Posts tagged with ‘happiness’

Have Compassion

Do You Care?
The Practice:
Have compassion.
Why?

Compassion is essentially the wish that beings not suffer – from subtle physical and emotional discomfort to agony and anguish – combined with feelings of sympathetic concern.

You could have compassion for an individual (a friend in the hospital, a co-worker passed over for a promotion), groups of people (victims of crime, those displaced by a hurricane, refugee children), animals (your pet, livestock heading for the slaughterhouse), and yourself.

Compassion is not pity, agreement, or a waiving of your rights. You can have compassion for people who’ve wronged you while also insisting that they treat you better.

Compassion by itself opens your heart and nourishes people you care about. Those who receive your compassion are more likely to be patient, forgiving, and compassionate with you. Compassion reflects the wisdom that everything is related to everything else, and it naturally draws you into feeling more connected with all things. Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on October 22nd, 2011 in Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in authenticity, Buddha’s Brain, compassion, EMPATHY, happiness, loving kindness, relationship, Rick Hanson, self help

End Self-Sabotage and Get Everything You Want

Why is it that we are motivated to change, and we work hard at it, and yet we do not succeed at attaining our goals? It’s because we sabotage ourselves. We sabotage our best efforts. We procrastinate. We resist. We don’t follow direction. We don’t follow through. We allow ourselves to be distracted and derailed.

We sabotage ourselves in a variety of ways, such that we perpetually withhold from ourselves all the goodies the universe has to offer, blaming it all the while on bad luck or it being someone else’s fault, rather than acknowledging that we are the Prime Movers of our destiny, that we are responsible for the lack and limitations in our lives, and nobody else.

On a conscious level we want to win, but on a deep, unconscious level, we are filled with guilt, shame, self-condemnation, and self-loathing, such that, rather than believing that we are worthy of winning and deserving of abundance and success, we believe that we are sinners deserving of punishment, suffering and failure. All of this is below our conscious awareness.

Our subconscious mind, intent on manifesting what we believe about ourselves at a deeply-embedded, unconscious level, believes our own harsh judgments about ourselves, and punishes us for our “sins.” It does this by sabotaging our conscious efforts.

It generates resistance and roadblocks. It attracts inferior elements. It encourages miscommunication, chaos, and confusion. The end result is an external world that reflects our internal self-concept. The end result is our not getting what we want.

The only way to reverse this process, in order to generate success and prosperity, is to put an end to our guilt, shame and self-loathing by forgiving and loving ourselves. The only way to do this is to first forgive and love others. This is what Forgive To Win!’s Forgiveness Diet has been designed to accomplish.

The Forgiveness Diet is a structured program that trains our mind to engage in behaviors that will benefit us in the long run. More specifically, the Forgiveness Diet is a daily regimen of thoughts, actions and exercises devoted to extending unconditional forgiveness, acceptance, and love. It is a daily regimen of estimable acts of kindness and service to others.

When we have mastered the Forgiveness Diet, our subconscious mind will believe we are good enough and worthy of reward, at which point it will stop sabotaging our efforts and start constructing the synchronistic attraction of synergistic people and circumstances that will favor our prosperity and success in all realms.

The Forgiveness Diet is the ultimate prosperity principle!

The reason why many of us have difficulty believing this is true is because we’ve been trained to believe that nice guys finish last, that no good deed goes unpunished, and that love, kindness and forgiveness are for chumps and suckers.

Nothing could be further from the truth. These are self-destructive messages generated by our subconscious mind to support its self-sabotaging agenda to derail us from healing ourselves and attracting abundance into our lives.

Although it is obvious that many people who are loathsome, selfish, unloving and hurtful towards others have succeeded and prospered, for most of us who mean no harm to others, emulating people like that will not deliver us what we want.

If we repair ourselves by extending unconditional forgiveness, acceptance and love to everyone, under all circumstances, without exceptions, we can replace our self-loathing with self-loving, thereby putting an end to our self-sabotage, such that our subconscious mind works with us rather than against us to attract and manifest everything we’ve ever wanted.

The best part about the Forgiveness Diet is that we don’t need to understand it for it to work. We don’t even need to believe it. Additionally, we don’t need to gain any deep insights about ourselves in order to get results.

We just need to do it. We just need to implement a few basic behaviors and practices on a consistent basis until they become habits.

But don’t take my word for it. Take the Forgive To Win! 90-Day Challenge. Rather than rejecting the Forgiveness Diet as magical or wishful thinking without giving it a try, follow it rigorously for 90 days and find out for yourself what it has to offer.

Make the decision to put aside your skepticism, negativity, cynicism and doubt for 90 days in order to work the program as vigorously and as honestly as you possibly can.

What have you got to lose? What’s 90 days in the bigger scheme of things? What’s 90 days in the expanse and duration of your life? It’s nothing. So what if you spend 90 days being generous, esteeming others, and forgiving them their trespasses? What’s the downside? There really isn’t any.

If you decide after 90 days that the experience was not transformative and was a complete waste of time, which I guarantee won’t be the case, you will have the rest of your life to be angry, vengeful, withholding, thoughtless, selfish and self-centered, and to see where that gets you.

But if I’m right in encouraging you to devote a mere 90 days of your life to the Forgiveness Diet, you will greatly appreciate the experience you put yourself through, you will see fewer roadblocks and potholes appearing in your life, you will be happier, more productive, and more successful, and you will gladly continue to engage in the Forgiveness Diet program.

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If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Walter E Jacobson, MD on October 17th, 2011 in Career, Diet and Fitness, Health, Relationships, Spirituality | No comments Read related posts in forgiveness, happiness, self-esteem, self-sabotage, success

Feel Cared About

When Have People Been Caring?
The Practice
Feel cared about.
Why?

Everyone knows what it’s like to care about someone. Remember being with a friend, a mate, a pet: you feel warmly connected, and want him or her not to suffer and to be happy.

On the other hand, you’ve probably had the sense, one time or another, of not being cared about. That you didn’t matter to another person, or to a group of people. Maybe they weren’t actively against you, but they sure weren’t for you.

As soon as you recall a time like that, it’s immediately clear why it’s important to feel cared about – which is to the heart what water is to your body.

Sometimes we feel embarrassed about our yearnings to be cared about. But they are completely normal – and deeply rooted in evolution. Love, broadly defined, has been the primary driver of the development of the brain over the last 80 million years.

Our ancestors – mammals, primates, hominids, and humans – survived and flourished and passed on their genes by learning to find good mates, bond with their young, draw males in to provide for children, create “the village it takes to raise a child” whose brain is quadrupling in size after birth and thus needs a long and vulnerable childhood, and team up with each other to compete with other bands for scarce resources.

In this context, being cared about was crucial to survival. Mammals, etc. that did not care about being cared about did not pass on their genes. No wonder you care about being cared about!

Studies show that feeling cared about buffers against stress, increases positive emotions, promotes resilience, and increases caring for others. Plus it feels darn good. Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on October 7th, 2011 in Family, General, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in Buddha’s Brain, Family, happiness, know yourself, LOVE, own your life, Rick Hanson, self help, self love, self-esteem, truth

Balancing Joining and Separating

There is a natural balance within us all between the desire for joining and the desire for separation, between the desire for closeness and the desire for distance. These two great themes – joining and separation – are central to human life. Almost everyone wants both of them, to varying degrees.

People tend to focus a lot on the joining theme, both because relationships are about – uh – joining, and because spiritual practice of any kind is fundamentally about coming into relationship with things.

Into relationship with our own suffering and that of others, and into relationship with the real causes of that suffering. Into relationship with the endlessly changing and thus impermanent nature of existence and experience. Into mindful relationship with the body, with the sense of experience being pleasant or unpleasant or neutral, with all the thoughts and feelings etc, in the mind, and with the qualities and aims of consciousness itself. And – it’s meaningful to you – into relationship with a transcendental Something: God, Buddhanature, the Infinite, unbounded Awareness . . . by whatever name.

But as important as relationship is, it is also important to bow to the other great theme, separation.

The Benefits of Separation

First, a healthy capacity for separation – or, using other words, for differentiation, individuation, autonomy, and self-expression – is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for healthy joining.

Second, autonomy is necessary for spiritual practice. Let’s consider these examples from Buddhism:

• One is always to “see for yourself,” and make your own decisions about what makes sense to you in the teachings of the Buddha.
• It is fundamentally up to oneself, and no one else, to engage the path of practice. No one can make us do it; we have to choose it ourselves. While Buddhism does not speak against God, it does not assert that God shapes our lives and that God’s grace is at work in our transformation.
• We are each individually responsible for the effects of our actions – for our own karmas. Buddhism is a very gentle religion/philosophy/whatever-it-is, but it is also bluntly tough-minded.

Much as separation supports joining, experiences of healthy connection, particularly in childhood, are critical for the development of healthy self structures, ego functions, and sense of worth and confidence. By taking refuge in our feelings of connection – both present in our relationships of the moment as well as internalized from our history of relationships – we are able to move out, from a secure base, to explore and cope with the world as an individual.

For instance, in Buddhism, one of what are called the Three Jewels of practice is the Refuge of Sangha – which means the community of fellow practitioners.

Mutual Support

In other words: individuality and relationship, autonomy and intimacy, separation and joining support each other. They are often seen at odds with each other, but this is so not the case!

For example, by knowing that you are entitled to your own view of reality, that you can assert yourself appropriately, that you can disengage when you need to, that you can honor your temperament if you happen to be an introvert who is a little drained by contact and fed by solitude – then you can be more comfortable and willing to enter into the depths of joining and intimacy available in relationships, plus receive the supplies anyone needs for healthy individuation, including the attention and caring and esteem of others.

Similarly, by acknowledging, and normalizing, and respecting the need for separation and distance in others – even if it is sometimes not your preference – that helps create a zone of safety which often fosters a greater willingness to hang out for a while with closeness.

In fact, people often step back in relationships – like agreeing, perhaps tacitly, to just not talk about certain contentious topics – in order to stay close. In developmental psychology, the term is “distance in the service of attachment.”

Working out Different Desires for Closeness

Of course, in important relationships there is rarely a perfect symmetry of desires for joining and separation. That just means that it is important to be alert to the other person’s hot buttons: for many people, if they feel their autonomy is being challenged, then that pops to the top of the stack as the key issue on the table for them . . . while for many other people, the same is true regarding perceived threats to joining. By taking into account the “imperative” of the other person, you can skillfully prevent unnecessary conflicts; by explaining your own imperatives in relationships, you can help the other person understand you better.

Additionally, the natural differences between people in the priorities they give to joining compared to separation, and the differences in the ways in which they pursue those aims, are simply another thing – albeit an important one – to negotiate in relationships.

Being able to accept and own your personal joining/separation “thermostat setting” will help you to talk about it more straightforwardly and effectively with others. And you will be as able as possible to accept and work nimbly with that set point in others.

Natural Cautions about Closeness

Most psychological wounds or traumas occur in the context of relationships, including in early childhood. Further, in our evolutionary history, there were a lot of risks in encounters with people who were “not-my-tribe.” So it is natural to be a little leery of interacting at first, especially with relative strangers.

To enter into connections today with other flesh-and-blood people, and with your internal history and sense of relationships, it is skillful to be sensitive and caring toward your own alarm bells and nervousness and resistance.

It is natural to bump into those “defenses,” often subtly. It is inevitable if you are opening up, becoming more available for relationship, more accessible, more engaged, more heartfelt, more loving.

Even as you read those words, you might be aware of both the longing for those qualities in your relationships and a certain . . . squeamishness perhaps? reluctance? anxiety? repulsion??! . . . . coming up as well.

It is perfectly natural. The closer we get, often the more the impulse to distance arises – just like the more distance we get, often the more the impulse to move closer arises.

As you go through life, first and foremost, just try to bring mindfulness to these states of mind, both the longing for closeness and the desire for distance. They are a wonderful object of mindfulness and even investigation.

In accord with true mindfulness, try to maintain an accepting interest, even a kind of soft friendliness, toward the closeness and toward the distancing.

And really, if the instinct toward stepping back feels wise, or is simply too strong to push through, then please by all means follow it, and step back.

* * *

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. His work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Consumer Reports Health, U.S. News and World Report, and Huffington Post, and he is the author of the best-selling Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom.

He writes a weekly newsletter – Just One Thing – that suggests a simple practice each week that will bring you more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind and heart. If you wish, you can subscribe to Just One Thing here.

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on June 23rd, 2011 in General, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in autonomy, brain, Buddha’s Brain, Buddhism, closeness, confidence, Consciousness, desire, differentiation, Ego, experiences, happiness, homage, individuation, LOVE, nature of existence, Neuroplasticity, neuroscience, relationship, Relationships, Rick Hanson, self expression, spiritual practice, SUFFERING, sufficient condition, thoughts and feelings, wisdom

Put No One Out of Your Heart

What is an open heart?
The Practice
Put no one out of your heart.
Why?

We all know people who are, ah, . . . challenging. It could be a critical parent, a bossy supervisor, a relative who has you walking on eggshells, a nice but flaky friend, a co-worker who just doesn’t like you, a partner who won’t keep his or her agreements, or a politician you dislike. Right now I’m thinking of a neighbor who refused to pay his share of a fence between us.

As Jean-Paul Sartre put it: “Hell is other people.”

Sure, that’s overstated. But still, most of a person’s hurts, disappointments, and irritations typically arise in reactions to other people.

Ironically, in order for good relationships to be so nurturing to us as human beings – who have evolved to be the most intimately relational animals on the planet – you must be so linked to others that some of them can really rattle you!

So what can you do?

Let’s suppose you’ve tried to make things better – such as taking the high road yourself and perhaps also trying to talk things out, pin down reasonable agreements, set boundaries, etc. – but the results have been partial or nonexistent.

At this point, it’s natural to close off to the other person, often accompanied by feelings of apprehension, resentment, or disdain. While the brain definitely evolved to care about “us,” it also evolved to separate from, fear, exploit, and attack “them” – and those ancient, neural mechanisms can quickly grab hold of you.

But what are the results? Closing off doesn’t feel good. Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on May 12th, 2011 in Family, General, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in brain, Buddha's Brain, Contemplative Practice, Contentment, happiness, LOVE, Mind Brain, mindfulness, Neuroplasticity, neuroscience, Positive Psychology, Relationships, Rick Hanson

Get Ready to Pass the Baton

As parents we all love to think our kids are great at everything. We love it when they walk early, talk early, excel in art class, earn good grades and are athletic. We brag, we boast – we feel so proud. It’s natural.

But nature, biology and even divine intervention seem to feel that we aren’t good at everything – that we should specialize. We are all different and must learn to understand ourselves to know our specific talents, strengths and passions – those attributes unique to each of us – so we can learn to find our best fit in today’s world. And when we find our place, we can create our best and most personalized lives – lives that are just right for us.

Inspired by our DNA are brain connections that are strong in some areas and weak in others. Early in our brain development, the brain allows the weaker connections to wither, allowing our strongest connections to lead. These connections create our personality, preferences, talents, strengths and passions. We are hardwired in very particular ways and our greatest performance (and happiness) happens when we understand this hardwiring and use it to make meaningful decisions about our work and life.

Science supports that we are good at some things and not others; we love some things and not others. Our greatest impact happens when we play to what we are intrinsically good at. We start to know this as we reach our later teenage years. Some realize it sooner, some later. But to realize what we are good at and are passionate about takes effort. It takes work. It takes work that each of us must do; we can’t do this work for our kids.

As parents, our role is to get them ready so we can pass them the baton of life – to be capable of taking it and running their life’s race. They choose where, how fast, with whom and how to run.

We are their coaches and trainers. We help them see their greatness – their talents, strengths and passions. We introduce them to the world so they can start to determine their best place – their best fit. We introduce them to the world so they realize they have choices – and the best choices will be those that allow them to play to what they are great at and passionate about. To be able to make these choices, they must know themselves and their world. And we bring all this together for them when they are young. We help them they discover the unique gifts they are born with and start to find their best place in the world that lets be who they were created to be.

When each of my three daughters graduated from high school, we hosted a “passing of the baton” ceremony. We explain that in the past 18 years, we have worked to help them discover who they are and have tried to show each of them how big the world is – to see all that is available. But when the baton is passed, they will own it all – their direction, success, happiness and choices. They will need to find their best fit – their place in their world – to be happy and thrilled by life each day. This is what is required to take the baton – to own your life.

We are still available for counsel and conversation but they must use all that they have seen to start to make wise personal choices – not to please us, be who we think they are supposed to be, or live as we feel they must – but, rather, to define happiness and success for themselves. We don’t tell them who to be. We remind them they must be the best at whatever they choose – and their best and happiest lives will be built around what they are good at and are passionate about doing.

Each of my three daughters has chosen wisely for herself; each took the baton and has owned her decisions, career and life. We may not always agree with the choices, but we realize they now own and invent their lives – as we did so many years ago. It is a wobbly process to start but with the right coaching, they learn very quickly to make good decisions.

Someone told me once that the worst thing a parent can hear their child say is “I have a miserable life.” We want our kids to be successful, but must also realize that success in our eyes may not be success in theirs. Maybe the better line is that we want our kids to love their lives and be thrilled by life each day.

So how can you coach your children well, to be ready to take the baton when it is passed to them:

1. Spend meaningful time with your kids and let them share what they think, feel and love. Listen generously.

2. Expose them to many things; many times our kids become things or do things because they didn’t know greater things were available. One of my favorite ways of showing kids the great choices in the workplace is to Google “job titles.” The sites show titles of jobs that many of us never knew we could be. It expands their options.

3. Watch the personal biases and judgments as kids start to connect to what matters most to them. An impartial approach allows kids to consider everything.

4. Careers and interests don’t always follow from parent to child. Allow children to search for those things that capture their interest, and always require them to see how what they are interested in fits in today’s world (they still have to make a living and move out of the house!).

Our kids are great – at some things. And effective coaches help their players (or kids) discover the things they are good at and then work hard to get better in those areas. This allows them to move from good to great. And to be successful in life, you must find your thing, then be great at it.

For me, the greatest success as a parent is a happy and passionate son or daughter – one who loves his/her life and does each day what he/she does best. That is success in my book. I don’t need or want my kids to be like me – unless that is what they want. Besides, the world needs us all to be different, to add the texture, color and richness of ideas and impact. We invent our world by those who live in it at this moment. To have the best world, we need everyone in their “greatness zone” – that place where they are connect to their best and share it with all of us. Help them get ready to take the baton and live their greatness.

Jay Forte is a business and motivational speaker, performance consultant and life coach. He is the author of Fire Up! Your Employees and Smoke Your Competition, and The Greatness Zone; Know Yourself, Find Your Fit, Transform Your World. Jay guides organizations – their leaders and managers – in how to attract, hire and retain today’s best talent. He coaches individuals how to reconnect to their talents and passions to achieve extraordinary personal and professional performance – to live their greatness. More information at www.LiveFiredUp.com and www.TheGreatnessZone.com.

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Jay Forte on October 28th, 2010 in Career, Family, New Directions, Personal Stories, Relationships, Spirituality, Teens | No comments Read related posts in careers, children, Family, find your fit, happiness, life choices, own your life

Chart Your Own Course

I grew up in a very Italian family. And by “very” I mean the strong traditions that came directly from Italy guided many aspects of our daily lives. This included parents who felt it was their responsibility to tell you who you were supposed to be – how to live, what to believe and what work to do. At least that is how things started.

The good news is we were also raised to be independent. And independent people don’t like to be told how to live, what to believe and what to do. That independence was the key for my siblings and me to determine that our lives belonged to us and that the key to our happiness and success would be for us to make critical life decisions for ourselves.

Though we had loving and well-intentioned parents, their perspectives of who we were and how we should live were nothing more than their perspectives. We did listen to their suggestions but determined the loudest voice directing our lives should be our own. This process was not without conflict. Nothing good ever comes without challenge because challenge helps us develop our own voice, see others’ perspectives and take responsibility for our decisions.

I firmly believe that each of us is hardwired for greatness – we have a customized combination of talents, strengths and passions that allow us to be good at some things and not others. We love some things and not others. And no matter how close we may be to our families, they can never know how we think and feel as well as we know. We must always be the voice that decides what is right for us – in work and in life. We must always know the facts, then own the decision. We must chart our own course.

Though my five siblings and I are part of the same family, and all close in age, none of the six of us has the same hobbies, the same careers or the same attitudes about politics and church; we have always been very different. Though I greatly appreciate the effort and intent of parents who felt compelled to tell us what to do with our lives, we all clearly saw that both our happiness and success required each of us to make these decisions for ourselves.

No one can know me like I know me. No one can identify my passions and talents as I can. And I honestly feel it is intended to be like this. Our lives are our gift. Part of appreciating the gift is in the anticipation and excitement of unwrapping it. We unwrap our lives as we live them. We get acquainted with more and more of who we truly are by living each day – by spending time noticing how we think, what we love, how we feel and what impacts us.

The more self-aware we become, the more information we have about what matters to us. The more we know ourselves, the better road we can chart for ourselves. I don’t want your road – you don’t want my road. My road is customized for me; yours should be customized for you. No one can do this customization except for us. And if we choose not to do it, or never learn how, then we live our lives according to how others tell us we should live. And I personally believe we then live only a fraction of our lives and never realize the our greatest purpose and value to ourselves and to our world.

There are many well-intentioned friends, colleagues and families who are loaded with advice on how we should live, who we should love and where we should work. Go ahead and listen to what they say. Consider everything. Then, value your own perspective about what is right for you more than what other says.

To help you customize your road, answer the following:

1. What is fun for you, and how do you add it into your day?

2. Who matters to you and how do you include them in your life each day?

3. What is critical for you and how do you address it each day?

4. What inspires you and how do you have more of it each day?

5. What challenges you and how do you learn to grow from it each day?

You own your life – and all that goes with it. Chart the right course for you so that each day you wake, you love the life you lead and make your greatest impact on those around you and on your world.

Jay Forte is a business and motivational speaker, performance consultant and life coach. He is the author of Fire Up! Your Employees and Smoke Your Competition, and the on-line resources, Stand Out and Get Hired, and The Hunt for Opportunities Success Manual. His new book, The Greatness Zone; Know Yourself, Find Your Fit, Transform Your World, will be available in October 2010. He teaches people to connect to their talents and passions to be fired up! in life and at work. More information at www.LiveFiredUp.com.

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Jay Forte on August 17th, 2010 in Career, Family, General, Health, New Directions, Personal Stories, Relationships, Spirituality, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in happiness, independence, life choices, live your life, own your life, ownership

How Will You Transform the World?

Wise words from Woodrow Wilson: “You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

Live your best life. And in the process, your best transforms the world.

I believe we invent our world in each moment; our world is created by those who live in it at this exact moment. And, the quality of our invention is based on each of us knowing ourselves to be able to contribute our best.

We are born with our unique DNA – our unique combination of talents, strengths and passions. The more we know ourselves, the more we become acquainted with our gifts – those attributes unique to us. Our happiest and most successful lives are lives that use what we are good at and passionate about doing.

This uniqueness is critical. Because we are all so different, we constantly add color, texture, experience and impact to our world. The more we know ourselves, the more we live this great uniqueness and the more of it we bring to the world. Our world expands. Our world improves. This is how we create our world. This is how we transform our world.

I see that most people live only a fraction of their capabilities – either by choice or by being unaware; they know so little about themselves and their hardwired greatness. They either don’t know how to discover what they are good at and what they are passionate about, or choose not to make the effort. The result is they do not access their greatness zone – that place of their greatest happiness – and therefore, do not bring their best to the world. You can’t bring your greatness to the world if you don’t know what it is.

Grace was an educator in a large international distributor. She spent the time to understand herself and pushed hard to land a job as an educator – a job that played to her talents and passions. She was enthusiastically connected to her students and intellectually connected to her role. Grace’s classes frequently had a waiting list. She flourished in your job, which amplified her life. She knew her talents, passions and strengths and brought her best to her work; she inspired greatness from others. She raised the bar. She wasn’t a national celebrity but was indeed a celebrity to many people she taught. She changed their worlds.

Identify several famous people who have committed themselves to their craft or area. Their talents allow them to be great at what they do. Their passion allows them to connect in an exponential way. The combination is a world changer. Think about Michelangelo, Robert Frost, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Emeril Lagasse, Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, Da Vinci, Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Babe Ruth…the list goes on. They were good at what they did and passionate about doing it. And in the process they added great value to the world. They created a more significant world. They transformed the world.

Now,identify several non-celebrities around you who have committed themselves to their craft. It could be a partner, spouse, colleague, teacher, pastor, friend or anyone else. Those who play to their greatness expand the world for all of us.

People who play small don’t transform the world. People who don’t know their talents and passions, live a fraction of their potential and their gifted lives. Not only do they miss out, but they also shortchange the world; they don’t achieve their greatness and don’t share that greatness to recreate the world in an exceptional way – each day.

Answer the following to discover more about your hardwired greatness:

* What are you good at?

* What are you passionate about?

* What is success (happiness) for you?

These questions start your process to discover the combination of gifts you were born with. You start to see your passions, talents and strengths. Use these be your best, bring your best and live your best. Besides having an amazing personal and professional life, playing to your greatness will also transform the world.

Jay Forte is a motivational speaker and performance consultant. He is the author of Fire Up! Your Employees and Smoke Your Competition, The Hunt for Opportunities Success Manual and the on-line resource, Stand Out and Get Hired. His new book, The Greatness Zone – Know Yourself, Find Your Fit, Transform the World is due out in September 2010. He works to connect people to their talents and passions to live fired up! More information at www.LiveFiredUp.com.

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Posted by Jay Forte on July 24th, 2010 in Career, Family, General, New Directions, Personal Stories, Relationships, Spirituality, Things We Love | 1 comment Read related posts in gifts, greatness, happiness, life, passion, talent, transform the world

Choices

I once heard Ingrid Bergman say, “if I had my life to live over again and I had the memory of what I had passed, then I would avoid certain mistakes. But if I didn’t have the memory I would do exacty the same because I’m happy with my life and I see no reason why I shouldn’t live it over again.”

I guess not many people can say that. What’s the secret of being happy with our lives? I think it lies in choosing, in being aware of what choices we make. Many times, when facing a decision, we let ourselves be influenced by outside voices: The musts and shoulds, what is socially correct, what our parent/partners/children are expecting form us. We don’t realize that we’re leaving ourselves behind. We’re not being honest with ourselves. It’s as if we don’t trust our internal knowledge.

How many times have you acted upon a feeling that came from your gut? Unfortunately, we’re not taught to look inside. On the contrary, we are encouraged to focus outside, on other people’s thoughts and considerations. And that’s how we make our own choices, based on opinions and preferences that do not belong to us. In fact, we barely know ourselves, so we can hardly see what we really want. Then we feel disappointed, injured, lost and, of course, we blame everybody else. In a way, we’re right because it was their opinions which led us astray. However, we forget that the choice was made by us. Nobody is pointing a gun at us. We have free choice. Maybe you’re thinking that in some cases you are not free to choose. Let me give you an example from my own life experience.

My Down Syndrome baby was four months old. I had a lot of family problems and I was really feeling overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for the baby on my own. I missed my job, my friends, my freedom. I felt like a victim. One day, a friend of mine told me, “well, it’s only a matter of choosing.” I defended myself. “No,” I said. “I have a disabled kid and I can’t choose. I can’t send him back, right?” He retorted, “You’re right. All I’m saying is that perhaps you can choose to put him in an institution and work hard in order to pay for all his needs.” I was speechless. He was right! I had a choice, nobody was forcing me to do anything. I was obviously choosing to be close to my baby, but I became aware that I was not a victim. I was choosing.

It is my experience that if I choose carefully and consciously, I never regret what I have done. Precisely because I chose it, I thought about it, I dealt with it and I chose what I considered was the best. It’s true that maybe later I found out I had made a mistake. But that’s fine. It was just that: I made a mistake because I didn’t know, of course. No guilt, no blame, no resentment. Just human nature!

If we can acknowledge the choices we make, we can get closer to Bergman’s statement. Choose consciously, from your heart, and be responsible for that. It’ll help you build self confidence and peace of mind.

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Posted by Monica Gomez on June 7th, 2010 in Health, Personal Stories, Spirituality | 1 comment Read related posts in happiness, personal happiness

Learning to Let Life Lead

Today I write about suffering. Not because I want to, but because I must. I am compelled. It’s not because suffering has some form gritty promise of being somehow more interesting.

Most days, the zone between the stored, unprocessed grief, anger, fear, and sadness the largest percentage of the world relates to as somehow normal and me, that space is vast enough to keep me sane. However, there unmistakable days when that gap is no longer cozy, when the air seems to get vacuumed out of my lungs all in a moment, my eyes are burning and wet, and I’m nauseous.

Sitting in an air-conditioned state-of-the-art movie theatre with all-reserved seating, I have just been punched in the stomach. I am unexpectedly brought face-to-face with the emotions of September 11, 2001 in the middle of what seemed like another sculpted and coiffed romantic drama that I am very willing to dance with. With one simple reference, my body is doing everything it can to hold back a torrent of sound and tears. I am reminded in every viscera of my body and mind that suffering is.

As I write just now, I am not looking to be a popular voice. I am willing to say what will not leave me alone. You see this hurricane of sensation I’m feeling isn’t personal. I did not lose anyone personally close in the events of 9/11. I taste it’s flavors because I am human and I feel. I feel deeply.

There are times like this night when I’m faced with some flash, usually through music, art, or storytelling of any sort, in which I feel my nerves and my heart on the outside, and am overwhelmed with emotion. Secretly I sometimes want to run far away from these moments out of some misplaced fear that what I know myself to be will be totally annihilated by what I’m feeling.

And yet, when I reach through the outer layers of these sensations into a deeper core, I realize it is love I am feeling. It’s love that overwhelms me, not the grief, anger, fear, or sadness. It’s the intensity of love moving through my heart in response to the suffering I’m witnessing.

If I only engage with the outer layers, I’m liable to get triggered into acting out the emotions myself; drawing in a struggle with someone convenient to give permission to a projected outburst of energy and emotion.

When I’m willing to lean back into the quiet presence of love that cares for people, that wants for their happiness, that aches to spread a touch that would be a final relief to all forms of pain. When I’m willing to lean into this love, I am free.

If only I would remember this more often.

You and I are the same really. It’s just a matter of how big a comfort zone you’ve built around your heart. That’s the only difference between you and I. The love I’m pointing at, and doing my best to hand the steering wheel over to fully, that love is what binds us. Regardless of our aplomb at living it, tasting it, and knowing it, it’s the substance that runs between us. Some people call it God. Some scientists call it dark space between the cells. I call it life.

Apparently, today I’m writing about life, because I must.

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Posted by Scott Schwenk on May 20th, 2010 in Uncategorized | 2 comments Read related posts in EMPATHY, FREEDOM FROM SUFFERING, happiness, HUFFINGTON POST, LETTING LIFE LEAD, LOVE, SEPTEMBER 11TH, SUFFERING