The Secret

he secret is developing away from a conciousness that gets what it wants to a consciousness that wants what it gets.
Jagdish Parikh

It is your ego that is the conciousness that gets what it wants. Your ego is constantly wanting new things in an effort to make you feel more important or powerful. It is a useful question to ask ourselves what is the real reason that we want some thing. Typically it is because we beleive that that thing will make us more important or powerful, and therefore happier. But the truth is that no particular thing can make us happy. Real happiness comes from inside us. It comes from an attitude, not any particular thing.

Real happiness comes from wanting what you get. If you only wanted what you had, you could never be discouraged or disappointed; and if you wanted everything you had without exception, you could never be sad or anxious or fearful. Thing how nice that would be! But when we are in a state of pain or poverty or hunger, it is very difficult to want what we have. In order to really want those things, we have to truly understand that the pain or poverty is meant to teach us something; to help us learn and grow and evolve. "Every cloud has a silver lining" if we will only stop to look for it instead of just wishing the whole cloud would go away.

So the secret of success is being happy with what you have already got; and being able to see the blessings all around you. But that doesn't mean you need to be perfectly content with what you have and never want more. There is a balance between having a burning desire for something and having a desire that hurts you. We are meant to always be wanting more. But when we approach our desire from a veiwpoint that doesn't expect this particular thing to make us happy (because we are already happy) or build our picture of who we are (or feel we should be); but is something we expect to get because we feel worthy and capable of it, then we will have found the secret to real success.

Finish What You Started

"Much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started."
David Allen"Getting Things Done"

Do you feel like there are just too many things for you to get done and the day just isn't long enough? In our society, we are very action oriented. We feel we are expected to get as much done as possible in our lives. We take on as many projects as possible. We feel guilty if we just sit down for a while and do nothing.

In fact, some people claim that we are turning into a society of ADHD. We can't even pay attention to news stories that last more than a few minutes; enough attention to really understand what is going on behind the events that are shaping our lives.

What we are missing is focus. We don't know what we really want to accomplish in our lives so we try to accomplish everything. And because there isn't time to do everything, we never get anything finished. There are always more urgent and/or appealing projects to get started instead. But there is a price to pay for this.

We never have the satisfaction of having completed a job and having spent enough time and undivided attention to it to have done it well. Another problem is that we only have enough attention for so many things at a time. If you have several unfinished projects, you don't have as much attention to pay to bringing new opportunities into your life. And, as Jack Canfeild says "The truth is that 20 things completed have more power than 50 things half completed. One finished book, for instance, that can go out and influence the world is better than 13 books you're in the process of writing."

Determine what you want to get accomplished in life, decide the first step to take towards that, and don't allow yourself to get distracted. Your life will be a lot less stressful that way.

For more ideas about how to be successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com/

"A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
George Bernard Shaw

Are you afraid of making mistakes? We are often so afraid of making mistakes that they don't make a decision about what to do. The are afraid that making the wrong decision will deprive us of what we want (whatever the right decision is supposed to bring us) . We have been taught to be careful that we don't make the wrong decision ("What if I make this choice and that happens?"). We feel we need to be perfect, and that we need to control the outcome of events ("What if it doesn't work out the way I plan?"). We feel that to make a mistake is an embarrassing failure. This petrifies us when we think about making a change or attempting a challenge.

We forget that not only are we, as humans, supposed to make mistakes, but that they are actually good for us. They teach us what doesn't work, and that helps us narrow down our list of things to try that might work. Thomas Edison made 10,000 "mistakes" while he was creating the light bulb. He commented "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." He was successful because he wasn't afraid of making mistakes.

Our lives are really like a big experiment where we are finding out what works and what doesn't. The most important thing of all is to get out there and take action. Yes, you may make a mistake, in fact you probably will. But that's okay as long as you learn what you can from it. Then you make any necessary adjustments in your plan, and keep going. There's nothing worse than sitting there, paralyzed by the fear of making mistakes, and letting life pass you by. They say that on your deathbed you will be regretting the things you didn't do, not the things you did (even if they proved to be mistakes).

For ideas about how to be successful, visit http://www.reachingmypotential.com/.