Archive for the ‘Taking Action’ Category
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
As a final project in the Science of Mind class that I have been taking, we were supposed to present our vision for a better world. Yesterday’s post gave me an alternative vision for a better world than the one I actually presented. To tell you the truth, there are a lot of things that can make for a better world, so this is only one of them. What is it? People taking personal responsibility for their lives.
Think about it…how different would the world look if every single person took responsibility for their lives, for their actions, and for their behaviours? Now we are playing that ‘what if’ game, but I think that if that was the case, people would not be complacent and would actually take action to change things they do not like – politicians, economics, relationships, etc. People would stop blaming others, which will result in more love and peace. People would live more happy and fulfilled lives as they would not remain stuck for long in any particular place that they do not like. People would pursue what they want in harmonious ways.
That would truly transform the world, don’t you think?
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, Energy, goals, Human Behavior, Inspiration, Personal Power, Response-ability, Responsibility, Science Of Mind, Success
Posted in Affirmations, Energy, Relationships, Success, Taking Action | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
North American society is not set up in a way that supports failure. Sure, we have a lot of entrepreneurs and incredible success stories, and people tell us that you will likely fail several times on your way to success. Yes, we hear the inspiring story of Thomas Edison who supposedly found 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb, before he finally discovered a way that worked, but at the end of the day our society is not set up to support people who fail (by the way, I’d like to see some evidence to support that 10,000 attempts – sure, Edison did try a whole bunch of times, but my personal feeling is that the number is grossly exaggerated for ‘marketing’ purposes).
If you fail in school, you are tagged with a label of ‘dumb’, ’stupid’, or whatever else. Later in college, if you fail a couple of courses, your GPA is brought down, and as some people discover later, that lower GPA prevents you from getting into a certain field (ie. medicine). If you take a risk and fail in business and are forced to declare bankruptcy, you are punished for 7 years via your credit score.
Our society is so focused on success, that we turned failure into a mortal sin. What is ironic is that in order to succeed, you will probably ‘fail’ a few times. Every time you ‘fail’, you’ll learn a lesson and then use that experience to make better decisions next time around. I wonder if that can even be addressed in a meaningful way, since this is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of our society.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, goals, Human Behavior, Irrational Behavior, Success
Posted in Success, Taking Action | 2 Comments »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
Over the years I needed to learn how to be patient, and I am still challenged at times because I like to have things done yesterday. I’m not sure whether that is something I was born with or simply developed while growing up (it would be interesting to hear a ‘nature vs nurture’ debate on patience), but it is a factor in my life nevertheless. I am actually amazed by how there is that lack of urgency in many businesses. Sure, they may drive their employees hard, but when it comes to dealing with them as a customer, there definitely seems a lack of urgency.
Digitally printed business cards take 30 minutes to produce, but you need to wait a week to get them done (or pay extra ‘rush’ fees in most cases). It takes a few hours to fix an electronic gadget or to decide to issue a replacement, but you need to wait 2-4 months to get something fixed through Future Shop. The peculiar thing is that this ‘backlog’ is not increasing. Whether you go to a printer today, 2 years ago, or a year from now, it will still take a week to get those business cards done; same story with Future Shop. What that says to me is that if they got rid of that backlog, they would be able to do things right away (or with a much smaller delay).
If you own a business, there is something you may want to consider. Or at least give me your reasons (or excuses 
) for why that backlog is necessary.
Until Monday,
V
Tags: Action, Responsibility, Success
Posted in Success, Taking Action | 9 Comments »
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
Whatever way you spin it, at the end of the day it is fear that prevents you from doing something new and keeps you stuck in doing the same things that you are used to – time after time after time. People say a lot of things about fear, like how it is ‘False Evidence that Appears Real’, but I’m not going to get into that now. What I’d rather draw your attention to is to the fact things are never as bad as you fear and the effects are rarely permanent. More often than not, what you fear is a lot less scary and does not even have a lasting effect on you.
Studies on happiness show that people return to their usual level of happiness after about 1 month in 90+% of cases. With other things, like winning a lottery or losing the ability to use your legs (see Dan Gilbert’s talk on happiness on TED), people still return to their normal level of happiness, it just takes a little longer (and losing use of your legs is a permanent thing).
Essentially we always find a way back to our point of happiness equilibrium, so if you don’t take a risk because you fear some ugly outcome that will ruin the rest of your life, just know that it is not so – you’ll be back to your regular self soon enough.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, Dan Gilbert, Fear, Happiness, Human Behavior, Personal Power, Success
Posted in Psychology, Success, Taking Action | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Not having enough time is a common complaint among the people. There are only 24 hours in a day with certain totally necessary activities, like sleep, and a lot more things competing for our time and attention. The really neat thing about it is that everyone truly is on the same playing field. People may be born in different parts of the world or into different families and circumstances, and use that as an excuse for doing or not doing something, but everyone has 24 hours in a day.
Sure you may have a lot of things to do, but you will always find time to do the things that are important to you. If you are not doing them, they are not as important as the things that you are already doing. So for example, if someone watches 2 hours of Survivor (if that show is even on these days), but has no time to go exercise, then this person obviously puts more values on watching Survivor than on being active, more fit, and healthy.
This applies to all the activities that you are doing and are not doing due to lack of time. When something is important enough, you will always find a way to make it happen. That’s why I don’t believe what people say – I believe what they do!
Until next time,
V
Tags: goals, Human Behavior, Personal Power, Response-ability, Responsibility, Success, Time Management
Posted in Success, Taking Action | No Comments »
Friday, March 12th, 2010
The blog posts from the last couple of days hopefully showed you that knowledge is abundant and available to anyone who wants to get it. That was the case in the past as well, except that prior to the wide availability of the Internet, it may have cost you a whole bunch of cash. Today, a lot of knowledge is freely available at your fingertips and the only commitment you need to acquire it is some time.
But knowledge, as I wrote about before, is only potential power, and it is the application of knowledge that gets you the results you seek. One of the applications of knowledge is the sharing of what you know with others for a fee, however that can become more tricky as someone can just as easily find that same information if they just commit some time. That being said, there is one main advantage that you have even if you are just re-distributing knowledge, and that is people being lazy and not willing to do the work themselves.
The safer approach is to put your own twist on what you know by innovating with your mind to present that knowledge in a way that is unique to you and to you alone. That is the more tricky part, but at the same time it is also the strategy that will keep you in a league of your own, since no one can be better than you at being you.
Until Monday,
V
Tags: Action, goals, Human Behavior, Irrational Behavior, Knowlege, Personal Power, Success
Posted in Psychology, Success, Taking Action | No Comments »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Yesterday’s post inspired me to use the rest of the week to talk about information, learning, and application. Today I want to share my thoughts on the importance of figuring out where to find information.
There was a time, not too long ago, when it was vital to know and memorize different information – facts, figures, details about events, etc. My parents came from that time and they both have a lot of interesting information stored in their heads because of that. At that time knowledge was important, because it was not easy to access information. Encyclopedias were probably the best resource for doing research. In fact, even in my middle school days, we used to look through encyclopedias for information.
I feel that the Internet changed everything. Suddenly a monstrous amount of data is available online only a quick search away. Memorizing seems like a futile objective, since anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can find that same information in a couple of minutes.
So the important skill to develop is to find the information you need quickly. As great as Google search is, there are better search strategies and there are worse ones. To be totally honest, Google did make it pretty darn simple to find what you are looking for, but learning how to search well will save you time every time you search. And with a number of searches that each of us does every day, that can add up.
Essentially, it comes down not to knowing the information itself, but rather to knowing where to get that information quickly and efficiently.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Information, Internet, Success
Posted in Success, Taking Action | No Comments »
Friday, February 26th, 2010
This week I talked about taking responsibility for how you react to your environment and for creating that environment in the first place. “What’s the point?”, you may ask. I think that when you take responsibility for your life, you take back your power. It is one of the most liberating and inspiring realizations that I have ever made!
As soon as you realize that you are responsible, you stop being a victim of circumstances and become an architect for your life. You take back the power and begin to exercise that power to, hopefully, go in the direction that you want to go. If you think about it, for you to be able to change anything, you must know that you have some power to do so. Otherwise, you won’t even try. This is, I believe, one of the reasons why so few people vote in North America – they do not think that their vote will change anything, so they don’t even bother. Do you think it is any different in other aspects of your life?
For you to make more money, you need to believe that you are capable of doing so. For you to be fit and healthy, you need to believe that you can do it. For an athlete to win the gold medal, he or she needs to believe in their ability to perform at that level. It is interesting that with the Olympic games, Canadians are constantly asked, ‘Do you believe?’.
So take responsibility for your life and take your power back so that you can use it!
Until Monday,
V
Tags: Personal Power, Response-ability, Responsibility
Posted in Energy, Psychology, Success, Taking Action | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Yesterday I talked about how it is vital to take responsibility for your life. Often people who have not given this idea a lot of thought will say that they do not have a choice in how they react to a given situation. A few years ago I was in that very same position. The thing is, you always have a choice, it’s just that sometimes you have responded the same way so many times, that it becomes automatic.
After you run a certain pattern a whole bunch of times, you become conditioned to running that pattern again and again. It is much like Pavlov’s dogs that were conditioned to the sound of the bell as a signal that it was time to eat, and began to salivate every time the bell went off, even when there was no sign of food. Humans are no different – after we respond a certain way to that traffic jam, for example, chances are we’ll continue to respond that same way until something in our environment is considerably different or until we make a conscious effort to change our habitual response.
And it is when we are conditioned to a given response that we feel like we do not have a choice in the matter. I say that there is always a choice and always an alternative to any response you may have chosen thus far. In fact, I’ll challenge to you find a single exception. If you find one, please let me know, because I have not been able to find one for years.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, Choice, Human Behavior, Pavlov's Dogs
Posted in Psychology, Success, Taking Action | No Comments »
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Keeping with the spiritual theme of the week, I’d like to go into the weekend with a brief talk about yoga. Much like with meditation, there are numerous different yoga practices, with postures ranging from light and easy ones, to very advanced ones where I wonder how people can bend that way. I personally do yoga pretty much every day. On some days I go through a lengthy yoga program, thought on the days where I do other forms of exercise, like a gym workout, I simply start my day with ’sun salutations’ to stretch out and get my body moving.
I personally enjoy more challenging yoga, where I feel like my body is getting a nice workout and a good stretch. However there are huge benefits to just doing some yoga stretches that don’t get your heart rate up that much. It’s nice that there is variety for everyone – you can always find what you are looking for.
And if you didn’t know that, yoga can be a meditative practice as well. Like with many forms of physical exercise, when you in the middle of it, it’s easier to stay in the present moment and focus on what you are doing, which is one form of meditation.
Until Monday,
V
Tags: Meditation, Neo-Spirituality, Success, Yoga
Posted in Neo-Spirituality, Taking Action | No Comments »