Your Need To Know

Living successfully and getting the things you want in life is simply a matter of solving the problems that stand between where we are now and where we want to be.

Your goal is your future. Your problem is bridging the gap between where you are now and your goal.

Everybody has problems. That is a part of life. And successful people have the same kinds of problems that other people have. There are millions of people with problems identical to our own. And there are millions of people who feel they can never reach their goals because their problems are beyond their ability to overcome.

If the most successful people have the same problems as all of us have, then it boils down to a person’s ability to solve them. Successful people are not people without problems; they’re simply people who have learned to solve their problems. People who can use their mind.

The only thing about a man that is a man is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse. Archibald MacLeish

The human mind is the one thing that separates us from the rest of the creatures of the earth. Everything comes to us through our minds. Our knowledge, abilities, talents, beliefs and love - everything - is reflected through our minds. And everything that comes to us in the future will be a result of the extent to which we use our minds!

But our own mind is the last place most people will turn for help. Why is it that most people will not turn to the vast resources of their mind when faced with problems?

Most People Have Never Learned How to Think!

This is a fact… Many people never think at all during their entire lives. They react to stimuli, they remember, they ask other people what to do, but they do not think for themselves. They fall into comfortable routines of daily living, go through the motions, and do it all again the next day.

When these people are faced with a problem, they will go to great lengths to avoid thinking. They may ask advice from someone - usually someone who doesn’t know any more than they do - or do whatever they have done in the past, but rarely will they put on their thinking cap.

Exercise Your Mind

If you want to develop the muscles in your body, you would do some sort of daily exercising. If you want to develop your mind, it is done in the same way except the returns are out of all conceivable proportion to the time and energy spent.

In his Lead the Field series, Earl Nightingale offered the following “mind exercise.”

If you total the hours in a year and subtract the sleeping hours, you’ll find that the average person has about 6000 waking hours of which less than 2000 are spent on the job (40-hour week). This leaves about 4000 hours we can call discretionary hours with which a person can do pretty much as he/she pleases.

I recommend that you devote just one hour a day, five days a week to exercising your mind. You don’t even have to do it on weekends. The best time is in the morning when the mind is clear and the house is quiet.

During this hour every day, take a completely blank sheet of paper. At the top of the page, write your present, primary goal clearly and simply. Then, since our future depends on the way in which we handle our work, write down as many ideas as you can for improving that which you now do. Try to think of 20 possible ways in which the activity that fills your day can be improved. You won’t always get 20, but even one idea is good.

Two important points to remember: 1) This is not particularly easy, and , 2) most of your ideas won’t be any good. At first you’ll find that your mind is a little reluctant to be hauled up and out of the old familiar rut. But as you think about your work and the ways it might be improved, write down every idea that pops into your head, no matter how absurd it might seem.

The most important thing this extra hour accomplishes is that it deeply imbeds your goal into your subconscious mind and starts the whole vital machinery first thing in the morning. Now, this means you’ll be thinking about your goal and ways of improving your performance 6 1/2 full, extra working weeks a year! Six and a half 40-hour weeks devoted to thinking and planning.

Starting each day thinking, you’ll find that your mind will continue working all day long. You’ll find that at odd moments, when you least expect it, really great ideas will bubble up from your subconsciuos. When they do, write them down as soon as you can. Just one great idea can completely revolutionize your life.

I’ve used this system for years and it has given me some of the most gratifying and rewarding experiences of my life. And it costs only five hours a week- five hours out of 168. Is it worth it?

It’s like spending five hours a week digging in a solid vein of pure gold, because your mind is all of that and much more.

Each of us tends to underestimate our own abilities. If we could just realize that we have deep reservoirs of great ability, even genius, within ourselves, and that these reservoirs can be tapped if we will just dig deep enough, we would certainly see miracles in our lives.

Gina

Technorati Tags: Earl Nightingale, Mind Power, Subconscious Mind

To experience life in the “present moment” is not a mysterious thing and it is not a big deal. It simply involves putting less attention on worries and regrets.  Less attention on the future, the past, and things that bother you.

Living in the present moment means living life “now”, with your attention on the present, and not allowing your mind to take you to experiences away from “now”.  When you manage to do this, you can enjoy each moment to a fuller extent.  You can bring out the best in your performance and creativity. You become less distracted by your needs and concerns.

Present moment living, getting in touch with your life now, is at the heart of effective living.  When you think about it, there really is no other moment you can live.  Now is all there is, and the future is just another present moment to live when it arrives.  Dr. Wayne Dyer

The happiest people know that no matter what happened yesterday, last month, or last year - no matter what may happen tomorrow, next month, or next year, “now” is the only place where happiness can actually be experienced.

This may sound confusing, so let me explain.  I don’t mean that you’re not affected by your past, or not concerned with tomorrow, because we all certainly are.   There are things in our past that we remember fondly and this makes us happy thinking about them.  There are our dreams and expectations of happy moments yet to come.  What I mean is that we can’t be bothered or worried over something that has already happened, or something that has not yet happened.

Yesterday… Today… and Tomorrow

There are two days in every week about which we should not worry, two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension.

One of these days is Yesterday with its mistakes and cares, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains. Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control.

All the money in the world cannot bring back Yesterday. We cannot undo a single act we performed; we cannot erase a single word said. Yesterday is gone.

The other day we should not worry about is Tomorrow with its possible adversities, its burdens, its large promise and poor performance. Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control.

Tomorrow’s sun will rise, either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds - but it will rise. Until it does, we have no stake in Tomorrow, for it is yet unborn.

This leaves only one day - Today. Any man can fight the battles of just one day; it is only when you or I add the burdens of those two awful eternities - Yesterday - and Tomorrow - that we break down.

It is not the experience of Today that drives men mad - it is the remorse or bitterness for something which happened Yesterday and the dread of what Tomorrow may bring.

Let us, therefore, live but One Day at a Time.

Children seem to do this intuitively and seem to understand that life is a series of present moments. They seem to understand that each moment is important and should be experienced to the fullest. If only we as adults could intuitively do the same.

If you can take this to heart and begin to live more in the present moment, you will find you spend less time being bothered by “life”, and more time enjoying it. You will spend less energy convincing yourself that “now” isn’t good enough, and more time enjoying the wonderful moment you are in - the present moment.

Gina

Technorati Tags: Personal Development, Happiness, Self-improvement

I read a very interesting article yesterday in WebMD magazine (July/August issue).  The title of the article is Painful Conversation.

What made this article so interesting to me is the fact that the medical profession is giving more credence to the power of the human mind in dealing with pain.  While I have read other articles on mind and medicine, and Mind-Body Therapies for treating pain,  I was happy to see this article in a mainstream magazine read by so many.

This article is written in a question and answer format, with answers given by Scott M. Fishman, MD.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

Q: What new treatments are you particularly excited about?

A: One has to do with teaching patients how to overcome their pain.  We know that the human mind can create pain but that it also has enormous power to take it away; we can teach people skills that were known to Buddhists hundreds of thousands of years ago.  It’s the same focusing technique athletes use to help them improve their performance.  Take Lance Armstrong on that last hill of the Tour De France.  Even though his legs are burning, he can divert his attention from the pain to the goal of performance.  And you can do this with many different techniques.  In this case, he’s used a cognitive technique to change the internal message, “I’m hurting, I better stop” to “I better keep going but perform differently.”  A pain psychologist teaches these techniques.  What I tell my patients is that pain psychologists are really coaches.  They’re not there to diagnose an illness, but to help you learn techniques to use your brain better – just like you would go to a physical therapist to learn techniques to use your body better.  It’s the same thing.

Q: You’re describing the mind/body connection.

A: Yes.  You can’t have pain without a mind so it’s all connected.  My patients are always afraid I’m going to think their pain is all in their head, that they have a mental illness rather than a physical illness, and ignore the real problem.  I try to counsel them that it’s quite the opposite, that any pain requires a mind and you can’t  have pain without a head; so recognizing that opens up all sorts of opportunities to help cope and reduce suffering.

I think of the mind/body approaches as techniques that tap into the body’s own pharmacy.  Things like mindfulness and biofeedback and cognitive behavioral retraining, or guided imagery, even self-hypnosis.  Things like acupuncture and massage.  We don’t know how these things work, but we’re certain they’re helpful.

Scott M. Fishman, MD, American Pain Foundation president and chairman, is Chief of the Division of Pain Medicine and professor of anesthesiology at the University of California, Davis.  He wrote The War on Pain: How Breakthroughs in the New Field of Pain Medicine Are Turning the Tide Against Suffering.  A University of Massachusetts Medical School graduate, he is board certified in internal medicine, psychiatry, and pain and palliative medicine.

Click the logo to read more on Mind-Body Therapies at WebMD:

Gina

Technorati Tags:Mind-Body Connection, Health, Pain Management