To the Opportunity of Expansion

Life is a spiraling progression, seeking to express itself through every one of us.  This entire universe is in an evolving process of becoming.  This means that there’s an opportunity to view what looks like a problem to you now, as you would view a child’s difficulties.

 

When you can see a child’s problem from the adult perspective, it’s easy to perceive how the child will move past it or outgrow it.

 

Having a challenge doesn’t have to mean having a problem; You can use it as an opportunity to practice expanding.

 

You can imagine yourself becoming bigger, larger, and greater than the “problem” you’re facing, and with that, life brings you the empowering result that you’re holding in mind.

 

In honor of International Women's Day

By Andrea Pozzi:-

I was asked to think about what advice I would give to myself at the beginning of my career. Below are five messages I would tell my younger self around career advancement.

1. Don't focus so much on a particular job but rather on the characteristics of the job: identify the aspects that are important to you, what gives you energy, what interests you. Do you like projects or do you prefer to have structured tasks? What skills and strengths do you want to leverage and use? Ten years ago, I was struggling with what direction I wanted my career to take. I had spent several years focused on trying to get a specific job and then when I had that job I found I was completely bored. I knew I had to make a move, but to what? That was when I started to evaluate not specific job titles or positions but rather all the pieces that make up a job--what did I want those pieces to be? Once you have those pieces identified, recognize opportunity, seize it and be true to yourself. As women, we frequently make decisions because we feel an obligation or a commitment, even though what we decide may not be best for us. One of my best career decisions was based on what was right for me even though I had another commitment at the time.

2. Decide on your own personal definition of success. Don't focus on titles or levels but rather are you passionate about your job? Does it give you meaning and purpose? Have patience--experience is rich and it all adds value. Even jobs that are unrelated and not part of a set career path will combine into a unique experience, knowledge and skill set that you can draw upon throughout your career. Make sure you apply lessons learned, especially from the jobs that were difficult or not that good of a fit.

3. Being good at your job requires much more than just being smart. Success in any career, job, or even task requires more than mere intelligence. Certainly book smarts can help but career advancement requires many things such as perseverance, good communication skills, flexibility, adaptability, and most of all, experience. From my perspective nothing can replace experience and good judgment. Maybe it's because I'm a risk manager. The best risk managers don't just rely on quantitative models but draw upon their experience and differentiate themselves through their judgment.

4. Don't be afraid to ask for help. This was a tough one for me to learn: ever since I was a child I had an "I'll do it myself" mentality. However, over time I began to discover that teamwork was important to me, that I got my best ideas and was my most creative when brainstorming with others. I realized that it's much better to raise your hand than to fail and, more important, that your boss doesn't want you to fail and will not think any less of you if you ask for support. It's not a weakness to ask for help, it's a strength and no one has ever turned me down when I requested help. I do have admit that in times of extreme stress, I sometimes still struggle with this. It's my default behavior, so I always have to be careful not to revert to it.

5. Feedback is not personal and it is under your control. You can decide to act upon it or you can decide that it is incorrect. If it is incorrect, then you need to determine if it is a perception issue and what behavior is leading to that perception. Feedback helps you to become more self-aware, which then enables you to make the necessary changes for you to succeed

How to Become A Master of Life

I want to summarise the important things I have been explaining to you:

1. You have many needs, both 'lower level' (e.g. food) and 'higher level' (e.g. love).

2. Your needs are the 'voice' of the organism called a 'human being' telling you what it needs for survival as a human (not survival at any level, e.g. as a cringing, naked half-starved beast.)

3. Your needs are never filled, finally, for all time. They are cyclical. Your two dozen (or so) needs cycle round and around. At any one moment, several are urgently screaming at you, a few are muttering for attention and others are satisfied - for now.

4. When a need is not filled, you feel discomfort and then pain. This is the human organism's method of alerting the higher part of your mind (the strategy part) to come up with some plans, pronto, for filling that need.

5. If a need has been unfilled for a long time, when you attend to it you feel a burst of an emotion we call 'joy.' This is your instant reward for getting started. It is not a sustainable feeling.

6. Gradually, as you master how to juggle your needs and respond to them in a timely fashion, your reward is a feeling we call 'contentment.'

7. The trick is to become a 'master of life' - a master juggler. This is not a 'natural' state. You need to work at it and practice it. You also need an instructor. (If you have ever tried your hand at juggling, you will know it is impossible to learn, by yourself, from first principles. But if someone shows you the step-by-step method, then anyone can learn to juggle three balls in around five hours. Five balls? Come back in five years!)

In case you have not yet realised this fact, it is going to take time for you to become a 'master of life'.

A good time to start is... now.

Lack of water will kill the organism called 'man' in a few days; but solitary confinement will kill a man (not the organism but his spirit) in a few months.

Starvation will kill a woman in two weeks; but total lack of love, warmth or affection will kill a woman (not the organism but her spirit) in a few short years.

When Your Life Suddenly Takes a Turn for the Worse

Time to Bounce Back

Life is the wildest roller coaster ride you will ever take. Today you might be on the climb. Or you might be whizzing through a hairpin, chaotic turn, wondering when it will end. Some days you might be hurtling at seemingly breakneck speed toward a dip. If you are, then today's message is for you. If you're on the way to - or at - the bottom, for whatever reason, then it's simply time to bounce back. You can do it. We're here to help. Craig Ballantyne

"If I fail, I try again, and again, and again. If YOU fail, are you going to try again? The human spirit can handle much worse than we realize. It matters HOW you are going to FINISH. Are you going to finish strong?" - Nick Vujicic

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By Mark Ford

A new client who agreed to sign up with you suddenly cancels.
A promised promotion evaporates.

The deadline your plumber swore to passes without anything having been done.

The trick to dealing with disappointments like these is to have a "What if it doesn't happen?" plan in place almost from the start.

The idea is to create a Plan B every time you create a Plan A. And if you create a good Plan B and spend some time visualizing it (after you have visualized Plan A), you won't feel disappointed if Plan A falls through.

If, for example, you are hoping to be in London for Christmas this year, go ahead and book the arrangements - but spend a few minutes thinking about what you could do instead if, for whatever reason, the trip falls through. (A special Christmas at home - celebrated in some new and interesting way - may turn out to be even better.)

A fallback plan also works in the event of an unforeseen interruption in your routine. Always being prepared with a list of tasks you have wanted to accomplish for a long time is a good way to turn unexpected down time into a rich, rewarding experience.

A few years ago, for example, I tore up my knee and had to have surgery that put me on my back for two weeks and off the Jiu Jitsu mats for six months. For someone with my schedule (and addictive mentality), this could have been very bad. But since I'd had prior knee injuries and, therefore, knew that I was likely to undergo this operation some day, I had developed a fallback plan that made the recovery time bearable.

My fallback plan for the two weeks in bed (and on painkillers - which meant I couldn't do any meaningful work) was to catch up on all the great movies I had never seen or seen only once. My fallback plan for the six months of Jiu Jitsu inactivity was to use the time to rest and restore my shoulders and back, which were seriously ailing.

The movie-watching plan went very well. I saw two or three great movies a day - more than 30 in all. I also managed, during the second week, to read a half-dozen business publications that had accumulated on the corner of my desk. Far from feeling blue and abused, I was in a very good mood during that early period of convalescence - and that was entirely due to the fact that I felt like I was finally getting to things I had long wanted to do.

My fallback plan for the six months of inactivity was more challenging. I still went into the Jiu Jitsu academy every free moment (and I occasionally helped out with a lesson), but, mostly, I was frustrated by not being able to train again - a feeling that intensified as my knee got better.

But because I used that time to have my shoulders and back worked on, after putting it off for more than three years, I felt that I was accomplishing something. And because of all the care I took in healing my body, when I finally began training again, I was able to compete for the first time in years with an injury-free (though age-addled) body. That felt good.

Spend five minutes today asking yourself:

• "What positive development in my career am I counting on right now?"
• "What will I do if it doesn't happen?"

Then ask yourself the same questions about your personal life.
If you don't have a fallback plan, develop one. When you do, make sure it's something you can be happy with. If it isn't, work on it some more. You'll find that the more time you spend refining it, the more attractive it will become.

And in case you unexpectedly end up with time on your hands, prepare now by making a list of projects and/or tasks that you have always wanted to do. (Have you been thinking about writing a novel? Researching your family tree? Have you long been frustrated because you can't speak a foreign language? Can't dance the salsa?)

Spend some casual time thinking about your "dream" projects, refining them, and imagining how you can make them happen. The more time you spend doing this, the more excited you'll be about it. And then, when the time comes (and it almost certainly will), you will move from disappointment to anticipation in no time flat.

Offer compassion in abundance today

Undoubtedly there is someone in your life right now who you wish would be different than they are.  They may be a tiny bit difficult, or dealing with them may be a really immense challenge for you.  We all have these people, and they are our greatest teachers.

These individuals will show you where your compassion ends.  They will test your resolve to remain positive.  They will show you where your love needs to stretch.

 

Consider the words of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who refers to the Chinese who invaded Tibet as, “My friends the enemy.”  His strategy?  He prays for them.  He could say terrible things about them, but instead, he chooses to focus on how to love them, on where he can offer compassion instead.

 

Isn’t that inspiring?

 

Open to the Possibilities

The universe speaks to each of us in a unique manner, according to our own level of consciousness.  

 

This is the way that parents connect with their children also.  You wouldn’t speak to your two-year-old the way you would speak to your twenty-year-old.  Love connects at the level of awareness.

 

Your Life might speak to you about any number of desires:  Health, wealth, relationship, or creative expression --But it always speaks in a language you can understand.

 

No matter what you desire, or what you hear, Life always moves in the direction of the upward pull toward greater freedom and fuller expression.  The universe is always congruent with the life you are living and the possibility of the next expanded version of yourself.

 

Would it be OK with you, if Life got a whole lot easier?

 

Open to the Possibilities