Conflicts with the kids? Relax!

“Family life! The United Nations is child's play compared to the tugs and splits and need to understand and forgive in any family.” -- May Sarton Faced with a child (or a person of any age, for that matter) who is angry or rebellious? Consider the guidance from Vimala McClure: “To discover what my child needed, a deep, yielding receptivity was vital. The temptation is to become more and more rigid, but the more you do, the less you understand. When faced with a child who is testing your resolve, relax and yield …. “As a parent, the frustration of not knowing how to fill a need that cannot be articulated can be overwhelming. Often we direct the rage that stems from that frustration toward the child, which serves to distance us even further, making it impossible for the child to open up to us. To get to this type of receptivity, a practice of conscious relaxation is a must.” “Those who have children can become masters of patience, endurance, and steadfastness, because children will test you at every turn. …The way to make our children patient and loving is to be that way ourselves.” -- Eknath Easwaran Access your own inner wisdom by tapping into your subconscious and intuition. Release stress, blocks and negative emotions, and spark imagination and greater vision...

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Responsibility brings power

"To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist."

-- Gail Sheehy

What holds you back from being all that you are?

In your journal, list at least 5 things that hold you back.

Now review your answers. Have you blamed people or factors outside of yourself?

It's important to understand that ALL obstructions are rooted in our internal blocks. Even the problems that appear to be outside of us are only reflecting back to us problems we have inside. Once we address our inner issues, the outer problems disappear.

Be personally accountable for everything in your life and watch your perspectives shift. We claim our power when we accept responsibility for our lives.

"Conscious evolution begins as we take responsibility for clearing our own obstructions."

-- Dan Millman

We don’t change overnight. Personal growth requires persistence. 

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Struggling with money?

“Managing your money does not depend upon becoming wealthy or declaring vows of poverty. Rather, it is about creating stability and sufficiency – a balanced flow of monetary energy through your life.”

-- Dan Millman

What would it take to achieve financial stability and sufficiency in your life?

Look honestly at your life. How could you achieve financial stability and sufficiency? Would you need more income? Would you need to trim back your lifestyle? Would you achieve this by refusing to purchase on credit? What can you do now that would move you one step closer to having control over the money in your life?

“We can respond creatively to what we experience as life-depriving and become richer in spirit for having met the challenge.”

-- Tad Crawford

Tackle your financial challenges holistically! Learn the basic steps to managing money, explore your beliefs around wealth, and open to the spiritual laws of abundance... 

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Learn to be aware

“You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.” -- Beryl Markham Who am I? To answer this, we must first learn to become more aware of ourselves. To be aware, we must STOP and PAY ATTENTION! We need to STOP and objectively watch ourselves in action. We live most of our lives by habit. These habits keep us stuck in patterns that limit our experience of life. Once we detect a pattern we were previously unconscious of, we can choose differently, if we want. With awareness comes choice and with choice, we gain freedom. “To be authentic is literally to be your own author …, to discover your own native energies and desires, and then to find your own way of acting on them.” -- Warren G. Bennis “Self-knowledge is the great power by which we comprehend and control our lives.” -- Vernon Howard Awareness is the key to all change. Begin to trust yourself more deeply as you uncover new dimensions of who you are. Go on a journey of self-discovery...

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Who are you?

“Please… tell me who you are and what you want. And if you think those are simple questions, keep in mind that most people live their entire lives without arriving at an answer.” -- Gary Zukav How deeply can you answer this question? Please realize that you are the only one who can answer it. No one else can tell you who you are. You must discover this for yourself. And the challenge of knowing ourselves is no easy task. We hope this question excites rather than intimidates you. There’s so much more to you than you know at present! Isn’t this intriguing? Perhaps it’s time to go exploring…. “Mysterious and intimidating to contemplate, the human brain is the most complex thing there is and the most difficult task it can undertake is to understand itself.” -- David Noonan “I don’t think God cares where we were graduated or what we did for a living. God wants to know who we are. Discovering this is the work of the soul – it is our true life’s work.” -- Bernie Siegel Know Yourself – An adventure in self discovery! Become aware of your subconscious limitations, your character strengths, weaknesses and potentials, your life challenges, gifts, talents, and your deepest desires and aspirations...

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Learn to let go

“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”

-- Lao Tzu

How do we take something away? As we cultivate higher awareness, we begin to see just how much we have added things that really aren’t there to our picture of reality. Our beliefs, concepts and emotions all add layers of meaning to physical reality, but that meaning exists for us only – it has no objective existence. For example, the word ‘mother’ has a complicated network of meaning for each of us.

Become aware of how your beliefs and emotions colour your perception of different events in your life. See if you can begin to step out of your fabrications to experience the truth and spaciousness of what is.

“When guilt rears its ugly head confront it, discuss it and let it go. The past is over. … Forgive yourself and move on.”

-- Bernie S. Siegel

Journey through the traps of ego into a life of meaning, purpose, joy and service. Embark on your own soul journey...

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Experience stillness

"My greatest wealth is the deep stillness in which I strive and grow and win what the world cannot take from me with fire or sword." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe If our minds are always busy, they don’t get time to do basic maintenance – to sort, tidy up and take out the trash. If we don’t periodically clear out space in our minds, there’s no room for new ideas to take root. Where do you find stillness each day and each week? Plan for quiet time, relaxation and stillness daily, even if it’s only for 5 or 10 minutes. “For peace of mind, we need to resign as general manager of the universe.” -- Larry Eisenberg Step by step, progressively learn basic meditation methods to relax, concentrate, focus, reflect, contemplate and illuminate your inner self.

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It's okay to dream!

“Don’t discard your fantasies as merely wishful thinking. Honor them as messages from the deepest part of your being about what you can do and directions you can choose.”

-- Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer

What are your deepest heart-felt desires, dreams and visions?

Our deepest desires and dreams align with the essence of who we are. The more we align with that essence, the more our life holds meaning, purpose and fulfilment. Do you have a sense of your destiny?

"Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born."

-- Dale E. Turner

“Everybody builds a dream in their lifetime. You’re either going to build your dream, or somebody else's. So build your own!"

-- Christopher LaBrec

Why are you here? Open yourself to more meaning and fulfillment by exploring your life purpose...

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What is your body telling you?

“There are times when we may fool ourselves. There are times when we can fool others. But we can never fool our body. It is the most sensitive barometer of our inner world.” -- Sherrill Sellman “Instead of frittering away your vibrancy with worry or distraction, realize your mind and body are inextricably united. What calms and tones up one, soothes and improves the other.” -- Marsha Sinetar "When you are saying that you are happy and you are not, there will be a disturbance in your breathing. Your breathing cannot be natural. It is impossible." -- Osho "Your body is the ground and metaphor of your life, the expression of your existence. It is your Bible, your encyclopedia, your life story. Everything that happens to you is stored and reflected in your body. In the marriage of flesh and spirit divorce is impossible." -- Gabrielle Roth "If you don't take care of your body, where will you live?" -- Unknown source

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There's light in the darkness

"Each difficult moment has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart."

-- Myla Kabat-Zinn

“Even the most daring and accomplished people have undergone tremendous difficulty. In fact, the more successful they became, the more they attributed their success to the lessons learned during their most difficult times. Adversity is our teacher. When we view adversity as a guide towards greater inner growth, we will then learn to accept the wisdom our soul came into this life to learn.”

-- Barbara Rose

“No matter what difficulty you are facing, it is coming from Divine Light to bring you to a higher place within. Write down every conceivable reason that this situation can contribute towards your growth. Write down every way this experience can possibly set the stage for serving to uplift others. When you are complete, and have come to the other side of this experience, you will then know 'why' it happened.”

-- Barbara Rose

“The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one’s life.”

-- Dalai Lama

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Direct your subconscious mind

"The power to move the world is in the subconscious mind." -- William James Our subconscious mind creates our lives perfectly according to how it has been programmed. It works 24 hours of every day, 365 days per year. It accepts instructions from the conscious mind, checks on old inner programming and executes. The subconscious mind acts on old beliefs stored over a lifetime. Many of those beliefs you may have accepted without thinking. Or you may have absorbed them when you were too young to exercise choice. Many of the beliefs that govern your life may no longer match what you now hold to be true. Nonetheless, the subconscious mind is the director till you rewrite the scripts. Put some effort into getting it working on your positive, conscious intentions instead of your old limiting, unconscious beliefs and your life will change. "If a man devotes himself to the instructions of his own unconscious, it can bestow this gift [of renewal], so that suddenly life, which has been stale and dull, turns into a rich unending inner adventure, full of creative possibilities." -- Marie-Louise von Franz As we are spiritual beings, the root of all of our life challenges lies in the spiritual realm. Get in touch with your spiritual nature to get a sense of the bigger picture of your life.

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Heal the past

"What you bring forth out of yourself from the inside will save you. What you do not bring forth out of yourself from the inside will destroy you."

-- Gospel of Thomas

We can transform painful memories by re-imagining them from the soul’s perspective of love and meaning.

Andrew Schneider says that all experiences have the purpose of serving the soul. An experience in the past blocked us because our fear at the time distorted our perception of what happened. To transform this limiting experience, we must bring what was then unconscious into the soul’s realm through consciousness.

We can do this by following these steps:

1. RECALL the past experience that might inhibit us.

2. OWN the experience (no judgment, blame, etc.).

3. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for it and the consequences (i.e., the experience was determined by my subjective perception of what occurred, dictated by my lack of wholeness -- specifically my fears).

4. GIVE IT MEANING (the soul was attempting to gain some kind of mastery or skill, but we didn’t know that at the time).

5. RE-IMAGINE it from the perspective of soul consciousness (showing its higher purpose).

"Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do. It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way -- in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited to the old."

-- Stephen Levine

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Is your ego involved?

"There is no room for God in him who is full of himself." -- Hasidic saying On the spiritual path, we must be diligent to discriminate whether we are acting from ego or from soul. If ego is in charge, what we do is self-referencing. At the deepest levels, we are motivated by our own self-interest. We’re looking out for ourselves more than for others. Although soul works through individuals, its focus is on the needs of others and on service to humanity. “Do not feed your ego and your problems, with your attention. ...Slowly, surely, the ego will lose weight, until one fine day it will be nothing but a thin ghost of its former self. You will be able to see right through it, to the divine presence that shines in each of us.” -- Eknath Easwaran "Why aren't you happy? It's because ninety-nine percent of everything you do, and think, and say, is for yourself -- and there isn't one." -- Wu Wei Wu We don’t change overnight.  Personal growth requires persistence...

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Strengths and weaknesses

“The burden is equal to the horse’s strength.” -- The Talmud What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? If you make a list of the two and study them, you may discover they match. Life needs us to bring our strengths to the world. To encourage us to do so, we have weaknesses that give rise to problems that require us to call on our strengths to solve them. Ingenious, don’t you think? “Our weaknesses are divine gifts that when embraced will enable us to make our purposeful contribution to the whole, which is why we incarnated in the first place.” -- Andrew Schneider “We acquire the strength we have overcome.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Know Yourself – An adventure in self discovery! Become aware of your subconscious limitations, your character strengths, weaknesses and potentials, your life challenges, gifts, talents, and your deepest desires and aspirations...

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Feeling trapped? Slow down!

“If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down. For me, slowing down has been a tremendous source of creativity. It has allowed me to open up -- to know that there's life under the earth and that I have to let it come through me in a new way. Creativity exists in the present moment. You can't find it anywhere else.”

-- Natalie Goldberg

Feeling trapped in some way? Give yourself space. Space to do nothing but breathe. To intentionally relax those tight muscles. To just for a few precious minutes, let it all go.

The world will keep turning if you tune out for a short while. And your world will begin to recover its balance.

“It's important to be heroic, ambitious, productive, efficient, creative, and progressive, but these qualities don't necessarily nurture soul. The soul has different concerns, of equal value: downtime for reflection, conversation, and reverie; beauty that is captivating and pleasuring; relatedness to the environs and to people; and any animal’s rhythm of rest and activity.”

-- Thomas Moore

Step by step, progressively learn basic meditation methods to relax, concentrate, focus, reflect, contemplate and illuminate... 

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All is mind

“I want to know the thoughts of God; the rest are details.” -- Albert Einstein Everything -- absolutely everything -- that happens in our lives has a spiritual cause. Mental, emotional and physical events are only effects. When we are struggling with any challenge, whether it be ill health, a lack of money, a lost job, relationships, an accident, whatever -- we need to look for the spiritual learning. We can ask ourselves, “What quality does my soul want me to live more fully?” “I went to the root of things, and found nothing but Him alone.” -- Mira Bai Journey through the traps of ego into a life of meaning, purpose, joy and service...

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Work with tension

“You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension and discipline are taken out of your life.” -- James G. Bilkey We need tension in our lives. It’s the force of personal evolution -- it sparks creativity and higher consciousness. If we’re not comfortable with a situation, we try to improve it, right? Tension arises through our experience of opposites. These opposites fight each other as each one struggles for dominance. Tension is transformed when two opposite dimensions of reality are brought together in balance and in wholeness. Know that tension is an integral part of growth. Instead of avoiding or resisting tension when it arises, identify the opposing forces at play. Make space for each of them to be there together and the tension will transform. We encounter tensions between positives and negatives, mind and body, self and environment, self and others, and personality and soul – the dualities in our lives. "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." -- Neale Donald Walsch Awareness is the key to all change. Begin to trust yourself more deeply as you uncover new dimensions of who you are...

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The key to creativity

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

-- Albert Einstein

Do you know the key to creativity?

It rhymes with weed. It produces the oak tree. We often eat it or grind it up for flour. It can mean cause or origination. You guessed it. It is SEED.

Our minds love to associate one thing to another. But as we get stuck in very fixed patterns of thinking, we think of fewer and fewer connections. We are ruled by habits, associations and automatic responses. So we must stimulate our thinking with lots of different seeds to chart new paths in our brains.

“Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.”

-- Napoleon Hill

“Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport.”

-- Robert Wieder

Even one right exercise can triple your creativity. Have fun exploring the creative process. Find the right tools that work for you. Create more exciting options in your life...

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Don't think away your feelings

“When emotions are managed by the heart, they heighten your awareness of the world around you and add sparkle to life. The result is new intelligence and a new view of life.”

-- Doc Childre and Howard Martin

How do you intellectualize your emotions?

Many of us live so much in our heads that we intellectualize our emotions. We analyze, rationalize and explain them away so quickly that we don’t actually experience them.

Learn to honour your emotions at all times by being willing to feel them. Of course, you may need to exercise some judgment over how and when you express them.

"Learning to be aware of feelings, how they arise and how to use them creatively so they guide us to happiness, is an essential lifetime skill."

-- Joan Borysenko

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