3/24/2011

The Lemming Dilemma

Reading this wonderful short fable of The Lemming Dilemma, has allowed me to better understand why people need to set themselves a life-vision and purpose.



Prior to reading this, my mind knew based on several other readings that "ya, ya, ya... I know I need to set myself some goals...", these are already in my head, "I know what they are... kind-of. That's all that really counts, right?!"

However once I finished reading this book, by David Hutchens, my mind started racing 100 miles/hour trying to established what IS my purpose and vision for MY life - what zest consumes me? And what is really in my 'head'... and is this where I'm heading?


Personal mastery is "the ability to consistently create the results you want in life with an economy of means.", David Hutchens continues with "Practitioners of personal mastery are constantly clarifying their sense of their own unique contribution to the world, continually growing, and, intentionally or not, creating results that elevate the world and people around them."

Personal mastery is a life-long journey; here are just-some of the key self-questions the author provides:
- Who are you?
- Why do you exist?
- What is your purpose in the world?
- What is it you wish to create?
- Why do some people expend much effort but produce so few desirable results in their lives?


I'm not a very good jumper - cause like 'Emmy', I ask too many questions?
I'm also not a good non-jumper / protester - since like 'Emmy' I see this as focusing on the negative side of things.

And so like 'Emmy', the lemming, I ponder and ask: What is it that I'm looking for and why can't I just "be" like most?

Why doesn't my mind just pursue the compliant role of "I'll do my job because the boss said so"?

...This is because -- my spirit, my character, my 'me' -- lives the enrolled role of "I'm here because I believe in what I am doing and I care enough about it to make it happen."

3/21/2011

SUCCESS

SEE your goal,

UNDERSTAND the obstacles

CLEAR your mind of doubt,

CREATE a positive mental picture,

EMBRACE the challenge,

STAY on track,

SHOW the world you can do it!

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going. - Beverly Sills
The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

3/20/2011

30-Day Facebook Free Challenge

Inspired by Steve Pavlina's 30-Day Facebook Fast blog -
I decided to "what the heck, let's give this a try".

Challenging Inner-Stories


First off, like everything else in your mind - we make ourselves think it's going to be hard. I'm here to confirm, that for me - it wasn't.

Now I can't confirm that it wasn't hard due to the fact that I knew it wasn't permanent - if it had been, then these past 30 days might have been altogether different.

I was convinced that it was going to be 'boring' not playing Bejeweled and Family Feud...
But turns out I survived.
I was also convinced that I was going to really, really miss everyone and feel like I was being left-out of most conversations.
...Again turns out I survived.

All-in-all the time away proved to myself that my "mind-chatter" was louder then necessary. "OMG No Facebook for a whole month!? What are you going to do?"
Well turns out, my challenge might have been a little overwhelming to other Facebook users. I kept being asked (or if people didn't see me or contact me outside of Facebook, then they would ask my spouse) how I was managing? "Isn't it hard?"; "Don't you miss it?"; "Are you secretly checking?"; "Are you still getting updates from your family?"; etc.

So to answer most of these questions:
- No it wasn't really hard. I actually liked the "break".

- No, obviously I didn't miss it. I have to admit there were times where I wanted to share with others and since most of my family & friends are on Facebook, I felt out-dated sending them emails (Gosh like who uses Hotmail anymore?? lol - isn't that where junk is collected?).


- No I didn't secretly check it, I deactivated my account and so for me to secretly check it, I would have had to reactivate it and quite honestly I wasn't sure if it would broadcast my "cheating time" through the Facebook News Feed so I didn't bother... and besides I really didn't want to.

- And last but not least, did I still get updates? Answer is yes and no. No I didn't get the constant updates about what everyone was doing but I did get the "important" ones. Like when my brother and his wife posted a video of my nephew laughing out loud for the first time - this was important enough for one of my family members to show it off to me.

Low Priority Noise

Too much "noise" is disruptive. So stepping away from the "noise" for 30-days actually felt good.
I was actually able to re-focus and re-energize myself.

Once I returned to Facebook, I did some cleaning, by filtering my news feed:
How do I control what I see in my News Feed?
...Cause if you ain't got nothing nice to say... I don't want to hear it (or read it).


Lost of Individuality

The Internet is a wonderful tool, and since the birth of Social Networking sites like Facebook came into play it's (the internet) open things up to a whole different level. I personally love it and hate it at the same time.

This Love/Hate relationship with Facebook keeps me guessing.

I love the interaction and the "live" updates.
Great functional use of technology!!

What I hate is the loss of live-interaction.


Yes sometimes the online thing can be fun - however
People need people.

If you are feeling down - you need physical people around you to re-energize your spirits.
If you are feeling happy - you want to celebrate with people and share your happiness-energies!

Social Networking provides us with the ability to share - electronically.
We still need that connective-ness felt in the presence of others - you don't get that online.

Value of Time

During my 30-day challenge I, all of a sudden, got a bunch of free time!?

Previously when logging-in to Facebook just to check on things what started off as 5 mins would/could end-up more like 20mins or even 2 hours. You get so caught-up in this world that you're actually missing-out on the real-world around you.

With all my newly found free-time, I finally found the time I had been looking for to start blogging.
I actually did something with that pile of paper that was in the box at the end of my bed.
I started planning some of my spring cleaning.
I was able to draft out some business plan ideas.

I actually got more time to myself to start doing things I wanted to do - tried out the new Zumba Fitness wii;
I went out to Chapter's and spent time there looking for new reads, actually read a book in Chapter's [The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Pocketbook Guide to Fulfilling Your Dreams (One Hour of Wisdom)
] and bought Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits
and had time to read this one too (at home)!

I also started, slowly but surely, meditating and am looking into expanding this new for me self-energizing learning so that I can do this more often and with more confidence.

Status Updates

Since this 30-Day challenge, I did re-discover Twitter.

I had a Twitter account prior, however never really paid any attention to it - cause I figured I got the updates I needed from Facebook and so why Twitter?

Well with Twitter, I'm able to focus more broadly subscribing to random people of interest. Unlike Facebook where I wish to keep things on a more personal-level, I'm able to select hundreds of various people and topics on Twitter where it doesn't seem as overwhelming.

Since my return to Facebook, I've decided to filter my Facebook account and 'drop' non-personal 'Facebook Friends' that I am now following on Twitter. These 'friends' are people whom I don't necessarily really interact with.

With Twitter, I'm still connected and get their status / communication updates which is pretty much all I'm interested in anyways. Removing them from my Facebook account eases me somewhat since (for me) my Facebook interactions are more on a personal-level: pictures of family and friends; interactions with family and friends; etc. Versus on Twitter everything is about your posted status, keeping it under 140 characters -
So messages are short and sweet - right to the point.

Summary

All-in-all I actually enjoyed my time away and was a little hesitant on whether or not I wanted to come back so soon. I had originally sign-up to Facebook for connection purposes and to keep in contact with my family and friends.

What happened is that I allowed things to get out of control - my control - by wanting everything.
Wanting to know what's going on with everyone.
Trying to keep-up with the Jones but online.
Keeping in touch with people who normally wouldn't have even bothered...

Example of this - I got a request from a classmate:
Why would someone I went to school with in grade 2, in an entirely different province, want to be my friend? Just because I was tagged in that classroom school picture?
You don't know me and quite frankly I don't know you - now why would you need to "connect" with me?
Of course if we had been friends, actual friends - we would have kept contact somehow and/or I would have remembered your name...

So now I'm returning back to basics.
Going to be keeping things simple.

If you're simply wanting "inspirational" status updates, then come find me on Twitter and remove me from Facebook. If you haven't interacted with me and/or if you saw me in the mall and wouldn't bother coming over to say "Hi", then let's do each another a favor and just disconnect.

How about yourself? Have you ever thought of giving Facebook a 30-day leave?
How do you think you'd survive?
And if you have done a similar challenge - share your experience: How did you make out?

3/19/2011

Never Assume Anything - Unless You Can Read Minds

Most people assume that most people think the same way they do - wrong!
Most people assume that if they like something, then others should like it too - wrong again!
Most people assume that if they can do something, then everyone else should be able to do it too - ...again, nope, wrong!

Maybe you think (assume) that someone doesn't want to go out with you because they cancelled out the last time you invited them...
Maybe you think (assume) that if you brought the pink polka dot sweater with the green sleeves that flair-out that's on sale for 85% for your girlfriend, she'll absolutely love it!

Just because you "assume" something in your 'head' doesn't make it a reality - this is simply 'mind-chatter'.
What is 'mind-chatter'? 

Here is Susan Stewart (...by the way, I've been to one of her workshops and she's great!) with her presentation on "Challenging The Stories In Your Mind":


Choosing to challenge your "mind-chatter" forces you to really take a look around you instead of just "winging-it". Winging-it is fine if you're happy - but if you find yourself in constant situations where your feeling 'lost' or 'alone' or 'unhappy' or 'frustrated' or ....whatever the case maybe - maybe it's time to challenge your thoughts and take control.

What you've learnt and observed throughout your life is stored in your mind like little folders -
* This is what I think about chores (if I did too many - then maybe I despise them) 
* This is what I think about the colour blue (like it or don't like it) 
* This is what I think about bees (they scare me since I was stung in the summer of 1985)
* This is what I think about money...
* This is what I think about family...
* This is what I think about...

Whatever your mind stores in these "folders" sometimes it needs to be "challenged".
Just because you were stung by a bee, doesn't mean that every single bee out in the world is out to get you!?

Challenging your "mind-chatter" at times, brings forward great new things - cause you're now forcing your mind to re-evaluate the current "thought" it has about that particular thing and/or it now has to replace it's old-way with the new-way.

Next time you catch yourself thinking something negative or saying something negative about a particular event; a certain food; a certain place or whatever - just stop yourself and - challenge it. 
Try to prove your "negative" thoughts wrong - make your new thoughts, right.

Give it a try and share your comments / success stories! 

3/07/2011

Take Your Passion to Action



Gary Vaynerchuk's TED talk on Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape dates back to September 2008 but is still 100% relevant to today's ways.

Taking that plunge into some unknown waters can be scary, but in the end when you pop your head back out of that water - you've just realized that that was the best adrenaline rush ever!! ...You just did something you wanted to do and to boot you're doing something most people just keep talking about.

Sitting on the couch watching TV at night isn't going to make you richer.

Take what you know and love to do, love to talk about, know even about - now - (you don't need to be a rocket scientist about this subject) and run with it!
You can go to the library and read endless amount of books about the subject but if you never take that knowledge and just go - you'll never go...
The best lessons are those that didn't work, AND, of course, obviously those that did!
But how you gonna know unless you try?

3/06/2011

Choosing to Live in Love

I'm a very strong-willed woman. I like a good challenge and appreciate efforts being given or shared between individuals. I've lived my fair share of struggles and have learned that not everything in life is "fair" - however now with this new outlook on life, I'm also seeing that some of these struggles were needed to make me who I am today. Also looking back, I might have even incurred some of my "situations" due to where my focus was at that time in my life.

Focus on debt. Result: Get more debt. Lack of finances. Situations where I'm left without money.
Focus on lack of trust. Result: Get lied to. Situations arise where I find my disappointed in someone / something. Frustration and angry towards 'everyone' else cause in my mind, they're all incompetent. 
Focus on struggles. Result: Be exposed to more struggles; bring on drama; get magnetized to troublesome situations (wrong place, wrong time).

Shifting Perspectives

So my new way of 'being' is to shift my focus on what I want vs. what I don't want.
This isn't easy. I know I shouldn't say 'that' since my focus then makes 'this' hard.
This new way of "being" is, just that - it's a new way of being.

What is this way? What am I wanting to be? ...I am looking at living life with 'Love'.
?? What are you talking about, you ask? 
Why, thank you for asking...


I write this blog out of nothing. I have no guideline. Nothing to base myself on - just simply letting my mind be free and allowing this flow of writing come through me. I'm accepting my inner-self to just listen and 'go with it'. So what if it doesn't make sense, if it's really bad - well I just won't post it. ...but what happens if this inner-self actually brings out a message that makes sense? If I choose to never listen, to never allow it to come out - I'm disconnecting myself from 'me'.

When I decided to sit down today, to start writing this blog, this isn't at all the topic I had chosen. I had just had a break-down with my teenagers about putting-in their share of team work / effort for the house duties. I had just finished venting a little too loud and a little too much and was coming in with a focus of writing about the "Boat" story I always tell them. I'll have to leave that one for another time. But once I sat down and refocused, a different message came about and just started flowing through me.

Some people joke around and say that I've completely lost it and there are times where my fear-based mind believes them. This is when I have to stop and refocus. This is what I meant earlier about "this isn't easy". My internal spiritual struggles are just that - internal. At times, I just want to forget this sense of self and just go on my way and live humanly, ignoring my spiritual-connection and pursue life in ignorance. ...but having done this already, repeatedly,  I know that "Love" keeps coming back calling me to stop living this way. As much as I try to pretend its not there - this connection - is there and keeps appearing at various stages of my life making it harder and harder for me to ignore it.

Our world has a tendency to embellish itself with it's human-ways, convincing us that what it has determined as being beautiful, is beautiful; what it has set as "smart" standards is what we all need to evaluate ourselves on; what it views as acceptance, we accept and what it tells us to reject, we push away.Where do these standards come from and why are they the only ones we set to achieve? According to these human-rules if I'm born uncommon and fall under their 'ugly' category and don't meet their educational standards; I'm pretty much doomed to fail. Why would we simply accept that?

For those who don't - I continuously applaud you because you are the strength, the courage, the vision, the truth this world needs. Don't hide behind close doors just because people don't understand or fear you - come out and let them see that "Love" is perfect and that each one of us is just that... "Love". Let those who live in fear... let them run and hide behind close doors.

Let Go and Believe

For me, this new way of being continuously tugs at me and fill-me up with fear-based programming.
Why are you doing this anyways? What are you trying to prove? You're no better than anyone else - who do you think you are? What makes you think you're special? Why even bother with all this, you know it's not going to get you anywhere...

So why do I bother? Because I sincerely believe I'm worth it. I sincerely believe that God (Love) is real and that letting go of control, power, fears, etc - is truly the way of life. It is the journey; that thing that everyone keeps looking for; that feeling we're all wanting; that void we're looking at filling - all of it, it's Love.

Love

Love is acceptance, trust, appreciation, permission, kindness, confidence, honesty, forgiveness, gratefulness, the ability to give, is faith, is to believe... Love is endless.

Everywhere I turn to, when looking for support, to gain better understanding, to collect knowledge - every one at the end of these support lines of communication (counsellors, social workers, physicians, scientists, researchers, etc.) have all turned to "Love".

Numerous authors, speakers, spiritualists, countless others have all documented their experiences and formulations on how living in 'Love' can change your life, ...so what's the worst that could happen? I become a person living life with a spiritual connection, gaining inner-happiness by choosing to see things with a lens of 'Love'? Could it be any worst? ;-)



What does this really mean? What does it mean to my life? Do I have to change? Do I have rules to abide? My answer to myself is: no.

If I have faith and just believe that "Love" will take care of me - that means I have no rules. Remember rules are man-made guidelines to structure a group of people so that control and power can be maintained.

To believe in God, to believe in Love, can't and shouldn't be strenuous.

If my focus is to "serve" and I believe that "serving" is what gets me to God (Love) then my beliefs are what are guiding me and the Universe (God; Love; Karma; Source; whatever you call it) in return responds. As long as I am doing what I want out of the goodness of my heart, and don't expect anything back in return - this is living in "Love".

If making food at a restaurant fills you up with joy and you'd do it for nothing, just simply cause it brings you peace, then this is living in "Love".
If taking photos is your passion, and you'll do whatever it takes to live this life - then this is living in "Love".
If sharing with the world, on a blog, your journey to "Love", and expecting nothing in return - then this is a way of living in "Love".

Whatever it is that brings you that peace, that joy - that's your inner-self calling out to you and saying: "Just go with it and everything will fall into place. Love will take care of you."

Living in Love

Again: Love will take care of you. Wow!

...Are you crazy, Love can't pay the bills. I've got a house, two vehicles, two pre-adults graduating high school in June and another that's just starting a growth spurt (mid-teens). Are you crazy - show me the money!

This is the hard part. This is a prime example of not having that faith. And so I'm telling the Universe - You can't take care of me, I need to do this myself [my focus]. So what am I going to get in return...

Pretty deep, eh?

So that's where I'm at. I'm not saying that having faith means sitting on your favourite chair watching TV waiting for the phone to ring. I'm also not saying that you'll magically walk to the store and find a winning lottery ticket... no what I'm saying (for me) is that having faith means that opportunities will come up allowing changes to occur in your life. You must be open to these changes AND you have to be conscious enough to notice these opportunities and ... to just have faith that it'll all work out.

If your sitting down whining about how everyone else is getting everything and nothing happens to you... then what is it you are focusing on? You're focusing on lack; on greed; on wanting others to suffer because you suffer; whatever the case... just remember that focus (even if you don't want to be focusing on this) is what's going to come back to you (Karma).

It's the Law; New Thought Movement; Law of Attraction, Law of Success, the Universal Law. For years, decades, centuries, ...forever - this has been documented.

You can't change others, you can only change yourself.
You can't change anything, you can only change you - your perspective on things.
Believe that you can change whatever you want - but in the end, if you take a deeper look - you'll notice that you're the one that changed. Your views. Your beliefs. Your perspective. Your feelings.

"When the student is ready, the teach arrives"

We're so caught up in "our" own little worlds that we disconnect from our spirit, choosing to not want to be students anymore. We figure we know everything. We're smart people and we don't need to connect to wishy-washy spiritual-connection stuff.


That fluff is for those yahoos who've gone overboard. And besides if it ends-up being true then I'll just deal with it when I retire. Right now I have to take care of myself and everyone else who needs me. 

...so what happens if you don't make it to retirement? Why choose to live a life of internal misery, worries, fears, and whatnot - who are right now creating cancers, anxieties; diseases inside you.

"For people who are more concerned about being able to pay their next bill than they are with the law of attraction, it's hard to think that keeping a positive attitude will change anything. Louise says that just hearing the ideas behind the law of attraction can help a person begin to make small changes in her life. "When the student is ready, the teacher appears," she says.

Martha says she noticed the law of attraction at work in an unlikely situation—while coaching homeless heroin addicts in Phoenix. Martha says they lived on the street because they couldn't afford apartments. "Then, I found out they were spending an average of $180,000 a year on heroin," she says. When Martha asked how they got the money for their addiction, she saw a change. "They would become completely different when they were talking about the one thing they believed was necessary. And as I've worked with them, I've seen that what they believe and expect is what they get.""

The Oprah Winfrey Show - June 27, 2008: Living the Law of Attraction

Lifetime Commitment 

This is where my choice resides. I don't want to live with what ifs. I'd rather live and learn; take chances; break 'rules' living outside the norm; challenge myself with breaking habits; challenge my beliefs; and choosing to continuously be a student - a student of life. The world is ours to learn and explore. And limiting ourselves to our little safe circle of security and comfort is what's going to get you no where. This is because you choose to live in fear and you allow that fear to consume your every thought. I no longer want to live in fear - I want to live in Love.

I read the following in the book Chicken Soup for the Soul.

This life is a test.
It is only a test.
Had it been an actual life
You would have received
Further instructions on
Where to go and what to do!
[Found on a bulletin board]



3/05/2011

How Selfish Are You?

Just read another of Steve Pavlina's blog - man does this guy know how to write! I totally connect with the majority of his viewpoints. His advice is always to direct - and should be! Thanks Steve for your continuous sharing! My personal growth has flourished since I first found you online late 2008; and was also lucky enough to have grasp some alone time to enjoy your in-dept reading of Personal Development for SMART PEOPLE in 2009. Still to this day I'm learning...


How Selfish Are You?

by Steve Pavlina (posted June 6, 2005)

Several readers have informed me they’re experiencing tremendous difficulty with the issue of selfishness vs. selflessness. Deep down they want to live lives of greater service to others (STO), but they note that their current lives are designed almost entirely around service to self (STS). This in turn often leads to feelings of guilt, but usually the guilt isn’t enough to spur action.

There are abundant belief systems which set STS and STO in conflict with each other, usually favoring one over the other.

First there’s the STO-favoring side. Serving others requires the “death of the self.” The ego is seen as something which must be transcended. In order to become enlightened, one must sacrifice one’s own needs to serve the greater good. Many societies hold people who seem to fit this model in high esteem.

On the other hand, we have the STS side. People are inherently selfish and cannot be expected to act against their own self interest. Selfishness is rooted in our biology, even encoded into our genes. We’re ultimately Pavlovian stimulus-response machines driven by pleasure and pain. Those who seem to serve the greater good only do so because on some level it gives them pleasure, or they’d feel pain if they didn’t.

I think both viewpoints are dysfunctional. They assume STS and STO are in conflict. But are they really?


Where does STS ultimately lead?

What would happen if you were to fully embrace the STS path and take it as far as you possibly could? What would be the most selfish life you could possible imagine? What’s the greatest pleasure you can think of?
Would you become like Hitler and want to conquer the world and put everyone and everything under your control? Ok, so imagine you’ve just become the supreme leader of the planet. Then what? What would you do with all that power? If you didn’t have to keep struggling to maintain it, you’d probably get bored after a while.

For many people the STS path is rooted in fear. The more money, control, and power you achieve, the more fearful you become of losing it. The pursuit of greater power is endless. Your situation is never totally secure.
But what if you could somehow master this path and achieve total, absolute security? What would you do then? What would you do if you had no fear?

Perhaps you’d want to contribute something… make some kind of difference… leave a legacy. If fear and security ceased to motivate you, then what would step in to take its place?

I think the pursuit of STS, if you think it through far enough and imagine yourself succeeding at every step, will eventually lead you to some form of STO.


Where does STO ultimately lead?

But what if you start from STO? What if you put others entirely above yourself? What if you aspire to make the greatest possible contribution you can, whatever the cost to you personally? Where will that lead you?
Imagine you succeed massively at serving others. You’ve cured every known disease, rebalanced the ecosystem, ended poverty and suffering, and maxed out everyone’s self-esteem. You’ve solved all the problems of humanity. No one even needs your help anymore.

What will you do then? Enjoy it? Work on yourself for a while? Won’t this eventually lead you back to STS?


Synergy between STS and STO

Now I’m well aware that you’re not going to be able to max out the STS or the STO path within the span of a human lifetime. There will always be more to do on either side. But this line of thinking got me curious — if maxing out one side leads you back around to the other side, then what does that mean?

To me this indicated that STS and STO both lie on the same path. When you travel to the end of one, you hit the beginning of the other. Perhaps STS and STO are far more twisted together, like a giant Mobius strip.
Biologically this made sense to me. In order for humans to survive, STS and STO must be in balance. If we became totally STS but not STO, we wouldn’t care for our young (among other problems), and we’d eventually die off. If we became totally STO but not STS, we’d fail to take care of our basic needs and would probably die from neglecting our health.

In order to be optimally STS, you must be at least partially STO. And in order to be optimally STO, you must be at least partially STS. Sometimes being selfish is the most selfless thing you can do, and vice versa.
If you want to serve the greater good, you have to serve your own needs. You have to take care of your health, your financial needs, your education, etc.

If you want to serve your own interests, you need to support the community around you which will help you succeed. At the very least you may do this financially, by buying products and services from other people.


Diagnosing congruency problems

STS and STO must remain in balance. It isn’t a matter of choosing one path over the other. You need both.
But what about situations when they’re in conflict? Certainly I don’t deny such situations exist. But rather than spending lots of time trying to figure out when to choose STS and when to choose STO, I suggest trying to work on your life path itself to bring STS and STO into greater harmony.

For example, suppose you’re in a situation where your job is almost entirely STS. You do it for the money or for other perks or for a feeling of security, but your work doesn’t serve the greater good in any meaningful way. Suppose your company manufactures junk food, the kinds of products that are only going to harm people’s health in the long run. But your company (and you) get paid to do it.

Then in your off time, you do volunteer work, spend lots of time with your family, and so on. In your personal life you try to be a lot more STO.

STS and STO are in conflict. They’re not in balance.

How many companies do you know like this? The work they do is almost entirely STS, serving the needs of the company and its investors, but then they also dabble in community service projects and slap a cutesy mission statement over the whole thing. Internally they’re driven by one set of values (mostly greed), while externally they project a different set of values (mostly service).

This is pure schizophrenia.

If you find yourself in a situation like this, you can start by getting clear about where you’re overly STS and where you’re overly STO. Where are you being driven too much by self-interest and damaging others in the process? And where are you sacrificing too much and hurting yourself?


No cheating

When many people find themselves in an unbalanced situation, they try to cheat.

They attempt to redefine STS or STO to fit their current situation. For example, a greed-driven corporation may try to come up with a cutesy mission statement that casts an STO light on its business goals. But no one buys it. It’s nothing but a whitewash and has no real power to motivate people. Most of the corporate mission statements I’ve seen from Fortune 500 companies fall into this pattern. They’re written with such fuzzy, imprecise language so as to say nothing of substance. I’d give them more credit if their mission statements began with, “Our mission is to make our investors filthy rich and to squash our competition.” I think that would be a more accurate statement of purpose than what makes it through the PR filter.

What happens to individuals who find themselves in an overly STS situation is that they try to rationalize some STO components. They try to find the good in what they do. Hey, at least I’m paying my taxes. If I don’t do this job, then someone else will. I’m just being a good provider.

Don’t lie to yourself. You know the truth.


Finding the path where STS and STO are congruent

It’s not easy to find a path where STS and STO are congruent. But it is possible. On such a path, greed and service are both pointing you in the same direction. While you’ll still need to manage minor conflicts between them, the big picture is balanced. You’ll be able to see that pursuing STS and STO will take you down the same path.

What is the greediest path you can take? I think if you answer this question deeply enough, you’ll find that it’s also a path filled with service. What is the path of greatest service? Is it not also a path marked by great pleasure?

I hit the incongruency wall as I built up my games business. Parts of my work were STS (like sales and marketing). Other parts were STO (like writing free articles and coaching other developers). But each part seemed to be separate. I’d usually either be doing STS work or STO work. I’d even try to balance my time between the two of them.

After several years of that, I began seeing that this manner of living was nuts. So I opted to define a new way of working where I could spend the majority of my time doing work that is both STS and STO.
The greediest thing I do for myself is to work on my own personal growth. Growth is my driving force, my greatest STS.

The most service oriented work I do is to help others grow. If I can give someone a perspective shift or teach them a new skill, it has the potential to change them for life. And then they may go out and use it to do more STO work.

Well, it wasn’t hard for me to imagine the kind of work where I could have my cake and eat it too. I realized that there would be tremendous synergy between working on my own growth (greed) and helping others to grow (service). The more I work on my own growth, the greater my capacity for service. And the greater my service, the more it feeds back into my own growth.

This was how I ideally imagined things working, but now that I’m about nine months down this path, I have to say that it’s working.

For example, my decision to write this blog entry is motivated both by STS and STO reasons.
On the STO side, hopefully this blog entry will benefit someone who reads it. It might have no effect, or it might help a lot of people. Also, this blog entry will help generate more traffic to this site, which will hopefully benefit even more people. And there’s tons of free content here now, so it’s very accessible to a wide audience. I have no doubt that this web site is doing people some good. Every week I get feedback to that effect. Many readers have told me about multiple shifts they’ve experienced and how dramatically their results have improved.

Then there’s the STS side. Writing this blog entry helps me clarify my own ideas. It will generate feedback that will help me see what I’ve written from other perspectives. People may poke holes in some of it. This may in turn help me to re-evaluate my own thinking, which means that I’ll grow. The ideas from this blog post may also end up in a future book, speech, or seminar, which means that people who read it today are helping me beta-test these ideas. Also, each new blog post helps generate more traffic, which means more ad clicks (immediate revenue) and more newsletter sign-ups and RSS subscribers. That means a bigger audience to buy info products down the road — books, audio programs, seminars. It also means more people who might hire me as a speaker or who might attend a seminar of mine 5-10 years from now. And that ultimately means more income, which means that new growth experiences become accessible to me. New growth experiences for me means more ideas I can share with others, which feeds back into STO.

So what I do is driven both by greed and service. To me they’re the same thing. Serving others is being greedy.


Ongoing conflict resolution

Whenever I encounter conflict between STS and STO, I look at the big picture. I try to figure out why the conflict is occurring and engineer it out of existence. It’s not easy, but I feel that the more I do this, the more harmonious my life becomes.

For example, what if some mega-corporation offered to pay me an insane amount of money to give a motivational speech to their sales staff? And suppose this corporation’s purpose is totally incongruent with my values, so by helping their salespeople to sell more, I’d be contributing to a greater problem. Maybe the company has a hideous environmental record. This seems like a conflict between STS and STO. Do I take the money and give the best speech I can? Do I take the money and give the salespeople bad advice that will do them more harm than good? Do I decline the offer?

Given my values this kind of situation is one that could very well occur (although the above example is a bit exaggerated). I have no interest in helping companies make money in a destructive manner, regardless of pay. But at the same time, I do want to help the people who work at such companies, and corporations hire enormous numbers of speakers each year, so it isn’t a market I want to write off entirely.

My decision was to focus on the kinds of speech topics that would allow me to still speak for certain corporations without compromising my values. I won’t speak on business-growth topics like sales or marketing to corporations which I’d rather not see grow. But I am open to speaking to their people about topics like living consciously, the kinds of topics that could plant the seed for change. That may seriously reduce the number of people who’d be willing to hire me as a speaker, but the extra money is not worth the damage to my integrity.

When you work on a task where STS and STO are both aligned, motivation skyrockets. Having worked like this for nine months now, I’m simply not willing to lose one side or the other.

There’s a good chance you find yourself in a situation where STS and STO are in conflict. Maybe it’s your work, your relationship, or your family. Take some time to think about how you could set these two powerful forces in harmony. Instead of having them work against each other, set them both after the same goal. Allow your greed to fuel your service and your service to fuel your greed. Accept and integrate both the selfish and the selfless parts of you. Learn to use both the dark and the light sides of your nature.

3/01/2011

Living Life on Purpose

Each of us has a role in life and each one of us is part of a 'bigger' system [the Universe].
As the current system stands we know that there's work to be done.

As a role, if each person helped assist one other individual in a life changing choice, a difference is made. Then, if that person helps in the same way someone else our original good deed is amplified; we've created a "social wave".

The system [the Universe] is connected to me, it's a part of me, it's why I exist - without it there's no way I could be. Each stage of my existence is based on the choices I made. These choices, in connection to the Universe, is what got me to where I am. Whether good or bad, those choices got me here, got me to "my" now. If I had chosen to make my decisions based on other people's choices, then I would be "them". Which is impossible. Even if two individuals were to make the same choices, the Universe's impact on their life, their thoughts, their emotions would eventually produce different results. There can be no two of you, just as there are no two of me.

Society, surroundings, education, peers, etc. all these influences do ultimately impact some of our choices. This is where the Universe allows our humanly nature to take place and thus provides us with life-lessons. Some people choose to continuously repeat, re-live, these life-lessons internally ignoring the Universe's call out to them. They choose to live 'their' life as they please continuously aiming at perfecting something that doesn't exist.

Again, we are part of the Universe and so we are perfect beings. This whole [Universe, God, Buddha, Karma, Source, Light, ...whatever you want to call it] is all that is good, all that is love. Our link, our connection to this 'whole' is our spirit, our soul, it's our connection to Love. Whether you live consciously with a soul or choose to ignore it, either way it's there. You sense it, you feel it, you know it.

When people choose to live 'humanly soul-less' they choose a life-journey continuously looking for something to fulfill a continuous 'gap'. This is where addictions fit in. This is where neglect fits in. This is where 'hurt' is. This is where 'fear' lives. This is a life without belief, without faith, without hope. If I choose to be this way, then I choose to no longer be "me", severing my 'connection' with the Universe and thus living a 'human soul-less' connection based on human rules and regulations created for power and control instilling in me the most powerful obsession of all: fear.

Limiting myself to human-worldly ways, I would allow society to choose my destiny by having them grade me and then accepting it as so. I can only grow as much as I allow myself to grow intellectually since... well I'm not smart enough; I'm not worthy enough; I'm not good enough..

How can this be true if I'm connected to the Universe? How can something, someone, that comes from that whole be not smart enough? It simply isn't true. The whole concept of being smart, being good enough, being worthy is all humanly measured. These measures are rules of this earth and can't be used anywhere else. When I return to the whole, when I return to the Universal Source will I be taking these 'measures' with me? Will God even care that I can't do algebra?

I am me. I am who I am. And my life has meaning. I will make mistakes; and from these I learn. If I wait for others to fall; if I wait for others to pave the way; if I wait for others... I'll never see life with opened eyes, since I will be seeing things through theirs. I need to climb, to grow and to fall in order to discover who I am.
If I never fall, my journey has already failed. If I never climb I will never feel freedom.


Allowing myself to stay closed in a box can provide me with a sense of security and comfort. However opening up that box and stepping out allows me to become free and allows me to stretch and freely breath what I'm allowed to breath. I'm allowed to get out. I'm allowed to have openness and freedom. I'm allowed to be me.


Can I help anyone else with their 'life-lessons'? Yes! Helping others is a wonderful experience, but maybe the question to ask is: Can I allow others to help me? Living in fear, makes me answer no. Living in denial, makes me answer no. Degrading my self-worth, makes me answer no. Thinking I'm not worthy, or that no one will want to, or that I'm a burden, makes me answer no. Pushing my ego aside, allows me to answer yes. Living in love, allows me to answer yes. Choosing to accept and receive the Universe's gift to me, allows me to say yes.

How does "what you do" allow you to move with flexibility and connect with others?


Allowing my growth to expand is to also allow my learning skills to broaden. Those surrounding me impact me in the ways that I allow them to. I must choose what to keep; what to pass on; and know when to just keep walking. Listening to that inner-spirit [Holy Spirit; Feeling of love, of good; your "Third" eye; whatever you call it] and allowing it to communicate through you will provide you and whomever surrounds you with nothing but love.

My status as an individual has an effect on life, my life. I can't change anyone else's life because they need to make their own choices. I can only be a model and share stories that can help form a pattern to assist others in creating their own results.

My choices are mine. My mistakes are mine - they're made by me, by my choices. They weren't anyone else's - because I made them. As long as I learn from my mistakes, then they're no longer mistakes but life-experiences. I accept my choices knowing that my path is being built continuously, by me - and this path [mine] isn't complete... because my choices are still not done.

I leave you with this extract from the book A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson.


"One of the most freeing techniques provided us in A Course in Miracles is a prayer on page 83 of the Text, in which we instruct the universe to undo our errors:
"...the first step in the undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly, but can as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourself in this, and keep yourself fully aware that the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. Say this to yourself as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation: 
I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.
I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.
I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me."
And that's it! It's a course in miracles, not a course in moving furniture. 'Miracles reverse physical laws. Time and space are under His command'." 

Tips for Hanging Picture Frames and Framed Art

To See Visual Examples and Explore more options, visit my one of my Pinterest boards:  http://pinterest.com/tammymathieu   General Hang...