Last weekend I have uploaded my first slide show on Author Stream. I only came across the site last week.

Basically Author Stream is a slide show/power point presentation sharing site where members get to upload and share their own presentations while downloading or rating others’.

My first slide show is a re-adaptation of an old post of mine entitled ‘Reboot your life: 20 mental barriers to let go of’. I have shortened it to what I think are the 10 essential points out of those 20.

Here it goes. Hope you like it. It is free to use, embed in your site or share with others….so just go ahead.I might also keep putting some more posts in this format if I see that it goes well with my readers

No related posts.

In all the personal development literature, probably the hottest and most read category is productivity -  specifically about  finding ways to deal with procrastination and getting things done.

This week I came across an excellent article written by Carolyn Rubenstein of A Beautiful Ripple Effect about ways of getting more done. Make sure to visit her site as there are more top class articles and excellent advice to be found there. Carolyn is also the author of Perseverance – True voices of cancer survivors.

The article was split in a two post series which I would like to summarize here for your info.

Carolyn starts by explaining how one of the main reasons of having our work flow blocked or even procrastinate about starting is because we get engulfed in a mind pattern sometimes referred to as the ‘Analysis-paralysis’. This state is when we get overwhelmed by the details or by the weight of projects and deadlines looming in our brains.

This is where we get debilitated. We get detached from the flow process and the more we struggle the deeper we whirl in the analysis-paralysis mind trap. Cheer up though cause there are also really effective ways of steering away from these self-limiting patterns. I would like to list them down in point form for you here:

Pt #1 – Weakening the analysis paralysis

1. Change your perspective: More often than not, getting stuck in a rut is more an issue about our internal perspective rather than an external obstacle that we face. The mind sometimes gets in a loop while trying to solve a problem and hence we end up spinning wheels. Carolyn suggests taking a wider, different view of the issue. It’s like having your nose stuck to a painting & you’re only seeing certain details. You move back you see the whole painting afresh. Very important. See the problem from a different angle and question whether your expectations are  realistic or overshot. If not try to realign them to middle ground.

2. Engage your right-brain: Now this is a point I totally liked. Being a right-brainer myself, I could fully dig  into it. Analysis is the domain of the left-hemisphere of the brain. It’s linear, logical analysis while the  right-brain is more intuitive, synthesizing ideas and joining the dots in a larger picture. And yes, it is more  creative. When you get stuck in analysis-paralysis, you have to switch activity from left to right and stop what  you’re doing to engage in more playful & creative tasks such as brainstorming & mind-mapping ideas on a whiteboard  with colourful markers (something I love and really works for me!!!), drawing for a few minutes with crayons or  pastels or jot down some fun & crazy ideas.

3. Move that body!: Simple, amazing & can only take a few seconds. Just move away from your chair and do any  movement and exercise – stretch, jumping on the spot, aerobics, Tai Chi, walk, etc. Moving the body is like a  portal to a more relaxed, aware and clear state of mind. This is why you feel that sense of well being after a walk  or a run. That is also why people get entranced by dancing or moving their bodies to a rhythm.

Pt #2 – Re-connect with your over-arching goal

4. Re-frame your work into something exciting: use your imagination to find a compelling and exciting reason to  hook you into starting or continuing your work. Try to think about how you would excite and convince someone else  to do what you do. This will re-spark your commitment and refocus your energies and will into your work.

5. Write a goal statement: This is where you set your specific goals. Carolyn suggests using specific dates in your goal statement like “Today is September 1, 2010. I am confident and calm now that my research proposal is complete.” This is a very good goal statement. In fact I have read elsewhere that is very important to self-talk  your brain in the present tense. This is where the trick is. It’s not “I will finish X by Y” but “I am now writing  the report” or “I am now cleaning the garage”. This ‘tricks’ your brain into believing that you are already doing  it so it gets on the fast track towards the task you want to complete.

6. Create a mind-map: Break down the actions into mini-action for better management. Mind-maps are an excellent  way to organize and map out your ideas. That is another way of saying “sorting out your own head and getting more  efficient at realizing a complicated series of tasks with ease and focus”. You can use free mind mapping software  like Free Mind or The Brain.

7. Focus on Action: After all the preparation you are ready to set off. One last thing – Below is a 2 minute focus  exercise in the form of an affirmation to keep get you revved up and ready to go. Carolyn quoted it from the book The Now Habit and it is described as “a two-minute procedure for shifting rapidly to the flow state by replacing  guilt and stress with stress-free focus on the present.”

“With each breath I am tapping into my creative self, opening more and more of my brain power to approach my task.  My conscious mind may not know yet what to do, just as it doesn’t know how a puzzle will look until it’s finished.

I may not know how I’m going to do this, but soon something will come to me, and then a little bit more will come. I will find the process very interesting, because while I don’t know yet what the solution will be, I do know that  I will do it, and that part of me already knows how to do it. It will also be interesting to see how time feels  different at this level of the mind and to discover about how much I will accomplish in such a short period of  clock time.

Counting up from 1 to 3, I am becoming more quietly alert, and I am now ready to work in a focused, concentrated  way, rapidly going from not knowing to knowing how to start: 1. I am more alert, relaxed, and energized, ready to  use the superior wisdom of my subconscious mind. 2. I am ready to come all the way up to full alertness with my  eyes open, eager to work in conjunction with the creative faculties of my mind. 3. By taking action, you will begin to create momentum by weakening the resistance you feel between you and the  finish line. Moving forward, you will likely confront analysis paralysis again, but each time you do, you can  approach it with strength rather than letting it seize your control.”

Related posts:

1. 5 Steps to Boost Self-Confidence & Self-Esteem

This is a guest post by James Adams

To get ahead, you need to take risks. Before jumping into a project, you need to assess the risks that you are willing to take. Here are ten considerations for smart risk taking.

1. Take lessons from the past

Every success and every failure has lessons to be learned. Is this a new project? If it is, there are others who have taken similar risks. Is this an improvement on an older project? What are the lessons that can be learned from the older project? Every failure is a teaching experience.

2. Set a time frame

When you prepare yourself to take a risk, establish a time frame within which you expect to see results happen. If you know that it takes at least two months to know whether something is successful, don’t start measuring results after the first month. Give your ideas time to come together.

3. Define success

Assessing the success or failure of a project means that the qualities of success have been defined. For that new website to be successful, what needs to be in place? Do you need to have X unique visitors? Do you need to make X in sales? Define your winning scenario.

4. Conquer your Fears

Fears lead to doubt. Doubt leads to inactivity. There are many people who are content to sit on the sidelines because they are not willing to take the risks required. You are willing to take those risks. Don’t let doubt and fear get in your way.

5. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Do not be so wholly committed to your project as to put everything on the line. Your venture could be a great success or a great failure. If your venture ends in disaster, have something in reserve from which to rebuild. Like in gambling, bring only what you’re willing to lose.

6. Don’t endanger yourself

Before you take this risk, think about what you are doing. Is there some part which, if it goes badly, can endanger your life physically or emotionally? Does the idea inherently bring harm to the people around you? Make sure that the rewards are going to be worth the risk that you’re taking. Else, don’t take the risk.

7. Do it now

Take immediate action. The momentum from the idea will carry you through. That progress that you make in the beginning will set the precedent for how the project is going to progress. Start immediately and take the risk. Create a foundation on which to build.

8. Be willing to fail

The risk that you are planning to take might be foolproof, but still allow for the possibility of failure. There is nothing wrong with failure, it just primes the pump for future successes. Any project that you start has the possibility of failure.

9. Don’t listen to nay sayers

Some people are determined to take you down a few notches. They will reveal their lack of confidence. They’ll tell you that your vision is too risky. They see that your risk taking is a threat to their well being. Don’t allow the naysayers to take you from your dreams.

10. Be committed

Great ideas sometimes fail because the person behind it was not wholly committed to the effort. If your dream does not have enough energy, it will end up on the floor as a mediocre success or a failure. Believe that your project can work. Believe that the risk that you’re taking is worth all of the effort.

Risk taking doesn’t have to be terrifying. Plan out what you’re wanting to do. Think about the risks that are involved. If the risk is not worth the effort, go back to the drawing board. If the risk is worth the effort, go for it!

As a tech writer, James Adams covers developments in technology for a leading ink cartridges store based in the UK. He spends most of his time reviewing products such as HP 901XL ink, but when time permits he post about art or design on their blog.

No related posts.

We live in a world in which egocentric views,short-sighted decisions, disrespect for our natural environment, wars over ideologies, etc (the list goes on a couple of paragraphs) are still prevalent and recurrent themes even now at the dawn of the 21st century.

Idealists like myself like to believe in an emerging culture of creative thinkers & leaders that will slowly guide us to break free from the old beliefs & power structures until we reach a tipping point after which global change starts accelerating very fast on its own accord.

Some people choose to refer to this as the global paradigm shift in the way we see the world, some others refer to it as the evolution of human consciousness. Others talk about the transcendence of individual & collective consciousness from the grips of the ego.

The latter is a nice metaphor which I opt to use for its ability to fit in diverse fields of human knowledge such as Spirituality, Jungian Psychology, Metaphysics, Consciousness studies, Systems thinking and others.

I see the world as still being dominated by ego-consciousness simply because the majority of individuals on this planet are still held by the grips of their ego. The rite of passage from ego-based consciousness to a more transendent eco-consciousness is an individual one as much as it is a collective one. Spiritual teachers like Andrew Cohen in fact believe that this shift in human consciousness operates collectively and synergistically within a group or network of like minded individuals with the same intentions & obectives.

This notion struck me as very plausible. In fact I very much believe that just like our language, thought,behaviour & belief systems do not operate in isolation but are influenced and partially determined by our social environment, so is our spiritual development. We have to start seeing things from an ecological point of view and not a mechanistic one because life & consciousness, like all other things, are networked and highly interconnected. It is no coincidence that many disciplines are now giving a lot of importance to understanding phenomena in terms of network dynamics and complex systems.

The shift from ego-based consciousness to an eco-based consciousness is also a naturally painful one. Parallels can be drawn. In our lifetime, growing up, accepting changes,taking responsibility, breaking away from the mold and leaving our comfy cocoon is never a smooth transition. But it’s part of life if we are to mature and wisen up.

I would like to suggest a few points to contemplate and meditate upon in order to open up one’s mind to the possibilty of eco-consciousness. One of my intentions is to integrate these perspectives in my general world view and habits. Here they go:

1.Don’t take it personally: It’s not about you.

We are emotional and subjective creatures by nature. The concoction of high emotional arousal together with taking things too personally or subjectively can be a lethal one. Throughout history millions of murders, torture, wars, suffering, etc was purely the result of these ingredients. Taking things too personally makes us irrascible, touchy,stressed out and often hurt.

Entering eco-consciousness means above all to feel and understand that it’s not about us, that we are tiny fleeting fragments of the whole and that our concept of the self, no matter how strong and real, is only a construct. We hold no special position in the general scheme of things even though it naturally feels that way since we are looking at the world from our first-person point of view. Understanding this is hard but an ultimate liberation. Imagine seeing things with clarity and objectivity even if you are being criticized, taunted or ridiculed. Imagine keeping a cool head instead of losing perspective or being hurt.

This is not a nihilistic position as some tend to complain. It’s not aimed at destroying the sense of self or not looking after your personal rights and freedom but about reframing your reality through a broader perspective in which the self is only a part of the whole.

2.Everything is interconnected: Are you a node or an end?

Another important shift is that from having a sense of seperateness to a sense of oneness and unity. This is a recurrent theme in many spiritual traditions but again it is naturally a counterintuitive one since we are programmed to identify ourselves and the world as different objects seperated by physical boundaries.

Modern science is also reaching a point of understanding the interconnectedness of everything in the universe at the very basic quantum level of matter. I very much suspect that this interconnectedness happens also at the level of consciousness including our states of mind,emotions and thought but we have yet to understand this scientifically.

Try to imagine yourself being connected to a universal network. You can either be a node, that is a medium or conduit that connects and conveys energy,love, positive emotions and good vibes or an end terminal that doesn’t connect to anything else. When you are a node, you are a mover and shaker of life. You give to others around you and you bring forward a lot of things but you also receive a lot of things. You are tapped into the universal stream. The more you are open, the more will flow in you and out of you. The more you are generous, positive, helpful, creative and motivate, the more you are reinforcing the network of life.

The opposite is also true. The more you are selfish, disengaged, negative, suspicious, resentful, envious, etc, the more you are closing yourself to the stream of life.

We have to start seeing the dynamics of life in terms of this sort of network fluidity. This is very much in line with Taoist philosophy.

3.You can affect people,situations and futures: Take responsibility

This is closely tied to the previous point. Since we are so highly interconnected to the web of life, everything we do has some effect on other people, the enabling or disabling of circumstances or some future course of action that in turn influences other people and outcomes. Life is an intricate balance and since we are plugged in the system every single action has a footprint on that balance. Ancient wisdom has repeatedly come up with this notion such as in many native American tribes or pre-christian paganic & shamanic cultures.

Think about those words you’ve heard as a kid or that particular episode in your life so many years ago that still remained impressed in your mind and which still bear influence on the way you see life. Do you get the point? Even little actions from one person can leave an effect in the consciousness of others many years and miles away from its origin.

Hence shifting from a more ego-centric to a more eco-centric worldview implies being more sensitive to how you responsibly act and react within the fine balance of life. More in this article.

4.Your perspective is always partial by definition: Keep on looking & listening

In the first point I mentioned the peril of seeing things personally and subjectively. In the same vein, it is equally dangerous to lock ourselves within a fixed and narrow view on life. This happens all the time and is the cause of so many quarrels between people,groups,cultures and nations.

It is not having a particular stand or viewpoint on life which is problematic but blindly holding on to it at all costs and discounting others’ views or the possibility that your perspective needs to change or grow. Think objectively about how certain perspectives you held on to very strongly in the past changed. Could that happen with your present ones?

We always see life through certain filters – time, place, culture, beliefs,objectives, likes and dislikes, etc. This is a convenient necessity but one which could hold us blind or tunnel-visioned.

Keeping an open-mind means keeping your views and theories open to correction and change.

5.Everything is impermanent: Loosen your grip on things

Possession is also a trait of the ego-based consciousness. We live in a world were possessions matters. It is not just material possessions but also relationships, status, achievements,influence and power. We measure wealth and power in terms of possessions.

The value we give to possessions comes mainly from two basic beliefs: The belief that resources are scarce or limited and that whatever we possess has permanence in time. Both are wrong assumptions. Resources are not scarce as we believe. They are neither permanent although permanence is a relative thing (something that outlives you could be relatively permanent but not absolutely so).

Contemplating on the notion of impermanence is important. Sometimes we trust that things will remain the same forever but they obviously don’t. Those of us who stay attached to this idea are the ones who will find it hardest to accept changes in life. The step to eco-consciousness involves evading this limitation. It involves grasping the essense of the dynamicity and impermanence of life and embracing it.

6.Be a critical thinker but not judgmental

Being critical and judgmental can be two different things. Being critical and analytical is a positive thing unless not done in a one-sided and narrow way. Adopting critical thinking means being rational and keeping balance so as not to be overcome by the irrational side of our being which begets poor judgment based on irrational fear, dogma, bias and preconceptions.

Being judgmental on the other hand, means being harshly critical to others even when it is clear that this does more harm than good. Being judgmental is not an action but a predisposition. It is not healthy since it promotes dissent,hostility, negative feelings and unhappy relationships.

7.Develop your awareness

I have written before about the subject of awareness on previous occassions. I regard developing awareness as being the one most essential thing to expand oneself on all levels of being – physically,mentally & spiritually. If I had listed these points in order of importance (which I haven’t) awareness should be the first one.

Awareness is the key to everything – literally. Awareness is the tool that punctures through the veil of our distorted reality and limited self-centred views. It connects us with our true selves, with our purpose in life and with our outer reality. This is what makes it such an important asset in our shift in consciousness.

8.Love is the supreme guide

If we are all interconnected at some level in a highly networked web, then love is the binding force that strengthens that web. It is like a fluid that runs in the network and reinforces the connections through which it passes. There can be no eco-consciousness without having love as a supreme guide.

9.Accentuate positive sentiments & feelings,attenuate negative ones

If we are to be healthy nodes in the web of life, we need to switch on and maintain the right qualities. Letting our negative emotions such as guilt, fear and pessimism run high may force us into builiding barriers which closes us down and throws us into egocentricity.

Accentuating feelings such as hope,loving-kindness and compassion makes us cultivate positive states of mind which in turn is reflected in the way we interact with others and the world around us.

10.Scale up your thinking: From local to global to Cosmic

I see a lot of people from where I come from who are so stuck in local thinking. Local thinking makes us think small, limited and detached from more distant realities people are living in. Local thinking is one of the hallmarks of egocentricity.

When one broadens his views and appreciates that the values and issues other countries and cultures live by are also important and of relevance, one starts thinking more globally. It is then that one understands that there are problems and issues that affect all of us on a global scale.

The next leap in thought, that from global thinking to cosmic thinking, is more of a mental excercise since one cannot have any direct ‘cosmic experiences’ but it is a good excercise nonetheless. There are so many things to contemplate on and Man has been pondering on the universe and his relation to it since the beginning of time.

Astronomic data and theories brought alive by stunning images of our home and neighbouring planets, distant galaxies, nebulas and even celestial phenomena in our own galaxy have been an enormous injection in our collective psyche over the recent decades. We have almost grown accustomed to the idea that we are not only inhabitants of a planet but of an endless universe of possibilities and natural phenomena. The more we ponder on this wonderful vastness the more we entertain the idea that we are very probably not alone either but there are possibly a large number of other beings who can be considered our cosmic brothers and sisters.

In a way this has given us an intimation with perceiving and conceiving things in a more cosmic’ way. I think that our collective consciousness has been scaled up one notch in this direction.

Individually, however, we can do more than that. We can contemplate more often, wonder, imagine and dream about the universe we inhabit and our relationship and belonging to it as a species.

Related posts:

1. Expanding consciousness through compassion & loving kindness

I was re-reading a passage from “A complete idiot’s guide to Zen living” by Gary McClain and Eve Adamson when I was struck anew by a very simple concept (don’t be misled by the title – it’s an excellent book for both newbies or otherwise and it’s a reference guide I regularly come back to).

The idea was posed in a very simple question which read: If you were to write an autobiography what would you start the first chapter with? Is it going to be something along the lines – “Someday I’m going to be….” or something like “Today I lived…”?

The question is raw and simple as it can get yet it’s profoundly intriguing. The answer defines whether you are living in an illusory self-definition of  yourself or one in which the concept you have of yourself truly reflects who you are.

Bang! It zapped me right between the eyes. It very much points at one of my failings and shortcomings. I don’t want to sound like I’m beating on my chest in guilt, but I do have to admit that I sometimes conceive of myself in terms of what I want to be or achieve rather than what I am doing at the moment. I envision myself by means of my potential self and not my actual self.

Did this ever occur to you? We are all driven by some goal or mission that we want to reach in life be that having a successful career, being leaders in a particular field, having a life full of rich experiences and inspirations and so on. And yes, we all day dream about it with our mind floating away into some imaginary future episode of our lives where everything is as we think it should be.

We project this future autobiography in our heads. We design the plot, characters and scene settings down to the slightest details and enthrall ourselves in this self-created fantasy minutes or even hours at a time only to have our playback paused or interrupted only by someone or something.
Isn’t this normal and kind of OK? don’t we all do that? Don’t we all have aspirations and dreams about how we want ourselves to be in future? Aren’t goals and visions of my self in the future necessary to make me thrive forward?

Yes and no. Yes goals are important and so is visualizing yourself having or living those particular goals but identifying yourself with what you want to be rather than what you are, presents a series of problems which are not apparent at first.  Here are a few:

1. It diverts your attention, energy & focus from the present - the only time you can act to change your future.

2. It gives a false self-identity based on mental clippings and cuttings of your imagination rather than a faithful self-portrait of the present self

3. It undermines your current efforts. By attaching yourself to an autobiography based on your imagined future self (me as a social entrepreneur – me as a Yoga school owner, etc), you might find it hard to appreciate the small steps you are taking NOW in the present. This is because everytime you succeed in making a small step you see it as insignificant because in your head it still feels a long way from the destination. This deflates your efforts and demotivates you.

I often fall prey to all the three problems listed above.The first point is pretty clear to most of us (especially those with good background reading in personal development).

We spend a lot of our waking time wishing and daydreaming about that time and place we want to reach in our life and in so doing we do not realize that we are stealing away that very scarce and precious time we have to act and make things happen. That time is now in the present.

Here is a quote from Zen and the beat way, by Alan Watts:

“The concept of time is one of the great ways in which we are fooled. We believe that the past and the future are, as it were, more solid and of longer duration than our present…We live in a sort of hourglass with a big bulb at one end (the past) and a big bulb at the other end (the future); we are at the little neck in between, and we have no time. Whereas when our vision becomes changed, we see that…we have in, in fact, an enormous present in which we live and that the purely abstract borders of this present are the past and future.”

The second problem is more subtle and slippery. This is because it is not immediately obvious why it is a bad thing to have a ‘pimped up’ self-image. In fact a lot of self-help books would tell you that your self-image is the blueprint of success. A strong self-image gives you confidence in your actions. This is true on many counts. But what the self-help advice is saying is that actually one should have a solid and undistorted image of oneself rather than one which is skewed because a) it either is negative or underestimated (hence the cause of lack of confidence) or b) that it is based on some idea we have about what is perfect or not.

The latter is the root of our illusion with ourselves and it is a theme which has been addressed many times in zen philosophy. So yes, it is good to have clear goals of where you want to be but to have an image of yourself which does not reflect where you are now can cause dissilusionment, frustrastion, dissatisfaction and will make you give up. Besides, we can very easily attach ourselves to an idea of what we ought to be or achieve which is not fully authentic but influenced by peers or social values at large.(think of advertising)

The last point is one which I believe to be the major cause of my quitting certain side projects. It is what I call ‘the commensuration problem’. If you have a goal and a hundred or so steps along the way (which require work and perseverance in different degrees), the evaluation of each goal has to be commensurate with the level of progress you are achieving and not the finishing line or the end goal. That is to say that whenever you progress a tiny bit forward you don’t each and every time cross-check it with how many more steps are still needed to achieve the goal but with how much you moved forward from your starting line.

Well this is another way of saying that you should focus on how much the cup filled up and not how much left there is for it to be full.

When we look at ourselves and see what we want to achieve rather than simply and honestly what we are (and trust yourself you are just perfect the way you are) we tend to fall very easily for this ‘commensuration problem’. We tend to think “Hey where did this task get me?…What? am I still at this stage? It’s hillarious, I should be there already by now! (In fact I am there already in my head). Gosh this is getting tiring! It’s such a long way till there!”.

You get the point. This is one danger of writing your ‘future autobiography’ in your head rather than your present and actual one.

With this thought in mind I think I will allocate some time to ponder about this. I would love to rewrite my autobiography and yes, feel confident and serene about what I am doing write now, like writing this article, having fun with my wife and daughter, enjoying summer and working hard to follow my dreams. I think this is a good start for a first chapter.

What about you? I would love to hear what you think.

No related posts.

One thing that constantly fascinates me is our ability to be unaware and oblivious of great wonderful things in front of our eyes on a day to day basis.

Sometimes we are so consumed by mundane problems and current affairs that we filter out a lot of information around us. This makes us lose sight of the bigger picture and the magnificence of grand things in our life journey – a journey we so often take for granted.

In many ways we lose out on creating meaning in our lives because of this simple yet inherent flaw in our nature.

Imagine how more meaningful life would be if we could every now and then step back and shift our awareness from the small picture to the big picture.

If we could escape for a minute from the reality of our daily routines, concerns and narrow habitual cycles (which we seem to drive on autopilot), we can gift ourselves with the knowledge of how special some things in life can be.

One thing which we fail to see is how special we are and I would in this respect like to suggest a couple of valid reasons why this is so.

1. You are reading this!: Well, think for a second about the implications of you reading this article.You are a sentient being biologically and culturally evolved to a point where you can search, filter, decode and organize information shared by other fellow beings.No small thing. We are the only creatures on the planet doing this and although I strongly believe there are other beings in the universe (even of much greater intelligence) we are very probably in the very top percentile of living creatures having this ability. On a neurological level, there is a lot going on – millions of interconnected neurons firing in parallel and reconfiguring connections on the fly. Amazing stuff. On a demographic and historic level, you are part of a very priviledged group of humans who live in a time where literacy and ubiquity of information is spread to most part of the planet.

2.You are living in a pivotal age in the history of the world: Although it isn’t at all times obvious,we are actually on the edge of a turning point of a huge and unprecedented technological and social shift. Futurists like Ray Kurzweil describe this tipping point (which will happen somewhere in the next three decades)as the technological singularity in which the breakthrough in one enabling technology (say in special nano-materials or the synthesis of new organisms that will produce fuels,compute or cure diseases) will foster an accelarated change in other technologies. One breakthrough will open up more doors for other breathroughs till a singularity point is reached in which the shift is so big as to be like nothing else experienced in the history of humanity. We are living witnesses at the dawn of this change.

3.You have the power to change things: We are so blind to this yet we do turn around events and bring about change on a daily basis. Through imagination,creative thinking,planning and visualization, we take action to make things happen or influence their coming about.

4.You have the power to love and bring joy to other humans and sentient beings: The power of love, compassion and empathy is immense. This capacity is very often underestimated, misunderstood or forgotten under heaps of petty ego-centric concerns. Giving is a way to pass on the human legacy of bonding, caring and loving. Altruism alone can leave positive effects through the network of human relations across time that no other external resource can.

5. You have the power to bring about life: (or had, depending on your gender and biological age). The capacity to propagate life is an amazing thing. This is the ultimate force of nature, mightier than the mightiest storm, eruption or hurricane.

6. You have the power to be a medium of a million good things: To help, teach, inspire, motivate, make aware and share emotions and experiences with others.

7. You have the power to aspire and create new things: New ideas, designs, new ways of thinking, new ways of seeing things. You have immense creative powers waiting to be unleashed even if you might think you don’t.

8. You have the potential to leave something behind that can make a difference to people’s lives: Could be a book, your ideas, your belongings, your memories, your children, your dreams.

9. You carry a code: You are a living medium to the genetical propagation of the future human race.

10. You can relearn the world around you: You have the incredible power to learn new things and reshape your knowledge as you interact with your environment and build up experience. You have the ability to correct and change your point of view as you widen your horizons of knowledge. The wise knows that this is indeed one of the most important

No related posts.

Most of us, myself included, grew up with the notion of our bodies as  bio-physical machines that no matter how astoundingly beautiful,intricate and complex, they are in the end merely physiological.Nothing more, nothing less.

I had this general assumption challenged when I read Eugene T. Gendlin’s book called ‘Focusing’ a couple of years ago.

Gendlin considers the body to be intrinsically linked to the person as a whole and not just a separate physical system that answers to the brain’s command.He however keeps his literature free from metaphysical notions such as mind, consciousness and spirit.

The idea behind Gendlin’s concept of focusing is not novel per se. It intersects with several other key ideas from ancient philosophies such as the practice of mindfulness meditation. The difference is that he offers a series of simple practical steps to develop awareness of our inner bodily sensations and use this ‘felt sense’ to listen to the wisdom of our bodies through what he calls the six focusing movements.

In essence, the focusing method is a way to use awareness of inner bodily sensations as an entry point to an inner mental space. So far this is perfectly the same methodology as mindfulness meditation – using inner awareness as a way to get into the ‘gap’ between our thoughts and, to use Eckhart Tolle’s words, access an undercurrent of stillness beneath our frenetic stream of conscious jitter. This is the first of the six focusing movements, Gendlin calls ‘clearing a space’.

The way that focusing parts away from meditation and mindfulness techniques is its application. Focusing uses the awareness of inner bodily feelings, usually in the stomach,chest or throat areas, in relation with a problem or an issue.

So for example, I might be having a creative block due to stress at work and I might use focusing techniques to ‘reach into’ the ‘felt sense’ (say a tight constriction in my stomach). The technique also involves staying with the felt sense for a while and using a ‘friendly nonjudgmental approach’ to get a deeper insight of my subconscious causes of the creative block.

This gets us to another two steps which are ‘asking’ and ‘receiving’. It may sound funny, weird or counter intuitive but the technique actually involves communicating with the felt sense as if you were talking to a friend. It is at this point that one may reach a state of ‘receptive awareness’. Images, words,voices or ideas might emerge that gives us intuitive solutions or answers to a problem and this may direct us into shifting our way of seeing a particular thing or problem.

My opinion about Gendlin’s concept of focusing is that it is a cross-breed between mindfulness meditation (since it involves developing our inner awareness) and creativity stimulation (problem-solving through accessing our intuitive domain). More than that it uses our own bodies as a medium.

If you want to have a go at it I am listing 12 easy steps for practicing focusing:

Note: These practical steps are taken from an article in WikiHow under creative commons license.

1.Say Hello

Find a comfortable position… Relax and close your eyes… Take a few deep breaths… and when you’re ready just ask, “How am I inside right now?” Don’t answer. Give an answer time to form in your body… Turn your attention like a searchlight into your inside feeling place and just greet whatever you find there. Practice taking a friendly attitude toward whatever is there. Just listen to your organism.

2.Begin to describe something

Now something is here. You can sense it somewhere. Take some time now to notice just where it is in your body. Notice if it would feel right to begin to describe it, as simply as you might tell another person what you are aware of. You can use words, images, gestures, metaphors, whatever fits, captures, expresses somehow the quality of this whole thing. And when you’ve described it a bit, take some time to notice how your body responds to that. It’s like you’re checking the description with the body feeling, saying “Does this fit you well?”

3.Pick a problem

Feel yourself magnetically pulled toward the one thing in your stack that most needs your attention right now. If you have any trouble letting it choose you, ask, “What is worst?” (or “What’s best?” ?– good feelings can be worked with too!). “What most needs some work right now? “What won’t let go of me?” Pick one thing.

4.Let the felt sense form

Ask “What does this whole thing feel like?”. “What is the whole feel of it?” Don’t answer with what you already know about it. Listen to your body. Sense the issue freshly. Give your body 30 seconds to a minute for the feel of “all of that” to form.

5.Find the handle

Find a word, phrase, image, sound or gesture that feels like it matches, comes from, or will act as a ‘handle’ on the felt sense, the whole feel of it. Keep your attention on the area in your body where you feel it, and just let a word, phrase, image, sound or gesture appear that feels like a good fit.

6.Resonating the handle

Say the word, phrase, image, sound or gesture back to yourself. Check it against your body. See if there is a sense of “rightness,” an inner “yes, that’s it”. If there isn’t, gently let go of that handle and let one that fits better appear.

7.Ask & Receive

Now we are going to ask the felt sense some questions. Some it will answer, some it won’t. Receive whatever answers it gives.

Ask the questions with an expectantly friendly attitude and be receptive to whatever it sends you.

Ask “What’s the crux of this feeling?” “What’s the main thing about it?” Don’t answer with your head; let the body feeling answer. Now, breathe that answer out.

And ask, “What’s wrong?” Imagine the felt sense as a shy child sitting on a stoop. It needs caring encouragement to speak. Go over to it, sit down, and gently ask, “What’s wrong?” Wait. Now, breathe that answer out.

And ask, “What’s the worst of this feeling?” “What makes it so bad?” Wait… Now, breathe that answer out of your system.

And ask, “What does this feeling need?” Wait… Now, breathe that answer out.

And now ask, “What is a good small step in the right direction for this thing?” “What is a step in the direction of fresh air?” Wait. Now, breathe that answer out.
Ask, “What needs to happen?” “What actions need to be taken?” Wait. Now, breathe that answer out.
And now ask, “What would my body feel like if this thing were all better, all resolved?” Move your body into the position or posture it would be in if this were all cleared up. This is called looking the answer up in the back of the book. Now, from this position, ask, “What’s between me and here?” “What’s in the way of it being all OK?” Wait. Now, breathe that answer out.
Finally, ask your felt sense space to send you the exactly right question you need at this moment. Now ask the felt sense that question. Don’t answer with your head. Just hang out with the felt sense, keep it company, let it respond. Wait. Now, breathe that answer out.

8.Sense for a stopping place

Take some time to sense inside if it is OK to end in a few minutes or if there something more that needs to be known first. If something more comes then take some time to acknowledge that.

9.Receive and experience what has changed

Take some time to sense any changes that have happened in your body, especially anything which feels more open or released. This is sometimes called a ’shift’.

10.Let it know you’re willing to come back

You might want to say to It “I’m willing to come back if you need me.”

11.Thank

And you might want to thank what has come, and appreciate your body’s process.

12.Bring awareness out

Take some time to bring your awareness slowly outward again, feeling your hands and feet, being aware of the room and letting your eyes come naturally open.

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At 36 years of age I am considered to be relatively young…at least by all those belonging to higher age groups than mine. Being in your mid-thirties is a curious thing. It’s like being in a passage way, a midway stage that does not belong anywhere in particular.

You haven’t yet reached that maturation peak in your life and yet you are irreversibly not young anymore, only perhaps youngish depending on perspective. In any case I feel I have somehow switched lanes from one ‘life-stream’ to another.

Let’s be clear, we feel change throughout life all the time as we go through different stages of development and experiences. Yet there are milestones in life in which the change is more meaningful and in a way you are more mindful and conscious of that change.

I used to think that maturity is very relative in the sense that some people can be more mature than others even though they are younger, hence pointing at the fact that age is only a correlated but not necessary cause for maturity. life experiences and character dispositions are the real factors.

I have come to suspect that this is not entirely true. In a way I started believing that even though maturity is more or less relative, there are certain points in life in which your consciousness changes and this happens by time. Hence time is still an important factor.What I am trying to say is that maturity and change in consciousness are influenced mostly by experiential time but also influenced by our biological time. The former is relative the second is more or less standard with little variations.

I feel going through a point in life where I am more conscious of meaningful changes in life. This is driven by my experiential time but determined by my biological time. looking back I have come to identify 5 major changes that characterize my maturity.

Appreciation and gratefulness

Life teaches us time and time again to take things less for granted. Taking things for granted means, amongst other things, that we haven’t come to appreciate the impermanence of life and things around us. It means that our worldview is very static and inflexible and it is not refreshed very often  – meaning that it is not very well equiped for life’s fluctuations.

The more the idea of impermanence sinks in my reality the more I appreciate and am grateful to anything happening around me. It could be just the early morning lights or a short family gathering. It started feeling as if there is no guarantee that any experience is repeatable and in many ways this is true.

Hence moments are more precious now. Sometimes it feels a little bit like that cancer patient living on borrowed time. Every morning is a lottery win.

Seeing my reflection in others

I very often used to see the negative side of others – hypocrisy, bigotry, ignorance,etc. Not just individually but also collectively such as the cultural trait in certain people. sometimes I couldn’t get past it and see beyond it and I have to admit I still struggle with it sometimes. I have realized that this was very often the cause of bitterness and anger.

Not so long time ago I came across a quote of Carl Jung (incidentally one of my greatest influences) that said “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves” and that struck me hard and fast. I immediately realized what it meant. What was bothering me in others was not as such their behaviour or character trait but the reflection of that trait still lingering somewhere in me!

Listen more, debate less

I used to strongly debate and argue my opinions in discussions where that opinion was either challenged or criticized. Of course this is not a bad thing in itself unless it does not get out of hand and I still love a good debate once in a while. But hotly argued debates can make you lose sight of the reason why you have an opinion in the first place…that you are an inquisitive mind interacting with a world of knowledge, learning, sharing, forming opinions and even changing them as you learn more.

It serves no purpose to fortress your opinions and belch fire when others present contrary opinions. It serves a lot to listen to the others’ arguments, reason & evaluate things out, filter noise and accept other’s complimentary perspectives and ideas because as I mentioned it will reinforce the purpose of  why you have an opinionated mind.

Accept more

Acceptance is not a privilege of holy men. We all have the capacity to accept things for what they are. To accept things as they are does not mean that you settle for a status quo in life and never let change happen. On the contrary, accepting means having a grounded heart in the midst of change and impermanence. It means taking a smooth ride on the wave of natural changes in life without anxiety, remorse, attachment, negative reactions and denial.

To accept is to open the door to life, the universe and everything

Focusing more on actions rather than outcomes

When I look back I realize that I used to have my actions immobilized because I used to lock my mind on the outcome rather than on the actions or steps I am taking now to reach that outcome. This used to make me frustrated and give up easily because whenever one of the steps didn’t turn out as expected I used to see the end objective dissolving further out in time  instead of just focusing on that action and trying it out again until I succeed.

This is a cornerstone of successful action.

The balance between heart and mind

As we grow our souls  journey through a long and winding road sometimes going through labyrinths and roller coaster rides. Youth for instance is characterized by stormy and restless passages where the mind and heart are in constant conflict and antagonism.

I see wisdom as being the synchronization of the heart with our intellect. It is the passage in life in which there is the quieting of the storm, where the waves of interference between mind and heart flat out in a sea of calm and transparency.

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This is a question that I often hear when people are in doubt, confused or lacking enough confidence in external information to arrive at a sound judgment.

I am however not at all pleased to use the term ‘instincts’ in the title, or anywhere else for that matter. The word ‘instinct’ generally means having a preset behavioral pattern which is genetically encoded and inherited. In other words it is a behavioral template that organisms follow unconsciously and automatically. It very much alludes to a general lack of free-will and creativity.

I believe that the real ‘instincts’ that guide us through indecisive or difficult moments in life run in opposite direction to unconscious and automatically responsive behavior.

In fact it involves our ability to momentarily ‘awake’ from those unconscious cycles of behavior and see through the veil of socially and individually constructed realities. It is a temporary transcendence beyond the compulsive patterns of thought and emotional habits that are ultimately not authentic but socially induced.

Trusting your ‘instincts’, or as I prefer calling it ‘listening to your heart’,is like connecting to a ‘web of consciousness’ in which energy and ideas flow naturally and freely. I have written something about this in the past here.

Of course many people might discard this notion of ‘web of consciousness’ as metaphysical mumble jumble. I think that this notion is a little bit ahead of its time and this is why it might be cynically labeled as metaphysical hogwash with no scientific basis whatsoever.

Yet I believe that time will tell a different story. Future exponential growth in science and the interdisciplinary understanding of our reality – That is the nature of Consciousness, complexity,hyper-dimensional space, Quantum fields and the interdependence of information in the Universe  – will enable us to better understand and appreciate that our consciousnesses are linked and communicate at different dimensions of reality.

Back to the question: “Can I trust my instincts?” or in better words “Should I listen to my heart?”. The answer is a definite yes. Listening to your heart means, amongst other things, listening to your self in a more complete way.

We often read off a situation with a very partial and limited view of reality. We can reason out something on purely rational grounds or just act on it in a way that is socially accepted as viable or good. Yet by not listening to our inner motivations and feelings we are only tearing off a few pages off a book without actually reading the whole story.

As I said in other articles, I think that wisdom is when your knowledge and reason are aligned with your heart. If not, even the brightest intellect can be consumed by internal conflict between reason and feelings, or minds and hearts.

In fact listening to your heart, is more of a passive thing rather than an active thing. It doesn’t involve doing more but actually doing less – such as setting your mind free of habitual thinking and switching off your ’social filters’. It is like the ancient Chinese concept of ‘Wu Wei’ or effortless action. It’s about being still and in that inner stillness your mind and heart resonate together in a more complete self or whole.

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