We’re taught that ancient literature is great art, but that it doesn’t have anything to do with living our lives. The truth is that literature which has stood the test of time is great art exactly because it is about living our lives.

The best of these ancient works attempted to answer one question: How should you live your life? And that makes sense. After people move on from the question, how are we going to find food and shelter, they finally have the time to ask, how should we live our lives?

And Homer, western civilization’s most influential writer, gives us his answer to that question. Through his epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, he tells us how he and many of the ancient Greeks thought we should live our lives. By embodying “arête.”

The most common definition of “arête” is “excellence.” And that’s a pretty good definition if we’re looking at “arête” as just a word on a page that needs translation. But we need to dig deeper if we want to find out why Homer thought it answered the question, how should you live your life?

Digging one level deeper, we come across another definition. “Courage.” Again, a good definition if you need to do some translating, but it’s still doesn’t answer our question. So we dig deeper and find “strength,” and now we’re sure we can translate “arête” whenever we come across it.  One of our definitions will definitely work.

But if we stop here, Homer, himself, would tell us that we missed the point. So we have to dig even deeper. We have to go on a real archeological dig into the wisdom of ancient times. But it’s worth it because it doesn’t take much longer before we find Homer’s answer to the question, how should we live our lives?

In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer’s main characters all embody “arête.” But for each of them, this “arête” is different. That is, each character has their own individual “arête.” They all have individual strengths. And when they focus on those strengths and exercise them, they embody “arête.” So it’s not being excellent at something that reflects this quality. It’s embodying that something.

It turns out that “arête” means excellence only in the sense that you’re embracing your strengths. Embracing what you do well. Whether it leads to actual success or failure is not the quality of “arête.” It often can lead to excellence, but not always.

“Arête” is the act of exercising your strengths. It’s using your mind and your body and your emotions to get as close to realizing your potential as possible. That’s how we should lead our lives. Whether we achieve success or not, we embody “arête” if we do what we should be doing. And that brings us back to courage and strength.

It takes courage to be honest with yourself about what you do well. It’s a moment of truth. The moment when you ask yourself not what you’d like to do well, but what do you do well. And the answer to that question may not be what you’d like.

And that’s tied to the Greek concept of fate. Cold, hard fate. The Christian version is warmer. God has a master plan. But it’s still the same idea. What we do well is what we do well, regardless of what we’d like to do well. “Arête” says embrace it.

This doesn’t mean that now that you’ve found the courage to be honest with yourself, it’s going to be smooth sailing. It’s still not easy to perfect what you do well. This is where strength comes into play. It’s going to take strength of character to do the hard work it takes to embody “arête.” But rest assured that it will be “right” work. The work you were intended to do.

And here are a couple of clarifications that Homer didn’t make. They apply more to modern times than to ancient times. First, when you’re discovering what your strengths are, don’t dismiss what others say. “Arête” doesn’t mean that you have all the answers. It doesn’t matter how you come to find you what you do well as long as you find out. And secondly, “arête” doesn’t mean “do you what you love.” It means love what you do. It means accept what you’re meant to do, then live up to your potential by doing your best to excel at it.

Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey to entertain and to teach. But today we look at those epic poems as great works of art and stop there. We find beauty in their prose and we forget the reason those works survive.

I was lucky enough to have read those poems and studied them in college. But it was an intellectual pursuit. I sensed that there was more to those poems, but my teachers never dove into those parts. And I couldn’t figure it out on my own. The idea that the Iliad and the Odyssey could teach me something about how to live my life never occurred to me. It took many years before that I understood the ancient wisdom found in those works and even longer to try it out. Don’t wait as long as I did.

Irving Belateche is a screenwriter, author and speaker. He’s just published the book, “Under An Orange Sun, Some Days Are Blue,” available on Amazon. It’s a work of motivational fiction where both ancient and modern wisdom is tested to see what works and what doesn’t. He’s written screenplays for Paramount, Columbia, Warner Brothers and other studios. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.

In this age of technology and materialism, when many wonder what tomorrow will bring, the resurgence of spirituality is a normal phenomenon. For centuries, people have turned to religions or other belief systems for support and understanding. Yet it never resulted in a better world on a global level. An improved personal life perhaps, but not a better planet. So one can wonder why, after centuries of religious or spiritual teachings on love, forgiveness, presence or service, the world situation has not improved spiritually; why acts of sharing and forgiveness are the exception, not the norm. We can guess that the big majority of people weren’t ready for these teachings, that the failure to bring peace, love or the end of suffering on earth is the failure of humanity.

After all, the spiritual realm did its job, didn’t it? So why are people not listening?

The answer lies in each one of us. Our perception of the world is a very personal thing, it involves our mind and the infinite interpretations it can make about our experiences. This is how most of us lead our lives: We base our actions on what our minds are telling us. Yet many spiritual teachings tell us to go the other way: love, meditate, watch your mind, forgive, practice compassion, open your heart. The discrepancy between the teachings and what we do with them is as wide as the gap between faith and belief. Faith is the mysterious spiritual touch which brings a sacred dimension to our life. Faith doesn’t abide by rules. Unlike belief, it has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with following one’s heart. Faith is our personal affair with our spiritual Self. Are we in a relationship with our soul or are we cut off from it?

We can tell by the quality of our life: A person who has faith acts from a place of trust and inner knowledge. A person who doesn’t have faith acts from the mind, this person doesn’t trust life and often second-guesses himself.

Faith is this indescribable feeling of knowing what’s right for oneself and acting on it. That’s what soul work is about: the inner knowledge of what one has to learn and do in this lifetime. Every soul has its purpose, every heart its calling. The work required to discover it is a spiritual journey some feel drawn to take. As you embark on this path, the real adventure begins, a new perspective slowly arises, old attachments vanish to leave room for new experiences. Your outlook on life shifts to incorporate spiritual realities and your inner transformation is mirrored in the outer world.

Every spiritual journey leads to a better understanding of your place in the world. Spiritual practice helps you connect with your Self, which is a drop in the sea of consciousness. As you connect with consciousness, you slowly learn that there is an intelligent design underlying your life, and that the spiritual realm contains all you need to know. So why not pick up a spiritual practice?

How do we define spiritual practice? A spiritual practice is the very simple act of getting in touch with your Self. Not with your mind, your feelings or your body, but with this sense of presence or being behind them. How to go about it is a matter of personal preference. A few things should guide your choice: Religion or tradition do not matter, except to your heart, so it is very important to follow your intuition, not your mind (or another’s). Practice will make all the difference:  Spirituality is an experience, not an intellectual pastime. Discouragement is common, the best way to deal with it is not to expect anything from your practice. Flowers only bloom in the right season, provided they were well taken care of.

Your spiritual practice also will bloom in the right season.

Sophie Rose is the author of The Way of The heart, Teachings of Jeshua and Mary Magdalene. She is a contributing author of The Sacred Shift, Co-Creating your Future.  Sophie is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition and has always favored a direct experience of spirituality.   She can be contacted through www.thewayoftheheartcourse.com, facebook or Twitter

Photo courtesy of: Travel Photo Pictures

Personal growth depends to an unknown extent on our ability to be aware of, and think about, our thoughts, feelings and behavior. However if we don’t ‘do internal work’, think deeply about this vast uncharted area, we are certainly going to lead a life that is more lifeless and robotic.

If we lead our life as if the world is only outside of us, repeating patterns of behavior, with no self-reflection, what is effective for us at one point in our life cycle, sooner or later, loses it’s effectiveness.

Below are five ideas to fertilize thinking about our internal worlds:

1) The first is that even if we chew and grind up good or bad food, and drink with passionate love, it still turns into feces and urine. True? No.

It is easy to see the beginning and the end of any process. We forget, or may not even be aware, that all food is something. When we take it in it begins a mysterious journey essential for our body growth; or, if there is too much, too little, or it is poisonous or rotten, this food journey can have destructive intent and lead to misery.

Likewise, ideas and feelings we take into our mind, while in a gristmill of conflict, tension and friction, can contribute to growth or to energy ‘waste.’ This kind of information-food, good or bad, will often turn out to be seeds of vital nutrient for personal growth, the growth of our ‘mind’ and our ability to think.

On the other hand this idea-feeling food, like real food, can also pass through quickly, be burdensome, poisonous waste, and, even if nutritious, it can also be too much, too little, or get stuck and not get worked on and thought about. This can leave us with the feeling we are in a dank, dark and slippery place.

Example: Being constipated with an idea like resentment, and holding onto it inside, can poison us while an idea like forgiveness will endlessly nurture our body, mind and soul.

2) The second is that we can spit out another’s words or ideas, such as ‘God’, ‘science’, ‘truth’, or opinions like ‘God is One’, ‘it’s not scientific’, ‘it’s beautiful’; or we can spit an idea or feeling back: “Hey you, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” In both cases, in so doing, are we acting automatically? Have we briefly, or for an extended period, forgotten our self and our internal world? Are we so rattled, angry and disturbed we’ve ‘lost our mind.’ It’s perilous to not live mindfully, to not step back and ‘see’ things from different perspectives.

Example: All ideas can be thought about from infinite points of view or vertices, to name only the mentioned three: religious, scientific or aesthetic.

3) So, here’s a third idea to chew on: We never really ‘pick the brain’; surely there isn’t brain tissue in a blog. Thinking about it further, the mind is an unproven concept; so picking the brain is a metaphor for chewing on ideas, feeding ideas to others, swallowing some, spitting others out, an exchange or extension of the ideas in our internal world with the internal world of others; an exchange extended across the world with love or hate. How this exchange affects one depends on whether or how deeply it is thought about it.

On thinking further yet, maybe ‘pick the brain’ is not a metaphor. Ideas just might become brain food, brain tissue, not just ‘mind’ food. Unlike minds, brains do exist, we can ‘see them’. Like our ‘mind’ we just can’t ‘see’ ideas.

Should we be aware of and think about ideas before we flush them away? Can we be that aware of them all? How much thinking is useful? Are we failing to pick our brain? Maybe ‘picking the brain’ means learning to think deeply.

Do we ‘think’ in our dreams? Do we do dream work and ‘think’ unconsciously? Is this the only time we are fully ‘awake’? Is this a deeper way to pick our brains, to chew over of facts and ideas?

Example: Are we walking around in a daydream or are we thinking deeply with our minds, right down into our heart, our genitals, our bowels, our very tissues. Is this the way to really ‘wake up’? Or is all this just picking over bones? That’s good. I get it. I like that.

4) Another idea to think about: If we think we can get something for nothing we are forgetting nothing is not only something, it is in its own way everything. We should be careful how we value something, or for that matter anything. Nothing might be priceless and we might be making a fool’s bargain for what we think is something. Yet even if nothing is really only nothing we need to be careful not to value what is valueless.

Example: If we feel entitled to something in the present without working or paying for it, we are forgetting that the ability to work (something) is a gift of love (everything). We might get something we think we are entitled to without working or paying for it but the hidden price tag is starvation (nothing) from living automatically, repeating patterns: patterns of greed, patterns of grievance and regret. Something that turns out to be nothing leads inexorably to the misery of the loss of love (everything).

5) Chew on these ideas, swallow them; Or, what the heck, just spit them out and forget them! Don’t let them get ‘stuck in your craw.’ Maybe these ideas are just a bunch of hooey anyway.

Hmm, will anyone think about this, be wide-open to what they have read? Will it help them grow?

Have you now been able to introduce the thinking parts of yourself to one another so they can sit down and talk? Do you ‘see’ it ‘all’ differently ‘now’?

How can we communicate, see things the same way? Can we, beyond forgiveness and love, ever see things the same way?

How can I listen to what you say, read what you write, be fully open so that it will help me to grow. How frightened am I that your growth or mine might turn out to be malignant and must be killed before it murders you or me or both or all of us?

Can your concept of mind ever really meet with mine? Is my mind ever separate from yours? Mind your own business!! If minds exist can they ever be separate running their own business? If so how separate can they be? Isn’t separation the only real problem? Who and what are we trying to be separate from?

Example: The sun never stops shining. Does it for you? Is it ever miserable outside? Is it cloudy, too hot, too cold, snowing, raining or arid, or really scary?

What’s your conjecture? How much of all this is ‘really’ happening in our internal world in that concept we call our mind?

Dr. Clark Falconer is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain. He is a practicing Psychiatrist from Vancouver, Canada and the author of the new, critically acclaimed book The Three Word Truth About Love And Being Well.

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“Success is dependent on effort.” –Sophocles

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” –Aristotle

One reason that philosophy is important to understand and use is that everyone is a philosopher.[1]

Far from being the ivory-tower, irrelevant proceeding limited only to those that like it piled-higher and deeper[2], everyone is a philosopher, just as everyone breathes, eats, and has thoughts.  We might even say that we hold this truth to be self-evident (just as they did in the Declaration of Independence), that everyone is a philosopher.  Furthermore, we know this because each person has to make sense of the world is some way.  In fact, just a bit of open discussion with any person will reveal what their beliefs are.  By delving just a little bit deeper, we can readily find out what their philosophy of life is, and how it operates in their life.  This is but one essential aspect of the fine art of philosophical counseling, more commonly known and marketed as life coaching.  Of course, psychologists call it psychotherapy.

Everyone is a philosopher whether they like it or not—whether they admit it or not—whether they realize it or not.

So, since we’re all doing this anyway—making sense of the world and attempting to apply that understanding—we might as well do it well.

It follows that if we don’t develop and practice positive principles on which we can base how we live our life, it’s rather like cutting bread with a dull knife.[3]

Furthermore, our philosophy has profound effects on how we approach every aspect of our life, even when – as so often is the case—we are not truly aware of what exactly our philosophy is.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has shown how one critically important aspect of our philosophy—our beliefs about how we make sense of the world–makes a huge difference in how we respond to challenges, and therefore, how we succeed in life.

In her book Mindset:  The New Psychology of Success – How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential, Dweck cites dozens of studies showing how a simple attitude towards one’s own qualities can bode well or not, depending on exactly which mindset you hold.  Roughly speaking, one’s mindset falls into one of two categories; either one’s mindset is fixed or growth-oriented.  The good news:  you can choose to change your mindset.

Briefly, if one’s mindset is fixed, you will tend to avoid challenges, avoid change, and avoid admitting to and fixing one’s mistakes.  On the other hand, if one’s mindset is growth-oriented, you will tend to embrace change, to embrace improving yourself and learning, and to even relish challenges.

Not surprisingly, the growth mindset is predictive of greater success in life, regardless of what area of life we are considering:  health, business, school, relationships, parenting.  Those with a growth mindset face challenges rather than avoiding them.   In the growth mindset, you focus on cultivating certain qualities; your focus is on learning, improving, understanding, and problem-solving, rather than trying to prove to yourself and others that you already possess certain qualities, as with the fixed mindset.

Perhaps one of the most historically famous exemplars of the growth mindset is Abraham Lincoln.[4] His sweetheart died, he failed in business twice, and lost seven elections before going on to become President of the United States.

We can attribute this tenacity and success in part to a growth mindset, which entails the cultivation of skills.  Further, the growth mindset itself can be cultivated—like most any philosophy—and this capacity of choice and develop our own outlook and philosophy is what distinguishes us from the animals.

Carol Dweck’s research shows that when we cultivate a growth mindset, we appreciate and practice making an effort to improve and learn from mistakes so that we continue to progress.

Philosopher Eugene Gendlin speaks of a related concept to Dweck’s growth mindset, which he refers to as living as living life-forward.[5] We will discuss Gendlin’s highly effective concepts and method (called Focusing) which fosters inner positive change and the cultivation of the growth mindset in a future philosophical article.

—–

Tina Miller, M.A., C.F.LE, aka SocialPsi Tina, is a Certified Family Life Educator whose diverse background is social scientific, holistic, and educational approaches to personal empowerment and relationships provides a  unique backdrop to her Unconventional Wisdom Coaching practice.  Find out how you can get your free telephone coaching session here.

In my opinion this is the biggest problem we face as “modern” people. We might have flashy gadgets and shiny cool things, but in the end when it comes down to peace of mind we have nothing.

I know for me at least whenever I used to come home for the day; I used to always be 90% tense and 10% anxious for reasons I couldn’t understand. I had a house, family, friends and blessings I could never count. I just didn’t understand.

I was stuck in a never ending loop of distress and lack of peace.

So then how did I overcome that?

Well a couple years ago, I learnt a secret.

I was reading through some books when I read the most amazing quote:

Freedom from desire leads to inner peace.
– Lao Tse

This completely changed my beliefs and got me thinking.

Why there is so little peace in the “modern” world is because of too many worldly desires. So in essence the flashy gadgets and shiny cool things I thought were my positives were actually bringing me down.

This brought a revolution in my life.

I stopped worrying about always dressing good, I stopped caring too much about technology, I stopped worrying about having the best of everything.

I started detaching myself from as much as things as possible and my peace of mind right away started going up.

The main thing was that I started to slow my life down. I found through experience that the world was moving way too fast and that it was taking away my peace. There was always better technology; fashion kept on changing and the best things never lasted.

So the only way I could get my peace back was by slowing down and living at my pace.

You can have peace of mind too; you just have to put your mind to it.

Good Luck in living blissfully!

Osman Hameed writes about self-improvement and shares effective tips for living better life on his website www.codeofliving.com. CodeofLiving is a juicy mix of tips, tutorials and articles that are guaranteed to make your life better.

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The Language of Success

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.

He is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle’s writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics.

Fifteen lessons from Aristotle:

1. The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

2. The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

3. The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

4. We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

5. There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

6. Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

7. To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.

8. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

9. We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

10. We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

11. You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

12. Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

13. What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

14. Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

15. Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

Thank you for reading, please pass this article along!

Mr. Self Development is an author who teaches a motivational and practical guide to success. Please visit him at Mr. Self Development.com.

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If one man tells you a horse, he’s insane

if three men tell you you’re a horse, there’s a conspiracy

If ten men tell you you’re a horse, you need to buy a saddle.

- Chinese proverb

I stared in disbelief at my Regional Manager. I could no longer hear the words coming from his mouth because all my attention was turned inside in a torrent of abuse aimed at him, the company, the industry, and of course, myself.

How could this be happening to me? How could I be turned down for the management development program when it had been de facto promised to me if I hit certain goals. Goals that had all been reached and most smashed.

As my brain scrambled to make sense of what was happening I heard him say one final thing  before the meeting came to a close and I was suddenly out in the cold, both figuratively and literally:

“You’re just too negative and pessimistic mate. Work on that and we can talk again in six months when the next round comes up.”

I’m A Realist, Not A Pessimist

Too pessimistic, me? Was he being serious? I wasn’t a pessimistic person at all I was a realist. Sure I was the guy at meetings that pointed out the down side of things. But every business needs employees that can be objective, point out flaws, and not just agree to everything suggested by senior management.

It just so happened I was that guy, and proud of it!

Over the next few days, and rather ironically considering what I had been told, I whined and complained to everybody and anybody that would listen to me about how poorly I had been treated.

The responses didn’t quite pan out as I thought though because I didn’t get anything like the sympathy I expected from such an obvious travesty of justice.

In fact just the opposite in many cases, with people shrugging their shoulders and a couple even laughing out loud in a “What did you expect?” manner.

Seeing Myself As Others Did

I was stunned, I mean really stunned. I was starting to see myself as others saw me rather than I thought I was.

Leaving the whole Myers-Briggs thing to one side and speaking very broadly, people tend to think of themselves as belonging to one of three different personality types. They either see themselves as being an optimist, a realist (pragmatist) or a pessimist.

When I speak to groups I will often kick things off by asking people to raise their hand to indicate which group they think they belong to. The split is usually along the lines of 50% feel they are optimistic, 40% realistic and 10% pessimistic.

Those figures are probably skewed somewhat as I suspect few people like thrusting their hand in to the air to announce to their peers and employers they are pessimistic. In my experience, it’s seldom a good career move.

However, it’s really a trick question, because to my mind there are really only 2 groups of people, optimists and pessimists.

Realism Is For Accountants

Take a glance around you at the moment and I guarantee you can see any number of things that at one time in the past were considered totally unrealistic and beyond the pale, including the device you are using to read this post.

Every single major breakthrough in the history of the human species was at some point in time considered unrealistic. Every single one.

History is littered with legions of realists lining up to ‘help’ the doers and the optimists by pointing out the error of their ways and assuring them they are wasting their time.

Fortunately for humankind optimists tend not to listen to other peoples version of reality Otherwise we’d still be living in caves, clubbing our dinner to death each evening and wearing furry underwear.

I’m okay with the furry underwear bit, but I’m not so keen on stalking my dinner or hanging out in bat-ridden, bear-hiding caves thanks very much.

If you’re still not convinced and think you are a realist let me take it a stage further.

How Realistic Are You Really?

Think of the last 5 things you worried about. How many came true? My guess is if you are anything like the vast majority of my clients it’s either 0 or 1.

And even if it’s 1, I doubt it was as serious as you feared and you obviously dealt with it because you are here reading this post.

So how realistic is it, spending most of your time worrying about things that, on the whole, never happen, and when they do you deal with them?

Shortly after my setback I picked up a copy of ‘Learned Optimism’ by Martin Seligman and started to read and things started to make sense.

I realized that my form of realism wasn’t just draining on people around me and a millstone around the neck of my career, but it also had a host of negative psychological and health issues connected to it.

Optimistic people, get sick less often, they are more successful in their careers, they make more money, they’re happier and they tend to live longer.

Not only that, but even though about 50% of our happiness levels are set at birth by our genes, the wiggle room in the other 50% is so great that (psychological issues aside) anybody can learn to be optimistic and thus happier.

If that is, the will is there.

How come nobody ever told me this at school?

It’s over 10 years since I had that conversation with my boss and barely a day has passed when I haven’t done something to help me move toward being a happier and more optimistic person.

I would be lying if I said it has been a smooth upward curve to a state of permanent blis, because life doesn’t work like that.

However, I’m pleased to say that I’m now the guy that looks for solutions and not the one that looks for problems and I’m grateful that my manager helped me realize I needed to buy a saddle because even though I didn’t believe it at the time, there really was no conspiracy.

Tim Brownson is a Life Coach, NLP Master Practitioner and writer. Originally from England he now lives in Orlando and is currently involved in a project to giveaway 1,000,000 copies of a book he co-authored called How To Be Rich and Happy to good causes.

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Many years ago a pop singer named Peggy Lee recorded a song titled, “Is That All There Is?”  She sang about how her life had turned out, ending each verse with the plea: “Is that all there is?”

Unfortunately those words could sum up the lives of millions of people today whose lives have not fulfilled the promise they felt as children.  Our romantic relationship (if we even have one) is okay, but “is that all there is?”   We go to work (if we do) but the excitement about our jobs (if there ever was any) seems to have dimmed.  We get by financially (if we do) but there never seems to be enough.  And life in general is okay (we don’t need a therapist), but life would be so much more fulfilling if only….  Is that all there is?

I’d like to suggest that there is a simple explanation why this feeling is so common and that there is a simple solution also.

Imagine that as a child you formed several beliefs about life, including There’s never enough, Nothing I do is good enough, No matter what I have, it’s never enough, No matter how good things get there always seems to be something missing, I’ll never get what I want, and I’ll never have enough money/love/friends/success.

If you held beliefs like these, how satisfied do you think you would be with life?  … Wouldn’t you be feeling, Is that all there is?

Ultimately all of our thoughts, behaviors, feelings, and perceptions are the result of the beliefs we formed earlier in life.  So if you want to change your experience of life you have to change the beliefs that determine your view of life.  When limiting beliefs are eliminated, new possibilities open up and we quickly discover that there is a lot more we can do and have than we ever thought possible.

Let me give you another example.  Assume you had the beliefs: I’m not loveable. Relationships don’t work.  Men/women can’t be trusted.

With these beliefs, you’d never form a really good, nurturing, long-term romantic relationship, would you?  And you’d be thinking about the absence of such a relationship in your life, wondering: Is that all there is?

Now let’s assume you completely eliminate those beliefs.  Can you see you have just created the possibility of a good, nurturing, long-term relationship that literally didn’t exist before? There is no guarantee you will ever find such a relationship, but the possibility exists now that didn’t exist before.

This is one of the most powerful consequences of eliminating beliefs: You not only change your behavior and feelings, you actually change the reality you live in.  And you realize that there is a lot more to life than you ever thought possible.

The possibilities that exist in your reality are defined by your beliefs. When you say something is impossible it actually becomes impossible for you. If you believe Life is difficult, you will experience things not going the way you wanted them to go as upsetting obstacles rather than exciting challenges.  If you believe I’m not capable or I’m not competent, would you likely try to do something you thought was difficult?  And if you tried, do you think you would succeed with these beliefs?

About 25 years ago I developed the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP) that has helped over 13,000 clients eliminate many limiting beliefs.  Let me explain how you can use it to eliminate some of your own negative beliefs.

To get a sense of how the LBP works, please try the following mental exercise: Assume your parents were very critical of you most of the time and rarely acknowledged you for your achievements.  No matter what you did, they focused on what you didn’t do and how you should have done better.  If this was the pattern of their interactions with you, there literally would be thousands of them by the time you were six or seven years old.  What would you have concluded about yourself by this time?

If you were typical of most children, you would have concluded that There’s something wrong with me or I’m not good enough. You would have experienced these beliefs as “the truth” about you as a child.  Today, as an adult, even though you might consciously realize the beliefs were silly and illogical, on some deep level you still would experience them as the truth about you.

If you were to recall your childhood, it would seem to you that you could “see” that I’m not good enough. In other words, when you visualized your parents being critical, it would seem as if you also were visualizing I’m not good enough. It’s as if your parent’s behavior inherently meant I’m not good enough. It would be so real to you that you could see your belief in the world that it seems you could say to someone: “If you were there watching my interactions with my parents, you also would see I’m not good enough.”

But if you looked carefully at the events that led to the belief, namely, your parents’ behavior, you would realize that their frequent criticism and lack of acknowledgement could have a number of different meanings, each one as valid as the one you chose. For example:

·            My parents thought that being critical would motivate me to excel.

·            My parents had lousy parenting skills.

·            My parents may have thought I wasn’t good enough, but they were wrong.

·            Maybe I wasn’t good at doing certain things, but that doesn’t mean I, as a person, am not good enough.

·            Maybe my parents were dissatisfied with my behavior, but they didn’t think I wasn’t good enough.

If you now tried to visualize I’m not good enough “out there in the world,” you would realize you couldn’t, because you really never did see it. All you actually saw was your parents’ behavior. And if that behavior could have a number of valid meanings, it has no single inherent meaning.  In other words, the events—as unpleasant as they might have been—had no inherent meaning.  You can’t draw any necessary conclusion about yourself as a human being based on the way your parents treated you as a child.  Therefore, you would be forced to conclude that the only place that meaning has ever existed has been as a belief in your mind.

When you reach this point, the belief has been transformed from “the truth” to “a truth” and is no longer a belief.  If you were to state the words of the belief, they would sound silly and meaningless.

This short exercise explains why it usually is difficult to get rid of beliefs: We think we “saw” the belief inherent in our observations.  It is difficult to talk someone out of something they think they “saw.”  As soon, however, as we realize that we never saw the belief (i.e., the meaning) in the events, that the meaning existed only in our mind, the belief disappears.

Try eliminating a few of the beliefs that make you feel, Is that all there is?, and discover that much more is possible in your life than you ever dreamed.

Morty Lefkoe blogs about how the Lefkoe Belief Process quickly and permanently eliminates the crippling beliefs that cause virtually all our problems.

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Everyday I take a break from my work when I get to the point of being tired of what I am doing, and I usually go play basketball. The breaks that I enjoy the most are when I am alone on the court. Uninterrupted. I shoot, shot after shot. I enjoy trying to perfect my shot. I have an inner desire to become gifted. I have come to the point where I know what I need to do to consistently make shots, but I just don’t consistently do what I need to do.

The rim lets me know how I am doing. I love having it’s instant feed back. The loud clang of the rim challenges me to become better, and the soft swish of the net rewards me.

But today, I realized that the rim’s instant feed back is unnecessary.

I realized that I already knew if the shot was off course even before it hits the rim. I know by how I feel during the shot. I know if it is too short, or sailing wide left, and I know if the shot is perfectly on track.

I realized that I was concentrating on the result and not on how I felt during the shot. I was fixed on making my next shot (the destination of the ball), but not on how I should feel during the shot (the journey).

When I let go of my fixation on making shots and instead focused on how I felt during the shots, an amazing thing happened. I made way more shots. Why? I got rid of my self imposed pressure on the result, and became free to follow how I felt during the journey. I didn’t care if I made or missed a shot; I only cared if I was focused on feeling what I knew I should be feeling during the shot.

Our lives are the same way. We want to succeed so badly that we become fixated on succeeding. Our every thought and desire is to succeed in whatever thing it is. Sometimes we want to succeed badly enough that we do things against our conscience and better judgement. You see this happening in our schools. Students want to pass a class without putting in the work, so they turn to cheating, and when they aren’t caught, they continue cheating.

The world has recently seen what this pattern of cheating leads to in the likes of Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford. They wanted to succeed so badly in their financial businesses, that they lied and cheated for decades. They took their new investor’s money and gave it to their old investor’s, pretending that this money came from legitimate investments.

They let their fixation on succeeding rule their actions and look what it brought. It brought devastation to thousands of honest people who invested in their lies. It brought families heartache and devastation.

In the words of Joshua Marcus Manuel, “It hurts to look at yourself in the mirror and hate yourself, look into the mirror and wonder what ever happened to that smile that used to shine so bright. When you look at yourself, you see this version of “you” that your mind has created, someone that has become so distant and cold that nobody wants to be around. Empty eyes. Fragile bones. The only thing you have left are the lies you tell yourself everyday to survive, lies that have become your painful reality, lies that will swallow you whole and crush your insides, lies that have turned you into someone you never wanted to be.”

Let go. Let go of those fixations that are preventing you from living a successful life. The way to success and happiness comes from letting go and following your heart, from being in harmony with yourself.

Look at what this did for Mother Teresa. For over 45 years, she ministered to the poor and the sick. She lead 610 missions in 123 countries for people with AIDS, leprosy and other illnesses. She dedicated her life to being in harmony with her conscience; she was her best self.

What things do you need to let go of?

Let go of them.

What things does your heart ache to achieve?

Achieve those things of your heart and live a life of success in harmony and happiness. Remember, “It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.” (Mark Twain) and “A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.” (Thomas Carlyle)

About The Author: Matt is the creator of Tiepedia – a website all about neckties. His longest streak of consecutively wearing a tie is 2 years and 5 days! (Don’t worry they were different ties) He loves life, his family, his heaven, and his sports (golf, basketball and college football).

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There are no shortage of ‘experts’ that claim to know the secret of maximum productivity. At first someone will swear that the only way to really get things done is to multi-task: more done, less time. Then immediately someone will counter that it’s far simpler, more effective and rewarding and ultimately more ‘zen’ to do one task at a time: single-tasking.

It’s time to stop the confusion. Is one method really better than the other or does it just depend on the individual using either method?

Let’s clear things up, shall we:

Single-tasking: Do one thing at a time to be more effective

Ah, the age-old art of doing less to achieve more. This has been beaten to death for centuries. When you focus all of your efforts on just one thing, it’s assumed you will complete it to the best of your ability. While this is mostly the case, single-tasking is significantly more time consuming. If you want to create a masterpiece it will take time. So much time, in fact, that you might lose track of your other assignments.

There are even times when you’ll be trying to complete a task, and still be unable to tackle it. This, of course, leaves the task uncompleted and you having accomplished less than expected.

Despite getting only one thing done at a time as opposed to many things, the return on that one thing will no doubt be tremendous. All the work you put into the task will be reflected in how effectively you completed it. There will also be a greater sense of reward having completed something start to finish and these small victories, on a daily basis, can ultimately have a very positive mental effect.

Multi-tasking: Do more in less time.

That’s the basic idea of muti-tasking. Though personal development sites collectively hail that single-tasking is more effective (heck, even I support it), multi-tasking is still effective in getting things done. To be fair, multi-tasking has benefits that doing one thing at a time doesn’t.

As I’ve stated above, you get more done. A perfectly legitimate example is that you’re working on a project for your business and you also have a baby to take care of.  Will you just drop caring for the baby while you finish that big project? Or will you nuture your little bundle of joy at the risk of losing your job? Better yet, would you fare better to manage both simultaneously? I don’t know about you, but the last choice looks the best to me.

Though multi-tasking does have its benefits, there are times when it can get a bit overwhelming. Taking on a lot of difficult projects at once is definitely not a good idea. By doing this, you spread yourself too thin and the law of diminishing returns begins to kick in.

Which Method is Better?

Both methods clearly have their respective pitfalls, but which method comes out on top? Single-tasking allows you to zero in on a task and get it done sufficiently, but multi-tasking gives you a wider range in which to get your tasks done at the expense of depth of understanding.

The answer then, lies not in the general, but the specific – as with most things in life. Different tasks, assigned by different people with different expectations, must be looked at on a case-by- case basis. There is no blanket answer as no two situations nor two people are alike.

Why Not Do Both?

Is there are rule that explicitly states that, “Thou shalt not single-task and multi-task at the same time?” Neither method is better than the other because they are both useful in getting things done. You don’t have to multi-task two big things in order to get them done quicker, because it’s possible that you’ll fail at completing both of them. Spending your valuable time single-tasking small problems can lead to overestimating them.

The solution is to multi-task the small things and single-task the big things. However, what if there are two large tasks to do? Should you still multi-task? The short answer is yes. Break up both tasks into smaller tasks and do them simultaneously. The long answer is that it depends on the task and which one you think requires more attention than the other. Some things aren’t easy to chop into chunks and can only be single-tasked, whereas some things can only be multi-tasked.

Multi-task or Single-task? The choice is yours

Not everyone can multi-task. It’s not a matter of brain capacity or time management skills. Some of us just feel that it’s more convenient to do a single task until it’s done. In addition, not everyone is comfortable with single-tasking. Some people just have to do something else in order to periodically take their mind off of the task at hand; they can’t sit still and focus on one thing at time.

But it doesn’t matter what I say. Nor does it matter what any other personal development blogger might tell you. No one way is “the” way to go. Both methods are very person specific, knowing what type of person you are will dictate your choices. The important point is to honestly evaluate your strengths, weaknesses and work habits, and approach each task conscious of these traits. Then experiment with different combinations to suit your needs.

Which do YOU think is better? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

John Anyasor is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain who writes for the HiLife2B: Blog on Personal Improvement for a Good Life. He gives advice on personal development, life lessons, college life tips, and more.

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