Archive for August, 2009
4 Steps to Living Your Vision By Marsh Engle
Posted by admin in Feminine Success, Positive Actions, Vision, empowerment on August 25th, 2009
Today’s an anniversary for me. It’s been eight years since my first book was published. And, over ten since I began to investigate what allows one person to continuously achieve spectacular outcomes every day without fail while others experience what appears to be an endless stream of bumps along their journey to success.
Here’s what I’ve discovered: Success is in the quality of our choice of action!
All of the high achievers I’ve met and interviewed have one very important thing in common: They each have a practiced system of success and it’s one filled with the attitudes, habits, rituals and certainty that serve rather than distract them from their vision.
Here’s what else I’ve discovered: We cannot change what we refuse to see, deny or acknowledge. In other words, it pays big dividends to get real, take pure responsibility and be deeply honest with ourselves. Know what you require in your life and allow these elements to be your continuous point of reference that guides your quality of choice and action.
The pay-off: Your actions are inspired, your enthusiasm high and your results in alignment with your greatest vision!
Are you ready to bring your vision into focus and empower the actions in your life? Begin by experimenting with the 4 Steps to Living Your Vision:
1. INVESTIGATE. Start by taking a look at your current patterns of thought, habits of action and energy depleting attitudes – all of them. If you are like most of us, it’s very likely that you’ve unconsciously practiced many of the same routines day in and day out your entire life. ; As you become aware of any limiting habits of thinking, choice of language and actions, take note. Acknowledge them. This first step is simply about gaining awareness. No need to judge. Simply notice.
2. DECIDE. As you begin to take notice of your conscious and unconscious actions that have become your way of life, decide which ones tend to deplete your creativity and which are empowering and energizing. The habits and attitudes to hang onto are the ones that propel you forward and serve your highest vision. In many cases, these are the ones that also positively impact the people around you. Disempowering ones are those that steal your sense of connection, joy and fulfillment – these are the ones that stand between you and living your vision.
3. REPLACE. Since every choice … including our ways of perception … tend to become routine very rapidly, the best way to eliminate an old disempowering attitude is to replace it with a fresh point of view. Take a look at limiting behaviors and consider a new way of approach. Become innovative. Stretch yourself. Transform. Modify your choices and replace them with vibrant new actions.
4. PRIORITIZE. Start with small steps. Prioritize the patterns that you want to tackle first. Ask yourself which ones … when altered … will have the greatest impact in your life. Then, focus on making small changes in those areas of your life. Remember, what motivates and propels a purpose-full life is your passion and enthusiasm. Break through the barriers of progress one attitude at a time – as you feel ready.
And, most of all, always keep in mind: A vision without action is simply a dream. An action without vision is merely a passing of time. But vision with action can change your life and the world.
“It’s a massive voice-not a single girl speaking alone.”
Posted by admin in empowerment on August 12th, 2009
The world is waking up to the fact that the greatest force for global change is growing up before our very eyes.
A new session unexpectedly stole the show at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Early on a Saturday morning-when most delegates would be expected to be sleeping-a panel called “The Girl Effect” played to a standing room-only crowd. A buzz circulated the packed room, which included heads of state, CEOs, international banks, and philanthropic leaders such as Melinda Gates and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Why all the fuss? Lee Howell, Davos Annual Meeting Director, says girls were on the agenda for the first time in the meeting’s 39-year history because, as he puts it, “The field work, economic analysis, and experience all point to the powerful effect you’ll have if you invest in girls. People have to do more with less. If that’s the context we’re operating in, then the girl effect is an answer.”
Julie & Julia! An Inspiration of Creativity!
Posted by admin in Career Development, Feminine Success, Uncategorized, empowerment on August 10th, 2009
In 2002, Julie Powell was just an average 30-year-old New Yorker who wanted something more than a dead-end day job. She turned to a cookbook for inspiration, but it wasn’t just any cookbook. Julie decided to cook every single recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year and chronicle the ups and downs of her attempt in a blog. The blog was a hit, and soon Julie got a book deal to write about the experience.
Her book Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously became part of a screenplay for a new movie written and directed by the famed Nora Ephron. Oprah.com’s Erin White talks with Julie about her journey through food blogging, cooking and writing and about what it’s like to see her story come to life on the big screen.Read more.
Want to Learn Creativity? Study Leonardo da Vinci
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on August 10th, 2009
If you want to learn creativity, study Leonardo da Vinci. Here are some of his principles:
- Ask challenging questions and encourage others to do the same. Keep a journal to record your ideas.
- Leonardo may be history’s greatest genius, but he made plenty of mistakes. He always focused on learning from them quickly.
- Leonardo wrote, “The five senses are the ministers of the soul.” Create an inspiring, enlivening environment. As you surround yourself with beauty, you invite your senses and your soul to come alive. Put fresh flowers on your desk; listen to inspiring music; enjoy healthy, beautifully presented meals.
- Maintain your sense of humor in the face of uncertainty. Smile like the Mona Lisa in the face of change. Listen for the voice of your intuition.
- Learn mind mapping®, a whole-brain technique for thinking, planning and problem-solving.
- Leonardo said, “Everything connects to everything else.” Creativity is all about making new, unexpected connections.
Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on August 8th, 2009
BE THE CHANGE- How Meditation Can Transform You and the World.
We all dread stepping out of what is familiar and known: your comfort zone. But when we do, we can discover enormous reserves of strength within ourselves, as actress Ellen Burstyn told us she did when she was homeless.
Most of us have a deep fear that the unthinkable could possibly happen to us, such as becoming homeless. In today’s economy, many people are finding themselves on the street through no fault of their own. Yet how many of us acknowledge street people as fellow human beings with needs no different from ours, simply without the means to fulfill them? Instead, how often do we avert our eyes when we pass them by and pretend they do not exist?
In an attempt to find out what it would take to see homeless people as being no different from ourselves, Rev. James Morton, the dean of St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York, began an experiment. As Zen teacher Grover Gauntt told us:
“He designed what he called the plunge: an act of diving into unknown waters and getting completely whacked and disorientated so you can orientate yourself in a new way. And he applied this to the street by sending his ministers out without any money, no place to live, no identification, just like the people they were serving. The first thing they did, quite naturally, was to go to the churches and ask for help, but, of course, very few would help them.”
From here developed the idea of street retreats: living on the street for a few days as a spiritual practice, intended to bring people into the very midst of society’s neediest, and by doing so to seek a place of inclusivity. Bernie Glassman, founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, talked to us for our book, BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You and the World. He told us:
“The homelessness that exists in our society is due to treating people as throwaways, and it will only end when we stop seeing them as garbage. Street retreats are where we live and practice meditation on the streets, begging and sleeping rough just as any homeless person would. We meet for meditation periods together and then disperse to do what we have to in order to survive, such as finding food to eat and boxes to sleep on.”
Bernie continued: “I included meditation as I wanted to show that meditation is not just sitting on a cushion but reaches out to every aspect of life. It is a way of bringing us into a state of inclusivity and of not-knowing, and when that happens, the experience of oneness arises. But at the same time we have the experience of not existing. When you are homeless and begging, people walk past you, you are completely ignored, you simply do not exist. When you have been so ignored, it is impossible to do that to another person. You can no longer look away from anybody or anything.”
Ellen Burstyn had this experience of being ignored when she did a street retreat and lived on the street with the homeless. In our book she told us:
“I did the street retreat because I was so afraid of it. I could physically feel how much fear I had about being away from my comfort zone, my bed, and especially not having any identity. The whole idea of begging was terrifying. The first time I did it, I had to a cross a street to a restaurant with tables outside. Two women were eating there and I decided to approach them. As I walked toward them, I felt like I was crossing over some line that I had consciously never known was there. I was purposefully stepping through my ego to experience what was on the other side. I approached the women and simply asked, ‘Excuse me, but I need a dollar for the subway. Could either of you spare a dollar?’ The woman closest to me reached into her pocket and handed me a dollar without taking her eyes off her companion’s face. I said ‘Thank you’ and walked away. I felt a strange pride that I had really accomplished something, but then enormous sadness as I realized that neither of the women had looked at me. I had got what I needed, but I had been disregarded, I had not been seen.”
This invisibility is one of the biggest difficulties for the homeless. As Grover Gauntt, who is a street retreat leader, says:
“Just a day can seem like forever as it is so intense. Suddenly, you do not have the money to get home, buy a cup of tea, make a phone call, or do anything. Fear rises as you are without any identity, any way of saying you are who you are. How do you relate to this world now? You have to find a place to sleep; you have to beg for food. And you watch people move their eyes to avoid seeing you. When we don’t have the experience of something, then we tend to negate or categorize it. Homeless people get categorized as being alcoholics, drug addicts, there to rip you off, or just plain crazy. But every homeless person has a story and a history, just like we do. Before I first took the plunge, I was fearful of confrontation, but I learned that confrontation is just disguised fear. I rarely pass a homeless person now without saying a few words and acknowledging him as a human being. Taking the plunge into the unknown is an expansion into a different way of seeing, an acceptance of all states of being beyond one’s own limitations.”
Doing anything outside of our experience is a plunge, especially stepping into places that we resist or are fearful of. The added ingredient of meditation to the street retreats was to deepen the experience of inclusivity, that we are all a part of each other, whether we are homeless or not. Such retreats, now held in many cities across the country, confront our fear and in so doing embrace our shared humanity.
Re-print http://www.huffingtonpost.com/living/
Ed and Deb Shapiro’s new book, BE THE CHANGE, How Meditation Can Transform You And The World, forewords by the Dalai Lama and Robert Thurman, with contributors such as Marianne Williamson, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Beckwith, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Jane Fonda, Jack Kornfield, Byron Katie, Ed Begley, Bernie Glassman, Russell Bishop, and others, will be published Nov 3 2009 by Sterling Ethos.
Deb is the author of the award-winning book YOUR BODY SPEAKS YOUR MIND. Ed and Deb are the authors of over 15 books, and lead meditation retreats and workshops. They are corporate consultants, and the creators of Chillout daily inspirational text messages on Sprint cell phones. See: www.EdandDebShapiro.com
Follow Ed and Deb Shapiro on Twitter: www.twitter.com/edanddebshapiro