Finding Our Fit In This World

Every one of us has the same, but unique, challenge - to find our fit in the world, or more correctly, in each aspect of our lives. It's a never-ending task; to find balance, our purpose, and meaning to life that is personally significant. It's one of the key reasons why we are happy or unhappy.

Happiness or unhappiness in one area of life has the profound ability to skittle into other areas. The flow of the compartments of our lives is more interdependent than we care to realise.

Indecisiveness is a key indicator that our sense of fit is askew.

MARKERS OF INDECISIVENESS

If we are given to have periods that vary from contentment to discontentment - the state of vacillating between these two, even on the same day - we straddle indecisiveness.

The truth is, when we grapple with our fit in the world -f or instance, in one important aspect of our lives, like our employment - where we struggle for meaning, confused for our role in it all - ripples pervade into other areas, even mostly our thoughts.

This is never a good place to be for long.

If life is seen as a flow, something we need to maintain regarding balance, and that balance is upset, we can begin to become less congruent within ourselves; less sure, maybe; certainly less decisive. Along with haste, indecisiveness is one of the two great pests halting contentment.

And, ironically, indecisiveness will make itself known in the unlikeliest of seasons. It may commend itself to a season already challenged for other disconnected reasons.

SHIFTING THE IMBALANCE

Life in the indecisive lane could be likened to a poorly ballasted ship; we imagine a ship that looks as if it may capsize. Righting a listing ship is perhaps awkward, but not as difficult as it seems.

Shifting the imbalance may take a focus partly in patience, to ride out the rough seas contributing to the list, and it may take a focus partly in discernment - the ability of awareness, and no less, the capacity of self enquiry - as well as the wherewithal, to install the changes required. Courage is the final component - sometimes we know what we need to do and all that is lacking is the will to do it.

Courage is comparatively easy if we consider that both patience and discernment are rooted in the character of perseverance, firstly, and secondly of gifting - not everyone has sufficient abilities or capacities in discerning the way forward.

But if indecisiveness is the marker, shifting the imbalance, somehow, is required.

As indecisiveness marks us as discontent, equally decisiveness can prove us inwardly very content. Decisiveness is, then, a more direct way to true blessing.

Decisiveness can be that indicator that we have found our fit in the world; at least in the significant compartments of our world.

There is interconnectedness between being inwardly decisive and happy. Those who have found their fit in their world are content. But, equally, finding our fit in the world is more a journey than a destination. Because of change, our 'fit' is something to be maintained.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham

Steve Wickham is a Registered Safety Practitioner (BSc, FSIA, RSP[Australia]) and a qualified, unordained Christian minister (GradDipBib&Min). His blogs are at: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com/ and http://inspiringbetterlife.blogspot.com/

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3 Main Stages of Our Lives

There are 3 main stages of our lives.

1. When we are young, we all had our dreams.

2. In our growing stage, we have been taught that if you want to be successful, we have to work hard. We also see our parents working very hard. Even our teachers tell us that if we are to do well, we need to study hard. It is therefore, understandable why for many people life becomes very hard.

3. And as we mature, those dreams of ours become distant. Dreams become less possible or seem harder to achieve and as time goes by, some of us begin to give up on our dreams. When you are out there working, reality begins to set in.

We see some of our friends becoming rich and they don't seem to work hard. And you say they must be lucky. We begin to ask question ourselves, why and what went wrong! We get demoralised and we just do our job. We find ourselves waking up in the morning not because we want to but we have to...to go to work, to go through the traffics, eat, sleep everyday without fail for the fear of insecurity. If we do well in a job, we get a pat on the back but if not, we get kicked in the butt. We just continue to exist and we live to pass time. Does that sound familiar?

Ask yourself, how can you expect to achieve greater heights if you do not change what you are doing now? The greatest insanity is to do the same thing day in day out and expect different results. If we want to change our life, we must change what we are used to doing...NOW!

When you reach 65, and not have made that change you will find that life may not be as secure as you thought, even with all your retirement funds. The World Health Statistic showed that when we reach the age of 65, 96% of the people will be either dead or dead broke (36% will be dead, 56%will need to depend on others survive, 4% will still be working, 3% well off and 1% wealthy). You may have your dreams but the sad true is that only 1% will have true wealth.

So how did this 1% create wealth? The above statistic tells us that 74% made their wealth from owning their own businesses, 10% are professionals (i.e. famous doctors and lawyers etc.), 10% CEOs and 6% the rest.

So if you want to be in that 1 percent, doing your own business seems to be the way. Statistics has also showed that 50% of the top 500 companies no longer exist. 80% of that remaining fail within 5 years and the rest fails within 10 years of operation. When you run your own businesses, beside the usual large capital investments and the certain level of risk etc. It is very common to hear the business owners saying that they have no time, they cannot go for holidays, and they need to look after their business etc. They become slaves to the business. The business is running them and not the other way round. Even if they employ staff, they will have a whole range of staff headaches, financial headaches and many other problems. These are usual for traditional businesses.

They become slaves to the business. The business is running them and not the other way round. Even if they employ staff, they will have a whole range of staff headaches, financial headaches and many other problems. These are usual for traditional businesses.

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How Hidden Subliminal Messages May Be Beneficial To You

Positive affirmations have been proven to be very effectual and the best way of helping oneself. This is one way of upgrading yourself to higher levels. Subliminal messages highly contribute to the development of the subconscious mind. Subliminal audio messages are recorded affirmations which have been saved in an audio file and have been converted to be concealed. You may be wondering how these audio messages are made subliminal, it is very easy. Affirmations are pushed to a sound frequency which is a bit higher. This means that no sound will easily be heard but still, the messages will be received by your subconscious mind. When these assertions grow up, your perceptions and conduct will start to convert at a central level. This will really help to save your time so much.

Instead of continuously repeating the positive affirmation twenty minutes daily, you will be called to pay attention to the hidden mp3 edition of your positive affirmation. This is also attainable as you carry on your duties or do other activities. The outcome will perhaps be the same, with only playing the album without attracting other people's attention and allowing the affirmations to reprogram the subconscious mind without your conscious effort but the total benefit is increased. These types of recordings may be preferred at the expense of the other known media types while working, studying or exercising at the field.

However, this does not mean that your other efforts are completely not called for. Positive actions will be called for in order to meet your target. However, your determination and self-control will be extensively upgraded. This will make it easier for you to realize your accomplishments. Though these changes may not be so drastic, the outcome may be viewed within a couple of days or in few weeks. Light changes will be noted in your thoughts, this will nurture until a complete change in your perceptions and habitual thought trend is seen.

Just like positive affirmations, subliminal recordings also have vast advantages to you, that is, from advancing your commitments to upgrading the level of confidentiality, the personal positive perception of yourself, your mind-set towards love and also, may be, even improving any health concerns. It is very important to formulate a good routine when getting the therapy, which will not interfere with your other important activities; most people tend to affect subliminal therapy first thing in the morning, or late at night before they retire to bed. Some therapies come with guidelines on how you can squeeze your daily activities to make time for personal development activities. Personal development therapies are quite effective when affected over a period of time.

In case you are well conversant with continual affirmations, then, you are in a position to know the advantages of these subliminal messages. The upshot will not be surprising but instead they will be very analogous, with only, saving your time as the core gain. This is a great additional benefit, especially with the fast planed routine.

Click Here to get your Free 'Secret Success Package' and transform your life in amazing ways!

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Write Your Way to a Better Life

It's no secret that our overall well-being improves drastically when we follow a healthy diet, exercise regularly, and get six to eight hours of sleep every night, but could creative writing have similar positive effects on our quality of life? New research over the past five years has consistently found that incorporating creative and expressive writing into your daily life offers tremendous benefits - physically, emotionally, and financially! Here's ten ways picking up a pen and jotting down your thoughts for fifteen minutes a day can help you...

1. Relieve stress - Whether you're venting about the boss from hell or imagining fantasy worlds ruled by wizards or vampires, creative writing can be a cheap alternative for therapy! Expressing your thoughts on the page gives you healthy opportunities to release pent-up emotions and take a break from the daily grind of life.

2. Build confidence and self-esteem - Poems, stories, and songs are healthy outlets for you to voice and validate your thoughts and ideas. For people who feel overlooked or singled out by others, writing on a routine basis is also an excellent way to identify and change negative thought patterns.

3. Feel younger - In 2008, a study by Dr. John Mirowsky at the University of Texas at Austin found that people who regularly do activities which require creative thinking can shave up to six years off their mental age!

4. Identify dreams and achieve goals - Writing offers you a chance to learn more about yourself, how you see the world around you, and what you want from life. A Dominican University study reported that people who write down their goals and aspirations are 61% more likely to pursue them.

5. Boost brain power - Exploring your imagination wakes up parts of the brain that typically lie dormant when you're watching TV or making a grocery list. Over time, regular creative writing exercises actually expand your mental capacity, enhancing your ability to "think outside the box" when faced with unexpected or puzzling situations.

6. Improve your career - Stimulating your mind with creative activities like writing improves both your creative and analytical abilities and helps you quickly generate more ideas and solutions, which can make you invaluable to your employer. You may even come up with an innovation which prompts you to start a company of your own!

7. Earn supplemental income - Submitting your poems and short stories to magazines, literary journals, or even greeting card companies could pay off, literally! These days, blogging about anything and everything, from being a mom to your commentary on the world, has become another fun way to share your thoughts and bring in some extra money from advertisers posting links on your site.

8. Communicate better in your relationships - Transferring a character, scene or idea from your head onto paper requires a certain amount of organizing your thoughts so you can convey a clear and concise picture to your audience. That same practice can carry over to how you express your thoughts and feelings to friends, family, coworkers, or clients.

9. Keep a record of yourself - When you find yourself wondering, "What was going through my mind ten years ago," you can look directly to your writing for insight into your thoughts and imagination at that time. It's a great tool for measuring how much you've matured and changed during various stages of your life.

10. Enjoy life and feel happier - Multiple studies, like the one reported by Dr. Geoff Lowe in 2006, have noted positive physical and psychological improvements in participants who practice creative and expressive writing, including improvements in immune system functioning, mood, psychological well-being, and memory. Lowe's study also found that people suffering from certain ailments, like asthma and arthritis, reported less severity of their symptoms when they were writing!

Allegra Newman lives in Los Angeles and is the co-creator of 365 Things to Write About, a hands-on creative writing journal for people of all ages to explore their imaginations.

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When to Reasonably Worry?

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.
~Matthew 6:34 (NRSV).

There is a common cost to love. For our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, and our endeared friends there is a burden; a reasonable worry. It is a fallacy, and a biblical false teaching, to reject this form of worry. A cost of love is the cost of life.

We must believe that to be appropriately concerned for our loved ones is God's will.

Occasionally, this will mean our thinking will be preoccupied, our feelings estranged to sense, and our actions invoking courage and grappling with, and resisting, fear.

REASONABLE WORRY CLARIFIED

The sort of worry that Jesus referred to when preaching the Sermon on the Mount - that quoted above - is perhaps a more general portion of worry related to our health, what we'll eat, how long we'll live, and what we'll wear. There are many things we are tempted to worry about that have little bearing on life or love.

Reasonable worry ought to be confined to life and love.

To worry about those things that are within our control, instead of just doing them, seems to be a waste of emotional energy.

Interestingly, those things that are out of our control-things that are usually related to either life or love-are actually valid things to be concerned about. But we convert these worries into prayers. We convert our concern into faith, which is always expressed in action.

BEING 'COMFORTABLY' WORRIED

We can expect that a level of actionable worry - the concern of familial advocacy - is pleasing to God. We have the capacity for it. We can deal with a certain amount of stress.

The Lord has given us charge over these matters. To be ambivalent about familial issues, pretending to or refusing to be concerned sufficiently enough, would be an abomination. Perhaps there are too many parents, adult children, or close friends that brush off concern because it's not 'cool', or they fear their concerns might be ridiculed. But a genuine concern about loved ones is just an honest expression of love.

We can feel vindicated, so far as our obedience to God's will is concerned, when we do something about our concerns or otherwise leave them alone if we can't.

'CONCERN' EXPLORED

Concern is like monitoring a car's fuel or temperature gauge. Monitoring, of itself, needn't necessitate worry; we are just keeping an eye on things. When indications cause an elevated level of concern, then we act if we can. There is always something we can do, even if it's just to express our concern in love.

Reasonable worry is an actionable level of concern; the motivation of love, inspired by the courage to act. Worry beyond the ability to act is pointless and failing to be concerned enough when it matters is negligence. Reasonable worry is the middle ground concern of wisdom.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Steve Wickham is a Registered Safety Practitioner (BSc, FSIA, RSP[Australia]) and a qualified, unordained Christian minister (GradDipBib&Min). His blogs are at: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com/ and http://tribework.blogspot.com/

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The Heart: Is It More Than A Muscle?

This article will look at the different aspects of the heart; this will include empathy, emotions and feelings. I will also explain my current understanding of what leads to an absence of empathy and an ability to feel.

Inspiration

I was also inspired to write this after seeing the Alfa Romeo advert. In the advert the actress Uma Thurman says the following line 'without heart we would be mere machines'.

So let's start this with an explanation of what empathy is.

In the dictionary the word Empathy is described as 'The ability to understand and share the feelings of another'. There is of course a lot more to empathy than this description reveals.

What is Empathy?

The description above, as I have mentioned, is taken from the dictionary definition. So now we have a basic understanding of what it is. The question I ask is; what is going on for the individual that has it? And what is going on for the individual that doesn't have it, or shows very little empathy?

Being able to truly recognise the feelings of another first requires the ability to recognise our own feelings. And if we can't recognise our own feelings or deny our own feelings, it is going to be close to impossible to recognise or to be aware of how others feel.

The Heart

This is where the heart comes in to the equation. In today's society it is largely seen as just a part of the body that pumps blood around the rest of the body. The idea that it could be something much greater and far more significant, is not even considered by many.

And just like the quote from the advert above shows, it is having a heart and being able to feel that makes us human. So now let's look at what the possible causes could be that stop one from developing a healthy and functional ability to empathise and to feel.

Traumatic Experiences

To one degree of another we all have moments and experiences in our younger years and throughout our life that are traumatic.

And it could be said that pain is part of the human experience and something that can't be removed and has to be accepted.

An example of the pain I am referring to is experienced when a relationship ends or in the passing of a loved one.

Now, some people that have these are still able to empathise, while others begin to close their heart and their ability to feel altogether.

Why Is This?

As to what it is that makes the difference here, I am not completely sure. There are numerous factors and influences involved. These could go right back to inherited trauma and experiences in the womb, to the conditioning received during ones younger years

Having a parent or caregiver who was emotionally unavailable or abusive, or experiencing nurturing that was overwhelming and suffocating, can all lead one to shutting down emotionally and closing their own heart.

What I do know is that the more we deny and repress our own feelings the harder it is to not only feel our own feelings, but to also recognise another persons feelings.

Feelings

To me this comes down to the very nature of feelings. In that they can be extremely painful to face and to feel them again could be to trigger and relive the trauma that created them.

With our minds tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain, the natural response is to escape pain at all costs.

As we continue to live our lives from the position of denying our own painful feelings, with the intention of only experiencing pleasurable feelings, we start to gradually lose our ability to feel altogether.

Extreme Pleasure

When the ability to feel is inhibited, there is then the need to experience extreme pleasure in order to feel anything at all. This then brings to our attention the substances present in our society that are being consumed in such high amounts.

Whether its Drugs, Alcohol, or Food for example, these all help one to feel good and alive. And if our natural state is one of numbness and emptiness, the usage of these will seem vital for being able to not only feel good, but to deal with the pain.

Extreme Pain

The other side of the desire to experience extreme pleasure is the urge to feel extreme pain. This is not the same as acknowledging our pain, it is something completely different. It is a way for the mind that resists feeling, to experience an emotional release. This is often called masochistic behaviour. This is a way for our ego mind to feel a sense of control again.

The Current Paradigm

Although there is other ways of dealing with our pain, due to our society being generally ignorant and unaware of how the mind works and the effect our emotions and feelings have not only on our life, but also on our bodies, these other ways are largely unheard of or are not possible to comprehend with the current paradigm.

Society

Not only is there the substances in our society that help one to escape these painful feelings, there is also the aspect society plays in creating an environment that causes people to use these substances to such extremes.

It's the question of: is it the society or is it the individual? The perspective I have is that it's a bit of both.

The Ego Mind

Although the heart has its own intelligence, the mind is projecting and interpreting everything it sees. This means that in order to embrace our own heart we have to challenge and process the minds conditioning. So that we can allow our hearts intelligence and knowing to flourish.

Processing

Whether it is in processing our childhood or day to day life, processing our pain is not only important for being a conscious human being, it is also imperative for functioning as a whole human being.

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Think Straight

As the coordinator for a think tank which operates online, I am often reminded of the challenges we face in our society with incorrect thinking. Now I'm not suggesting everyone ought to be a logical thinker every minute of their lives. We all know the value of creativity, and the importance of a diversity of thought. It is wonderful what Americans can do when we all get on the same page and work towards that common goal. But it should also be noted that we stand for freedom, and individual liberty, and therefore we must respect the rights of those who think a little differently.

Still, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but they aren't entitled to their own facts. If something is red, we need to call it red, if something is blue, that is its true color, it is truly blue. Now then, obviously we have a problem in our society when folks think they wish to promote a certain agenda. That agenda might be environmentalism, it might be socialism, or it might be a number of different isms. And yes that is fine, however when groups of people get together and carefully doctor the facts and figures, they end up engaging in storytelling, white lies, and half-truths.

At some point we need to separate out the agenda driven politics, and rely on empirical data, we need to take a look at the facts. One of the biggest challenges we have is; when agenda-driven folks that are considered authority figures, are taken as perfectly and 100% credible even when they are purporting non-truths. Not only do we have a problem with those who might unethically try to brainwash us, trick us, or lead us to believe something that isn't so, but we also have a problem with their followers who blindly follow these Pied Pipers.

It's time for America to think straight, to challenge the experts, and also to respect authority, yes, but also to challenge them when something seems out of place, when something just isn't right. Individuals in our society need to step up, and be curious, and not be afraid to ask the tough questions. If those who have agendas are absolutely truthful and honest in their assessments, then they shouldn't mind answering the questions. In fact they should know the answers to those questions immediately, without hesitation, and without talking around in circles when answering the questions.

In this particular article I am not attacking any individual, or any group. I am simply stating the challenges we face as Americans with agenda driven leaders who falsified the data to fit their political goals. We must be wise, we must do our research, and we must think straight and ask those tough questions. And when any of us is in an authority position we must take that responsibility seriously and exercise integrity. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 24,500 articles by August 24th or 25th will be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off now..

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