut outcome of modest value. By itself, one small victory may seem trivial. But a series of victories at small but significant tasks, lowers resistance to opposition. Small victories are controllable opportunities. They produce visible results.
Small solutions single out and define problems clearly. By looking at specific, limited conditions of a problem, it is easier to find a solution that fits. The problem is easier to see and the solution easier to try out.

Small victories emphasize the importance of defining limits. They avoid defining problems diffusely. “The establishment stinks.” They avoid open-ended solutions. “Burn the system down.” They define problems more precisely. “This is what is wrong.” They narrow solutions. “This is the first thing we have to work on.”

Once a small victory has been secured, energy is released and powerful forces are set in motion that favor another small victory. When a problem is solved, the next solvable problem appears. This happens because information is clear. When our perceptions are sharper, more resources, both inner and outer, can be tapped.

Small victories change a situation. They stir up change. Even when complexity does occur in the future, you will have the skills to meet them. In time, more complex tasks are handled with more mastery.

Small victories provide information. This information speeds up learning and adaptation. Small attempts are miniature experiments. They test theories. They offer insight into viable strategies. In little experiments, numerous theories can be postulated, numerous strategies tried out, until something clicks, a pattern is discerned, a meaningful solution appreciated.

Small victories are also more emotionally stable. A small defeat does not result in despondency, a small victory in exuberance. Everything is relatively even-tempered. A large, sudden victory can be overwhelming. Lottery millionaires, for example, have been known to lose all their money rapidly. This is different from the businessman who understands how to manage his money, even when it runs in millions, because he has built his business over a series of small victories.

Essentially, then, the best big victories are those that have arrived over a period of time as a series of small victories. These victories have stability, balance, and perpetuating power. They have matured over time because they have been built up over a process of events. Big corporations, for example, sometimes break themselves down into smaller departments to stimulate the creativity and dynamism of a small group.
Above all, when you initiate a small-scale project, or break a large project into small-scale projects, there is less that can go wrong. There is a closer link between cause and effect. Simple patterns can be created, observed, tested, discarded, tried out, and finally trusted. Immediate feedback is available as to what works and how long it takes. Clarity of vision, manageability of tasks, immediacy of results – all these arise from pursuing small victories.

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Saleem Rana got his Masters degree in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life

Copyright 2004 Saleem Rana. Please feel free to pass this
article on to your friends, or use it in your ezine or
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