I’d like to share with you an inspiring video by Mark Osborne called “More”. I think that it wonderfully demonstrates the effects our inner passions and vision have upon our lives. It’s 6 minutes long, animated, and unspoken. Check it out:

If you’re interested, you can find more of Mark’s work here.

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In a word, no.

On more than one occasion I have been asked that when one is faced with making a new decision in some major life area weather it is wise to rely most heavily upon the faculties of our senses or to seek and await clarification and guidance through meditation, prayer, or the receipt of intuitive hunches. I believe the answer is quite simple; seek out guidance through the means you are comfortable with, and then having done so choose the course of action that seems most appropriate to you regardless of weather or not you feel a strong pull one way or the other. Sitting around and stewing about not having a specific gut feeling or that God is not answering your prayers is a nothing but a copout, and the lack of a major intuitive response is NOT reason to stand pat and do nothing.

Your intuition is there to guide you along your chosen path, not to create that path for you. That’s your job. That is why you are here. Decide what is worthwhile and meaningful to you, determine to pursue it, and then immediately embark upon the journey, listening for and following the intuitive or spiritual guidance that you WILL receive along the way.

Having made your decision, intend that circumstances will align along your path. Perceive the obstacles you encounter as learning and growth opportunities that can help lead you to better a future and greater personal growth, even though they may very well be a huge source of pain and discomfort at the time you encounter them. They are not necessarily there telling you to quit, they are not there because some outside entity put them there, and they are most decidedly not in your life to punish you.

You are here to co-create your own destiny, not to be passive and wait to be led. Hours, days, and months can tick away while you wait to have your destiny decided for you, rather than realizing that you are responsible for creating it yourself. There is no one else in the Universe outside yourself whose job it is to bestow upon you your specific marching orders in life, and that is their really cool part about being alive. We get to choose and create!

If you are struggling with a decision such as this, I encourage you to stand up, decide for yourself once and for all who and what you choose to be, and to follow that vision with blinding, unerring passion. If it involves massive change in your life, of course you will have to consider how your new path will affect the lives of others around you before embarking on an immediate 180, if indeed a complete 180 is what is required. Choose the path that love would choose without subjugating your deepest inner passions, trust and follow your intuition, and watch with amazement as doors begin to open and synchronicities begin to manifest.

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Remember the old saying that happiness is having “someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for”? Not only is this great advice, it also happens to be a great foundation for maintaining a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

Today I’m going to share with you 9 foundational areas that I believe are key to living a life that is emotionally, physically, and spiritually healthy. Of course there can be as many “foundational areas” of balanced living as there are authors willing to write about the subject, but this compilation is my own and since this is my blog I have the benefit of being able to share my list with you.

Have a clear purpose

Weather you believe your greater purpose lies in your work, your family, your spiritual path, you relation to the world at large or any combination thereof, it is important for you to believe that you are contributing and making progress towards something that is of great significance to you. Without a clear sense of what you’re aiming for or the ability to press on and produce what you determine to be meaningful results, it is very easy to become frustrated with life and fall into states of disillusionment and discouragement.

Maintain a healthy lifestyle

I’m talking about diet and exercise here, and yes I do believe they are very important. You don’t have to go to any wild extremes, but taking care of the body you live in will go a long way towards helping you feel energized, happy, and alive.

Be willing to let go

of the need to be right.
of the fear of failing.
of the need for approval.
of the need for someone’s affection or attention.

It took me a while to get this concept, but since I began to grasp it life has gotten better and better. External references of validation are nice and can be the icing upon the cake, but true happiness lies in not needing or caring about the way you are perceived. When you get to the point in life that you are willing to be true to yourself and unashamedly express your authenticity, you will probably be surprised at how much less you fail, how you no longer care about being “right”, how you in will fact garner more approval, and how you somehow manage to attract the attention of those who mean the most to you.

Love somebody

It has been said rather simply that love IS. That we are all one and love is the one common element, the God force behind all creation. How true. Love is who we are at our deepest levels, and the ability to express that love freely and openly without condition is the mark of an emotionally healthy individual.

Live in the present

Ok, you’ve heard this one a million times so I’ll spare you the many tired clichés, but in return I want you to promise me that you’ll dedicate yourself to spending one day acting like this is actually true. Put your circumstances aside, forget about your plans, and just BE. Go somewhere nice, with somebody nice if you can , and spend the entire day immersing yourself in what is. Then come back and post a comment letting me know how it went, even if you had a flat tire or your dog bit you while you were falling down the stairs backwards while carrying out the trash.

Consider your connection to a higher Source

It doesn’t matter to me personally weather you subscribe to the recorded teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi or anyone else. If you do, I’m sure that you realize there are many other people who also subscribe to those same teachings yet maintain differences of doctrine regarding what these individuals taught and exactly how one should live as a result. The important concept here is the commonality. All of the world’s religions seem to recognize that we all share a connection to a higher Source and that our lives have an inherent sense of meaning. Connecting to that Source can make life a fuller, richer, and more rewarding experince.

Remain grateful

As I said in my previous post, we live in an orderly Universe where like attracts like and thoughts become things. Feelings of gratitude tend to produce the conditions for gratitude, while feeling ungrateful increases the likelihood of whatever it is you’re ungrateful about being present both now and in the future. What sort of things can you think of right now to be grateful for? How about blessings in disguise? Have you ever resisted a change of events only to later become grateful for what came to pass?

Be generous

Generosity is one of the least understood and most important aspects of a balanced lifestyle. Everything in the Universe is energy, even our thoughts. Energy flows in an ordered and balanced way via the Law of Attraction, which simply states that like attracts like and that vibrations of energy tend to match up with each other. Stop the flow of generosity and generosity will stop flowing to you. Hording and believing in scarcity are the surest ways to experience lack and ensure that others aren’t normally generous with you. Gandhi says to “be the change that you want to see in the world” and Jesus said that “As ye give, so shall ye receive”.  I’d like to think they knew what they were talking about.

Keep growing

If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Life is about expansion. It’s about coming into the fullness of who we are and continuing to discover and express that fullness openly and without fear. We never “get there” and we’re never done. We either continue the process of recreating ourselves into fuller and fuller representations of who we are, thereby increasing our happiness, our knowledge, and our ability to love and give; or we begin to diminish and withdraw into preconditioned patterns of behavior devoid of any possibility of growth that can lead to the atrophy of body, mind, and spirit.

I hope that reading this list was of some help to you. I do realize that it is rather limited in scope and that much more can and has been written on the subject, but by beginning with these steps I believe that many people can begin the process of attaining greater balance in their lives and thus begin to live life more abundantly.

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The stock market is going down and your investments
are going in the tank…

You’re physically sick and your body feels miserable…

Life has its ups and downs. When things are going great we’re supposed to feel good and when things go lousy we’re supposed
to feel bad, right? That seems to be the way most of us have
been conditioned to think.

Preconditioned Responses

Live in a bad economy = walk around feeling depressed.
Lose your home or job = walk around feeling miserable.
End a relationship = walk around feeling bad.
Becoming ill = feeling lousy and complaining about it.

First of all, I acknowledge that “bad” things can and do happen. All of the above have happened to me personally at one point or another in my life (plus a lot of really good things too). Its all part of life!  One of the greatest life lessons we can learn is that the significance of events lie not in the events themselves but in our responses to them.

What is Stress?

What exactly is stress anyway ? Can you touch it or see it?  Nope.
Stress is nothing more than your bodies reaction to your own thought processes. Sure, you may be able to point to things in your environment that you readily identify as being the source of your stress, such as an angry boss, rude co-worker, crying baby, your declining financial position or that looming deadline, but the stress you feel is actually your body’s response to your continued thoughts about those events and not the events themselves. If one person can hear that crying baby and not be driven crazy by the sound, or face financial uncertainty with a sense of gratitude and appreciation then you must realize that it is your choice of how to respond to events like these that either results in stress or allows you to live with a sense of comfort and inner peace.

Notice your Reaction, Choose your Response

I’m not saying that we as humans are above being affected by external stimuli. Not at all. In fact I believe we should acknowledge our initial responses to potentially stressful situations and learn from them what we can. Why are we feeling bad - is there something else we should be doing, or something else should have done differently? There may perfectly valid reasons for you to react stressfully in response to external events and you will want to acknowledge the presence of those feelings while learning whatever you can about the reasons they originated. Are they prompting you to change your behavior in similar situations in the future, or maybe reminding you that you made some regretful choices outside of your values? If so, acknowledge it as such and learn the lesson at hand. Then, realize that beyond the immediacy of the situation lies your freedom of choice and the ability to free yourself from the destructive burdens of stress and maintaining a negative focus.

Remember, Like Attracts Like

After noticing your initial response to something you define as “stressful”, take a moment to step back and ask yourself if continuing to feel bad is likely to make the situation any better. After you’ve avoided the danger or learned the lesson, what is the continued benefit of feeling bad and staying in a stressful state? Is it because society dictates that when X happens you are supposed to feel Y and you fear that you’ll either be labeled inconsiderate or irresponsible if you don’t? Or maybe you are choosing to punish yourself to reinforce your distaste of the outcome and thus decrease the likelihood that you will ever do something like that again?

The Way Out of Stress

The way out of stress? Simply remember that we live in an orderly universe where like attracts like and that thoughts become things. Notice that in such a universe, continuing to feel thoughts of anger, despair, or anxiety aren’t likely to improve the way things are but rather will increase the likelihood of the stressful stimuli being present both now and in the future. Choosing to feel bad and staying in a low energy state will ultimately attract more of that which you seek to avoid. An acceptance of how things are and a sense of gratitude for the lessons learned will ultimately serve you better than living in denial and despair. By changing your thoughts you can break the cycle of negativity that causes and perpetuates stress and instead create for yourself a present and future in greater vibrational harmony with the type of life you choose to experience.

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Life purpose is first and foremost about being rather than doing. As Wayne Dyer has said, “We are human beings, not human doings”.

Purpose has to do with realizing who we are and lining up our thoughts and actions with our connection to Universal Source (or God if you choose) and realizing that we are co-creators of our reality along with that Source. Our Source is unlimited, abundant, loving, and forever giving, and the more we line up our thoughts and actions with that Source the more we will experience the blessings of living a lifestyle abounding in prosperity, love and happiness.

Life purpose is about putting love and gratitude and passion into whatever you are doing right now.  It is also about accepting that right now is exactly perfect as it is for all the reasons that you and your Source co-created it. A key concept is to realize that you are not on any spiritual pathway because there is no “spiritual pathway”.  Spirituality has everything to do with who you are “being” in this moment as opposed to anything you may be “doing”. It is through being that we connect with our creative Source and seem to experience a pathway of continuous growth, when in reality we are simply reconnecting with that which we already are and always have been. An interesting post which expresses the idea that spirituality is more closely related to being rather than doing (via following a pathway) can be found
here at GoodLife Zen.

Since life is more about being than doing, your life purpose doesn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with your occupation. It can, it’s just that it doesn’t have to. It’s a matter choice, practicality, and personal passion. Occupations serve you best when they line up with your interests and values, and you will generally perform better and be happier in a position that you are passionate about. However, occupations are more about doing than being, while your connection with your life purpose (good, bad, or undefined) can and will shine through in whatever it is you happen to be doing.

I dare say that we all desire to experience more of the attributes of our divine nature such as abundance, love, joy, and contentment. These attributes are as much a part of our nature as they ever were and as they always will be. They define who we really are. Acting in accordance with this nature through a state of being is the surest, fastest, and easiest way to bring these attributes into your life and the lives of each person you touch, in whatever it is that you happen to be doing.

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OK, so you’re thinking of making a career change. Maybe even a radical change. You’re tired of doing what you’ve been doing and are eager to consider something new and different. Maybe even completely different. If so you’re definitely not alone. Boredom, frustration, and monotony are strong motivators, especially for those in or approaching their 40’s having been in the same field for well over a decade and knowing they have at least a couple of decades more in front of them should they decide to hunker down and stay put.

As you gaze across the horizon the grass may indeed appear greener elsewhere. It usually does, as familiarity breeds contempt and we are prone to disdain being held prisoners to mindless routines. Yet before you quit your high paying CEO position to take up painting yard gnomes to sell at art festivals there are a few questions worth stopping to consider. Those who neglect to do so will often experience failure and frustration, eventually returning to their previous careers as the only way they know how to bring in $$.

1. Are you considering a change of scenery or a whole new field?

If you desire to move in a completely new direction, stop and consider the reasons why. Be honest with yourself. Does your dislike with your current position have more to do with you and the way you conduct yourself and relate to others, or is your work environment in bona fide conflict with your values and passions?

2. What exactly is it that you are passionate about?

If you’re not sure, reading this post is a good place to start.

3. If no one else’s opinion mattered what would you be doing for a living? Why?

This is about authenticity and freeing yourself up from fears and judgments. It’s your life. Are you living it for yourself or for someone else?

4. How can your current network support your new endeavor?

People make things happen and there is no substitute for good networking. If you don’t know anybody in your new field, how will you compensate for this?

5. If choosing a new career field, do you have a solid action plan to transfer your current skill set into a money making position?

Be resourceful about the way your skills and experiences can transfer into a new endeavor. With clients, I utilize a technique referred to as “mapping across” to help people discover how past successes in one area of life can translate into useful recourses in seemingly unrelated areas.

6. If considering self employment, are you the right type of person to be self employed?

Do you make decisions quickly and change them slowly? Do you love to network? Are you willing to invest your savings and sweat equity into a startup operation without any ironclad guarantee of success? Are you a self starter? If not then working for someone else may be more appropriate. Self employment holds many benefits, but if you’re not cut out for it it’s far better to know so up front than to jump in blindly and later regret having pulled the trigger.

7. Do you have or are you willing to invest the time and $$ to acquire the proper credentials?

If you lack the required experience, credentials, or training, what plan do you have to compensate for this? How important are formal credentials? How else can you acquire relevant experience?

These are only a few of the basic questions to consider when contemplating a major shift in career direction. By taking the time to formulate clear, honest answers to questions like these early on in your decision making process, you can sidestep a lot of frustration and position yourself to make better decisions that will serve you well in your chosen career for years to come.

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You’re traveling along a lonely two lane country road in the early morning darkness. Headlights loom in the distance as another car approaches.

Its driver, inattentive or momentarily
distracted, suddenly veers into your path
seconds before impact. You’re going about 50 mph and the other driver probably a bit more
so there’s no time for anything but reaction. You quickly swerve to avoid the fatal catastrophe. Whoa - you made it! OK, you’re still alive, but what was that sound you just heard?

Shaken but otherwise unharmed you pull over onto the narrow shoulder and slowly emerge from your vehicle. Noticing the other driver’s tail lights fading into the distance, you realize that he/she is either completely oblivious or unconcerned regarding what just transpired. Inspecting your vehicle you spot a narrow paint covered gash about 10 inches long leading up to your now cracked tail light. Death has paid a close visit this morning but you will live to tell about it.

Perspective

Imagine this had actually happened to you as it recently did to a friend of mine. What meaning would you ascribe to this sequence of events? Would you experience feelings of relief? Anger? Gratitude? Mortality? Would the incident cause you to examine your life and reconsider your priorities, or would you simply shake it off as a close call and go about the rest of your day?

Our mental states and often times our reactions depend upon the meaning we assign to events that transpire in our lives. Given the above sequence of events, one can easily build up and justify frames of reference for feeling lucky, unlucky, blessed, cursed, angry, contemplative, or victimized. All that is required to do so is a change in perspective.

The simplest way of changing our response to any given situation is to change the perspective we choose from which to assign meaning. Purposeful living requires knowing what outcomes you are seeking and choosing the response(s) most suited to its accomplishment. Inflexibility of thought resulting from fixed perspectives can save time and eliminate the need for conscious thinking but often proves to be too limiting when striving to achieve optimal outcomes.

The next time you are faced with a challenging situation to which you assign a meaning that leaves you feeling unhappy, limited, or otherwise stuck, step back and consider some alternative viewpoints. Walk a mile in another’s shoes. Try on another pair for yourself. Several pairs if you have to. In doing so, you may decide to change the way you “frame” the event in your mind and uncover a more useful response.

That in a nutshell is what reframing is all about.

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Welcome to part 3, the final installment of my review of NLP Presuppositions.

Choice is Better Than No Choice

People will sometimes take a specific course of action that seems less than optimal because they don’t perceive any other viable options. “What else was I supposed to do”, “I just couldn’t help it”, or “I simply had no other choice” are things people often say to justify the actions they take. Having more options to choose from leads to making better decisions since you can then become more flexible and creative in achieving your outcomes than if you were operating from the perspective of little or no choice.

Mind and body are indivisible parts of the same system

You can quickly change your mental state by altering your physiology, and over time you can change your physiology by changing your predominant thoughts. Mind and body are inseparably linked and mutually influence each other.

People work perfectly. No one is “wrong” or “broken”

People achieve the results in their lives according to how they structure their experiences and the choices they make. Again, this is a presupposition that isn’t always true but is typically the most efficient platform to work from when seeking to make changes in one’s environment.

A person’s results in life make sense considering how they process information and organize their thoughts with the obvious exceptions being those who suffer from chemical imbalances in the brain or mental handicaps. The rest of us are all reaping the results of our beliefs and actions. If your outcomes are less than desirable, NLP methodology holds constant your self worth while seeking to uncover or recover beliefs and perceptions that when held as true will prove more useful in achieving your desired results.

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Welcome to part 2 of my review of NLP Presuppositions. If you missed part one, click here.

There is no failure, only feedback

All responses we get from our actions have value by providing us with the opportunity to learn from our experiences and use that feedback to make adjustments. The NLP concept of T.O.T.E. is like a mental software program that works to create successful outcomes based upon having fixed goals and variable means of achieving their outcomes. The acronym T.O.T.E. stands for (Test Operate Test Exit).

Once we decide upon an outcome, we set up a Test to determine how we will know when the outcome has been achieved. We then Operate within our environment by taking action to achieve the result, after which will again test to see if our outcome has been achieved. This takes place within a continuous loop until the Test is successful and we Exit the program having achieved our desired outcome. As long as the end goal remains unchanged, there is no failure absent giving up. Every experience along the journey is simply an opportunity to learn and come closer to achieving success as we have chosen to define it.

People have all the resources necessary to make any desired change

This one can be hard to believe but still quite useful. An effective way of understanding this is that while everyone is considered to have all the available resources to achieve their outcomes, those resources might not currently be available in the context where they are needed. Consider a person who is able to function effectively at work with tact and diplomacy despite multiple conflicting demands and time constraints from bosses and co-workers, yet who looses their temper quickly and becomes impatient with their spouse or children at home. The appropriate behavioral resources exist but are not being applied in all areas that require it. A useful NLP strategy for bringing resources into the context where they are needed is a technique known as mapping across.

If one person can do something, other people can learn to do it

A core component of NLP is the concept of modeling. It is the belief that if one person can do something, it’s possible to study their techniques, attitudes, and kinesiology to develop a method to transfer that skill set to others. Of course physical limitations will come into play and this concept may not be true 100% of the time, but it provides a more useful structure for effecting change than assuming the contrary and has enabled many ordinary people to achieve spectacular results.

You cannot not communicate

Remember the old study that says that only about 7% of communication is the words we choose? If another human being can hear or see you, even if you are sitting still saying nothing you are still communicating. Posture, body language, tonality, facial expressions, breathing patterns, eye movements, and changes in skin tone are all ways in which we communicate our internal states and thus all are useful in understanding and relating to others.

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Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP has as its foundation a set of beliefs known as presuppositions. These beliefs form the basis of the many practical applications derived from NLP that are so incredibly useful in helping people achieve positive change in their lives. These beliefs are incorporated into NLP as presuppositions not because they are always true 100% of the time, but rather because holding the belief that they are true provides the most useful approach to understanding how people create and interpret the structure of their experience and ultimately make the choices they do.

Over the next few posts I will explore these presuppositions in order to help familiarize you with them. In doing so I hope to provide you with a better idea of exactly what NLP is and how it’s utilized to help people make positive changes in their lives.

The meaning of communication is the response it gets

From a practical standpoint, how your communication is received by the listener is more relevant than your intent. If you intend to communicate one thing but your listener receives a different message, it is up to YOU to adjust your communication until it is received in the manner that you intend. Relying upon the other person to figure out what you mean and complaining that they don’t “get it” takes all responsibility for the communication out of your hands and leaves you without any options of getting your message across. If the way you are trying to get your message across doesn’t work, try other ways of saying/demonstrating what you mean until you have successfully communicated your intended message.

The map is not the territory

What we view as reality is not ultimate reality. Objective experience is first filtered through our senses to the extent we are able to perceive it, then filtered through our belief systems, moods, opinions and experiences of others to construct in our minds “maps” of reality which we then file away to rely upon as the basis of our future experiences.

Map making is incredibly time saving when it helps us achieve the things we want in life, and just as effective in a negative way when we unintentionally create maps that limit choices and hold us back. No matter how accurate the map, it is still only a representation of the territory it strives to represent. By changing a your map to one that is either closer to objective experience or more useful in achieving the outcomes you desire (or both), your experience of reality and the outcomes you generate can be changed.

Every behavior has a positive intent

Given their models of reality and the perception of possible choices, people make the best choices for themselves to achieve the outcomes they desire. Even when a persons choices objectively seem self destructive, short sighted, hurtful, etc, they are selected by the individual as the best perceived option to meet their needs at the time the choice is made. Helping people perceive a greater range of available choices is a major aspect of NLP, since having a greater range of choice provides a better inventory of options from which exists the possibility of making better decisions.

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