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How to Change Your Life – Part 4

Emotionals States

Anyone is vulnerable!               Image from dailymail.co.uk

“An emotion does not cause pain. Resistance or suppression of emotion causes pain.”
― Frederick Dodson

Emotional States and Life Change decision making

Don’t go shopping on an empty stomach! Makes sense really, doesn’t it! Your tummy will make you bring groceries home that only your present appetite would want.

So why deal with other issues, when your emotional state is not focussed where it needs to be?

One reality of Life Change events and periods is that your emotions will probably be a little turbulent. Especially if it was a sudden event and you didn’t choose it! If you were made redundant from a job you had been at for a long time, it is to be expected that you would be upset, possibly feel betrayed, hurt, abandoned and a host of other emotions. If it financially disadvantaged you, the emotions of fear and loss will be there also.

Emotional States

Emotional Turbulence – image from accuweather.com

Not a great frame of mind to start planning a new future, is it?

Understanding what goes on in your mind at times like these is the key to managing the emotions and turning them around to work for you. Being aware of your emotions is the first step in this management process!

I’m angry!

How often have you had something go wrong, and suddenly found yourself angry over it? Did you make the choice to be angry? Or did you just discover it happened? Mostly, we find out afterwards. However, it is possible to raise awareness to a level where we can see the emotional change coming, and then choose consciously, before it becomes too late, which emotion to feel, that will put us in the best position to deal with it.

Emotional States

Grrrr!               Image from dianafit.com

We have seen sports people put their opponents off their game with ‘sledging’ or other emotional upset strategies, whose game then goes off and they lose the match. However, some players, in whatever sport, seem immune to this behaviour. Why is that?

These professionals have mastered their emotions. They are aware of the emotional upset games and are acutely aware of their emotions, and CHOOSE different emotional states to counter them!

A TV series some years ago explained this in a wonderful and funny way. “Herman’s Head” was about Herman and the four “sub-personalities” in his head, in charge of his four major emotional states. The four characters acting out Herman’s emotions each represented a different aspect of his personality and were very one dimensional. This is a very fair representation of what goes on, although we have many more than four sub-personalities! Remember the ‘shopping when hungry’ experience? How powerful but one dimensional is the pull of the appetite when shopping while ravenous! The fast food counter got a work-over, the BBQ chicken counter had us in from the start, but none of the laundry items made it home!

Emotional States

Herman’s Head TV Show – image from brainsandcareers.com

In a similar manner, when we are angry, we think of little else. When we are sad or depressed, our thinking is in a very narrow focus. However, by being aware of our emotional states and choosing differently, we could be in a much more productive frame of mind.

Rather than angry about losing that job, how about becoming creative and finding a brilliant new way of promoting how valuable you are to a new potential employer? Rather than becoming a Kamikaze Road Rage driver when cut off, how about choosing to be a responsible parent and keep the children sitting in the back seat safe and out of harm’s way? Rather than being depressed, how about being resourceful and choosing to see the future differently?

It’s all about changing that attitude.

The problem is that once it is upon you, it’s very hard to change. You need to catch it beforehand, and choose differently before you are overwhelmed by the new emotional upset.

How do we become aware of emotional states and upsets and changes before they happen?

One section of the Life Change 90 program does precisely this. You make a note of your emotional states each evening through a simple, 30 second process we show you. Over a short time, this makes being aware of your emotional state or changes natural, and you actually CAN see them coming.

Once that happens, you can then choose differently. It really is that simple. However, you need to develop that awareness first and the Life Change 90 program is one of the few readily available ways to easily gain this awareness.

There are other benefits of this awareness also. You learn the range of emotional states you have available within you, to call upon when needed. For example, for those terrified of public speaking, you could call on that part of your psyche that loved to show off, and actually enjoy getting up with a microphone. For those who feared the dark, you could call on that part of your psyche that loved exploring, and make an adventure of the night time! There are so many other examples, and each person will have their own to think about.

If you’d like to develop your emotional awareness as a strategy to deal with and even prevent emotional upset, Life Change 90 has this feature built into it, as part of a powerful suite of tools created specifically to enable you to deal with and manage life change events and times to your benefit. Download it now and start working on your own emotional states, get them working for you, instead of controlling your life for you.

If the life change event or process is too much for you to work on alone, there are people you can ask for help – specialist Life Change Coaches.

Next section of this ‘How To Change Your Life’ series, we will look at Goalsetting, the thing that so many people are afraid of, yet they are actually doing it all day, every day!  Goalsetting for your life change process is a little different to regular goalsetting, and you need to understand that difference!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

“When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self-esteem. We have to slow down and deal with what is troubling us, so that we can enjoy the simple joy of being happy and at peace with ourselves.” ― Jess C. Scott

Related posts:

How to change your life – part 3 – Self Discipline

Life Change Event Definition

It’s OK to ask for help

 

How to Change Your Life – Part 3

How to change your life part 3

A word from Jim Rohn on the topic

Self Discipline

If you are overweight and out of shape, going along to a gym won’t make a scrap of difference. Unless you go back, time after time, develop discipline around the issue, and make fitness development a habit! Just one trip won’t make a difference!

Perhaps the greatest challenge in making serious life changes is breaking out of the habits embedded over many years of use and daily reinforcement.

Changing habits is a huge issue; just ask any smoker, or someone who has tried to break or change a habit. Powerful self-discipline strategies are needed if you intend to break or change habits on your own. However, there is another way.

How to change your life part 3

       Breaking habits can be a challenge.   Image from fwweekly.com

Automating your life change program can be a powerful alternate strategy, especially when you have so much else going on in your life. Setting aside a few minutes each morning and evening to set up your daily program may make the difference for you, and begin the mental reprogramming you need to make these changes work, and stay with you forever.

How to change your life part 3

Putting your auto in drive!   Image from ask.cars.com

How does automating your life changes work?

There was significant research done by Pavlov, using dog feeding times and a bell, to record the use of stimulus and response to establish habits. This technique is essentially a prompt and reward for the appropriate behaviour once achieved. In a different but conceptually similar way, we program our minds each morning, and check off the results each evening, focussing on the positive achievements to feel the reward.

By implanting our goals, intentions and tasks in our minds each morning, we begin the process. For example, if your life change goal required you to take certain steps each day towards achieving it, by reminding yourself each morning by taking a few moments to note exactly what those steps are, your mind is then sent on a search for the opportunity to complete those tasks. It’s not something you consciously have to do, as your subconscious mind is already at work on the project.

During the day, your mind will locate the opportunities you need to complete those steps, and make you aware when it has found them.

To be specific, if you put the thought into your mind “I need to get a map of the downtown area today” and note it in your to-do list, while you are out and about, your subconscious mind is looking for where you might find such a map. When you near a newsagent, post office, information booth or other such likely place, it will pop a thought into your conscious mind and you will remember to look for the map you need.

How to change your life part 3

The power of the subconscious mind! Image from beyondthedream.co.uk

The same applies to either changing or creating a new habit – put it into your subconscious mind early in the day and let your subconscious do the work for you.

As with everything, the more you do this, the more practice you have, the better you become at noticing when your subconscious mind prompts you with one of your daily steps “to do” from your morning routine.

Once you have completed the task or the habit-forming action, you will feel a little sense of self-satisfaction and your self-discipline requirements are done.

In the evening, you sit with your program for a few minutes and review your day. On the list is the task: “Purchase a map of Downtown”. Check it off, and you have rewarded yourself in a tiny way, for achieving that mini-goal. If it was the new habit, you check it off also.

Of course, there are habit changes and other steps towards your goal that you will take each day. Each morning, you note them in your program. During the day, you find and achieve them, and in the evening, you check them off.

Doing this provides you with a visual and an emotional record of your achievements, and your daily use of this system begins to embed the new habit or activities into your subconscious mind, so that you no longer have to consciously work at the habit or activity to remember it – the new system has automated it and it is already happening.

A final step in the process is recording your achievements on a monthly sheet with a check mark, showing your monthly activities at a glance. Each day you completed or achieved the tasks and goals you set yourself is recorded for you to see, along with your moods and emotional state – the subject of the next blog. The chart Shows you your progress for the month at a glance, a visual pat on the back for your progress and success!

How do you set up self-discipline automation?

The program is the Life Change 90 program, a 3 month program designed to enable you to change your life over this 90 day period, with all of the Life Change tools you need, and many bonuses in addition. One of them is the Self-Discipline that the program develops.

Once this self-discipline is programmed into your subconscious, you automatically look for opportunities to advance your goals and life change process through your subconscious. It will seem like you are attracting, as suggested in the “Law of Attraction” promotions, all these wonderful opportunities to you. The reality is that you are training your subconscious mind to be aware of the opportunities when they appear around you, and to take action on them when they appear. The celebrations each evening for your achievements locks the successes and the new habits in place!

Download your copy of the Life Change 90 program now, to get your next 3 months of Life Change Automation started, as soon as possible.

If you need support with it, you have the option of Life Change Coaching to really power through your life change process, and greatly reinforce your self-discipline with the accountability of having a Life Change Coach to support your efforts.

Next time: Your emotional state during times of change

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

“If you wouldn’t follow yourself, why should anyone else?”  ― John C. Maxwell

Related posts:

How to Change Your Life – Part 2

How to change your life – Part 1

Life Change Event Definition

How to change your life part 3

Enjoy the rewards! Image from tumblr.com

Google Teenage Problems.

teenage problems

            Looking like the weight of the world is on her shoulders.                                                                                Image from visual photos                                                             

I AM SHOCKED!

Teenagers only have to focus on themselves – it’s not until we get older that we realize that other people exist.   Jennifer Lawrence

I was originally going to write about the most influential and positive role models of my early life, and did a little research on it. I looked for how many searches people did on the topic, and found that there were only 30 searches (globally) for that exact search and around 3,000 for that topic in general.

However, in the same search program, which brings up “related topic searches”, I also found:

Search topic                                        Exact match                     Broad match

positive role models for teens                   10                                   100
positive role models for teenagers           30                                   270
positive role models                                   720                                 18720
positive role models for girls                    70                                    630

However, the search also found:

troubled teens                                              4400                            171600
teen depression                                           9900                             386100
teen pregnancy                                            49500                          1930500
teen pregnancy help                                   590                               14750
teenage problems                                       6600                             257400
teen issues                                                   2900                             113100
teenage depression                                    8100                              307800
teen suicide                                                 18100                            705900

teenage problems

Not necessarily a good role model either! Image from belfasttimes.co

What is this saying about what is really going on with teenage problems?

There are more searches each month globally for “Teen Suicide” than there are for all the positive searches for good teen role models! There are so many more people seeking solutions to the teenage problems, than there are seeking positive ways to prevent the problems!

That lifts the scab on the huge issue of teenage problems. I confess, until I saw this, I didn’t realise the incredible depth of the teenage problems issue, even though I have written about the topic in general previously in my blog on “Empowerment for Teens”.

What is needed, obviously, are many more positive influences and role models for children and teenagers, to influence the growth and development of our youth so that these teenage problems are prevented – rather than becoming teenage problems needing treatment!

We can all play a role in this – literally! Are you a good role model for youth? Do you lead with an example that you would be happy your children could follow? Or would you be concerned if your children did as you demonstrated, but not as you said?

Children learn by example and follow the leads given by their most powerful influences in those formative years. Those potentially positive influential people are firstly, their parents, family friends and especially friends of their parents who they see regularly, and their teachers. They are also greatly influenced by what their own friends and peers do and say – mostly learning their habits – good or bad, because in the early stages of learning at least, they still don’t know the difference!

teenage problems

                                                  Peer groups – they can make or break a teenager!                                                   Image from tagesthemen24.de

How can we break this cycle of teenage problems?

Who were the most influential people in your early years? What did you learn from them? What can you still learn from them, on reflection?

Let me tell you of a few influences of my early years, to explain what I mean.

Aside from my parents’ influence, we had a family friend called Dennis. He was an amazing guy and a lot of fun to be with. He met my Dad when I was around 4 or 5 years old, when we were having some construction work done on the farm. He was a friend of the builder, and Dad and Dennis hit it off. He often came up to do a bit of spotlight shooting after this, and that was when we met his wife, Norma.

Norma was a paraplegic. She had been wheelchair bound since around age 18, when a car accident changed her life. She and Dennis were sweethearts at the time and he never left her side. They married and were fortunate to have a child. Dennis was a man’s man, worked as an electrician in the steel mills at Port Kembla, but was also a devoted husband and father, with strict personal disciplines and moral standards that he lived by. He set an example that has stayed with me for all of my life.

When Norma died, I was about 16. She and Dennis had become part of our family, even though they lived 200 miles away. It hit us hard, but Dennis was our strength through it all. He is still strong and courageous, well into his eighties now. He remarried and shared a wonderful relationship with his second wife until recently when she also passed away, again leaving him alone. I spoke to him about his loss and he was shaken, although still his wonderful, compassionate self. I thanked him for the example he had set me for my life to aim for, and he was most humble. He said it was just a day at a time and his aim was to make each day count. Dennis, you certainly did – your days and mine also. Thank you.

Teachers can have a huge influence on the enthusiasm and appetite of youth for all things exciting and perhaps forbidden. No one knew this better than the other major influence in my early years, that of John Stanley Gabb, the wool classing teacher and registrar of the Cootamundra Technical College. He was only a small man, and his uniform seemed to be a white dustcoat and shiny black shoes, over a shirt and tie. He was always well-groomed, probably around 40 years of age when we met, and I was 15.

His class was about a dozen unruly farm teenagers who were ostensibly there to learn to class wool, so they could handle the shearing season on their own farms. However, living miles from town and company meant these guys were also out for a day off the farm, to play up and create merry hell wherever they went before, during and after the class. John Gabb was equal to the task.

Big John Clark was a great example of the students. He would stand up near the front of the room, one foot on the chair seat, elbow on his knee and told jokes non-stop for as long as he was allowed, never cracking a smile, never pausing and knowing that the rest of the room was unable to draw breath for the laughter. But John Gabb was able to judge exactly when was the right time to intervene and say “OK, Guys, let’s give that a break and work on what we are supposed to be doing.” Always firm, but never authoritarian, and always respected.

Respected so much that when these boisterous teens had trouble, he was also the one they went to for advice. No, he wasn’t their agony aunt, but he was a great first step in the process, usually before the boys told their parents the problems they were having. Over the four years I knew him, these informal chats prevented probably half a dozen major episodes of teenage problems that I knew about. He also had other classes and there were a few hundred students at the college, whom I never met. However, he made it his business to know them all, and be available to them.

Twenty years later, I went back to Cootamundra to find John Gabb, and he had retired. As it happened, he retired to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, only an hour’s drive north of where I lived. I was running my seminars at the time and made it my business to call in to his home, to thank him personally for the influence he had in my life. I did not realise during my time at college how powerful he was. It was only a decade later when I faced certain challenges that his lessons, teachings and examples were the ones I used to pull me through. As I began writing my seminars, teaching and lecturing from the stage to quite large groups of people, I realised how much of his influence was still coming through.

That’s the thing about solid foundations and good principles, they are right and correct, down through the ages. John Stanley Gabb was influencing young people still, all around Australia, through my work, twenty and thirty years later, as he sat in his lounge room up on the Sunshine Coast. When I met him again, his welcome was warm. When I told him what I was doing, and thanked him for the powerful influence he had been in my life, his eyes teared over and he thanked me for telling him.

People such as these are the ones who really make a difference. I know that I could have had serious teenage problems if not for their influence. I was as wild and strong-minded as any other teen, perhaps more than most, but I had great role models in these people, as well as the examples set by my parents. I was fortunate. It seems so many more kids are not, or there would not be so many searches for teenage problems on Google!

Again, I ask you, are you a suitable role model for your children, and those of your neighbours and friends? Or will those children be searching for “teenage problems” on Google as well?

teenage problems

       Are you a good role model for her to follow? Image From strategylab.ca

If you are happy that you are being all you can be, as a role model for today’s youth, then I congratulate you. If you feel you could do more, then may I recommend a look at Life Change 90?

You already know you CANNOT TELL children and teenagers how to act and behave. That’s just an invitation to rebel against you and everything you stand for.

Rather, demonstrate in your life what they aspire to, with the love and satisfaction they also desire, through knowing and using the tools available to them also and which you will not only learn, but develop as habits through Life Change 90. Show them what they want to see and let them know it is available to them also. Join me in Life Change 90.

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.    Doug Larson

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

You have teenagers thinking they’re going to make millions as NBA stars when that’s not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is.     Dean Kamen

Related Blogs

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Success Habits

Og Mandino – Lessons from the Master

Og Mandino

Og Mandino Courtesy of Wikipedia

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.”
― Og Mandino

When Og Mandino touched my life

There are moments in our lives that are indelibly etched, that live with us forever. One such moment in my life is when Og Mandino first walked out on stage in front of me, sat down and began to speak.

It was a day in early 1987, at the old Boondall Entertainment Centre on the north side of Brisbane. There were half a dozen famous speakers on the schedule; I’d only heard of a couple. A friend and business associate at the time invited me along. He had a mobile mechanic business and credited much of his success to staying motivated by events such as this. That still holds true, we do need a regular injection of inspiration. I was then new to the corporate world and this was my first taste of it.

A couple of high energy, foot stomping, stand on the chair and chant speakers came on, one of whom has since mellowed and gained great popularity. When he spoke, there was a great energy in the hall, 17,000 people were up and chanting too, clapping and cheering.

Then Og Mandino took the stage.

The man had a presence I have rarely experienced. He spoke softly, invited us to sit, then he sat and began to speak. In contrast to the energy of the previous speaker, he hardly moved on his chair. The audience didn’t move, not even sure they breathed for the next hour as this man poured wisdom forth as though there was nothing else happening anywhere in the world. I don’t recall a single person coughing, not a chair creaking, not a sound for that hour, except the voice of Og Mandino reaching into my heart and changing my life around for me. If ever there was an audience with an angel, this was it.

I have no further recollection of any of the speakers of that day, although I still have the promo material and notes I made. Og Mandino had done his work. That was, I think, his last visit to Australia. He passed away in September of 1996, the world was saddened by his passing and his loss to humanity was incredible. However, the man left a legacy that I had begun to devour long before then. He was also an inspired author.

The Og Mandino Legacy

Og Mandino wrote many books, the most famous of all was “The Greatest Salesman in the World”. I read it many times, and followed up a number of times with the ‘workbook’ “The Greatest Secret”. It was while working through the exercises in this book that I gained the personal empowerment and inspiration that has me writing to you now.

Not only did #Og Mandino teach through the wisdom of his writing, he used strategies that if implemented, work brilliantly. Old but powerful concepts that the greatest teachers and philosophers down the ages have used to change the world. He made the suggestion that we record our successes daily, so that we could see at a glance, just how successful we were. He described a simple graph paper chart he used and I followed up on it.

First, I took a sheet of paper, ruled it up as I thought he meant, and went to work with it. Then I got my first computer, and created a spreadsheet in Excel. Each morning I would set my intention and goals for the day, and each night I would tick off my successes. My life turned on this program.

At the time, I was recovering both in health and from a business failure, and my goals for recovery from each went on this sheet. Month after month, I would check back and chart my progress. Some months I would see poor results, so I got out my diary and checked what I did that did not work – and saw how to change it for the better. Other months were a series of daily celebrations. On review, I could see what worked, so I incorporated more of those events and activities into my life. Simple although crude, but incredibly effective, daily doses of empowerment. Daily readings of Og Mandino books were a staple at this time in my life, consolidating my successes and carrying me through the dark times.

Og Mandino

Og Mandino Fundamentals Courtesy of pixpirations.com

After only a couple of years of rebuilding my health and my life, I restarted in a new career direction. I had undertaken the Entrepreneurs Program at University of Queensland, the Business Programs at Kedron Business College and numerous other courses, programs and seminars, when the share market crashed.

The 1987/1988 share market crash was a global catastrophe. Lives and businesses were ruined overnight. But I was ready. I found that people were coming to me in my new vocation of business adviser to get them back out of trouble, out of impending bankruptcy, business closures and persecution by the banks. I had made my own turn-around, and now armed with the tools of my recent experiences, I took on this challenge. The incredible part was that the empowerment strategies I had used on myself, combined with the business education I had obtained, were both the emotional and business support and advice that these ailing and failing business owners needed. We never lost one who came on board with us! We saved millions of dollars for companies that were within days and sometimes hours of closure, hundreds of jobs that would have vanished, ruining lives and families as they went. But we saved them all.

I thank Og Mandino for it. His teachings and wisdom enabled me to be in the right place at the right time, to make this contribution and Mr Og Mandino, I am eternally grateful to you Sir. Thank you.

The programs I created back then were followed by far more advanced programs in later years, seminars, workshops and advanced trainings in many fields, delving into the neuro-sciences and alternative thinking therapies and strategies way before they were popular or fashionable. Life has changed and evolved much for me since then, and the products and services I now deliver are far more advanced than anything I could have dreamed of back in the 1980’s. However, just like you can trace your DNA back hundreds or thousands of years, so you can trace the DNA of my programs and training back to the simple, fundamental philosophies and teachings of Og Mandino, and some of the other great mentors of my early years in business and training.

Whilst some people have said that “unless it’s created with the technology of the current day, it doesn’t work anymore”, I think about the other fundamental laws of nature and physics and the generalised principles that still make the world go round. Gravity is one such law. It’s still working incredibly well. Cause and effect. Very powerful also. Sayings like “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar” and so on, still relevant and absolutely true. The fundamentals will always work. Because they are the fundamentals of life and of very our existence on this planet. They are there for everyone to use, if only they knew about them and would access them to their benefit.

Please look at this link about OG MANDINO. His life story makes for powerful reading. Before becoming a best-selling author, Og Mandino was a bombardier and pilot in the US Air Force during World War 2. He flew with fellow pilot and later movie star, James Stewart. During his early life after the war, he, like so many other returned soldiers, contemplated ending it all, but found inspiration in a book, and his life changed also. His remarkable life story is well worth reading…

Og Mandino

Og Mandino Air Crew Courtesy of www.natickvets.org

If you would like to experience the benefits of the teachings of Og Mandino as they influenced my life, you can. I have packaged much of what I learned from Og Mandino into Life Change 90, the life change program that over a period of just 90 days, can transform the life of the person who truly commits to it. No matter what you do, you are here, on this planet, and you are likely to be here for the next ninety days. Make them count. Get Life Change 90!

If you know someone else whose life could benefit from exposure to the principles espoused and taught by Og Mandino, please send this blog article to them. I’m sure they will thank you.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray

Prayer for change

#prayer for change

Prayers count, no matter who prays!
Image from www.atotheword.com

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”
Bernard M. Baruch

A Prayer for Change

While looking at my blog today, I chanced upon a section of the dashboard I hadn’t noticed before.  It showed the search terms people had used most to find my blog online.  It shocked me to realise what it meant.

The two top terms were:

  1. Prayer for change in my life

  2. Empowered Person

If ever there was a cry for help, both these terms are screaming it from the rooftops! Prayer for change and seeking empowerment!

For two decades I have delivered life changing workshops and seminars all over my country on exactly these topics, and the cry has been the same:

“I expected more out of life than this, by now!”

#prayer for change

I expected more out of life than this, by now!
Image from www.sott.net

I have heard it from teenagers, from young disillusioned couples, from parents with teenage kids, and from retirees, who were struggling still, after a lifetime of struggle.  A #prayer for change, if ever there was one!

When we were in school, we were told, and probably you were too:  “Study hard, get good grades, get a good job and have a good life!”  Well, these people all followed those directions and by the time they came to my workshops, that is how they felt – ripped off!  It was a lie, and they had fallen for it!  And now, they have this prayer for change!

There’s nothing wrong with having a good education and getting a good job.  However, that’s not it – that’s just the start!  Your education continues and it’s a lifelong program you are enrolled in!  The school of life is never on holidays – it always has something to teach you!  The question is – are you ready, willing and able to learn?

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
Oscar Wilde

For those people truly desiring change and empowerment, we have provided the Life Change 90 Program. Click here to learn more about Life Change 90.

For those people searching for a prayer for change, here is mine – click on this link for the whole blog:

Today, My Perfect Day

A day that I could begin by being of service to another, to start their day also with inspiration and love.

A day when I could plan and begin projects – dreams that could take all of my tomorrows to complete.

A day I would live as though it was my last, as though there would be no tomorrow.

A day when I would play the games I play to the limit,

To laugh as hard as I can,

To love as passionately as I am able,

To work and achieve to my capacity,

yet with time to rest and relax with my loved ones

until we are full of the love we have for one another.

A day when there is time to reflect,

To consider those whose fortunes have not yet been realised, as mine have,

To pray that they may be realised – soon.

A day which closes with a Prayer of Thanks to the Great Spirit and all the guides I have,

for watching over me through this day,

and to ask them to guide me through the next,

so that again someone might say:

“I’m glad that you came by!”

© Ray Jamieson 1993

#prayer for change

A pot of gold, after all?
Image from wordlesstech.com

For those searching for Empowerment, there is a whole series of empowerment blogs for you, everything from Financial Empowerment, to Empowerment for Men, Women, Children and Teens, and explanations on what Empowerment means and how to gain it!  The full list is below.

Thank you for your searches, and thank you for looking to Life Change 90 and our program for the answers to your prayer for change, and for your personal empowerment, in whatever form you desire it.  I hope we have helped you and you know that we will continue with our aims to empower many more people, in times to come.

If you feel this article has empowered and benefited you and you feel it could benefit the personal empowerment of other folks you know, please reblog it, share it with your friends and associates.  It might be the day you changed someone’s life for the better!  If that was that special person in your life, then congrats: you just changed your own life too!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails, and I hope your prayer for change is answered!

Ray Jamieson

Please also refer to my other posts on Empowerment:

Empowerment through Emotional Intelligence

Financial Empowerment

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Personal Empowerment

What would an empowered man do?

Empowered by love

Financial Empowerment

#Financial Empowerment

The financial jigsaw puzzle
Image from intentionalwealthinstitute.org

Update: Feedback is that this post on #Financial Empowerment is almost brutal. Sorry, but it has to be – people in financial crisis are often also in denial.  I know – I was one of them! This blog is from my hard-earned and learned lessons in financial empowerment!  I needed some ‘hard talking to’ in my time of crisis, and I don’t want you to go through what I experienced, because of my denial!

However, the post is not all bad news! If you recognise your symptoms below, you’ll be amazed at the reasons for why we do and feel what we do, and delighted with the range of options and solutions.  The links take you to even more detail on the solutions available to everyone who needs financial empowerment.

Financial Empowerment

There is an elephant in the room.  A great big ugly elephant.  We talk about empowerment and self development and personal growth but when someone mentions ‘money’ or being wealthy, too often, thoughts or whispers of greed, selfishness, get rich quick, or some other such demeaning slur appear.

There is even that famous Bible quote:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (King James Bible).

However, any quote taken out of context can take on a whole new meaning, such as this one does!

So many people have hidden behind this and other poverty based quotes to make excuses for their lack of abundance, without even realising it.  They believe these quotes and old sayings (“life wasn’t meant to be easy” is another!) are actually facts.  THEY ARE NOT!

“Take responsibility for your finances or get used to taking orders for the rest of your life. You’re either a master of money or a slave to it. Your choice.”Robert Kiyosaki

It’s time to say IT IS OK to have money and wealth.  It’s NOT OK to be poor and just accept it! 

It’s NOT OK to have to worry where the next dollar or the next rent or mortgage payment is coming from.  It’s NOT OK to have your child’s next meal in doubt because you don’t have the money to put a meal in front of them.

#Financial Empowerment

Down on his luck, by Frederick McCubbin
Image from www.artroom.com.au

Why would you NOT have all the money and financial empowerment you need, or want?

There could be some absolutely valid reasons.  Bad luck.  Bad management of a situation.  Bad start in life.  Got robbed.  Got divorced.   Got taxed.  All valid and perfectly good reasons to not have any money.  If you are OK with reasons for not having money that is, rather than the money.

If this is you now, are you planning on staying this way? 

If you are unhappy about your financial situation, read on – there is much to learn and much to look forward to!

Is it OK to be broke? 

Most teenagers and students visit “Broke” during their high school or university years, just after leaving home.  Possibly the best time to visit, when you are young and life has so much promise and you are so enthusiastic about it.  You also don’t have family responsibilities then.  Enjoy the experience of living on the financial edge, learn the financial empowerment lessons and then get the hell out of there!  Life is better with a full wallet!

How does a lack of financial empowerment affect men and women differently?

In ancient times, men were the hunters, women were the nurturers.  This imprinted in the DNA of the human race and reflects in their emotional states today, thousands of generations later.  A man who could not hunt and provide for his family was shamed.  Today, men feel humiliated to be without work and income.  A woman in ancient times who could not nurture her family was considered of low worth and status.  She had to take scraps or be married off to a low status male.  Today, very little has changed!  Jean M Auel’s excellent and very well researched books, starting with “Clan of the Cave Bear” demonstrate this perfectly!

Let’s look at what it means to be lacking in financial empowerment, for both men and women.

Financial Empowerment for women

A woman without money in the 21st century in the western world is a woman who has to educate herself and develop a career to support herself, or to be supported by someone else.  She must develop an income stream to pay for the necessities of life.  If she cannot do this, she has to choose between doing without the necessities of life, or being at the mercy of someone who has them.

Perhaps she will find a husband, someone who will be delighted to take her just as she is, and who promises to support her forever.  Lots of women have thought this; many have made wonderful lives being supportive wives for their loving husbands.

#Financial Empowerment

Since my divorce….!
Image from www.sincemydivorce.com

But many have found that after a time, their marriage and support program suddenly ended.  Perhaps through tragedy, or for other reasons, sometimes divorce.  Now, they are older, perhaps wiser, but many are still without an income and a way to pay to live.  That doesn’t mean that a divorced woman cannot cope – just that sometimes, the divorce is financially devastating, and they are left with little money and a family to raise, and often on a solo parent benefit or part-time wages.

Financial empowerment for women is vital.  Not just for the feeling of satisfaction, but for the independence it brings.  Ladies, if you are financially independent, you can choose where and who you want to spend your life with, for reasons other than necessity and somewhere to live.  An important goal.

Financial empowerment for men

Guys, there is probably nothing more disempowering than looking at your family, and knowing you cannot provide for them.  Not being able to pay the mortgage or the rent, rationing the children’s food, losing the car to the finance company, all for the want of a better cashflow.

#Financial Empowerment

Super Dad!
Image from thewonderfulworldofnothing.blogspot.com

The other side of the coin is great!  You feel invincible and powerful when you have financial empowerment.  When you know that your financials are OK and that the house and car are paid for, and the family is secure, you feel king of the castle.  So you should.  Supporting and empowering your family is perhaps the greatest responsibility that most people could ever have.

Financial crisis happens, far too often.  It happens to good people, to great people, and to most of the people who don’t understand money and financial empowerment.  But there’s also a way through it.

The key to financial empowerment is education.

I don’t mean reading, writing and arithmetic, although they are important.  Financial literacy education, understanding the financial empowerment principles that make the money world go round.  They aren’t too hard to learn, though they can be harder to put into practice.

“No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.”Brian Tracy

The world has changed since I was a boy.  Fifty years have made a huge difference.  A house now costs half a million dollars here, but fifty years ago, $2500 would have got you one.  A car was $500, now it is $40,000.  But wages were much less!  Fifty years ago, it was 365 shillings per week, around $36.  The princely sum of $1,800 per year.  Now, in Australia, the average annual wage is $75,000.    Prices have increased but so has our income.

What HAS changed is the opportunity level!

In this age of technology and information, a person no longer needs a factory or huge amounts of capital to start a profitable business.  Many people work their own business from anywhere in the world they want, as long as they can connect a computer, laptop or even tablet to the internet!  As long as they have a skill they can apply, a second or even a primary income is available for anyone, if you become educated in how to market something of value to the world!

There are businesses set up solely to market skills, such as Elance – working as contractors in a virtual world, with real people at either end.  Computer technicians often repair your computer problems from their own office, working on your computer remotely.  People with a little money can invest online and make a living as traders.  You can set up a business, consulting, buying, selling, trading, creating, almost anything you want, as soon as you launch your own website and get your story online.  There are even people making a good income writing blogs, just telling stories online.  There are numerous ways to either supplement an income, or replace it, and there is no discrimination in the virtual world.

What is Residual Income?

Think about your wage.  If you don’t go to work, you don’t get paid.  No residual income.  Think about the rent on a house.  The owner could be in Spain, New York or Sydney.  The rent still goes into their bank account.  That is residual income.

Make money while you sleep.  Set up your income streams as businesses at which your presence is not required, fully automated, and the money will flow to you, wherever you are. Click this link for more details and alternatives!

Examples of residual income are:

  1. Financial investments, shares, term deposits etc.  You need a lot of money initially and the Return On Investment (ROI) is from 1% to 5% usually.  $1,000,000 at 5% is $50,000 pa.
  2. Investment property.  In Australia, an investment property starts at around $350,000 and higher, and ROI is either negative (profits from tax benefits) or up to around 5% clear.
  3. Leasing out equipment, rental cars, machinery etc.  Lots of money initially but a higher ROI, because of a shorter working life of the equipment.
  4. A second job?  Doesn’t qualify, as there is no residual income.  However, this is where most people look when they need more money.
  5. A business with employees.  If you can set it up so that it makes a profit while you are not there, yes, ongoing residual income.  However, bricks and mortar businesses are struggling the world over.  Many do not make a profit at all.

Can you make money online?

There is an alternative, made possible by the technological revolution and the internet.  It is possible to start a small business online and set it up to operate globally, fully automated and delivering profits into your bank account, wherever you are.  Many are very successful; the operators have replaced their regular income and quit jobs, to live on the ever-growing profits of their fully automated online businesses! Click this link for more details and alternatives!

Examples of online income streams:

  1. Contracting your skills, such as through ELANCE, or being a virtual assistant
  2. E-Bay trading, buying and selling items
  3. Shares and options trading, taking a parcel of money and actively trading with it – be careful of the risks! Only for skilled traders!
  4. Consulting and providing advice, for a fee
  5. Website sales of an item, product or service, sometimes digital products or information
  6. Using a website in conjunction with a bricks and mortar business for mail-order sales
  7. Writing and publishing online
  8. Networking of a business opportunity online, building up a global downline network

NOTE: 1-4 are usually not residual income streams although they are internet businesses.

#Financial Empowerment

Internet Business Opportunities!
Image from fortune500designs.com

These opportunities are there for everyone.  If you have a skill or a product range, you can sell it online, anywhere in the world.  If you see a networked business opportunity, you can have a global business almost overnight, with residual income coming in from all over the world.  And you don’t have to leave your day job!

If you are also a member of Life Change 90, you can enjoy Personal Empowerment, as well as Financial Empowerment!

Think about this:

Are you earning what you are worth right now?

Are you earning what your family needs right now?

Are you earning enough to fund the dreams of your future, right now?

If not, what are you going to do about it, and when?

There ARE answers, and you can find them in the links here.  I look forward to seeing you at the top, earning lots more than you are now!

If you feel this article has financially empowered you and you feel it could benefit the financial empowerment of other people, please reblog it, share it with your friends and associates.  It might be the day you changed someone’s financial fortunes and future for the better, not just your own!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

 “Take action every day. It doesn’t have to be dramatic action, but every day, stick with it. Spend time on things that make you proud, that stretch and strengthen you.”Phillip Humbert

Please also refer to my previous posts on Empowerment:

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Personal Empowerment

What would an empowered man do?

Empowered by love

Empowerment through Emotional Intelligence

Empowered by love

#Empowered By Love

With Love, anything is possible!

“Love is not the opposite of power. Love IS power. Love is the strongest power there is.”
Vironika Tugaleva, The Love Mindset

Empowered by love

#Empowered By Love

Image from survivorpediatrics.wordpress.com

The average guy is a pretty fragile creature in some ways.  Once we left childhood and the things we grappled with while getting through that stage, we got to the teen years and weren’t they a fearful time!  How many guys made it through their teen years with an intact ego?  Trying to impress the girls – that’s what we thought we had to do, and mostly we failed.  We either got really thick skins fast or learnt some smooth lines.  Or we got pretty badly hurt and carried those hurts with us into adult life.  Those rejections and teenage girly things we heard thrown at us, some hurt really badly!  Mostly we carried some of those hurts forward.  I did.

Now, in my adult years, I think of the life I’ve led and the things I’ve done and where I am now and I sometimes stop and wonder.

I am blessed to now be empowered by love.  However, that has brought some incredible realisations with it.  This amazing lady whose love is given freely and unconditionally – am I really worthy of her?

I mean, it’s a totally reasonable question I think, for a guy who has carried his teenage scars and other skeletons til now, and suddenly finds someone who knows all about them and still loves him, despite those scars and failings, or perhaps because of them…?

I think of my own failings and wonder whether I am worthy of the love of this lady.  After all, she is pretty darn amazing.  My scars and insecurities tend to surface and I wonder if I am really worthy of her after all.  Then the magic happens.  Guys, this is what it’s all about!  Ladies, you probably don’t realise the power and magic you control….

#Empowered By Love

My source of empowerment

I feel the love of this lady.  It goes to my core.  I feel it under my skin, in my day, in my thoughts, in my intentions, in what I am dreaming of for the future.  A shared future.  Our future.  That’s when I realise that whatever has happened in the past that I might be less than proud of, less than happy with, I can rise above, because I have been given a new source of empowerment.  I am empowered by love, the single most powerful force on the planet.

#Empowered by love, I can pretty much do anything.  Empowered by love, I can withstand pretty much anything.  Empowered by love, I am pretty much unstoppable.  Because I know that it’s no longer just me doing it!  Beside me, I have the most amazing lady.  Together, we are unstoppable!  We are empowered by love, our love!

Guys, really take this on board.  If you haven’t felt this love yet, make it your goal to be empowered by love.  If you are single, find that special lady and become empowered by love.  Become the guy you can be, the one you have the potential to be, so you can attract that incredible lady to you, the one who can make you feel like I do now!  Work on yourself so you really ARE worthy of her, by becoming everything you really can be.

If you are in a relationship, and it doesn’t feel like this, how much of it should you take responsibility for?  You BOTH committed to the relationship.  Have you really lived up to your end of the deal?  Whether or not you have, accept the responsibility, and plan to woo this lady all over again.  You did it once, you won her heart, now do it again and this time, aim high – aim for unconditional love and believe me, it’s something you can’t achieve without giving it first!  But when you do – then you become empowered by love.

Life takes on a whole new meaning when you are empowered by love…

#Empowered By Love

Imagine…
Image from www.mamiverse.com

A quick word to the ladies…  Do you realise the power you have over your guy’s fragile heart and soul?  We guys are hurt or bruised quite easily, rather more easily than it appears.  On the other hand, if you share this incredible and empowering love for him, you CAN make him feel invincible, you can empower him to be your knight in shining armour – or to feel like it anyway, whether he has the white charger or not!  Use your power wisely, weave your magic well and let your guy feel empowered by love.  And enjoy the benefits of it!  You’ll find that when he is empowered by love, you’ll feel pretty darn good too!

How do you do that?  If you are not sure, it comes down to you becoming all you can be also.  Work on yourself to realise your own potential.  If you are a couple, work on yourselves, but work together – share the journey and grow together. Click here to learn more about becoming an Empowered Couple.

I mentioned in my last blog about the ten second kiss.  That’s just the start.  You might see a lot more of that concept through these blogs in the future, empowering your relationship.  In the meantime, it’s a great start and wonderful to help you feel good about growing together.

If you feel this article has empowered and benefited you and you feel it could benefit the personal empowerment of other folks you know, please reblog it, share it with your friends and associates.  It might be the day you changed someone’s life for the better!  If that was that special person in your life, then congrats: you just changed your own life too!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

“Greater than atomic power is the power of love. Alas, we use it so sparingly!”
Dada J.P. Vaswani

Please also refer to my other posts on Empowerment:

Financial Empowerment

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Personal Empowerment

What would an empowered man do?

What would an empowered man do?

#What would an empowered man do

Empowered Man
Image from theredlist.fr

“The only thing that stands between a person and what they want in life is the will to try it and the faith to believe it is possible.”
Rich DeVos

What would an empowered man do?

It’s easy to preach.  It’s easy to lecture.  It’s harder to live what you preach and lecture about.  It’s especially hard when Spirit or fate or the Gods on high decide to confront you with a problem straight out of the box you were preaching from!

The question is, when something like this happens, what would an empowered man do?

Now, an empowered man here refers to empowered women, children, teens, civic leaders, politicians, and anyone else you can think of.  It’s all of us, and I’m lumping us together under the term ‘man’.

The guy (or girl) comes home, tired and well and truly over the day, it’s been a tough one.  Their partner is frustrated as their day was tough too, the kids are noisy, but they just want to sit with a beer or wine and relax, let the day go and when they feel like it, come join the family.  But the kids want to play, their partner wants a hand in the kitchen, stuff is happening all around and this is not a time when they can opt out for a while.

#What would an empowered man do

Home at last!
Image from www.huffingtonpost.com

What would an empowered man do?

The question really should come back to “what is important in this life?” and start from there.  Attend to the first priorities and work outwards from there, once they have been attended to.

First priority?  There’s their partner standing there, tired and very frustrated with their day also.  This person committed to spend their life with them, and share the joys and hassles of their family forever.  WOW!  Number one priority?

#What would an empowered man do?  He would kiss this lady, tell her he loved her and block the world out for a while.  There’s a book called “The ten second kiss” that I have referred to in my seminars and it suggests that night and morning, and leaving for work and coming home from work is a powerful time for it, that you should kiss your spouse or partner for at least ten seconds.  At least twice a day, at those important times.

Why?  Because when you kiss someone for ten seconds with your full intention and attention on your kissing, it speaks volumes to them about your love for them, and it does them a world of good too.  Things like easing tension, frustration and giving the feeling to them that they are loved and supported in every way.  Sort of an antidote to a tiring and frustrating day.

What about the dinner on the stove?  What about the kids?  What about all the other distractions?

Take the pot off the heat – it’s only for 10 seconds!  Get the kids to time you – this is a powerful way for them to see and experience what love between their parents is and should be.  There is not much that cannot be put off for just ten seconds!

#What would an empowered man do

A great daily ritual
Image from karapearson.com

OK, that’s Priority 1 done.  Priority 2 should be a hug for the kids.  Big hug, acknowledgement for a moment, so they feel the love too, and it’s amazing how often that is enough for them for a time.  Time to enable you to handle the other issues that are demanding attention.  Perhaps you can be with the kids in a family way.  Grab a coffee or tea, sit with your spouse and children on the couch for a few minutes, have a family hug, right after your ten second kiss.  Take a few more minutes with all of you together, sharing your days.  Ask your spouse about their day, their ups and downs.  The same with the children, asking questions gets them present and takes their mind off concerns that drag energies down.  That also allows you to catch up on the urgent news and to plan the next few minutes of dealing with the other issues, such as the dinner that’s cooking, the chores to be done, homework and so on.

What would an empowered man do?  He’d first attend to his family and be nurtured by them, while he empowers them with his love and attention.  He’d make this a daily ritual.

Another scenario.  The empowered man (or woman) is at work and the boss yells at them, bawling them out over something, whether it’s valid or not.  The boss is a chump, loud mouthed and obnoxious.  The first reaction is to make a batch of ‘nose jam’ and spread it all over his face.

#What would an empowered man do

Not again!
Image from www.mccormicksys.com

What would an empowered man do?

First, is it OK to get angry?  Yes, and it’s natural to get angry at times.  The human body and most other species become angry if provoked.  It’s what happens next that matters.

We established a few blogs back that you cannot win an argument.  We learnt in another blog about how to empower people when they are angry or fearful, so that you can work with them rationally and come to a good resolution.

#What would an empowered man do

Empowerment Emotional Tone Scale

This image is the Empowerment Tone Scale.

(Click on this image to enlarge it!)

The angry person is down under the empowerment line.  The fearful or grieving person is lower still, near the bottom.  To relate with these people, you need to boost them and their emotional state up to the empowerment level at “interest”, near the top, even if only for a few seconds!  You do that with targeted questions, relevant to the topic, but ones they need to process a little.  That processing is the key to empowerment.  This is because for the mind to process a question, it needs to be in a constructive state, not destructive.  Asking a question raises the person’s emotional state.  It empowers the person you are asking the question of.

Back to our angry boss.  What would an empowered man do?

They would engage the boss with simple, relevant questions to establish the parameters of the situation.  They would go on to ask about the specifics.  Then they would ask the most powerful question framework “WHAT can WE do about THIS PROBLEM?”  This establishes the conflict as an issue separate to either of them, but a problem they can solve as a team.  A totally different scenario to when the boss walked in.

#What would an empowered man do

That’s better! All sorted now!
Image from www.act-now.ca

Does it work every time?  Of course not.  But it’s what an empowered person would do first, rather than inflame the issue with retaliation.

Of course, launching into strategies such as these without a reference point in place is going to be a challenge.  For some men, if they arrived home and without warning, took their wife and kissed her solidly for more than a few seconds, it would either frighten them or make them very suspicious.  After reading this blog, discuss it with your partner and adopt this practice of the ten second kiss morning and evening.  Make the family hug a ritual.  You’ll probably find it changes other areas of your life too.

With your boss, don’t wait until he’s furious before you try to empower him.  Use simple but relevant questions all the time to build his level of empowerment and you’ll find he is much less likely to explode if and when something does go wrong.  And at that time, he’ll respond better when you ask more questions, because you have conditioned the situation already.  It won’t be anything new!

What would an empowered man do, to become more empowered in the first place?  

How do you get to BE this way, without needing to re-read this blog when life serves you a rotten tomato?

Empowerment is not hard.  It’s simple, it’s strategic and it’s constant.  Constant implementing of daily success habits, morning and evening, practicing throughout the day and celebrating your successes at night.  It’s challenging yourself to be the best you can, and recording your efforts to be your best.  It’s dropping unproductive habits and replacing them with success habits that step you closer to your own goals every day.  It’s putting yourself in a state of mind that is empowered by the environment you create around you.  It’s choosing the people you associate with, the information and influences that go into your mind and surround you in your life.  One tiny step at a time, all the time.  It’s simple, and it’s constant. Click here to learn more about becoming Empowered and learning to use your EQ, as well as your IQ!

After a while, it becomes a habit and is the state of mind you unconsciously life in.

During the learning process, we pass through four stages of competency.  They are:

  1. Unconsciously incompetent – we don’t even know we are messing things up!
  2. Consciously incompetent – we know how bad we are at this new thing.
  3. Consciously competent – we know what to do but still need to focus to get it right.
  4. Unconsciously competent – it’s become a good, solid habit; no need to even think about it anymore; we do it unconsciously and get it right every time!

After a while, these new success habits that we practice daily, morning and evening, become a part of our subconscious program and we do them without thinking.  We LIVE them.

#What would an empowered man do

Words of a wise and empowered man
Image from wolflaguerra.wordpress.com

What would an empowered man do?  Subscribe to this program and share it amongst his family, friends and workmates, to empower them too…

If you feel this article has empowered and benefited you and you feel it could benefit the personal empowerment of other folks you know, please reblog it, share it with your friends and associates.  It might be the day you changed someone’s life for the better!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

“Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.”
Bill Moyers

Please also refer to my other posts on Empowerment:

Financial Empowerment

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Personal Empowerment

 

 

Personal Empowerment

#Personal Empowerment

Personal Empowerment – starting young!
Image from www.huffingtonpost.com

Personal Empowerment.

asinha97
You are responsible for your life. So why expect something to happen for motivation. Self motivation is biggest drive for self empowerment. Anil Sinha

 

I recently sat with a man who had asked me to write his biography, his journey from weighing 350 pounds (160 kilograms) back to 200 pounds (90 kg).  After he told me his story, I had a question for him.  First, here is his story, briefly.

He had told me that as he grew fatter, just from being a glutton and careless, he grew too big to do his ceiling insulation batt business – he couldn’t fit through the manholes into the ceiling cavity, so he sold that business and bought a security patrol business.  Then he couldn’t get in and out of the patrol cars because of his rapidly expanding girth, so he sold that business too.  Eventually he began selling real estate in a city office because all he had to do was stand (or sit) near the front door where people would walk by, and he could talk to them.

#Personal Empowerment

Something wrong with this picture
Image from nypost.com

However, the life changing chain of events for him began with the bicycle shop next door.  Sometimes he’d stand at his front door and chat to the owner of the bicycle shop, a former triathlete champion, and one day he asked him if he could try riding a bike, as he thought he might like to lose some weight.  Just making conversation.  The reply was that he didn’t stock a bike that would hold his weight!

Then he needed to run to the back of his shop again to the toilet, for the fifth time that hour, and the bicycle shop owner told him he needed to get ‘that’ checked out.  He already knew what his problem was.  The doctor told him after a few short minutes “You have chronic diabetes caused by your eating habits.  If you don’t lose 100 pounds this year, you won’t see next year!”  It scared him; he said those words felt like machine gun fire into his chest!

My question to him was: “If that doctor had not threatened you with your own death, at what point would you have decided you were overweight and needed to do something about it?”

His answer?  “I don’t know.  I never considered it!  I don’t know what it would have taken to have that amount of personal empowerment, to recognise my problem and deal with it!”

Personal empowerment is not a big deal.

#Personal Empowerment

A whale of a time!
Image from selfimprovementdevelopment.com

My definition for #personal empowerment is the willingness to honestly see yourself as you are, and to commit to making any changes you feel are necessary for your wellbeing, on any level, physical, mental, emotional or spiritual.

That just means that if you know you are not fit, you decide to change that and you do what you need to do, to become more fit.  If you have bad breath, you brush your teeth.  If someone tells you that your breath is bad, you don’t abuse them for being rude to you; you thank them for being honest with you and then you brush your teeth.

Being less than you can be, less than your human potential is a crime against yourself.  That doesn’t mean that you need to be training to be fit enough to run the next marathon.  It doesn’t mean you need to immediately begin to diet, or take any other radical steps.  It has nothing to do with vanity, and everything to do with your personal pride.  Look honestly at yourself. Ask yourself if you are the person you always wanted to be. If you can see how you can become closer to that ideal, then you need the strength to commit to making the changes that will get you there.

OK, I hear some howls of protest!  Personal empowerment?  I’m suffering from a chronic illness, I can’t do that!  I was in a car accident and my injuries won’t allow that!  I am overweight because I have a medical condition and the drugs affect me!

Relax.  The question is; are you being all you can be?  If you are ill, then you are ill and that will place limitations on you physically.  But how is your heart?  How is your spirit?  How is your mind?

Personal empowerment will take you from where you are in your life, to where you could be.  It’s not about being fitter, faster, smarter or better than anyone else, just being the best YOU that you could be.  Sometimes, personal empowerment is just being the best parent you can be, so that you can be an empowered parent for your children.  What this world needs probably most of all, is empowered people, who can be empowered parents, so that the next generation who are our children now can take over this world and continue to make it better and fix the mistakes we have made in getting it to them.

Personal empowerment is worth it.

But how do you get personal empowerment?

#Personal Empowerment

It’s the little things that count!
Image from mylifeismymessage.org

It’s easy.  Baby steps each day.  It’s not a massive shift, it’s just a few little success habits to get into each day, and then continue to do them every day!  Not hard at all.  You already have a number of habits right now, perhaps some that don’t serve you that you could replace, others that you definitely want to maintain.  Like brushing your teeth.  But add some affirmations and goalsetting to that.  Perhaps doing a few minutes reading of something positive each morning and evening – just a few minutes.  Perhaps setting priorities for your day, specific things that will actually advance you a little closer to your goals.  Perhaps at the end of the day, doing a review and seeing what you achieved, what you learned, what you felt, and checking off what you actually did.  If you started a new habit, check off that you did it, or didn’t – make yourself accountable.

Get into success habits.  Start feeling a sense of achievement for the little things, so that when the big things come up and real personal empowerment is needed to face those challenges, you have already been practising, you have the success habits in place, all you are doing is changing the goal……!  See?  Simple.

That is personal empowerment.  A program with all of this exists now for you to slip into your daily routine; you can get it here.  A few minutes morning and evening and it is done.

The bonus is that it teaches you lots of other cool strategies as well, such as communication skills, financial success tips, stress management and health tips, mental strategies, conflict resolution, goal setting and a whole heap more over the 90 days of the program.  That’s the few minutes of positive and empowered reading material, a couple of hundred words a day to get you on track with life changing strategies in every area of your life.  Personal empowerment was never so easy!  Start your personal empowerment program now! Click here to begin!

If you feel this article has empowered and benefited you and you feel it could benefit the personal empowerment of other folks you know, please reblog it, share it with your friends and associates.  It might be the day you changed someone’s life for the better!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

Be ambitious towards your own personal enhancement.  Steve Mariboli

Please also refer to other posts on Empowerment:

Financial Empowerment

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

What would an empowered man do?

Empowerment for Children

#Empowerment for Children

Happy, learning children
Image from www.cumc.com

Empowerment for Children

In Empowerment for Teens, we saw that the way children are raised has a huge effect on their behaviour as teens and then young adults.  This is found in the most basic of human instincts, the instinct of survival, one of the few a baby is born with, and is very relevant in #Empowerment for Children

To survive, a human being is programmed to do whatever it must.  As a baby has little conscious thought capability at birth, everything is trial, error and instinct.  Babies rely on mothers for feeding, nurturing, protection and survival.  Therefore keeping mother close is a survival instinct.  To do this, some babies cry, some laugh, some are cute and coy, some are funny little clowns.  All are survival strategies initially; the range of survival strategies expands as the baby grows.

A toddler cry baby doesn’t get much sympathy.  However, the baby can learn that a certain laugh, or a certain funny behaviour can get mother’s attention, so that becomes a strategy.  This might be the start of the ‘clown’ survival strategy.  Robin Williams claims this was his way of surviving school, where the bigger boys bullied him until he told jokes!  Now, it is his career!

With most young animals in a nest, if there is competition for food, the bully always wins.  The same with human babies – the instinct is to get in first and get the food to survive.  A bigger or more boisterous baby may become a bully as a survival strategy amongst smaller siblings.  A smaller one may realise that direct action against a bully would not work, but being sneaky and agile might – monkey like antics might become the survival strategy, or outright stealth, guile and theft.  Just as a survival strategy.

#Empowerment for Children

Feeding time – who’s going to get it?
Image from commons.wikimedia.org

However, we see these same strategies employed in adults!  This is because these survival strategies become embedded as “sub-personalities” in the mind and psyche of the child and remain embedded as the child grows up.  At one time they were all relevant as survival strategies; now, as adults many are redundant, but they remain.

Can we be sure of that? Are sub-personalities real?

Think of a young mother in an ordinary day and how many sub-personalities she operates with, just to make it through the day, from leaving bed in the morning, to bedtime at night.

Waking, she becomes a mother first, looking after the immediate needs of her children, feeding, clothing and getting them ready for school.  Then she becomes a taxi-driver to deliver them to school.  Then it’s onto the freeway in the car to drive to work, she’s a racing driver.  At work she becomes a dutiful employee, slightly subservient to her supervisor, but definitely superior to that jerk from the mail sorting room who tried to hit on her last week!  Hmmph!  Then she suddenly becomes mother again at lunch time with a call from the school that one of the children has fallen and scraped a knee, but it’s OK, the school nurse has bandaged it and it will be fine.  A text message from her husband, saying he’s thinking about her and how wonderful it was to cuddle up naked under the sheets last night.  She started reading the messages as a loving wife, but by the end of it, a nymph had emerged.  She looks up from the message and sees the other office workers looking at her and she becomes a blushing teenager!  Back to work and she becomes the dutiful employee again.  Time to go home and she enters rush hour traffic and she becomes the road rage Mama for half an hour.  Home at last, she becomes mother again.  Husband arrives home and she becomes wife for a moment as he kisses her, and then mother again as she prepares dinner and scolds the children for the noise they are making.  After dinner she becomes a school teacher while helping with homework.  Bedtime for the kids, she becomes a wife again and sits quietly with husband discussing the day.  Bedtime for her, she showers and slips into bed and the text message nymph of earlier in the day appears and for the next hour, she is none of the previous sub-personalities from throughout the day!

#Empowerment for Children

Herman’s Head Sub-Personalities
Image from www.sitcomsonline.com

Whew!  All those different sub-personalities and all appropriate at different times of the day, with different people, and different situations.  Definitely not appropriate to mix them up and when that does happen, disaster is not far away!

How are sub-personalities relevant to empowerment for children?

The baby we first looked at is developing sub-personalities as it grows older, in order to survive.  The empowered child, the well balanced and happy child will confidently move between sub-personalities almost unconsciously, provided we create and foster a supportive environment around them, making it safe for them to grow, explore and experience the world.

How do we make empowerment for children possible?

As parents, it is our responsibility to create the most supportive environment for our children to grow up in.  The best way to do that is for us to be fully empowered personally first – being the best parents and teachers we can be, for them to model as they grow.  Empowerment for Children comes after their parents learn empowerment for women and empowerment for men!

Children do not do as they are taught.  Children do as they are shown by example and that is why they model older children, rather than anonymous characters from text books!  As parents, we need to demonstrate what we want children to learn, and provide the environment where this learning is possible!

Enlightened educationalists will tell us that children learn best in a happy environment where they can experience what they are learning about.  Experiential learning has become a buzz word but really, children have been doing it for thousands of generations, learning through their childhood games.  We need to ensure those childhood games are possible, safe and that we can participate in them to the extent we need to, so that we can give guidance as and when the children need it.

#Empowerment for Children

Learning by playing
Image from lindaoconnell.blogspot.com

The best way for empowerment for children to be experienced is by parents reading to children.  If you have ever seen the rapt look on a child’s face as they explore a picture book with Mummy or Daddy, and the innocent questions that come from it, you will understand.  As the child grows, reading more mature story books opens the child’s mind to the wider world.  I remember my Dad reading “Treasure Island” to me, and another of our favourites, “Two years on Bardunyah Station”, an Australian outback cattle station where everything was larger than life.  Stories such as these allowed us to create magical images of what lay beyond and enthused us with the desire to get out and explore the world, to discover our own Treasure Islands and feel the vastness of the wide outdoors.  We were fortunate that we had empowered parents who understood this.

#Empowerment for Children

Reading to your child is empowering for them
edu101.hubpages.com

When the children do get outdoors, be there with them!  Children’s school sports days are a great place for them to show off to Mum and Dad, if they are sporting by nature.  Music recitals or dance classes are other great ways to participate in your children’s activities if they have come to love the arts.  Whether or not they are the best doesn’t matter, as long as you demonstrate your involvement, and show encouragement for their efforts!

#Empowerment for Children

School sports day
www.chengelo.sch.zm

Is it OK for a child to fail?

Empowerment for Children can only happen when the child learns to fall over and stand up to try again!  So many are nursed through childhood that when they reach teens and Mum and Dad can’t keep an eye on them every waking moment, that the first obstacle they come across flummoxes them!  They need to learn from setbacks; learn to power on despite them and because of them, learning from the mistakes and picking up the lessons!  Only in this way do they become ‘battle hardened’ for the sometimes hostile environments they will face as teens and young adults.

#Empowerment for Children

Ooops! Here comes a lesson!
Image from liketreesplanted.com

However, of critical importance is where Mummy and Daddy are when they fall, and how THEY react to their child’s failures!  Empowerment for children happens when they learn from parents that it’s not the failure that matters, it’s getting the lesson and starting over that is important!  If parents are critical of poor school results, poor sporting results or music recitals, then the child learns that it’s a hard world and their parents are just another part of it.  If instead Parents are there to encourage and teach success habits, they learn that mistakes and failings are only stepping stones to success!  They learn what we demonstrate!

This is important in another way too, because as parents we fail sometimes too, and our children know it!  They recognise in us the mistakes we make, and if we judge them harshly for their mistakes, that is what they have learned to do with us.  They become the most critical and unforgiving teenagers unless they learn the truth about mistakes – they are just part of the lifelong education system we are all enrolled in!

Empowerment for our children is directly proportional to the amount of personal empowerment we, as adult parents have.  When WE are empowered, we can empower others, especially our children.  Personal development and empowerment work for us is how we can best empower our children, and lead by example on their march into their teens and adulthood.  Click HERE to become a more Empowered Parent now!

If you feel this post has contributed to empowerment for children, please share and reblog amongst your friends and associates.  So many parents are crying out for empowerment for children, but don’t realise that it is within reach.  Your sharing may change the life of another – everyone deserves personal empowerment and this could be the day you make a difference!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

Please also refer to my other posts on Empowerment:

Empowerment through Emotional Intelligence

Financial Empowerment

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Empowerment for Teens

Personal Empowerment

What would an empowered man do?

 

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