Allan and Barbara Pease &10 behavioral revelations

Allan and Barbara Pease are experts in human relations and body language.  They have sold over 20 million books including, Why Men Don't Listen and Why Women Don't Read Maps, Why Men Lie and Women Cry, Why Men Don't Have a Clue and Women Always Need More Shoes, and The Definitive Book of Body Language: how to read others' thoughts by their gestures.  They're also popular public speakers. I have had the pleasure of being in th audience of some of their events and always come away with gems of wisdom.  This has real relevance and staying power.

Even if you have never heard of these people, these 10 tips taken from their books will trigger your own "ah-ha" moments.  After all, as you dream, devise a plan and proceed unconsciously, its your underlying thoughts and emotions that determine how your vision or dream unfolds: 

1) Being perceptive means being able to spot contradictions between someone's words and their body language. (Being self-aware means discerning these things in yourself).

2) For a man, success in the mating game relies on his ability to read the signals being sent to him, as opposed to being able to initiate.  Women's difficulty in finding partners isn't about reading signals, its more about finding a partner who will match their criteria.

3) Modern humans are worse at reading body signals than their ancestors because we are now distracted by words.

4) When a person's words and body language are in conflict or contradict, women ignore what is said.  Men react differently.

5) Submissive dogs reveal their throats.  Humans reveal their palms.  The position of your hands on your arms, legs or in the air actually reveals if you're being honest with yourself.

6) A natural smile produces characteristic wrinkles around the eye--insincere people smile only with their mouth.

7) Science proves the more you smile, the more positive reactions others will give you. (Good advice is to smile constantly. Everyone will wonder what you're up to.)

8) The older human beings become, the more serious they become.  An adult laughs an average of 15x/ day while preschoolers laugh  more than 400x/day.

9) People drink alcohol and take drugs to try to feel how happy people feel normally.

10) When the mind closes, the physical body follows.  The question is, do you notice the real meaning behind gestures or choose to beat your head against the wall?

Buddha & 4 views to shatter false assumptions

Sometimes inspirational mentors can be well-known yet, rather obscure.  They can set an ideal or a standard which prompts you to reflect on how you view yourself.  For me, Buddha represents mystery and heightened awareness. The three phases of his life experience--Siddhartha the prince, Gautama the monk, and Buddha the Compassionate, enlightened one, all set examples that urge the rest of us to redefine our own awakening:

1) Discover the truth.  According to Buddha, the individual person or concrete sense of self are illusions.  He grew to sense how ignorance and attachment lead human beings to create false assumptions and misunderstandings, including getting stuck in a limited self-view, rather than embracing unconditional love and infinite potential.  He urges us to willingly rethink the meaning and temptations of ownership, possession and control.

2) Believe in karma.  This brings us to the principle of 'what goes around comes around.'  Emotional attachments can weigh heavily on the human soul.  If a soul is held back by a sense of failure, fear, pain or regret, then it may be reluctant to heal the past.  Your prior experiences influence your psyche.  Good karma, means acting well so to ensure a healthy psyche in years to come (fruit of karma).  Past lives also influence where you are.

3)  Review your patterns.  Buddha claimed we tend toward or away from anticipated suffering. Learn why you hate or fear not getting what you want, or not receiving.  Conditioning leads you to distinguish good feelings from bad. Buddha appeared to grow from the hardships and pain of reality that Prince Guatama knew of in this world.

4) Follow the Middle Path.  Eliminate your attachment to existence, desire, and prosperity, and a way to the Middle Path will be revealed. This is achieved through the Holy Eightfold Path which includes; Right Belief, Right Aspiration, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Means of Livelihood, Right Endeavor, Right Memory, and Right Meditation.

Building a mindset like Buddha leads to insight, then acquired wisdom, which yields calm, knowledge, and eventually, Nirvana. Buddha deduced all else was linked to some unnecessary suffering.  He felt true peace and happiness could only be experienced through your mind and true pain and suffering could be felt in reality.  Whether or not we agree, we're invited to explore new ways of being to overcome our resistence to change.

7 Ways to experience your authentic self

To experience your authentic self would mean to experience your deepest, heart-felt dreams.  As you evolve to deduce that how you think creates who you are, then you will sense benefits in these steps which can guide you to get-in-touch with your soul:

1) Be present.  No matter what you have in mind, to be present solely in body won't get you where you wish to go.  You need to evolve to be present emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually.  This implies developing greater holistic awareness of yourself.  Sift through the barriers you project that keep you focused and grounded in the past.

2) Speak your truth.  This means you learn to express how you feel with no fear of judgment, reprimand, criticism or punishment.  You can express feelings while nurturing love and respect for others, and for yourself.  As you work on whatever issues relate to your particular soul development, you will also connect with like-minded souls. 

3) Listen to and from the heart.  To discern the inclinations of your soul, you need to be more attuned to all aspects of everyday life.  The key is to trust in the process, in all events that unfold. To have faith in your intuition is to trust and grow your connection with the Forces behind your thoughts and feelings.  Use senses to read other senses.

4) Detach from outcomes.  This kind of attitude prevents you from being controlled by the ego-mind.  Value can always be found in choosing to learn from life experiences and choosing to change yourself. You have opportunities to increase your strength and awareness, to sharpen your ability to overcome inertia, and heal yourself.

5) Strengthen your will.  Visualize everything as you would will it to happen.  Increase your awareness of the possible advantages of channelling your own will energy.  Consider why you need it.   Take steps to apply it.  Connect with your Divine plan now. 

6) Dissolve your fears.  Any reason or excuse you offer for not doing what you truly desire is actually hiding an underlying fear.  If you aim to talk youself out of your dreams, you simply devalue your experience and you also forget you create your own illiusons. 

7) Eliminate distractions.  This is done from inside yourself and naturally shifts your attention to where it should be.  The only way to get to the bottom of distractions is to get in touch with your sense of purpose and priorities.  It all gets back to being honest and loyal to the person you are.  Without that, you distort your sense of the truth.

4 Tips to discern more about yourself through blogging

The more you read about blogs and blogging strategies, the more you may think about how similar strategies could assist you in different ways. Inspired by Tina Su of ThinkSimpleNow.com  who wrote a great guest blog on Problogger, and also inspired by ideas offered by Jason Ivers on  A Miracle A Day.com, I decided to prompt you to ask some of your own questions to empower you to develop dreams in your own way:

1) Why are you blogging? Lots of people blog to pass the time.  You may do it when you're bored, daydreaming or, to satisfy a desire to learn.  Some of us blog to connect with like-minded people, to search for answers, to obtain advice or direction or, as a means to compensate for emotional voids.  You may be driven to forge relationships or to postpone another reality.  Probe yourself with questions to get the ball rolling.  As you figure out why you blog, its easier to notice what isn't working and decide to change.

2) What are your blog goals?   Sometimes people start a blog to narrow their life focus.  They may blog about anything and everything, and gradually realize they prefer discussing fewer subjects.  This can help clarify an identity or purpose.  If your purpose is soul-searching or venting, blogging can be an effective, emotional outlet. Yet, if your main purpose is something else, like, to inform, to increase your traffic, build a client base or, to promote particular services, then you can see how reflecting and focusing your motives would help you immensely.  Brainstorming is a fantastic starting point.   

3) How does a blog teach you about yourself?  How you choose to contribute or present blog info reflects your priorities and offers a glimpse into your personality. Are you goal-oriented? Ambitious? Confused? In-transition? Does the spirit of a teacher emerge in your soul? Do you have a particular audience or community's interests in mind? Its not only what you instinctively write that reveals things about you, but also the kinds of readers your energy invites into your life.  As your blog intentions become clearer, readers are more likely to gravitate and benefit.  People readily reconnect when drawn to a threads of interest (or other appealing things on offer).  As you sense blogs are a means of raising self-awareness, you gain your own momentum.  

4) Who are your readers?  Although blog visitors don't always leave comments, you can progressively gain insight about the kinds of people who visit and revisit your blog.  Consider systems that help you compile statistics.  You can determine details like which sites link your blog, which key words and articles are most popular, you can obtain geographic information abut your visitors and subscribers.  You can offer questionnaires and suggestion boxes to generate feedback.  It all depends on what you want.

So, the more you discern through blogging, the clearer you grasp what you want.  To get what you want, structure your blog to help others get what they want.  Simplicity means getting to know yourself in ways that become mutually-beneficial.  Now, run with it.

Transcend the pain

Do your habits of perceiving and understanding your life serve you or do you serve them? Pain is a signal you can learn to explore and grasp at different levels of awareness.  What you sense in your present, or anticipate in your future is grounded in your limited view ofthe past.  How would you dissolve unwanted patterns and unlock your true intuition?

You only cope with pain as you accept and understand its message.  As you evolve to recognize meanings behind your pain, that is, the reasons for past emotional wounds in need of healing, the quality and intensity of your pain changes.  In other words, you discover more effective ways of dealing with it. You can react positively to pain, and find ways to heal.  You can encourage an absence of intention to dwell on the past.  The more pain you expect, the quicker the controlled will of your ego will thwart your plans to access your unconscious, and the harder it becomes to filter your perception.

Time exists only for continuity of memory.  This can seem like a prison if you ground yourself in your recollections of discomfort.  What if you released memories? In actuality, you are infinite, immortal and enlightened. These are your baseline states, often overshadowed by the turbulence of mind and your vivid imagination.  Re-experiencing pain is choosing to dwell on bad memories. Your personality manifests when experience is associated with the past and projected into the future as expectations.

Rest assured.  At the core of your being, you are connected with the love and light that define your authentic self. As you sense the knowledge and intelligence of your centre, you will sense it orchestrates not only phases in your physical life, but all the lives.  Something beyond you encourages your process of change and renewal. 

As you step back, you begin to discern you only act as an observer of experiences, but you are not the experiencer.  You are the spirit that occupies no time or space.  You may think and feel.  Yet, you existed before perceived experiences and you still exist after each one. Spirit is the immeasurable potential of all that is, was and will be.