If you have something that you want to do but never get to it, do it first thing in the morning before you do anything else. Anthony Robbins called this ‘the hour of power’ where you take the first hour after you wake up and use it as ‘your time’ for that important activity that you never get to. It can be reading, writing, playing a musical instrument, or going for a run. The activity does not matter – what matters is that you get it done.

This surely requires some discipline, especially if you have to be at work at a certain time and need to wake up an hour earlier to create that time cushion. And it is a lot easier to sleep that extra hour when you know you can too – I would know . But all that is still easier than finding time for your activity later in the day. Something always seems to creep up and get in the way. That is why you do your task first thing in the morning before anything has a chance to get in the way. Give it a try and see for yourself….

Until next time,

V

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

Google is one example, where they have taken numerous initiatives to reduce energy use at their facilities and implemented technologies that paid for themselves in a few months. So at the end of the year, they had a net increase in profit due to increased savings. That makes it much easier to sell to the shareholders the requirement for other money saving technologies that pay for themselves and put money in your pocket over a longer term.

This ‘green’ field is just one of the areas where you can get ‘both’ positive results. Are there any other areas that you can think of where there are two (or more) outcomes, that are normally thought of as incompatible, that are in fact very compatible with a little creativity?

Due to the long weekend, my next post will be on Wednesday.

Until then,

V

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

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

One of the comments on a recent post talked about how we eliminate many personal hobbies and favourite activities as we get into a relationship, and how we dive into those activities when the relationship is over. Been there – done that – lost many friends in the process. I now see it as a ‘rookie mistake’ and will never again use a relationship as a reason to not do the things I love – ever! So here we have a need (and I believe that it is in fact ‘a need’) for individual expression.

The other aspect of the foundation for my theory is something that I have touched on only a little bit in the post on how we often treat strangers better than family and friends. I will talk more about it in the future, but for the time being, it seems to me that the more time people spend together (and the less time they spend doing other things they love), the higher the chance of them being frustrated with the little things. I have seen couples fight (and have fought myself) over the stupidest little non-issues and in my opinion, personal space is the solutions in many cases.

So my theory for happy living is *drum roll* to have separate residences with your ’significant other’. Revolutionary, I know! Yes, it would be more expensive (but so is good food), and will make the whole ‘raising the kids’ thing a little more challenging (if you want kinds), but I’m willing to bet that if people made the commitment to each other (this eliminates those early break-ups due to incompatibility) and maintained separate residences, the divorce rates would be significantly lower.

Alright…bring it on! I’m ready to take the heat!

Until Monday,

V

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

This comes back to the whole notion of your entire consciousness being attractive, which includes your subconscious mind, and not just your conscious mind. An infant does not have anything in their conscious mind – not anything they can make sense of anyways. When a child is born, they are, however, born with a subconscious mind that is wide open for programming, and although is wide open, it does not mean that it is empty.

Since we are all really Energy, I believe we are linked, in a way, through our subconscious minds. And the infant is subconsciously linked to his or her parents, community, country, and world as a whole, with parents having the strongest influence. If you have trouble with this, think of DNA. Child’s DNA carries programming from his parents, his larger community, and the human species as a whole, with the parental influence being the strongest. In a similar manner, the same child take on the subconscious programming from their parents. And it is this subconscious programming that a child starts out with that is attractive.

I hope that this explanation makes some sense.

Until next time,

V

Well, at its core, it means to get to a point where you feel, understand, and internalize that you are responsible for your experience of life – the bad, the good, and the ugly. I would personally argue that you are responsible for all of the circumstances, events, and conditions in your life. This can be a difficult concept to explain, and much more difficult to internalize, and it also raises good questions, such as, ‘Is the child in Africa responsible for the conditions she is born into?’. But that’s a whole other discussion, which I will tackle later. For now, however, even if I say that you are not responsible for the circumstances, events, and conditions in your life, you are definitely responsible for how you perceive all those experiences and how you react to them.

Stephen Covey talks about responsibility as really being ‘response-ability’, or an ability to choose your response to whatever happens. Say you are in a traffic jam; you can be angry and frustrated, or you can be calm and relaxed. Chances are you have had both responses at one time or another, and in both scenarios your experience of that same traffic jam is very different. In other words, your ‘reality’ changes according to how you choose to respond to the situation. And this applies to every situation you may find yourself in.

Pretty powerful stuff, don’t you think?

Until next time,

V