Though many of us may not realize this or want to acknowledge it, television affects us at multiple levels. The constant barrage of advertising messages on television often can result in misplaced priorities, unrealistic expectations and low self-esteem when those expectations are not made. It constantly makes us want things we don’t need and teaches us to expect instant gratification. By constantly equating material wealth and good looks with happiness, television teaches us to focus on all the wrong things and forget the things that should really matter.

The simple act of switching off the television and letting it remain that way can liberate your mind in ways that even you may not expect and allow you to savor experiences. So do yourself a favor and quit your cable company and move on to Netflix if you really want to watch something every once in a while.

2. Drop Your Fast Food Intake
The U.S. is one of the most obese nations in the world and it is no accident that we got that way. Per capita the average American family eats more junk food than in any other country. A lot of that has to do with the ubiquitous presence of fast food restaurants around the country. Most of these places serve up food that contains way too many calories, too much saturated fat, salt and grease. All too often the food is deep-fried, over-cooked and contains very little to no nutritional value.

Eating such food may convenient and inexpensive, and yes tasty as well. But over the long-term the consequences to your health from eating too much fast food can be devastating. Apart from making you obese, a diet consisting of fast food alone will rob you of the vitality and energy that results from a balanced diet that is rich in fruits and vegetables.

Fast food can leave you feeling lethargic and unhealthy and deprives your body of the nutrients it needs. Importantly, all that low-cost fast food that you are consuming now will end up costing you big time in health care costs stemming from obesity, blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease.

You truly are what you eat. So make a sensible choice and drop your fast food intake. See what it difference it makes.

3. Continue To Educate Yourself
It truly takes a diverse set of skills to be able to survive in the current economy. Companies are looking to cut costs and have been resorting to widespread layoffs over the past few years. Increasingly they are counting on their remaining employees to pick up the slack and essentially do more for less. To succeed in this environment it is no longer enough to do your best, but to be the best at what you do.

That means being willing to recognize that the degrees you might have earned and the credentials you might have acquired will only take you so far. You have to continue to educate yourself and make susre that you have the skills needed to compete with today’s brightest and the best.

Remember there are a countless number of eager young graduates coming out of college every year with a fresh set of skills. Not only are they hungry for your job they are often willing to work for less. Competing against them will require you to constantly remake yourself. You need to educate yourself, learn new skills and polish up your existing expertise.

See if you can leverage your work experience to acquire specialized professional certifications or other educational credentials in your area of work. It might just save your job.

4. Get On The Green Bandwagon
This year Go Green! It’s one surefire way to make you feel better about yourself. There’s little to beat the satisfaction that comes from knowing that you are doing your part to keep your surroundings and the environment healthy. Those of us who often complain about climate change, the greenhouse effect and global warming often feel powerless to affect any change on our own. We often refrain from doing the things we know we should do because we think we are too insignificant to matter. But the truth is that change has to start with someone and it might as well be you.

Going green doesn’t take a whole lot of effort either. It could be as simple as resolving to use reusable bags at the grocery store, carrying a water bottle to work instead of using disposable bottles and refraining for using paper plates and cups. Going green can also mean being more careful about using materials you know are easily bio-degradable, reusing materials as much as you can and of course recycling as often as possible.

Going green doesn’t have to mean making drastic changes to your life. But the feeling of well-being and self-esteem that it can result in are truly immeasurable.

5. Get Off The Money Train
There’s little denying the fact that we all need money to survive. It’s crucial to our physical and mental well-being in more ways than we might realize. At the same time though money shouldn’t be the entire focus of life. Making money is not an end in and of itself. And neither should it be a means to an end.
Too often the drive to equip ourselves with all things material blinds us to the fact that money in and of itself has no inherent value.

It is our attitude towards it that is immeasurably more important. There are truly others things in life that are far more important than money, but which we seldom pay as much attention to. Family and good health for instance are probably more directly linked to our sense of overall well being and happiness than money alone ever can be. So too is social service. The satisfaction that comes from knowing that you are contributing your talents to those less fortunate is more gratifying that anything money can bring. But until we stop equating money with happiness, we will never be able to find true happiness.

So this year, make a resolution to get off the money train and see if you can return some of the good fortune you might have been blessed with, back to society. You just might find it more rewarding than you anticipated.

6. Drop Instant Gratification
As a society we have been brought up to believe than we can attain anything we want almost as soon as we want it. The easy availability of credit, at least until relatively recently, has in fact made this a reality for many of us regardless of whether it’s a house, car, big-screen TV or any other material possession. It’s one of the reasons why the average 20-somethings these days have more material possessions with them then their parents did at the same age.

The problem with instant gratification is that it creates in each one of us a feeling of self-entitlement that becomes hard-wired in our brains. The more we get things without really having to work for it or save for it, the more we are going to feel that instant gratification is our birthright. When we don’t get what we want right away, many of us tend to feel frustrated and emotionally trapped.

Because we expect everything this instant, it removes any incentive for us to really save or plan for the future. Inevitably all of us are going to realize that life really doesn’t work that way and that there truly are some things that you got to have to work at such as love, and respect and reputation.

If you want to feel truly happy, drop the notion of wanting things instantly. The rewards of having to wait for and work for something are truly far greater than instant gratification.

7. Make Up Your Own Political Agenda.
Don’t wait for the government to do everything for you. Though the government is there to serve you it does not mean that it is always looking out for your best interests. Too often, politicians are more focused on serving the interests of powerful corporations and lobbyists than they are in looking out for yours.

Political agendas these days are too often controlled by companies with deep pockets who are looking to further their commercial interests at the expense of the voting, tax-paying public. Far from being a government of the people, by the people and for the people, big government these days represents big business. Politicians, irrespective of their party affiliations have largely become slaves to their corporate masters.

That however doesn’t have to mean things have to remain this way for ever. If you want change you got to be willing to lead that change. Rather than being a passive participant in the democratic process, be proactive. As President Kennedy once famously put it, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country.” Many of the greatest social changes in history resulted from grass roots movements started by ordinary individuals who had the courage to stand up for their beliefs.

Your political agenda doesn’t necessarily have to be earth-shattering. It could be as simple as mustering support for a pay raise for elementary school teachers in your area, or ensuring that the neighborhood park is not zoned as a commercial property by your local politicians. Don’t rely on politicians to take the initiative. Too often they won’t take action unless it is at the bidding of a commercial interest.

So stop being indifferent to politics and make up your own political agenda for the changes you want to see around you.

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Since two years ago, I have also personally found it more helpful to be setting intentions rather than be engaged in traditional resolution setting. In fact, I have found that the use of power words and phrases – to encapsulate the essence or the meaning of the intent – very effective.

Setting Intentions and New Year Resolutions
What is the difference, you may ask? Well, my perspective comes from personal experience. For the most part, new year resolution setting has been pretty much a left-brained activity for me. My resolutions were externally driven or were chosen because they would make me look good. In fact, it was easy to simply adopt a few – if not one – from a pool of widely known ones. Well, as far as I could remember, I never quite stuck to my New Year Resolutions as soon as I have made them.

On the other hand, picking the right intentions involves our intuition. It requires an awareness of our inner desires, the stirring of our heart. It is about bringing ourselves into alignment. The alignment is with a desired aspect of life that we are working on.

Because it is about aligning ourselves, setting intentions also comes with addressing our resistances. Inner work may be required when we observe that we are out-of-alignment. Throughout the year, based on our ongoing experiences, it may be necessary to make any changes to our intents as appropriate.

The process does not generate any sense of perceived “failure” or not living up to our resolutions per se. Setting intents is not a once-a-year activity; rather it is a process that naturally unfolds as we evolve. Because of this, I keep an intention-setting journal by my bedside to keep track of changes arising throughout the year. It is interesting to note how my intents have shifted to today’s.

Power Words for Visioning
From studying the the science of visioning, I learn that it is a good idea to keep our intents or vision statements short and snappy. Having a power word, phrase or motto – that sums up the essence of what we desire – keeps us focused.

Indeed, the use of power words can serve as an ongoing mantra or motto. The Vision Board Book shared about the one compelling word for the Shroyers family that helped in achieving a life of their dreams. Keith Shroyer sprayed a wall – ten by twelve foot – in his living room with the word “freedom”. “Freedom” served as their guiding vision, motto and statement all rolled into one. Eventually, Keith moved from a dead-end job to a life of financial freedom. His family now lives in a boat.

While intention setting comes from within, it is not that we have to come up with something new. More importantly, choosing the appropriate power word or phrase to adopt for visioning must be able to elicit an emotional response from us. Power comes when we are able to connect deeply with the meaning behind the word, phrase or motto.

To help ignite inspiration, I came up with a list of 30 power words for those who are new to intention setting. I also provide some examples of actions that can be taken to support and activate each vision.

30 Power Words: A-Z Guide

1. Power Word: Abundance
Power Phrase: Inter-align with Abundance, Living in Abundance.
Power Action: Be expansive, let go of resistances and have a reverence for life.

2. Power Word: Action
Power Phrase: Just Do It, A thousand-Mile Journey Starts with a Single Step, Inspired Action.
Power Action: Take inspired action, avoid procrastination.

3. Power Word: Authenticity
Power Phrase: Authentic Expression, Be Who I am, Use My Voice.
Power Action: Connect to the truth of who I am.

4: Power Word: Balance
Power Phrase: Balance is Key to Wellness; Yin and Yang.
Power Action: Make time for priorities in life, restore inner and outer balance, study feng shui elements, go for yoga.

5. Power Word: Be
Power Phrase: Just Be.
Power Action: Focus more about being than doing, practice patience, just breathe.

6. Power Word: Clarity
Power Phrase: Insight, Be Awake, See Clearly.
Power Action: See big picture, avoid getting too caught up in the content of the story, practice insight meditation, wisdom from insight.

7. Power Word: Courage
Power Phrase: Live My Dreams, Fly.
Power Action: Take risks, be bold, go on adventures, master courage to do things differently.

8. Power Word: Creativity
Power Phrase: Creative Ideas on Tap, Creative Artist.
Power Action: Engage imagination, play and possibility.

9. Power Word: Dream
Power Phrase: Dare to Dream, I Dreamed a Dream, Dream Big, Dreams take Flight!
Power Action: Open myself to possibilities, engage in imagination.

10. Power Word: Equanimity
Power Phrase: Equanimity, Quality of Equanimity, Non-Attachment.
Power Action: Practice equanimity i.e. calm, centered, balanced and mindful awareness of the impermanence of things, sensations and experiences.

11. Power Word: Freedom
Power Phrase: Freedom from Fear, Financial Freedom, Freedom to Live.
Power Action: Let go of resistances, free to make choices.

12. Power Word: Gratitude
Power Phrase: Gratitude is Gold, Gratitude Rocks, Gratitude Now.
Power Action: Practice gratitude, count my blessings and share my gifts.

13. Power Word: Harmony / Peace / Serenity
Power Phrase: Let my Breath be my Guide; Love the Moment, Peace of Mind.
Power Action: Make peace with every moment, learn qi gong.

14. Power Word: Health
Power Phrase: Health is Wealth
Power Action: Practice mindful eating, make healthy food choices, exercise, stay healthy mentally.

15. Power Word: Intuition
Power Phrase: Intuitive Awareness, Intuitive Intelligence.
Power Action: Awaken and develop intuitive abilities.

16. Power Word: Joy
Power Phrase: Enjoy the Journey, Live it Up, Celebrate, Live Now, Happiness is Key to Success.
Power Action: Choose to be happy whatever the situation is, be light hearted, celebrate every small thing!

17. Power Word: Laughter
Power Phrase: Lightness of Being, Laughter is the Best Medicine.
Power Action: Look at the humor in each situation, avoid taking things too seriously, have fun.

18. Power Word: Love
Power Phrase: Love Thyself; Love is All Around.
Power Action: Practice unconditional self love and love for others.

19. Power Word: Money / Prosperity / Wealth
Power Phrase: I am a Money Magnet, Multiple Streams of Income, Financial Freedom
Power Action: Shatter limiting money beliefs, adopt prosperity consciousness, worry less but keep vibrations up.

20. Power Word: Oneness
Power Phrase: We are One.
Power Action: Let go of separation.

21. Power Word: Possibility
Power Phrase: Open to Possibility, Dwell in Possibility.
Power Action: Open to receiving, practice non-judgment, try new experiences.

22. Power Word: Power
Power Phrase: Step Into Power, Awaken My Potential.
Power Action: Let go of fears, step up, take charge.

23. Power Word: Presence / Mindfulness
Power Phrase: Live in the Now.
Power Action: Practice mindful awareness, give quality attention to the moment, meditate.

24. Power Word: Responsibility
Power Phrase: Live Deliberately, Take Charge, Power To Change.
Power Action: Commit to inner change, less blame of others, conscious living.

25. Power Word: Share
Power Phrase: Spread Love, Share my Divine Light.
Power Action: Practice loving kindness, lend a helping hand, share my gifts.

26. Power Word: Success
Power Phrase: I am a Winner, Success is Constancy to Purpose.
Power Action: Think success, dream big.

27. Power Word: Smile
Power Phrase: Window to My Soul, Language of Love.
Power Action: Smile to strangers, neighbors, etc.

28. Power Word: Space
Power Phrase: Make Space.
Power Actions: Clear the clutter, switch off TV, meditate.

29. Power Word: Spirituality
Power Phrase: Connect with God/Source/Guides, “I am a Spirit with a Human Experience”.
Power Action: Adopt good values, live consciously, mindful of ego, take wise actions, reverence for life, etc.

30. Power Word: Wellness
Power Phrase: Mind-Body-Spirit Harmony, Self Nurture.
Power Action: Make time for relaxation, de-stress, release negative emotions, let go of old baggage.

Sources for Power Words and Catchy Phrases
Still feeling stuck over what power phrases to use? The world is a huge resource. For inspiration, check out:

• Memorable Songs & Jingles. Look up The Best Songs Ever!
• Favorite Quotes. Use the keyword directory to a favorite quotes website.
• Poems. Hunt at Poem Hunter!
• Popular Advertisements. The advertising industry is great at coming up with slogans: The Advertising Hall of Fame.
• Popular Phrases. Use a tool: Phrase Finder.
• Make your own slogan. Use the Slogan Generator found here.

Less is More
Don’t make the mistake of cluttering your visioning or intention setting process with too many power words (see picture at the top of my post) either! My suggestion is to choose one or fewer than three at any one time. The picture below is a vision board that I made to illustrate the right use of power words….

Decided on yours already? What is/are yours, by the way?

About the author:
Evelyn Lim is a Life Coach, Intuitive Consultant and Writer.  She shares tips about raising conscious awareness on her blog.  Please visit AttractionMindMap.com.

Get your free copy of my new book:
The Principles of Successful Manifesting - How to make your life dreams come true.
Click here to download

Often thought of as part of our journey from the imperfect now where we are today to the perfect future where we want to be, New Year’s resolutions serve as guideposts to dreams. We do not often allow ourselves to dream about our future, but we have given ourselves permission to place particular importance upon the ones we value the most when the calendar year draws to a close and the promise of fresh new beginnings is raising optimistic glints in everyones’ eyes.

It’s a matter of perception.

Our reaction to and perception of the past is often subdued at best, and in the quietness of our hearts we know we could have done better, accomplished more, acted more purposefully, or loved more passionately. We take the past as the bellwether of things to come and it is with no little apprehension that we face the coming year with a tinge of self-judgment.

Our perception of the future is nearly always rosy. After all, why would anyone want a future filled with turmoil, strife, and hardship? Tomorrow always brings with it the release of old limitations and the promise of new fulfillments. The past is something we have already tried and moved beyond. The past, the one each individual experiences, may have been an amazing symphony of momentous challenges overcome and fabulous rewards claimed.

It is the past that we turn our backs on and the future that we pin our sights on.

I once heard of a man, an important teacher to thousands and the head of his community, who resolved to give up apples. Not because he didn’t like apples — he loved them and ate a few every day. No, this man gave up apples because something deep down within himself recognized that for a resolution to mean anything, it had to hit him where he lived. It occurred to him that any resolution is not about accomplishing something as it is about determining to strengthen your character in some fashion.

Do you love apples? Their juicy deliciousness? Their wholesome crunch? This man did. He knew that, for a resolution to stand any chance of strengthening his character, he needed to give up something he cherished rather than dream up something he desired.

This brought him to an important understanding of the nature of desire. Giving up apples was a way for him to bring his awareness back to the present moment. Any desire for an apple, which had earlier been an ingrained habit for him, reminded him that the present doesn’t actually need apples to be savored. It is delicious just as it is.

When we look at the past, we are seeing it from the present perspective of who we are now. In this fashion, the past seems to us like a condition of lack because from the standpoint of the present moment, the past can never be as richly sensual nor as fully experienced as the present. The past is a tape we run in the present, a story about other presents we have experienced — where we were in time and who we perceived ourselves to be. We can never run this tape from the past. It always plays out in our memories in the present moment.

From the standpoint of the present, our past desires will always be poor 2D renditions of our multidimensional now, much like looking at low-resolution b&w prints. The emotional color, the experiential saturation, the sense of movement is nothing how we experience the present.

On the other hand, our imaginations usually turn our futures into stupendous technicolor productions of beautiful complexity and appeal. We are entertained by our futures because we love to consider how it would feel to have that thing, experience that condition, love that person, build that ediface, or discover that treasure.

The future engages our emotional selves in a way that few things do for many of us in the present. Our present selves may be routine bound, discouraged, and worn out. Our present selves may have lost sight of what inspires us and become gray shadows in the glorious world when once we were lit up by the flames of our creativity and optimism.

The future is a movie ticket to that inspired source within that trusts in the goodness of things. The future is about having faith in the face of the unknown to come. From the standpoint of the present, our future dreams will always be larger than life, but that largeness occurs only in our imaginations, not in life itself.

Life itself is always present, eternally and infinitely so. Life is the essential stuff of existence in our universe, and who’s to say whether the very stars themselves are not alive with some mysterious force that we all sense but rarely explore in depth. Science has pointed out to us that the atoms in our bodies, and indeed the entire cosmos, came from the stellar birthplace of billions of stars. Religion adds the qualities of awareness and moral action to this act of creation and humanizes it by assigning it to a creator. Is it any wonder that we experience our future as a sort of brightly shining re-experience of our stellar birth?

And what has all that to do with resolving to give up apples? Simply this: the present, not the past or the future, is where our life takes place. To the extent that we are conscious of our resolutions in the present moment, we are able to affect real changes in our lives. Dwelling in the past is settling for a limited version of the now, and anticipating the future is imagining our own perfectability. Learn from the past, energize your creative imagination from the future, but always live in the present.

Your New Year’s resolutions will be firmly anchored in your life if you do so, but do it NOW!

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We process life at deep levels of the mind to which we do not have conscious access. We fall in love with someone but do not know why. We become angry but cannot articulate a reason for our anger. We laugh at things without having the slightest idea what makes them funny.

The source of these mysteries lies in the Shadow.

The Shadow is the area of the unconscious mind where we suppress our deepest fears and bury our greatest potential. Aspects of ourselves and the world around us that we can’t process consciously are relegated to the Shadow – where ideas and answers that never enter our waking thoughts take the form of dreams.

Yet even when we are awake, the Shadow speaks to us in the form of projection. We project buried aspects of ourselves – whether “good” or “bad” – onto other people. Much has been written about “bad” projections and they are certainly a dominant cause of unhappiness and even horror. But we also project our untapped potential for love and joy onto the people in the waking world around us.

Each of us makes choices in our daily lives that do not conform to logic and are not part of a consciously delineated course of action. Sometimes our choices are disastrous; other times they lead to wonderful opportunities.

These choices are the result of impulses, intuition and subjective logic – all of which derive from the same place we visit in our dreams: the Shadow.

At times it may seem that our waking lives are spinning out of control. We are stuck in jobs we don’t like or in relationships that don’t bring us joy. We have self-destructive habits we can’t seem to break. We worry endlessly about our finances, our health, our place in the world – and our worry only seems to make our situations worse.

Could it be that our Shadows lead us to these situations by entrancing us with projections? Is your Shadow trying to tell you something? The answer might just be in your dreams.

Dream Study
Though the study of dreams may be as old as human consciousness itself, it is a relatively new practice in Western mainstream culture. Freud brought it into fashion, but many of his doctrines were narrow and confining. The Shadow world – the realm of dreams – operates at a level that cannot be comprehended, much less categorized and codified.

But it can be explored.

There are some who make it a practice to record their dreams and analyze the symbols, looking for messages hidden in the unconscious mind. While dream analysis can certainly yield insights into the mysterious forces that drive us, it is only one way – and a fairly crude one – to tap into the unknown realm of the psyche.

Lucid Dreaming
Lucid dreaming is a process in which you learn to be aware of the fact that you’re dreaming while you are in the dream state.

You needn’t wait till you wake up to ponder what your dream is saying. You can actually ask the figures in your dream what they are trying to tell you while the dream itself is still in progress.

This practice is exhilarating and brings about a feeling of incredible liberation. You can fly or walk through walls; you can conjure up departed loved ones; you can do any impossible thing that pops into your head.

But lucid dreaming is more than just a thrill ride. By identifying, in the moment, the illusory nature of your Shadow dream projections, you gain the ability to spot unconscious projections that dominate you in your waking life.

It is a powerful tool to wield as you work on the lifelong project of building spiritual awareness.

Make a Beginning
While there are many levels to lucid dreaming and a deep exploration of the practice requires a great deal of time and discipline, you can get a taste of it without too much inconvenience.

Set your alarm two or three hours ahead of the time you need to wake up in the morning. When the alarm goes off, get out of bed and walk around for ten minutes or so. Then return to bed – remembering to reset the alarm for the time when you actually need to get up.

When you go back to sleep, you will be in a lighter stage of sleep than we are normally in when dreams take place. In this lighter stage, rapid eye movement (REM) still occurs; you can still dream. And because you are not so deeply asleep, your dreams will be easier to remember when you next awaken.

You may have to do this for days or weeks, however, before dream recall becomes a regular occurrence. Some patience and persistence is required.

Once you have developed the habit of consistently remembering your dreams, decide upon a detail – preferably a part of your own body, like your hand or your foot – that you are going to notice in your next dream state.

After waking yourself up three hours early and getting back into bed, mentally repeat this detail over and over until you fall asleep: “I will notice my hand. I will notice my hand. I will notice my hand.”

While it may not happen immediately, persisting with this practice will eventually yield the desired result. In the dream state, you will notice your hand and it will trigger conscious memory. You’ll recall that you were going to notice your hand while you were dreaming. And suddenly, you will know you are in a dream.

Once you gain this awareness, you will experience a sense of total freedom like none you’ve ever felt – awake or asleep.

Conclusion
The applications of lucid dreaming to the waking world are obvious if you understand the degree to which Shadow projections dominate both.

There are many books and even online dream groups that can help you navigate this amazing journey through your unconscious mind. You live in a dream world. Why not live it to the fullest?

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Practice these Three Actions and watch what happens.

The First Breakthrough Action
Let go of your non-love feelings. Pay attention to what you’re saying, thinking and doing. Watch all the time. Stay awake to what’s happening. Be on the lookout all the time. When you see some non-love thought, you stop it. When you see some non-love feeling, you stop it. When you see you’re taking some non-love action, you stop it.

If what you’re thinking, feeling, saying or doing is negative, end it. Stop it.

If I hand you a red-hot poker you drop it in a split second, right? Non-love feelings, words, thoughts, actions, all those are hot pokers. Drop them. Non-love, not-liking, disapproval, negativity is burning up your life just like a red-hot fireplace poker burns up your hand.
Drop the non-love feelings like you would drop a hot poker.

Here’s the test. Is it negative? Then, it’s non-loving and hurting your life. Drop it.

The Second Breakthrough Action
Hold in mind what you want. Hold in mind means what you keep in your mind. Hold in mind means the thoughts and feelings that occupy your mind all the time.

You get what you hold in mind. Whatever is occupying your mind, your thoughts and your feelings, is what you manifest in the material world. It’s the law of attraction.

Positive attracts positive, negative attracts negative. Love attracts love. Non-love attracts more non-love. Love is the same energy as positive, success, abundance, health, money, peace.

If you hold in mind “I can’t,” you’re right, you can’t. If you hold in mind “I don’t have it,” you’re right, you don’t have it and you aren’t going to have it. You’re holding the wrong thing in mind. You’re holding in mind what you don’t want.

Fake it until you make it. Stop thinking you don’t have it. Hold in your mind only what you want. Prove it to yourself. Make a good effort. What do you have to lose? If I’m right you get to have everything.

If I’m wrong, you’re no worse off. Here is a little hint: If it doesn’t work, it’s because your mind talked you out of doing it. Your mind talked you out of making a decision. Your mind talked you out of being determined and persistent. You (like everyone else on the planet) have spent your entire life collecting non-love feelings.

It’s likely to take some time to get all of them out. However, it’s worth it because, if you work at it, if you do it, it will work. You will notice changes happening the very first week if you are persistent. Hold in mind what you want.

Here’s another hint: You can easily see what you’re holding in your mind. Watch what you’re saying all the time. Watch what you’re thinking. And, you can see what you’re holding in your mind by paying attention to your feelings.

Now remember, this is not about affirmations. This is not about hanging signs around your house and car. This is about holding in mind what you want. You do that by dropping thoughts, words or feelings which express what you don’t want.

The Third Breakthrough Action
Make a commitment to be positive and loving, in spite of what’s happening. Decide: “I’m going to be positive and loving in spite of whatever is happening.” Make that your motto.
Be positive in spite of what happens. You live your life automatically reacting with emotions you learned as a two-year-old child.

You’re not two years old anymore, but you’re still doing the same thing. End the habit of automatically reacting. It’s just a decision. Something happens that seems to be negative. You react. You leave the present moment and you go off. Does that ever solve anything?

Anger, breaking into hysteria, feeling bad because someone gave you a dirty look? Negative, non-love behavior doesn’t do anything for you except make you more negative and non-loving.

It never solves anything. It never helps anything. I know you see that. I know you agree with me, because you have experienced it yourself many, many times. Make a decision. I am going to be loving and positive in spite of whatever happens.

Remember the hot poker? Begin by letting go of the hot poker called negative, non-loving reactions. Try it. Prove it to yourself. Be positive and loving in spite of whatever happens, whatever is going on, whatever they’re doing or saying. Be positive and loving and watch what happens.

When you’re positive and loving in spite of whatever, you’re moving over to the side of love. Love conquers all. Love transforms. Love is the answer.

Adopt the Three Breakthrough Actions. Practice them. Don’t listen to your mind trying to talk you out of it. You’re in the right place at the right time. Take action. Be loving. Let go of the non-love feelings.

Practice the Three Breakthrough Actions:

• Let go of your non-love feelings.
• Hold in mind what you want.
• Be positive and loving in spite of whatever happens.

You will be the happiest and you will have everything. Prove it to yourself. I always thought good luck was something mysterious that happened to people for no good reason. Now I understand.

Now I see that luck is loving yourself. I proved that to myself because I started having great luck. All kinds of things started falling in my lap when I started loving myself and everyone else. Now I live a life of good luck. Uncanny good things are happening for me all the time now.
— BW, Oregon

For more information visit: Love Yourself Book

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Pre-paving is telling the Universe what you want before it happens. It is a form of intention that “lines up the energy” so that you can easily manifest what you desire. Whether you realize it or not, all day you are intending, and what you intend you create. You create with your thoughts.

In essence, you are already pre-paving, although sometimes you have been pre-paving positively and other times negatively. What you have attracted is the result of what you have consciously or unconsciously paved forward. In other words, whatever you are prepaving, you are creating. Suddenly the idea of pre-paving catches your attention.

Pre-paving is about setting your intention
I am a Reiki Master, so I like to explain things in terms of energy. When you know the energy behind what thoughts do to your life, you get very motivated to make a change for the positive. Imagine that you have a field of energy immediately surrounding your body, about six inches around your body if you are picturing it.

Every thought you think enters this energy field. This energy field is called your vibration. It is the sum of the thoughts, feelings and intentions that you are currently holding. Your vibration works as a magnet, attracting to you all of the people, events and circumstances in your life.

Your goal is to raise your vibration so you begin attracting the good things in life that you have always wanted. The moment you begin positively pre-paving, your vibration rises immediately.

How it Works
Every thought you think is recorded in the ether and starts to manifest. It manifests according to the degree of energy, conviction and power you give it. When you pre-pave with conviction and belief, you make significant changes in your life in a short period of time. In other words, you change your destiny.

A pre-pave is a statement that tells the Universe what you will do, how you will feel, or what will happen. It is a statement that you can either say verbally (loudly or softly), or you can write it down, or think it mentally.

Whichever way feels right for you is fine, but know this; the more power you put into your pre-pave, the more powerful the result. Think of a hypnotist in action. A hypnotist puts the conscious mind to sleep and within thirty seconds can have you thinking you are a red fire engine. We hypnotize ourselves every moment of the day with the thoughts we choose to hold and the words we choose to speak.

Wish and Reality
The sub-conscious mind cannot distinguish between reality and a wish. It also cannot take a joke. When you think or say something, the sub-conscious mind says “Okay, let’s support this because it must be true”. Even when you are joking around, saying things in jest, you are creating what you are saying.

The sub-conscious mind carries within itself your entire belief system. It works on automatic pilot. It never stops, even when you are sleeping. It creates what has been programmed into it by your conscious mind. If you say things like “I can’t afford it” or “That’s the story of my life”, the subconscious mind takes this as reality and orchestrates everything around you to make it come true.

If you are joking around with your spouse and you say something to the effect of “I do everything around here”, the Universe will manifest more and more situations where you are doing more than your share around the house.

This is where pre-paving comes in. Prepaving is a conscious, positive programming of the sub-conscious mind. When you place a positive command into your sub-conscious mind, it starts working immediately toward making it happen. This is the power of your thought and spoken word.

This is the power of pre-paving. Positive pre-paving is consciously choosing your thoughts and words for a specific result. When you set a pre-pave in motion, it physically “lines up the energy” for its manifestation. What does it mean to “line up the energy”? Let’s look at the analogy of your daily commute to work. If you get in the car and pre-pave safety, the Universe will physically orchestrate circumstances around you in order to keep you safe.

On the other hand, if you do not pre-pave safety as you start your car, you personally may not have accident-consciousness, but the driver next to you may. The result is that you could wind up in an accident situation just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. How many times have you found yourself there, “the wrong place at the wrong time”? This is not by chance These things can be avoided by positive pre-paving.

When you pre-pave, you are never in the wrong place at the wrong time, because the Universe “lines up the energy” for you to be in the right place at the right time.

A Few Tips
You do not need extra time in the day to pre-pave. You are already doing it. It is a matter of practicing it consciously, practicing it positively and choosing pre-paves to create specifically what you want.

The most powerful times to pre-pave are first thing in the morning and last thing at night. These are the times that your consciousness is most powerful for creating. It is when the consciousness is changing from the wakeful state to the sub-conscious state and back again.

Unfortunately, this tends to be the time that most people worry. Worry is a negative pre-pave. Worrying at this time of night and morning is the worst negative pre-pave of all. The comforting thing to know is that a positive thought is one hundred times more powerful than a negative one.

Don’t beat yourself up if you have a fleeting negative thought. The next time you have a negative thought, immediately turn it into the opposite, positive pre-pave. Know that in an instant, you can wipe out the negative thought, one hundred fold. Imagine your life if you could turn all of your worries into positive pre-paves.

There are times when you will want to pre-pave a specific outcome that you desire because you have so clearly etched into your mind what you want. In this case, the more clearly you picture it and know what you want, the better.

There will be other times, however, when you will want to pave forward an outcome that is open-ended, not to limit yourself. I have found my greatest achievement to be when I have left the results open, shooting for the stars and reaching the moon. You will understand more as you read on and begin to practice for yourself.

Pave it forward with conviction
Feel it and mean it. Your pre-pave will be as powerful as your passion and belief. My life has been dramatically changed with pre-paving which is why I have made it the focus of my teaching. I have personally recovered from addictions, moods and a string of self-sabotaging tendencies.

My life went from mediocre to phenomenal with this amazing technique of conscious creation. In my classes, I have witnessed what it does for people. Pre-paving makes a shift in your consciousness, so much that if you could see energy, you would physically see your vibration change as you instigate each positive command.

For more information: www.elisabethfayt.com/book

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The Principles of Successful Manifesting - How to make your life dreams come true.
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And in today’s society where the martial woes of everyone from the Sanfords to John and Kate Gosselin are headline news, we are presented with every reason in the world to give up on our relationships — and fewer and fewer reasons to stay. While researching my most recent novel, I sat down and spoke to women, men, and married couples about why they do stay. And, sometimes, why they wished they had. This is the best advice I’ve found.

1. Love is a decision
Watching Governor Sanford stand up over these past weeks and speak about how he found his soul mate in his Argentinean lover reminded me of something Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun and author, wrote about Sweat Lodges. She wrote that the only way to be in a Sweat Lodge – to experience all that it brings – is to sit far from the exit. Because if you sit too close, you will find a reason to use it.

The same is true of any long-term relationship. If you decide to look for an exit, you will always be able to find it: whether it comes in the form of another lover, or another life. But the couples I spoke with who decided to commit to their marriages and relationships – to be present for them, to help them grow more sacred – told me that they were immeasurably rewarded for that decision. The more committed they grew to their marriages — the further they sat from the exit — the more joy and peace they found there.

2. There is No Weakness In Forgiveness
I’m not happy anymore; or I’m disappointed; or I have doubts. Three familiar catchphrases that free us up to not work to bring a relationship back to a positive place. In fact, we are conditioned these days to believe that the brave thing is to move on when the honeymoon is over. But that very standard makes it hard for any long-term relationship to survive inevitable disappointments.

While some would argue that it is brave to pick up and start a new life when a relationship begins to ebb, the truly brave thing – the hard and valuable thing – is to figure out how to find a new flow together. As one couple, who is happily married after 40 years together, informed me, “The most invaluable gifts come on the other side of the bad periods. If we hadn’t forgiven each other for the hard times, we never would have experienced such good ones.”

3. Someone New Won’t Be New For Long
One factor is consistent in all studies of marriages and long-term relationships: a main cause of divorce and separation is infidelity. Those that stray (statistically, women as much as men these days) sight many factors as reasons: a breakdown in passion, a breakdown in communication, a breakdown . . .

But statistics also tell us that the chance of a relationship born from infidelity being successful is less than 1 and 100. Less than 1%. More often than not, the best thing someone new has going for him or her is being . . . new. And, once they aren’t anymore, you are left in an even more precarious position.

Whoever you choose – it always comes down to one thing. How hard are you willing to fight to make the relationship work? How easily are you willing to give your relationship away?

4. Often the Person You Are Running From Is You
Surprisingly, of all the reasons couples gave me for why they chose to end their marriage or relationship, the loss of love or mutual friendship was often notably absent. It often came down to something else: the desire to start a new life. To not grow old. Or, at least, to not feel like they were.

It is difficult to stay with the person who knows you best when you don’t like what we see in the mirror. It may be easier to blame your partner than to take a hard look at yourself. But, at the end of the day, it isn’t your partner’s responsibility to change your self-image, or to fix your self-doubt. It’s yours. And, if we want to like ourselves better, running out on a person who likes us the way we are isn’t a wise starting point.

5. You Don’t Need A Reason
Like anything worth having in this life, marriage and long-term commitment are hard work. Sometimes knowing that can be enough to help us not pick at the scabs while they are healing, to not make things worse as opposed to letting them feel better. As a lovely couple in Seattle Washington reminded me, things will feel better. “Be good to each other, be patient. If you allow it, love always lives through that.”

Author Bio
Laura Dave is the author of the acclaimed novels The Divorce Party and London Is the Best City in America. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, Self, Redbook, ESPN the Magazine, and The New York Observer. Dave graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. In August, Cosmopolitan magazine named her as one of the eight “Fun and Fearless Phenoms” of 2008. She lives in California.

For more information, please visit: www.lauradave.com

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The Principles of Successful Manifesting - How to make your life dreams come true.
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Am I willing to increase the amount of time every day that I feel good inside?

When I use the phrase “feel good,” I’m talking about a natural, inner sense of well-being that’s not dependent on outside factors such as what you’ve eaten or what you might be doing. It’s important to begin with a willingness to feel good inside, because there’s no sense enhancing other parts of your life at the expense of your inner well-being.

I’d like you to spend more and more time every day enjoying an organic, deep feeling of body/mind wellness. That’s what I’d like you to say yes to, if you’re so inclined. If you said yes to increasing the amount of time you feel good inside, let’s extend the question to the outer aspects of your life:

Am I willing to increase the amount of time that my whole life goes well?

When I use the phrase “whole life,” I’m talking about your work, your relationships, your creative pursuits, and any other aspects that are central to your life. What I’d like for you, if you’re willing, is for all of your life to flow more positively and easefully, for longer and longer periods of time.

If you said yes to those questions, consider going one step further than merely increasing that amount of time:

Am I willing to feel good and have my life go well all the time?

At first glance, you might ask who wouldn’t say yes to all of these questions. Well, for many of us, the idea of all of this positive emotion seems far-fetched to begin with. It is easy for us to just assume that with the positive comes the negative. To that I say, “Why not get willing, and see what happens?”

We humans have a long and wonderful history of transcending our beliefs about what’s possible. In the early days of the steampowered train, learned scientists urged capping the speed at thirty miles per hour because they believed that the human body exploded at speeds greater than that. Finally some brave people risked going beyond that limiting belief and found that they did not explode.

I think we’re approximately at that same stage of development with regard to our ability to feel good and have our lives go well. In my life I’ve discovered that if I cling to the notion that something’s not possible, I’m arguing in favor of limitation. And if I argue for my limitations, I get to keep them.

Ultimately we have to ask ourselves, “What’s the payoff for arguing forcefully for our limitations?” In the case of the steam engine, scientists were trying to protect people from harm. The limiting belief was well-intentioned even though it was erroneous. From my experience with a lot of people, as well as myself, over the past few decades, I think we can put our minds at ease: being willing to feel naturally good and have our lives go well is not a safety hazard.

In my view, saying yes to that question is one of the most courageous actions a human being can take. In the face of so much evidence that life hurts and is fraught with adversity on all fronts, having a willingness to feel good and have life go well all the time is a genuinely radical act.

Going into space is no longer radical; you can buy a ticket online. However, going into your inner depths, where your most deeply held beliefs about what’s possible reside, counts in my book as a radical act. If we think it’s even remotely possible to feel good all the time and have life go well all the time, we owe it to ourselves to find out how many of us can do it.

Feeling good and having your life go well are wonderful outcomes, and I hope you say yes to both of them. However, I think they are just stepping-stones and launchpads to something really spectacular! If you are willing to feel good and have things go well all the time, consider the ultimate step: Are you willing to take the Big Leap to your ultimate level of success in love, money, and creative contribution?

About the author:
Gay Hendricks is a psychologist, writer and practitioner in the field of personal growth, relationships, and the mind-body connection. He is best known for his work in relationship enhancement and in the development of conscious breathing exercises, which proponents believe increase awareness, energy levels, and relaxation.

For more information: The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks

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The Principles of Successful Manifesting - How to make your life dreams come true.
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- Do you know how you think?
- Do you know what you do when you have to think something through?

Try this exercise:
Take a few minutes  to write what you are thinking. When you are done, take a look at what you have written. Keep the following questions in mind:

- Is your thinking organized? Methodical?
- Do you use a charting or mapping process to keep track of the flow of your ideas?
- How do you know where one stage or type of thinking ends and another one begins?

If your page of thoughts  and ideas looks like  random words that don’t form a recognizable pattern,  you are not alone.  Most of us haven’t the foggiest notion of what we do when we think.

Consider the following questions:
If you don’t know what you do when you think, then what do you do when you solve problems?
Do you solve them without thinking? Maybe THAT’s the problem!

The good news is that even though you probably spent more time learning how to program your iPod than learning how your mind works,  it is easier to tune up your mind than to program your iPod!

And when it comes to mastering your thinking, emotional intelligence is essential! Emotions are stored as molecules in your limbic system, also known as the emotional brain.  Those molecules are triggered by, say, the smell of roast turkey and pumpkin pie at Halloween, or a song that takes you back to a summer afternoon when you were in college.

This is equally true for pleasurable and painful emotions.  (If, like me, you want to understand the science behind this, please read Dr. Candace Pert’s groundbreaking classic, Molecules of Emotion.)

Feel the power of those e-words: excitement, exuberance, enthusiasm, excellence, and euphoria.  Think of a time when you experienced one of these powerful emotional states.  Imagine that you can ‘step into’ that experience again as if it was happening around you now. See what you saw, hear what you heard, and feel what you felt. Now you can touch your earlobe or make a fist to create an anchor between your ear or fist and those molecules of emotion.

Tighten your fist or brighten the colors in your mind and you may enjoy a greater intensity of emotion.  When the feeling fades,  shake out your hand, wiggle your shoulders…and go back to whatever you were doing.  Whenever you want a boost,  touch that same earlobe or make that same fist  and say, “Take you back.”  Your emotional brain will flood you with the chemical states of excitement, exuberance, enthusiasm, excellence, and/or euphoria.

This technique, called “anchoring,”  gives you the power to change the channel in your mind.  Instead of feeling frustrated or upset, you can use the anchor to signal your brain that it is time to change your emotional state from feeling overwhelmed to feeling empowered.  Yes, you can!

It won’t bring back your job, your house, or your investments.  Nor can just one anchor bring back all the confidence you had before your dream broke down.  That takes time, patience, and new ideas.

I know something about that.  I lost everything in a recession in the late 1990’s:  home, savings, marriage, job, and my health.  More to the point: I lost my self-esteem. I blamed myself for not being able to prevent the loss.  I felt like a failure.  I believed I would never regain the money or income that was drained away by an adjustable mortgage and escalated well beyond our ability to pay.  It was traumatic and isolating.

A middle-class baby boomer, one of the most humiliating days of my life came when our family qualified for the free school lunch program.  This was not supposed to happen!

I know what it’s like for you if you are losing your job or home.  The feelings of failure are connected to your sense of survival and your sense of self-worth.  You may be questioning your ability to come back from this. You may be angry because the dream you worked so hard to achieve has broken down. You may even feel depressed and overwhelmed because you do not know how to begin rebuilding. Where do you start?

You start with yourself.  Make a list of your fears and put it in a drawer. A year from now you will be surprised when you read it again.  Some of the events will have happened. You will already have dealt with them and will realize that you are stronger as a result!  You will have overcome some of your fears and a few will have dissolved on their own.

Looking back at yourself when you wrote the list, you may be amazed to discover how good it can feel to have already accomplished some of the powerful changes you have wanted to make…and you are, aren’t you, now?

You change the oil in your car every 3,000 miles and call it maintenance. But how many miles has your mind clocked? Don’t  you think maybe it’s time for a tune-up?

About the author:
Life falling apart?  Need an experienced mentor to guide you through it? Dr. Laurie Nadel has 17 years’ experience and has appeared on “Oprah.”

Check out her website at: www.laurienadel.com

Get your free copy of my new book:
The Principles of Successful Manifesting - How to make your life dreams come true.
Click here to download

“It’s too expensive,” he said. “As soon as I found out how much the lessons cost, I gave up the idea.”
“There’s opportunity all around you,” I responded energetically. “You work at an airport! Talk to the owners of the planes, talk to the pilots, talk to the crew members, find out if there’s something you can do in exchange for lessons. When you decide you can’t do it, it’s over. You can just as easily decide to do it and, in time, you’ll have your pilot’s license!”

He shrugged his shoulders, looked at me as if I were a little strange, and said, “Nope, I don’t think so. It’s too expensive.  When I heard how much it cost, I just turned away from it.”

“But you’re turning away from life, from yourself, from opportunity, and you’re acting as if you’re powerless! Are you powerless?”

He shrugged his shoulders, laughed a little, looked at me again as if I were strange, and walked away.

This young man was faced with the same two choices we are all faced with at varying times in our lives. You can either take positive action to bring about what you want or you can shrug your shoulders and walk away.

Your success or failure is foretold by your actions, by what you believe.  For a limitation to be valid, you must accept it. If you’ve lived your life believing that having what you want is limited, your actions have been based on that belief and you have produced results consistent with your belief. Your belief was then reinforced by the reality you created.

It is important that you fully understand what it means to “produce results consistent with your belief.” If you believe you can do something, you will act based on that belief. If you believe something is impossible to do, you will fail to even begin. Your action or inaction will bring about results consistent with what you decide.

Many years ago, I was training a small group of salespeople about how to outgrow restricted thinking.  One of them, Walter, took to the teaching immediately.  During the training, the following incident occurred, and it gave him an opportunity to put what he was learning into action.

Another member of the sales team, James, had listed a house for sale. The house was in a very rough part of town, where several tough gangs regularly vandalized houses. So to protect the house until the escrow closed, the company hired a night watchman to look after the property.  The very first night, one of the gangs beat up the night watchman and vandalized the house with a lot of graffiti.  The next morning, when the salesmen heard about it, James said, “Well, that’s the end of that sale. The buyer will never buy the house now.”

“That’s what you think!” said Walter. “Do you mind if I call your seller?” James agreed.  Walter picked up the phone and called the seller and told him what had happened. He told the seller that unless he could get a price reduction, the sale would be lost. The seller agreed to a five-thousand-dollar price reduction.

Walter then called the buyer and said, “I have some great news for you!” He told the buyer what had transpired the night before and then said, “And I used that incident to get you a five-thousand-dollar price reduction!” The buyer, who knew it was a rough neighborhood, was delighted and thanked the quick-thinking salesman profusely.

One of those men saw the incident as a piece of bad luck that would ruin his sale, and the other saw it as an opportunity to make the sale more firm. One used the event to envision failure, and the other used it to envision success.

Walter used a Universal principle – the one that says that how we respond to an event determines its outcome – and he used it perfectly to ensure success. That day he was only using it so he and his friend could make a sale, but I knew he would go on to use the same principle in a much bigger arena, perhaps to purchase the house that everyone says is not for sale or to invent a new machine that everyone says cannot be invented.

That attitude, that “inner knowing,” when fully developed, will be “what’s true for Walter,” and it will carry him to the fulfillment of his dreams and a wonderfully satisfying life, having things the way he wants them.

About the author:
Chris Prentiss is the author of the book Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life.  He is also the founder and co-director, with his son Pax, of the world famous Passages Addiction Cure Center in Malibu, California.  And he is the author of the popular The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery and Zen and the Art of Happiness.  For more info about his books visit: PowerPressPublishing.com.

Get your free copy of my new book:
The Principles of Successful Manifesting - How to make your life dreams come true.
Click here to download