positive thinking

17 Mar 2012 No Comments

Love The Rain

“Over the last few days little pearls of wisdom have been spilling forth from strangers in the most random of places, and each one has inspired a different act of kindness.

1. Thoughts create words create reality. On Saturday at the beginning of a gym class my instructor told us she was having a terrible morning, she was a magnet for things going wrong and all she needed now was for the “stupid microphone” not to work. Having also attended the previous class (sometimes I’m a little crazy that way), I knew the microphone was working perfectly well. But sure enough, she spent ten minutes flipping switches before exclaiming ”It’s not working, as usual.” She then spent the rest of the class in turn shouting instructions and complaining about having to shout. She was so frustrated that she kept messing up the choreography. All day I thought about how easy it is to be your own worst enemy and not even realise it. I decided to make a conscious effort to be kinder to myself over the weekend. I did things that make me feel calm and happy – catching up with friends, exercising, meditating, eating well, reading, cooking… I also bought all my fruit and vegetables from a local organic market – to my great amusement the Englishman who was running the market told me I was “doing a jolly good thing for the environment but more importantly a jolly good thing for your health”.

2. Your life should love you. On Monday while I was in a shop, a fairly successful-looking woman was asked what she did for work. She laughed and gave the most amazing response I’ve ever heard: “I do whatever work loves me.” When asked what she meant, she listed an assortment of different jobs which she claimed all had one common element – they made her feel appreciated, valued, talented and loved. The lady went on to say that this was also true of people she had in her life – “How could anyone ever expect to be happy if they choose to spend time with people or work that doesn’t love them?” Of course we all know it is true, but as friend recently told me quite matter-of-factly, “Sometimes I think if I let go of every person who let me down, there wouldn’t be many people left.” I can empathise with this so strongly. But I realise more and more each day that it’s better to be surrounded by a few people that truly love you than many who don’t. Following on from this lesson I decided to make someone else feel loved and I wrote a gratitude card to my amazing friend R. She is constantly inspiring me, making me consider things from a different perspective and encouraging me to have unwavering faith in myself and the universe.

3. Love the rain. Today while waiting for my daily caffeine fix, I noticed a little girl (around five) sitting at the window of the cafe watching the rain outside. All around her us adults were complaining to each other about the cold, wet weather. This little girl, however, had a different take on things, bouncing excitedly in her seat as the raindrops fell heavier and heavier, and saying quietly: “Hello, rain! I love you. Thankyou for making the flowers grow.” If only we could maintain children’s natural ability to find such joy in things. This little girl inspired my ‘piece de resistance’ for this week (if not month): I went around to every unit on my floor (25 in total) and left a flower and a note on the doorstep reading “A random act of kindness to brighten a gloomy day.” Strange how nervous this made me – I did it so hastily you would think I was robbing the places. Maybe my last flower incident has traumatised me. I didn’t want to get “caught”; didn’t want to be judged; didn’t want to answer suspicious and ungrateful questions. I just wanted to imagine that each person came home after a stressful, rainy day to find a lovely bright flower on their doorstep that made them smile and wonder.”

Singing in the Rain video. Re-posted from Year of Kindness Blog.

by polyachka in Happiness Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

17 Sep 2011 1 Comment

The Law of Attraction in Action

Deanna Davis has a good book with practical tips and tools on how to apply the Law of Attraction to our life.

In her interpretation of the law the main steps are:

1.Choose your state

2.State your intention

3.Take inspired action

Choose your state – consciously decide how you want to feel emotionally and where you want to direct your attention. Take consistent steps to regularly create a favorable emotional state.

Techniques:

Beyond Polyanna

Thanks! A lot! (explain why and what happened today, episode that made you feel grateful, recount why this was important to you)

Gratitude exercise (Counting your blessings, Gratitude journaling, Gratitude letter, Wealth walk, The power shower, Abundance practices)

Spacemakers (release negative thoughts and replace with positive thoughts)

Peace of mind meditation, Emotional freedom technique (EFT), Sedona (The invitation)

Set your intention – sift through your references and possibilities to determine what you want to experience in your life. Make a decision to think and act in a way that will create the outcome that you want. Than focus again on choosing your state to align yourself with that intention.

Intention creates the blueprint from which you can build your life. You are the key instrument in identifying, setting, and acting on your intention. Unless you make decision that things will be different, they most decidedly wont’ be.

You need to make a decision to move your desire from the landscape of your mind into the realm of reality.

There is a realm of preferences and possibilities, you need to know your preferences and examine possibilities. Preferences are just a matter of what we like, what we appreciate, and what we’d like to experience even more of. Your ability to effectively explore the possibilities related to your preferences is directly proportional to your ability to maintain a beginner’s mind.

Expectations often precede experience. Intention is steeped in certainty – it is a decision to manifest something meaningful in your life. The decision comes from a sense of hope and eagerness, and is centered in certainty that want you want is not only possible, not only probable, but inevitable.

Techniques:

You are here and hierarchy of needs worksheet

Sifting strategies: I desire worksheet, shopping cart, mind movie

Affirmations, Vision boards and Believing is seeing exercise (meditation)

Take inspired action– from a place of calm and silence, ask yourself, “What is my next best step?” and act on it immediately with joy and energy. Once again, choose your state and provide momentum for your inspired action and to prepare you to move on to your next intention.

It emerges from a series of five simple steps: quieting your mind, asking simple questions about next steps, taking initiative in the form of immediate action, gaining momentum with consistent progress and reflecting on and building on that progress to sustain continued success. Release your resistance. Silence your mind and take small steps.

In order to move forward in life, you need to take inspired action consistently. You have to be willing to shift your focus from what you have seen in the past and what is in front of you now if you want to see the beautiful vistas that are waiting for you just beyond the horizon.

Techniques:

All about the ask (What is my next step?)

Proof of progress (catalogue and evidence your accomplishments)

Two S – supercharge (create structure/systems and support)

Rhyming reminders (Tweak of the week, Go with the flow, Snuggle the struggle)

by polyachka in Happiness Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

16 Sep 2011 1 Comment

The Secret and The Law of Attraction

There are several books on the law of attraction and I want to give you a quick comparison of two approaches.
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne:

Three steps are:
1. Ask
2. Believe that you receive it and feel good
3. Receive

You must know exactly what you want and ask for it.
Sounds easy, but it may not be. Your conscious and subconscious minds are filled with wants, desires, and fears. What you want needs to be exact. You cannot just think that you want to be rich. You must have a tangible goal, such as “I want to sell 20 copies of my new book in 10 days”. Make sure that your actions follow your thoughts. You cannot just think of selling the books, you must actually have a book that you are proud of and that people will want to buy.

You must believe that what you want is already yours.
This creates positive energy. If you can visualize the action as having already happened this will complete an important part of the process.

You must be in a state of mind to receive.
Energy flows where energy goes. We are one, we are all connected, part of one energy field, one creative source. It is absolute perfection. Divine mind is the one and only reality.
Negative thoughts are the cause of fear. Competition is the example of separation, there is enough for everyone, no limits.
Become a creative mind. Whether you think you can or you can’t do something either way you are right. There is a law of supply, of infinite supply. And Universe is a supplier of everything.
You are not your past, you have all the power within you. Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want. So what are you going to do now? Chose now.

The Law of Attraction by Abraham- Jerry and Esther Hicks:
There are three main laws:
1. The law of attraction – you attract your thoughts
2. The law of deliberate creation – visualize what you want to receive intentionally
3. The law of allowing – allow others and yourself receive what they and you want

There are three main steps in the Law of Attraction:
1. Identify your desire
2. Give your desire attention
3. Allow
Affirmations from Abraham:
I want perfect health
I want prosperity
I want great relationships
I am wanting to attract those who are in harmony with me – physical and non- physical
I am growth seeking being
I am healthy
I am happy
I am prosperous
I am interacting with those who are in harmony
I am full of joy

And my favorite affirmations from “The help” movie:

I am smart

I am kind

I am important

by polyachka in Happiness Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

21 Jun 2011 No Comments

Purpose+Passion=

Those, who don’t have the time for a whole week of audio course about Life of Purpose or don’t have the money to do Tony Robbins training, which I was told costs about 10K, but still want to learn about purpose and how to apply it to their lives, should try for free what I did last year at the Strategic Volunteering Workshop. It works!

It was one of those Mondays when you don’t want to get out of your bed, especially when you are not employed. I still made an effort and took the train to Downtown Crossing to attend Strategic Volunteering workshop at the Work Place.  I didn’t have any expectations, just signed up because I truly believe in volunteer work, to me  it means not giving something away but sharing and enriching ourselves and the world around us. I was curious to see what others have to say about strategic volunteering.

The instructor Mark McCurdy, also Founder and President of The Nonprofit Career Coach, delivered an interesting presentation to 10 participants. Main idea was to follow your heart, find what you love to do and focus on it… You would say that we all know this concept as it was mentioned in many philosophical schools, religions and books like The Alchemist and The Monk who sold his Ferrari, etc. True, but the twist is that you apply this concept to volunteering, meaning – not necessary leaving your current day-time job and switching to something else right away.

Volunteering is a way to connect you with your passion, which at the end may lead you to your perfect job you just don’t know how to find yet … As often we have one idea of what we want to do but in reality it may become  something different. As Tony Robbins said “Sometimes you need to lose your dreams to find your destiny”.

I also liked how Mark explained the process of finding what you love to do and implementing it, that is how to connect several elements which are  Passion+Purpose+Strategic Volunteering +Focus

Very often we only focus on passion or purpose but never connect both, never mind applying them to reality by doing volunteer work or seriously focusing on it. So here is what I got out of this workshop:

What is your passion/favorite hobby/interest or what are you good at? I like to ask questions and connect to people through conversation/story, also I’m interested in volunteering.

What community/population do you like to serve? To help unhappy lost people.  Because I was depressed myself in the past, I want to help unhappy people.

How do you think you combine the two into strategic volunteering?  Besides doing this blog and telling about volunteering, I may want to reach out to whole communities of depressed people and write newsletters for them about ways to get involved in volunteer work,  create workshops and events for them.

Focus on what you defined - narrow your goal and be consistent… I spoke to Mark that instead of general population I should focus on non-profits and groups that support communities of depressed people/victims of depression. Mark mentioned that “Collaboration is King” (not cash anymore). He also suggested doing video/audio interviews of volunteers/non-profits for http://nptimes.com/, which is almost like TV show about volunteering world. All I have to do is to focus on these ideas and act upon them – be proactive and reach out to those organizations/communities and create samples of my work.

Imagine that you were at the same workshop, what would you come up with? How many people do you know who decided to do something they are very passionate about even though it was not their profession and they became very successful by eventually pursuing it?

by polyachka in Happiness Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,