Self Improvement Information

Life can be a joyful ride.  It has many ups and downs.  There seems to be a couple of universal speed bumps.  They are money and relationships.  Two important things that have huge effect on our perception of our ride through life.  In relationships, a tough concept for some is that we teach people how to treat us.  Some of you are saying, “right on, sister, I believe that!”  Some of you are saying, “that can’t possible be true!”

Let me give you an example.  We teach people how to treat us by what we are willing to accept from them.  You have probably heard the old saying, “he/she was born with a silver spoon in their mouth”.  Mine was a different upbringing.  I was born with a “guilt spoon in my mouth.”

Guilt is a very powerful manipulation tool.  It is very effective way to get what you want.  It is, also, a very under handed tool that scars both the user and the recipient.  When I learned that I am responsible for my own life, I believed it.  I didn’t bat an eye at the concept that I create all the things I wasn’t happy with in my life.  What was more difficult, for me, was taking credit for the good things.

Being raised with the idea that everything that happened bad in our household was my fault led to my feelings of inadequacy, depression, and of course that familiar feeling, guilt.  This led to my feelings of being a door mat.  That is what I was projecting and I attracted strong personalities that used guilt techniques to interact and control me.  As long as I accepted guilt, people used it.

We teach people how to treat us by what we project. When I was in my twenties, I started taking horse back riding lessons.  I had always wanted to learn to ride.  In my lessons, I always wanted to ride “Snickers”, a buckskin, who was easy to ride.  She always did what I wanted and my riding experience was fun.  My instructor always made me ride Casper.  He was a white horse with mind of his own.  When I had a lesson riding him, I had to work. I came to realize that when I projected confidence and made him do what I wanted, my riding lesson became more fun and I learned more.  I grew to enjoy the challenge he presented.  I realized that life and relationships, we attract the situations and the people that put us out of our comfort zone to learn from it.

When a relationship is a challenge for me, I ask myself, what am I projecting?  What am I accepting from that person that is making the relationship less fulfilling? Why am I attracting that? What do I need to learn from this particular relationships.  The biggest question I ask myself, is this relationship worth working through the challenges?

As I have grown older and wiser, I have grown more comfortable with what I will accept and what I project.  My relationships with others is much more fulfilling, with less drama.  I feel peace regarding how I teach others to treat me.

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We live in a post “Secret” world.  Many people feel, to manifest what they want, they must live in a perpetual state of happiness or positive feelings.  Sorry, folks, I think that is just a load of poo.  I know many people in the “self help” arena would be very disgusted with me for what I just wrote.  But, seriously, do you believe that it is possible to be happy all the time?

Let’s look back, historically, at a couple of famous individuals.  First, let’s look at the life and times of Jesus Christ.  Do you believe that he was happy 100% of the time?  Probably not.  There were many things that happened to him that couldn’t possible make a guy happy.  Necessary to go through, but not a happiness inducer.  How about Mother Teresa?  Do you think that working with sick and dying people every single day plastered a grin on her face every morning?  Maybe, maybe not.

Feeling sad or depressed doesn’t automatically label you a failure.  Negative feelings can be healthy.  It helps us better understand the opposite of those feelings.  Do you think we would know happiness for the joy that it is if we had never experienced being sad?  Every one of us will endure something that makes us unhappy; losing someone you love, have a job loss, etc.  Those things are out of our control.  If we push those feelings away, without acknowledging them, they will return with a vengeance.

What we choose to focus on is in our control.  Here are 5 tips to increasing happiness.

1.  If you like something, enjoy it. No guilt, just enjoy it!  I enjoy boating.  I love being on a lake.  I enjoy feeling the sun on my face and the wind in my hair.  I enjoy smelling coconut suntan lotion.  It brings pictures to my mind of many fun and happy times on the lake.  Every chance I get I head for the lake.  Some day, I will live on a lake.  I dream about that day.

2.  If you don’t like something, avoid it. It is perfectly okay to avoid things you don’t like.  I don’t like crowds.  I don’t like standing in line for things.  Perfect example:  women’s restrooms.  Large meeting places must have been designed by clueless men.  There are always lines for the women’s restroom.  Men don’t understand that concept until they have had to wait for their women to stand in a bathroom line (perhaps holding her purse?)  Is it a tough concept to have 2 women’s restrooms for every men’s? Food for thought for the architects out there.

3.  If you can’t avoid it, change it. If I have to get into a crowd situation I try to do things differently.  I avoid drinking a lot of beverages so I can stay out of the bathroom line.  I eat something before I go, thus avoiding the food lines.  I stay in my seat and keep the milling around to a minimum.  Changing what I can to do to avoid what I don’t like increases my happiness.

4.  If you can’t change it, accept it. If I am in a big crowd I don’t focus on what I don’t like.  I look at the advantages of being there.  Some of my best times have been in big crowds; such as conventions, concerts, and parties.  If I spend my time complaining I make everyone around me, and myself, less happy.  I accept it.

5.  Change your attitude. Changing my viewpoint is very important.  All things are seen through the eyes of perspective.  If I go through my life saying and thinking that I hate crowds I would have missed out on those happy times I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  Simply changing how I look at those things, and looking for what I like in those situations increases my happiness.

While we can’t be happy 24/7/365, we can increase our happy moments by choosing how we look at situations.  The times that I have been unable to do so, I have learned to let it go.  The best method, I have found,  for releasing unhappy thoughts is the Sedona Method.  If you are interested in finding out more, check out the website and get a free DVD explaining the method.  It is amazing.

If you found something of value in this post, feel free to pass it on to your peeps!  A re-tweet for the peeps is appreciated.

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There are many ways to build a business life.  Whether you work in your own entrepreneurial business or as an employee in someone else’s business. Some people work hard and the fruits of their labor come with extreme amounts of pressure and stress.  They work long hours.  They have little time to enjoy family, hobbies, and relaxation.  As soon as they stop, due to illness or misfortune, they seem to be swept up by an invisible force that seems to carry them away.  They spiral into more health problems or financial ruin.

A few months back, I was sitting next to a gentleman at a seminar.  The relationships side of my personality took over and I just had to make a new acquaintance.  Hoping to find areas of commonality, I asked him what he did for a living.  He explained that he was a Yoga instructor with his own business in a nearby town.  Being interested in Yoga and knowing that it can be a competitive field for instructors, I asked him how that was working for him.  His response was, “quite well, I have more business than I can handle”.  I asked him how he got his clients and he responded, “they just come to me”.

I have observed businesses that function similar to the first and, also, to the second examples. I have puzzled over it.  How can some folks have an almost effortless experience building their business like the Yoga instructor, and some people always seem to be swimming upstream against a waterfall of adversity.

We would all like to be part of a business that grows, with what seems like effortless ease.  Most people don’t have a problem with the part of the equation that calls for working hard.  That is not where the challenge lies.  It is the mindset, or being in “the flow”.

I have been on a quest to answer the question, how do we get to “the flow”?  I have been making considerable headway on answering that question.  As the quotation says, “when the student is willing the teacher will appear.”  I stumbled into this video from “Engage Today 2009″ which was a conference held in September of 2009.  This conference had some heavy hitters, in the success arena, in their line up of speakers.  A 16 CD set will be released on January 28, 2010 with all of these speeches.  Looking at the line up of speakers this should be a great investment.  You can check out the preview videos here.

The 9 minute video I am showing you today, which is just a teaser, is bits and pieces from a speech given by Vishen Lakhiani from Finer Minds.  Even in this preview video he gives some interesting answers to the question about how to get into the flow.  If you enjoy this post please re-tweet.