We thought we’d leave you with something to smile about today. Something to kick off your weekend, bringing some more happiness and joy into your life.
This video was taken at Central Station in Antwerp, Belgium. The Sound of Music. Enjoy!
By now, you likely know how important our dreams are for receiving messages. These messages could be for life direction, in answer to our burning questions, or for a personal growth tool. But how do we capture our dreams so we can learn the messages hidden in them?
We often hear from people that they think they don’t dream at all. We would say that you do - you just need to practice the habit of capturing and interpreting them. It’s like riding a bike … a little awkward at first, but then it becomes a habit that you don’t even think about. That’s your goal here:
○ Go to sleep with the intention of remembering your dream. It’s like communicating with your subconscious mind, putting it on notice that your dreams are important, so pay attention.
○ Have a notepad and pen handy by your bed.
○ Immediately when you wake, write down everything you remember about your dream - impressions, feelings, people known and unknown, numbers, names, colors - anything that stands out for you, regardless of how insignificant you think it is.
○ Journal about your dream. Here’s where you can fill in the details of what you remember as you woke as well as the general way you felt in the dream. At first, you may not remember more details, but as you practice your subconscious mind will deliver more details.
Begin capturing your dreams. Very soon you’ll find yourself remembering more detail, more often, with greater clarity.
Life Provoking … Your Hidden Messages
If you liked “Notes From The Universe” you’ll love Choose Them Wisely: Thoughts Become Things!
Mike Dooley expands his approach to life, dreams and happiness in his newest book. Packed with inspiration and thought-provoking messages, you’ll find yourself eagerly awaiting the next message. With no coincidences in the Universe, you’ll soon realize why you’ve been drawn to this book.
The best way to experience “Choose Them Wisely” is in brief increments, allowing yourself time to absorb the message and realize the relevance in your own life. Well done (again) Mike!
If you like listening to books while driving or relaxing, I highly recommend picking up his audio version. Mike’s voice has a calming yet humorous tone to it - very engaging.
You may be wondering what our dreams have to do with personal growth. Everything! You see, our dreams are an ancient communication tool with our soul - through our subconscious mind - directing us, coaching us, guiding us to what’s most important for US. It’s not for others - it’s like your own personal life coach right inside of you, dedicated to you and what you want most in life!
What Messages Are We Receiving?
We filter over 60,000 thoughts each and every day. Unfortunately, 90% of those are repetitive thoughts - the same ones we had yesterday … errands to run, choosing what to wear, our route to work, what to eat for lunch … you get the picture. With so much ‘noise’, it’s easy to see why we don’t receive our deepest and most profound messages while going through our daily lives.
That begs the question, “How do we receive our messages and guidance?” Through quieting the mind. This can be done with meditation, (which contrary to uninformed belief, IS simply quieting the mind, not sitting in Yogic positions and chanting) and through our dreams. We’re going to talk about dreams…the message vehicle of your soul.
It’s All About You
Something magical happens when we go to sleep…we turn off our conscious mind. You know, the one that races all day long with tens of thousands of thoughts? How can we possibly get answers to our most burning questions and problems when we’re distracted by our ‘daily’ thoughts and responsibilities!
Dreams are this magical place where we work on our waking problems and live out our true desires in life. They’re also a place where we receive our messages - course corrections, comments and instructions, special information about your life and its direction, as well as serving as a creative channel for those most important things to you. This makes dreams a valuable resource for living a life of purpose and passion. The special information you receive is for you and you alone.
Now, knowing how important our dreams are, can you see how important it is for our personal growth to capture our dreams?
In today’s busy world most of us multi-task. Getting smart about combining tasks (multi-tasking) can be a very effective time saver. A word of caution: don’t combine high priority tasks. Those higher priorities in your life deserve your undistracted focus.
○ Consider spending time talking with your kids (very important) while you fold the laundry (who knows, they may help)
○ Turn your commute time into educational or entertainment time by listening while driving. These days, almost every book is available in audio format.
○ Put your filing in order while waiting on hold.
You can get much more done when you engage the support of others. Who can you delegate to? Who can you partner with. Relinquish some control and share it with others who are willing and able to support you. You free up much needed time for yourself and leave them empowered with their own sense of accomplishment.
These days we all wear many hats. It can be done with style and grace when we plan to succeed, making the most of our time.
You frantically run around each day attempting to get it all done - juggling work, family, friends. Your endless to-do list just keeps growing … as does your frustration. How can you get more time - to get it all done AND for yourself? Time Management done the right way…
Minimize or Remove Distractions
We all have distractions in our lives. After all, things come up. However, there’s a lot we can do to minimize certain culprits that rob us of our most valued commodity - time.
○ De-clutter your life: Clutter is distracting and takes your focus away from important things. Is your desk or office messy - clean it and get organized. Is your home cluttered - make it a project to go room by room and sell, give away or donate those items that you haven’t used in 1 year or more. Clutter subconsciously suffocates us which is why we can never be at peace while we’re surrounded by it. We naturally focus better when we have space.
○ The 5 minute rule: If it takes less than 5 minutes to complete a task, do it now. Put those dishes in the dishwasher, the clothes in the laundry, make that phone call (if it’s less than 5 minutes) - you get the picture. The little items can pile up and become overwhelming. Do it now. The distraction will be gone and you’ll feel as if you’ve accomplished something.
○ Technology trap: These days we have technology helping us out - but it isn’t always a time-saver. Very often we find ourselves wasting precious time checking email, surfing the internet aimlessly, chatting online and yes, playing mindless computer games. Here’s a hint: ONLY check email during specific times of the day. This is one of the biggest distractions in getting the important things done. Also, limit your internet, chat and computer games time to the “free” time you have - that is AFTER your most important priorities have been addressed.
Time is the one thing we can’t buy more of, borrow, rent, sell or trade. On this, we’re all on the same playing field. So why do some people seem to move effortlessly through their day, accomplishing much AND they seem happy and balanced? Time Management done the right way…create more time by effectively using your 24 hours a day.
Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail
Brian Tracy said if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. It’s an absolute necessity to plan our days in advance in these fast-paced times. Without some kind of structure in our day, we race from here to there taking much longer than necessary, and get distracted along the way. That’s where time management comes in…
○ Plan your week in advance: Block out specific time slots to complete tasks for the next week. If you work during the day, block after work time for family, household chores, hobbies, etc. It’s important that you know what your priorities are - you’ll plan them first and then your less important priorities.
○ Plan your next day the night before: This is where you can fine tune your schedule for the next day and it takes less than 5 minutes! If something came up that needs to be addressed immediately, you can shuffle your schedule around. When you plan before sleep, you wake up with an expectation of how your day will go and work more effectively.
○ Plan personal time: Time for ourselves always falls through the cracks when we’re ultra busy. This is one of the biggest mistakes we make, thinking there isn’t time for us. When we don’t take the time for ourselves, our batteries run out. What happens then? We have even less energy to get it all done. Even 20 minutes a day of uninterrupted personal time is enough to recharge your batteries.
○ Plan exercise time: Another mistake many of us make - no time for ourselves, definitely no time to exercise. Half of recharging our batteries is mental and the other half physical. Our bodies need movement to remove life-draining toxins from our systems. Again, you don’t have to block out hours of time - commit to 30 minutes a day - all at once or broken into 10 or 15 minute segments.
Planning in time blocks gives us the structure to focus on a task at hand and getting more done. Be flexible - plan to do a little each day on a task, or in larger, less frequent blocks of time. You’ll quickly find yourself getting more done, more effectively.
How do we break free of “try”? How do we set ourselves up to succeed? Begin with changing our language.
Get honest with yourself (and others)…
You do or you do not. You do want something, do act on something, do work towards something - or not.
Here’s the key - DECIDE. When you decide, you’re telling your subconscious mind to go to work on finding ways to get what you want. When you decide, you make it happen - no matter what.
Feel how different “decide” feels from “try”. Can you feel the expectation of success in decide? Can you feel the change in energy in your body? Can you feel the conviction that you’ll do whatever it takes once you’ve decided?
There’s no room for failure in decide - you’ll keep going until you succeed.
Raising Your Standards:
One of the key ways to raise your standards is to stay true to your word - to yourself and others - but most importantly to yourself. When you say you’ll do something, do it. When you don’t want to do something, or have no intention of doing something, say so. Remove “try” from your vocabulary and insert “do” … or “don’t”.
○ DECIDE - decide what you want
○ COMMIT - commit to seeing it through to success
○ RESOLVE - resolve to work through any obstacles that may come up
You know what you want. Choose to include in your life more of what you want, less of what you don’t and to more honestly express your choices. Not only will you respect yourself more but others will as well.
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
~ Yoda
(fictional character from George Lucas’s “Star Wars”)
How often have you “tried” to do something and failed…often miserably. There’s yet another reason to not try again - another example of failure. Soon you just give up trying and stay stuck in a life of mediocrity that may feels comfortable, but erodes your soul every day you exist there, until you wake one day and wonder what happened. You question why other people seem to have all the luck and you don’t. It may surprise you to know that by removing one word from their language, these same “lucky” people have lifted the lid from their mediocre lives and have begun living the life they truly want to live.
“Try” is the language of failure. Subconsciously, your mind registers “try” as the assumption that you’ll expend energy without the expectation of results. So why even bother trying? Sometimes we’re just kidding ourselves, and other times we’re just kidding others. When is the last time you told a friend you’d “try” to make it to their party, never intending to show up. I’ll bet your friend knew you wouldn’t show up even if you didn’t admit it to them.
As with your friend, when you use the language of “try” on yourself, you’re excusing your lack of action and follow through before you even start. Essentially, you don’t want to do what you’re saying you’ll try to do. It’s like a pre-emptive excuse - Well, I tried!
Want success? Change your language!
What are you searching for? Your answers may lie inside this book…
The Valkyries
This is my favorite of Paulo’s books…written just after “The Alchemist” (also highly recommended), it’s wonderfully detailed with the author’s personal quest for answers - the answers to his soul’s most important questions.
As he weaves his story while journeying to the desert in Arizona in search of The Valkyries, you’ll find yourself learning some very important life lessons…
* We destroy what we love most
* We have an internal contract to not win when victory is possible
* We always use the best weapons we have against ourselves
* We’re prisoners of our past
How to overcome? Ah, that’s the soul filling answer that Paulo describes … as it relates to his own quest.
If you’re searching for your own answers, reading this book can only bring your closer to an understanding of who you are and how you hold yourself back from fulfilling your life purpose.
