Archive for May, 2010

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Patience

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Last week I talked about how many people lack urgency, which I find expressed in the business world when I am their customer. My own struggle is that I usually want things done yesterday, but I also understand that ‘patience is a virtue’.

I totally get that sometimes a certain period of time is required for an action to produce an effect: you press an accelerator and it takes a car time to get to a certain speed, you send in some paperwork to the government and maybe a month later you’ll get a response (hahaha), you conceive a child and 9 months later you have the most precious thing in your life (evil mwahaha), you get the idea. It’s not a big deal when you know how long something takes, but what about situations when you don’t? For how long do you pursue it? When do you pull the plug?

If we are talking about success (in business for example), people often say that commitment and perseverance is what made the difference. OK, that makes sense. But I have also heard some very successful people say that it is vital to know when to pull the plug. So in essence, have commitment and perseverance and stick to what you do, but pull the plug when you realize it’s not working. And the touch question to answer is when is it not working?

This is another thing I don’t really have an answer for. So feel free to contribute ideas.

Until next time,

V

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Posted in Success | 1 Comment »

Failure Is Not An Acceptable Option

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

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Posted in Success, Taking Action | 2 Comments »

Put Yourself In The Picture

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

I talked a few times about this important step in the manifestation process, which is creating a picture, or an image, of what your end-goal looks and feels like. Once you have that picture, you can play with it, contemplate on it, add things, take away things, etc. The ‘Ideal Life’ visualization that I described in the past is also based on this very picture. There is one small, important details that turns out some people miss – putting themselves in the picture.

Kenn Gordon told a story as a joke on this very topic in order to illustrate the point. The story goes something like this. This guy – we’ll call him Mike – watched ‘The Secret’ and was fascinated by the Law of Attraction, so he decided to attract a brand-spanking-new red Maserati into his life. So he goes down to his garage and cleans it all up to create a space for this new red Maserati. He puts up a large Maserati poster on the front wall and paints the side wall red. He pictures that red Maserati in his garage twice a day – once in the morning and once before going to bed. After about a month of this, his income is not increasing and the red Maserati seems as far away as it was when he started. That weekend, as Mike is mowing his lawn, his neighbour – we’ll call him Jim – walk up to chit-chat for a few minutes. Seeing the open garage with a clean, neat space, he asks Mike, “Hey, I just got a brand new red Maserati, but I don’t have an extra stall in my garage to put it. Do you mind if I rent that open space from you?” *laughter*

Mike did all the things right, and ended up attracting the red Maserati to his garage…but he forgot to put himself in the picture. Try not to make the same mistake…

Until next time,

V

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Posted in Energy, Neo-Spirituality, Success | 2 Comments »

Spiritual Mind Treatment (05.10.2010)

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Join me in knowing that we live in an Awesome Universe, and that Awesomeness is the essence of everything. The planet is Awesome, the lakes are Awesome, the mountains are Awesome, the people are Awesome, and I am Awesome too! The more I internalize and align myself with the Awesomeness of the Universe, the more Awesome my life is. With Awesome gratitude I invite and allow more Awesome to be part of my life. I let go and let it be Awesome!

Until next time,

V

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Posted in Spiritual Mind Treatment | 1 Comment »

Lack Of Urgency

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 :P ) for why that backlog is necessary.

Until Monday,

V

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Posted in Success, Taking Action | 9 Comments »

Getting Passed Fear

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

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Posted in Psychology, Success, Taking Action | 5 Comments »

Proving A Point

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Recently I started to think more about all the things I have heard and read on spirituality and attempted to organize it into something more personal and concrete. I want to stick to the scientific end of things, not to the blind faith one, so I tried to separate ideas into the ones that had scientific backing and the ones that were personal opinion of another human being. Frankly, I’m not much closer to figuring things out because it seems like there is contradicting evidence out there for almost everything.

The book that I mentioned yesterday, 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, brings 13 great examples of things that are proven and disproven by equally qualified and educated scientific teams. Go figure! I thought that if something was proven, it would not be disproven (or vice-versa), but that does not seem to be how it works. In fact this reminds me of another piece I read once that suggests that people, using the same data, can prove two completely different things by applying statistics differently.

Sadly, because of that, it makes it difficult to separarate ‘truth’ from ‘fiction’ and using logic does not help much, since it is stained by previous experiences. So what is the virdict? It seems like you can find evidence to support whatever you want to believe. *sarcastic tone* Lovely!

Until next time,

V

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Posted in Neo-Spirituality, Psychology | 1 Comment »

Free Will

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

There is an interesting book that I am reading now by Michael Brooks called 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense. It talks about “the most baffling scientific mysteries of our time”. The chapter, and more specifically a portion of a paragraph in that chapter, is what I want to bring up today, and it is on the free will. In this book there are no answers – just things that many hold to be true that do not quite add up, and free will is one of them. There is quite a bit of research out there that suggests that we actually do not have free will in the sense that we do not consciously make our decisions – there is activity in the brain, about pressing a button for example, before there is conscious awareness of the intention to press the button.

Pretty neat stuff, but what I’d like to draw your attention to is the following: “Studies show that neurotic and psychiatric disorders are more common among those who attempt to keep conscious control of life and suppress its unwelcome quirks. Sanity, paradoxically, may lie in accepting that you are not in control.” That just about blew my mind because a lot of materials in self-development suggests that we are in total control of our lives. And I have read before about how that backfires as people beat themselves up for not being good enough to be able to control their lives as they want.

I don’t have any conclusions that I am ready to draw from that, but I just wanted to put it out there.

Until next time,

V

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Posted in Neo-Spirituality, Psychology | 2 Comments »

Spiritual Mind Treatment (05.03.2010)

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Join me in knowing that…

Science teaches as that everything came as a result of the Big Bang where there was huge amount of Energy condensed into very little space out of which all matter came, so we are all Energy at the deepest of levels. Energy cannot be created or destroyed – it only changes form – and there are precise laws governing that process. My understanding is that thought puts that Law in motion, which like the fertile soil, responds in kind to the original thought. So here and now, in this very moment, I plant a thought-seed for happiness, creativity, abundance, health, and love. With heart-felt gratitude, I plant this thought-seed into the fertile soil of the Law, and allow it to grow and manifest. I let go and let it be…and so it is!

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Posted in Spiritual Mind Treatment | 1 Comment »

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