Strengthen your concentration

What can you do to strengthen your concentration? Turn off the blaring music or change over to some more peaceful of meditative. Switch off the television. Put down the phone and turn on an answering machine if you have one.  Tear yourself away from those addictive computer games. Stop talking about doing things that are unrelated to the task at hand. Adjust your environment to suit your task or move yourself to a setting which will permit you to focus. Collect all the items  and information you need to accomplish your task. Put them together in one place and sort them.

It is never too late to revise your approach to concentration. You can start where you are. Decide if staying where you are in your current circumstances will enable you to move ahead.  If this is not the case, then it's time to take the necessary steps to accomplish more in new ways.

Crisis is opportunity

Any problem you perceive or experience, even the worst situations imaginable, actually contains the beginnings of the best possible things that could happen.  You can learn to reframe a crisis as an opportunity. Your point of view determines what seems easy or hard. What becomes far more important is whether you evolve to consider your pursuits to be more satisfying and fulfulling.

Consider entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki went through a difficult period where bankruptcy initially forced him to live in his car with his wife for six months.  They readily admit that was the toughest period of their lives.  Yet, knowing hardship prompted them to develop new faith in themselves.  It encouraged them to trust their dreams. They swallowed their pride, asked for help, took friends up on an offer to l live in a basement and 9 months later, they were back on their feet. Kiyosaki recreates his version of success as a best-selling author, real estate investor and financial advisor.

Consider a young man had a burning desire to pursue a musical career but was repeatedly told he had no talent.  He came  to suffer from low self-confidence, and didn't initially see everything he labelled as a problem was really a self-created illusion.  He opted to become a pharmacist, but he never let go of his dream.  When new friends encouraged him to enter the 2006 Australian Idol contest, he never anticipated winning. Funny, now Damien Leith's native Ireland wants him back! Athought in the process of becoming an Australian citizen, he does not forget his roots.

Both these men come to see they couldn't get rid of their problems by getting angry or trying to understand how people felt around them.  Instead, they had to step back and see it is up to each of us to notice and correct errors in our own thinking.  Each of these men discover inner power to reframe conditions, to view all experiences as part of learning curves and view every perception is a stepping stone.  In essence, they show us perceived problems are exercises in character-building. 

One big message stands out:  to doubt and discourage is like standing in our own way.  Each of us is invited to appreciate all experience and accept ourselves as we are.  Though we create our own personal versions of external success, inner success is given.  Intrinsic worth is always here.

Severing views of your history

Undesirable situations in your present are simply perceptions.  They are grounded in a belief about history.  The more you dwell on and share painful stories, the more you add energy to negative feelings and cement a sense of the past.  The essence of being exists beyond them. 

Consider an idea that Carlos Castaneda's teacher, the Nagual Don Juan, told him about what one requires to arrive at the highest level of peace and harmony:

"One day," he said, "I finally realized that I no longer needed a personal history, and just like drinking, I gave it up, and that, and only that, has made all the difference."

Whatever happened in your past is simply a belief.  Watch what happens as you shift attention from that kind of perception  To focus on the present is to know the past is imagined into being. You exert control over how you feel.  Use this time you have to your advantage.

Sever those experiences ona  teimline that evoke restlessness and discomfort.  Let them go such that they no longer control you. Focus on feeling good where you are and know everything emerges based on how you feel.  As you love everything. Life is perfect.  The more you encourage, the more you enrich the world.    Mind invites youto focus attention on the future, tells you the best is yet to come. The heart feels the best is here.  Now choose. 

Do you love yourself?

Seeking approval is a sign.  Reaching for approval reveals you doubt yourself.  If you decide not to seek approval, you begin to see that what other people think doesn't reallyaffect who you are inside.   Why? You don't have to be what people desire or expect.  Loving yourself unconditionally means you accept yourself and do not seek to change anything.

As you begin to consider things about yourself you might wish to change, reflect also on people or circumstances that may have prompted you to feel this way. Learn to rise above these influences. Tell yourself honesty triggers a fulfilling life.  Denying innate love and acceptance blocks a human being from living physical existence to the fullest.

"How do we love ourselves? One way is by not seeking approval outside ourselves."

-Byron Katie

Gateway of humility

Humans are taught to think life isn't supposed to be a smooth journey. Many of us have "close calls" where it may seem like death misses us by a whisker. Did you have a close call where you felt it wasn't your time to leave? Did you approach the gateway of humility, a tunnel of light perhaps and realize love is the answer? Maybe you feel a bigger plan is at work?

I knew a girl who was hit by a car and put into a coma. She ended up pulling out of it and later, regaining consciousness.  She indicated her deceased grandmother had told her she'd be back another time.  The doctors didn't believe her. Her family wasn't sure if she was hallucinating. She believes her grandmother is now a guardian angel who protects her.

Alison Dubois' life demonstrates the power of guardian angels. She is the focus of a t.v. show called Medium and author of the best-selling book, "Don't Kiss them Goodbye."

When she was six, Allison's deceased great-grandfather supposedly approached her with a message for her mother: "I am okay, I am still with you. Tell your mom there's no more pain." Allison shared his comforting words with her mother and turned to embrace a lifetime of creating connections between loved ones and the those they have lost who are seldom really far away.

Another purpose of her Alison's gifts surfaced while she was an intern in the homicide bureau of a district attorney's office. Curiously, she began to visualize the crime as she handled evidence. She claims to have regular dreams where people contact her from the other side. Allison listened to her Higher Self and gave up law school aspirations to be a consultant profiler on criminal investigations. Her abilities have also been tested in closed research studies and one of the many test subjects she impressed with her readings turned out to be Deepak Chopra.

Alison trusts her guides and surrenders to a power greater than herself.  This enables her to exist at a high level of conscious awareness, to accept and evolve with changes as the observer inside herself.  Her life is a testament to the benefits of trusting love, energy and guardian angels.  She senses these being make themselves available to assist us providing we ask.