I like to use the following analogy, courtesy of Tony Robbins. Imagine that all your current abilities are described by a circle. Whatever is within a circle, you can do; whatever is outside the circle, is a stretch for you or is outside of your current abilities. Once you increase your abilities, your circle grows. But it does not grow a bump on its circumference in the area where you increased your skill. Instead, the entire circle grows, so the area covered by it is that much bigger and now your abilities have increased in other areas as well.

Now this does not mean that if you learn how to fly a plane, you automatically know how to weld. Instead, while you were learning to fly the plane, you learned some things about yourself, about others, and maybe even about the world. The things that you learned increase your capacity to do better in other areas of life and make it easier to acquire new skills. Makes sense?

Until next time,

V

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

So the need for certainty is reflected in our desire to know, more or less, what is going to happen tomorrow. We like to know where our income is coming from, that we’ll have a roof over our heads at night, that we’ll get some food in our stomachs when we get hungry, etc, etc. Even people who are back-packing across another continent, who may not know where they are going to sleep that night, still have some certainty in their life, like that they will experience adventure, see new things, and create life-long-lasting memories. But what happens when we fully meet this need for certainty, to the point where we know exactly what is going to happen and when it is going to happen? Simply, we get bored.

This is where the need for variety comes in. We need to have unpredictable things happen in our lives for us to really enjoy life. It is actually quite fascinating that sometimes you’ll have a person who has not left their immediate area for 10 years, suddenly leave on a long trip to South America – what happens is that they have met too much of the certainty need and swing more into meeting their need for variety. And people who stick to the government job, prefer more certainty than variety in their financial affairs.

The two are opposing needs, since the more certainty you have, the less variety you have and vice versa. People find a point along that sliding scale that they feel happy with and they usually stick to it. When you think back on your life, did you have experiences where you went too far towards one end, only to swing back in the opposite direction to compensate later?

Until next time,

V

I believe that the subconscious thoughts are responsible for majority of our lives and for all those things that make you say, “I never thought about that, so why is it showing up?”. The subconscious thoughts attract into our experience things that seem to be totally random and not connected to our conscious thoughts. But remember, it is not just out conscious mind that creates our experiences, it is our entire consciousness. And that is one of the most powerful distinctions that I have ever made for myself.

But since only 5% of our thoughts are conscious, does that mean that we can never truly be in control of our lives? If I had only 5% share in a company, it would be very difficult to take the company in the direction that I want it to go. Thankfully the fact that we are only aware of 5% of our thoughts, does not mean that we can only have 5% control. But more on that later!

Until next time,

V

I personally really enjoy talking with pure scientific minds about this stuff, because this often goes against what they know. And the challenges that I get from them are often very similar – they mention not being able to prove this in a double-blind study, or they refer to some cognitive bias as being the reason for my belief. But the beautiful thing is that regardless of what they want to believe, I still constantly attract the right people, the right opportunities, and the best parking spots into my experience.

What is exciting is that there is more and more evidence to support what I believe about how things work. Science is just starting to catch on. And as liberal as the scientific community paints themselves to be, according to the very same pure scientific minds, scientists cannot deviate too much in terms of what they study and publish without risking their carriers. I actually had one of my friends admit to me that, in the current environment, if someone was trying to do a lot more research in the ‘fluffy spiritual stuff’, they would have very hard time getting funding, even more trouble getting published, and would pretty much be burying their career. No wonder there are not a lot of paper on this subject. However that is slowly changing and it will be comical when I’ll get to say ‘Told you so!’ with a big grin on my face.

Until next time,

V

Picture yourself at the end of the day, and see yourself looking back at the entire day that just ‘passed’. Look back at the meetings that you have had during that day with the desired outcome. Reflect back on the calls that you made and the responses of the people on the other end of the line. Think back on the family dinner and the warm, loving, invigorating conversations that occurred. Reflect back on all the tasks that you finished during the day and all the things that you accomplished. Pretty much look at all the areas of your day as already complete with the desired outcome.

When you are finished remembering your day, come back to the present moment and feel excited about the day you are about to live. Make it your intention to build your day in your reality much like you just did in your mind. At this point you should be pretty energized to live your day to the fullest! Repeat the next morning!

Until next time,

V

Tony Robbins spoke about an interesting experiment of hope vs expectation. People were asked to think of something that they really want to have or experience. When they were asked to hope that it will happen, they described their inner feeling as being passive, seeing a possibility of both, the success and failure, and described the mental images as primarily black and white. When the same people were asked to expect, on the other hand, they described seeing themselves as more proactive, saw a successful outcome, and described their mental imagery is being primarily in colour. Try this for yourself, and tell me about the differences you experience between hope and expectation.

If you think about it, since we live in a creative Universe that responds to thought and feeling, a feeling of hope is rather wishy-washy. You hope when you are not certain, but when you are certain, you expect! You don’t just hope, you expect to step onto a solid floor when you get up in the morning. You need to get to the same place of expectation when it comes to everything else that you want to achieve and experience in life, but more on that later.

Until next time,

V

I view the entire field of self-study as a circle – a circle of self-mastery – and Unlimited Power would be on the circumference while The Science Of Mind would be near the centre, if not not the centre itself. Tony Robbins and speakers/authors like him offer phenomenal material and incredible value, but they are working with easy-to-follow personal development strategies. They have wide appeal – hence they are on the circumference of the circle of self-mastery – and are easier to grasp and understand.

Ernest Holmes, on the other hand, is not a celebrity and does not have an enormous following. The Science Of Mind is a challenging book to read and is difficult to understand. It, however, deals with the inner-workings of the Universe and tries to drill as far down as possible into how we, as humans, relate to the Universe at large. Ultimately it explains exactly how, and why, the easy-to-follow personal development strategies work.

The interesting thing here is that it is rather challenging to start at the core and work your way out – it is simply too difficult to understand what the heck the core of the circle of self-mastery is all about. I have had an experience where I heard a speaker (don’t remember his name at this time) and thought that he was off the wall. A couple years later, after learning a considerable amount about the Universe that we live in, I heard him speak again and, this time, he made a lot more sense. So I had to work my way from the outside of the circle of self-mastery towards the core, step by step. That way, I built on materials that I learned previously and understood what I was learning at the time a lot better.

And now that I have explored more material near the core of the circle of self-mastery, it makes the materials closer to the edge much more spectacular and mind-blowing. But I do find that working with the core materials is much more effective and much more rewarding.

I wonder if you have had similar experiences?

Until Monday,

V

Last week Dr. Kenn Gordon was speaking about knowledge and application. This is something i heard from almost everyone I have ever come across in self development programs and books, everyone from Tony Robbins to Bob Proctor.

Knowledge is potential power. It is what you do with it, the application of knowledge in other words, that brings you power. Just knowing something is not very useful, it seems. Bob Proctor, in his Born Rich program, was saying that you can memorize the entire program and still have no improvement in your life unless you apply your knowledge. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Having a lot of facts, figures, and ideas stored in your head does not give you much besides the satisfaction of knowing.

The power, and the results that follow, come from actually taking action based on those facts, figures, and ideas. Your power and your results come from putting one foot in front of the other, time and time again, and from the never-ending drive to go forward. So, if you have been sitting around with a lot of knowledge in your head and are talking virtually no action, it is time for a little change. Set a goal and do something RIGHT NOW to move yourself closer to the goal. It may be a phone call…it may be finding a book…it may be searching the web. Whatever it is, go and do it NOW!

Now, back to the Centre For Spiritual Living. I was also pleased to learn that there are “Science of Mind” classes offered through the Centre. I have gone to the introductory class, but we did not do much else but introductions. Next week we are diving into a pretty thick book, The Science Of Mind, by Ernest Holmes, so it should be interesting!

Until next time,

V