If letting go were a simple process, we would never remember a skinned knee, smashed finger, or sore body part. If we hurt ourselves, we would pause, perform some simple ritual, and everything would be better. Fortunately for us, not letting go is a survival technique inherent in all of us.

What we do instead when we, Let Go, is we assimilate this present pain into us. We make it a part of us. We absorb it into ourselves. We take this pain inside of us and we mix it in with all our memories. We mingle and rationalize our present pain and emotion until we begin to feel a lessening of our pain.

We can go to others for help, though they can not really help us in the normal way we think of helping. We each have all the help we need inside us. What we need to do is decide we are ready to move on. At this moment when we decide to move on, our situation and our pain starts to change.

Generally whatever happened is the absolute worst thing we have ever experienced and it comes with the most pain we have ever experienced. Eventually we know we have to make a decision about our misery. Either we spend the rest of our life living in the moment of the pain, or we decide to start living our life again.

If we decide to start living our life again, we can see the pain for what it really is. The emotional pain we feel is a part of our life. Our pain is the result of our personal life experience. Our pain has happened and nothing we can do will ever make it disappear.

What we can do is stop thinking about hoe we feel, and start thinking about the events that led up to why we feel this way. What happened that was in our control and what happened that was beyond our control.

Whatever was in our control, we can ensure we do not do a repeat. By doing a repeat, I do not mean stop dating because this time it hurt so bad. Rather, slow down and think about what happened before. Were their signals the other person was giving off we chose to ignore? Did we emotionally invest more than we should have? Did we choose not to see the situation for what it was, and chose to create our own version instead?

It may well be there was nothing that could have been changed. It happens, and it is painful. It is also a part of life, and we can not quit living because we are hurt. Everyone of us is vulnerable because we are living our life the best we know how. Most pain of this type is a one time occurrence. It happened and it will never happen again.

If these situations are repeatable in our life, there is something we need to learn from them we are choosing to ignore. If you have one painful experience after another, perhaps it is time to change directions and not go down that path yet again. Going down a new path can be no worse than going down the same path  again. If this pain is a onetime experience, accept it for what it is. Learn from it, and keep on living.

Behaviors which some see as negative, anti-social, career limiting, whatever one chooses to call them, are behaviors which work for the individual at some level. These behaviors are tried and true, modified and tuned through the preceding years. When these behaviors are used they achieve the expected outcome. If these behaviors did not work for an individual they would have been modified out of existence.

What does one do if they are seen as, or they feel they have behaviors which hold them back from achieving their goals? Behavior substitution is the most promoted course of action. Substitute a limiting behavior for a behavior that is more accepted and helps achieve the desired result. That is what many experts say.

Take that behavior which is causing problems and replace it with a better behavior. For some people this is a healthy and positive way to fix whatever is wrong. The positive reinforcement of changed behavior should solidify and promote the use of the new behavior.

The only problem is it does not work for many people. People modify or replace one or more behaviors they feel are holding them back in some way. They adopt what they believe are more acceptable behaviors. Often just like the weight loss panacea, they find that after really trying and working on change for weeks or months, nothing changes.

Behavior based rewards are either non-existent, or not present in enough quantity to help the individual want to keep using modified or replaced behaviors. Little by little, just as lost pounds are regained, old behaviors start re-appearing.

Instead of enjoying all the benefits of everything one hoped would happen with behavior modification, the individual finds themselves back in the same rut they thought they were digging themselves out from. A  lot of work and effort and nothing really changed.

Maybe the problem is not in the behaviors themselves? Unless they are criminal or otherwise unlawful, maybe the behaviors are not the problem? After all these behaviors are part of the individuals personality and to some extent make them what they are.

Maybe the problem is using the behaviors at the wrong time, place, or manner? There are hundreds of jobs in multiple career fields where people use behaviors which do not work well in general social settings, and they use them successfully! Instead of trying to become someone else, be creative and look for opportunities, both social and career oriented where bad behaviors are both rewarded and encouraged.

Take those seemingly negative behaviors out, polish them up, and look for opportunities where they can be rewarded and not punished. With some tuning and polish, behaviors that many people want to change can be a fast track to success. It is more pleasant to look in the mirror and think, “This is who I am”, than look in the mirror and think, “This is me acting like someone else.”

The catch in this way of thinking, and there is always a catch, is self acceptance. Accepting who we are what we are, and knowing we are perfect for us is easier said than done. One has to throw away our families implanted ideas of who we are and look for our real self. We are what we are, and accepting ourselves is where our focus should be. We should not be focused on some ideal that we know we will never meet, or become.

Once self acceptance is second nature, it is time to find an outlet where we can be rewarded for how we are. Dismiss limiting beliefs about what we think we should be doing, for finding a lifestyle and career where we are acknowledged and rewarded for who we really are.

This takes effort and searching. The possibilities are real, they exist. Other people just like us are benefiting being themselves, doing work we can only guess at. All we need to do is be willing to break the mold we never fit in to start with, and get out there and find what we were created for and meant to do with our life.

I almost never hear someone utter those words or thoughts in reference to their life. If you have not read it here on this blog, you have read or heard about self limiting beliefs other places. If you have not read or heard about shaping and creating your own life on this blog, you have read it somewhere else.

It has frustrated me that so many people have read from many differing sources, ideas and ways to change their life; yet nothing ever changes for them. They read something here, or somewhere else, get all hyped up, and start trying to do what ‘everyone’ says they should be able to do, and nothing changes.

Until recently I was of the opinion that nothing changes because they do take not any idea of changing seriously. I thought perhaps they try out a suggestion they have read about over and over, and after a week or two give up on it.

A second possibility occurred to me that perhaps those people who were not able to realize any change were comfortable right where they were and they preferred the present circumstance of their life to the possibility of improving their life. I know a few people really do not what their life to change. Change is scary, what they have for a life may not be good, but it is comfortable.

I see it every day when a few people do the same things over and over again, expecting different results from their actions. It reminds me of an old computer saying, “input equals output”, which was a programmers pleasant way to say, “Garbage in, Garbage out’.

While reading last week I came across another explanation. Once I read it, I knew the reason people have trouble with ideas like LOA, and other Life Changing Strategies is because no matter how it is explained, people are not understanding what they should be doing. People read and read, practice, and practice some more, and nothing changes. All because what is so obvious to everyone who has used they strategies is omitted in the telling.

Law Of Attraction generally tells people in one form or another how to create a thought and then let that thought go out into the Universe. The Universe using some unknown magical ability is supposed to take your wish and make it reality. Poof, your wish has come true!

Other life changing strategies including my own, are to start living your life as if you have achieved your goal. Sounds pretty simple on paper from my side of the fence. If you want something to change, start living your life as if the change has happened. Works for me over my lifetime, it should work for everyone same as it does for me.

There are many who would rather I did not say what I am about to tell you. They are making a lot of money and really would rather not do anything to unset that proverbial apple cart. Some experts send desperate people down the path of pay for which does not really tell anyone anything they do not already know. Or they provide a multi step program, at so many dollars a step, never quite reaching the end.

People are using what they know to achieve what they want for their life, and the heck with the rest. The immediate goal is financial, with ulterior reason hidden away in private. The only thing separating you from them is either in the end they do not tell you what you need to know. Maybe they tell you what you need to know, but it is so disguised, that when you hear or read it, you probably gloss right over it. More to follow in the next post.

Emailing someone is safe, and sharing your opinion is only a little step from making comments somewhere where no one knows you, so it is also safe. You also want to keep reading and commenting on what you read at least once every day. Reading and commenting is the foundation stone of your process of overcoming shyness. You may want to slip back to where you are most comfortable because it is easy, but do not allow yourself to do this, keep moving forward.

You should be doing two things every day now, reading and commenting. Reading something on the web, commenting on it, and emailing your friends about what  you read with a link, and how you feel about it.

Once you are comfortable doing this it is time add another step. This step is only a small step from commenting on posts and articles and emailing your friends about what you read still including a link. In fact it is a safe way of combining both tasks.  Your next step is find forums you have an interest in and join them.

Forums are everywhere and most are easy to participate in. Some forum examples are Craigslist, which some feel is more of a zoo than a forum. Other possibilities are forums on computers, gardening, hiking, bicycling, personal development, the list in endless. Both Yahoo, and Google have groups you can become a member of on hundreds of  subjects.

All you have to do is sign up and start participating. Groups are a great next step because you are a little less anonymous yet you are still largely unknown by anyone other than comments and thoughts you contribute to the forum.

While you are participating in your group, do not let your commenting on what you read on the web and sharing it with friends fall to the wayside. You need to keep at it until it becomes habit and you do not even have to think about it any more.

If you have done these things faithfully for a month or so, they should be pretty much ingrained in you by now, and you can proceed to the next level. This marks a change from interacting on the web. You will be using your new found skills and abilities to interacting with real people in real time. For this step you will need to be a little adventurous and creative. Check out Craigslist, Yahoo, and search the web for groups that meet where you live that you have an interest in and can join and contribute.

Any group you join does not need to be something you have burning passion for, but it does need to be a group which you can enjoy and participate in. The value of moving your skills from the web to the world, is you are now starting to make the change in yourself with real live human beings. The time and effort you have put into the web have given you a new skill set you may have never used, or became rusty. Now being part of a group, you can talk, debate, contribute, or debate with some modicum of distance between you and those around you.

After you have spent enough time in a group environment where you have honed your skills, and you have accomplished what you set out to do. You are no longer shy, unless you choose to be and you now have good skills to talk to anyone about anything, anytime.

Now you have experienced that worst that can happen face to face in a safe environment of the web. You have been disagreed with, argued with, ignored, and everything else people do when interacting with one another. You also have been agreed with, quoted, asked for your opinion, and started new conversations. You have been a part of most of the worst and most of the best of not being shy. The rest is up to you now. Good luck, and I hope you are happy with the changes you have made.

Stop Being Shy – Only If You Want To 1 of  2

You have to really want to quit being shy to be successful. It is almost the same as learning a new subject in school, or learning a new job. If you want to be successful, understand success comes from within, not from anything you can read, listen too or watch. If you really want to change from being what you feel is being to shy read on. Otherwise you may as well find something else to read, as the rest of this post will be of little help for you other than a few pointers you may never use.

As you are still reading, here is the first task you want to accomplish on your path from changing from being shy to being more outgoing. You need to to decide what the worst is that could happen from changing from being shy into being more outgoing. Sometimes we prefer to be shy because it is safer, easier, or less stressful. Your reasons for being shy may include these reasons and more, and your reasons may be different.

No matter what your reasons are ensure you really understand what you are getting out of being shy. The reason for identifying the important  reasons you choose to be shy are important. After thinking about yourself and what you get out of being shy, you may decide that you really are enjoying quite a few benefits from being shy. You may find that being shy is comfortable, and now that you really looked at it you no longer feel any need to be something else, and shyness fits you quite well after all.

Think about all the reasons you want to not be so shy, and be more outgoing. Your reasons may be: you want to be more popular, you want to be noticed, you want to be able to talk to people. Spend as much time on this task as you did on your reasons for being shy. The purpose of these examinations of what you are getting and what you expect may cancel each other out. You may decide changing is more work than what you think will change.

I am going to proceed on the idea that after you have compared yourself now against you in the future, you decided you really want to change into someone more outgoing. I have one last task that you have to complete before you start on the process of changing yourself, sort of a sanity check to ensure you are making a good choice. I mention this because like all change this process takes a lot of time and effort on your part.

This last task is you need to define what is the worst that happen if you stay shy as you are. I am sure you are the perfect you right now, though you feel you can improve on you, and make yourself better. Next think about the worst that can happen if you quit being shy and expose more of yourself to the world around you. What is the worst that can come of not being shy?

Now, we are on to the actual process itself. The first step in moving away from shyness is like swimming in cold water. Taking little steps until you are sure you are ready to jump in and get it over with. While it seems simple to just make the change all at once, it is not the best way because too many things will have changed too fast, and that will take you way out of your comfort zone. Get too far out of your comfort zone and you will not want to stay there. We will be taking small steps instead.

Resolutions such as losing weight, quitting something, or exercising more are common resolutions that are made each New Year. These resolutions are for the most part hollow, and generally groundless.

New Years resolutions are rarely followed over the whole year. The first days and weeks resolutions are fresh and part each days focus. As weeks three, four and beyond arrive, resolutions that were made so firmly, start sliding down the what is important today scale.

Should any of these resolutions really have been be made? Are any of these resolutions really important in life? Are those resolutions only space fillers or place holders, forgotten by the end of the month? Most importantly, do resolutions make anyone feel good way inside where it counts?

Perhaps it is time to make real choices that mean something, and will potentially make a real difference each and every day of the next year, and every year after. I suggest my rule of three to help make real resolutions. This rule of three creates a timeline of the year. Use the rule of three to split the year into: this week, this month, and this year.

Instead of making resolutions, add value to your life this year and create intentions. An intention is to have a course of action, resolution is simply finding a solution but not acting on it. When creating your intentions, make intentions having a path making real changes in your life.

Pretend it is possible this next year may be the last year you will be alive. If the idea of this next year being your last year alive is scary, think about people you knew or heard of, who thought they would be here this year, making yet another list of resolutions to be forgotten after a few weeks. Being alive means accepting we may be one of those people that someone alive pauses to think about this time next year.

Now that resolutions are out and intention is in, it is time to take the next step. Look at your next week, starting tomorrow, the day after, or whatever day you pick as the start of your week. What can you do to make a real difference in your life that will make you feel and those around you feel good? What will you intend for the next month that can not be done in a week? What will you intend for the remainder of what may be your last year that you can not do in a day or a month? What changes can you bring into your life that will actually mean something.

Here is my New Years rule of three. What are you going to intend for the next week? What are you going to intend for the next month? What are you going to intend for the next year? Thinking in this way is acknowledging our mortality, and focusing our intentions in manageable periods. Combined in this manner intention becomes a powerful reality, and a life tool everyone can use.

Each of our lives are unique, as are our life situations. Below are some suggestions of what you may wish to intend in your life. Intention will improve your life, and the lives of all who will enter and leave your life next week, month, and year. Read these thoughts over and change them for use in your life or use them as starting points for totally new intents in your life.

Resolutions are generally weak and lead to yet another failure on the list of many. Thought out meaningful intentions are powerful life changing tools which make you grateful to be finally alive.

Here are some thoughts to help create intention for your personal use:  Tell a parent, sibling, or friend what you really want to tell them; Find out peoples names who are peripheral in your life, and tell them how they change your life for the better by doing what they do; Be grateful and respectful to the once living things that are now your food; Learn about a people or culture you know nothing about; Learn more about your spiritual self.

Learn more about your religion and why you believe what you do; Read autobiographies, listen to audio books, or watch movies about people you admire; Learn another persons culture and beliefs; Create quiet time to be outside; Buy, plant, and care for a plant(s); Plant or place a potted flower in a needy public place and take care of it; Find someone you can help each _; Attend a church you have never been to; Eat a meal of food you have never eaten; Talk to strangers, strangers have something important to tell you about your life right now, ask them what it is. Look for ways to make a difference in someone’s life.

Here is an easy to remember thought: ‘To be resolute is to be unwavering, to intend is to have action and purpose. I create my life with intent.’

Self help is a space filler of hollow promises promoted by people chasing a fast profit. Perusing the internet for unhappy self help victims one can find many instances where the promise was not only not filled, but not even partially filled. Of course there are no refunds which further sparks the fire and fans the flames.

Go into the local bookstore and shelves are filled with books claiming they can help you make your life better. If you have read the ‘about’ page of this blog, you read a similar thought there. here is a quote from my about page, “I have a lot of life experience, so I feel I have something to share with you, that you may enjoy or benefit from. “

If you believe that nothing anyone writes, said to you, or tries to sell you, will make your life any different, you are absolutely correct. Nothing you read or hear will likely make any changes in your life. The idea of any self help material, no matter the source helping anyone is an illusion.

It does not matter if you manage to bring Lester Levenson back as your personal advisor, the Roman Catholic Pope moves in next door to be closer to you, Lillith appears because she is going to be your personal mentor, or the Dali Llama agrees to be your life guide. Anything anyone could provide for you is only so many words or ideas.

This is the plain and ugly truth about self help. Nothing you can read or hear will help you. Your life is what it is and that is the end of it. Writing this certainly clears the air. Someone at last admits that every written or produced to improve your life is wasted effort. I am glad I went ahead and made this statement. If you are in agreement there is no need to read any farther. Nothing anyone can say will change your life.

However, I am glad for the person last week who took the time to make those comments. Perhaps this is the moment that needed to be said to me. Was I wrong seeking a way of living which improves my life? Maybe it was a mistake to get beyond anger, blame, and dislike. Maybe living my life would have been more rewarding by not trying to change it.

If I was happy living a life of anger, blame, and dislike, I think I would not have decided there was a better way to live and I was going to find it, or die trying. This beginning was frustrating and difficult. What books I read where written by people who never seemed to have to struggle once in their life, with the exception of the bible and we all know what happened there. What little changes I decided I could make in my own life seemed trivial and petty, and of no consequence.

I did not have a clue on how to make my life better. I started at the very beginning. The first thing I did was I admitted I knew nothing about living a happy contented life. Starting here I made small changes I hoped would make a difference in my life.

When I spoke with people who seemed to live a better life than I did, I listened to what they said about their life. I paid attention to their outlook, and expectations for their life. I especially listened to what they thought about themselves and other people in their daily life.

Life is a struggle from the moment of our conception. We struggle to grow enough to be born, we fight off disease when we have few tools to fight with. We struggle from the moment we drop onto the bed sheet. We struggle to learn how to take our first breath.

Life is a challenge, a struggle, an adventure, or an experience. Wether we are happy and enjoy our life or not, we are the person living it. We have the power to change our life, reshape, and remold it into a life we want.

All anyone has to do, is for a split second seriously ponder if there is a better way to live. That is the seed that starts the process of changing ones life into something we want to live. One second of wondering if there is a better way opens a portal, allowing all the help in universe to offer you a helping hand. Open your mind, reach out your arm, stretch out your hand and grab on, your new life is waiting.

Unfortunately these are tried and true, died in wool, written in concrete, branded in steel truths. Everyone is rewarded in the manner of everyone else like themselves. Everyone leads lives of quiet desperation. If you do not believe me, think of the people in your social group.

Everyone dresses the same, has similar tastes, all make about the same income, and they all have about the same expectations for their future. It makes no difference if the group you belong to is in their late teens, thirties, sixties, or somewhere in between. Everyone in your group will more or less progress and achieve at about the same rate.

It does not have to be that way though, unless you prefer it to be that way. Social pressure, a lifetime of listening to others expectations, and your beliefs all contribute to having a live like everyone else. Most people want the house, the car, the job, whatever group you identify with, everyone has about the same value set.

So why does everyone in that group deceive themselves by thinking they are unique and what everyone else will likely accomplish through their lifetime does not apply to themselves? I once read a definition of stupid as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.

Hold up your hand if you suffer from doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. I am holding up my hand as you read this. Unless I am paying attention to what I am doing, I find myself repeating the same pattern over and over and expecting different results.

What is wonderful and important right now, is reading this and wondering if reptition applies to your life. If it does, it is your lucky day, because from this moment onward there is an opportunity to take a new approach to how you manage your life.

If you realize you have been doing the same things and hoping for a different outcome, this moment is the time to know and believe that nothing will change except the calander date. There may be an occasional fluke where something different happens, and your mind will jump on it reinforcing the thought that you are on the right track, but do not take one instance an place it above the other hundred or more instances.

Repeating the same patterns leads to the same results. Starting now, make an effort to change the way you do things. The first time, or the first twenty times may bring about change you do not want, but at least you are making changes, and you know what won’t work. Eventually you will find what works and your life will take off in the direction you really want it to go in. Of course you will have to take personal responsibility to step out from the crowd and dare to be different…and the crowd won’t like that.

If we needed something done in our life, or wanted to modify someone in our life, it could be the same process. Reach into our construction set box, pull out some tools and off we go. Fixing, modifying, creating, changing someone around us into someone better for our life.

There is some good news about our construction sets. We all have one. Our construction sets are standard equipment given out when we are born into this world. It is always with us, and it is always in use. From the moment we wake, perhaps even in our sleep, we remove and use tools out of our construction set. We are busy shaping our world into something we feel is more like what we want.

Looking around it is obvious that some people are very good at using the tools in their construction set. Their life appears to be perfect, they have everything anyone could want. At least it looks as if they have everything you and I may want. It seems they are master craftsmen and have used their tools with all the skill and finesse becoming a master craftsman.

When we look at our own lives we see a different picture. Some parts of our life are working pretty well, and some other areas need some major work. It could be in how we manage our resources, perhaps our relationships, or maybe even our time. For some it may seem that we lost our construction set somewhere along the way and most things in our life need fixing.

There is something valuable we may have missed about construction sets in general. All the tools we need to create, change, or modify our world are inside our box of tools. For the most part, we are masters in the use of all the tools we have in our constructions too.

Our live consists of a lifetime of repair, modification, change, level, and rebuild. Our construction sets are complete when we were born, but we are not. We have all the tools we need and we know how to use them, but it takes a lifetime, sometimes longer to create the world we envision.

In the meantime, though, we have all the tools we need to keep working on our masterpiece. All it takes is being true to ourselves, knowing what we really want for our lives, and not letting ourselves be distracted from our future. Sounds simple, and perhaps for some it is, but for the rest of us, there is one important tool in our construction kit that we often overlook.

The tool we overlook the most is checking our progress against our plan. We made a plan sometime in our past, and we get so busy we never stop to check our progress against our plan until it is obvious something went wrong somewhere along the line. The great thing is when we do learn to occasionally check our work against our plan, this tool becomes one of the most important and least overlooked tool in our personal construction kits.

It sure felt good when on the winning end to really punish the other person. Taking it one step further. Adding a few extra hurtful comments because I knew I could was extra frosting on the cake.

Over time, I learned, or maybe unlearned, that I was not doing myself any good going above and beyond when I won an argument. It made me feel good for a few minutes of course. Or maybe I should say it made my ego feel good.

What I found was the price I extracted in collecting my proverbial pound of flesh from the other person would eventually turn out to be very expensive for me. I found out my behavior I was really hurting myself in the long run.

Over time, I find it better not to let arguments become that heated if at all possible. The more battles I took on, even more battles would make their presence known. In the end there are only a few battles worth fighting.

What I learned to do was stop arguing when I won. When losing, I found it is less painful to concede immediately. Stopping at the first opportunity is something practiced in martial arts where the idea is to stop the violence as quickly as possible with the least amount of harm to the opponent.

Fighting battles can be fun. Winning them is fun. Punishing the loser is even more fun. It is a blast in fact, until I needed something that only the person I hurt could do for me. Then suddenly it became obvious that the price they paid was much smaller than the price I would end up paying.

At first it was hard to stop. Hard to make myself stop when I had a lifetime of taking arguments too far, too often. With practice it became easier, and when done long enough, stopping before an argument became heated and something painful was said, became second nature.

So what is the benefit in not taking an argument too far? The most obvious is the other person does not feel like they have an enemy. They know what they were saying was actually heard and understood. In the future they may be may be more likely to help you, or at least not do anything to hamper you because they are not your enemy.

Being perceived as more mature comes in third for me. Not letting a disagreement become personal, and therefore heated, allows me to stay focused on keeping the disagreement respectful.

I find I have more energy. I have more energy because I am not wasting energy and effort on something that is not that important.

Life becomes easier and simpler. Not wasting time and energy on something that when compared to the bigger things in life are not really that important, allows more time and effort for what really matters. Not spending my energy trying to win an argument at any cost, gives me more time to notice those little things that make a big difference in the quality of my life.

When enough time is put into not arguing for the sake of arguing, I now understand other peoples arguments may be valid when they disagree with me.

Because I learned other people are not always wrong, I started seeing the person. When I start seeing the person, I know they are trying to enjoy their life just like I am. They may be going about it differently, but they are not wrong.

Reaching this point, a happier more filling life starts to happen, and life becomes happier and more enjoyable because almost everyone is moving in the same direction I am.