Happiness & Prosperity (Part 5)

Next in the video series delayed as I'm traveling for a few weeks. Start with THIS Video

This post is the Fifth in a series. I recommend you begin with #1
"Happiness & Prosperity – It’s No Secret - Introduction"

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 Personal Characterizations

When I was the owner and CEO of several nationally accredited adult education schools, I noticed that many students whom I assessed as having normal or above average intelligence, appeared to have great difficulty learning in one area or another. After much research and experimentation I was able to see the root of the problem. I wrote several papers and revised the curriculum of several courses. After adding the new curriculum and working with the instructors I was able to greatly reduce the mental blocks many students had.

Over time I was surprised to see the simple ideas we used for removing these mental blocks also had a profound influence on the students personal lives. In seeing themselves differently and becoming more effective in the way they learned, the lessons stayed with them and began to transform other areas of their lives. They learned more about themselves and what they learned begins with our following step.

Step Three - List your good and bad qualities

Make a list of all your good and bad qualities. On a piece of paper or on your computer, make two columns. At the top of one column write “Good” and on the other “Bad”. Then just begin listing all the things you know are good or bad about you. Put down as many as you can think of right away, but it’s ok if you keep adding to the list over days or weeks. (I’d be interested to know what your voice is chattering about right now!) Don’t skip this step; it’s one of the most important. As we continue, what you learn about yourself will help give you great peace in your life. Dig deep and don’t worry about what others might think. You don’t have to show it to anyone, and no one has to agree with what you think.

Some people have a hard time with this, so I’ve made a list of some characterizations to help you get started. (See below) Many of these characterizations are interchangeable and you can put them in the good column, the bad column, or both. You can also add phrases or sentences that describe your good and bad characteristics. You can use things like: “Not good at computers”, “I’m a Geek” (Remember - good or bad) “can’t draw a straight line”, “I’m too short (tall/fat/skinny/bald/hairy/etc.)”, “nobody likes me”, “everybody loves me”.  While you could look at the list and choose every word and apply it to yourself, that wouldn’t be useful. What is needed are the main characteristics that define who you are. The most important ones may not be obvious because they are such an integral part of your everyday life. Imagine some critical moment of brutal honesty when you are required to say who you are, what are your good points and where have you been weak. Write it down.

Extra Credit Exercise

For anyone looking for a little insurance, an extra edge in finding peace, happiness and prosperity, here is an extra credit exercise. Write a short autobiography. One to three pages is great, or do more if you like. This isn’t for publication; so don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, and neatness. Write a short story about your life.

Examples of how we characterize ourselves and others

A failure Aggressive Agitated Airhead Always Right Ambitious Annoying Antagonistic Anxious Apt Arbitrary Arrogant Awkward Boring Brazen Brutal Callous Careless Conceited Corrupt Cowardly Cruel Devious Disgusting Dishonest Domineering Drab Dumb Egotist Emotional Evil Faint-hearted Fat Fickle Foolish Garish Greedy Hypocritical Immoral Incompetent Inept Irritable Jealous Lazy Loose naughty

Mean Merciless Messy Miserly Monotonous Nasty Obstinate Out of Shape Overbearing Overweight Perverse Plump Pretentious Quick Tempered Reckless Rich Rude Sad Sadistic Sarcastic Self-Centered Selfish Shallow Sinful Sordid Spiteful Spoiled Stingy Stuffy Stupid Sullen Thoughtless Timid Un-ethical Unfair Ungrateful Unscrupulous Vain Vicious Vulgar Wealthy

Adventurous Agile Agreeable Altruistic Ambitious Amiable Angelic Attentive Attractive Audacious Brave Caring Charitable Civilized Compassionate Competent Confident Conservative Courageous Courteous Creative Cunning Decent Dependable Desirable Devoted Dignified Disciplined Discrete Dynamic Eloquent Erotic Fair Fashionable Fortunate Friendly Generous Gifted Giving Glamorous Gracious Grateful Gutsy Handsome Happy

Healthy Helpful Honest Horny Hot Humane Humble Imaginative Ingenious Just Kind Liberal Loyal Lucky Magnificent Merciful Modest Neat Nurturing Passionate Patient Patriotic Polite Proud Prudent Pure Reliable Reputable Resolute Resourceful Rugged Sensuous Sexual Shrewd Sincere Skillful Skinny Spontaneous Stylish Suave Successful Thoughtful Thrifty Trustworthy Truthful

Happiness & Prosperity (Part 4)

Next in the video series will be up in a few days. Start with THIS Video

This post is the Fourth in a series. I recommend you begin with #1
"Happiness & Prosperity – It’s No Secret - Introduction"

_______________________________________________________________________________

Step One - Observe your inner voice.

Alan Alda has a great book title that would have been a good title for this first step. It's called "Things I overheard while talking to myself" But let's get started, this is a shortcut to "paradise". Past masters had a rather slow and lengthy path showing the way to paradise. Let’s unravel what has kept most of us from taking a shortcut with their lessons. It’s not difficult and one of the ideas in the Tao is; nothing is difficult unless you say it is. Like the mysteries of the Tao, you will need to see a third choice between difficult and easy, the choice that actually IS the Tao. 

Now you probably just had a thought about what you read. Something like: "OOOH, that sounds good", or "I don't get it", or how about "This sounds like a bunch of crap", or maybe even "What's a Tao?" or something else. Whatever it was, think about it now.  Those last few sentences about the Third choice are there just to provoke thoughts, and it's not important what the thoughts are. This is your first step being able to hear your internal "voice", and one you should repeat often. Go ahead; think what popped in your head when you read about the "third choice". Got it?

OK, if you weren't able to notice your thoughts, you just need a little practice. This is one of those practical steps I spoke of. Try re-reading the paragraph until you can hear the comments from your inner voice. It doesn't matter what you hear, only that you notice what thoughts come to you. It’s like wax on – wax off. You want to practice listening to your thoughts until you can just turn it on like a loudspeaker. Once you can hear your own comments whenever you want, you’ve completed step one!   It’s OK to go on to the next step. You can practice one and two together. With practical lessons such as listening to your thoughts (the voice) you will be on the way to discovering the new viewpoint. As you become skillful, you might also notice that you’ve created a second voice! The one that’s listening to your voice, and reporting what it heard.

Step Two - Observe if things are good or bad

Learn to hear whether your voice thinks something or someone is good or bad. The path of these first steps will take you to the place between good and bad, where nothing is good or bad, where ideas, opportunity and innovation are as endless as the universe.

Adam and Eve were in paradise, and then they ate the fruit of what tree? The Knowledge of Good And Evil tree?  Think what it might have been like before they had this knowledge. The Bible reports that having this knowledge they saw they were naked, and became ashamed. God had created them naked and unashamed. They didn't think naked was good or bad. They didn't pay any attention to it. They simply lived in paradise. Once they had knowledge of good and evil, everything took on a shade of good or bad, and naked became something bad (ashamed).

For all the guys thinking  "wait, wait, naked... that's cool! That's good!" Three demerits! On the serious side, a minority of people (men and women nudists for example) think naked is good. But this step is not about choosing one or the other.  This lesson is about asking your voice if something or someone is good or bad. When you begin, some things will obviously be good or bad. Sometimes you may have doubts. There are thousands of variations and shades of good and bad. Try grading on a scale of one to ten, with the words “Good” and “Bad” as the number ones. If you manifest a million dollars for example, it will be a number one good. If you manifest a hundred dollars it might be a number seven good. If you manifest fifty cents, some people will call it a number 10 good, while others may call it a number nine or ten bad. There is no “right” answer. This step is only about noticing the good or bad you see in people or things.

Practice as often as you can. Any free moment will work. Look at a stranger on the street and ask yourself what you think of them. You’ll find answers just pop into your head. What about their hair, shoes, weight, height, income, intelligence or any of the hundreds of ways we can judge people. While we often find our evaluation is correct, this exercise is not about being accurate. I don’t care if you’re right. This is about noticing that we have a “good or bad” evaluation about everything. If you have a doubt about this statement and believe some things can just be neutral, just pass on that item and keep practicing.

This isn’t about accuracy, it’s a fabrication to assist you in seeing that we always judge with some level of good or bad. Judging itself is not a bad thing to do. I am not suggesting we do away with good and bad. Judging in this way is one of our most valuable tools. We use it constantly to guide us in everything we do. For example, I chose a few examples of Dao translations to emphasize my ideas. I had to decide which ones might be better (good) and which translations might not help or might confuse (bad). One of the side benefits you will gain from the following chapters will be a far greater skill in judging good or bad. For the moment we are working only on the ability to notice your evaluations. 

Thanks, and be sure to look for Part 5 
PS. would really appreciate any comments, "Good" or "Bad" :-)

Is your Life compass working OK?

Re-reading my research to prepare my videos, I had a few thoughts about the "Copernicus" story I often use to show how some erroneous piece of fundamental knowledge can cause hardworking, intelligent people to come to very bad conclusions. You can liken that to a broken compass. No matter what you do or who you are, if you're unaware the compass is faulty, you're not going to get where you want to go.

The Copernicus story may seem unimportant for most people as it did not have much of an impact on the everyday life of people. Astronomers had their universe turned inside out, but what difference did it make for all the daily tasks, relationships, etc of people's lives? Basically nothing. Yet the realization that some fundamental fact about life turned out to be wrong caused vast changes that have been going on for centuries and continue today.

In fact I would claim that some of the change that took place led to at least some "fact of life accepted ideas" that are also wrong. Uncovering mistaken background knowledge, a "broken compass", is what this series and the videos are about. I'm attempting to pull back the first layer to begin to look at who we are, what can we as individuals accomplish, and use a new view to become more effective in anything we do. What if many of the things you think about yourself are wrong? What if you could decide new characteristics for yourself? How could you use them to become more effective in getting where you want to go or even choose a new direction you hadn't thought possible?

Happiness & Prosperity (Part 3)

Next in the video series will be up in a few days. Start with THIS Video

This is the Third in a series. I recommend you begin with #1
"Happiness & Prosperity – It’s No Secret - Introduction"
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Chapter Two

Your journey begins with the first step

Step by step, we will peel back what you already “know” and reveal the simple idea that can change our lives. My promise to you is that you will understand the Tao, Dyer, The Secret, Chopra, and others. You will have the ability to achieve what they offer. You will have more peace in your life and be more effective at all that you do. When I speak about having peace, some people imagine a “couch potato” type of peace. Inner peace is more like being calm within, regardless of the turmoil around you. A useful analogy is to imagine a sculptor carving a huge piece of marble, working long hours while he sweats with hammer and chisel in hand, yet totally content and at peace because he is doing what he loves.

My promise is conditional. You have a part to do. You have to read, follow the steps, take notes, and even do some thinking. The instructions are not mystical or whimsical. They are all things you know how to do such as: Make a list with paper and pen. Write a page, etc.  It may happen that you won’t like to do some of the steps, but you will be able to. A shift in reference is effortless in hindsight, but a high wall to climb when you are blinded by what you already know. The earth was never the center of the universe. Our eyes and common sense pointed to everything revolving around us; we just couldn’t see the truth. Learning from history is the first step in making a new fundamental shift in the way we see the world. You’re already moving toward creating a new view of the universe.

Is Paradise Lost?

A familiar story from the Bible, Genesis, tells us about paradise, Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve lived naked in the Garden of Eden, a paradise. They lived without cares or worry, in a state of pure joy. Then one day they lost the privilege of living in the Garden of Eden. They lost it because they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. They left paradise with their knowledge of good and evil. They have passed this knowledge on to all of humanity. Now today, outside of paradise, we all know about good and evil. No matter the person, no matter the thing; we see everything with some shade of good or bad. Our friends, our homes; cars, clothing, jobs, food, cities, pets, spiders, politicians, sports ... everything is something we like or don't like, care about or don't care, enjoy or detest, want or don't want. This is the world where we try to get the good stuff and avoid the bad stuff. This is our world - paradise lost. Or is it?

Maybe we can’t live in Paradise, but it does appear we can visit. A visit to paradise can make your whole day, maybe even your life.  In most religions or beliefs, we find descriptions of a type of experience reaching beyond the ability of words to describe. The great masters, the sages, and spiritual leaders tell of letting go and becoming part of a bigger power. Religious experience is said to be an experience of transcendental realities. In Zen, Enlightenment is the state of being with no mind. Buddha and thousands of others are said to have been enlightened masters. Enlightenment is said to be an experience like nothing we have in our normal lives. With no normal reference point, sharing this experience has been difficult. For example The Tao says:

The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;

We’ll review more of the Tao later, but here you can see we’re back to the “instructions” problem. This twenty-five hundred year old document is considered one of the best ways to reach enlightenment (Tao has a literal translation of “The Way”). Many find the way to paradise can be a twisted path of riddles.

I had the good fortune to have been down that path. It was a twisted path, but well worth the journey. It’s a place of absolute peace and wonder. I’ve seen the world, the universe and life itself as an endless opportunity. It’s great, but as the Bible said, it’s not a place where we’re allowed to live. Eventually, as you wander around paradise something will happen like; you get hungry. You have to stop and grab a bite to eat. Leaving isn’t bad. When you leave, you remember the experience. What you can do is bring some of what you experience in paradise back into your life. I don’t think we as humans, can live in paradise. What I do know is, you can learn to bring some of paradise to where you live.

The search for the path to paradise, happiness, and prosperity has been going on for thousand's of years. Teachers and writers have been telling us how we can get there. Probably the best-known writing is the Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese writing of 81 verses that is widely used to help people on the path to enlightenment. This is the document Dr. Dyer writes about. He uses it as the basis of his new book to help us change our lives. In the book and DVD "The Secret" we are shown examples of many who have found the way to happiness and prosperity. Deepak Chopra has also had great success in guiding us "... to fulfilling our dreams". If you could spend time with Chopra, I believe you would be successful in achieving much of what he teaches. Olivia-Newton John did this and credits Deepak with helping her through difficult times and bringing happiness back to her life. Meditation and years of study of the Tao has also met with a lot of success. Many masters of the Dao say, "Only living by the Tao can you be truly yourself."

In the real world, most of us don't have the time or the thousands of dollars to attend Chopra's workshops, nor do we wish to dedicate our lives to meditation. Wayne Dyer spent more than a year on the beach at his Maui home thinking and meditating to come to his understanding of the Tao. If you don't have a home on the beach in Hawaii or the resources to spend a few years just thinking, that’s probably not the answer for you. From our existing viewpoint it appears that the Tao is difficult, enlightenment, joy and paradise are still a secret, and happiness and prosperity are expensive and time consuming. Surprisingly, it's really not difficult to find happiness and prosperity. It's not even easy. It's something else.

Coming in Part 4 : "Step One - Observe your inner voice."

Happiness & Prosperity – It’s No Secret
Jim Luciano

Next in the video series is posted:  http://youtu.be/05nLghEeId8

This is the second in a series. I recommend you begin with #1
"Happiness & Prosperity – It’s No Secret - Introduction"
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 Chapter One

The difficulty with instructions

Two excellent authors and teachers, and a groundbreaking book.

Dr. Wayne Dyer’s latest book, “Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao” interprets the ancient Chinese Tao Te Ching, and offers to teach us how we'll "... live in a new world aligned with nature ... Accomplish more by trying less". Deepak Chopra tells us how to have "... well being, good health, fulfilling relationships, and material abundance."

The best selling book, The Secret tells us "... you can have, be, or do anything you want." Achieving the results by following their instructions is problematic. Dyer’s coaching for example; to  “bring happiness to all that you do” is an instruction few people know how to do. Learning HOW to do it is the reason you buy these books.

 Manifest is another example of a futile instruction. In “The Secret” one of the things they tell you to do is; manifest things. This is always a concern if you're not an experienced manifester. Don't worry; the book tells us it’s "... as easy to manifest one dollar as it is to manifest one million dollars." One problem I see with this instruction is most people have yet to learn how to manifest one dollar. You can understand earning a dollar, finding a dollar, stealing a dollar, getting a gift of a dollar, but the universe hearing your vibrations and giving you the dollar may not be something you’ve learned yet. If you've read The Secret, re-read it, watched the DVD, talked about it and still haven't manifested your million dollars, maybe you're not doing it right. The book lacks detailed directions, so where do you get better “manifesting” instructions? I thought I’d see if the secret to manifesting might be found on Google! A Google search for "how to manifest" offered twelve million websites. If it's just money you wish to manifest, there are over two million websites on "how to manifest money". If you've already visited the 1.8 million sites on “how to manifest wealth” and no longer need money, perhaps you’re looking for help manifesting other things. There are millions of sites on “how to manifest desires”, “how to manifest dreams”, “how to manifest what you want”, and even a few million “how to manifest love” sites.

When you go online, you should visit more than one of these sites. The first item on Google’s search results may not be the right one for you. The first site on my Google search "how to manifest love" was this page: "Educational movement and army of lovers working to build a new vision of gay male world." This probably won't help if for example, you're female. The first listing for "how to manifest dreams" appeared to be more helpful. There was a list of 10 ways to get started manifesting your dreams. Even better, for those with difficulties manifesting, there was a link to another site where there were many "essential oils" and other products to help you manifest. They have a large assortment of helpful items such as a small bottle of "Believe" for only $21.71. With this you can "... move to a higher level of awareness." Hopefully you were successful at wealth manifesting" because going beyond believing to lotions such as "Dream Catcher", "Inspiration", "Joy" and others was quite a bit more expensive!

Well I've had a little fun with the idea of manifesting to make a point. Instructions such as manifesting leave you without a practical understanding of what needs to be done. In the end you really don’t know what manifesting is. There are some people who have had success with manifesting, but it's such a small percentage it should be obvious few people understand the phenomenon. If they did, I’d expect to see a whole lot more manifesting going on.  I think we can agree the universe has mysteries we can’t explain (manifesting being one of them). Inspirations and happiness come to us, seemingly from nowhere. Some people really do seem to have manifested successfully and surely each of the authors has had an extraordinary experience, and been inspired to share it with us. They are attempting to connect us to this mysterious power and source of the universe. Did they leave something out? Did they miss something? After all, each of these authors and teachers has great credentials. They worked hard, and they want you to have success and the happiness they have found. What else can they do? What can you do? What is missing?

I said that changing the way you look at things could have dramatic effects. Imagine if you were able to look at the whole universe in a fundamentally different way. Rethinking one basic fact can change the universe. It’s happened many times. There are moments in history where a simple idea (simple when viewed from hindsight) changed our view of the world and ourselves. Not an invention, but a different way to view what we already know. If even one little piece of what we take for granted is wrong, we may not be able to produce effective results. Hard work, dedication and intelligence are not always enough.

One example is ancient astronomers, plotting the path of the stars. Many dedicated, intelligent and hard-working astronomers spent years, maybe their whole lives plotting the path of the stars through the heavens. Yet, the results they produced were totally wrong and ineffective. They knew something was missing and made many attempts to explain and patch the problems they encountered. They couldn’t see what was wrong because what they already knew blinded them. The story of the Garden of Eden was a part of life in medieval times. The place where God created all life, animals, and man was obviously the beginning of everything. So it was just common sense the Garden of Eden was the center of the universe.

The earth was the center of the universe. The sun, the moon, and the stars revolved around us. This was the reference point used for plotting the movement of the stars. Nicolaus Copernicus challenged this idea. Although it appeared so obvious the celestial bodies revolved around us, he was willing to look beyond what everyone knew. He rethought the universe literally from the ground up. In hindsight, it seems so obvious. All he did was shift a basic reference point.

Armed with this new way of observing the world, astronomers could now use all the same skills and knowledge to produce effective, useful work. All the tools, and practices for studying the movement of the stars remained the same. Yet with this new reference point, they created a whole new universe. This simple idea went on to change much more than astronomy. This basic fact changed the thinking of the western world. What was our place in the universe? If we weren’t the center, was someone else? What did it all mean? The religious and personal upheaval was long lived. Science was affected, and many credit Copernicus’ ideas as being the chief motivating force of the scientific revolution that began in the sixteen hundreds.

Thought expanded to new levels, a scientific revolution began; all from the simple idea the earth was not the center of the universe. A shift in understanding ourselves and our possibilities can bring an equally historic change in how happiness, relationships, abundance, inspiration, and success are created. Historically we have used many analogies and ideas to talk about how we humans exist and live. But, you are not a computer. You’re not a smarter ape or monkey. When you are able to see who you are, you gain a whole new perspective. You can change your entire universe.

Modern philosophers have uncovered one of these simple changes in reference. Perhaps I could just write it out in a few words and we’d be done. You could go get enlightened, and live happily ever after! It’s really that simple. A single sentence could describe it, a sentence as simple as “The earth is not the center of the universe”. You probably noticed there are quite a few more pages in this book, so you may have guessed I’m not going to write the “answer” here. The reason? Fundamental shifts are not easily digested. Copernicus waited many years before allowing his book to be published. Then the book was suspended in 1616. The church wanted to “revise” a few facts. Galileo was placed under lifetime house arrest in 1633 for following Copernicus’ ideas. The question of our place in the universe was also an understanding of life and who we are. Imagine living in sixteen hundred and telling a friend over lunch, “By the way have you heard the earth isn’t the center of the universe?” “Oh really, that’s nice. I wouldn’t let anyone hear your fantasy, they hang people for crazy stuff like that.” The whole western world lived their lives knowing we were the center of everything. The universe, the sun, the moon, and the stars revolved around us. People needed more than a simple statement to rethink our place in the grand scheme of things, to understand our place in the universe.  Can you manifest? Can you follow the instructions of Chopra, Dyer, and the Tao? Yes of course, you just need a little shift in your universe.

See you at chapter Two... Jim

Happiness & Prosperity – It’s No Secret

Today I'm starting a new series. I was going to write a book and had about 20 pages or so. I'll post them here a little at a time while I turn to YouTube to complete what I wanted to say. You can see the first video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjW4ZFUf7VY&

Happiness & Prosperity – It’s No Secret

Jim Luciano

Introduction

Happiness and Prosperity go great together. There are “Happiness and Prosperity” authors selling thousands of books, tapes, cd’s and dvd’s as well as many speakers who offer expensive seminars. They’re happy and prosperous!  But what about you? 

You’re inspired. You read their books, listen to their tapes, and attend their seminars. You’re filled with hope and can’t wait to be happy and prosperous. But as time passes the lesson seems to fade, so you try another book, a new guru, or the latest pop-psychology. The goals are real and achievable; the universe is truly wondrous and mysterious, so why does happiness remain elusive?  The books and teachers tell us; follow the steps and you will have it all.  However problems can begin when you try to do what they tell you. They often tell you to do things you don’t know how to do. Sometimes what they’re saying doesn’t even make sense. Where is the gap? Are they speaking nonsense? Are you unable to understand? Do other people have the same problem? Can you find real step-by-step instructions that you can understand so you can find the inspiration, wonder, happiness and confidence you were born with?

For the lessons to work you must experience them. A few people are fortunate to experience the results just by reading about them. This works best for people who have had similar experiences. For most of us reading about an experience is not enough. I can talk all day, show you pictures and movies of my flight on a Hang-glider, running off a mountain top in Rio De Janeiro, but you will never really understand the experience until you fly off a mountain. If you are a sky diver, you will connect with my story on a different level. The true benefits these authors and speakers offer you are actually beyond the ability of words to describe. This idea of experience is an area where you will find a difference between this book and others like "The Secret". If I sat down with you and relived my flight over Rio, if I became very emotional and described everything in a wonderful glowing story, you might be inspired, you could become excited and enjoy my telling of a great experience. But where would that leave you next month when you're at work, dealing with the problems of the day. Books like "The Secret" are similar. They tell us real stories, which can build up excitement, but for most of us the excitement fades. Why? You didn’t get to have the same experience the storytellers had. There were no instructions that led to having the experience, they only told you about it.

Even though these authors have familiarity with all the wonders they offer, they really don’t understand it well enough to tell you how to have the same experience.  For example, if you’re unhappy, Wayne Dyer’s new book suggests you bring happiness to all that you do.  How the heck do you do that? This may be easy for him. He has years of research and thinking. He is the author of numerous best sellers such as “Your Erroneous Zones”, “Pulling Your Own Strings”, and “Real Magic”. Living in his beach house in Maui he worked for more than a year walking on the beach and contemplating ideas such as bringing happiness to all that you do.  It might not be as easy to do in your life. For instance, imagine you’re on the freeway and the boss is screaming on the other end of your cell phone “where is my report, you’re late?”. Meanwhile the guy behind you is beeping his horn and waving his finger in an obscene way; and then the guy in front of you cuts you off and you miss your exit. Wayne says just “Bring it”. Yeah sure, bring happiness to that puppy!

Is it possible you don’t know how to bring happiness to whatever you’re doing, especially when you’re unhappy?  I respect Dyer, Chopra, and the many contributors to the best selling book, The Secret, for their passion and efforts to contribute to our lives. Each has unique ideas of the way to a better life. When you hear them speak or read one of their books, you’re filled with hope. Yet days or weeks later the lessons have faded into the background. You work, take care of family, struggle to get things done and make ends meet. It seems that everything demands your attention and you struggle just to keep up. Before long, life resumes its tedious pace. The promise of manifesting a few million dollars, having great relationships, and happiness is gone. What happened? You might begin to wonder “Did I work at it long enough?”  “Did I try hard enough?” or “Maybe I need to read it again?” “Is it just me? I hear so many stories about success with this book” Think about it. How many of the readers of the 7 million copies of The Secret manifested millions and a happy life? Where are all these new millionaires? And did they follow the instructions for happiness?

What is happiness? Perhaps another problem with “bringing happiness to all that you do” is not recognizing happiness when it’s right in front of you. For example, my wife was afraid of heights so the thought of stepping off a treetop and careening down a mountain on a zip line was not her idea of happy.  Now it’s one of her happiest memories.  What if the geek, scientist, tree hugger, or neighbor you can’t stand has the potential to be the most important person in your life (no, no, not her/him!) At a dinner party, I helped congratulate a stranger on her divorce and toasted her vow never to marry again. Three months later we were engaged and we’ve been living a life of unbelievable happiness. We each saw the opportunity for happiness and grabbed onto it.  When your next opportunity for happiness shows up, will YOU recognize it?

Sometimes the solution to a problem is so close it’s difficult to see. You can work and struggle to accomplish a goal, and fail because of a simple step overlooked at the beginning. How does some seemingly obvious step trip you up? How do some people seemingly find opportunities at every moment they need them? Did you realize you could be blinded by what you already know? Things you know are skipped when you learn something new.  You take some things for granted and never look back. This is where our search for happiness has failed us.  Something that we all learned, keeps us from seeing the opportunities that are showing up everyday. We miss opportunities and life seems to pass us by. Don’t let it happen to you! Happiness and prosperity shouldn’t be a secret. There are real-life practical steps you can follow to take control of your life and opportunities.  I will show you how to get back to the beginning and see what is missing. I will give you the roadmap to happiness and prosperity.  

To be continued ...

Eat your GMO's & Sell your Euros

People know so much about everything - politics, sports, relationships, life, etc. In my "Center of the Universe" post I talked about knowing and how understanding what you know can improve almost every aspect of your life. But how do you DO that? Well here is a good first step.

Whenever someone says anything you don't agree with, you have a conflict of knowledge. How do you begin to sort it out? Try asking these questions of this person AND yourself.
Where did you learn that? Who said or reported it? How reliable are they? How do you know that they're reliable?

Is GMO (genetically modified) food safe? good? bad? harmful? helpful? Hordes of scientists, politicians, and citizens around the world know the answer to these questions. Although I've read probably 100's of pages and have an opinion (assessment) I can't say I know the answers. From my particular way of observing I also assess that no one knows. The complexities of the situation may take generations before reliable facts are available. For the most part, in these types of questions, parties on each side of the questions have an agenda. Perhaps one of the more important pieces of research you can do to come to a reasonable conclusion (opinion - not knowing) is to look for the agenda, the background of who is supplying information.

Let me give you an example of how this works:

I recently read a report about the European Crisis and how the Euro was going to disintegrate and everyone in Euros was going to loose everything. The report was quite thorough, detailed and believable. It left me with the thought people should sell Euros. Before becoming familiar with how "Knowing" works I would have now "known" a lot of new things about the ongoing Euro crisis, probably shared it with others and maybe even acted on it. I could easily have started "Tweeting", emailing, FB'ing etc and gotten friends to act on my new "Knowledge". Fortunately this one got resolved for me quite easily. While I knew the reporting agency, I was unfamiliar with the reporter. A Google search on the author's name quickly found an article where he was already under investigation for another article about the fate of the Euro while he was shorting Euros. That one little fact cancelled out all he purported to know about the situation.What actually plays out with the Euro is not the point. It's confusing what knowledge is. Even the best, most informed and practiced assessment of a situation is still an opinion, not a fact.

Everyday we are learning. Understand that much of what we know was learned far in the past and we have no idea where we learned it. Who told us, where did they learn it, and how accurate and unbiased were they? The reality is that everything you know, you learned somewhere and it may be time to recognize that some of what you know may not be true. Here's a simple way to understand how our knowledge can undermine us. You may know that it's a nice day - 75 degrees, sunny, and 49% humidity. This is NOT a nice day - Sorry, what it is, is 75 degrees, sunny, and 49% humidity. Everything else is an opinion, an assessment. In Greenland it might be hot, in the Amazon, chilly. All of us have many "Nice day" bits of knowledge. Nothing wrong with that when you are aware of the difference.

I'll have lot's more on this in upcoming posts. For now it would be a great exercise if you just keep questioning your knowledge. Most of it is probably solid and well grounded, but it often takes uncovering only one, taken for granted, "nice day" piece to be found wrong, to change your whole view of the world.

BTW. On the GMO questions... I haven't heard anyone claim the GMO foods are better (more nutritious), and there is a lot of money on the "it's OK side", so while they're arguing about the safety, I find it personally prudent to avoid them as much as possible. My assessments, NOT facts :-)

Ok Sheep, Line UP! Obamacare's going down!

OMG! How could they let Obamacare stand??? How bad is that? We've got a big job to do. Lets pull out all the stops and get the campaign rolling. I mean let's face it, we have to repeal this disaster. I know, I know, it's almost like convincing millions of people to poke themselves in the eye with a sharp stick, but enough sheep, uhhh I mean voters, are still in our herd. Thank God for Citizen's United, as just controlling most of the media might not have been enough to pull this one off.

OK, so let's get started! We need to fire up all those cleaver little emails to get passed around. Slick TV spots that show how the seniors are all gonna loose their medicare, jobs will be lost, the feds will be tellin your doctor how to treat you (it's OUR job to decide what treatment we'll let the doctors give you), taxes will go up, and the economy will go bust. We need to lean on all those ad guys we pay big bucks to, to come up with some new stuff.  

Although most voters don't think too much, we need to keep feeding them new sound bites and keep that wool over their eyes, otherwise imagine what could happen:

• No caps on the lifetime insurance amount.
• This is crazy and will just KILL profits (instead of people we don't really need). I mean before (and now) insurance companies could just pay so much and then let you die. Now they're going to have to continue treatment even if it cuts into profits! How lame.
• No denial for pre-existing conditions.
• This one should be easy. We've already convinced most people that it's only fair that if you're already sick we shouldn't have to insure you. Almost no one realizes how many ways we can warp this one; denying almost anyone even though the "pre-existing" condition had nothing to do with what they need insurance for; or anytime they loose their existing insurance and they try to buy back in-Surprise!
• 85 % will HAVE to be used for healthcare.
• Talk about crazy! This is the greatest capitalist society in history. Why would any businessman ever want to use premium dollars for healthcare? Our goal as capitalists is to keep 100% of premiums for profit and so far we've only gotten to a little more than 30%. This is a real danger, could you imagine the problems if the sheep, errr voters (got to stop saying that, someone might actually report it some day) found out medicare administration costs are about 2%? They could start thinking (a disaster in itself) that their ability to see a doctor when they're sick is more important than billions and billions of dollars in profit.

There are lot's of other problems with Obamacare, and we surely don't want this to get worse. Before you know it the sheep could start thinking (there's that damn word again) that healthcare is a right and that if you get sick you should be able to see a doctor! Sheep! stand up for OUR rights! Don't let healthcare happen in this country! Repeal Obamacare NOW!

PS. Did you notice how cleverly we have the WHOLE country calling it Obamacare? A lot easier to tell the sheep to get rid of Obamacare than trying to convince them to reject "Affordable Care"! ah ha ha! Don't you just love herding and fleecing the sheep! It's so easy.

The Center of the Universe

I keep looking for a way to present the answer to all our problems. You see, I know can fix everything. Yeah! Exactly! As soon as you say anything like this the alarms go off and readers can't click away fast enough. Ok maybe not fixing everything, but a really big improvement. I was fortunate enough to have learned from some great thinkers, teachers and business people. My study partners included Ruth Otte former CEO of the Discovery Channel, (she grew revenues from $8 to $365 million), Dr. Matthew Budd, past Harvard Medical School professor, and others

One of my skills has been to teach new ideas to others, and this is my offer to pass on the knowledge and discoveries of some of our greatest thinkers. So here goes. Try to hang in for at least a paragraph or two and you may glimpse the enormous benefit of being able to see everything more clearly and make every decision more wisely. If something doesn't make sense or you disagree, post a comment and we can discuss it.

The number one problem? It's everything you know. Huh? Yeah, when was the last time you checked out and verified any of the stuff you know? Here's an example of how "knowing" works and why "learning" something different than what you know, is a problem.

At one time the earth was the center of the universe. Everyone knew it and it was also obvious by just looking at the sky and seeing how the sun, the moon and the stars revolved around us. Can you imagine Copernicus stopping in at a bar and telling the locals "Hey, I just figured out the ground, the land we live on is spinning around like a top, and not only that but we're speeding through space, racing around the sun, and ... and ... " I hope you get the idea. The biggest problem Copernicus faced in getting the facts out was that everyone already KNEW otherwise. So this is where I'm headed. To talk about things that you know, and show that there is a way to test what you know, and point out the benefits of understanding how knowing works; little things like improving every decision and thing you do in your life and in your relationships, both personal and business.

Why me? Well this stuff isn't mine, I learned it from people that are, well..., scientists, philosophers, business people, etc. They write the kinds of books and papers that only others like them read. I'll mention some of them later on, but really only for credibility, I don't expect you to try and read them. It's like picking up a book on installing a computer network when you don't know much about computers. Or like buying "The Secret" only to find that manifesting a million dollars is still a secret. They had a lot of good ideas, but they lacked the ability to show you HOW to manifest.

Here are the main topics I will cover in this series.

• Knowing
• How many "Earth is Flat / Center of the Universe" bits of knowledge are you carrying around? If everyone else knows the same bit, what are the opportunities in discovering the real facts? Once upon a time you may have known about the Easter Bunny, are there any more bunnies?
• Thinking
• Not what you think it is :-)
•  What it isn't
• Assessments/Characterizations
• Did you ever do something and later say "What the heck was I thinking"? Miss an opportunity and wonder what happened? Have a date or relationship that Umm, wasn't the best choice? I'll show you what went wrong, and how to make better choices in the future.
• How things get done
• Think about this: When you ask for something (request) it's ALWAYS about something that would NOT have happened if you didn't ask for it. You're going to be surprised to see how many problems arise from not understanding the simple rules of asking for things to happen.

 Don't expect everything to make sense right away, the stuff  I'm writing about is a lot closer to my imaginary Copernicus' bar talk than you can imagine. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them, and I'll do my best to clarify.