Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there. — Marcus Aurelius

I remember when I was ten years old, we were asked to write an essay on ‘My best friend’. I thought for a while about all my friends that I had and tried to find out one who knew everything about me. Surprisingly, in a group of very close friends there was no one who knew everything about me. None of them knew anything about how I felt at home and how desperately I wanted to grow up and much more. And few who knew.. never understood it thoroughly. After brief rumination, I realized that I was my own Best Friend as only I knew about my life completely. Hence, I wrote about myself and got a zero as my teacher thought I wrote the essay on ‘Myself’ and not on ‘My Best Friend’.

I have always been a very affable and friendly person and thus making friends was never difficult for me, then and even now. But whenever the thought of my best friend comes to my mind, I can confidently proclaim that ‘my self’ is my best friend.

Whenever I need someone to talk to, I turn to myself. My inner soul gives me the accurate answers to my questions. I ask myself about my actions, needs, desires and capabilities. And I get the right answers and reasons! Only thing needed here to carry on with the conversation is – honesty.

One has to be brutally honest with oneself if one wants to talk to ones inner self. Be firm about your questions, don’t evade even the most elusive ones because in most certainty you will find answers to all the doubts and all the questions you pose to your conscious.

Here are five things you need to do to be able to carry out an excogitative conservation.

1) Build a relationship with your inner self – we all have different relationships with different people. But do we have a relationship with our own self? If yes, what kind is it? Do we love ourselves? Or is our inner soul our best friend? Do we bully our conscious with our actions or do we keep preaching it new things by reflexive activities? Figure out the type of your relationship and improve it. Build a rapport where your soul is free to talk to you fearlessly.

2) Be honest – while seeking answers, try to recollect even the minuscule detail and accept the reality. Be true and genuine and try to reason with full honesty. You will get the right reasons and the absolute answers.

3) Take a moment with yourself – your inner self may not be comfortable everywhere and that is the reason many a times we say ‘I don’t know what I want..’ or ‘I am not able to get an answer’. Go to a place that gives you peace. Maybe on the roof top under the sky, a beach, next to a water lake, under a tree, in a dark room, while walking on the road or anywhere. Only you know which place lets you talk freely to your self.

4) Ask questions – excruciate yourself with all the questions you have in mind. Don’t just ask ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions. Ask why you did something or why you want something. Get answers to questions like what if you had done it differently, how could you not do it, would you do it again etc.

5) Respect your inner self – there is no use of letting your conscious speak, if you do not listen to it. Because if you disobey your inner voice few times, it stops talking to you. So, start venerating your soul’s voice and next time whenever you try to listen to your heart, actually LISTEN to it.

After all, myself is nothing but my ‘self’ is all!

—-

Surabhi lives in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a group of islands in southern India, with her husband and nine month old daughter. She quit a corporate job to focus on her family and enjoy the process of being a mother and a home maker. She believes simply: ‘it is good to live’ and her blog is an attempt to prove it. It is a platform to share thoughts, ideas, happiness and sorrows. She would be delighted if you join it !

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How To Increase Self Discipline

How To Motivate Yourself

Many of us go through life without truly living it.
Jonathan Swift once said;
“There are only few who live today, most of us live tomorrow”.

I have mostly lived in tomorrow, always looking forward, aiming for my goals.
Many times I have let my happiness and well being today slide so that I can produce results that will benefit me in the future.

Find Balance
I wrote about this in depth in an earlier post here at Pick The Brain: How to find Balance in Life but I want to mention it here since it is an important subject.

If you cannot balance your needs of today with the needs of tomorrow you will not be able to focus 100% on your goals and you won’t be able to continuously produce high quality results.

How I try to Increase “daily living”
As I said I have had a lot of problems focusing on today’s needs, I have such a focus on my goals that I have been close to burning out multiple times, I have had to stop myself from working so that I don’t neglect my family and I have had to force the habit of a daily work out to save me from health care troubles.

With that said, I have gotten a lot better at it.
I have learned that life today is pretty good, that happiness is a choice and one I don’t have to wait until tomorrow to live and that spending time on all 4 major areas of my life makes me more efficient in each: Family, Health, Career and Finances.

An exercise that has helped
Something that has helped me has been to take 30 minutes every day and just focus on the now. Thinking;
“What do I really want to do NOW? “
“What makes me the happiest?”
“How can I spend as much time as possible doing what makes me happy?”
“What do I have to be happy about?”
Do that for 30 minutes, it gives you 30 minutes of freedom every day.

Make it a habit
Make living in the now a habit. Practice gratefulness and mindfulness, practice happiness, take time for yourself, your family, your friends, do whatever you need to feel good about yourself.

If you live today you might not have to dream about tomorrow
If you take a hard look at your life, you might realize that you have already achieved most of your goals, maybe you have achieved enough?
In that case, why not just be happy?

Action Exercise
• For 30 minutes/day focus on yourself;
“What do I really want to do NOW? “
“What makes me the happiest?”
“How can I spend as much time as possible doing what makes me happy?”
“What do I have to be happy about?”

I hope you liked this article and found it useful.
If you would like to read more from Daniel M. Wood you can find more at his blog Looking to Business.com. He writes mainly about Motivation and the Principals of Success.

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10 Secrets To Success

The Language of Success

Since graduating from high school, I have spent the last fourteen years on the “right track” for my big transition into adulthood.

I moved out, went to college, found a good job, and bought a house. I did everything I was expected to do. I worked long hours, chasing promotions and raises I didn’t care about. I dutifully planted myself in front of the television in the rare moments I was home, and filled my existence with all the normal stuff of modern life—debt, clutter and stress.

I just wanted my parents to be proud of me. So I chased what I had been told success looked like. Instead of finding what I was searching for, I discovered a constant stream of excess—too much work, too much stress, too much stuff—and I was drowning in it.

In the stillness of the night, blanketed by the never-ending comfort of darkness, I would begin to dream about the life I wanted to live. One filled with joy and peacefulness where I was doing work that mattered to me, pouring my energy into those I loved, and had the space to just breathe—pretty much the complete opposite of my current existence.

But instead of chasing the life I dreamed of, I kept chasing the one I didn’t want. I was scared of changing direction, scared of challenging what I had been taught to desire in life, and even more terrified by the idea of actually getting to live the life I dreamed about.

What life are you chasing?

When I started thinking about the changes that would need to happen in order for me to transition from one life to the other, the fears within me started to multiply. I thought about things like:

• How do I go about changing?
• What if I can’t do it?
• What if I don’t like the things I thought I did?
• How can I support myself and do this?
• Am I too far along in life to even entertain the idea of changing it?
• How can I just walk away from the “security” I have now?

The mere idea of change can be one of the scariest realities we face. When you are standing on the cusp, you have to dig deep within yourself to find ways to overcome the fear, doubt and worry. There is no one solution that works for everyone. It will be a lot of trial and error as you find your way along, but the more actions you take the more the confidence you gain.

You aren’t going to start out with all the right answers, or even a complete picture of where you want to end up. But I suspect, in the stillness of the night, that voice speaks to you loud and clear about the life you know you want to be living.

Here are 10 ways to help you start chasing a new direction:

1. Get clear about what you want. A boat that wanders aimlessly never reaches the shore. You need to have some direction to help guide you along the way. Some people start out with a complete picture, while others identify one or two things they want to change right now. Either way, you need to get clear about where you are going.

2. Start small. A danger zone exists when you get clear about where you want to be. You start to feel excited about the life you want to live, and then you try to change everything at once. You get exhausted, and you give up. Don’t set yourself up for falling back into your old life. Start with the smallest action you can take today and just do that.

3. Focus on what not how. If you continually focus on how you are going to accomplish massive transitions in your life, you will never begin taking those small actions. When you think about how, your mind can come up with all sorts of scenarios where you don’t reach the goal. This is not what you need to focus on. None of this matters today. Worrying about a future that will most likely never come to pass is a waste of both your time and energy.

Put your focus where it matters most—what do you want for your life? Once you focus on the what, and start taking those small actions, the how will take care of itself.

4. Don’t think about how long it has been this way. I spent fourteen years working on my professional career, before I left it behind to write and run my own business. I spent twenty-three years overweight before I lost that first pound. Now I spend every day writing and running my own business. And to date, I have lost over 108 pounds.

It does not matter how long things have been this way in your life, today is the day that you can start to change. It just takes your unwavering commitment and one small action. Then repeat this step again tomorrow.

5. Create accountability for yourself. You cannot do this alone. (Trust me, I thought I could too!) You need people who know and support your efforts to keep you on track in this process. You need accountability that tomorrow you are going to keep pushing forward. You need people you can rely on when the going gets tough (because it will, that’s just life). You need someone to help you see things in a different way, to call you out on your excuses, and to keep you going when you’d rather give up.

Build yourself a support system, and let those who would question or undermine your efforts go along their way.

6. Don’t give in to the negative self-talk. My brain has this amazing talent wherein no matter what I do, it can point out all the ways in which I have failed. It tries desperately to convince me that I shouldn’t keep going; that it just wants me to be safe.

Phooey! That inner dialogue is what is keeping you stuck in the first place. You are in control of your mind, not the other way around. Choose to look at things in a different perspective. Choose to keep your options open and your dreams alive. When the negative discussion starts, choose to be stronger than your thoughts.

7. Open yourself to possibility. If you close yourself off to the world, you are going to miss a lot of amazing things. Part of this process is allowing those past pains, those old mindsets and preconceived notions go. You need to create a sort of blank slate within yourself to begin reconstructing how you see the world.

8. Be willing to let things go. One of the biggest gifts you can give yourself in this process is freedom. By releasing the burden of your stuff, you will find that there is plenty of time and space to create the life you want to live.

Clearing out the physical clutter in your personal space is a great place to start. Take it 15 minutes at a time, room by room. Start with small actions and get the momentum building. This doesn’t just apply to our physical possessions, but our emotional ones as well. Focus on the number of commitments you have in your life, the things you feel that you have to do. Start thinking about all the stuff in your life, and what you can do to begin clearing it away.

9. Take care of yourself first. In the never-ending race we have created out of our lives, the first person we always neglect is ourselves. You can’t wait for the world to quiet down before you start focusing on your own well-being. Keeping such a frantic pace only leaves you exhausted and not of much use to the people depending on you. To be of great service to others, you must first take care of yourself.

10. Stop and reflect along the way. When you start implementing the first nine points on this list, you may find yourself caught in the momentum of change. Time passes quickly in our lives, and as we grow and change so too does our vision of the life we want to live. Make sure that you take time to simply reflect on what you have accomplished, where you are at right now, and where you are headed—then plan some small action steps for tomorrow.

Stephanie Wetzel is a writer and entrepreneur on a mission to help women overcome their weight and create the life they want to live. She has lost over 100 pounds by changing her habits, mindsets, and lifestyle. She believes in the power of commitment over diets, and blogs about it on Trading Pounds. You can also keep up with her on Twitter.

‘I feel the most fulfilled and perform best when I am helping others in a direct capacity, and am learning in a collaborative work environment.’

I recently told a friend this.  Being able to put such thoughts into concise expression hasn’t always been easy for me.  In fact, in my past, I’ve actually had different ideals, which I’ve gravitated toward.  These ideals had little to do with my aforementioned paraphrase.

I’ve done considerable research on my interests and passions as well as possible career options, which take advantage of the intersection of these areas.  I’ve read numerous books on these subjects, seen documentaries and lectures on the topics, and sought out a variety of mentors and a number of individuals in my own career search and selection.  I’ve even done career assessment through surveys.  I recently took one of these types of career assessments.

The Strong Interest Inventory is based on Holland Codes, and is a common career assessment tool.  I’ve utilized this testing in the past but for some reason my latest assessment provided a new perspective for me, and what I learned was quite revealing.  Not only was the view interesting and relevant to me, but I believe my insights were not unique.  This explains my reasons for writing about this subject.  I believe my thoughts are relevant to many of you as well.

[**] While on a trip to my hometown of Santa Cruz, California, I took time to meet up with David Thiermann to chat about my current career direction.  (I am refocusing from entertainment marketing to mental health.)  In the past, I have worked in a few environments where I perceived people caring more about the work getting done than the conditions under which it was completed.  However, in addition to noticing this, I began to feel a deep disconnect between my own interests and my work.  In bringing this up to David, we began to do some refinement when it came to my own personal ethos.

To give a bit more of a background on the Strong Interest Inventory, I believe it would be helpful to better explain the Holland Codes.  According to Wikipedia, the Holland Codes are as follows:

• Realistic – Someone who enjoys working with his or her hands, tools, machines, and things.  Someone who is practical, hands-on, mechanically inclined or tool-oriented, and physical.
• Investigative – Someone who enjoys working with theory and information.  Someone who is analytical, intellectual, scientific or explorative.
• Artistic – Someone who is non-conforming, original, independent, chaotic and creative.
• Social – Someone who is supporting, helping, healing/nurturing, and enjoys cooperative environments.
• Enterprising – Someone who is persuasive and enjoys selling, dominating, promoting, status, and enjoys competitive environments, leadership and leading.
• Conventional – Someone who is precise, orderly, organized, detail-oriented, clerical, and who has perfect attention to detail.

[**] Of course these self-rating and selecting types of surveys can vary by moment.  At the exact moment I took this test with David, he found me to be feeling most capable and motivated toward the Social, Enterprising and Artistic categories.  The most interesting part about this experience was David’s comment about our society and how it tends to treat Social categories.  David mentioned that in his experience, he’s noticed that society tends to encourage people within the Social category to move toward Enterprising paths.

BAM!  His statement hit me like a ton of bricks.  Not only did I feel this exact stigmatization toward my Social skills and Social career options growing up, but I perpetuated them by believing that I could excise them by working in “Social” settings, parameters and frameworks within the field of marketing.  Upon further reflection, leadership and management were, and are, of incredible interest to me.  As I see it now, my main issue within my experience in entertainment marketing was that in order to achieve leadership roles, I needed two specific things which I did not have at the time: patience and active mentors.

I believe my issues surrounding “patience” are based on the fact that I didn’t enjoy my work.  It gave me little in return for a lot of hours of hard work, commuting and stress.  It paid the bills and developed my skill set, but the work was incredibly dull for me.  What I wasn’t thinking about at the time was that I valued helping others not the work itself; and, in order to make my way up the corporate ladder, I would need to prove myself in an career path which provided little return back to me.  What a revelation!  I only wish I could have made this distinction a bit sooner in my life.

This is not to suggest that by working in more Social environments I will not run into political situations, frustrations, people who are burned out and miserable, and need to exercise patience on a regular basis.  However, when I was able to put my career into a Social framework, for me, the pieces began to better fit together and my current direction made much more sense.  My purpose is helping others, not about persuading, selling and dominating.  I enjoy collaborative environments.  Though I appreciate competitive environments, when it comes at the expense of other individuals it becomes intolerable for me.  Now that I have had this realization, what is left for me to do?  Simple.  Now I need to take the next step.  I need to figure out a way to tap into more S.E.A. tasks and farm out as many of the C.I.R. tasks as possible.  This may seem like a simple concept but in better understanding it, it is truly making a monumental difference.

[**] This post is meant to serve as a reminder to you that no matter much effort and energy you put into your life, you are only going to be able to achieve a level in life that you permit yourself to through such vessels as reflection, dedication, motivation, honesty, openness and risk.  Even when you believe your current path to be absolute in its representation of your own life, life can still surprise you.  I know it recently did for me.  I encourage you to reflect on your own paths and see how you can better tune in to your life whether it is through a career coach, therapist, and friend or loved one.  As in the wise words of my dear friend David: “When people stop going through transitions, they stop growing.”

Nick Holt is entering University of Southern California’s Master of Social Work program this year.  His background is entertainment marketing and his interests are personal growth and development through a lens of positive psychology.  Like him on Facebook.

Every moment of every day is a new beginning for your life through the words you choose to use.

Words make up your thoughts and ideas. They shape the images in your mind, coloring what you perceive and believe.

In the world around you, words make up text messages, tweets, and on your Facebook page they explain your pictures, your past and your plans. They make up the laws that rule much of your experience.

Yet all this being true, we seldom stop to think about the ongoing power of the words we use and string together, the empowerment of words at our disposal when used effectively, or the power unleashed against us at our peril when words are used without awareness.

Our mind is the light we shine second by second on the words we choose from the infinite lexicon before us. It is critically important that we be alertly aware: The words we choose to shine the light of our mind on, shape our very life and its quality.

Now if we stop for a moment and think of the avalanche of words we are inundated with from without, never mind from the running dialogue within, it is easy to see the confusion this can lead to. Which words to choose and will they lead to an effective direction in our life?

NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE WORDS

One common way to think about the words we use is to refer to them as negative thoughts or positive thoughts. This kind of classification provides some assistance in that it points out that negative thoughts and words often lead to negative feelings.

For instance: “I am too this or too that,” (This is often a comment about a body feature.), will lead to feelings of depression, anger or self-pity.

Conversely, it is popularly believed with this classification, sometimes to the point of it being called a secret that positive words and thoughts lead to positive feelings and outcomes in ones’ life.

For instance: “Just think positive and you’ll feel better.”

This kind of classification of our words and thoughts unfortunately polarizes words into good and bad, however, and this polarization can paralyze us. This is because at times so-called ‘negative’ words can be most positive in their impact on our life, and conversely positive words can easily lead us astray.

For instance, as I discuss in the book, The Three Word Truth about Love and Being Well, the word Won’t, seemingly negative, is a most powerful word leading to peace of mind and personal joy when used as follows: I Won’t judge, I Won’t criticize, or, I Won’t attach to outcome or stuff.

Conversely again, the seemingly positive word Will if not chosen with great care can lead one far astray in the power it unleashes and lead us into the dark.

For instance: I Will open that bottle of wine. I Will drive my car.

It is easy to see how the negative word Won’t can clear a space for the positive word Will, but Will needs to flow back to Won’t to keep it from going astray. I Won’t open that wine. I Will do that work I have been avoiding.  Won’t can eliminate the toxic in your life as Will can invite it back in.

TRANSCENDENT WORDS

Contrary to words classified as positive or negative, words that focus us in the ‘here and now’ tend to be transcendent. These are words like Am.

Here we can think about beginning each moment of our life with a transcendent word: I Am energy. I Am light. I Am Love.

Similarly a word like OM is used in meditation to center us in the power of the present.

I Am says there is no doubt and no obstacle that cannot be overcome; I AM transcends perception.

For example: ‘I Am going to do this’ says in fact it is already done. ‘I Am Love’ says I love the world and my view of the world is loving; as this is not a hostile view, it dissolves fear, guilt and anger.

WORKING THE WORDS

If we decide to center our life around just Three Words, Won’t, Will, (Intention) and Am we can see and feel the empowerment presented to us in the abundance of the world; we also see a way to cut through the confusion of endless words coming at us from inside and outside.

If you become clear as you begin each moment of your life to work these Three Words, that is decide what you Won’t do, you open up a space to begin the next moment with what you Will do.

Centering in WILL as the creation you are, you are able to transcend your fear, doubt, guilt and anger by realizing in your essence I Am, as is everyone else.

This realization in turn will lead you back to what you Won’t do and what you Will do as you shape your surface personality that is now ready to extend truth, beauty, creativity, love and joy to the world.

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. To receive daily tips on the power of words follow Clark on Twitter.

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