One of my Twitter followers (can’t remember who – I apologise!) had a link to this old blog post by John Reese, a respected internet marketer.(It is really old in Internet terms – late 2006!)

As someone who does a bit of internet marketing myself, I thought I’d read it… to discover that this particular post has much more scope in the “self development” arena, in my humble opinion. Hence this post! This information doesn’t date, so I don’t mind that it’s from 2006 … hope you don’t either…

A little background here: I am a victim of procrastination and overwhelm on occasion. I have little “to do” lists on scraps of paper & lose them, find them again days or even weeks later… and generally find my personal life a bit chaotic if I have to rely on my memory, which gets overloaded quite regularly! So when I saw this post, I thought the video was well worth watching if it would help me with better strategies.

John talks about a system he has developed, using ideas from many sources. He calls it “Reboot Your Brain”. It’s a very interesting system of “dumping the contents of your brain” into 3 different notebooks (and it IS important to have them separate, as he emphasis in the video) and thus being able to free up your mind and memory, as you learn the habit of putting everything (and that is literally EVERYTHING you can think of!) down on paper.

The video is quite long at 67 minutes … but if you plan to watch it in 3 sessions with brief breaks, it’s worth that effort. Oh… and take notes!

Watch John’s video by clicking here.

Let me know how you get on – leave a comment below; I’d love to hear!

Take care

Tracey

Zig Ziglar said, “People often tell me that motivation doesn’t last, and I tell them bathing doesn’t either, that’s why I recommend it daily!”

This idea is so important to remember when you’re struck low by doubts or worries… nothing is an instant quick-fix – you have to work at success, happiness, motivation, inspiration. That doesn’t mean that you’re on a never-ending cycle of struggle, not getting anywhere – but you have to top things up regularly to stop them “going flat” as it were.

• Find inspirational quotes that will remind you that what you’re doing is worth while!
• Speak to people who uplift you with their positive energy and joie de vivre   : )  Even if your circumstances remain the same, your outlook may change and that can help enormously.
• Take responsibility for your own feelings – you really can change the way that others make you feel by choosing to let their energy affect you … or not!
• Find some form of meditation that centres and calms you, and helps you learn to avoid others negative energy – again, it takes work and practice, but the benefits are so worth it.
  I’ll write more about this soon…

Find what inspires YOU!!!

Motivation implies an outside source, pushing you towards something that you want (or think you want)… but if that source of motivation is absent, it makes continuing along the path you want far harder than it needs to be

Inspiration implies motivation from within, a source of internal energy that will keep you going because it comes from your passions or beliefs – it’s a bit like having a fully-charged battery on inside you all the time – you stay driven!

Please let me know if you’ve enjoyed this post – then I can write more articles in this vein…

thanks,
Tracey

Ben Fletcher at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom devised a study to get people to break their usual habits. Each day the subjects picked a different option from poles of contrasting behaviors — lively/quiet, introvert/extrovert, reactive/proactive — and behaved according to this assignment.

So an introverted person, for example, would act as an extrovert for an entire day. Additionally, twice weekly, they had to stretch to behave in a way outside their usual life pattern – eating or reading something they would never have done.

What do you think was the biggest change in the group?

The remarkable finding was that after four months, the subjects had lost an average of eleven pounds. And six months later, almost all had kept the weight off; some continued to lose weight. This was not a diet, but a study focusing on change and its impact.

The Underlying Principle
Requiring people to change routine behavior makes them actually think about decisions rather than habitually choosing a default mode without consideration. In having to actually process decisions actively, they exercised their choice and decision-making abilities, extending to other choices such as what to eat, and what not to. Once becoming aware of actively making choices, they could decide what’s in their best interest.

“The box” most of us are in is the result of programming and conditioning. And it is self-created in adulthood. Recognizing yourself as the author, the creator of your story challenges an assumed model and leads to the deeper question, “How do I create something else instead?” And, “What will the ‘something else’ be?”

Very thought-provoking… it would be great to hear from anyone who has done something similar…

–> from the article “Coaching Outside the Box”
by David Krueger MD
Executive Mentor Coach
www.coachingcompass.com

Live a life that feels wonderful!! This is what Greg Hicks believes you can do, and he outlines ways of choosing such a life, in his new book Choosing Brilliant Health: 9 Choices That Redefine What It Takes to Create Lifelong Vitality and Well-Being. I haven’t seen Oprah Winfrey’s show – but I’m a subscriber to her regular newsletter, which mentioned a talk about this book last week – you can hear a snippet from the radio show & read a little about the book on the link to Bob Greene’s show on “Oprah and Friends Radio“.

As Bob Greene says on the website:

“What’s the secret to living a long life? According to Greg Hicks, there are actually nine universal secrets to health, happiness and longevity, which he chronicles in his book Choosing Brilliant Health: 9 Choices That Redefine What It Takes to Create Lifelong Vitality and Well-Being. Greg says research has shown that positive emotions play a fundamental role in maintaining wellness, and he shares with Bob a few of the ways we can create positive behaviors and attitudes that will help us live longer.

• Live with positive intentions. While we can’t always choose our circumstances, we can always choose our attitude, reactions and intentions—which in turn affect every cell in our body, Greg says. Not surprisingly, he says people who live longer give themselves positive “commands” for the day, beginning the moment they wake up. “The more we can be successful at choosing these positive attitudes, the more our brain creates these new neuropathways that make it so they become more our automatic responses than whatever our automatic responses [were],” Greg says.
• Be accountable to yourself. Greg says people who live long tend to have a sense of competency and control that helps them tackle life’s challenges, including disease or illness. On the other hand, people who don’t have a sense of accountability tend to view themselves as powerless victims, he says. “Even though we may be victimized in life, if we panoramically see ourselves as a victim, we have shot ourselves in the foot because our body does not like this,” he says.
• Think about the things you love. Because thoughts have such a determining role on our health, Greg says it’s important to identify your passions, envision them in your mind, journal them and share stories about them on a regular basis. “Just thinking about something that you love or a passion of yours activates the same part of the brain that’s actually experiencing that thing,” he says.
• Do the things you love. In addition to thinking positive thoughts about what gets you excited and happy about living life, Greg says you have to do those things too. To the degree that you can, make those activities central in your life if you want to live a good, long life, he says. “Living [your] passions is not debatable,” Greg says.”

Even if you don’t read this book, take these few pointers to heart, realise that YOU are so much in control of YOUR ATTITUDE and thus your outlook on life, and health – and be well!

Blessings
Tracey

P.S. another related link: also from Oprah’s website

I was going through emails, filing, deleting, re-reading – and I came across one about Ashley Kurek and his new book. What really struck me was the following quote, which I have heard before but hadn’t known to whom it was attributed:

“Your mind is like a parachute, it works much better when it’s open”

I’ve always considered myself fairly open-minded… you know, seeing the other persons point of view, wanting to learn new things – but in fact it’s only since I started actively working on expanding my mind and consciousness about my place in the world that I realised that to be truly open-minded means to just accept people and things as they are, without judgement. And you know what? It’s not as easy as I thought! We are so conditioned to react to things! If someone criticises us, we’re nasty back – without considering that their criticism says more about them than about us.

Another recent email had the most brilliant passage taken from Epictetus’s “Art of Living”:

Let the quality of your deeds speak on your behalf. We can’t control the impressions others form about us, and the effort to do so only debases our character. So, if anyone should tell you that a particular person has spoken critically of you, don’t bother with excuses or defenses. Just smile and reply, “I guess that person doesn’t know about all my other faults. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have mentioned only these.”

To me, THAT is open-mindedness!

Here’s to learning & tolerance in our society !

Tracey

There is an interesting article on the BBC Online website, dealing with the influence that genetics can have on a person’s predisposition to happiness.

Dr Alexander Weiss is quoted as saying:

“Although happiness is subject to a wide range of external influences we have found there is a heritable component of happiness which can be entirely explained by genetic architecture of personality.” “

It’s interesting to know this, as it explains the sometimes vast differences in nature between siblings and relatives – but our natures and levels of happiness are by no means fixed at any point. So wishing you a successful Personal Development journey!

The BBC article: Key to happiness

Be happy
Tracey

For busy people, especially those who work outside the home or have children to look after, one way of improving the work-life balance is to do smart housework. Don’t work yourself into the ground trying to clean your household every weekend! Tackle small things in 10-minute chunks, and you’ll be surprised how much gets done, and how much less stressful it can be.

There’s a saying “A cluttered space leads to a cluttered mind”. In these times of information overload, and too many things to do and remember, decluttering your home can help to calm the mind!

Here are some things that I’ve tried, and have found effective:

1. Instead of trying to vacuum every inch of your house every week, do the main hard-traffic areas in a quick “blitz” and leave the thorough vacuuming to every other week – a freshly vacuumed carpet makes a whole room look better, and 10 minutes will get most of your main areas sorted out.
2. Make trips around the home multi-purpose. If you’re taking the laundry from the bedroom to the washing machine, on the way back to the bedroom, run a duster over the flat surfaces in any rooms you pass through – skirting boards in the passage, or the coffee table in the living room.
   Constant dusting in little bursts is more effective as dust doesn’t have time to settle & become noticeable, so you can keep on top of things with a bit less effort.
3. If you find clutter tends to congregate in certain areas, like kitchen or hall tables, analyse your habits to see if you can do things slightly differently – for example, don’t leave your keys on the hall table; have a designated and convenient place for them – perhaps a drawer in the hall table, or hooks in a convenient spot close by. This will reduce the amount of clear-ups you’ll have to do when something can’t be found or you have visitors coming round and you need to clear the coffee table, for example.
   If decluttering-on-the-move like this isn’t practical, then get into the habit of a 5-minute mini clear-up at the end of each day. It saves a lot of time in the long run.
4. Clear out your purse or wallet at least twice a week – ditch all unnecessary paper into the paper recycling bag, put anything with sensitive information into the “to shred” pile, and file all card receipts to reconcile against your bank statement, before they are also shredded. Doing this for 2 minutes every 3 or  days reduces the amount of paper that can accumulate over time if it’s not properly attended to.
5. If you’re a car-clutterer, make time at the end of a working week to spend 5 minutes putting maps back in the glovebox, removing sweet wrappers and old water bottles, and taking stray gloves or jackets back inside. Apart from making cleaning easier over time, it’s a deterrent to vandals who might think there’s something valuable in the pile of junk on the back seat!
6. If any of you are like me & love collecting trivia from magazines and newspapers, you know how this can grow into an unmanageable drift of paper over time. In this high-tech age of ours, I have the perfect solution: scanning! If I find an article or picture I just have to keep, I’ll tear it out of the magazine or paper, and then scan it in, name the resulting file sensibly, and file it on the hard drive of my computer.

   Tip: set up a computer filing system that makes sense to you. If you copy someone else’s system, but it doesn’t make sense in your mind, you won’t use it.
   –> I categorise things (e.g. finances, house, CV, Travel, quotes, wine) and have sub-folders where necessary – under finances, I’ll have taxes, banking and insurance. I also name each new file with the date as the first part of the name so that I can always find things chronologically. BUT… this only works well if you use the year-month-day format YYYYMMDD; otherwise the order is fairly random.

7. Keep floors clear! If something gets left on the floor and it doesn’t belong there, put it back where it belongs! This is particularly helpful with shoes, clothes, books and magazines. I have finally, after 20-plus years, started lifting my books and magazines from the piles that grow around my flat, and it really makes a difference!

Well, if this isn’t enough to get you started, drop me a note & I’ll dig up some more time-saving hints & tips! Until then, good luck with these new habits!

Tracey

My friend Ash just sent me a link to an excellent blog post by Walter Kirn, called “The Autumn of the Multitaskers“. For anyone yearning for balance in their lives, I can only say, “read this through now – yes, all three pages!”

The way Walter Kirn describes how multi-tasking has taken over our lives, and how we feel inadequate if we can’t multitask, is an eye opener.

As Ash wrote in his email to me: “It’s the whole sucky thing about modern culture, everybody has 5 minute bites of time and you almost have to market your emails so they bother reading them.”

I’ve been trying to multitask to a huge extent in recent months – studying life coaching, practising Reiki, working with a life coach, and a business coach on a course I signed up to, and getting a couple of businesses up & running… no wonder it all almost blew up in my face3 weeks ago! I think I might just consider Walter Kirn’s revolutionary idea of becoming a “multiquitter“, and try to focus on things in a sensible, logical, one-at-a-time fashion … and see how much better I do …. and feel!!

Take it easy, everyone!!

Tracey

I’m using some brilliant enhanced-meditation CDs that assist the right & left sides of your brain to work more synchronously. This “brain re-patterning” can be quite emotional sometimes, and we’ve had the following simple breathing technique suggested to us to help get through any rough patches in the healing & change process:

• Breath slowly and evenly. On the in-breath say to yourself “accepting” and on the out-breath say “releasing”.
• Please don’t dismiss this technique as being “too simple.” It works, and those who have used it notice it!

And that’s it really! I’ve started using it and have found that the anxiety I feel in my stomach decreases after a few minutes – so well worth a try!

Be good to yourself!

Tracey

I’ve started this blog to share the wealth of knowledge I have available on many subjects – Reiki, personal development, stress-busting – I have SO many free eBooks to share, and personal experiences… so hope this helps YOU in your journey!

Hi. My name is Tracey, and I live in London, UK. Over the past 2 years I have been on a wonderful journey of change & discovery in my life, and I have made one of my goals that I will help you do the same, should you choose to accept my challenge!

The key elements of my journey have been determination, saying “yes” to all opportunities to learn new ideas and techniques for self-improvement, learning and receiving Reiki, getting a Life Coach, working with a personal trainer at the gym, finding the right weight loss program for me, and the support of my wonderful friends & family. I’m going to write a bit on breaking bad habits, Reiki, yoga, my diet program, setting up some businesses & learning LOADS, the power of positive thinking and how Life Coaching has helped me.

It is very important to remember: change comes from within. You will NOT change just by wanting it; you have to take action.

To accomplish great things, we must not only believe and dream, but also plan and act.
- Eric Edmeades

Very best wishes,
Tracey