You can get more work done in less time by accelerating your speed in accomplishing important tasks. Three fundamental speed skills offer the key to shortening your work day:

• Speed reading
• Fast writing
• Effective listening

Strategic, purposeful reading accomplishes your goal faster. Most people just plod through their reading from beginning to end. By the time they get to the end of reading, they’ve forgotten the material at the beginning! Sound too familiar to you? Instead, follow these key principles:

• Plan to go over the material 2-4 times
• Use your hand or finger to pace yourself as you read
• On your first pass, do a fast scan of the material, no more than 5-10 seconds per page
• Take a few moments to jot down some questions about the material that you’d like to have answered
• On your next reading, slow down and use notes and highlighting to capture the answers you’re looking for

“Writing with a purpose” speeds every writing task. We all often just plunge into writing, whether its a short email or a long paper. As we painfully write sentence after sentence, after a while we start getting bogged down, and everything we’ve written so far seems to actually slow us down, as if we were wading through hip-deep mud. Speed writing can fix this!

Speed writing begins, ironically, not by writing, but by pausing and visioning what the end is that you want to accomplish with your writing. Are you just trying to convey two facts in your writing, or are you trying to convince your audience of a complex proposition? Knowing your goal helps you structure your writing. Always put your notes in the order that you expect them to appear in your writing. Always draft an outline of the major points you expect to make. Unless you need more, automatically use the basic three-part structure of:

1. Introduction
2. Body
3. Conclusion

It’s surprising as how often this works, even for basic transactional emails.

You can further speed your writing by keeping you sentences short. You will write faster because this helps keep you ‘on track’ for conveying the key points from your outline. Your audience will also be able to read your message faster! Finally, be sure to do an editing pass and then a final proof reading of your writing. If your writing does not accomplish its goal the first time around, you’ll have to spend more time on the task.

Use effective listening to speed your day. There are four major areas where poor listening might cost you time that you can’t afford in your hectic day. These listening “time wasters” are:

1. Poor listening habits such as talking more than you listen or not focusing on what the other person is saying.
2. Failing to ask the right, concise questions to draw your speaker quickly to what you need to know
3. Letting classic communication roadblocks get in your way such as you slipping into the mode of telling the other person, rather than truly listening to them. Examples would be you switching into a mode of ordering, advising, moralizing warning, or arguing with the other person. These might feel good in the moment, but they slow you in your objective of learning desired information from the other person. Put your ego to the side, and only speak if you need to ask a clarifying or guiding question.
4. Letting communication break down through not really hearing what the speaker is saying. As Abraham Lincoln said, “I spend one third of my preparation in preparing for what I am going to say, and two thirds of my preparation in anticipating what the other person will say to me.”

A great way to be sure that you’ve heard correctly, is to restate what the speaker wants you to understand. When you think they’re done speaking, simply say “What I understand from what you said is…” and then rephrase the key points that you need to know.

There is no magic way to getting more work done in less time. It’s really about simple efficiency based in staying task-focused and goal-oriented. Whether your goal is learning information from reading, achieving a goal through the written word, or absorbing information from another speaker, keep your goal in mind and use these purposeful techniques to get the task done more quickly.

Mitch enjoys writing about web topics and he recommends making your business more effective with Time Sheet, Employee Time Clock, and Attendance Time Software.

Rule #1. Find angles or hooks that interest you. Bad listeners tune out boring or dry subjects, even if they are important for you to hear and understand. Find an angle that hooks you – ask yourself “What’s in this for me? How can I benefit from this?”

Rule #2. Don’t be distracted by the speaker’s form, instead focus on their content. If the speaker’s delivery is poor, don’t let that shut you down – stay focused on his or her content — that’s what you’re after. You’re stuck listening to them in any case, and they might have the best content in the world that is just cloaked by their poor preparation or delivery. Picture a ‘diamond in the rough’ and give every speaker the benefit of the doubt. Save your judgment for later!

Rule #3. Hold your fire until the speaker is finished. If you enter into mental argument and disagreement in your head while the speaker is still talking, you’re just going to miss a lot of what he’s saying while you are showing off in your head with mental rhetoric and gymnastics.

Rule #4. Listen for ideas, not facts. Facts are dime a dozen, and you’re not likely to remember them tomorrow anyway. Also, you can probably look them up on the web in seconds. But ideas are golden – ideas are the framework and skeleton that hold a thousand facts together.

Rule #5. Use an appropriate form of note-taking. Rather than always taking one style of notes (e.g., always super-comprehensive, detailed notes, or always skimpy notes), adjust your note style to the speaker. If the speaker is logical and well ordered, then your notes can follow a classic outline structure. But, if the speaker is impressionistic and passionate, you might be best off noting major theme headings with lots of white space, and then filling in details as the speaker jumps around.

Rule #6. Practice and work at listening. Try to “crack” a subject even if you can’t immediately connect with it. Work hard at your listening; exhibit genuine, active and attentive body language.

Rule #7. Resist distractions. Don’t let outside events or noises distract you. Put the smart phone or Blackberry down, by gosh! You are here for one reason and one reason only – to listen and absorb the key ideas from the speaker.

Rule #8. Keep your mind open. Don’t let emotional buzz words rile you up. Don’t let the words and concepts hang you up, but try to interpret them in the context of the discussion.

Rule #9. Be an active listener. Since your mind and thoughts will proceed much faster than the speaker’s message, be an active listener by mentally challenging, anticipating, summarizing and weighing the points and ideas you’re hearing. Listen between the lines by attending to the speaker’s tone of voice and body language and even the pacing. For example, if the speaker pauses and takes a deep breath, that can tell you a lot about how they feel about the next thing they’re going to say.

Rule #10. Exercise your mind. If the material is heavy and dense, hard-to-understand, don’t resist it or tune it out by day dreaming. Instead, view it as a chance to exercise you mind by challenging it.

Mitch enjoys writing about web topics and he recommends making your business more effective with Free Time Sheet, Employee Time Clock, and Attendance Time Software.

Volunteering is a great way to meet people and experience new things. You open yourself to many doors of opportunity when you decide to donate your time. Networking, learning new skills, and seeing the world are great reasons to volunteer. In addition, employers will view you as more favorable in comparison to others.

Aside from all the nice benefits, volunteering is about giving and helping. That is what humans are meant to do. Opening up your spirits will benefit you farther than the tangible benefits. We all want to make a difference. Well, volunteering is the way to achieve that. Amidst your busy life, try to find time to volunteer. Even if it is once a month, it will make a difference.

I volunteered heavily in my college years. I worked in the campus volunteer center and within community affairs for quite some time. It was one of the most rewarding jobs that I have ever experienced. Putting a smile on someone’s face was priceless. When I helped run an organ donation carnival, the response I got from one of the leaders was “Thank you for helping us save lives!” That was all worth it. Now, go out there and make a difference today!

I hope this article helps you. You can visit me at http://ebooks4life.blogspot.com or Self-Help Ebooks. Thanks for reading!

We all watch in spellbound disbelief when good dances hit the floor and seem to glide and sway in perfect harmony with the music. Let’s face it the birth of dance shows on TV proves that we all love to watch good dances dance.

Green with envy well there is a cure for the dreaded two left feet syndrome.

Salsa dancing lessons will take you from the clumsy to the graceful and it’s almost painless. Salsa music is so catchy that you can not help tap your feet to its intertwining rhythms and melodies. You can’t help but want to dance to Salsa.

Good Salsa dancing lessons will take you step by step though the easy to learn basic steps and turns so within a matter of weeks you will be dancing like you were born in Havana Cuba.

Salsa dancing lessons are springing up all over in clubs, bars, school and village halls so you should not have a problem finding a dance instructor to perform the surgery required to give you rhythm and correct your two left feet.

Salsa dance lessons and Salsa teachers are like a good pair of trousers one size dose not fit all so if you don’t get on with the first set of lessons try another teacher. One very important point to remember is to have FUN. This is what Salsa is all about so no matter where you go for your Salsa dance lessons remember to have FUN.

See you on the dance floor

Lee has been dancing salsa for over 3 years and enjoys travelling all over the world to learn more about salsa dancing. He is the webmaster for http://youcansalsa.co.uk a Cuban Salsa dance website.

1. Talk from the heart

Communication problems in relationships are the primary cause of so much grief and unhappiness between people. You must have experienced loads of examples throughout your life of people completely misunderstanding what you were trying to communicate. It doesn’t matter whether you are speaking face to face, on the phone, writing a letter or email, or tapping out a text… you can guarantee that at times your message will not be received as intended. So what’s the answer? The best advice is to improve your communication skills — and that starts largely with understanding your self better. If you know and understand your own mind better, and how it operates, you will better understand other people. Start to honestly and openly ‘watch’ yourself. Learn about the way you work. When you can be honest and observant about your own self, as it is, flaws and all, you will be vulnerable enough to communicate deeply and meaningfully with your significant others. Most of the time we live behind emotional walls and facades, guarded and sealed off from real emotional interaction with others. As you become free of that through self-knowledge, you develop the ability to transcend and overcome all relationships problems.

2. Embracing change

Emotional problems in relationships are so painful, aren’t they? It really hurts when your relationship is not working the way you want it to. One of the things that I’ve noticed helps overcome emotional problems in relationships is simply to embrace and accept change and transformation in your relationships. You have to expect it. What worked in your relationship 10 years ago, 3 years ago, 2 weeks ago, or yesterday is not necessarily going to work today. Try and maintain your flexibility and adapt. Keep working on how you can make your relationships even more special and meaningful today. Get back to how creative you were when you first started dating. Recognise that your relationships aren’t static things, they are organic and growing. You have to nourish them and heal them when anything attacks them or stops them from growing.

3. Be the change

You’ve been searching for ‘relationships problems and answers’ in a proactive way, which is great. You have initiated the process of healing your relationships and getting back to a position where you can transform and create blissful relationships. You don’t need to wait for your relationship partner to catch up and want to participate again in creating this magnificent partnership. You can be the change that you want to see. Take 100% responsibility for healing and nurturing your relationships. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean blaming yourself for your relationship problems, it means taking an ‘if it’s to be, it’s up to me’ attitude to creating relationship magic from here on out. Change what you do, change your habitual patterns of behaviour. You are an immensely resourceful being and you have the answers to all your problems within you. Declare that your relationships are worth fighting for rather than fighting in!

Your new paradigm of bliss

Not everyone has serious relationships problems. There are many couples who sail through life enjoying their togetherness. Why not you? Maybe you have had poor relationship role models or simply you and your partner made poor choices by default. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you equip yourself with the knowledge and resources to begin creating wonderful loving relationships from here on out. You won’t find a better resource than http://www.blissfulrelationship.com which offers a compilation of the love strategies and secrets used to build the top 1% of long-term, love-filled, happily-ever-after relationships. These couples spilled the secrets that they use to overcome communication problems and emotional problems in their relationships and build wonderful joyful marriages. It’s a brilliant source of genuine ‘been there, done that’ relationship help that will shortcut your journey to a beautiful problem-free relationship.

Want a ‘fairy tale’ relationship? They do exist! Don’t miss out! Discover the secrets to a blissful relationship at: http://www.blissfulrelationship.com your top resource for ensuring your love relationships and marriage grow more joyful and fulfilling every day …and never again succumb to relationship problems.

As the year fades from 2006 and brightens into 2007, maintaining the delicate balance between reflections and planning are vital to remaining optimistic and eager. While we want to look back to analyze where we have been and we want to consider both the bitter and sweet moments, we should not dwell on either. Pulling out the painful, embarrassing, and stumbling times to examine them is important so that we can learn from mistakes, but while doing so, we must be mindful to be gentle with our souls.

Set aside a specific time to open each foible, blow off the dust and mourn the follies. Examine them carefully and take away only what is beneficial. Lock up the emotional baggage that accompanied the errors.

After a day or so, when the lessons are digested and ingrained into our being so that instincts steer us away from the lesson’s bitter sources, it is time then to look at the joys of the year that has passed. Look at each passing month with your eyes closed and your heart opened. Savor soft memories that made you smile and warmed your heart on a cold winter’s day in January. Remember the way you felt upon giving your love a heartfelt gift as though giving a part of your self. Contemplate the lightness of your soul on the first warm day of spring when the grass turned green and the flowers bloomed. Hear the laughter of the children playing in the sprinklers on a hot day in August. Listen to the quiet calm following the children’s return to school at summer’s end. Watch the turning of the leaves through the crisp October air. Revel in the excitement as the snow started to fall and you knew you would be with family again over the Holidays. Once you have this solidly in your heart, open your eyes and spend the next day or two contemplating your blessings.

Now it is time to mix the foibles and joys together to create a recipe for success and happiness in 2007. Based on the feelings that you’ve experienced over the last few days, what stands out? What are your prime ingredients? What will you avoid at all costs and what will you try to include more of? What do you want to saturate your recipe with? Spend the next couple of days thinking about this.

Since the beginning of this process a week or so has passed. Now it is time for decision making. Make a plan. Base it on what made you smile. Was it time with family or the vacation you finally took? Was it staying at home or being with children? Was it a promotion at work or completing the degree you’ve been working on? Was it moving into a new home or working on the one you already have? What made you sad? This becomes your list of things to avoid.

The next step is to write down only four steps on how you are going to have more of the things that make you smile. Pick one thing you know you can accomplish in three months. Once you are happy with the results, move on to the next step to build on your joy. Isn’t it better to succeed in moving slowly through just four goals than to fail at just one?

Lastly – act and set aside three days at the end of each quarter just for you. Act on one goal; then the next; and the next; and finally the last. At the end of each quarter (March, June, September and December), take three days for you. On the first day, examine the bitterness of the last three months, take the lessons and lock the rest away. On the second day, taste and revel in the joys of the last three months. On the third day, revise your plan and move on to your second goal. By this time next year you will have a lot more to smile about and a lot less to regret. Keep this recipe handy and repeat it as an annual New Year’s tradition.

Jeanne Mullis

Sr. Executive Director

Nutronix-Automatic Builder

Jeanne.Mullis@verizon.net

So what’s your story? If you’re like most people, you probably have different stories for different areas of your life. For example, maybe your career has been flourishing, and this is fueling high confidence in your current situation. But at the same time, you’re single and have been searching ‘forever’ to find the right relationship. And in your present, this is cause for doubt and worry. Whatever your unique set of circumstances, chances are what’s in your past – your story – is a huge factor in how you’re feeling today. And when it comes to Law of Attraction, how you feel is everything.

Okay, let’s try something here. Looking at a few key areas of life – career (this can include finances), health, relationships, spirituality – gauge how you’re feeling right now with respect to each. Pause reading for a moment, and really take your pulse with these. Allow your deeper feelings to surface. What kind of messages have been playing over in your mind? How are your stories about what happened in the past contributing to how you’re feeling today? How does this make you feel about your outlook for the future?

Are you starting to see how your stories might be limiting you? Let’s say you did the exercise, and for ‘health’ you came up with, “I’ve been wanting to lose weight for a long time. I know I can do it, but every time I try, the same thing happens. I lose some weight, I feel good for awhile, but then I end up putting it right back on again.” And even though these are only your past results, we often use the past as evidence for predicting our future. And how do you think the Law of Attraction responds to that? It gives you exactly what you create – in this case, more losing weight and putting it back on again. And it does this with precision. Every time.

It all comes down to the vibrations we’re sending out to the Universe. And there are only two kinds – positive and negative. If you find yourself mired in negative self-talk, one tool you can use to break the pattern is to ask yourself, “So how else might this turn out?” This creates an immediate energy shift by allowing for the possibility of an opening where none existed before. Instead of being victim to a past which has produced consistently unwanted results, asking this question brings your power back to the present moment, offering you another potential outcome. And with this small shift in energy, the Universe will respond in kind with a shift in results.

We all come with a past, no one is denying that. Things happened. But the distinction arises in the meaning we place on what happened. For example, just because you had a fender-bender doesn’t mean you’re careless, a lousy driver, or “See, the cards of life really ARE stacked against me!” All it means is you had a fender-bender. That’s all that happened, nothing more. And the moment after it happened, it was done and gone. Anything else you attach to the story is, for lack of a better word, bunk!

The Law of Attraction is always responding to the present moment. What you have today is the result of all your cumulative present moments. The power to change your circumstances comes in what you are thinking now, how you are feeling now – what you are vibrating now. And out of your vibrations, The Law of Attraction gives you more of the same. So the real challenge is keeping the energy in your present moment clear, so you consistently send out positive vibes. What you think about is what you become, so you don’t want create your future by tossing junk from your past out ahead of you. When your parents taught you, “If you have nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all,” they were on to something! The same can be said about recalling your past. “If it ain’t positive, it ain’t worth remembering!”

There’s a moment in my favorite musical ‘Wicked’ when Galinda (The Good Witch) comforts Elphaba (The Wicked Witch) by saying, “That may be your (story) Elphaba, but that doesn’t make it true.” And so it is with your story. Just because you’ve chosen to carry it your whole life – just because you’ve been rehashing that story over and over – doesn’t make it true. You have such incredible power to create any story you want. In the words of Neale Donald Walsch, “Your life will be what you create it as, and no one will stand in judgment of it, now or ever.” So let go of anything from your past that isn’t contributing to your greatest good. Tell yourself the most phenomenal story you can imagine! Trust that the Universe gets your message loud and clear. Then allow yourself to reap the rewards of your new story. And we all live happily ever after.

Until next time…

With love,

-Jeff

Ask Coach Jeff…

Question: You know those people who always complain “There isn’t enough time in the day”? Well admittedly, I’m one of them. On the one hand, I’m industrious enough to take on many projects in my life. But the other side to that is I’m constantly stressed about everything that needs to get done. I tend to procrastinate, and find I’m always rushing at the last minute to pull it all together. Any suggestions?

-A.J., New Jersey

First of all, congratulations for taking on big things in your life – that’s awesome! It’s important, though, to notice what you’ve been telling the Universe about it – “There isn’t enough time in the day.” And so, it’s completely logical that The Law of Attraction is giving you back the exact vibrational match to your feelings. And for you, it sounds like this is showing up as day after day of there ‘not being enough time.’ Ok, so here’s the truth: There’s exactly enough time in the day – 24 hours – same for everyone. So just by adopting this thought (that there IS enough time) – even if you don’t completely believe it’s true at first – you’ll begin to create an energy shift, which in turn will shift how you perceive your day. As you continue ‘tweaking’ your thoughts, you’ll soon start to feel like someone who has LOTS of time to complete EVERYTHING you need to get done. And you’ll find that’s how the Universe will respond to you. If you make this one small shift, I guarantee you’ll see results. It’s Law, and can’t possibly work any other way!

Jeffrey T. Brownstein is a Certified Empowerment Coach (CEC), specializing in Law of Attraction. He has Bachelor’s degrees in English and Metaphysics, and is also a Certified Energy Healer, Holistic Health Consultant, Landmark Education graduate, and has been a Group Exercise Instructor for 13 years. Jeff currently resides in New Jersey, and is working on a book about harnessing the power of Law of Attraction.

I know it was the term CEO that threw you, but stay with me here a moment longer because you ARE running a company! Just look at the company you keep. Look in a mirror, who do you see? The CEO? Good. Confused? Ok, I will stop with the riddles.

The company you run is You, and believe it or not, some of you even come with a complete Board of Directors that sit full time, while others have found them derelict in their duties and have fired them.

I know, you are sitting there with your eyebrows scrunched and asking yourself what the heck is this lady talking about. Well this should clarify things for you.

Have you ever wanted to achieve something so badly that you could taste it? This ‘something’ was something that you promised yourself that “this time” you would follow through and Win! Then the unthinkable happened, you failed to deliver. It was just one more time that you didn’t get the job, or you froze when it was time to get up and speak, or the diet you began in the morning was history by lunch. More proof now that you are once and for all, truly a loser. Another notch on the belt of failure. Let me ask you something, do you really believe you are a loser? If you answered Yes, then you are WRONG and I am going to prove it.

Do you feel like your best efforts are sabotaged all the time? Well you are correct, they are. That is the job of one of your Board Members; to make sure you fail. Why? Because its part of the story that you either wrote for yourself or others helped write over and over again. It is a core belief in your subconscious, and what you ‘BELIEVE’ of yourself will always be made to come true.

It’s like this. If you ‘see’ yourself as fat then Every time you begin your new diet, you are destined to fail. It has to be that way, because your subconscious is there to make SURE that the story of who you are remains true to the tale. If you hate Exercising, then every time you commit to exercising daily, you will quit shortly within, and if you say you are a messy person, then every time you clean up your room, it will be messy in no time. It is your Subconscious that is really directing the events, not your Conscious voice.

Do you ever call yourself names like you ugly fat piece of garbage? Your subconscious does not judge whether this is good or bad, true or not true. It hears the same story over and over and it eventually becomes truth. Your Truth! It will stay this way until you do something to change it.
I am sure that you have heard a familiar voice inside your head say “you know you deserve a good meal after losing out like that”, ‘ You can take today off from exercising, look how hard you worked yesterday”, Why bother when you know you are too fat, too ugly, too dumb, too whatever”, in fact, after about 10 minutes of this disparagement you agree with the voice, and now believe you will never be able to accomplish anything of note.

Do you know the voice or voices I am talking about? I am sure at one time or another you have met one or two of them. They are the members of your board, and they govern your actions when you give them free rein.

Meet your subconscious mind and the folks who sit at the Round table of Self Concept. Their joy in life is to hand out healthy doses of self doubt.

Sometimes it’s the same guy- I call him Monsieur Saboteur, and sometimes they change up, and it’s a very nasty woman, but their message usually carry the same theme, “You will fail, don’t bother trying,” etc. The voices get so loud that they override your own wishes and desires until you say “Why bother”. You stop what you were intending to do, they stand up and cheer, another job well done for them, and another failure for you.. Surprise, surprise.

There is good news. It doesn’t have to end this way anymore. I can show you how to rid yourself of this self defeating monster, fire the members of your board, and put you back in charge. Interested?

In Tim Gallwey’s book, The Inner Game, he calls the message from the board members interference. Interference may consist of obstacles such as fear, self doubt, self limiting concepts and assumptions that decide to come out and play when we are faced with challenges and change.

I have found through my experience as business and life coach, that people fear 3 things, Fear of Success, Fear of Failure and Fear of Change.

In order to be successful, we must play our inner game if we want to overcome the self-imposed obstacles that prevent us from accessing our full potential”. Tim’s formula for success looks like this: Performance = potential-interference, P=p-i. According to this formula, performance can be enhanced either by growing “p” potential or by decreasing “i,” interference.
Make sense to me, but how do you go about increasing potential or decrease interference?

The first thing we need to do is to go inside and find out which member of your board is resisting the desired outcome. What is their objection to the goal at hand? What is their fear and how can we overcome it? This is called Awareness.
Once we know the problem at hand we can address it.

As a change agent and coach, I have worked with many individuals and organizations to help ease the transition of change and demonstrate how embracing ‘change’ can be an exciting opportunity and something to look forward too.

If Awareness is stage one, what is Stage 2? Well, Gallwey says in order to play the inner game, choice and trust are the next two necessary ingredients to beat interference and increase potential.
I too believe that the answers are inside.

One of the lines I am famous for is “choose the life you want to live, instead of living by default”. This means don’t just let life happen to you. Be in charge of who you are and where you want to go.
You can choose to be afraid or not to be. You can choose to love or not. You can choose to be successful or not and you can choose to increase your potential and trust in yourself and your abilities. Honestly all it takes is trust.

Are you ready to trust in your abilities, choose the life you want and watch that Potential Skyrocket as you become aware of your Inner Game and play to win?

Gallwey’s Inner Game formula is excellent and a great place to start, but in my opinion there is still one STEP missing. That is reprogramming your hard drive (your subconscious mind) so that it stops blocking your choices and actually insists you go where you want. It is just as easy to programme “I am a winner” in as it is to be a loser.

This takes a bit of effort on your part, but not as much as you might think and the outcome FAR outweighs any input of time. Once you engage the power of your subconscious mind, you have the power of a homing missile working for you. NOTHING can get in the way and take it off course.
How can this be accomplished? Quite simply in fact, however, this is one of those things that are simple, but not easy.

First, you need to go back inside and re visit your beliefs. You need to examine where each and every one of them came from, and find the “story” behind them. Ask yourself, how do I know this? Who told it to me or did I learn this on my own. Who first told you that you were fat? Was it your grandparents? Your Parents? A boyfriend. At sometime in your life, this image got stuck in your subconscious and you have been repeating the story over and over until it became your truth.

They way we act often is not of our own accord. Our beliefs come from the stories that we have been told over and over again as a child. In fact, your fears may not even be your own but your mothers or grandfathers. It’s true. Think about it for a moment.

Why are you afraid of spiders? Are other people in your family afraid? Have you ever examined where your fears come from? Well what we need to do is change the stories.

Our subconscious does NOT know the difference between truth and make-believe, so your job now is to re write your personal history. If you are overweight, then you will write down in a book that your perfect weight is 135 pounds (be realistic). Envision yourself at that weight, and hold that vision in your mind everyday for several minutes several times a day, especially when you are in a relaxed state, just upon waking and when you go to bed. See yourself winning. BE THAT WINNER!

Keep writing in your journal over and over again what your perfect weight is. Do this often. It takes approximately 12 weeks to break a habit but you will notice in about a week (it took me 3 days) that you will not be tempted by fattening foods. In fact, don’t be surprised if you don’t want to eat at all. You will not be fighting yourself anymore, but rather you have just engaged a formidable ally who will be doing all the hard work for you. Its Easy Breezy as Covergirl likes to say from now on.

This works for ANYTHING you want to change, be it smoking, self esteem issues, even relationships.

As CEO, you have the right and the position to rewrite your own personal story and now you understand where your true power lies. You will be delighted at the ease with which your life will change. Soon you will be the person you have always wanted to be, but didn’t know how.

The first resolution is that you promise not to divide yourself against yourself.

You promise not to judge yourself in any way. You allow yourself to be as you are and your life situation to be as it is. If you do judge yourself then you resolve to become aware if you judge yourself for judging yourself! In this way you become like a Russian Doll. Inside you shrink. Inside the heart shrinks. See how long you can practice this loving kindness to yourself during this New Year. Real change arises from awareness and insight. Nothing really changes through judgement except increased division and the creation of a harder ego shell. With a divided will you are like someone trying to increase the light (de light) in a room by turning down the dimmer switch.

Your New Years resolution might be to change what you call a bad habit. You make it your intention by using will power to rid yourself of this so-called bad habit. This is in one sense doing violence to you. There is the one with the bad habit. Then there is the one with the intention of overcoming by force of will the one who indulges in the habit that is judged bad. The question then is, “Which one is the real you?” In this way you become what has been called in the Bible ‘legion.’ When you use the will in this way you may well achieve a ‘successful’ outcome. Usually, however, the root cause of the so-called bad habit remains and given enough stress in your life situation the bad habit will return.

Resolve to create some space in your life.

This is space for the arising of Love. This Love that arises is not what has been called ‘shopkeeper’s love.’ This kind of love is ego-based. It arises from our sense of feeling separate and is the result of being solely identified with our mind, body, emotions and memory that we call our personality. The ‘shopkeeper’s love’ gives love in exchange for something. It gives to friends, family or others of like mind provided that they meet certain of our needs for companionship, security or belonging. When our needs are not met then we quickly go shopping for love elsewhere. This love of ‘me’ or ‘mine’ then often turns into jealousy, resentment, anger and sometimes hatred.

This New Year give yourself some real space.

Giving yourself space is a great kindness. This is not merely physical space but deep internal space that gives freedom and allows for creation anew and for a sense of heightened energy. This sense of space creates a gap that in the Zen tradition is called ‘no mind.’ This space allows Love to arise in this world of form. This is not the ‘shopkeeper’s love,’ which seeks the best bargain. This is Love that seeks no return for itself because it is in no sense separate. It is Love that rains on the just and unjust. It is not the love of ‘little me.’ Where ego is involved love does not really flourish. Do not be afraid of the idea of no mind. No mind is not an idea. It is the most intense and alive experience because it is pure experience. Within the experience of no mind there are no opposites and divisions of thought. There is no ego to be divided against itself.

What is this thing called Ego?

I call it the Ever Grasping One. It is that in each of us, which grasps experience in all its forms and calls it ‘mine.’ It can be described as the total collection of thoughts, emotions, memories and experience that when gathered together forms what we then call ‘me’ or ‘I.’ It is what we call personality, which means ‘the mask.’ It is the role we play in the world and how people recognise who we think we are. All religious teachings have one thing in common. They all tell us that when we are solely identified with this collection of thoughts, this often frozen life force of emotions and past experiences called memory, then Love cannot be.

Of course, most all of us do not wish to give up our sense of persona that we consider to be our true self.

Most of us cannot imagine what it would be like to be in the world without our personality and without the psychological mask we don in order to face the world. We ask, “Who would I be if not ‘my’ personality, thoughts or emotions?” We think that we would appear as nobody and as a nothing. Better, we think, to go and engage with practices of self-improvement. Better, we think to engage in learning to become a better person. This learning only serves to change the mask but does not reveal who you are beyond the mask. It can only really help one to learn to be more comfortable in the world of shopkeepers love. At least for a time it makes one feel more attractive and less of a beggar for love in the world of form.

Those who know who they are and their true relationship to life still have thoughts, still have feelings and have memory. They still have a personality. Usually it is the vibrant, unpredictable dance of forever becoming anew. The difference is that these people see beyond the mask. Those who know who they are are a presence that is alive and new in each moment. They are the river of life as it expresses uniquely through them. A mask is not needed for this river to flow. A mask only serves to get in the way. This is the meaning of the Zen saying, “The river flows and the grass grows by itself.” Experience as life simply is. There is no requirement for it to be ‘my’ experience.

Such individuals, and they truly are individual, are neither really interested nor not interested in self-improvement. They are the knowing of Love that recognises life as life cannot be improved upon. This is not to say that one’s life situation cannot be improved. Only if you do not know the no-mind, the still point within, out of which all arises you can be living a life of luxury and still be a beggar. You will still be a bargain hunter, a seeker after shopkeeper love, which is always conditional and subject to end within the limitation of time.

This New Year begin to create space that will give you a glimpse of what it means to be Love.

This is not the same as being in love. To be Love is not even to be loved. To be love is to know that beyond all things such as thoughts, feelings and memories that you are eternal. It is to know that you are created in the image of Love. There is no duality in this. There is no one who is a subject being loved by an object. There is only the being one. When this is known – not simply believed in – then you will no longer be a beggar for Love. Then you will not go shopping for something you think is missing. You will be a multi-dimensional being who needs or wants for nothing because they are one with everything.

To enter the state of no mind is to enter the experience of Being.

This is the state, which is beyond time and out of which Love arises. No mind is not a state where everything ceases to be. It is not mindless. It is an intense awareness and intense sense of being in the moment, an intense experience of this timeless now. In Irish mythology this place is given the name Tir Na Nog – the land of the forever young. It is from this no mind; this timeless placeless place of the forever now, that all that is new arises and gives rise to a sense of wonder. It is from the stillness of no mind that deep peace is known not as the absence of conflict but peace beyond opposites. This is the peace of God, which is to say the peace of Love.

Entry into no mind is through the simple but profound practice of silent witnessing.

You do not judge yourself as you simply witness thoughts arise, feelings arise like bubbles arising from a deep lake, but they are not the lake. You are the lake. You are that into which thought and emotions arise. When you watch without judgement you are transmuting the straw of conditional acceptance into gold of unconditional Love. You are bringing light into your world and into the world. The darkness of non-acceptance is not overcome by wilfulness but by allowing it to be as it is. This allowing it to be is not a licence for uncontrolled emotionality. You allow the miracle of healing contained in one of the greatest and most misunderstood teaching of Jesus which is, “Resist not Evil.”

Then you can begin to know what it is to be in Love with who you are beyond judging yourself as unacceptable in any way. Out of this arising of Love there is no requirement to make yourself a better person. This is only tinkering at the edges with the mask that is ultimately not the real you. Out of this arising of Love will be the enoughness of who you truly are beyond ego identification. You will see beyond the Ever Grasping One. You will know how to live in the new that is paradoxically forever changing within that which is forever changeless.

Let this New Years resolution be to simply be.

Let this be your intention so that you can be forever now and forever young. Let this be your intention without forcing, without judgement, without wilfulness. Let this be your intention with kindness and with self-caring. Let your revolve be a flow rather than a fight. Become the witness of your real life beyond all that arises within your fragile life situation. Do not divide yourself in anyway. Do not become legion but become the Blessing that you already are – the Blessing of Love.

Happy New Year.

© 2006 Tony Cuckson

By the time the excitement of the New Year’s celebrations have worn off many resolutions have already been discarded like the millions of tossed out Christmas trees. You slip back into your old ways. You get comfortable. Nothing changes.

Indeed that is the crux of the matter. You want things to be better, you really do. And you really try to change your old habits and that is the dilemma. While you cannot get new results with old habits you will not be able to successfully create new results unless you toss out the old you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

“Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment if the same old lawbreaker is to keep them?”

Change is essential to growth but it is not our actions that we primarily need to change, it is ourselves and more precisely our self-image. As Master Success Coach, John Kanary, says,

“You cannot out-perform your self-image.”

In other words, you will not produce results that are inconsistent with the person you truly believe yourself to be. If you do, those results will be short-lived for they will not be in harmony with the person you really are.

It is your hidden self-image that is controlling everything that you do. It operates like a thermostat. If you deviate from your set point then your self-image will pull you back into place. If you think you are a success then you will act in a manner that reinforces that view. If you think you are a failure then, whether or not you have any validity for that opinion, your self-image will, likewise, reinforce that view.

You may think that is a bad thing but your self-image is embedded in our sub-conscious mind which has one mission in life – survival. Whatever is impressed upon the sub-conscious mind stays put until we work on re-programming our mind. This re-programming means change and this represents a threat, danger even, which is why we experience such resistance when we try to impose change. Unless we recognise what is happening when we start having feelings of anxiety and doubt or otherwise feel uncomfortable with the changes we are making to improve our lives we will abandon our cause at the first hurdle.

“A goal that is casually set and lightly taken is freely abandoned at the first obstacle.”

Zig Ziglar

This is why we need a powerful motivating factor for us to want to change. We need to define our purpose for it is this which will drive us forwards like the proverbial salmon swimming upstream. It gets to a point in its life when its internal programming demands that it embark upon a journey from which there will be no turning back.

Hence, even when certain behaviour patterns do not serve us we will continue to act in that way because the sub-conscious mind, as powerful as it is, knows no better. You have to change the internal programming for the external results to change and that is a challenge. James Allen, said in As A Man Thinketh:

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstance but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound.”

So how do you overcome this challenge? You have to figure out who you have to be in order to do and have the things you want. In other words become the person you want to be first in your mind and then you will find it easier to act like that person.

You will need to be prepared for rejection and possible humiliation. This is not easy because as humans we want to belong and to feel connected.

You will have to be prepared to give up something so that you can have what you want. You have to create the space for what you want. For some this implies sacrifice yet you will be giving up something of a lesser value for something of a greater value.

You may have change location, change your peer group, dress differently. You will probably have to master new skills and you will definitely have to make sizable investments, and I’m not just talking money here, but your time as well in your personal development.

However, if you hold steadfast in your mind the image of not only what you what to acquire but also the person you must be in order to have those things you will be successful.

Can you do this? I believe you can. So get your pen and paper out and start planning your New Year Revolutions. No, that’s not a misprint. You see success means transformation – New Year, New You.

Nickolove Lovemore is a Life & Success Coach and a Certified NLP Practitioner. Contact Nickolove to arrange a complimentary coaching session. Send an email to Goal Achiever to receive a special series of FREE reports plus other resources that will assist you in achieving your goals in 2007.