Appreciating your Life

"Joy has nothing to do with material things, or with man's outward circumstance... A man living in the lap of luxury can be wretched, and a man in the depths of poverty can overflow with joy.”

William Barclay

In this week’s post, we continue to explore ideas and distinctions for overcoming patterns of greeding and for ‘wealthing your life’ with true inner and outer wealth.

Accepting and appreciating your self

According to the father of Cognitive Psychology, Dr Albert Ellis, psychologically healthy people are usually glad to be alive and accept themselves simply because they are alive and have some capacity to enjoy themselves and appreciate their lives. “They refuse to measure their intrinsic worth by their extrinsic accomplishments, materialistic possessions and by what others think of them.”

This ability to appreciate your life circumstances and situations is a life enhancing adaptive coping strategy. It helps you overcome obstacles and buffers you against greed, stress and difficult life circumstances.

Sometimes patterns of greeding are a futile attempt to cope with stress or problems in life – “when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping” syndrome. But as we’ve seen in previous blog posts (e.g. Overcoming the hedonic treadmill), the satiation of desire never feels as good as the desire itself, leading to a vicious cycle of wanting more and more. Alternatively, by accepting and appreciating your self and your life and focusing on gratitude and appreciation you can overcome the life denying enemy to happiness of greed and selfishness.

The Blessings of Gratitude

Dr. Robert Emmons, a psychology professor at the University of California-Davis has spent the last decade studying gratitude. His research has shown that people who regularly practice grateful thinking are more than 25 percent happier, suffer lower levels of stress, are healthier and even sleep better. And I think you'd agree that these are all incredibly life enhancing things.

The practice of gratitude has also been found to be incompatible with negative emotions, and can inhibit feelings of envy, bitterness, anger, and greed. You simply can’t do greeding and other negative emoting while focusing on gratitude and appreciation. The expression of gratitude also stimulates moral behavior, such as kindness and helping, and increases social bonding.

What can you do?

So to increase gratitude in your life, use the easy and very beneficial Positive Psychology exercises covered in earlier and upcoming blog posts. For instance, make a practice of counting your blessings via a daily Gratitude Journal. In this process you write 3 or more things each day that you feel blessed with in life and really savour and appreciate them. Keep it beside your bed and fill it in each evening before sleep. Review it each morning.

Or use a Gratitude Rock or Item as a trigger to remind yourself to remember things you feel grateful for. I use a small beautiful rock I found on my favourite beach. I’ve placed my Gratitude Rock on my kitchen bench and every time I see it, I make a habit of using it as a reminder and trigger to think of something I truly appreciate about my life. It’s such a life enhancing thing to do, it feels great and I highly recommend it.

You can also send Gratitude Letters, emails or messages to those who have helped you and you appreciate. Just imagine how life enhancing receiving an unsolicited message of gratitude or appreciation will have been for one of your friends, family, mentors, colleagues or loved ones. And the wonderful thing is, giving gratitude has as much benefit and positivity for those who send it as for those who receive it.

Inner Wealthing - A spirit of generosity

In a sense it’s about creating and evoking a spirit of joy and generosity in your life and your interactions with others. There’s always something or someone you can feel grateful for or towards.

Generously celebrate your blessings, savor them and focus on the positives in your life. Even in the midst of the worst of life’s challenges, you can always choose to place your focus on past blessings and future possibilities. And truly, isn’t that incredibly life enhancing!


Awareness Questions – Savouring Gratitude

Ask Yourself:

• What are the blessings in my life? Who and what can I show appreciation for?
• What positive aspects of my life and my self can I fully savour and appreciate?
• How can I focus more on the delights and abundance of the simple joys in my life?

with appreciation and joy,

Grant

Beware of Supernormal Stimulus!

If a bird is given the choice between nesting on a large plastic egg or on its own egg that it recently laid, it will choose the larger egg, even though it is cold, smells of plastic and has the wrong texture.

This tendency in nature for any stimulus that is an exaggerated version to elicit a stronger response than normal is called the ‘Supernormal Stimulus’ effect.

It was first observed by the ethologist Konrad Lorenz in brooding birds. Since then it has been observed in a wide variety of creatures. For example, there is an Australian beetle species whose males are sexually attracted to large and orange females – the larger and more orange the better. This creates a problem as the males attempt to mate with beer bottles that are just the right color – the males are more attracted to the bottles than to actual females.

The effect in humans...

In humans, it is argued that phenomena such as sexual fetishes and our delight for junk food can be largely explained as examples of supernormal stimulus effects. Candy bars are a great example of supernormal stimulus, they contain more concentrated sugar, salt, and fat than anything that exists in our ancestral environment and we love them. Some people are so strongly attracted to candy and chocolate that they’ll continue to eat them to the point of damaging their own health.

Other examples of human responses to supernormal stimuli are evidenced in how we like the colors of flowers so we breed bigger and brighter ones; we like sweet scents, so we manufacture strong perfumes; we like sexual stimuli, so create clothes and cosmetics to exaggerate them. We also prefer tall people, large breasts in women and super-models who have exaggerated levels of human beauty such as large eyes and facial symmetry.

The key and important thing to note about the effect of supernormal stimuli is the instinctual preference we have for those things that are larger, shinier and more exaggerated than normal.

The effects of supernormal stimulus can link to and drive life denying patterns of greeding. They can lead to behaviors of over-indulgence due to the strong unconscious responses we have to super-stimuli. So it’s vitally important to track for these effects in your life and then use conscious decision making to moderate your behavior. Make life enhancing choices through intelligence rather than through evolved instinctual patterns and desires. More greed is not better!

"There are limits to self-indulgence, none to restraint.”

Mahatma Gandhi

And if you are interested, you can read more about Supernormal Stimuli and how to overcome them in this fascinating book:

Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

A Harvard psychologist explains how our once-helpful instincts get hijacked in our garish modern world. Our instincts—for food, sex, or territorial protection— evolved for life on the savannahs 10,000 years ago, not in today’s world of densely populated cities, technological innovations, and pollution. We now have access to a glut of larger-than-life objects, from candy to pornography to atomic weapons—that gratify these gut instincts with often-dangerous results. Animal biologists coined the term “supernormal stimuli” to describe imitations that appeal to primitive instincts and exert a stronger pull than real things, such as soccer balls that geese prefer over eggs. Evolutionary psychologist Deirdre Barrett applies this concept to the alarming disconnect between human instinct and our created environment, demonstrating how supernormal stimuli are a major cause of today’s most pressing problems, including obesity and war. However, Barrett does more than show how unfettered instincts fuel dangerous excesses. She also reminds us that by exercising self-control we can rein them in, potentially saving ourselves and civilization.

Satiating the Hunger of Greed

In this post I want to share with you a simple yet powerful and life enhancing technique based on NLP and Positive Psychology for overcoming greeding patterns and thereby ‘wealthing your life’.

Pattern interrupting greeding
Since greed utilises many of the same biological circuits as sexuality and hunger, you can satiate these primitive mechanisms by sending messages to your heart-brain and gut-brain to quell them. Remember also that positive emotions undo and inoculate against negative emotions and that gratitude and appreciation overcome greed.

The following technique uses heart-breathing and creative feeling to pattern interrupt the process of greeding.

Interrupt patterns of greed by:

• Recall an act of kindness you did for someone. Feel pleasure in having performed it. As you remember this experience fully, focus on breathing your feelings of love, caring and appreciation into your heart.

• As you are feeling deep and strong feelings of positivity, love, kindness and generosity in and around your heart, begin to expand and move these kind and loving feelings up into your head and down into your stomach and gut region. You can even send them lower into your groin region.

• Continue to breathe in feelings of love and kindness and spread and expand them throughout your body, with specific awareness to deep in your gut.

• Talk to your heart and gut-brains and tell them they are satiated. Reassure them they are well and that your life is filled with a wealth of happiness. Tell them you are satiated and replete.

You’ll find this technique is very powerful and can stop selfishness and greed in its tracks.

Practice it. Greeding comes from parts of your primitive multi-mind attempting to gain more and more because they have not received the message that you have achieved your outcomes and enough is now enough. By sending appropriate messages to your unconscious mind via your heart-brain and enteric-brain, you bring your system back into balance and stop the vicious cycle of patterns of greeding.


Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

life enhancing thoughts and smiles,

Grant

Bliss Pointing

As researchers in psycho-physics know, almost all human processes and behaviours have a ‘bliss point’. Indeed, sensory satisfaction is largely driven by the bliss point phenomenon. What is a bliss point? It’s the optimum sensation or experience that results when the level of a constituent is ‘just right’ – neither too low nor too high. Our physiology is evolved to search for and maximise these bliss points.

For example, with sweet foods our palate is optimised for a certain level of sweetness. Too little sugar and the dessert tastes bland, too much sugar and it tastes sickly.

Similarly, there are optimum levels for brightness and other forms of sensory stimulation.

The import of this for understanding and overcoming life denying greed involves finding and maintaining the bliss points in your life.

The challenge...

You see, the challenge is that the human nervous system is built around the use of hormones and receptors to control and communicate within the system. Our body continually adjusts the amount of these chemicals and the number of receptors based on our ongoing experience.

Let’s look at an example. There is an optimal bliss point level for the amount of endogenous opiate (endorphin) receptors in our tissues. These are used in the control and signalling of pain and pleasure. However, when a person floods their body and brain with an opiate like the drug heroin, over time the body down regulates the amount of endogenous opiate that is produced and the number of receptors that respond to it.

In other words, the system attempts to maintain the evolved bliss point for internal opiates. Then when the person tries to give up the drug, they find themselves in terrible withdrawals, in massive pain and heightened response to normal stimuli. Even the slightest touch becomes painful, because their body can no longer produce sufficient endorphins to control the pain signals.

During the addiction phase, it takes more and more of the drug to produce the high, as the body continues to down-regulate the response to maintain the bliss point – the point of optimal opiate response. During the withdrawal phase, it takes many weeks or months for the body to regrow the receptors and the ability to produce and respond to internal opiates, as it once again attempts to maintain the bliss point.

Do bliss pointing!

The “take home” message about bliss pointing, is that to maintain optimal enjoyment from any experience in life, you need to carefully manage not to flood your system. If you have too much of anything, you will overflow the inbuilt bliss point and your body will down-regulate its response. You need to give everything a rest. Moderation in all things is the key.

You will only be able to maintain the life enhancing bliss point of happiness in your life if you carefully manage your behaviours and experiences so that you never continuously over-do or continuously over-indulge. Your wonderful brain/mind/body is like a garden, the plants need just the right amount of water and nutrients; too much or too little and the plants wilt and suffer.

So track for the bliss points in your life and carefully manage and maintain them. Remember: use moderation in all areas of your life. Your ongoing happiness depends upon it.

Thinking Tools – Moderating your Life

Moderation in ALL things!

Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

optimal thoughts and life enhancing wishes

Grant

Overcoming the Hedonic Treadmill

"The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have.”

Lin Yutang

There is a tendency in our lives to adapt to the prevailing conditions and for things, no matter how distorted or extreme to become ‘normal’ before long. Research has found that people who have either experienced incredibly positive events such as winning the lottery, and people who have experienced extremely negative events such as becoming blind or quadriplegic, have an initial positive or negative response respectively, then within less than a year largely revert to their normal levels of happiness. The joy and sadness of good and bad events tends to fade with time.

On the Hedonic Treadmill

In the field of Positive Psychology, this effect is called the ‘Hedonic Treadmill’ and it’s particularly germane to the subject of greed and wealth. Research on the hedonic treadmill has shown that as a person makes more money, their expectations and desires typically rise, resulting in no permanent gain in happiness.

Part of the process of greeding is the belief that the satiation of a desire will lead to ongoing positive feelings and experiences. But, as the research on the hedonic treadmill suggests, the initial positive response to satiating your desires will be fleeting. Before long, your feelings and levels of happiness will return to the norm, leaving you back on the treadmill. You’ll then need to increase your wants and desires and continue questing for more.

Unless you do something differently, over time you’ll end up stuck on this tiresome hedonic treadmill of greed and all it will ultimately achieve is leaving you feeling no better than before and with a constant unsatisfied need for more and more. As you can imagine, this is not particularly life enhancing... 

Shift your focus

The hedonic treadmill effect is particularly applicable to happiness based on pleasure.

Remember, research in Positive Psychology has shown there are three components to a happy life – pleasure, engagement and meaning. The antidote to the hedonic treadmill is to shift your focus from pleasure to a greater focus on engagement and meaning. By living a life filled with purpose and meaning and focusing on helping others you’ll experience a life that is deeply satisfying and doesn’t rely on an ongoing greed for pleasure and surface enjoyment.

Also, stop basing happiness on external objects and possessions. Instead, look to your own inner resources and competencies to generate joy and happiness in your life and the life of others. Watch out for patterns of greeding and hedonic treadmill effects in your life, and avoid them as the true life denying enemies they really are.

Success Strategy – Loving Kindness Meditation

Research by Positive Psychologist Dr. Barbara Fredrickson has shown that the practice of the Buddhist technique of Loving Kindness Meditation can mitigate the effects of the hedonic treadmill. When practiced for as little as an hour per week, Loving Kindness Meditation can enhance positive emotions and buffer against negative emotions such as greed, fear and envy.

Loving Kindness Meditation is a meditational practice in which you send out thoughts and feelings of love, kindness and well-being to all sentient beings. It involves 4 phases, with each phase lasting approximately 5 minutes. The meditation can be done as a visualisation in which you imagine and feel a sphere of love and light around yourself and then radiate it out from yourself. It can also be done as a verbal exercise in which you repeat phrases or mantras while remembering and recalling positive memories of love and kindness.

1. The practice begins by focussing on developing a loving acceptance of your self. This is the first phase. Fill yourself with thoughts, feelings and images of love, caring and acceptance. Repeat words like “I love and care for myself. I deserve happiness, health and love.” Visualise yourself filled with a radiant ball of love centered round your heart and radiating throughout your body and your life. Do this for 5 minutes.

2. The second phase involves meditating on loving kindness for someone you already care about and love. This could be a close friend, a parent, a lover, a mentor, teacher or benefactor. Concentrate on sending them feelings and messages of loving kindness. Visualise the light of your loving kindness and compassion spreading from your heart out to them, surrounding and filling them and their life.

3. In the next phase, you shift your visualisation and meditation to someone you are neutral to, perhaps a stranger or an acquaintance. Do this for 5 minutes also, before moving on to phase 4.

4. The final phase is more challenging. In this phase you focus on sending loving kindness to people that you dislike or who have been difficult or hostile towards you. Feel and imagine enveloping them in compassion, forgiveness and kindness. You can also spread your thoughts of loving kindness out to all beings in the world, encompassing all sentient creatures, all people.

True Inner Wealth

You will find that this meditation exercise feels fantastic and has a lasting effect that stays with you for many, many hours. Indeed, Dr. Fredrickson’s research shows that the more you practice the meditation the longer the effect lasts and spreads across the contexts of your life, generating emotional and psychological resources that support ongoing happiness and success. Now that is true life enhancing inner wealth!


peace and life enhancing thoughts,
Grant

And here is Dr Fredrickson's book on her research for those who want to learn more:

Positivity: Groundbreaking Research to Release Your Inner Optimist and Thrive

Producing vs Consuming

“Earn a dollar, spend 80cents... happiness!

Earn a dollar, spend $1.20... misery!!!”

In this weeks post, we continue exploring ideas and distinctions on ‘wealthing your life’ - how to create true wealth, joy and life enhancing happiness. Remember, the key with wealthing your life is to bypass the greed for mere money and instead build skills and strategies into your life for creating life enhancing wealth.

Let me share another story from my life...

Many years ago I worked with a fellow consultant who was constantly broke. Though he earned hundreds of dollars an hour, he had no money in the bank and no investments or assets to his name. His problem was he consumed more than he produced! He would waste his money on expensive meals, pointless and costly toys and high priced rental accommodation. Everything was hired, leased or rented. We called him ‘gadget boy’ because he always had to have the latest gadget or technology on the market and as soon as it was a few months old he would give it away to someone else.

He owned no real wealth of any sort and his outgoings were equal to or larger than his income. He often lived on a buffer of credit card debt while he waited for his next payment to arrive. I would occasionally have to loan him money just so he could eat a meal with me or fill his car with fuel. What a crazy life!

While he literally had a 6 figure income every year, he was one of the poorest people I know.

Thankfully, my father taught me from an early age the vital importance of producing more than I consume. He gave me the powerful thinking tool of the insight that ‘It’s not your incomings – it’s your outgoings’ that are crucial for generating wealth and living a great life. You see, you can earn a relatively modest income and be wealthier than my friend described above.

All you have to do is ensure that your expenses are much less than your income, and save the wealth that you thereby generate. Use that wealth to create investments and assets that in turn generate more income. Make your wealth work for you. Before long you’ll find you are rich in freedom and choice with a healthy buffer of wealth to support you no matter what happens in life – you’ll be financially free. It’s quite simple, maximise your incomings, minimise your outgoings and save the difference. Invest wisely and your wealth will steadily grow.

Thinking Tool – Produce more than you Consume

It’s not your incomings – it’s your outgoings!

Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

to your life enhancing success,
smiles,
Grant

Savoring your life

"We've been raised to compete, to want more! More! More! It's a way of life. It's about greed.”

Sandy Duncan

Greed, excessive materialism and hedonism are addictive behaviours that are definitely not life enhancing and can destroy inner peace and happiness. We are challenged daily by a world that encourages and supports these addictions. They’re insidious and deceptive. And once you’re on the treadmill of escalating desires, it’s not easy to get off.

By understanding the natural processes that lead to these destructive emotions and behaviours, you can learn to control your desires and re-balance your life. Happiness is created, not by satisfying greed, but by truly savoring and appreciating what you have and do in life. True wealth involves more than money and true joy needs more than the satisfying of desires.

Addiction to Greed

It’s becoming exceedingly obvious we live in a world filled with selfishness and greed. The evidence surrounds us. Take a look at the state of the world! The media is filled with stories and images that are testament to the greed that has stealthily overtaken society.

We are living well beyond our means. The planet cannot support so many humans living such rapacious lives. We are destroying our world and our future. Our economy is in massive disarray. Our ecosphere is in massive decline. We are raping our world in the name of greed, desire and avarice.

This has all come about due to the craziness and un-sanity of following an economic model of infinite growth in a finite system. Yes, an infinite growth model… For hundreds of years our society, politics and economics have been managed using a year on year growth imperative. Our businesses and financial systems have been measured and directed by expectations of year on year growth – that’s growth on previous growth.

This is an infinite growth model. It relies on exponential growth, of continuous and never ending expansion on top of previous growth. And as we are now experiencing, it is unsustainable. We live in a finite world. We cannot keep digging and siphoning up limited resources and expect that to continue forever. It’s unsane!

And I’m sure I don’t have to convince you of that… However, we may have more of a challenge getting you to see your own addictions to personal patterns of greed, desire and selfishness that are feeding this unsane system and are ultimately so life denying.

Why is that?

Because many of these patterns, the very patterns that have created our current world issues, are naturally evolved and inbuilt propensities. They are normal. And in controlled amounts they’re even useful and appropriate. They have largely driven the successes we all enjoy and are highly valued in society. But they’re also insidious, addictive and lead naturally ever onwards to more and more and more of the same.

So while en-masse and globally they are now evidenced as crazy and destructive, in your own life they’re often still accepted, overlooked or even applauded. Tracking and changing these insidious greed and selfishness patterns can be challenging.

The first step of course is awareness. You need to be aware of the patterns and processes of ‘greeding’ in your life. The next step is to interrupt the patterns. Then finally and continually you need to practice emotions and behaviours that oppose these negative greed patterns and inoculate yourself against them.

The biology of greed

The primitive emotion-driven biological circuits of your brain become intensely aroused when you anticipate greed behaviours.

Research at Stanford University has shown that anticipation and desire for money during behaviours such as financial investing and gambling cause the same areas of the brain to activate as those responsible for sexual desire. In one study, the brains of young adult men were scanned with magnetic resonance imaging while they viewed sexually arousing pictures and also when they made risky financial decisions. The study found the same areas of the brain light up during financial gambles as during sexual desire.

This is something to be aware of: Greed utilises many of the same biological circuits as hunger and sexual desire. Greed feels good. It’s quite an insidious trap.

The other important thing to note about the biology of greed is that satiating desire does NOT feel as good as the greed itself. One study found that the hot state of anticipation cools down as soon as you gain the financial reward, yielding lukewarm satisfaction.

As Jason Zweig, author of the book ‘Your Money and Your Brain’ describes it, "Making money feels good, all right; it just doesn't feel as good as expecting to make money. In a cruel irony that has enormous implications for financial behaviour, your investing brain comes equipped with a biological mechanism that is more aroused when you anticipate a profit than when you actually get one".

Contentment versus Greeding

According to the Dalai Lama, “The true antidote of greed is contentment” and a reliable method to achieve inner contentment is “not to have what we want but rather to want and appreciate what we have” (The Art of Happiness by Dalai Lama and H. Cutler).

These deep and ancient insights from Buddhist philosophy have been recently supported by research in Positive Psychology. The studies show that savoring and appreciating what you currently have can significantly increase levels of joy and happiness.

Savoring involves relishing and paying special attention to the pleasurable and meaningful things and events in your life. It’s about truly appreciating and celebrating your experiences, including those occurring in the present, those that are now fond memories and those you are looking forward to with positive anticipation.

The studies also show that savoring positive experiences is correlated with a greater sense of well being, increased happiness and better physical health – All great life enhancing benefits and wonderful antidotes to greeding!

By shifting your attention to a focus on contentment, you’ll have broken the vicious spiral of wanting more and more. You’ll have allowed your multi-mind to experience and enjoy the life you have right now. You’ll overcome the enemy to happiness of greed and never-ending desiring.

Remember also that the mind/body is a patterning system, so the patterns you put into your mind and life create the patterns of results you get back from life. I liken the practice and focus on savoring and contentment to the Native American story about the wise grandfather talking to his grandson. He tells the young boy we all have two wolves inside of us struggling with each other. The first is the wolf of peace, love and kindness. The other wolf is fear, greed and hatred. "Which wolf will win, grandfather?" asks the young boy. "Whichever one you feed" is the thoughtful reply.

So make sure you feed the life enhancing patterns you want in your life, and stay tuned for more ideas and distinctions in up-coming blog posts on ‘Wealthing your life’.

"The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.”

Flora Whittemore

Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

life enhancing thoughts and wishes,

Grant

Wealthing your life

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."

- Thoreau

True life enhancing wealth goes beyond money and assets. Wealth is an attitude, a skill and a way of living. It’s about peace of mind, flexibility and generosity of spirit.

Research shows that more money doesn’t buy happiness. Once you have enough money for the basic necessities of a good life, more money tends to bring little additional and meaningful happiness and can even bring its own hassles and additional risks and responsibilities. Nevertheless, wealth provides freedom, choice and the ability to purchase life enhancing experiences and adventures such as overseas travel, inspirational adventure activities and the time and resources for advanced education.

In this and upcoming blog posts, I want to share with you some ideas and life enhancing strategies about wealthing your life. I hope you enjoy them and find them useful.

About Wealthing

The key to wealthing your life is to bypass the greed for mere money and instead build skills and strategies into your life for creating true wealth. Of course, I could write a whole book on Wealth Creating and many people have already done so. I highly recommend you read some.

However, I must stress that what follows is general life advice and in no way constitutes financial advice. For specific financial advice, pertinent to your life, personal situation and requirements, you should always seek professional advice from a registered Financial Advisor. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s explore some tips, distinctions and thinking tools that support wealth creating.


Let me tell you a story...

Using Money

I was at a local produce market where I spied a flower stall filled with beautiful bouquets. “I know”, I thought “I’ll buy my beloved some beautiful flowers, she’ll love them”.

Now you see, since I teach and run workshops on negotiation I always like to practice my skills and techniques whenever I can. So I walked over to the vendor and started negotiating.

“How much discount will you give me now, for those two bunches of flowers, and make such a great customer like me, really happy?” I asked with a smile. With a cheeky glint in his eye, the vendor smoothly responded, “Ah, my friend, I can see you like a bargain. However, my prices are as low as I can go. So there’s no discount available. However, if you buy the flowers now, I can give you a bonus that is worth much more than a few dollars. How does that sound?”

We bartered back and forth for a few more rounds, as I attempted to determine how firm he was on not dropping his price and to find out what this ‘bonus’ was.

“I’ll give you some very powerful advice as the bonus” he said. “Advice that has such value it will make you much more money than you could ever get from the few dollars you could bargain on these flowers.” “And I’ll tell you what, if you don’t feel the advice is worth it, then I’ll give you the flowers for free. But I know you’ll see how powerful the idea I’ll share with you is.”

He had me very intrigued now. He’d done his negotiating job well. So I capitulated, and agreed to buy the flowers at the original price and waited anxiously for him to wrap the flowers and share with me his sage advice.

“Ok”, he said, handing me the flowers and taking my money. “When you first came over to my stall, I heard you say ‘I think I’ll spend a few dollars on these beautiful flowers for my beloved’, is that not true?”

“Yes”, I replied, “I do believe you are right.”

“Well”, he asked, “Once you have spent your money, what has happened to it?”

I pondered… what does he mean? What happens to money once you’ve spent it? I looked quizzically at him.

“It’s simple”, he smiled, “It’s gone! When you spend your money, it’s gone. You don’t have it any more.”

“However”, he continued, “if you ‘Use’ your money, rather than spending it, what happens?”

I looked at him, thinking… “I guess when you use money, you have created value with it and you still have the value”, I replied.

“Yes!”, he laughed, “you’ve got it! When you find yourself about to purchase something, ask yourself: will buying this use my hard earned money wisely or will it merely be spending it? Will this be the best use of my money? Do I really need to spend this money?”

“If you follow this powerful advice, you’ll find yourself generating true wealth. Your purchases will add value to your life and you won’t waste money spending it on frivolous purchases.” His face lit up with the biggest of smiles, as he asked, “Now tell me, isn’t that powerful advice, and isn’t it worth more than a couple of dollars saved on these beautiful flowers!”

Use money, don’t spend it!

He was right! It was fantastic advice: “Use money, don’t spend it!” What a powerful thinking tool. I thanked him profusely. He had added another useful distinction to my understanding of how to generate wealth in my life.

I truly suggest you commit this thinking tool to memory and use it and practice it every time you consider making a purchase. The tool orients you to questions of purpose, outcomes and value. Do you really need to make the purchase, will it be the best use of your money, will it add true wealth to your life? If not, then don’t make the purchase, save your money.

Use this life enhancing tool and you’ll find yourself growing and creating more wealth in your life. And stay tuned for some more life enhancing ideas, thoughts and distinctions on wealthing your life in upcoming blog posts.

Thinking Tool – Using Your Money Wisely

Use money, don’t spend it.

Self Compassion and Mindfulness

Hi there, welcome to today's blog post :-) Take a moment before you start reading, to breath deeply, relax and become mindfully aware of your body, your posture, your feelings. Notice any tension in your shoulders, your chest, your gut, your heart, your pelvis, your legs. Acknowledge what's going on in your body and your life.

Now gently let any tension go and allow warm relaxing feelings to breath through your body, your heart and mind. Really enjoy a deep sense of loving self compassion in your heart and calm abiding in your gut right now. Take another deep easy flowing breath and smile, smile deeply, smile wonderfully. Smile from your head, down into your heart and on into your gut. It feels great and you deserve to experience it mindfully now :-)

Today's Blog: why it's so practical

 
I've blogged before about how life enhancing compassion and mindfulness can be, how they can add practical value to your life and how they are linked with your heart, head and gut brains... and so today I want to reinforce this knowledge by sharing a short youtube vid entitled 'Self Compassion: What it Really is and Why it's so Practical'

Do you remember the blog post I did on Transcending Pain? In it, I described how pain is a signal and the word 'pain' can be considered to be an acronym that describes the role of this signaling:

PAIN = Please Acknowledge Information Now

Once you have consciously acknowledged the experience of the paining -- the information -- you find the emotional valence of the experience is often massively decreased. Notice the links between this and what Dr. Germer described in the video. Suffering decreases when you mindfully acknowledge and accept pain, either physical pain or psychological pain.

SUFFERING = PAIN x RESISTANCE

Self  compassion, mindfulness, heart-felt acknowledging and openness, all lead to a change in the unconscious response to paining and decrease suffering. Every one of us has and will experience times in our lives in which pain is inevitable. The ability to control that paining, to transcend it and to overcome and transcend suffering is incredibly life enhancing.

You might want to increase your knowledge and skills in Self Compassion and Mindfulness by reading Dr. Germer's book:


The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions

Balancing your Qi

A friend of mine, Michael Bending, was describing to me some of the insights that he has gained from studying and practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) this last few years. Mike has a Diploma of  Massage, is completing a  Bachelor of Health Science: Traditional Chinese Medicine and is a Political health activist, one time IT specialist, deep sea Navy Clearance Diver, semi professional triathlete and is passionate about creating positive change in the world.

I asked him to share his thoughts, ideas and insights with you. I can see many connections between what TCM offers and how it links to modern scientific insights of the heart brain and gut (enteric) brain. The idea that various organs are linked to particular emotions (emoting) makes sense when you realise that the gut brain and heart brain connect to and enervate the organs around the body. Messages to and from these distributed systems must change information flows and resulting emotional responses that are used to motivate and directionalise the head brain, thinking and ultimately behaviour.


So for your interest and edification, here's Mike's guest blog on TCM and enhancing your life:


Happiness, the 5 emotions and the organs they pertain to in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Your physical health alters your perception of the world around you, what you see, what you don't see, what you focus upon or do not focus upon.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) says that the Qi energy in your system determines your health. TCM states that each organ is responsible for an emotion: liver/anger, kidney/fear, heart/happiness or mania, spleen/over active mind, lungs/sadness. If the Qi is deficient in the kidney or heart it leads to corresponding changes in the emotions linked to those organs.

Now if I was to explain in such a way as to match our western biological way of thinking, then I would say that each organ is responsible for the regulation of different hormones and chemicals in the body and the balance of these hormones and chemicals dictate our emotions and thoughts at any time of the day. We can see that the kidneys express or do not express adrenalin relative to the flight or fight response to perceived danger...if the kidney is not functioning correctly then people could be fearful in ordinary everyday routines and events. Have you ever heard the expression "I was livered" when referring to anger? Well when someone has an unbalanced liver; in TCM then they will generally have a lot of anger at different times in the day or rise to anger easily.

So, moving along....our emotions are the sum total of the chemicals and hormones that wax and wane in our bodies. Our egos are the sum total of these emotions, and our perception of the world is an extension of our ego. Our perception of the world can reinforce our internal chemical environment or help change it....its an open-loop control system which can flip over to a closed loop control system anytime we decide....but only when we decide to take control! Or let go!

The emotions result in the sum of our ego influence the decisions we make on a day to day basis... about everything....and sometimes the way we feel one day is not the way we feel the next and sometimes we regret the decisions we made yesterday because we don't feel the same way today.

So...even though we can, in varying degrees, exert some control over our emotions mentally, we are in fact not in as much control of our lives as we generally like to think we are. Its like white water rafting, we can exert some control with our paddles and steer a course but we are also at the mercy of the currents of the river.

Many men will not understand this statement and may even negate it as most men feel as though they are in control of their thinking 24/7. Most women, will understand this as they sometimes feel different emotions before and during their menstrual cycle.....a woman may get angry or sad or both...she can't help it, it is the sum of the hormones and chemicals that are being expressed or not being expressed at this time. The man's general response to these emotions is "just snap out of it honey" but this is easier said than done for many women!

Men don't understand this as they believe they don't lose control of their emotions like women do, hence they believe women can "just snap out of it". However men don't stop to think they they are in fact driven by a different emotion 24/7 every day of the month. Testosterone drives their nearly every day thoughts and actions, but because it happens everyday of the month and it doesn't result result in moods of sadness or melancholy, then men don't usually see a difference in their behaviour as women do. However men do sometimes have a problem with anger but probably dismiss it as being part of being a man. Most women will acknowledge their behaviours during those 5-7 days of the month, men have no idea they themselves are so out of control emotionally.

So what causes these chemical imbalances? We all have different genetic predispositions however the main mechanism involved is genetics and food. We are what we eat, it has been said many times yet most people do not fully grasp this statement. Different foods have chemicals that have effects upon our bodies. If we don't get enough of some of these chemicals then the body does not function the way it should. 

The average western diet has nutrient values paramount to eating a plate of cardboard three times a day, hence diet is the place to start when trying to effect happiness. Yes some genetic predispositions will make it harder for some people, but genes can be switched on and off depending upon the levels of certain nutrients and mental control.  And if you think that your mental capacity to control your biological functions is limited then spare a thought for the Tibetan monks who practice a lifetime to actually slow their heart beats to almost nothing and raise their body temperature at other times. It is possible.

Some people who suffer depression have a higher need for vitamin B3 than other people. Exercise like running, swimming, cycling, yoga, qi gong and tai chi all stimulate the happiness hormones called endorphins which will effect changes in our body and our perception. Good sleep will stimulate more melatonin which is responsible for regulation of most of the hormones in our body.

So lets get back to happiness and life enhancing....happiness is the balance of these chemical markers in the body. Yes they can be controlled by the mind, without so much reliance upon diet, but it takes years of skill and practice as shown by modalities such as Buddhists mediation training. The average person can not do this without extensive training. We can control our emotions when we are more understanding of how they are effecting us and this does have an effect day to day.

Its a multifaceted approach, food, medicine, relaxation, exercise, sleep, mentally concentrating upon happy events and moments while minimising negative emotions, consciously fostering love and compassion in our hearts while minimising anger, fear and sadness.

Think good thoughts, step back from the illusionary world...see the world for what it is without these debilitating emotions....and don't get caught up with what other people think, run your own race.

The perfect blossom is a rare thing, you could spend your entire life searching for one and it would not be a wasted life!  (The Last Samurai)

Chase after money and security
And your heart will never unclench
Care about people’s approval
And you will be their prisoner
Do your work, then step back
The only path to serenity.

Lao Tze

for more information or to read more of Mike's thoughts on TCM and health, check out:
http://www.taipingjourney.com/happiness.htm

Connecting with others...

I was chatting with my friend Garry the other day about a recent holiday in beautiful Tasmania that he and his beloved had just returned from. I asked him what he'd found most life enhancing about the holiday. He responded that surprisingly, it was the conscious decision they'd made to connect with other people they met during their travels that had really made a life enhancing difference.

Now Garry is like me, we tend to enjoy our privacy and solitude, and don't normally do a lot of extroverted socialising. So on holidays, we'd tend not to spend a lot of time connecting and sharing with strangers. But on this trip, he'd decided to change that and see what would unfold through a more gregarious way of interacting with people. Along the way he'd met some really fascinating people and had his mind and life seeded with some interesting new ideas and opportunities. Connecting with others had been really life enhancing. I asked him to write something about his experience and share it here on the blog.

Here's Garry's report on a life enhancing holiday experience he had through connecting with and learning from 'Ron', one of the many people he serendipitously met in his travels:

Eco holidaying..  Ron's life enhancing perspective

Changing social values have brought forth, the modern 'eco holiday', broadly advertised and featuring a 'low impact' approach to the traditional holiday experience. A decade into this century, the travel/holiday industry has grown an increasing array of 'green' options, often with a concomitant price elevation. I'd like however to share with you a story based on a more basic approach to moving across this planet.

 Imagine this. Ocean Beach, west of Strahan Tasmania, the sun setting on an endless horizon. The Southern Ocean blue and peaked white with the energy of the wind. A man busies himself by a local viewing spot.

 A closer look, and he is removing rubbish. The type that litters most sightseeing spots. In fact he focuses on the bits of rubbish most people don't want to pick up, and he's equipped for the task with a 'grabber'. 

This is Ron, and his path across the land is defined by freedom, but he has made a deal between himself and the land. Whenever he stops in a location, he cleans it up. He always leaves his camping sites free of human rubbish. He considers it to be like a payment for the pleasure of staying. As the sun sets over Ocean Beach, he pays for the experience with his time and his efforts.

We talk about it and agree that sometimes just a small change in how we value an activity or experience can define a more rewarding path. He takes satisfaction and reward from both the natural beauty of the ocean scene and the fact that his passage has had a restorative influence on the space. Eco holidaying that is accessible to all.

So that's a vignette from Garry's experience of connecting with people and the life enhancing ideas and values that can be brought to your life through this.

I hope it inspires us all to task ourselves, to stretch out, to make more of our lives in every way, and to connect with each other and share life enhancing ideas and experiences.

smiles and life enhancing thoughts,

Grant

Aligning your multi-mind

"A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Abraham Lincoln

According to the noted Stanford University neuro-scientist and psychologist Prof. Robert Ornstein, we don’t have a single unitary mind, rather we are a multi-mind made up of numerous simple and relatively autonomous mini-minds. The cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky calls it a ‘society of mind’.

We appear to experience a single mind and stream of consciousness, but the scientific evidence suggests that this sense of unitary self and consciousness is really a fiction. In reality, our mind is the result of a synthesis of many unconscious processes operating and negotiating together.

Many brains - a society of mind

Let’s examine this idea in a bit more detail. For a start we know we have at minimum three separate brains – the head brain, the enteric or gut brain and the cardiac or heart brain. The head brain itself is also composed of two relatively autonomous functional half-brains – the right and left hemispheres. Within each of these brains, groups of neurons and structures operate, build and perform competencies and unconscious skills. And importantly, these mini-minds communicate with one another to operate the totality that appears as the ‘self’.

This works fine when all parts of your multi-mind, your ‘society of mind’ are aligned and congruent. It’s problematic however when there’s disagreement or dissension in the camp; when parts of your mind are incongruent or at odds with one another. Such incongruence or mismatch undermines your resolve and leads to incongruent behaviour and outcomes. You literally sabotage your own success.

We all have experiences of this. Think of times when you’ve felt torn on a decision. Where one part of you has agreed but another part has not. Notice also that the two ‘sides’ of this disagreement are often represented on the two sides of your body. You’ll see and hear people say “on the one hand I feel/want/believe X… but on the other hand I feel/want/believe Y”; and you’ll literally see them hold their hands out as they say this.

In NLP terms, this linguistic expression is a literal descriptor of the unconscious process of the two hemispheres being in disagreement with one another. Remember that the left side of the body is connected to and controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, and the right side of the body is controlled by the left hemisphere. When the two hemispheres are in disagreement with one another, this incongruence is represented and embodied across the physical body and often experienced as mismatched feelings at the midline of the body.

Think about something you are undecided on now, or something that was important but you were divided about in the past. You’ll probably experience exactly what I’ve just described. Notice also that the left and right brains also communicate to the heart brain and gut brain and lead to feelings of discomfort or disagreement in your gut region or heart region – in your gut brain and heart brain.

When you negotiate and integrate all these disparate parts, you'll often find that you feel the coming together, the aligning, at the center of your heart -- you finally feel like you've gotten to the 'heart of the matter'. Interesting how the heart and gut brains are pivotal in generating congruence, motivation and encouragement.

The Cybernetic Loop

Remember the Cybernetic Loop model from NLP that says that the mind and body are connected in a control loop and that what affects one part affects all other parts. When there is disagreement or incongruence within the system of your multi-mind, it leads to incongruence in your feelings and your behaviour and physiology.

A great example of this is when someone gives you a gift you really don’t like. It’s almost impossible to congruently express gratitude and thanks without some non-verbal indicator of your dislike for the gift. In fact, psychologists have developed tools to read the fleeting and small micro-muscle movements that occur whenever you attempt to lie. The part of your multi-mind that knows it hates the gift will fleetingly take control of the muscles in your face and show a micro-expression of disgust before your conscious mind directs the muscles to make a smile and voice your appreciation of the gift. These fleeting micro-expressions are picked up by the other person’s unconscious mind and form part of the intuitions that we all use to know when someone is being genuine or not.

Another great example of the effects of incongruence occurs in sport. Golfers are well aware of the ‘yips’ – unconscious and involuntary patterns of movement that derail successful shots. Even the most skillful sportsperson knows that if they allow any part of their mind to think a negative thought or focus on failure then their performance will suffer.

Aligning for success

There are two important things to note from this insight about your multi-mind and the effects of incongruence within it. First, if you want success, you need to make sure all parts of your self are aligned and supportive of that success. Incongruence and inconsistency are not life enhancing and are indeed enemies to happiness and success. You need to learn to detect incongruency within your society of mind and be able to negotiate with all parts of your mind to bring them into alignment and agreement.

Secondly, incongruence within a person’s multi-mind is usually embodied and expressed (typically outside of their conscious awareness) in their physical stance, their micro-muscle movements and facial expressions and in their non-verbal communication. You can learn to notice and track these signals and detect when someone is not fully supportive of the outcomes you are working towards with them. Equally, any incongruence you are feeling will be non-verbally expressed to other people’s unconscious minds and will undermine your chances of successful outcomes with them. In part, this is how self-fulfilling prophecies work within human relationships. We literally express and communicate all the messages from our multi-mind, and get responses from others that recapitulate our expectations.

So I hope you are fully and totally realising right now, with all your heart and mind, all the parts of your society of self, that congruence and alignment of your multi-mind is a life enhancing and vitally important skill. You need to become a master at ‘congruence-ing’ – at tracking for and generating congruence and alignment within your mind/body. And with that in mind, in upcoming blog posts, we'll learn about detecting congruence and incongruence signals and some techniques for aligning the various parts of your self(ing).

Until then, start to notice the various signals and messages within your body and your multi-mind. Listen to your dreams, because that is one of the key ways that the heart and gut brains communicate with the head brain. Tune into and trust your intuitions and your hunches. And start to talk kindly and lovingly with your unconscious mind -- with all the parts of your multi-mind. Talk to your 'self' like you would talk to a loving caring friend. And learn all you can about hypnotic languaging techniques such as the Milton Language Patterns from NLP. The more skills you have in communicating, directing and aligning your unconscious multi-mind, the more life enhancing success you'll have in achieving your heartfelt outcomes in life.


positive smiles and life enhancing wishes,
Grant

You might like to read these key books by Robert Ornstein:

Multimind: A New Way of Looking at Human Behavior
The author of The Psychology of Consciousness here defines the human mind as a "bastard hybrid system." Each of us has many "small minds" that simultaneously process feelings, fantasies, ideas, fixed routines, interpersonal responses and bodily skills. Multimind helps explain why our emotions and attitudes are easily swayed, the difficulty of ever really knowing oneself or another person, and how mental shortcuts we rely on to make snap judgments can harden prejudices.

The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres
"I began this book with a pretty firm prejudice," says Robert Ornstein of his survey of the two halves of the human brain. "I believed that after two decades of research we'd find ... that there might be little to distinguish the two sides." Instead, he concluded that "the division of the mind is profound," with deep roots in evolution, embryonic development, and society. It is profound, but not simplistic: Ornstein shows how the right hemisphere is neither a chimpanzeelike moron nor a mystical genius. It provides the context, the big picture, while the left hemisphere keeps track of the details. Doris Lessing says, "I have always admired Robert Ornstein's ability to explain difficult scientific ideas to ordinary people"; Paul Ehrlich calls The Right Mind "the most innovative, fascinating work yet to appear on the role of the two hemispheres of the brain." 

Tao - a life enhancing way...

"If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to."

The Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese book of philosophy that has much to teach us about the way of life enhancing. 'Tao Te Ching' can be roughly translated as 'the way and its power' or 'the way of life'.

The Tao Te Ching begins with the following passage:

The Way that can be told of is not the true or unvarying way;
The names that can be named are not the true or unvarying names.
It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;
The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind.

In another translation, this passage also reads:

The Way that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not real.
The Way manifests all that happens and may happen;
The world represents all that exists and may exist.

To experience without abstraction is to sense the world;
To experience with abstraction is to know the world.
These two experiences are indistinguishable;
Their construction differs but their effect is the same.

Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.

The map is not the territory

What these deep and intriguing teachings are attempting to express, in ways that words truly cannot express because of the nature of words and symbols, is what NLP represents in the powerful saying:

"The map is not the territory"

This thinking tool, originally coined by Alfred Korzybski, the father of the philosophy of General Semantics, highlights the understanding that 'no map can ever fully represent the territory that it maps'. A map will ALWAYS be a deleted, distorted and generalised/abstracted version of the territory. And all words, thoughts and symbols are maps of the world. We never 'truly' know the world, we only ever experience a deleted, distorted and generalised version of the world -- 'The way that can be named is not the true way'.

In other words... the tools you use to make sense of the world and to represent (re- present) the world and communicate your understanding of the world, to yourself (your multi-mind) and to others, will ALWAYS be lies. They are NOT TRUE and can never be true. They may be relatively veridical and may closely represent certain aspects of the world, within defined boundaries and contexts, BUT the map can never be the territory. The menu can never by the meal. Words are NOT the things they stand for.

Robert Anton Wilson, in his brilliant and life changing book 'Prometheus Rising' put it well when he described our human mapping and modeling processes as 'Reality Tunneling'. According to Bob, we each live not in the real world, but in our very own deleted, generalised and distorted 'reality tunnel'. And the world that can be constructed (by our unconscious modeling and reality tunneling processes) is not real. The names that can be named are not unvarying names. As the Buddhist's say, nothing is permanent, nothing exists in and of itself, all is process, constantly changing and varying. And the deep understanding from all these various wisdom traditions and modern neuro and behavioural technologies, is that our model of the world -- our reality tunnel -- is NOT the true world.

What can you do with this?

So what does this mean? What can you do with this to enhance your life?

Well, for a start, it in part means that your beliefs, ideas and thoughts are not totally true, fixed, absolute or real. These insights indicate that it is massively unsane to be rigid in your beliefs and values. NO belief is 'the' TRUE belief. All beliefs are 'names' and no name is the true or unvarying name or way.

These philosophical insights suggest that you are best served in your life when you are more flexible, open and pliant in your attitudes and approaches. Let go of absolutist and unyielding ideas. Let go of dogmatism and the need to be right. Allow yourself to be comfortable with uncertainty and fuzzy boundaries. Nothing is absolutely certain. Possibility and probability are key. Don't take yourself so seriously. Don't take life too seriously -- take life more light-heartedly, with humour, forgiving, joy, balance and flexibility. Relax your model of the world. Relax your attitudes. Map the way of your life with flow, peace and calm abiding joy. It's an incredibly life enhancing way.

More from the taoist way

And for your enjoyment, here are some more key ideas from Tao'ist philosophy as expressed in the "Tao Te Ching", that have generative import for living life enhancingly:

• Force begets force.
• Living simply, is life enhancing.
• Material wealth does not enrich the spirit.
• Self-absorption and self-importance are vain and self-destructive.
• The harder one tries, the more resistance one creates for oneself.
• The more one acts in harmony with the universe (the Mother of the myriad things), the more one will achieve, with less effort.
• The truly wise make little of their own wisdom for the more they know, the more they realize how little they know.
• When we lose the fundamentals, we supplant them with increasingly inferior values which we pretend are the true values.
• Glorification of wealth, power and beauty beget crime, envy and shame.
• The qualities of flexibility and suppleness, especially as exemplified by water, are superior to rigidity and strength.
• Everything is in its own time and place.
• Duality of nature complements each other instead of competing with each other — the two faces of the same coin — one cannot exist without the other.
• The differences of opposite polarities help us to understand and appreciate the universe.
• Humility is the highest virtue.
• Knowing oneself is a key virtue.
• Envy is a calamity; overindulgence is a plight.
• The more you go in search of an answer, the less you will understand.
• Know when it's time to stop. If you don't know then stop when you are done.

wishing you a balanced, flexible and life enhancing way of life'ing,
Grant


And from one of the authors I most cherish and revere, here's a translation of the Tao Te Ching that is wonderfully life enhancing to read:

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way

“Ursula K. Le Guin’s translation of the Tao Te Ching is a personal and poetic meditation. Through her own careful study of these ancient teachings, she brings the Way into contemporary life. Each day, I open this book at random and receive a contemplative gift. These words are akin to water in the desert.”

Living your childhood dreams...

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

Randy Pausch

The Last Lecture

A lot of professors give talks titled “The Last Lecture” -- Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can’t help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, an award winning teacher and computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer...

"On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told his audience about the cancer that is devouring his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.

Randy’s lecture has become a phenomenon, as has the book he wrote based on the same principles, celebrating the dreams we all strive to make realities. Sadly, Randy lost his battle to pancreatic cancer on July 25th, 2008, but his legacy will continue to inspire us all, for generations to come."

See it here

Randy's last lecture isn’t about dying, instead, it's about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment and about living your dreams! It is inspiring and life enhancing. So I've shared it here with you. If you've already seen it, then watch it again, I have many times, and it continues to inspire and remind me to live my dreams, savour every moment of my life and appreciate the people I love. If you haven't seen it before, then take the time now to do so, it will definitely enhance your life.

Check out Randy's book here:

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.