My Favorite Self-Help Stuff

Happy New Year!

How has 2012 been going for you so far? And how have you been doing with your New Year’s Resolutions?

I love New Year’s Eve and the beginning of the new year. It’s like a blank slate. You get to start over again!

Whatever may have held you back during the previous year, you can do better this time. So what is it you’d like to do better this time around?

Here’s the deal with New Year’s Resolutions though…

So many people have been making the same ones over and over again, and by the end of the second week in January, they were history. And yet, when a new year rolls around, they make them again.

This is a baaaaad idea!

Why? Because you’re teaching your inner self that you are a failure. That you’re not to be trusted. Each time you let yourself down, you have even less of a chance to make it next time.

So this year, don’t do it the same old way. After all, you want to empower your inner self, not frustrate it.

Before you make (and/or break) your new year’s resolutions, stop and think!

Oh, and yes, I know, we’re already halfway through January. But that’s okay. Take your time. You don’t REALLY want to wait till NEXT year, do you?

New Year’s Resolutions, Done Differently

I wrote about a different approach to New Year’s Resolutions last year too, and so this year, let’s take another go at it…

Step 1:

Figure out what you REALLY want to accomplish.

Step 2:

Divide it into doable steps.

Step 3:

Make a commitment to take the first step.

Step 4:

Make a commitment to take the next step. Etc.

Step 5:

Repeat with other worthwhile goals, but be sure not to overwhelm yourself.

Note that I said “doable steps” – the idea is that you should make it attainable, and you should make it something that really matters to you.

In a recent year, I wrote about making not New Year’s REsolutions but New Year’s Projections.

I envision my new year and what I want to happen. Then I come up with action steps and take them, one at a time.

This is not a contest. It’s your LIFE!

So let’s not make resolutions to beat ourselves up with. Instead, let’s make some that inspire us to bigger and better things. Let’s come up with envisionings to live our dreams.

So what is it YOU want to have happen in your life this year?

What can you do to make it come true?

The Key to Successful New Year’s Resolutions

Focus on doing the things that are under YOUR control.

For example, if you want to get published, start writing.

And once you have written things, make sure they’re really good.

And then, submit them for publication – in suitable places.

There’s no reason why you can’t stretch and aim for the moon, but also consider what would work – i.e., in this case, consider your audience, and your competition.

I remember the first poem I ever got published in a “real” literary magazine. It was “Chemoceremony” – and you can check it out on my Average C Cup site.

It was the first Villanelle I ever wrote, and I put my all into it. I spent days writing it, and I was very pleased.

It was a poem about how I turned chemotherapy into a sort of ceremony, and I had thought for a while about how I might merge those two, and one day it clicked.

And since that poem was a villanelle, a specific form, I decided I wanted to send it to the Formalist.

Now the Formalist is a pretty competitive journal, plus it won’t accept multiple submissions. But I felt that this poem was right for it, and I decided to send it.

And bingo! They liked it too, and published it! Woohoo!

The reason – I knew the journal and I knew my poem was a good fit. So I took a chance at a long shot and it worked.

Of course, I also submitted lots of poems in a variety of places that were rejected, but that was just part of the “game.” I kept at it, and by the time I published Average C-Cup, most of the poems in there had been published in literary magazines.

And all it took was a commitment to keep sending them to suitable places.

So as you consider your goals, make it about taking action. Also make it about getting GOOD at taking action.

If I hadn’t worked on getting good at writing poetry, and at selecting the right publications, and writing well-crafted letters and submitting in proper format etc., I wouldn’t have been successful.

But I would never make a commitment to get this many poems published. That was not something that was under my control.

Still, if you take right action, with the right attitude, with the right kind of “New Year’s Resolutions,” and with visualizing success, chances are that you get where you want to go.

And with that, get ready for a FABULOUS New Year!

Elisabeth

Happy New Year! Albeit a bit belatedly…

How’s 2011 been treating you so far?

I just looked at the date of my last post and, gosh, how embarrassing! I didn’t realize how long it’s been.

I meant to write a whole bunch of New Year’s posts, and now we’re halfway through January already.

Which brings me to New Year’s Resolutions…

Here’s the problem:

If we make resolutions and then break them, what does that do to our inner self, higher self, subconscious mind, or whatever you call that part of you that guides you along as you move forward in your journey.

If we keep making promises that we don’t keep, it will start having very low expectations. When we disappoint our own deepest self, we set ourselves up for continued disappointment and failure.

So what to do about that?

Approach them a bit differently? Definitely.

There are two elements that are really crucial when it comes to those resolutions:

1) Do we REALLY want what we claim we want?

I mean, do we want it badly enough to really commit to paying the price it costs on a continuing basis?

If the answer is “No” it’s not a good idea to resolve that.

Now this does not mean we don’t WANT this, but it means that maybe our lives are too full of other commitments already that we simply don’thave the energy to do what we tried to wrestle ourselves into doing.

2) We are committing ourselves to doing too much

That’s the second problem. And it goes along with part of the previous section.

There are two ways in which we can go wrong here:

a) We commit to goals over which we have little control.

Let’s talk about weight loss or blood pressure or whatever. If we commit to certain weight loss goals or blood pressure readings, we may throw in the towel quickly because subconsciously we know that these are things we don’t really have full control over.

Sure, the old rules about goals being measurable and all make that seem like a good idea, but the thing is we don’t have control over outcomes.

For example, you try to get a job by February 1. It’s your New Year’s resolution. Maybe you make it, but maybe you won’t. You don’t have complete control over the outcome. You DO have control over which interviews you go to and how many (to a point), and how many applications you send out, and so on.

Ditto for weight loss. You have control over what you put into your mouth and what you do in terms of exercise and other helpful things.

b) We commit to doing too much

I just had a very interesting experience here…

The Example of Kevin Riley’s Natural Blood Pressure Lowering Program

I was reading Kevin Riley’s excellent program on how to reduce your blood pressure naturally, and immediately, I thought, I can do this faster and better.

Well, not exactly.

Here’s how his program works.

It’s a 12 week program called “Get Natural” and each week he gives you an assignment of approximately three things you are supposed to do (and keep doing) so the cumulative effect of them all will leave you with a much improved blood pressure picture by the end of the 12 weeks, and probably much sooner than that.

His first week’s assignment?

Drink water (I forgot how many glasses, but two of them you should drink before you ingest anything else in the morning), cut down on coffee to 1-2 cutps a day (or at least less than you started with) and add herb tea and green tea.

Not too tough, right?

Well, I am now drinking more water, and added more tea, and I’m still drinking coffee, but much less. In fact, today, I only had two cups, though those cups admittedly were about three times the size of the kinds of cups Kevin probably had in mind.

Still, that’s good. I also tried to incorporate a bunch of things from later sections, but guess what! They didn’t stick.

See the principle?

Just in case you want to check it out for yourself, here’s where you can see the program:

CLICK HERE for Kevin’s Program

And if you want the more complete version of this program, I recommend you get this one instead:

CLICK HERE for BREATHE & Kevin’s Program

On the surface, the second one is a series of audios that get you to do a specific breathing exercise that will lower blood pressure all by itself.

But here’s the thing: you also get Kevin’s complete downloadable manual as a bonus!

It’s about $10 more than Kevin’s program by itself, and you won’t get Kevin’s bonuses. And in case you wondered, is this breathing exercise included in Kevin’s program?

Yes it is, but not till week 11. Not that you couldn’t start doing it earlier… It’s 15 minutes of relaxation, listening to music and breathing along with the cues. Oh, but the audios are NOT included in Kevin’s program, so you’d have to get those in week 11. Or use some of your own.

That’s why I personally got the second program and got Kevin’s as a bonus.

So what’s the lesson?

Keep things realistic. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, considering what else you already have on your plate.

And so that accounts for my lack of posts recently. I’ll resolve to improve, but no, I’m not committing to daily posts. Maybe a couple a week. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, go over your New Year’s resolutions and think about where you may have been overshooting the target.

And resolve to be gentle with yourself…

One of my favorite reminders of that is that little bit in airline preparatory drills where they say to put on your oxygen mask first before you put on anyone else’s. It’s not a prescription for selfishness, but a reminder that if we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re little use to anyone else — OR ourselves.

So be good to yourself, and have a fabulous 2011.

Elisabeth

P.S.: And if your resolutions include getting healthier…

CLICK HERE for Kevin’s “Lower Blood Pressure Naturally” Program

CLICK HERE for BREATHE Easy PLUS Kevin’s Program

Have Boundless Energy and
Sleep Soundly with the Sedona Method.

Sleep more! Doesn’t that just sound like the anti-resolution?

Not in my book. I find it incredibly difficult to “find” the time to get enough sleep. and yet, I am getting every more aware that I MUST make it a priority if I want to remain productive — and healthy.

Which makes me wonder why in the world I’m typing this at 2:30 in the morning?

So much for that one. But now, I haven’t REALLY officially resolved it, and messing with my sleeping patterns is always a bit of an ongoing struggle.

The thing is sometimes I’m more alert and awake late at night than I am at other times of the day, and it seems like such a waste to not take advantage of it.

Meanwhile, once I do go to sleep I tend to sleep like a baby (or a log), which I suppose is a good thing. It wasn’t always like that.

A few years back, I had a huge problem with insomnia. I threw all sorts of things at it, from herbs to aromatherapy to soothing music and even the occasional prescription drugs, and STILL had trouble.

One thing that finally fixed it, literally overnight, was the Mind-Body-Spirit meditation from the Quantum Touch Supercharging workshop I took. I literally fell asleep lying on the floor, in the middle of the meditation exercise we did in that course. Twice! How embarrassing.

But I figured I was on to something. when I did the meditation that night after going to bed, I never made it half-way through before I went to sleep. And when I woke up in the night, I just continued where I left off, and zzzzzzzzzz

It still works. On the rare (very rare) occasion that I make it all the way through, I just start over, and I don’t think I ever made it through twice without falling asleep.

Oddly enough, I can do the meditation with my eyes open during the day and it will NOT make me fall asleep, so I even do it sometimes while going for walks. It has a wonderfully energizing effect then.

How does it work?

You can find out the details in the Supercharging Quantum Touch book by Alain Herriot (sp?)

Basically, you visualize yourself being bathed and literally soaked in a series of 12 colors, from white to purple, indigo, copper, silver, gold, yellow, green, blue-green, blue, magenta and mother-of-pearl. There’s also a special breathing pattern, but I never mastered it and simply do slow breathing while I do the exercise.

You can get the more detailed instructions in the book or on the workshop video, which you can order form quantumtouch.com.

Meanwhile, it’s now 2:51 and defninitely time to catch some zzzzzs.

And as for my resolution… I’m working on it. Getting at least 7 hour of sleep a night, at least most nights, is the first stage of my resolution. Then work on getting to bed earlier and making my hours more regular. Update sometime in spring…

How are YOUR resolutions coming along?

Here’s the FREE 5-part series designed to help:

TurboSelfGrowth.com

And if you would like to stay in your jammies all day, all the while earning a living with a legit online business, get my FREE report that will tell you how by clicking on the banner below:

CLICK HERE to free yourself from addiction NOW with The Sedona Method.

Happy New Year!!!

I can’t believe we’re already into the second week of 2010! And I haven’t even gotten started with New Year’s Resolutions.

Of course, I have my different spin on that, and I’m going to write a few posts on that over the next week or two…

First of all… the traditional approach to New Year’s Resolutions doesn’t usually work and if anything is counterproductive.

When it comes to carrot vs stick, I’m all for the carrot. The idea is to focus on what we want and not punishing ourselves for our real or imagined short-comings.

One thing I will do is go back through that program by Jason that helps tremendously with overcoming some habits I’d like to live without.

It’s what you’ll find out more about when you go to the following site:

http:;//www.turboselfgrowth.com

And especially http:;//www.turboselfgrowth.com/go

But go to the http:;//www.turboselfgrowth.com first because you’ll discover an offer where you can get it for almost half off…

And as I wrote in an article last year, I’m much more in favor of “New Year’s Projections” thank “New Year’s Resolutions.”

What is it that you would like to visualize for yourself?

As for me, I’d like a steadily growing business, books, courses with lots of students in them, happy clients, and a healthy body too, preferably with less weight on it.

And so one of the things I’ll be working on next year is a special low-aggravation system of releasing some of those extra pounds.

I’m going to call it Kitchen Sink Diet — not because it involves eating over the kitchen sink or because I get to eat everything but the kitchen sink, but because I’m going to plough through everything I can find out there that might be helpful and then put it together in to an “everything but the kitchen sink” diet plan of sorts.

Though diet is a misnomer. It’s more about adding things than subtracting things, though hopefully certain detrimental food stuffs will be crowded out by the good stuff… Much like what Jon Gabriel advocates in his Gabriel method.

In fact, one of the things on my to do list is to a) start listening to his audio again regularly (I’ve been slacking off) and b) get his newly available special Smart Music audios that put you in a smart state instantly and are great for starting the day off with. Can’t wait to get them and will report back once I have startd using them.

Enough for now. More on New Year’s Resolutions and related matters very soon.

And may YOU have a fantastic 2010 as well.

Elisabeth

New Year’s Resolutions anyone?

2009 was a toughie, and so a lot of us are REALLY looking forward to 2010!

And it’s time to look ahead to make the most of it right out of the gate, isn’t it?

So whether or not Santa brought what you were hoping for, here are a couple of things you may want to get for yourself:

First of all… A FREE Gift!

A 5-course e-course on how to get rid of bad habits:

http://www.turboselfgrowth.com

Check it out, and if you like, you can get a very special deal on the full course, which makes a fantastic gift for anyone who would like to finally overcme whatever it is that has been holding them back.

Of course, you’re welcome to check it out right here:

It’s an audio course with a transcript so you can take notes and review more easily.

And if you click on the banner right below, you’ll get the FREE e-course!

I promise you’re going to love it. In fact, I’m going to dig out my own copy and work my way back through the audios…

And if it’s time management that’s getting you down, you should see this revolutionary approach to mastering time once and for all:

http://www.IMTimeMastery.com

By the way… this one goes REALLY well with the course above… And, here’s a little secret:

If you get the course above AFTER you sign up for the newsletter, you can get it for 45% off (if you take advantage of the special offer you’ll get after you sign up for the newsletter) AND you’ll also be able to get the time course for 45% off… so you could get BOTH of them for only a little more than one of them would be…

So why not start here…

http://turboselfgrowth.com

These will REALLY help with achieving a very happy 2010!

And… they also make fantastic gifts! Which reminds me of my friend Stefan whose birthday is today. He was always frustrated that his parents would combine Christmas gifts and birthday gifts… but then again, he always had US come on his birthday and bring him MORE gifts too.

I’m gong to give him a call today!

Have a fantastic day and a GREAT 2010!

Elisabeth