Power Hour: How to Recognize Life's Abundance

Power Hour: How to Recognize Life's Abundance

Now more than ever before, anxiety about loss of income has replaced the sense of abundance and fulfillment. Most of our fears about not having "enough" are about money and time. But what about a lack of emotional fulfillment, a lack of love, a lack of creative solutions? Abundance is all-embracing. At least it should be.

The most crucial thing to understand is that abundance begins in the mind. Do you believe you only lack something because you haven't yet found a creative way to solve the problem? Or do you believe there's never enough to go around, unfair stuff happens, and there's not much you can do about it?



Choosing a belief system that cultivates abundance is crucial. But how do we do it? The simplest way to look at this—and also the most productive—is to recognize that you are always processing your life. There is input and output, forming a feedback loop. Input is the term for all the experiences that come your way during the day, while output is all your responses: your thoughts, words and actions. You are the one who oversees both. You sift through the input, evaluate it and take what you like, while rejecting what you don't like. Nothing is more crucial than your contribution to the feedback loop: You are the one who colors everything that comes your way, using intention, belief, expectation, wishes, hopes, dreams and fears. No input is neutral, because you are emotionally invested in your experiences. At the other end of the process, when you produce output, you again color it the same way. Your thoughts, words and actions indicate how involved you are in your life. Thus the circle of personal reality is shaped, every minute of every day. 

1. Turn negativity into positive action. Take one thing today that you feel negative about. Before the day is out, take one positive action that diminishes the negativity. Such actions include the following: standing up for yourself, speaking your truth, fixing what can be fixed, asking for help, seeking wise advice, walking away from things that can't be fixed, reducing the stress and looking at your role in creating the negative situation. But the possibilities are endless. Taking even a small action begins to change the feedback you're getting. 

2. Get a healthy outside perspective. In bad situations, people tend to contract and withdraw inside themselves. "It's my problem" leads to isolation, which makes lack and loss feel worse. I realize that no one wants to be a burden on others and that everyone wants to preserve his or her dignity. But other people have confronted lack and loss, survived the pain and eventually made it all the way through. It helps enormously to be in touch with someone who has walked in your shoes. 

3. Don't indulge the level of futility. "It's hopeless. I'm helpless. Nothing will change or ever get better." Everyone hears these words; the voice of futility persists because we were all little children who felt helpless and hopeless at times. If you indulge the voice of futility, it will pull you down to its level. So reject the temptation to indulge in a defeatist viewpoint (if you are depressed, which is a serious mental condition, seek professional help). Tell yourself, "This negative voice isn't me." Gently but firmly reject the voice of futility, and when any good thing happens, however small, remind yourself that the voice was wrong. 

4. Expand your awareness. The greatest enemy of abundance is contraction. When you find yourself in a tight situation, feeling that there is no way out, drawing a blank when you try to think of new solutions, or carrying around a heavy burden, these are signs of contraction, in mind, body and spirit. Expansion is the great friend of abundance. It brings in the light, opening up new possibilities. In a relaxed, open state, your awareness sees farther, and life isn't so confined. 

How can you expand your awareness? To begin with, set aside time every day for peace and quiet. The brain has a natural mechanism for resetting itself and getting back into balance. Give this mechanism a chance. Being under pressure, putting up with noise and stress, and never stopping to relax are counterproductive. Go into a quiet place and sit with your eyes closed for a few minutes at least two times a day. Let yourself become centered again, and if you can, practice meditation. 

5. Take full responsibility. If you want a radical cure for being a victim, here it is. Victims are dominated by external forces—other people, circumstances—and since outside forces cannot be controlled, it seems natural to give up responsibility for the bad things in your life. "I can't help it" is like a poison seed that keeps multiplying and growing. The solution is to recognize that situations change only after a person quits looking outside and starts taking responsibility. 

In effect, you are saying something positive: This is my life. You reclaim ownership of your life once you take responsibility. At the same time, you are stating a simple, inescapable truth. If your life isn't your own, whom else can it belong to? No one else has enough time, money, energy and love to give you everything. Abundance comes from within. When you take responsibility, you accept everything, the good and the bad, as your whole package.

Abundance reveals itself when you build a feedback loop that can accept and build upon what life has to offer. Look at the familiar story of lottery winners who are worse off 10 years after their sudden windfall. Why? Because they couldn't adapt. They processed life on a limited scale, and suddenly they were asked to process millions of dollars, massive attention, public exposure and the demands of people around them. Unless you have prepared the way, abundance itself can turn into a drain on you. The secret is to constantly build in small steps, taking advantage of small victories by using them to create your own belief system, one that can accept higher and higher levels of opportunity. Here are a few guidelines that you can use...

6. Develop a higher vision of your life. There is such a thing as rich but miserable—we all know people who fit that pattern—but there is no such thing as fulfilled and miserable. Material abundance, which can be useful, contains no fulfillment by itself. Fulfillment comes from a vision that comes true. The higher the vision, the greater the fulfillment. 

In effect, vision acts like a trigger for abundance. It sets in motion a host of hidden processes, because awareness builds upon itself, as you probably have already experienced. If you practice, you get good at things. If you reinforce the positive, there is more positivity to come. This is the ideal kind of feedback loop that can be applied to everything you dream of, wish for and envision. But it requires focus. When you learn to ride a bike, you don't want to be eating a sandwich and texting a friend at the same time. Riding the bike is your focused intention. Apply this same concentration to your vision. 

But what kind should you choose? Some principles are common to all higher visions, and they can be simply stated: I will be good and honest; I will be sincere; I will hold on to my truth; I will aim to love and be loved as best I can; I will add to everyone's life, not simply my own; I will do no harm; I renounce violence; I will revere the things I believe in the most. 

As for getting to the specifics, look at the people you most admire. Write down a list of heroes and heroines that inspire you, either form real life or fiction. Read biographies. Delve into scriptures and inspirational literature from the world's wisdom traditions. As you expand your search, you won't get more confused. Instead, you will find that certain elements ring true with you, over and over. Maybe it's the element of service or devotion or giving or creativity. As you incorporate it into your thinking, your own vision will be clarified in your mind. This germinal stage is important, so don't hasten it or become impatient. The vision you select is actually selecting you. 

7. Make full use of your successes. It's strange to realize that abundance starts small. Doesn't that contradict what the word "abundance" means? It means a bumper crop, a flow of good things and unlimited supply. Those are all applicable, but you can't assume that abundance happens all at once, like a thunderstorm quenching a parched land. The process is more like attaining a skill. If you want to master walking a tightrope, you start small and low down, not big and high up. This actually insures that you will reach your goal. 

So don't set yourself up for failure by short-circuiting the process. A lot of things, including the wiring in your brain, must become organized around your goal. Every wish brings a result. The world's wisdom traditions teach this lesson. But they also teach that results can be tiny, or mixed, or hidden from view because our awareness is limited and distracted. It helps to know that the process will never let you down—your every thought and intention becomes part of the feedback loop. 

Be focused and consistent. Notice every step forward and take advantage of each small success. In this way, you close the gap between what you want from life and what it is giving you. At the same time, trusting the process also means not straining or adding to your stress. We are all programmed to fear the unknown, and yet every good thing in life emerges from the unknown. 

In the end, the gap that separates lack from abundance is self-created. Abundance, however, comes down to connecting with a natural part of life. It is lack and loss that are unnatural. Life is a field of infinite possibilities. The unknown isn't filled with just a few good things; the possibilities are unending. Try to make the connection. You have the ability. Creating your own reality is the richest gift you received at birth. Abundance is a wellspring for you to tap into, and the process of getting there actually works. 

Power Hour: New Year - New You

Power Hour: New Year - New You 

Want to Change? - Your Change Starts from Within
Be Proactive -  Begin With The End in Mind - Put First Things First


To Be Proactive is to have the gift of self-knowledge or self-awareness - the ability to choose your own response. A proactive person is driven by values that are independent of other people’s reactions or responses. We can choose to use difficult situations to build our character and develop the ability to handle such situations better in the future. Being proactive means assessing the situation and developing a positive response to it. (I work on this everyday.. I have a lot to change, and I am defnitely a work in progress. )

Out of the multitude of events that occur every day, there’s only a subset that are actually of concern to us - the rest really don’t matter. Within that set of events that are of concern is a smaller set that you actually can do anything about, your sphere of influence, so to speak. There are events and things you can change, and there events and things you cannot change. Now, where is your focus? Is it on those events that you can do something about, or on the ones that are out of your control?

The idea is don’t spend your time focusing on events that you can’t control; instead, focus on what you can control. Let’s say, for example, that you’re waiting for a very important phone call, contract to be signed, or event to happen. Some people stress out waiting for the call, - that’s a bad habit because you can’t control when the phone call comes. On the other hand, others simply spend their time focusing on the things they can control - the phone call will eventually come, right?

How can you achieve that? Count the number of times you focus on things you can’t alter the outcome of in a given day. Do you daydream about unachievable things? Do you worry about stuff you can’t affect or change? Cast those efforts aside and spend your time on things that you can affect and change.


Begin with the End in Mind is a gift of imagination and conscience, and occurs when you prioritize and plan with 'The End' in mind. 'The End' represents the purpose or driving force in your life. To engage in this habit you need to have a dream. By defining your own vision, and setting goals, measurable progress towards the fulfillment of your dream can occur. When employing imagination and conscience—two unique human capacities—difficult situations can be alleviated. By using imagination and conscience, you don’t rely on memory. If you rely on memory or history, chances are you will lose your cool, make judgments regarding other people, and will probably exacerbate the situation.

Taking 'The End' literally, imagine your funeral and what others there are saying and thinking about you. What do you want them to say? The things that you want them to say are the real core values that you care about the most, and thus they should be the ones that you focus your life’s work on, both personally and professionally.

This leads to writing your personal mission statement. Can you really codify in a few sentences what your mission in life is? It seems overused and common, but it’s truly effective if you spend the time to work out what it really means and actually state it in words - in writing.


Put First Things First is the gift of will power. It is a life of advantage and influence. To really understand and apply this, you need to spend time doing what fits into your personal mission, observing the proper balance between production and building production capacity. Identify the key roles that you take on in life, and make time for each of them.

Most things that we do each day can be divided according to urgency and importance: they’re either urgent or not urgent, and they’re either important or not important. Obviously, in our lives, we wish for the things we do to be important, but we’d also like for them not to be urgent, because urgent things cause stress. So, ideally, an effective person focuses on things that are important but not urgent.

We should strive to do this in all aspects of our life, no matter which hat we’re wearing at the moment: worker, parent, spouse, volunteer, and so on. Then, within each of those roles, one should define specific goals that they wish to accomplish, important short-term goals. Once you’ve defined a couple of goals for the upcoming week for each of your roles, literally schedule them in. Add these things to your schedule and don’t let anything interfere with them. Because these items are not urgent, you have some flexibility on when to do them, but because they’re important, you must schedule them and keep it on the schedule.

Power Hour: The Power of Gratitude

Power Hour: The Power of Gratitude - It's all about Being Grateful for What We Have, Not What You're Going to Get

With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it's easy to forget about what and who you're grateful for.

I've been working on my gratitude for many years, and I'm still amazed at how challenging it can be to focus on what I'm grateful for at times (especially when I'm feeling sorry for myself, complaining or focused on what I think I should get, instead of all that I already have). I'm also blown away by how powerful and transformative gratitude is when we choose to pay attention to it, experience it and express it, especially during the holiday season.

I recently saw a show about a man who had been in prison for almost 30 years. When he was asked what he appreciated most about being out of jail, he said, "Seeing the stars, listening to children laugh and hearing dogs bark." Wow—think of all the simple things we take for granted that we could choose to be grateful for each day, instead of focusing our attention on what we don't have, what we want or what we think we deserve (but haven't been given yet).

What are you grateful for? What do you appreciate about the things you already have in your life? What do you love most about the people around you? How often do you ask yourself and others these powerful questions? Sadly, many of us don't take the time to ask or answer these types of questions on a regular basis, especially in the midst of these difficult times and the stress and expectation of the holidays.

I hope you and your family have been and will be spending time focused on what you're grateful for during this time of year. However, focusing on gratitude is something that we can do all the time, not just on special occasions or during the holiday season.

There are many reasons (i.e., excuses) we have for not focusing on what we're grateful for:

• We're too busy and stressed out
• We're waiting for things to work out perfectly (which they almost never do)
• We don't want to brag (especially now, when lots of people are going through tough times)
• We focus on what needs improvement and the many things we still have to get done
• We focus on all the bad stuff in our lives, about others and in the world
• We pay a lot of attention to what we don't have, what we want and what we think we should get

While all of these reasons make sense and are understandable, they simply and sadly get in our way of tapping into one of the most powerful emotions and states of beings we have access to: the power of gratitude.

According to Jack Canfield, author of The Success Principles and co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, "Gratitude is the single most important ingredient to living a successful and fulfilled life."

Gratitude not only makes us feel good, it's also one of the greatest attractors of abundance, love, peace, success, health, connection and more. The more we focus on what we already have, the wonderful aspects of our lives and what we appreciate, the more we end up having to be grateful for.

Stop for a moment and think about some of the things that you're grateful for in your own life. Make a list either in your head or on paper. We each have so much to appreciate. When we take the time to acknowledge our many blessings, especially at this time of year, we utilize the power of gratitude in a way that benefits us and those around us in a profound way.

Simple Ways to Practice Gratitude Every Day

We can expand our capacity for gratitude this holiday season (and in general) by creating simple and genuine practices. It doesn't really matter what we do or how we do it, just that we come up with easy and meaningful ways to focus on what we're grateful for during the holidays and beyond. Below is a short list of some different possible gratitude practices. Pick one, use many or make up your own practice:

• Write cards or e-mails expressing your gratitude for others: genuine, specific and personal
• Meditate and focus on what you're grateful for
• Have everyone at the dinner table share something they're grateful before you eat (or while you're in the car or other times you're together with your family)
• Ask people what they're grateful for (and/or ask this question as part of your outgoing voice mail message)
• Use a gratitude journal and write in it regularly

While so many of us understand and know about the power of gratitude, it's the practice and expression of it that really has an impact. During this holiday season—in the midst of the stress and activities this time of year brings—if we can take the time to think about, feel and express our gratitude and appreciation for life, others and ourselves, we can literally transform our experience of the holidays, as well as of our lives and relationships, in a beautiful way.

Power Hour: Seven Thoughts

1. See What You Want to Be:
“When I look into the future, it’s so bright it burns my eyes."

What do you see when you look into your future, because what you see is what you’re going to get. Do you see your future so bright it burns your eyes? If you do, then that’s what you’re going to get. If you see your future as mundane, then that’s exactly what you’ll get as well. What you see is what you get; I suggest you begin to see what you want to be.


2. The Power of Passion
“Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.”

Passion comes from doing what you love. When you’re passionate you can work all night long. Passion is power, it is the fuel that you need to succeed. Discover your passion and dedicate your life to fulfilling it, no matter how long it takes.


3. Focus on the Good
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”

What you focus on expands. If you focus on the good, you will get more of it. If you focus on lack and poverty, you will get more of that as well. Learn to recognize the good in your life and be grateful for it everyday. Soon your focus will change and so will your life.


4. You Must Change - To See Change
“We can’t become what we need to be by remaining what we are.”

In order to have more, you must become more. Nothing changes in your life until you grow. What are you doing daily to grow, to change? If you’re not changing, you shouldn’t be expecting your life to change. To the degree that you change is to the degree that your life will change. If you keep on doing, what you’ve always been doing, you’re going to keep getting the results you’ve always been getting, to expect otherwise is insane.


5. We All Fall Down
“Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.”

Imagine if a small child quit trying to learn how to walk after falling down twenty times. Imagine if he or she said, I guess this walking thing isn’t for me. In life you will fail, you will make mistakes, you may even get discouraged, but you must try again. The only people not failing are the people who are not stretching themselves beyond their current comfort zone. Dare to fail until you succeed.


6. Maximize Your Potential
“The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be.”

Are you maximizing your potential? Are you utilizing 100 percent of your skills, talents and knowledge, or are you settling. The purpose of life is to grow, to become all that you were intended to be.
Your purpose is to grow big enough so that you can help others, so the question is, are you maximizing your potential?


7. Think Bigger
“What you were intended to become goes far beyond anything you have imagined.”

So many people live beneath their capabilities because they are riddled with guilt by the thought of living a lavish life. You were intended to have the best, and to become your very best. The best was made for you! If not you, then who?

Power Hour: You Become what you Believe

Power Hour: You Become What You Believe

There came a time in my life when I needed to seriously look at my life, heart, mental/physical health, and overall well-being and... ask myself what do I believe? I spent so many years living the life that I was 'supposed' to be living or the life that society and those around me thought I was supposed to be living.. and it did not make me happy, it did not give me peace, it did not give me joy, and definitely did not give me happiness. I needed to make some changes..

These changes were not going to be easy, and these changes were not just going to impact me and me alone... I needed to make changes in my life, my relationships, my way of life, and perspective that I knew were choices that were going extremely tough, but I felt like I was having the life literally being sucked out of me and felt like I was dying... I needed to accept the fact that I deserved to be happy too... I needed to take the steps to make my life change... I believe that the growth and changes within my life are all part of the journey. And while I am on this journey, I am trying to ask myself questions, learn and grow...  

Do you believe that you are worthy of Happiness?

Do you believe that Happiness, Success, Abundance, Comfort, Fulfillment, Peace, Joy, and Love is your Birth Right?

Is that what you believe or do you believe something else?

Because you will Manifest the Life that You Believe...

Whatever you deeply believe, you will create...

Be The Change you want to see in your life

Here are some thoughts and questions..

• Close your eyes and "fast forward" to a moment 5 years from now, when you are living your best life to its absolute fullest. Describe the room where you wake up—where is it, how is it decorated, what is the energy like, and who is there with you?
• Think of something you wish to make happen— and in your mind create a concrete symbol to represent that wish coming true. What did you wish? What is the symbol?
• What is the feeling in your body as you imagine this wish coming true? Feel for ways to shift and reshape your vision until it feels possible and peaceful. In fact, it's most likely to happen if it feels like a done deal—normal. 
• What is it you know you can do, with your eyes closed on your worst day? Thinking about your falling-off-a-log-easy skill, how might you see that leading not just to pleasant outcomes, but to huge success? 
• To find out what you truly believe, write a description of your life situation—the people around you, your circumstances, and "blind spots" where your self-concept fails to align with your real self. 
• Look back on your previous answer, and investigate the beliefs that correspond to your life's worst elements. Rethink those beliefs.
• When has a negative statement called forth a strong feeling in you that said, "No, this person is wrong. I am meant to succeed"?
• What offhand remarks have you said—or heard someone else say about you—that turned out to be a sort of prophecy?
• Are your actions in alignment with what you say you want in life? Where are you staying in a situation where other people are treating you badly, waiting for them to change? Passivity in a situation of injustice creates a damaged life.
• Do you undermine yourself by thinking, "I'll never..." or "that doesn't happen for people like us"? Instead, find examples of times your negative belief was wrong. Focus on the places where your life plays out in defiance of your negative beliefs.