Attract More Happiness using Law Of Attraction | Abraham Hicks

Another wonderful Abraham Hicks recording on how to attract more happiness into your life. For more information please check out http://www.abraham-hicks.com

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How to inhabit your body in a stressful environment | Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle - How to inhabit your body in a stressful environment.

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My Job is Stressing Me Out. Is that true? | Byron Katie

An honest inquiry into the source of stress in your life will yield some surprising results. If you're mindful, present, and inquiring, you won't be able to fool yourself, says Byron Katie.

Katie's latest book is "A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are".

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The Secret To Happiness | Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle's Teaching About Spirituality and Genuine Happiness!

Visit Eckhart Tolle's Website : https://www.eckharttolle.com/

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Your partner's flaws are your own | Byron Katie

Byron Katie explains a post: "Your partner's flaws are your own, because you're projecting them."

"If my partner has a flaw, who is believing that?" Byron Katie says. "Where's the flaw? If I'm the one seeing it, I am its creator." 

Katie offers a personal example of how we project our flaws onto others. With the eyes of love, she can see her ex-husband standing before her, perfect, acting in a way that other people think is unacceptable. Through self-inquiry, we too can see our partners clearly, without the filter of our judgments.

"A flawed mind attacks.  It defends....Defence is the first act of war."

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Practical ways to Allow Everything In Your Life! Abraham Hicks

Discover practical ways to allow everything in your life! 

Be more general about what you want.  Talk about what you want and why you want it. 

Evidence of manifestation: the emotion that you feel.  Feeling calm, sure, eager, hopeful, confident: those emotions are manifestations to let you know that you are in the vibrational vicinity of what you want. Next good ideas begin coming to you.  Then you begin to see things in your mind's eye. Then people start talking to you about it, and on and on and on.

There is leverage in alignment that is nearly undefinable. When you stop thought you stop resistant thought. 

For additional information on Abraham Hicks or Esther Hicks, please visit their website at http://www.abraham-hicks.com/
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Ask your Inner Being for a glimpse! Abraham Hicks

"Ask your Inner Being for a glimpse" is a wonderful recording providing new insight on how to get what you want... Abraham Hicks

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What Is Meditation? Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle provides a fresh perspective on what meditation is.

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The secret to powerful relationships | Abraham Hicks

Discover why relationships have been how they have been, and what to do about it.

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What Is Music And Why Is It So Important To Us? Eckhart Tolle

Many activities can serve as portals to presence, but we must be careful not to become dependent upon them.

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How to train positive expectations in a simple way | Abraham Hicks

"You cannot be less than you have vibrationally become and ever feel good."
"Once you are in (the vortex), the more specific you get the better you feel."  
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The person you really need to marry | Tracy McMillan | TEDxOlympicBlvdWomen

Tracy McMillan is a television writer (Mad Men, United States of Tara) and relationship author who wrote the book Why You're Not Married...Yet, based on her viral 2011 Huffington Post blog. She also appeared as a dating coach on the NBC reality show Ready For Love. She lives in Los Angeles and is the mother of a 16-year-old guy.

In her TEDxOlympicBlvdWomen talk, McMillan answers the question: "Who is the one person you need to marry in order to have a successful relationship? (Yourself)"

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Getting rid of fear | Eckhart Tolle

Very practical advice on how to get rid of fear.  

Acceptance of the seemingly unacceptable. 

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Be, Do and Have More | Zig Ziglar

Zig Ziglar's early days sharing how you have to be before you can do and have more of what you want. 

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The Art of Stress-Free Productivity | David Allen at TEDxClaremontColleges

Productivity guru and coach David Allen talks about "Stress Free Productivity" at TEDxClaremontColleges.
"How sustainable is your life and work style, right now, in terms of the long haul?"
"How available are you to creative things that are around you, right now, that you don't have the bandwidth to recognise, or take advantage of right now?  "
Victim: no control, no focus.  Driven by latest and loudest. Crazy-maker: high focus, no control.  Mad scientist.  Micro-manager: no focus, high control.  Captain and Commander: high focus, high control. Optimal place to be!
Capture your thoughts.  What outcome am I committed to finish? What's the very next action step that I need to take? Use a  map to capture it all.   Reassess regularly to recalibrate and refocus. Source 

Do You Owe The World Anything? | Steve Pavlina

The standard economic narrative as applied to human history tells us that barter came first, then money, and then credit and debt. In actuality we know that these concepts developed in the opposite order. Debt and credit pre-date the use of money by thousands of years. Money, in the form of early coins, came into usage largely as a way of keeping track of debts. And finally, the human use of barter systems actually arose after money, not before. Barter is employed by people who’ve already learned about money, and barter systems often use an equivalent of money to manage trades, such as how cigarettes are used as a medium of exchange in prisons.

With the publication of Wealth of Nations in 1776, Adam Smith helped to popularize the notion that money was invented to be a superior replacement for barter. But anthropologists and historians found that no such barter-based cultures actually existed before money; barter came after money. Before money there were some simple forms of trade, often combined with complex social rituals, but they were extremely limited and normally used for trading between tribes on special occasions, not within existing groups and not on a daily basis.

Apparently humans didn’t have barter systems until after money came into play. One reason is that without money, a barter system would be way too complicated and unwieldy. Barter is typically used as a fallback system when formal currency isn’t available, and even then barter tends to be transacted with respect to a previously used currency. For hundreds of years after the Roman Empire fell, for instance, people engaged in barter exchanges, the value of which was translated into Roman currency. This was done even in areas that weren’t originally part of the Roman Empire. It was actually the concept of money that popularized barter.

So if people didn’t have barter until money came onto the scene, what did they do if they hadn’t been exposed to money? How did they exchange goods and services? They typically just shared freely with each other, or they gave each other gifts, sometimes upon request and often using rituals to do so. The notion of debt was only loosely and informally recorded in people’s minds, such as you might do today if you felt that a friend owed you a favor. This system worked quite well, and it still works well today. If you mooch off your friends or family too much, you may start noticing some resistance in their willingness to do future favors for you, along with some mounting pressure for you to start giving back now and then. If, on the other hand, you behaved generously with others, you might find that they’re fairly generous with you as well.

In truth there were lots of different cultures with different ways of trading. Some were quite imaginative in their rituals of exchange, such as having the equivalent of an inter-tribe swingers party that involved the exchange of goods as well as bodily fluids.

Born Into Debt

You could say that we’re are all born into debt. We depend on others for our survival, especially in our early years. We also benefit from all the knowledge and skills that were taught to us by others. When we come into this world, we receive value from others. Do we have an obligation to repay that value in some fashion, perhaps later in life when we’re capable of doing so?

How much did it cost your parents to raise you? Is that a debt you must repay, either to them or to society as a whole?

Look around you at all the things you’re able to use today that someone else created. Do you owe anyone anything for these gifts?

Do you owe the world anything at all for your existence? If you live strictly for yourself and choose not to contribute to others in any meaningful way, are you shirking your responsibilities?

These are interesting questions for you to explore on your path of growth. I encourage you to seek your own answers to them. I’ll share some thoughts about how I’ve explored them thus far.

Owing God

In my earlier years, I was taught to believe in a God who seemed to feel I owed him something. I was supposed to worship him for my entire life. I was born a flawed human, and I would always be a flawed human. My very existence was a stain on God’s otherwise perfect world.

I learned from a young age that I was born into perpetual debt. I owed God my very existence, and thus I incurred a debt so great that I could never hope to repay it no matter what I did, but I still had to try. I was created in God’s image, but even though he was all powerful, he still wanted me to worship him and to glorify him for being so wonderful, and he’d be offended if I didn’t obey.

In my teenage years I began to slough off much of what I’d been taught growing up, mainly because it didn’t make much sense. I became an atheist. Without the burdensome notion of original sin on my back, I began thinking more objectively and open-mindedly about the idea of service to others.

After this shift the experience of helping people changed for me. I enjoyed it much more. It felt good to be able to choose to contribute as opposed to feeling that I had to do so in order to repay a debt or to glorify some petulant deity.

I had been taught that without God, I’d automatically become a deeply selfish person, but I found that I actually enjoyed giving a lot more when I felt free to choose it, not obligated to do so under threat.

The World Owes Me

And then, about a year later, I opted to push this exploration far to the other side. Shortly after I got to college, I tried out the philosophy of living mainly for myself. That led to lots of criminal behavior, drinking, gambling, and several arrests. I eventually straightened out and realized that wasn’t how I wanted to live. Looking back, I still appreciate that I explored that path, although I’m glad I didn’t do too much damage along the way.

My attitude during that time shifted from thinking that I owed my life to God and to society, to thinking that the world owed me and that I could take whatever I wanted to the extent that I was capable of doing so. I reveled in outsmarting systems to prevent theft. Anti-theft sensors were easy to overcome. Security cameras could be fooled via misdirection. I especially loved using social engineering tactics to steal things right under clerks’ noses. My gains were someone else’s loss. It was a competitive way of living.

I could have kept going down that path and often fantasized about escalating it in various ways, some of which I implemented. But eventually the world taught me that it didn’t agree with my thinking. I realized that if I kept living like that, I’d be in a perpetual state of conflict with the world, always wondering if and when I’d get caught again. A felony grand theft arrest finally convinced me to explore alternative ways of living.

Being Debt-Free

My next phase was to progress to living with the mindset that I was debt-free. My philosophy during that time was live and let live.

I didn’t owe the world anything. The world didn’t owe me anything. You don’t mess with me, and I won’t mess with you. Let’s just keep to ourselves as best we can. That was my level of thinking during my early 20s.

This was a step up from a life of constant conflict, but I also endured a lot of hardship during this time, especially in the first few years of running my own business. My goals were largely for myself, not to substantially benefit the world. I found it very difficult to make my first business successful. It seemed like everything I did would backfire on me.

This was highly frustrating because I was better off financially when I was a criminal. During those years I had no financial debt, plenty of cash in the bank (usually around $10-20K, which was plenty for a 19-year old), and it was easy to cover my bills by selling stolen goods as needed.

When I tried to do what I felt was honest work, I sank into debt and went bankrupt. And it took six years to reach that point.

During that time I read books about making money, such as Think and Grow Rich. I may as well have read Think and Go Broke. The advice often sounded good — set clear goals, visualize having more wealth and abundance, make a plan, work the plan each day — but in practice my results at this level of thinking were dismal.

How come when I was just trying to maintain a neutral relationship with the world, did it seem like the world was constantly harshing on me and making my life a lot more difficult than it should have been? I felt there had to be an easier way to live.

Doing the Opposite

There’s a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza concludes that his default way of thinking never leads to good results, so he decides to try doing the opposite for a while. Whatever his natural instincts guide him to do, he commits to doing the exact opposite. While he tries this way of living, everything works out beautifully for him. Suddenly he starts getting terrific results across the board.

After having my fill of frustrating years, I decided to try something similar with my own version of the do the opposite philosophy. I would explore new options I hadn’t tried before, even if I couldn’t see how they would help. I could hardly do worse since my previous best thinking had led to bankruptcy. Since I was already broke, I didn’t have much to lose by experimenting.

Some of those do the opposite ideas didn’t pan out. But some absolutely did. One thing I tried during that time was to volunteer to serve in a software industry trade association. I had no idea where that would lead, but at least it would be something different than what I’d done in the past. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I’d ever made. Within a month or two of getting involved, I was Vice President of the organization, then President the following year. And my income from selling my computer games went from $300 per month to $20,000 per month in a few years.

As a consequence of volunteering, I got to spend a lot of time interacting with other independent software developers, many of whom were quite successful. I also made contacts in the industry press. I learned how to improve my sales, and I learned how to get some free press coverage for my games as well. But when I volunteered, I did my best to focus on contributing to the association and its members. The benefits largely came about as side effects of volunteering.

This is also what got me started writing articles. I wrote my first article in 1999 for that trade association’s newsletter. For the next five years, I averaged about five articles per year. When I started blogging in 2004, it was a way to expand the occasional article writing I’d been doing since 1999. And it all started with a decision to try doing the opposite of what I’d previously been doing.

I don’t think it was really the do the opposite philosophy that made the difference by itself. Sometimes doing the same worked just fine. I think what mattered most was that the energy signature I brought to my work after 1999 was totally different. I gave up on trying to succeed just for myself. I became more social within my industry and spent a lot of time helping others achieve their goals. I started thinking of my own success as being part of a larger social landscape.

I began speaking at industry conferences during that time. I hosted a roundtable for indie game developers at the annual Game Developers’ Conference. I launched an online discussion forum for indie game developers, kept it free of ads, and made sure it was intelligently moderated, so as to provide a valuable service to the community. I put in hundreds of hours per year on these types of service projects for others. All of this was unpaid.

During the years prior to 1999, my attention was focused mainly on my own goals. I wanted to become successful, grow my business, create hit computer games, and make lots of money. I also wanted to get out of debt. I really thought those were decent and intelligent goals.

I also figured that once I became rich, then I could focus on doing more to give back to the world if I wanted to, and I’d be in a better position to do so. What could I give to the world while I was broke and in debt? Surely I should focus on my own goals and get something going there first, right? Shouldn’t I create my own private victory before thinking about how to contribute to the world?

This strategy of working strictly on my own goals didn’t work out for me when I applied it to business and income generation. It had worked well for me in other areas of life though, such as school, which was probably why I stubbornly stuck with it for so long afterwards.

Paying the Debt

I discovered that I really liked doing acts of service for the community around me, especially writing articles. The feedback I received was encouraging because it told me that what I shared actually made a difference in people’s lives. My early articles for the trade association, which were printed in paper newsletters and mailed to about 1000 members, included a byline with my email address, so readers could send me feedback. I usually received a few emails for each article, including suggestions for new articles and some republishing requests.

I remember when one software developer wrote to me after I’d been writing for several years, thanking me that my ideas helped him build a business with more than $1 million in annual sales. That really got me thinking. I had never built my own business to that level, yet I was somehow able to help someone achieve even better financial results.

Some people might feel jealous upon receiving that kind of feedback, but I felt inspired and uplifted by it. I thought to myself… This is really cool. If I hadn’t written those articles, that guy’s business might not have done so well. I felt proud of his accomplishments, knowing that I played a role in helping him achieve his goals. I liked the idea that my lessons might actually be more valuable to other people than they were to me.

For years I had met with frustration after frustration and setback after setback while trying to achieve my goals for myself. Yet somehow I was able to help inspire others to do things that I’d never done. I have stacks of CDs that I’ve received in the mail from musicians that told me I inspired them to create a new album or song, some of which have lyrics inspired by my articles, but I’ve never composed an album myself. This encouraged me to keep discovering new lessons I could share. Even if a lesson only helped one person, I felt it justified taking the time to share it.

As people continued to share how I helped them in various ways, I began to revisit the idea of social debt again. At some point I realized that if I ever did have a debt to pay to the world for my existence, then surely I’ve long since repaid it by now. Even accounting for the criminal stuff I did during my late teens, I must be well past any reasonable standard of restitution that may be owed to society for my carelessness and my existence combined.
Consequently, I live each day with the feeling that I am officially out of existential debt. I can see that my existence is a net positive for the world with the various ripples I’ve created, not by my own accounting but by the sum of all the accounting that’s been reported to me by others. This includes the books people have written, the music that has been composed, the relationships that have formed, and the businesses and nonprofits that have been started that people have thanked me for helping them achieve.

Moreover, since I wrote most of my articles to be timeless, and since I’ve uncopyrighted them as well, and since they’ve been translated into many languages and republished in a variety of forms, I can reasonably expect that the ideas I’ve shared will continue to create positive ripples for many years to come. This gives me the sense that I’ve not only paid my existential debt for my life thus far, but I feel I’ve also paid more than enough for all my remaining years on earth as well.

So now I’ve come full circle in a way. I’m back to feeling that I don’t owe the world anything for my existence. But this time it’s not because I don’t acknowledge the existence of the debt; it’s because I feel that if there ever was such a debt, then surely I’ve more than paid it off.

Overpaying the Debt

The feeling that I’ve overpaid the debt gives me a sense that I deserve to be supported by life. This doesn’t feel like entitlement but rather a natural reward that I’ve earned. I feel that I’ve contributed more than enough value to the world to cover the cost of my existence.

Sometimes I would think to myself, Hey, you’ve contributed so much already. Why not take it easy for a while? People can always read your older articles. Why keep writing so much? Surely you don’t have to. You have plenty of money. Go travel for a while. Take some time off. If anyone has earned some slack, surely you have.

But when I actually try to live that way, something feels off to me. I don’t feel as happy. I feel like I’ve lost the flow. The passive income keeps flowing, and my bills are still paid, but I feel out of sync with my path with a heart. Instead of enjoying more time off, I feel like my life fills up with trivialities and minor problems.

Taking some time off when I need a break feels good to me. But when I stop contributing or try to work strictly on my own personal goals for a while, I can tell that I’m not in the flow.

Simple Acts of Realignment

When I feel I’ve fallen out of sync with my path with a heart, I often remind myself to perform a simple act of realignment. This is a task I can do that I can reliably expect will bring me back in sync with the feeling of flow that I love so much.

My favorite act of realignment is to write and publish a new article. And I must write that article with the purest of intentions. I can’t be writing for selfish reasons or thinking about people’s reactions or web traffic effects or anything like that. My intention must be to write from inspiration and to help people grow.

Whenever I do that, I easily sync back up with my path with a heart.

This is a very empowering practice for me since I know that no matter how confused I get, how far off track I get, or how badly I screw up, I can always return to this simple act of realignment. I can always set a pure intention and write and publish a new article. It’s beautiful knowing that for the rest of my life, I’ll always have this simple practice that I can return to again and again to get back in tune with my flow.

Whenever I write a lot, which is my primary form of contribution, my life seems to flow with effortless ease.

Alignment vs. Debt

I think the idea of existential debt is a bit misguided. It’s a stab at understanding how to sync up with your path with a heart and to immerse yourself in that delightful feeling of flow, but the notion has been corrupted and turned into something that’s more likely to take you out of alignment.

Wrestling with the concept of whether or not I owe the world something for my existence was an important part of my path of growth. But these days I see contribution as an invitation, not an obligation.

I don’t feel obligated to pay back the world for anything, and I have good logical reasons for not feeling so obligated, if only because I feel I’ve already paid more than my fair share. But if I used this line of thinking to justify non-contribution henceforth, I’d still be missing the flow.

My path with a heart isn’t to pay off a debt from a place of duty or obligation. My path with a heart is to accept the invitation to create, to contribute, and to share. I don’t do this because I owe anyone anything. I don’t do this because I need money. I do it because I love being in the flow of inspiration. Writing, speaking, and other forms of sharing make me happy. When I write, I’m at peace.

Overcoming Neediness

People email me every week with message like, “I need money. Just tell me how I can make a lot of money quickly.” What can I say to someone who’s struggling with the type of mindset I succumbed to in my early 20s?

I can tell them how I solved similar money problems, which was basically to stop being needy, but they don’t like that answer at all. They want me to tell them how to solve those problems from their current level of thinking. That isn’t something I can tell them because I experienced only failure using that approach. I was never able to do it.

How do you tell someone that the solution is to stop being needy when they’re so addicted to feelings of neediness, debt, and obligation?

And how does one stop being needy anyway? Neediness is what you experience when you’ve fallen out of sync with your path with a heart. So to stop being needy, start doing something that’s incompatible with feeling needy. Start giving. Start contributing. Volunteer. Set a pure intention, listen to your inspiration, and act on your inspiration immediately.

Do the opposite of what needy people do. Do what you’d be doing if you were already in a place of abundance.

Purity of Intention

If you were to design your own simple act of realignment, what would it look like? When you fall off your path with a heart, what’s the quickest way to get back onto it?

Start with a pure intention. Set an intention to perform a selfless act of contribution and giving. Invite inspiration to come to you and to flow through you, like you’re tuning in to a radio station. Decide that you’ll act on inspiration without hesitation. Do your best to release any sense of neediness or expectation. Clear a few hours for this act, during which time you commit to rising above pettiness, selfishness, neediness, and fear. Let this be a time of elevation for you. You can always go back to feeling needy later.

Let your mind wander for a while. Don’t force or push yourself into action. When you feel ready, let the flow of inspiration energize and animate you. Allow it to speak through you, write through you, move through you.

Notice how good it feels to act from such a purity of intention. There is no neediness here, no debt, no obligation, no worry. Notice that you can always come back to this pure act of realignment again and again. Whatever form it takes, it’s yours to summon whenever you desire. No matter how far you stray from your path with a heart, you can always come back to it.

Alignment Is the Solution

You don’t have an existential debt to pay, but you do have an existence to experience. You can spend that experience wallowing in neediness, fear, and worry, or you can elevate that experience to a place of flow and alignment.

I think you’ll discover as I have that this experience of alignment is also a beautiful path out of debt, obligation, and scarcity.

You do not have to pay your existential debt or your financial debt first before you can start contributing. Your path with a heart is not something to be entertained at some future date when you’re finally in a place to do so. Your path with a heart is the ideal solution to your current problems. It is the very path that will lead you out of debt and into a place of contribution to the world.

There is nothing you need to do first before you can contribute. You can make a positive difference in people’s lives right where you are. I wrote my first article when I was going bankrupt. Living with lack seems like a distant memory now, and my path out of scarcity began with a purity of intention, combined with the seemingly silly decision to do the opposite of wallowing in neediness.

Is wallowing in neediness working for you anyway? Is it giving you the results you desire? Has it blessed you with a life of joy and abundance? If not, then maybe it’s time to try doing the opposite for a while.

If that answer doesn’t sit well with you, then my second best answer is to become a criminal. But having tried both myself, I think the path with a heart is easier. 😉

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The mathematics of weight loss | Ruben Meerman | TEDxQUT (edited version)

When somebody loses weight, where does the weight go?  Find out in this fascinating talk. 
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The Deepest Truth Of Human Existence | Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle gives a talking meditation about connecting with our deepest truth.
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Alcohol, tobacco, blame and physical cravings | Abraham Hicks

All recorded and printed Abraham-Hicks materials are copyrighted by Jerry and Esther Hicks. For more information on Abraham, Esther & Jerry Hicks please go to their website: http://www.abraham-hicks.com

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Building a Powerful Gut Instinct | Steve Pavlina

Human logic is incredibly limited. Even our best logic is layered upon emotional biases and instinctual behaviors. Logic doesn’t care if we learn and grow. Logic doesn’t care if we’re happy or miserable. Logic doesn’t care if we live or die.

Fortunately, logic is only one tool for making decisions. Our bodies have many more layers of intelligence.

One of those layers is your gut instinct. Many people experience this as a sensation in the abdominal region.

When I used to eat animal products, it was nearly impossible for me to tune into my gut instinct. That channel was almost completely muted. I’d only notice it in extreme situations, like when I got arrested. I think my inability to hear that channel was one reason I did so much shoplifting in my late teens. How could I hear it while so much of my energy was being used to digest a bacon double cheeseburger, french fries, and a milkshake?

When I went vegetarian, my gut instincts finally became audible, and they grew louder and clearer when I went vegan, but it still took many years for me to start trusting them. I wasn’t used to receiving information on this channel, so I didn’t consider it important. But as the volume increased, I couldn’t entirely ignore it, so I began exploring these signals through the lens of spirituality. I’d listen through meditation. I’d journal about these signals. I’d discuss my impressions with like-minded people. I interpreted this as a spiritual awakening of some kind. But in my day-to-day practical life, I largely disregarded this information.

Over time I slowly realized that my gut instinct was providing useful information, but I only saw this in hindsight. I didn’t act in alignment with these impressions when they first came up, but I eventually dealt with the consequences of doing the opposite. For instance, I paid the price of doing business with people who gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach.

Most of the time when I felt this gut instinct, it was a negative feeling. That made it hard for me to listen to it because I saw myself as a positive thinker. My personal bias was to find a way to make a deal happen or to make a relationship work. I wanted to achieve things. 

Saying yes to new experiences was a key part of my path of growth. I had a strong tendency to discount my gut feelings when they were negative. I figured that it was the voice of fear and cowardice and that I should simply power through it.

The way I see this gut instinct now is that it’s a summary reading of the combined energies of a situation.

These sensations are usually very general. They don’t come packaged with details or explanations. A gut instinct is like a thermometer. It can tell you if something is hot or cold, but it can’t tell you why.

Finding the Positive Path

For many years my gut instinct seemed like an annoying naysayer. But occasionally it would give me a positive sensation, such as when I was reading personal development books or going to a conference. The negative signals were often louder and more prominent, so when I experienced the positive ones, it mostly felt like a form of escapism.

Eventually I began to explore paths that gave me stronger positive signals, such as when I started writing articles in 1999. Reading a good book was something nice to do for myself, but writing articles clearly impacted other people’s lives as well. I noticed that when I considered ideas that involved some form of contribution, my gut gave me stronger positive signals than usual. I began doing a lot of volunteering during this time as well.

As I began receiving more positive signals to balance out the negative ones, I felt encouraged to trust these gut instincts a little more and to take more action in alignment with them. I was far from perfectly trusting, but life seemed a little more fair once I began sensing opportunities to pursue instead of only traps to avoid. I felt like this instinct was finally meeting me halfway instead of just being a naysayer. It’s easier to listen to a voice that says yes sometimes and no sometimes instead of only no, no, no.

I began taking more risks to act on this voice, and over a period of years, I explored more of its subtleties. The tricky part was distinguishing this voice from other channels like my memories, beliefs, and conditioned emotional responses. Sometimes I’d feel some fear or trepidation about a new experience, like volunteering to speak at a conference, but my gut instinct was telling me to go for it. Making such discernments required patient practice. The more I listened to these signals and practiced deciphering them, the more I could hear their individual voices and make better decisions. It’s like learning to distinguish the voices of different people talking in a crowded room. Your brain will figure it out with some practice.

Turning Up the Volume

I noticed that sometimes my gut instinct was very clear while other times it was murky. I found that the level of clarity was linked to my health habits. When I exercised a lot, the signal was especially clear. If I slacked off from exercise, it was harder to get a clear signal.
When I began exploring raw foods, these gut feelings became ridiculously loud and clear. Sometimes I found the signals overwhelming. 

This is one reason that I’ve been going back and forth between raw foods and cooked foods for so many years. I began dabbling in raw foods as far back as 1997, and I did my first 30-day 100% raw trial around 2003. In 2008 I ate 100% raw for six months straight. In the years since then, I’ve gone raw for 30 or more days many more times, especially when I wanted some extra clarity, but eating raw continuously hasn’t become my default baseline yet.

For the past two months, I’ve been eating mostly raw again, including 100% raw for several weeks in a row. Presently I’m eating about 90% raw. I still find it difficult to handle the intensity of my gut instincts when they’re at such a high volume. Eating cooked food has the effect of turning down the volume. Right now this is working well for me.

Another aspect of eating lots of raw food is dealing with the extra physical energy. I feel a little stir crazy if I eat raw and don’t move a lot. My gut instinct also tells me I need to spend more time outside in the sunlight. This morning I decided to take a day off from exercise and still ended up going for a 9-mile walk before breakfast. When I eat mostly cooked food, the urge to move isn’t nearly as compelling.

Trusting the Signals

I often like working and playing in sprints, with each sprint lasting a few weeks. This month I had planned to do two different sprints. First, I wanted to create the web pages for the new workshops we’ve booked and to open registrations for them. Second, I wanted to visit Costa Rica.

Logically it made sense to do the workshop pages first, then go to Costa Rica. That way people would have more time to learn about the workshops and to figure out which one(s) they want to attend. Going on the trip would be a nice reward for completing that project. So that was my initial decision.

But when I started trying to implement the decision, my gut said it was the wrong decision. I’d been eating 100% raw for several weeks in a row at this point, so that voice was loud and clear. I should go to Costa Rica first, then handle the workshop pages after I got back.

I decided to listen to the signal, but it didn’t feel like I was making a decision — more like the decision was made for me. I booked a flight and landed in San José the following day.

Overall it was a really nice trip. Rachelle and I explored several museums, a coffee and banana plantation, the top of a volcano, two rainforests, several waterfalls, and the capital of San José. We saw huge colonies of leafcutter ants as well as a bullet ant that was almost an inch long. We saw poisonous frogs. We saw orchids galore. We saw toucans up close and held them perched on our arms. We spoke a lot of Spanglish with the locals.

A few days before I was to fly back to the USA, I started having an intense allergic reaction. I began sneezing a lot, my nose ran like crazy, and my eyes kept watering. I felt like I had a cat sitting on my head, and I barely got any sleep that night. I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all. The next day was no better. Even after I showered and we went to another location an hour’s drive away, the symptoms continued all day long. It didn’t seem like a food allergy because I didn’t have any digestive issues. It felt like I was suddenly allergic to the air. I was puzzled since it was obvious that I was having a strong allergic reaction, but to what? How could it be following me around like this from one location to another?

I’m allergic to cats, but normally I’d have to pet one or come into direct contact with cat hair to have any notable issues, and I didn’t spend any time around cats on this trip. This reaction was much worse than any cat allergy I’d ever experienced.

While we explored a rainforest and I continued sneezing and blowing my nose dozens of times, a guide told us that one of the nearby volcanos had recently undergone a small eruption, spewing ash into the air which fell all around San José and beyond. He said that some people are allergic to volcanic ash, and he described the symptoms that I was experiencing. I’d never been in the vicinity of a volcanic eruption before, but apparently I’m one of those allergic people.

My symptoms continued for the rest of the trip, but once I got on the flight to Miami, I started feeling better almost immediately. I’d never felt so grateful to breathe the air inside a plane before. By the time I arrived back in Vegas, the symptoms were 80% gone. Within a few more days, I was back to normal.

Another oddity on this trip was the weather. When I checked the weather app on my phone before and after I arrived in San José, the forecast was 10 solid days of thunderstorms — not a single dry day in sight. I’d never seen a weather forecast like that, not even in Seattle. San José gets so much rain that there are trenches between the streets and sidewalks for the water to flow. You have to step over these trenches when crossing the street. Some are so wide and deep that they have small bridges built over them. Why would I want to go on a trip to a place where the expectation was constant rain?

Logically I expected this to be a very wet trip, but in actuality it didn’t rain much at all while I was there. Most days were partly cloudy and partly sunny. When it did rain, it was usually at night while I was inside. A couple other times when it rained, it was while walking in a rainforest, and the canopy served as an effective umbrella. Overall the weather was beautiful while I was there.

Despite all the sneezing in the final days of the trip, I had a wonderful time in Costa Rica. It turned out to be a really good time to go. But I didn’t realize how good the decision was till I returned home. A few days after I got back, there was a much larger volcanic eruption, covering the city of San José in tons of ash. Hundreds of people were hospitalized because of it.

If I had gone against my gut instinct, I’d be in San José right now. With the minor eruption that happened while I was there, I had one of the strongest allergic reactions I’ve ever experienced, and I couldn’t even see any ash in the air or on the ground. Given the situation there now, with visible ash in the air, on the ground, and inside buildings, I might have been one of those people headed for the hospital.

I suppose that now I also have the benefit of knowing that I’m allergic to volcanic ash, which may be a good thing to know when I travel to volcanically active places in the future. 🙂
While many people turn to raw foods to heal from serious illnesses, another attractor is the heightened sensitivity to various forms of energy — the energy of living beings, the energy of places, and perhaps the energy of the planet itself.

Letting the Locking Relay Float

Because these energies are always in flux, I find it nearly impossible to make gut-based decisions far in advance. The signals are very present-moment. When I make a gut-based decision, there’s a certain immediacy to it. I have to run with it right away.

It’s not unusual for me to feel a surge of clarity about taking a trip and to be in another city within 24-48 hours. Sometimes I’ve made a decision to take a trip in the morning, and I’m arriving at my destination that same evening. Sometimes my gut screams YES, but I know the YES is time sensitive. I have to act immediately or not at all. Even delaying one day can kill the timing.

One of my favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes is “Lower Decks.” It includes the following scene, which begins when Ensign Sito takes too long to obey an order to fire the phasers.

RIKER: What happened back there, Ensign?
SITO: I’m sorry, sir. When we changed course I had to re-lock phasers before I could fire.
RIKER: Next time, try letting the locking relay float until the actual order to fire is given. They may not teach that trick at the Academy, but it works.
SITO: Thank you, sir.

When people ask me about my plans and intentions, especially with a desire to lock me into certain commitments, I often recall this scene. It reminds me not to succumb to the pressure to prematurely commit myself when my gut instincts are still in flux.

I understand people’s desire for predictability and certainty, especially when they want to coordinate their schedules with me. But I know from experience that it’s usually best for me to let the locking relay float until the order to fire is given. In other words, I prefer to let my plans and options float until I get a strong gut instinct to go a certain direction. Then I lock the decision into place and fire with immediate action.

I hope that what I’ve shared here gives you some insights to further develop your own gut instinct — and to trust it when your signals are loud and clear.

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5-minute daily routine: Super Brain Yoga + a Donna Eden short version

5-minute daily energy routine: Super brain yoga and a shortened version of Donna Eden's routine plus the Prana Mudra.

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30 Days to Success | Steve Pavlina

A powerful personal growth tool is the 30-day trial. This is a concept I borrowed from the shareware industry, where you can download a trial version of a piece of software and try it out risk-free for 30 days before you’re required to buy the full version. It’s also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it’s brain-dead simple.

Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like smoking. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.

Yet we often psyche ourselves out of getting started by mentally thinking about the change as something permanent — before we’ve even begun. It seems too overwhelming to think about making a big change and sticking with it every day for the rest of your life when you’re still habituated to doing the opposite. The more you think about the change as something permanent, the more you stay put.

But what if you thought about making the change only temporarily — say for 30 days — and then you’re free to go back to your old habits? That doesn’t seem so hard anymore. Exercise daily for just 30 days, then quit. Maintain a neatly organized desk for 30 days, then slack off. Read for an hour a day for 30 days, then go back to watching TV.

Could you do it? It still requires a bit of discipline and commitment, but not nearly so much as making a permanent change. Any perceived deprivation is only temporary. You can count down the days to freedom. And for at least 30 days, you’ll gain some benefit. It’s not so bad. You can handle it. It’s only one month out of your life.

Now if you actually complete a 30-day trial, what’s going to happen? First, you’ll go far enough to establish it as a habit, and it will be easier to maintain than it was to begin it. Secondly, you’ll break the addiction of your old habit during this time. Thirdly, you’ll have 30 days of success behind you, which will give you greater confidence that you can continue. And fourthly, you’ll gain 30 days worth of results, which will give you practical feedback on what you can expect if you continue, putting you in a better place to make informed long-term decisions.

Therefore, once you hit the end of the 30-day trial, your ability to make the habit permanent is vastly increased. But even if you aren’t ready to make it permanent, you can opt to extend your trial period to 60 or 90 days. The longer you go with the trial period, the easier it will be to lock in the new habit for life.

Another benefit of this approach is that you can use it to test new habits where you really aren’t sure if you’d even want to continue for life. Maybe you’d like to try a new diet, but you don’t know if you’d find it too restrictive. In that case, do a 30-day trial and then re-evaluate. 

There’s no shame in stopping if you know the new habit doesn’t suit you. It’s like trying a piece of shareware for 30 days and then uninstalling it if it doesn’t suit your needs. No harm, no foul.

Here are some examples from my own life where I used 30-day trials to establish new habits:

1) In the Summer of 1993, I wanted to try being vegetarian. I had no interest in making this a lifelong change, but I’d read a lot about the health benefits of vegetarianism, so I committed to it for 30 days just for the experience. I was already exercising regularly, seemed in decent health, and was not overweight (6’0″, 155 lbs), but my typical college diet included a lot of In-N-Out burgers. Going lacto-ovo vegetarian for 30 days was a lot easier than I expected — I can’t say it was hard at all, and I never felt deprived. Within a week I noticed an increase in my energy and concentration, and I felt more clear-headed. At the end of the 30 days, it was a no-brainer to stick with it. This change looked a lot harder than it really was.

2) In January 1997, I decided to try going from vegetarian to vegan. While lacto-ovo vegetarians can eat eggs and dairy, vegans don’t eat anything that comes from an animal. I was developing an interest in going vegan for life, but I didn’t think I could do it. How could I give up veggie-cheese omelettes? The diet seemed too restrictive to me — even fanatically so. But I was intensely curious to know what it was actually like. So once again I did a 30-day trial. At the time I figured I’d make it through the trial, but I honestly didn’t expect to continue beyond that. Well, I lost seven pounds in the first week, mostly from going to the bathroom as all the accumulated dairy mucus was cleansed from my bowels. I felt lousy the first couple days but then my energy surged. I also felt more clear-headed than ever, as if a “fog of brain” had been lifted; it felt like my brain had gotten a CPU and a RAM upgrade. However, the biggest change I noticed was in my endurance. I was living in Marina del Rey at the time and used to run along the beach near the Santa Monica Pier, and I noticed I wasn’t as tired after my usual 3-mile runs, so I started increasing them to 5 miles, 10 miles, and then eventually a marathon a few years later. In Tae Kwon Do, the extra endurance really gave a boost to my sparring skills as well. The accumulated benefits were so great that the foods I was giving up just didn’t seem so appealing anymore. So once again it was a no-brainer to continue after the first 30 days, and I’m still vegan today. What I didn’t expect was that after so long on this diet, the old animal product foods I used to eat just don’t seem like food anymore, so there’s no feeling of deprivation.

3) Also in 1997, I decided I wanted to exercise every single day for a year. That was my 1997 New Year’s resolution. My criteria was that I would exercise aerobically at least 25 minutes every day, and I wouldn’t count Tae Kwon Do classes which I was taking 2-3 days per week. 
Coupled with my dietary changes, I wanted to push my fitness to a new level. I didn’t want to miss a single day, not even for sick days. But thinking about exercising 365 days in a row was daunting, so I mentally began with a 30-day trial. That wasn’t so bad. After a while every day that passed set a new record: 8 days in a row… 10 days… 15 days…. It became harder to quit. 
After 30 days in a row, how could I not do 31 and set a new personal record? And can you imagine giving up after 250 days? No way. After the initial month to establish the habit, the rest of the year took care of itself. I remember going to a seminar that year and getting home well after midnight. I had a cold and was really tired, yet I still went out running at 2am in the rain. Some people might call that foolish, but I was so determined to reach my goal that I wasn’t going to let fatigue or illness stop me. I succeeded and kept it up for the whole year without ever missing a day. In fact, I kept going for a few more weeks into 1998 before I finally opted to stop, which was a tough decision. I wanted to do this for one year, knowing it would become a powerful reference experience, and it certainly became such.

4) More diet stuff…. After being vegan for a number of years, I opted to try other variations of the vegan diet. I did 30-day trials both with the macrobiotic diet and with the raw foods diet. Those were interesting and gave me new insights, but I decided not to continue with either of them. I felt no different eating macrobiotically than I did otherwise. And in the case of the raw diet, while I did notice a significant energy boost, I found the diet too labor intensive — I was spending a lot of time preparing meals and shopping frequently. Sure you can just eat raw fruits and veggies, but to make interesting raw meals, there can be a lot of labor involved. If I had my own chef, I’d probably follow the raw diet though because I think the benefits would be worth it. I did a second trial of the raw diet for 45 days, but again my conclusion was the same. If I was ever diagnosed with a serious disease like cancer, I’d immediately switch to an all raw, living foods diet, since I believe it to be the absolute best diet for optimal health. I’ve never felt more energetic in my life than when I ate a raw diet. 
But I had a hard time making it practical for me. Even so, I managed to integrate some new macrobiotic foods and raw foods into my diet after these trials. There are two all-raw restaurants here in Vegas, and I’ve enjoyed eating at them because then someone else does all the labor. So these 30-day trials were still successful in that they produced new insights, although in both cases I intentionally declined to continue with the new habit. One of the reasons a full 30-day trial is so important with new diets is that the first week or two will often be spent detoxing and overcoming cravings, so it isn’t until the third or fourth week that you begin to get a clear picture. I feel that if you haven’t tried a diet for at least 30 days, you simply don’t understand it. Every diet feels different on the inside than it appears from the outside.

This 30-day method seems to work best for daily habits. I’ve had no luck using it when trying to start a habit that only occurs 3-4 days per week. However, it can work well if you apply it daily for the first 30 days and then cut back thereafter. This is what I’d do when starting a new exercise program, for example. Daily habits are much easier to establish.
Here are some other ideas for applying 30-day trials:

• Give up TV. Tape all your favorite shows and save them until the end of the trial. My whole family did this once, and it was very enlightening.
• Give up online forums, especially if you feel you’re becoming forum addicted. This will help break the addiction and give you a clearer sense of how participation actually benefits you (if at all). You can always catch up at the end of 30 days.
• Shower/bathe/shave every day. I know YOU don’t need this one, so please pass it along to someone who does.
• Meet someone new every day. Start up a conversation with a stranger.
• Go out every evening. Go somewhere different each time, and do something fun — this will be a memorable month.
• Spend 30 minutes cleaning up and organizing your home or office every day. That’s 15 hours total.
• List something new to sell on eBay every day. Purge some of that clutter.
• Ask someone new out on a date every day. Unless your success rate is below 3%, you’ll get at least one new date, maybe even meet your future spouse.
• If you’re already in a relationship, give your partner a massage every day. Or offer to alternate who gives the massage each day, so that’s 15 massages each.
• Give up cigarettes, soda, junk food, coffee, or other unhealthy addictions.
• Become an early riser.
• Write in your journal every day.
• Call a different family member, friend, or business contact every day.
• Make 25 sales calls every day to solicit new business. Professional speaker Mike Ferry did this five days a week for two years, even on days when he was giving seminars. He credits this habit with helping build his business to over $10 million in annual sales. If you make 1300 sales calls a year, you’re going to get some decent business no matter how bad your sales skills are. You can generalize this habit to any kind of marketing work, like building new links to your web site.
• Write a new blog entry every day.
• Read for an hour a day on a subject that interests you.
• Meditate every day.
• Learn a new vocabulary word every day.
• Go for a long walk every day.

Again, don’t think that you need to continue any of these habits beyond 30 days. Think of the benefits you’ll gain from those 30 days alone. You can re-assess after the trial period. You’re certain to grow just from the experience, even if it’s temporary.

The power of this approach lies in its simplicity. Even though doing a certain activity every single day may be less efficient than following a more complicated schedule — weight training is a good example because adequate rest is a key component — you’ll often be more likely to stick with the daily habit. When you commit to doing something every single day without exception, you can’t rationalize or justify missing a day, nor can you promise to make it up later by reshuffling your schedule.

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