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Dec 16
Moving Towards Wisdom, Beauty & Strength
By which my friend Eleutherios assures me is the Kabbalistic (and poetic) equivalent of Steve Pavlina’s three principles of personal growth; truth (wisdom), love (beauty) and power (strength).
This post has been a long time in coming, and in it I’ll explain why in order for me to move towards truth, love and power, you must be Willing to Change Everything in Your Life
In David Deida’s book The Way of the Superior Man, he talks about how you must be willing to change everything in your life when necessary.
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Nov 22
Lessons for Personal Development Bloggers
Earlier this year I had an idea: why not ask personal development bloggers for advice on personal development blogging, compile them into an ebook and give it out for free?
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a swell idea to me 🙂
Unfortunately, that idea never materialized as I became caught up in life and work.
A few of the personal development bloggers I’d started to email had already replied me though, and I’d always felt sorry to have their work languish in my email.
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Nov 18
Personal Atrophy for Foolish People
In Personal Development for Smart People (see my book review here), Steve Pavlina lists the three core principles of personal development as Truth, Love and Power.
When you combine the principles, you get the secondary principles of personal development; Truth combined with Love gives you Oneness, Love and Power combine to give you Courage and Truth with Power gives you Authority. All together, the six principles combine to give you the seventh core principle of personal development: Intelligence.
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Nov 13
Keeping the Faith in the Most Difficult Times
There lives an angel and her name is Miguelina. She is one of the most inspirational people I know.
Her life is dedicated to serving others through education. She believes that the path out of poverty (including her own); an existence of few choices and few resources, is paved through learning.
I would like to share with you the story about Miguelina because it can inspire us to do more with what we have and teach us that keeping the faith works!
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Nov 10
Stress Relief Tips to Help You Get to the Root of Your Stress
The following stress relief tips are simple and practical. They will swiftly ease your stress!
Step 1. Become Aware
In a relaxed position, with your eyes closed, picture yourself being stressed. In your mind’s eye, go through every stress symptom that you have.
Feel yourself being stressed. It is imperative that the visualization is very real with powerful emotions attached to it.
Now picture yourself becoming aware that you are stressed. You are now the Observer of your behavior. You see your symptoms but your perception of them is of something separate from you.
It is like a miniature awakening!
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Nov 7
Fast and Effective Ways for Coping with Stress
Stress is a part of most people’s lives. It is a reality that we all live with. This is why we need to have different mechanisms in place for coping with stress. According to Brilliance Removalists Perth whether we are business executives or working in a hard physical job like home furniture removals, the challenge for most of us is actually being cognizant of when we are stressed. It is such an habitual state for us to be in, that most of the time we don’t even know when we are in it!
We all have distinctive and personal indicators that we manifest when we are feeling stressed. What are yours?
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Nov 6
About Eating & Habits
Steve Pavlina wrote this after having nothing but juice for the last ten days:
With each passing day, I can see more clearly how cooked food is used as a drug to create a certain kind of feeling in our bodies. We keep eating it because we’re addicted to it, not because it’s healthy for us. We confuse those addictive cravings for the experience of genuine hunger. Instead of making conscious food choices, we let our addictions dictate what we eat, how much, and how often.
I experienced a glimpse of this during day two of my own short live foods fast:
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Oct 19
Anthony Robbins’ The Power of Crisis
The times they are a changin’. I don’t know about you, but I feel a little uncertainty during these times, when the papers are full of doom and gloom.
To help, life coach extraordinaire Anthony Robbins has launched The Power of Crisis, a website about real people overcoming and transforming challenges.
Whether you are a top carpet cleaner like www.brilliancecleaning.com.au or a professional pool cleaning company like Kreepy Krauly, there’s a lot of good advice there, check out Tony’s recorded audio message there, and also Kathy’s story , she was born deaf, labeled mentally challenged, but taught herself to speak. Watch her story and I challenge you not to be moved!
Tony has also appeared recently on the Today Show to talk about how to deal with the current financial challenges.
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Oct 19
Life Coaches Blog Pledges All Profits to Conservation International
3 months ago I wrote that all ads on Life Coaches Blog were off, due to a new contract at work that stated I had to share part of my profits with the company if I were to do outside work.
That was all fine and good, but if I was to be honest with myself, the ability to make some extra cash from Life Coaches Blog was a big motivator for me to keep this site running. And not only that, the monthly Adsense cheques were a great way to measure progress – the better I was running Life Coaches Blog, the more money I’d get. All that went out the window the day I switched the ads off.
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Sep 30
Tune In – Give the Gift of Listening
Think of a time you were conversing with someone. As you talked with them you noticed the lights were on, but nobody was home. You may say they were in la la land or daydreaming. When was the last time you got the blank stare from someone? We have all probably experienced chatting with a friend or having a discussion with our spouse only to realize they are off in another world.
We may ask; “Did you hear me?” to which they quickly respond with; “Huh? Yeah…” Parents sometimes experience this when they are correcting their teenager. The teenager rolls the eyes or looks everywhere else except for in the eyes of their parent. All too often this happens. Not only has it happened to us, but we have also done it to others.
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Sep 29
Book Review: Personal Development for Smart People
When the King of Personal Development Blogging Steve Pavlina announced he was writing a book that promised to reveal the core underlying principles behind all personal growth, you can bet I got pretty excited. I’ve always been curious about the whys behind what we human beings do, and I was curious about what Steve had to say about the differences between people who grow and people who don’t.
I enrolled in his offer for a review copy of Personal Development for Smart People, and happily got it (mine was an e-book version – his publishing house got so many requests from overseas they couldn’t ship everyone a hard copy). I’ve sat with it the last two weekends to read, and this is what I got.
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Sep 28
Book Review: Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen
Most of us know chef Gordon Ramsay from his TV appearances; giving hell to contestants on Hell’s Kitchen or roasting restaurateurs on Kitchen Nightmares. Watching either show is a stark example of schadenfreude – German for ‘enjoyment taken from the misfortune of someone else’ – it’s painful sometimes but you can’t tear yourself away.
Ever since 37signals introduced me to Gordon and his show, I’ve enjoyed watching Kitchen Nightmares, not just because it’s entertaining, but because you can learn so much from it. Gordon’s not just a one-trick pony who’s getting famous on being egotistical, loud and overbearing, he’s also a great chef and entrepreneur.
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Sep 26
Living the Dream Part III
I had always prided myself on my ability to make good choices and I thought this was one of them. A lifelong quest for the secrets of happiness; the years of studying and reading about attaining goals, human behavior, spirituality and psychology, had helped prepare me for this moment. And yet, I still did not have an answer.
I decided to sit at one of the beachside cafés and ponder the question. It occurred to me that a book I had recently purchased called Practicing the Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, was in my bag. I took it out and flipped through the pages, hoping it would give me a clue. I came upon this passage:
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Sep 24
Living the Dream Part II
The fantasy soon faded as the viciousness of this crime forced me to recognize the polarities of Dominican Republic. Everyone was talking about this senseless act and adding their own incidences they had either experienced or heard about; robberies at gunpoint, misconduct by the police, medical mistreatment and others.
My perspective on my new country was rapidly shifting from positive to negative. This new reality was hitting me like an oncoming train. The six-month honeymoon with my new home was now over. My dark feelings were self-perpetuating, and what’s worse, I didn’t know how to stop them. It was a downward spiral, as each negative thought attached to the next negative thought like links on a chain. The more links, the heavier the chain and before I knew it, I was a prisoner, captive of my own feelings.
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Sep 22
Living the Dream Part I
A memorial was held at my daughter’s school to honor the short life of one of her schoolmates, a fourteen-year-old boy named Marc El Wafi, who was shot in the head while defending his friends. The memorial described a child who sounded like a living angel. Friends and teachers shared their stories about his acts of kindness, his wonderful sense of humor, and his jovial spirit.
In just eight months at the school, he had touched their hearts deeply and made an imprint that would last a lifetime.
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Sep 19
Introducing Karen Parsons
After this great run of posts by guest blogger Carey Powell, I’m very pleased to introduce Karen Parsons, President of Successful Solutions Life Coaching who will be sharing a beautiful true story with us next week.
Be sure to read it!
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Sep 17
Chickens On Fire & Zen
Running around like a chicken on fire greased with Tabasco is actually the easier thing.
The harder thing is to freeze, not do anything and have a Zen moment.
But the Zen moments are quintessentially important.
Piling on more miles with that burning chicken makes you feel like you’re getting places, touching base, getting things done. It’s medal to the metal efficiency.
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Sep 15
Maintenance: Fearlessly Living Your Dream in Real Life
You’ve met your goal – congratulations!
To get to this place, you had to make many changes. Some were small, some were large, some were trivial and some were absolutely life altering.
Now comes the job of maintaining those changes and keeping that goal alive in your life. You’re riding high right now, but what will happen when real life creeps back in (bad habits included)? What will you do when day-to-day pressures or complacency threaten your new found habits and lifestyle? You can plan ahead and come up with a maintenance strategy that will meet those challenges head on.
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Sep 13
Book Review: Eat Pray Love
While on my recent 2-week journey across Japan, I had the chance to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. And because I underestimated how much time I’d have on the trains, I ended up reading it not just once, but twice. And yet, I enjoyed it as much the second time round as the first.
Eat, Pray, Love is the story of Elizabeth’s travels through Italy, India and Bali as she struggles out of a recent divorce and turbulent love affair, in search of the three things she has been missing in her life: pleasure, devotion and balance.
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Sep 12
9 Keys to Building a Blog You Can Be Proud Of
I don’t claim to have all the answers on how to create a successful blog – in fact, I’d be wary of anyone who’d say he does. I don’t claim to have a wildly successful blog either, so investigate what I say. But there have been lessons along the way, running Life Coaches Blog for near 3 years now. And these 9 points are how I’d summarize them.
1. Know What You Want Out of It
To be successful, you have to define how you’re going to measure it, or you’ll always be chasing after rainbows.
2. Money Goes Second
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Sep 11
Get Real: In Pursuit of Your Fearless Life
How are you standing in the way of your dreams and goals?
It’s time to stop telling yourself lies, stop making excuses and (gulp) take a long hard look at what role you are playing in your current situation.
If you’re willing to ask yourself the hard questions now, you can save yourself from facing them as even bigger roadblocks in the future. But if you skip this step, you’ll keep coming up against these same issues over and over again, no matter how hard you work.
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Sep 9
Don’t Look Back in Anger
Some of us have been angry for so long that we’ve forgotten what it’s like not to be angry anymore.
We’ve become so attached to our anger that we think it’s who we are. But it’s really no more a part of you than an old wound is, when it’s time to finish healing you just have to let the scabs fall. It might leave a scar, but even that fades with time.
You might have to change so much that you’ll have to become a different person. And that can be scary. The unknown usually is. But what is it that you’re so afraid of losing by hanging on to your rage? What will you lose if you let it consume you? And what will you gain when you finally move on?
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Sep 8
Finding Gratitude: Gaining a Fearless Shift in Perspective
Finding gratitude is a fundamental step in the self-improvement process. You can’t expect anything new to come into your life without first having a genuine sense of appreciation for what you have now.
Gratitude invites a sense of humility and a focus on what truly matters – which can be especially challenging in our materialistic society. It helps you to see that while you may not have everything you want, you do have more than everything you need. Gratitude brings everything into balance and gives you a proper perspective.
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Sep 7
Inspiring Links: Week of 7th September 2008
Just 3 links this week, because they’re each so rich with nuggets of wisdom.
Derek Sivers interviews Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Workweek, which turns out to be a must-read article for anyone who has something they’d like to be doing if they didn’t have to do anything. Here are some of my favorite bits (and there are so many).
Read MoreLong life is not guaranteed, folks. It’s important to really question this deferred-life plan that saves all retirement for the end.
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Sep 5
Roadmap to Success: Your Fearless Action Plan
“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”
Japanese proverb
If you have a vision of what you want to achieve, it’s essential to create an action plan of how and when you’re going to do it. This is the time to set specific goals, assign timelines and watch as quantifiable results begin to manifest.
You’ll break down each action item into manageable tasks, to guard against overwhelm. And when you meet each of your own self-imposed deadlines, plan to give yourself a special reward. This will help you follow through and stay committed.
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