Achieving Goals - Personal Success

Yesterday on Deal or no Deal, a contestant, Rita, won £18,444. Everyone in the studio was sad for her because she could have gone away with £100,000.

Rita was happy with her eighteen grand because it meant that she could fulfil a long held ambition to travel and visit the grave of the father she had never met because he had been killed during the war when she was a child.

To Rita, the amount of money she got was a success and she was delighted. But everybody else looked upset for her.

This made me realise that success is very personal. One man's hill is another man's mountain. One woman's failure is another woman's victory. It is all relative and individual.

When defining and manifesting our goals, we shouldn't think about what people around us expect of us or whatever everybody else thinks is a good goal to reach.

We should think about what success means to us. In this sense, success can be defined as what would make ME happy.

Achieving Goals - Part Four

OK, so you’ve listed and clarified your goals, you’ve chosen the main priority for your first focus and you've visualised your ambition coming true. What's next?

Draw up an action plan.
It isn't enough just to send your wishes out into the ether.
You need to plan your vision outlining the steps you need to take to achieve that goal.
This is the logical practical part of journey. Be very detailed, realistic and specific.
And remember that realism doesn't mean pessimism.

Divide your action plan into small manageable steps.
Some goals don't require a great deal of action and some require a lot of implementation.
Each day take at least one step towards achieving your goal.

Create milestones or signposts along your journey to keep you on the right track. Don't be too rigid about keeping to the finer details of your plan. Allow the Universe to do its part and to meet you halfway with synchronicities, coincidental meetings etc.

Have a strong focus but try to go with the flow at the same time. It's a fine balancing act to remain focused but not rigid and to see the big picture as well as the minute details of your future plans.

It is important to know exactly what you want but it is just as vital to know WHY you want it. So while you are creating a plan of action, it's a good time to review the purpose of your goal. Why do you want to achieve this particular ambition? Is it for financial security, happiness, creative fulfilment?

It is always good to keep the Big Picture in mind so that you are open to discovering several routes towards achieving the underlying purpose of your goal.


Read Achieving Goals - Part One

Read Achieving Goals - Part Two

Read Achieving Goals - Part Three

Achieving Goals - Part Three

You may have heard of Cosmic Ordering, the system created by Barbel Mohr for manifesting your goals.

One of Barbel Mohr's guided meditations instructs the listener to imagine that the cosmos is like the internet and to connect to the cosmos, we should imagine that we are going online.

I have created the following visualisation exercise based on the concept of cosmic ordering and the internet. It is a form of proactive prayer.

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Observe your breathing for a couple of minutes and instruct your body and mind to relax.

When you are relaxed:

Imagine that you are at your PC and you are shopping online. But you are not ordering from Amazon. You are ordering from the Universe.

There are different categories in the Universe's Online Store: Career, Property, Relationships, Health and so on.

In each category, you select what you want to order. For example, in the Career section, you may order a new job. In the Property section, you may order a new house. In the Health section, you may order Peace of Mind.

When you click on each item that you want, it goes into your shopping cart.
Finally you go to your Shopping Cart and review your list.
When you are satisfied with your list, see yourself clicking the SUBMIT YOUR ORDER button.

Et voilà.

Read Achieving Goals - Part Two

Read Achieving Goals - Part One

Read Achieving Goals - Part Four

Achieving Goals - Part Two

The first step to achieving your ambitions is knowing exactly what they are.

The best way of clarifying your goals is to write them all down.

Your main goal may be to get a new job or to travel the world or to write a novel.

However for a truly holistic approach, it is a good idea to create goals for yourself in each of the following categories:

Financial - This covers your job, career aspirations, bills, debts, possessions, property etc.

Health - This covers physical and emotional healing or personal development, leisure and fitness.

Spirituality - (If you are spiritually minded) - For example, you may wish to discover a spiritual path or create your own.

Relationships - This covers your relationships with your family of origin, your partner, your children, your friends etc. including people you want to improve your relationship with, opportunities for creating new relationships and those you wish to eliminate from your life.

Visualisation
Once you have made your lists, you can pick the goal which is the most important to you at this particular moment and imagine in detail how you would feel to have this specific goal fulfilled.

What impact would achieving this goal have on your life?

Which emotions would you experience in the first few moments that your new goal is attained?

The Achieving Goals Series will continue over the next fortnight.

Read Achieving Goals - Part One

New FREE Online Stress Relief Course

A new 7 day Stress Busting course is now available from my main website.

The course is absolutely free. You need do nothing more than sign up for it on the link below.
You will then receive each day's lesson by e-mail.

The course provides practical relaxation techniques and carefully designed exercises for reducing the symptoms of stress.

Discover creative and healing methods of combatting stress by enroling on the 7 Day Stress Busting E-Course.

To enrol, click on the link, scroll to the bottom of the page and complete and submit the short form:

FREE 7 Day Stress Busting E-Course

Achieving Goals - Part One

If you are stuck in a rut and need to change an aspect of your life, one way of getting out of the rut is to change your mindset and train your mind to accept a new way of thinking.

Thoughts are made of energy and energy creates events. So it follows that creating positive thoughts and images will in turn manifest positive events.

However positive thinking or visualising your goals are sometimes not enough.

The path to realising your goals must rest on a foundation of self-love and gratitude.

Self-Nurturance

If you have low self-esteem, you may feel undeserving or that the path to your goal is too difficult or that you are not good enough to attain your dream.

You have to believe deep down that you deserve to achieve your ambitions and manifest your goals otherwise your visualisation techniques may take longer to become a reality.

This can be achieved by adopting habits of self-nurturance through simple acts such as taking time out for yourself to do things you enjoy without needing to be perfect at them, meditation, reiki and self-healing techniques.


Gratitude

You have to be grateful for what you've got before you can progress. Sometimes you need to see the lesson or the "gift", or the silver lining of every situation so that you can move on from negative incidents in your life.

The more you say thank you to the Universe, the more you receive in return.

Once the twin tools of self care and gratitude are in place, visualisation techniques can work in a powerful and effective way.

Read Achieving Goals - Part Two

Easter Inspiration

Easter is the celebration of resurrection and new life.

Spring is the season of rebirth.

This is a great time of year to create new plans and new projects for the next twelve months. It is the perfect time to set new goals and to start putting your plans into action.

The energy at this time of year is much better for creating new resolutions for yourself than in January, when we should really be winding down and resting. In fact, it would be great, if we could celebrate the start of the New Year in Spring instead of in Winter.

But as we can't really alter the calendar, we can alter our mindset. If you have been stuck in a rut, now is a good time to get inspired.

This month I will be looking at the connection between the imagination and achieving your goals. So continue to revisit this blog for tips and techniques on using your imagination to achieve your goals over the next few weeks.

Happy Easter

Window Meditation

On a day like today with the sun shining brightly through the windows, I thought that this would be a relaxing meditation.

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• Sit in front of a window.
  


• Take a few deep breaths.
  
  
• As you breathe in, imagine that you are taking the sunlight into your body and that it is a healing light which is entering and rejuvenating all your body's cells.
  
  
• When any thoughts enter your mind, as you breathe out, imagine that the thoughts are flying out of your head, out of the window and into the light outside.
  

Repeat this exercise: breathing in the light and breathing out your thoughts (especially any negative ones) for at least five minutes and then as long as you feel comfortable.

Adapting the Window Meditation

It may not always be a beautiful day. But you can still do the exercise with or without the sun. You could also try it at night with the moon.

If it's raining, when you do the breathing out part of the meditation, you can imagine that your negative thoughts are flying out of the window and are being purified by the rain.

Or if it is cloudy, as you breathe out, you can imagine that your stressful thoughts are being carried away on one of the clouds.

Simple Abundance

One of my favourite teachers came ten years ago in the form of a book by Sarah Ban Breathnach. I was intending to buy it as a Mother's Day present but ended up buying it for myself.

The book was called Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. It is an inspirational book for women. It is all about finding your authentic self. The book is packed with information about creative mentors and teachers. It is full of quotations and meditations, amusing anecdotes and poignant stories. Each two month period is devoted to a particular theme such as gratitude, order, simplicity or joy.

This book can be a great companion to you both throughout the year as you read each day's passage and on any stage of your spiritual journey.

It is a particularly helpful book to have by your side if you are going through a transitional stage in life.

Memoirs and Meditation

Writing can be a great method of meditation whether it is free, unfocused, stream-of-consciousness writing or it is a reflective piece of writing that is focused on one particular concept such as 'peace' or 'hope'.

Writing about significant episodes in your life can be a meaningful act of reflection.

When you review your life through the written word, it is often surprising to discover how much you have gone through, how much you've achieved and survived, how far you've come and how far you've got to go.

Taking pivotal moments from your life and freezing them like written snapshots just for yourself can open you up to important insights about yourself, your relationship with yourself and your relationships with other people.

Some of us spend so much of our time on a treadmill in an endless repetitive cycle of of work, home, TV, hobbies etc. lost in the everyday details of our lives that we don't get to see the big picture.

Writing about aspects of your past life can highlight where you are on your current journey giving you a new perspective and vision of your future.

Sometimes it is is good to stop, notice and reflect, to pause and evaluate without judgement or criticism, just to observe with an impartial eye what has happened, what is going on and what sort of future you are creating for tomorrow.

Read more about Free Writing or Reflective Writing.

The So-Called "Secrets" of Success

The main "secret" of success is perseverance.

So continuing with this month's theme, here are nine secrets of success whose origins range from traditional sayings to anonymous authors.

When all put together, they read like an inspirational poem:

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking. ~Buddhist Saying
Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid only of standing still. ~Chinese Proverb
Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines. ~Robert Schuller

Some people dream of success... while others wake up and work hard at it. ~Author Unknown
All the so-called "secrets of success" will not work unless you do. ~Author Unknown
The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen. ~Sarah Brown
Success is a ladder you cannot climb with your hands in your pockets. ~American Proverb

The difference between try and triumph is a little umph. ~Author Unknown
Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat. ~Ann Landers

Anonymous Voices on Perseverance

Continuing this month's theme, here are three pearls of wisdom on perseverance from 'Authors Unknown':

Difficult things take a long time, impossible things a little longer.
~Author Unknown

When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum.
~Author Unknown

Don't be discouraged. It's often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.
~Author Unknown

Health Benefits of Meditation

Here are a couple of articles detailing recent medical research into the health benefits of meditation.

Click to read full article: Meditation Fools The Brain

This article outlines recent research studies carried out by universities in the United States into the health benefits of meditation which include boosting the immune system, improving memory, controlling binge eating (and increasing happiness!)

Click to read full article: Transcendental Meditation and Congestive Heart Failure

This article discusses a study carried out by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine with African American men and women in their sixties. The study demonstrated that Transcendental Meditation significantly improved the quality of life and emotional state of the participants as well as reducing the physical factors that contribute to heart failure.

More about the benefits of transcendental meditation on the Creative Healing Meditation website.

Two Thoughts on Perseverance

Saints are sinners who kept on going.

~Robert Louis Stevenson

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Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perseverance Wins

This month's theme is Perseverance.

Here is today's thought of the day.

When the world says, "Give up,"

Hope whispers, "Try it one more time."

~Author Unknown

Visit this blog again for more reflections on Perseverance for encouragement, inspiration or food for thought.

Words of Wisdom

Here are some imaginative and inspiring speeches, addresses and general words of wisdom for the young and young-at-heart.

Click to read this speech: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

Click to read this speech: "Pursue joy, not happiness"

Click to read these lyrics: 'Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen)'

Meditation for Beginners

Meditation, like any new skill, requires practice.

Just like when learning to play a musical instrument, you may have to practise scales before you can play sonatas, or a dancer has to train at the barre before becoming a ballerina, meditators may have to practise breathing exercises and relaxation techniques before they are able to reach anything resembling a continual state of bliss.

It is much easier to meditate when you are on a yoga holiday or a retreat or sitting on a mountaintop. It's a bit more of a challenge when you live in the middle of a city, have a stressful commute to work or a young family to take care of or both.

Small steps are recommended if you are starting out on a meditation practice. It is better to allot a few minutes a day to centering yourself and then gradually extend the time as it becomes easier.

One day something clicks and everything falls into place. Other days you find it hard to reach the same state of peacefulness again.

Every meditation session is different and brings something new. Even if you don't notice any change at all. Meditation has an accumulative effect on the mind and body. Changes are going on in the background, unconsciously.

If you are used to filling your mind with clutter, decluttering it can sometimes be a shock to the system. So if you have started meditating and are thinking of giving up, keep at it for a bit.

Remember all the benefits of meditation.

Remember there are many different methods of meditation which may involve writing, movement, breathing, drawing, guided imagery, listening to music and much more.

If one method doesn't work for you, try something else. And while you're looking, don't give up.

Stress and Deadlines

If I am really stressed, have lots of things to do and no time to do it in, my breathing becomes shallow, my thoughts are faster, I don't finish one task before I start on the next one and while doing that I remember something that I forgot to do and should have done weeks ago.

Jobs that revolve around meeting deadlines crank up the stress factor - as does drinking lots of coffee.

Living in London is not conducive to deep relaxation. I often myself hurrying to get somewhere even when I'm not in a hurry, hurtled along by the crowd.

One tip to combat stress is to slow all your actions down - no matter how much you have to do and no matter how much you feel is not getting done.

When I consciously make an effort to slow down, concentrate on one task at a time, be in the moment, I achieve much more and get lots more done. My breathing automatically becomes slower, my posture becomes better without thinking about it and I don't feel as if life is just one big deadline.

It is a real challenge to walk when you can run. But sometimes it can be a real stress buster.

Lately I've decided to use the word 'milestone' instead of 'deadline'. It's not exactly a synonym but I find 'reaching a milestone' to be less stress-inducing than 'meeting a deadline'.

Repetition, Rosaries & Relaxation

Praying, as well as being a form of spiritual communication, is also an effective relaxation technique.

Prayer or the repetition of short spiritual phrases that are meaningful to you can be an effective measure when it comes to combating stress according to the director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute in Boston.

The repetition of short phrases or one word can cut into stressful thought patterns and slow them down.

The article notes that "that there is no preventive stress medicine. Stress is part of life."

When we are stressed our blood pressure rises and our heart beats faster.

The repetition of phrases which have a peaceful resonance, engaging in meditation, or listening to gentle music has the effect of slowing down our brain waves, lowering our blood pressure and reducing our stress.

For Catholics, the repetition of rosary prayers, the meditation on the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries, even the action of holding and moving the fingers along the rosary beads are all aids to relaxation and the reduction of stress.

Catholic News Service

War and Psychics

It has been revealed that in 2002, the Ministry of Defence funded secret tests to see if a group of people could psychically see into remote hidden objects.

At first, the researchers tried to recruit established psychics for the experiments but when all refused they had to use volunteers.

The subjects were asked to identify contents hidden in brown sealed envelopes. 28% of the volunteers made some close guesses. But for the most part, the volunteers did not even come close. One reportedly fell asleep during the testing.

The Ministry of Defence did not disclose their reasons for spending approximately £18,000 on these tests.

Because of the timing and the nature of the experiments, there has been speculation that the defence experts were looking at the possibility of using remote viewing in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden or the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Their study concluded that remote viewing could not be put to great use for the purposes of the nation's defence.