Solo Professionals – Revealed – 3 Ways to Utilize Your Knowledge Online is a post from: Self Improvement Made Easy

Narrow YOUR Focus is a post from: Self Improvement Made Easy

Using Your Camera for Relieving Stress and to Change Perspective When Walking in Nature is a post from: Self Improvement Made Easy

3 Easy Steps to Rocket Your Focus to Live the Life You Deserve is a post from: Self Improvement Made Easy

And, yet, some months ago, he found himself confronted by a major career decision and, as a result, found himself reverting to the indecision and stress that had almost ruined his life some years ago, that had almost cost him everything. So, his point was this – why, when it came to the push, did his meditation have no effect in the cut and thrust of daily life? Well, for starters, he freely admitted that things would have even been a lot worse were he not meditating. As he said to me, at the very least, he is one of a tiny minority of people who are fully aware of what they are thinking and fully aware when what they are thinking is unhelpful or damaging.

But the key point is that, unless you put what you learn in meditation into the moment to moment living of your everyday life, you will not get the downstream and all-important benefits of clarity, focus and presence of mind. And, you don’t wait until everything goes wrong to start putting what you have learned in meditation into practice – you have to do it when things are just normal. It’s just the same as training for a big match – you train beforehand to make sure that you can play your best on the day.

This training consists of regularly checking your state of mind throughout the day – every day. If everything is running normally, chances are that your mind is wandering and distracted – after all, this is the normal adult default state of mind. Research demonstrates that the normal adult pays just one percent attention to what is going on when all is running smoothly. Obviously, this level of commitment to one’s life is not sufficient to have a great life – and this is why most people tend to be “not-too-bad”. As a result of this, however, the ordinariness of everyday life provides us with the perfect training ground. Simply stop yourself at various points during the day and check to see whether you are clear, present and focused or not – how you feel during meditation will be your guideline for comparative purposes.

If you’re not in a clear and present state of mind, bring yourself back to that state by returning to now. Again, simply, this means that you take a few moments to pay full attention to the here and now – you could stop and focus your sight, feeling, hearing, senses of smell and taste on what is actually going on, or you could simply take and fully appreciate a few deep breaths. Our contact with the here and now – and the opportunity it presents us with to live our ordinary day extraordinarily – is through (and only through) our five senses. You need to come to your senses!

And, if you do this when nothing crazy is happening in your day, you will be fit and ready to be at your best when things actually do go wrong.

Dealing With Stress is a post from: Self Improvement Made Easy

Newsflash! – the one sure way of holding yourself back is wondering why you’re not going forward! Frustration is a waste of our precious attention and energy. Wondering why what we want to happen hasn’t happened yet is a useless, negative, self-defeating thought – you might as well say to yourself “well, I kinda knew that it wasn’t going to happen anyway!”

You and I have a finite amount of energy available to us and your personal development goal must be to marshal that energy and target it, like a laser beam, on getting on with both what we have to do now and heading in the direction of whatever it is that you want out of life. Frustration, worry or even wondering about when, how or if something will happen is a dangerous distraction, a self-destructive use of your energy – it’s like you’re targeting your powerful laser beam back on yourself! You have to be so careful where you point that laser beam because it can be equally constructive or destructive.

Unfortunately, if you’re normal, your laser beam isn’t turned on at all. Psychology informs us that the average person pays little or no attention to anything and invests a mere one percent of their energy in doing what they’re supposed to be doing. And if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing now, when are you going to start? The only place and time that you are is now – the only time and place that you can focus your energy is now. Wishful thinking, daydreaming, wanting or needing are destructive uses of your energy because these mental ramblings have nothing to do with the scientific reality that everything only exists now.

Therefore, if you’re frustrated that you don’t seem to be making progress, it’s your frustration itself that’s tying you down. If you feel that you’re stuck in a rut, it’s that very feeling that will perpetuate your discomfort. You must to direct your attention to the urgency of living in the here and now. Now is the time and place that demands your focus – not some of it, like normal crazy people, but as much of it as you can marshal. The very input of an abnormal amount of energy into the present moment will trigger an abnormal response from universal energy. This is how abnormally successful people are so successful – they put their energy into the present and, as a result, they have presence. This must be your goal also.

Is Frustration Destroying Your Best Efforts is a post from: Self Improvement Made Easy

In addressing this issue, I often refer to what a client from Northern Ireland said to me at the height of the so-called “Troubles”. He said “It must be that, for some people, doing their mental exercises is a bit like the way some of my fellow-countrymen go to Mass on a Sunday, kneel down and pray and, on a Monday, go out and shoot someone!” A well made point – if your efforts at personal development don’t make an impact in the ordinary course of your everyday life, there really is little or no point in fooling yourself into thinking that you’re on the road to the life that you want. Personal development isn’t supposed to make you feel good for just a few minutes each day, it’s supposed to change your life and if it isn’t doing that, then you’re doing something wrong.

As I write this, I’m expecting a client who is going to spend the next couple of days with me here in the Alps. He sent me an advance note – what he called his “agenda” – and, in that note, he asks how to bring the calm and focus that you get during meditation or mental exercising into the cut and thrust of everyday life. My answer to him will be simple. During the course of your everyday life, especially when the going gets tough, you’ve got to regularly stop yourself, notice state of mind and compare it with the calm and clarity that you get when you’re doing your personal development exercises. If you’re state of mind has drifted from your benchmark calm then you’re going to have to take a momentary step back from what’s going on, take a few deep breaths, and restore the mental calm and focus that will make the difference to your actions and personal effectiveness in the present moment.

Personal development isn’t personal development if you’re not seeing concrete results in your ordinary life – if your life is still all over the place, you’re just lulling yourself into an even more dangerous place where you might well make decisions or taking what you think is action that could make your life worse rather than better.

Personal Development Is Worth Nothing Unless You’ve The Results To Show For It is a post from: Self Improvement Made Easy

Effectively, if you’re not in a clear state of mind, you’re tripping yourself up – blocking all your best efforts, making sure that you stay in the kind of normal life in which you currently find yourself.

Everyone with whom I’ve worked over the years knows the difference between clarity of mind and the muddled-headedness that is the norm. They’ve experienced the difference clarity of mind makes in their daily lives – sometimes straight away. But cultivating your clarity of mind takes time – maybe just five or ten minutes each day – but it’s bizarre the number of people who can’t take or make those five or ten minutes to make the remainder of their day so much better and to make the rest of their lives so much more exciting.

By cultivating your mind, I mean a little mental exercising or training. Many of my clients prefer these phrases to “meditation” but it all amounts to much the same thing – taking a few minutes to reacquaint your mind with the actual reality of the here and now, stopping your automatice mind assuming that it knows what’s going on in the here and now – years of research proves that it doesn’t have a clue!

But, mental exercising is just the same as physical training. Bet you didn’t know that the average gym membership lasts just six weeks and that the average new member actually goes to the gym just twice! Yeah, we have good intentions but it appears that we actually prefer to be not-to-bad than happy, healthy and fit – both physically and mentally.

So, here are a few ideas to enable you “cultivate your mind” without having to go to the mental gym! Number One: do something that “gets you in the zone” – like going for a walk or jogging, like listening (really listening) to music. Number Two: do some of your routine tasks differently – like brushing your teeth with the “other hand” or having something completely different for breakfast (or actually having breakfast!). Number Three: during your lunch break, or a coffee break, go somewhere on your own for five minutes and just watch the world go by – see, feel, hear, smell and taste what’s going on. Oh – and Number Four: sign up for my free Personal Development Ezine. It goes out every Monday and Wednesday – many of my readers call it “their fix” or “dose of reality” and some say that even seeing the email in their inbox reminds them to be more focused!

The thing is, clarity of mind is all about paying attention to what’s going on now. Normally our minds are whizzing around at high speed paying attention to stuff that isn’t going on – stuff buried in our subconscious or worry about something in the future. You need to calm your mind down – then you can really speed up at doing all the the really important things that you should be doing, without the normal distractions.

Self Help: Clarity Of Mind is a post from: Self Improvement Made Easy

In other words, when it comes to being successful at whatever your chosen goal, the focus required is in the here and now. Very simply put, focus means paying an abnormal amount of attention to what’s going on now. In rugby, for example, the world’s leading place-kickers have a goal of being part of a winning team – but focusing on that, when they’re about to take an important penalty kick, won’t help because that “notion” is not tangible enough to focus the mind. So, instead, you see world-beating place-kickers focusing on the present moment – turn on the sports channels on your TV and you’ll see all major sports stars, in whatever field, using a variety of techniques to enable them focus on the present moment. In rugby, you’ll see them focus on their breathing (a ten-thousand year old form of meditation beamed live into your sitting room!) to clear their mind of everything except just that moment and it’s all important task. Watch the great golfers and the rituals they perform before each shot – again designed to clear their mind of everything except the task in hand. The same goes for the great tennis players, particularly before they serve.

Paying abnormal attention to the present moment will change your life. I’ve deliberately used the word “abnormal” because years of research in the field of psychology proves that normal people pay little or no attention at all to the here and now. As a result, they are not focused on the task in hand and they achieve nothing out of the ordinary as a result. However, if you want to be abnormally successful, you’re going to have to behave abnormally yourself – you’re going to have to learn to pay attention like a sports star.

Paying abnormal attention involves clearing it of all the noise that distracts the normal mind. This clearing process is achieved by turning your attention to what is really and truly happening in just this moment – to the exclusion of everything else. That’s why paying attention to breathing can be so powerful – that’s why meditation, which develops your mental ability to pay attention to just this moment, can be so powerful and life changing. On the other hand, even taking five minutes every morning to close your eyes, notice the sounds around you and feel the way your body moves with each breath will be a major leap forward for any normally unfocused mind.

Personal Development: How To Focus Your Mind is a post from: Self Improvement Made Easy

Again, psychology has concluded that the latent state of the normal adult mind is negative. In other words, if you’re normal, your subconscious heat-seeking capability is targeted at, at the very best, a life that’s not too bad – and that is the kind of life that you get. The directional programs which the normal mind uses as its guidance system were installed during our childhood years. We learned by watching others’ lives and by being impressed by things that were done for us or to us. Having grown up in a normal world our onboard computer is set on “normal”. And, because psychology suggests that normal people don’t control their own mind, our cybernetic minds are out of control, bringing us to places that we don’t want.

But, as I’ve said, focus your mind to a goal in which it believes and its cybernetic capability will bring that goal about. So, you need to know how to reprogram the coordinates! When it comes down to it, belief is not wishing, hoping or wanting. The subconscious mind processes sensory data – so believing is seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting what you want as if you have it already, as if it’s taken as given. Uploading your desired objectives is simply done by handwriting what you want, in those sensory terms, as if you’re already experiencing it. Handwriting impresses the subconscious mind and, once done, the subconscious mind will go about its work – the only thing that will divert it is if you start wondering when what you want will happen (that’s the kind of useless thinking that sends your mind off its plotted course).

I’ve seen plenty of clients get their desired outcome – I’ve also known a few who, having achieved it, realized that it was not what they really wanted. Therefore, you need to be careful how you set your mind! Consequently, as I suggest to my clients, your actual goal setting should be non-specific in terms of the life you want or how you got there but very specific in terms of what it looks, feels, sounds, smells and tastes like to have arrived. In other words, set your mind on success and happiness, without preconditions, and you’re about to set off on the adventure of a lifetime.

Goal Setting: Getting Your Objectives is a post from: Self Improvement Made Easy