Continue reading »]]> GUEST BLOG: A way to open up your heart to joy is forgiveness.

One of my favorite quotes is “To hold a grudge is to poison yourself and expect the other person to get sick.” Walter E. Jacobson has written a book on forgiveness. Today I share with you a resource you can use to be the best you that you can be. Live your dreams, get the girl, shower in money, so on and so on.

Forgive To Win!

By Walter E Jacobson, MD

“I wrote the book, Forgive To Win!, because during my many years helping people as a board-certified psychiatrist, I realized that the cause of most people’s unhappiness, depression, anxiety, anger, and frustration with their health, their relationships, their career and their finances is self-sabotage.

Most people get in their own way. They don’t do things they know they need to do and when they do take action they make poor choices that impact negatively on their lives and keep them from attracting and manifesting all that they desire and aspire to accomplish.

When I started teaching my patients the secret to ending their self-sabotaging behaviors (spiritual techniques and cognitive tools designed to increase self-esteem and eliminate guilt, shame and self-loathing deeply embedded in the unconscious mind), their emotional turmoil subsided and their lives got better!

I realized that the Forgiveness Diet, my structured 90-day program for ending self-sabotage, was something that could benefit a great many people, particularly those who repeatedly buy self-help books but don’t get the results that they desire.

My Forgiveness Diet is not complicated. And it works!  With diligent practice and persistence, you can generate love and harmony, increase self-confidence, eliminate fear and worry, be happy, and live a life of value and meaning.

When you re-program your mind to neutralize your negative, harsh Inner Critic, that voice inside yourself that subconsciously causes you to sabotage your opportunities and best efforts, everything changes. There are no limits to what you can accomplish with Forgive To Win!”

Today, October 18th only, when you order this extraordinary, life-changing book, you will receive over 100 free bonus gifts from people who have partnered with me on my book launch because they believe in the power of my book to help you transform your life.

http://forgivetowin.homestead.com

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Continue reading »]]> The Law of Attraction has many amazing aspects that work well with living in your daily life. In my path as a spiritual life coach, I use many of them every day. I work to deepen them and learn the lessons that come from them. The Law of Attraction is not only a good law to manifest what you want, it is also a good way to learn lessons on how to live your life. This is one of the blogs that discusses how I put the Law of Attraction into action in my daily life.

Spiritual Life Coach Tip on Law of Attraction: Turning Motivation into Inspiration

Motivation and inspiration are two different things. Motivation is when you try to get yourself to do something that you do not want to do. Inspiration is when you do something because you feel inspired to do it. The Law of Attraction works by you focusing on what you want and reducing the resistance to it. When you try to motivate yourself to do something you are actually pushing against what you desire. Often times when you motivate yourself, you actually insult yourself into doing the actions to get what you desire. A good example of people doing this is losing weight. The motivational style of losing weight is to look at yourself in the mirror, tell yourself how fat you are and then get on the treadmill.
The problem with motivation is that once the motivational aspect of what you desire is gone then you will stop the desired actions to get what you want. For instance, you look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself how fat you are and in a few months you lose 20 to 30 pounds. Looking at yourself in the mirror you feel good about how you look. The motivation of looking fat is gone. Then you either go back to your old habits because you don’t have the motivation anymore or you find another way to punish yourself into getting what you want.
Another way you may motivate yourself is to trick yourself into doing the correct action. Such as, setting your clock to a different time than the actual time. This way you are treating yourself as a child and you lose a little respect for yourself each time you do this. Since you know that you are tricking yourself, you are not actually tricking yourself. You are just telling yourself that you do not trust yourself and creating a childish game for you to do the actions that you want to do.

Motivation isn’t all bad of course. Motivation is a good way to begin because it is always spawned by what you do not want. As discussed in a previous blog, what you do not want is a good way to discover what you do want. When you discover what you do not want and you will feel the motivation to do the action to get away from what you do not want.

Inspiration is when you feel like you have to do something. You get those impulses that tell you to do an action and doing those actions feel so good. That is the basis of getting what you want with the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction is not about feeling good, sitting on your couch doing nothing and then having what you want appear magically. The Law of Attraction is about moving you from the motivational mindset to the inspirational mindset. Then when you figure out your desires, you clean up your resistance to it and feel the inspiration to take the right actions. Going back to the weight loss example, when you are inspired and thinking about how good it feels to work out and get healthier, you notice that there is an aerobics or sports class that you enjoy. Instead of tricking yourself to go to the classes, you will be drawn to them to the point where it is easier to go than not go. You will not feel like you are trying to lose weight, instead you will feel like you are playing. Living life through inspiration turns life into an amazingly fun game. Motivation is work and inspiration is playing. You will play every day of your life when you live an inspired life. Feeling the best you can about any situation and cleaning up your resistance will allow you to turn your motivations into inspiration.

What inspired step have you taken towards your desire?

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Continue reading »]]> Here is a joy meditation I made. It is a rough draft, however it will give you an idea of what is going to be on my future CD. Tell me what you think!

joy meditation

I really enjoyed making the meditation. I felt so good while doing it.

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Continue reading »]]>

Here is an audio that is a rough draft of a CD project I am working on. Tell me what you think. Also what did you learn from this audio?

Nip Worry in the Bud

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Continue reading »]]> Top 15 Placebos of the Decade

Last year, I chose the 2009 Placebo of the Year award. Congratulations to the winner Invite Change. I thought it would be fun to start 2010 with a look back at the top 15 placebos of the 2000s. Wow, it is funny to write that. I remember when I was going to party like it was 1999. That song did not get old at all in 1999.

Placebos in this sense are personal development work, events, books or audio-books that have changed my life for the better. The 15 that I mention here are the top 15 in the last 10 years that have greatly shaped who I am today. A few may surprise you, one definitely will if you haven’t read a previous blog of mine.

Number 15: A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. This book gave me a wonderful look at life and the way things are and some methods to help me remain in the present. There are times when I am driving when I will just take some breaths and drive to practice being in the now.

Number 14: Deepak Chopra/Wayne Dyer. These two people are synony

mous for me. They are similar in their teachings and are best friends. They are two of the first self-help people I listened to and they have many good ideas. Using Chopra’s process of being conscious of doing something unconscious, I stopped biting my fingernails. He said not to judge an action as right or wrong, instead notice myself doing the action. I started doing that with fingernail biting and then one day I noticed I had to cut my nails for the first time in over 20 years. That showed me actual proof that I was learning from self improvement. I enjoy both men’s senses of humor and have learned a lot from both of them over the years.

From Dyer’s teaching, I learned that living from spirit, is living from inspiration.

Number 13: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steve Covey. This is on the list for two reasons. One is the habit of which is my favorite, “Seek first to understand then be understood.” This is a wonderful way to live. Listening to people is a lost art in our culture. Often people tend to wait for their turn to talk. They do not actually listen to the person who is talking. There have been many times when I have listened to conversations and it is like two people are having completely different conversations.

The second reason is from reading this book I finally understand unconditional love. Before this book, I thought it made sense, however, after this book it just clicked. When Covey had a conversation with a client about how the love in the client’s relationship was gone, Covey kept telling him, “Well just love her.” This made the click for me.. Love isn’t something I have, it is something I do. You do not have love for someone, you love them. From this book I have been able to deepen my capacity to love and working to have love as just a state of being rather than something that I do.

Number 12: Boundary Solution. “Boundaries” is a seminar series given by Joan Casey. I was lucky to meet her at a Warrior Sage event. I was surprised to learn that she also leads seminars and was smart enough to take two of them. Using many techniques, I was given a view on my boundaries and push them. There was a time when nothing was more important than pushing my boundaries. The Boundary Solution seminars gave me a safe place to push and grow my boundaries. I took two seminars. One focused on boundaries with other people and the second was about boundaries within myself.

The main idea I took away from these seminars was an exercise where I felt a feeling with passion. I chose a feeling, fear, and then worked with it for 21 days to break my addiction to the chemical of the feeling. This excercise has allowed me to avoid creating situations that fulfill my need for fear. This has been very freeing.

Number 11: News for the Soul. www.newsforthesoul.com was a website that I would go to at least once a week. There I would listen to the people they showcase like Satyan Raja, Don Ickle, Greg Braden, Brad Yates, Amethyst Wyldfyre, James Arthur Ray, John Assaraf, and many more. News for the Soul also introduced me to a wonderful free and easy technique called Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT. Brad Yates is the person who is known as the EFT wizard. I highly recommend looking him up on Youtube and giving it a try. It might look a little funny, however it is quick, easy and free and may help you.

It is hard to pick one nugget I learned from News for the Soul. There was at least a two-year period that I listened to it constantly while working and I used a lot of great ideas from it and learned from many different perspectives. If I had to point to one thing it would be discovering EFT.

Come back next week for 10-6!

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Continue reading »]]> The seventh key to living a joyful life creates an amazing context for the other keys. The seventh key makes finding your placebo a pleasant experience. It keeps being positively selfish and receiving abundance from being negatively self centered. The seventh key creates a space where it is possible to clarify, live your purpose and move from joy to joy. Finally, the seventh key makes giving up the illusion of being done a joyful experience rather than an unsatisfying one..

7th Key to living a joyful life is love unconditionally.

One of my joys is listening to audio books in my car. I laughingly call it “attending automobile university.” This is a term I heard from an audio book by motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. One day, I was listening to Steve Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” In one chapter he was talking to a friend whose marriage was on the rocks. The guy was giving him a lot of excuses as to why he does not have love for his wife anymore. Steve Covey kept on replying to him, “then love her.” After listening to this part of the book it clicked in my brain. Love is an action, it is not something to be had or held.

With further learning about love, I have discovered that love is something that is beyond an action. It is a way of being. Living your life with unconditional love is the most freeing way of being. Unconditional love means just that. Loving without any conditions even when people are being so darn unlovable.

Unconditional love does not mean you have to allow this person into your life. In fact when you set your boundaries and live from the truth that is yours, then you are showing more love and compassion to that person than if you allowed them to walk all over you. It is not loving to do an action and then resent them. It is not loving to allow someone to do something to you that is harmful. It is perfectly loving to tell someone that you do not wish them to be in your life as long as they are acting in such a way.

Loving Yourself

How many times have you told yourself how much you love yourself? What have you done today to show you that you love you? You are the one person you have to spend the rest of your life with. No matter what happens to anyone in your life, it is you who is always going to be around. If you do not love yourself, you are spending a long freaking time with someone you do not love.

If you do not unconditionally love yourself right now, then practice loving yourself more each day. This includes loving the parts of yourself that you want to change. Every action and decision we make are for positive intents. We are only working with the skills and tools that are available to us. Many of the negative actions we do, we do because we are protecting ourselves from something. To the man who cheats on his girlfriend so he can experience freedom, to the woman who eats to fill the hole in her heart from a cheating boyfriend, there is almost always a positive reason for the things that we do. The key is to find the positive aspect of the action and finding the love for yourself in it.

Furthermore, loving yourself is changing the negative action and decision into something more positive. Since we are always being and always becoming, we can change the actions we do or the beliefs we have while loving those aspects of ourselves as well.
Loving Others

This is exactly the same with other people too. Everyone who is not you and is not psychotic are doing their actions with a positive intent. Even the most hurtful actions they take have a positive intent about them. They are just working with the tools that they have. When someone does something hurtful to you, it is the time to have compassion. No one who is happy and full of life would do anything to purposely harm another, especially in a cruel way.

Loving others unconditionally changes the way you deal with them in other ways. For instance, you will love them without expecting anything in return. Imagine the freedom you would feel if you just love people for who they are and did not expect them to love you in return. The amazing paradox is the more you love someone without wanting them to love you back, the more potential there is for them to love you. Also loving unconditionally increases your capacity to love and attracts more people into your life. Before I started practicing this principle I had only a few people I would hang around with. Now as I practice more and more unconditional loving, I have so many amazing people in my life. I know for a fact that increasing my capacity to unconditionally love is the catalyst for sparking more friendships and fun times.

It is a Practice

If you are part of the majority, then unconditionally loving is a practice. This kind of discussion is often laughed at in western society. In America, we are taught that there should be conditions to love and that it is not good to be vulnerable. Mother Teresa said it best, “The greatest paradox is that when I love until it hurts, there is no hurt.”

Homework of the Week

Look in the mirror and say, “I love you.” Do this everyday until it feels good.

Record ten people who are in your life. For each person listed write at least five things that you love about them..

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Continue reading »]]> The first key to a living a life of joy is a general key. The first key can be dangerous if you do not take responsibility for your life. You must believe that you are your own guru. Please read the four previous blogs if you have not read them.

The first Joyous Expansion key to living a joyful life is: Find Your Placebo.

The placebo effect is used in the medical field. It has been shown that some people are able to cure themselves with the power of their beliefs. Some people are so trusting that a doctor can give them a pill and tell them it will cure their headache, they are able to cure their headache even if the pill is a sugar pill Researchers testing new drugs have to test whether or not their drug works better than people deciding to feel better by eating sugar pills. Unlike medicines, the only long term side effect to finding your placebo is a better quality of sex, a more joyous life and more love in your relationships.

When it comes to happiness, what if everything is a placebo? In my studies I haven’t found anything that has worked with all people. The trick is finding the right placebo that works for you.

We live in an age where there is more to read about living a happy life than ever. There are hundreds if not thousands of books on meditations, techniques, and inspirational stories. Everyone has access to therapists, life coaches, acupuncturists, massage therapists, and spa treatments..

Click on the website http://www.time-for-time.com/howold.htm. Enter in your age and see how old you are in days. That is how many months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds on this earth that you haven’t been living up to your potential. This is the time you have lived without finding the placebos in your life that bring you to a happier state of being.

Ten years from now you will live 127 months, 521 weeks, 3,652 days, 87,628 hours, and 6,257,699 minutes. If you plan on living for ten more years do you want to live them with more joy and happiness or how you are at this moment?

How much time in your day do you dedicate to finding new actions, ideas, activities, books, movies and seminars that will allow you to live the life that you want to live?

In my time I have found many placebos that have increased the joy in my life. I have taken a few seminars from a group called Warrior Sage. I have read many books that have inspired new thoughts and have brought me new techniques to live a more inspired and joyful life. In fact, August 28 is my five year anniversary finally deciding to make finding my placebos a priority.

An important aspect of finding your placebo is discovering something that works for you. If something does not work for you, drop it and find something else. In my search, I have found techniques and books that did not sit well with me. Just because something works for someone else does not mean it will work for you. The opposite is true as well. Something that works for many people is reiki. Reiki is a spiritual practice where one receives healing from another person by having them lay their hands on them. The idea is that they are the conduit for healing energy that is coming from a loving source. The idea of healing from a loving source interested me. I went to a few classes and even some reiki circles. After trying this, I decided that it is just not for me. Reiki is a placebo for many people and I honor them for finding it. I am sure some of the placebos that I have found do not sit well with all others.

Something that has worked for me is the Emotional Freedom Technique. EFT is a therapy where you tap on certain points of your body. One of the great things about EFT is that it works for some people and is easy and free to learn. Joining a group and participating in a technique called borrowing benefits has worked wonders in my life. People who have met me in the last two years would be surprised to learn that I once disliked hugging. There was something about the closeness and the touching that bothered me. I have many therapeutic theories as to why that was the case, however knowing those theories did not help me in my desire for closeness and hugging. By tapping on my hugging with a group, I now love to hug. I believe that I am the best at giving hugs and that hugs can bring great healing in people’s lives.

Doesn’t happiness come from within?

The short answer to this question is yes. The long answer to this question is of course. Happiness is something that comes from within. One of the unfortunate parts of being human is most of us do not actually believe this. Believing that happiness comes from within is something that a lot of people understand. However, they have not put it into practice. If they did, they would be happy.

When you read something that inspires you, talk to someone who helps you or listen to an amazing audio book that changes your life, it isn’t coming from the outside. What is actually happening is for that brief moment in time you have let down the resistance to your own joy that has been inside of you all along. It is like you are in a room and the sun is shining outside. What the books did was open the drapes to let in the sunshine. The sun was shining the entire time. Believing that the book, seminar, guru, television personality, priest or therapist is the reason that you are happy is like believing that opening the drapes created the sunlight.

What if you are already happy?

Then you are in a perfect spot to keep up the momentum of happiness. Newton’s first law is the law of inertia. An object that is in motion will stay in motion. If you are already happy, why wait for something to go wrong to find a way to bring you back to happiness?

One day I got a psychic card reading for fun. One thing the psychic told me was there was a book that had a meditation for health that she found very helpful. She told me she tends to listen to it when she is sick and when she does she finds herself feeling better and more inspired to do things to change her predicament. The question that I wanted to ask her was, “Why do you wait until you are sick?” If she continued on this meditation when she was well, she will keep up the inertia and live more days of feeling well.

This is the same for you. When you are feeling happy, it is still time to find and keep on doing the actions that make you happy. Keep it up.

Only doing joyful actions when you are upset is like only servicing your car when something goes wrong. Changing the oil every three months helps prevent your car from breaking down. I would imagine that you are more important to you than your car.

My Services

Working together we will find your placebos and keep up the momentum. In fact working with me will be one of your placebos as you will feel more joyful after our session. Also I will provide homework assignments that are geared toward finding out if they are something that will bring more joy into your life. Being a person who brings joy more joy into your life is a passion of mine.

http://www.joyousexpansion.com

Homework of the week

Buy one book or read one article that inspires you.

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