The Stranger!

The Stranger!

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on. As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche.
My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger... he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies. If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The
stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.
Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet.
(I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home - not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our long time visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my
ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.
My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol but the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished.
He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked ... And NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first.Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over
in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?....

 

We just call him 'TV.'


  P.S. He has a wife now....we call her 'Computer.'

Their first child is "Cell Phone".
Second child "iPod”

And JUST BORN LAST YEAR WAS a Grandchild:

iPad

Visualise a point in time

Just IMAGINE ...
Visualise a point in time in which you are living a dream you have
Now IMAGINE that moment in time as happening RIGHT NOW
Engage your senses as you experience this moment RIGHT NOW
Imagine being there

What do you see?
Imagine the sounds
What do you hear?
What do you smell?
Imagine the taste &
Imagine the touch

As you focus on this dream

Paint a picture of this moment in time as if it were happening RIGHT NOW before your very eyes

Capture the feeling in your throat & in your heart.
What feelings surface in this moment of conscious awareness?
Make this like a mantra
Play & see it in your mind's eye whenever you meditate.
~Enza Currenti

9 Beliefs of Highly Ineffective People

POST WRITTEN BY: ANGEL

9 Beliefs of Highly Ineffective People

It is nearly impossible for anyone, even the most ineffective among us, to continue to choose a life of tedious grief after becoming fully enlightened to the fact that ineffectiveness is a choice.  It is the direct outcome of unproductive beliefs and behaviors.

So here’s a quick reminder – nine things to stop believing:

An extra reminder: We just released our new ebook 1,000+ Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently. It makes a perfect starter kit for the new year. Click here to find out more.

1.  “I don’t know what I want.”

Never let what other people expect from you dictate what you expect from yourself.  Figure out what you want.  Clarity about your true desires is so liberating because you get to stop proving yourself to everyone, including yourself.

When you get real about the true feelings you crave, you end up surprising yourself with an abundance of new opportunities and possibilities.  ReadAwaken the Giant Within.

2.  “I can deal with it all later.”

Without a plan you’re going to stay where you are.  It’s time to figure it out.  It’stime to make a move.

You will not be judged by what you say; you will be judged by what you do. Wake up each morning determined, so you can go to bed satisfied.  Have the courage and discipline today to do what is needed instead of simply what is convenient.

3.  “That’s too much work.”

Life is not always easy.  Wishing for a situation to be easier without taking action usually just makes it more difficult.  The most effective way to handle what must be done is to do it.

The time-tested strategy for making life truly easier is to work through each challenge as it arises, persistently following through to the best of your ability.  Use each challenge as an opportunity to create value and make a difference, and you’ll eventually get to wherever it is you hope to go.

4.  “I don’t have the strength.”

Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them.  You will find that they don’t have half the strength you think they have.

The struggle you’re in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow.  Even when you give it your best shot and you miss, it’s not a failure.  Instead, it’s just another opportunity to step up to the plate and do it better next time.  You are stronger than you think.  Don’t give up.  Read As a Man Thinketh.

5.  “My relationship with someone else will solve my problems.”

The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.  If you’re not comfortable enough with yourself or with your own truth when entering a relationship, then you’re not ready for that relationship.  Because you are incapable of loving another unless you love yourself, just as you are incapable of teaching someone else something unless you yourself understand it.

6.  “I will never forgive!”

You have to forgive.

You don’t have to like them, you don’t have to be friends with them, you don’t have to spend time with them ever again, but you have to forgive them, to let go, to let it rest, to let bygones be bygones.  Because if you don’t, you are choosing to tie boulders to your ankles, which are way too heavy for your growing wings to carry.

7.  “New paths and experiences are too risky.”

Have the willingness to feel the fear and do it anyway.  It’s not the future that you need to be afraid of; it’s repeating the past that threatens your growth.  Wouldn’t you rather attempt to do something great and learn a lesson, than attempt to do nothing and learn nothing for the rest of your life?  ReadAuthentic Happiness.

8.  “Starting over is not for me, no matter the circumstances.”

There comes a point in your life when you realize that nothing will ever be the same, and you realize that from now on, time will be divided in two parts:  before this and after this.

But that’s okay.  There’s no shame in starting over again, for you get a chance to rebuild things bigger and better than they ever were before, or reinvent yourself and do something you’ve always wanted to do.

9.  “My unhappiness now will create happiness in my future.”

Maybe you think you’re entitled to more happiness in the future by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way.  Being happy takes as much practice as being unhappy.  It’s by living with a smile that you smile more.  By waiting you wait more.  Every waiting day makes your lifetime as a whole a little less happy.

To be happy is to truly live.  Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it to the fullest.

9 Surefire Ways to Get What You Want

POST WRITTEN BY: MARC

9 Surefire Ways to Get What You Want

In life, you don’t get what you want, you get what you work for.

Here are some ideas for making it happen:

Reminder: We just released our new ebook 1,000+ Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently. It makes a perfect starter kit for the new year. Click here to find out more.

1.  Every morning ask:  “Is this what I want for myself?”

Whenever the answer has been “no” for too many mornings in a row, you know it’s time to make a change.  If you follow this principle a lot of life’s big decisions are actually pretty simple.

Long-term happiness is the settling of your soul into its most appropriate spot.  This spot contains the ideas, passions, people, and places that move you.

Accept responsibility for making these things possible in your life.  Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.  Be honest with yourself.  If you catch yourself following the crowd on automatic pilot simply because it’s the easiest option, it’s time to pause and reflect.  Read Quitter.

2.  Turn your dream into actionable steps and execute.

Action breeds results.  Slice your big-picture dream into a set of small goals andmeet them.

Execute, execute, execute.  You are responsible for getting things done.  It always comes down to your actions.  You choose: either action and results or inaction and excuses.  You can’t have both.

The pain of discipline is far less than the pain of regret.  Do what you have to do – 100% of it.  No one has ever given a dream their best shot and regretted it.

3.  Take a few small steps every single day.

Don’t build mountains in your mind.  Don’t try to conquer it all at once.  Take everything in stride, one step at a time.

When you seek instant gratification you make life unnecessarily painful and frustrating.  When you choose instead to treat each moment as an opportunity to make a small, positive, long-term investment in your future, the rewards come naturally.

Although each individual effort may seem to have no effect when you make it, at some point you’ll look back and realize the momentous impact your efforts created once they were added together.  By moving at this sustainable pace, you’ll be able to continue moving forward for as long as it takes to get precisely where you want to go.

4.  Exercise rock solid self-control.

Your ability to restrain an impulse by cross-referencing your moral values and goals creates the essence of your long-term happiness and success.

You are never going to get what you want until you learn how to do what’s right even when it feels wrong.  Every time you do what’s right by a decision of your will using discipline and self control to go beyond momentary feelings of weakness, you get that much closer to what you want.

5.  Practice until you’re an expert, and keep practicing.

In all walks of life, achieving greatness is a choice.  Practice makes it possible.  You are what you practice most.

Whatever you decide to do, do it well.  Do it so well that when others see you do it, they enjoy it so much that they want to come back and see you do it again, and they also want to bring their friends along so they can show them how incredible you are at doing what you do.  Read The Success Principles.

6.  Mind your thoughts and your words.

Understand the power of your thoughts, and guard them more closely.  Understand the power of your words, and prefer silence to anything negative.  Through your thoughts and words you create your own weaknesses and strengths.  Your limitations begin in your mind where you can always replace negative with positive.

So stop worrying about negative scenarios that are merely figments of your imagination.  Allow your thoughts to encourage you rather than hinder you.  Focus on the moment in front of you.  Free yourself to deal effectively and successfully with what is real and what is now.

7.  Surround yourself with people who lift you higher.

You are the average of the people you spend the most time with.  The great danger of being around negative people is that you start to become like them without even knowing it.

Relationships must be chosen wisely.  Bad company corrupts good morals and human potential.  There’s no need to rush into a relationship you are unsure of, or associate with those who hold you back.

8.  Give back.

The great Zig Ziglar once said, “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

For it is in giving that we receive.  In other words, what goes around comes around in this world.  As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.  Read Better Than Good.

9.  Create balance.

Be diligent and committed to your work, but also make sure you leave time for pleasure and exploration.  It is not enough to succeed at one specific goal; you also have to take part in the different dimensions of your life – while you can, while there’s time.

Lift your head up from your work every now and then and take a long walk, hold hands with your beloved, go fishing, spend time with your friends, swim, bask in the sunlight, try something new, meditate, breathe deep, or sit quietly for a while and contemplate the goodness around you.

In other words, balance yourself – work diligently, but don’t ignore every other aspect of your life.  Keep your mind fresh, your body active and alive, and your relationships nurtured.  Do so, and the things you want most in life will come more naturally.

Top 10 tips for making lists

• By Richard Branson -
• Jan 03, 2013

I have always lived my life by making lists. These vary from lists of people to call, lists of ideas, lists of companies to set up, lists of people who can make things happen. I also have lists of topics to blog about, lists of tweets to send, and lists of upcoming plans.

Each day I work through these lists, and it is by ticking off each task that my ideas take shape and plans move forward. As the new year gets started, lots of you will be busy making resolutions. If you want to stick to them, I suggest making them into lists. Here are my top 10 tips for making lists:

1. 1.    Write down every single idea you have, no matter how big or small
2. 2.   Always carry a notebook
3. 3.   Find a list method that works for you. Doodles, bullet-points, charts – what suits    you best?
4. 4.   Make a list of small, manageable tasks to complete every day
5. 5.   Mark off every completed task – you’ll find making each tick very satisfying
6. 6.   Make your goals measurable so you know if your plans are working
7. 7.  Set far off, outlandish goals. What do you want to have achieved by 2020? How about 2050?
8. 8.  Include personal goals in your lists, not just business
9. 9.  Share your goals with others. You can help motivate each other further
10. 10. Celebrate your successes – then make new lists of new goal

By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group

Take back your health

Take back your health
Written by: Marilyn Linton, QMI Agency
Jan. 30, 2012
New bestseller challenges current approach to care with unconventional tips (ditch vitamins?)
(SHUTTERSTOCK) Take a daily aspirin, not a daily vitamin. Trade the heels for sensible shoes. Throw away the juicer and buy frozen vegetables. And take complete charge of your health. Doing these and other simple things like moving around more and getting a flu shot will help you to live longer. Or so says Dr. David Agus, whose new book The End of Illness offers a different twist on the prevention message. It argues that although medicine has failed in the battle against illnesses like cancer, we have at our disposal the tools, tests and know-how to delay our demise - if we challenge long-held wisdoms of what health means. The book is already a bestseller for Agus, who heads the University of Southern California Westside Cancer Center. While not a cancer cook, it's his view that cancer is "a metaphor for the basket of the world's illnesses." Cancer isn't something that happens outside of you, he writes. You don't "get" cancer, you "do" cancer. "It's self-generated in the sense that it's our own cells gone awry." That's why he uses cancer as a verb, as in "the patient is cancering." Medicine has won the war against infectious diseases, he writes, but the germ theory doesn't apply to today's chronic diseases. For them we need a new strategy, one that focuses on the body as a complex whole system. Argus, who co-founded two health care technology companies and received the 2009 GQ Magazine Rock Star of Science Award, says that when the body is stressed through drugs, supplements, poor schedules, or excessive exercising, eating and drinking, we interrupt the body's homeostasis - its inclination to seek balance. When our system is thrown off balance, we're vulnerable to illness. Prevention is key, of course, but early diagnosis can also save you. So the knowledge you carry into that doctor's office is more essential than your doctor's knowledge, he writes. Know your family medical history and be aware of everything from your loss of hair to the changing colour of your fingernails. Ask for medical records and digitize them so you can have them on hand, stored on a USB stick. Agus says many patients ask him if they got sick because of a genetic predisposition. He says that while DNA governs possibilities, there is much you can do to shift your fate and live longer than what your DNA seemingly dictates. As for Agus's health tips, they're unconventional, even controversial, and based on the idea that inflammation is the root of all evil. Yet in many ways, they're reassuringly old-fashioned: · Be regular - at mealtimes, at bedtimes, when you wake and when you exercise. Straying from your schedule, even on weekends, stresses your body. A regular schedule, he writes, is like a "wonder drug." · If you're over the age of 40, ask your doctor to put you on a statin. These cholesterol-lowering drugs lower bad cholesterol, but maybe more importantly they impede inflammation - the cause of chronic diseases, including cancer - and are credited for reducing heart disease deaths by 60 percent since 1950. · If you're over 40, take a daily 81 mg "baby" aspirin. Doing so prevents blood clots which can cause heart attacks and strokes. The blood thinner is also a powerful anti-inflammatory that reduces the incidence of cancer by 20 percent. · Ditch the supplements - including Vitamin D. Unless you have a diagnosed deficiency or are pregnant, it's unlikely you need vitamins: Results of studies on them don't live up to their hype; and they can disrupt the body's ability to control what it needs. "Just as we cannot explain why some men taking selenium were at a higher risk of developing diabetes, we cannot expound on the complex network of how vitamins affect and alter our systems - for better or worse," he writes. · If vegetables aren't market fresh, buy frozen. Fresh isn't as fresh as you think, he writes. Food begins to degrade as soon as it falls from the tree or has been picked. Many fresh foods are nutrient-poor whereas freezing fruits and vegetables locks in their nutrients. · Have a flu shot: The flu gives you more than aches and pains: It causes "an inflammatory storm" that can damage your body's defences even 10 years hence. · Move around more. Sitting all day is as bad as smoking! But when you move around, wear the right shoes as ill-fitting shoes cause chronic inflammation which can increase the risk of everything from Alzheimer's disease to cancer. Be your own doctor first The End of Illness is, in part, about being your own personal health advocate. Go to your doctor primed with answers to Dr. David Agus's personal health inventory questionnaire which includes questions on how you feel, how you walk, the colour of your nails, the triggers for headaches or pains, your sleep profile, your routine wellness check-ups and a list of OTC and prescription meds. Did you know? The body seeks simplicity. Let the body find its own balance or homeostasis by being mindful of the body's inputs and its preferred rhythms.

The True Story of Rudolf

The True Story of Rudolph A man named Bob May, depressed and brokenhearted, stared out his drafty apartment window into the chilling December night. His 4-year-old daughter Barbara sat on his lap quietly sobbing. Bob's wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer Little Barbara couldn't understand why her mommy could never come home. Barbara looked up into her dad's eyes and asked, "Why isn't Mommy just like everybody else's Mommy?" Bob's jaw tightened and his eyes welled with tears. Her question brought waves of grief, but also of anger. It had been the story of Bob's life. Life always had to be different for Bob. Small when he was a kid, Bob was often bullied by other boys. He was too little at the time to compete in sports. He was often called names he'd rather not remember. From childhood, Bob was different and never seemed to fit in. Bob did complete college, married his loving wife and was grateful to get his job as a copywriter at Montgomery Ward during the Great Depression. Then he was blessed with his little girl. But it was all short-lived. Evelyn's bout with cancer stripped them of all their savings and now Bob and his daughter were forced to live in a two-room apartment in the Chicago slums. Evelyn died just days before Christmas in 1938. Bob struggled to give hope to his child, for whom he couldn't even afford to buy a Christmas gift. But if he couldn't buy a gift, he was determined to make one - a storybook! Bob had created an animal character in his own mind and told the animal's story to little Barbara to give her comfort and hope. Again and again Bob told the story, embellishing it more with each telling. Who was the character? What was the story all about? The story Bob May created was his own autobiography in fable form. The character he created was a misfit outcast like he was. The name of the character? A little reindeer named Rudolph, with a big shiny nose. Bob finished the book just in time to give it to his little girl on Christmas Day. But the story doesn't end there.  The general manager of Montgomery Ward caught wind of the little storybook and offered Bob May a nominal fee to purchase the rights to print the book. Wards went on to print,_ Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer_ and distribute it to children visiting Santa Claus in their stores. By 1946 Wards had printed and distributed more than six million copies of Rudolph. That same year, a major publisher wanted to purchase the rights from Wards to print an updated version of the book. In an unprecedented gesture of kindness, the CEO of Wards returned all rights back to Bob May. The book became a best seller. Many toy and marketing deals followed and Bob May, now remarried with a growing family, became wealthy from the story he created to comfort his grieving daughter. But the story doesn't end there either.  Bob's brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, made a song adaptation to Rudolph. Though the song was turned down by such popular vocalists as Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore , it was recorded by the singing cowboy, Gene Autry.  "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was released in 1949 and became a phenomenal success, selling more records than any other Christmas song, with the exception of "White Christmas."  The gift of love that Bob May created for his daughter so long ago kept on returning back to bless him again and again. And Bob May learned the lesson, just like his dear friend Rudolph, that being different isn't so bad. In fact, being different can be a blessing.          MERRY CHRISTMAS 2012