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Archive for December, 2008

“We lift ourselves by our thought. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always everywhere.”
–Orison Sweet Marden, 1850-1924, Author and Founder of Success Magazine

How do you see yourself in your mind’s eye? When you think about yourself or get an image of yourself, do you value what you see?

IMAGE WHO YOU WANT TO BE

One powerful way of becoming who you want to be is to begin to image yourself as you want to be in many different life situations. For example:

• Who do you want to be when someone is attacking you or criticizing you? How do you want to respond?

• Who do you want to be when challenging events occur in your life? How do you want to respond?

• Who do you want to be regarding honesty and integrity?

• Who do you want to be regarding your management of time?

• Who do you want to be regarding the organization of your living and work environment?

• Who do you want to be regarding the health of your physical body – how you eat, how much you exercise, how much sleep you get?

• Who do you want to be regarding the way you treat other people, especially loved ones?

• Who do you want to be regarding how you think and feel in your everyday life?

• Who do you want to be regarding your spiritual life?

Holding an image of “the ideal of yourself as you long to be,” as Marden states in the above quote, is an important way of moving yourself toward your ideal. It is not enough to think of yourself in these ways – you need to actually image yourself as you want to be. Create little videos in your mind’s eye of these different situations in your life, seeing yourself as you want to be.

LOOK FOR ROLE MODELS

Think about the people in your life, or people you know about, or even film characters, whom you admire. It is important, in creating your inner images, that you find role models of people behaving in the ways you admire. Then put yourself into those images, seeing yourself behaving in these admirable ways. Thoughts and images are very powerful in changing feelings and behavior.

All of us have been programmed to respond to the challenging situations in our lives by our experiences as we were growing up. You will continue to respond with your automatic programmed responses unless you consciously decide to reprogram yourself. Consciously creating thoughts and images about who you want to be is a form of reprogramming. Since you have practiced your old programming your whole life, it takes an ongoing conscious effort to create new responses. This is why Marden, in the above quote, states that you must “Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always everywhere.”

We each have the free will and the power to become who we long to be, but it will not happen without conscious and continuous effort. This kind of change does not just happen, nor does it happen quickly. If you decided to learn to play a musical instrument, you would know that you would need to practice, practice, practice in order to become proficient at it. Becoming who you want to be takes just as much, if not more, practice! Why not begin today creating the images of who you want to be and start practicing them?

About the Author:
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Join the thousands who have healed their pain and discovered joy! Learn Inner Bonding now! FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome.Phone Sessions Available.

Keyword tags: self esteem,self help,self improvement,personal development,personal growth,confidence,self confidence,Margaret Paul,Inner Bonding

Way back in the 1830s, the world found itself in the predicament of having more technology than techies – if you can believe that.  The new industrial revolutionaries had underestimated the number of trained hands they would need to maintain, repair and manage the new “toys” of industry.
 
But serendipity came to the rescue.  An idea the English educator Sir Isaac Pitman began using to teach shorthand, a method used to fill a shortage of office workers, became an important component in solving the era’s shortage of technical workers.  The magic wand?  Correspondence courses.  Distance learning 1840s style!  
 
The movement grew out of off-campus lectures given by the Scottish educator James Stuart of the University of Cambridge in England, and expanded to the United States at Illinois Wesleyan University, which began a successful home-study program in 1870.  In 1883, a “Correspondence University” was established in Ithaca , New York .  Also during this time, the Chautauqua Institution’s seminal academic William Rainey Harper, a pioneer in promoting lifelong learning and establishing distance training programs, developed a correspondence program in New York.  He continued the method at the newly established University of Chicago, where he became its first president in 1891.  In the 1880s, Thomas J. Foster started home-study courses in mining safety using a newspaper to reach his students.  The enterprise eventually became the International Correspondence Schools.
 
A number of other measures and organizations further deployed the new distance education.  There was the United States Co-operative Agricultural Extension Act (Smith-Lever Act) in 1914, the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA) at Madison, Wisconsin in 1915 and, in 1926, the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC, formerly known as the National Home Study Council) was established.  Among federal programs, the largest is the U.S. Air Force Institute for Advanced Distributed Learning, which offers some 350 correspondence, online, and broadcast programs to more than 300,000 Air Force members.  The U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps also offer DETC-accredited instruction in military skills. 
 
More than 100 million Americans have enrolled in correspondence courses since the 19th century. 
 
The options for distance learning are diverse and extensive.  Home study courses are available in fields such as Bookkeeping, Writing, Art Studies, Business Management, Child Care, Web Design, Airline Training, Counseling, Event Management, Wedding Planning, Nail Manicure, Animal Care, Diet & Exercise, Forensic Science and How to Start Your Own Business.  In the mid-1960’s, the launch of what was then the largest classroom for physicians was set up through telephone networks in Wisconsin .
 
One study dedicated to distance learning (Connick, 1999; Schwitzer, Ancis, & Brown, 2001) found that this type of education not only works, but has a dynamic market at its disposal:
 
“The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived need for career planning and placement services by distance education program administrators and to explore what services are currently offered at four online degree-granting institutions in the United States.  The researcher assumed that distance learners are perceived to be grounded in an occupation or career path, and that they are involved in distance education for professional development.  While this may be true for some distance learners, it has been noted that many enroll in courses in an attempt to make a significant career change and/or advancement”.
 
In 2006, a report by the Sloan Consortium, an organization devoted to elevating the status of online education to that of four-year institutions, stipulated that almost all of the largest colleges and universities in America were offering online distance learning courses. “Well over 3 million students also took these courses during the previous year. These figures show an obvious rise in new interest by the general public in distance education, a trend that most schools around the world are beginning to tap into”.
 
Whether to improve their lives, increase their job prospects, or simply to study their hobbies, distance learning facilitated the educational needs of our ancestors by the tens of millions, allowing them to study at their own pace in the comfort of their own homes.  The method played an important role in increasing the literacy rate in the U.S. to the tune of 97% in 1903.  There was no debate over the credibility of distance learning to effectively teach people to read, write and spell.  In fact, some states did not allow you to attend kindergarten if you weren’t able to read at the time of enrollment.  Today, just about one third to one half of U.S. adults have some trouble with reading, writing, spelling and reading comprehension.  You’ve seen the stats.
 
It is not a stretch to argue that distance learning may be the perfect large scale tool used to replace all the retraining that is necessary – and costly – in today’s world.  This includes basics such as reading, writing and spelling skills, all three of which can be learned at a time and place that fits the demands of various lifestyles.  In the near future, you will readily be able – even expected – to handle that reading, writing or spelling problem first and then choose what you want to create for the world.  A distance learning course like the Literacy Pod http://literacypod.com is sure to play a pivotal role in making the realization of this goal a reality.
 
Given the crises of global markets, retraining as fast as possible can be the greatest way to succeed.  By training from a location dictated by the priorities in your life, you can enjoy the freedom of studying on your own time and at your own pace.  Huge benefits are there to be had for the workplace and home -lifestyle-friendly education. 
 
First, handle that pesky literacy situation.
 

About the Author:
For more on what you can do about illiteracy please visit http://literacypod.com

Keyword tags: Business, Prosperity, Self Directed Education,advice,education,self help,home study,

Vera sought out counseling with me because her doctor advised her to discover the emotional causes of her chronic fatigue. Vera, a successful stockbroker, was in a loving 18-year marriage. On the surface, everything in her life was fine. She had enough money, friends, and a good relationship. Yet Vera awoke each morning battling fatigue and depression.

David sought my help because of chronic feelings of inner emptiness. David is very successful in his manufacturing business, has a good marriage and two adult children. Like Vera, everything seemed fine. Yet the feelings of inner emptiness drove David to overeat, overspend, and indulge in porno on the Internet.

While both Vera and David were successful in their careers, neither loved their work. They worked to make money, but their work had little meaning for them. Yet when they looked inside, neither could discover what did have meaning for them. Both reported that they had never experienced a sense of meaning in their adult lives, and that the emptiness and depression had been with them since adolescence.

As I worked with Vera and David, it became evident that each had made a decision early in their lives to shut down their feelings to avoid the deep pain of unbearable loneliness. Vera shut down because she was unable to tolerate the loneliness of her mother’s behavior toward her. Her mother would say she loved Vera, but Vera never felt her love. Instead, she felt her mother energetically pulling at her, trying to suck the life out of her. As a very sensitive child, Vera could not tolerate this confusing experience, so she put her feelings in a box and decided to live out of her head instead of her gut.

David, also a very sensitive child, shut down because he was unable to tolerate the loneliness of being with two emotionally unavailable empty parents, and the loneliness of rejection from peers.

As adults, both Vera and David were still shut down from their feelings. They were still afraid of feeling the pain of loneliness – a feeling that is actually an everyday fact of life. Loneliness is present when your heart is closed or another’s heart is closed, or when there is no one with whom to share love. Loneliness is the primary feeling when we want to connect with another and the other is unavailable. If you were completely open to your feelings, you would feel moments of loneliness throughout the day. However, most people never feel this feeling and are completely unaware of it, because the moment there is a twinge of emotional pain, they move instantly to various addictions and addictive behaviors, such as substances, activities, thoughts, shame and blame. Yet when we shut out pain, we also shut out joy and a passionate sense of purpose.

Pain and joy are in the same box. Vera and David could not discover what has meaning for them and what brings them joy while keeping a lid on their feelings. And the very act of keeping a lid on their feelings was creating their depression and inner emptiness.

Imagine that your feelings are a child within. If you ignore this child – by ignoring your feelings – this child feels abandoned. Our refusal to feel and take responsibility for our own pain is an inner abandonment and results in anxiety, depression, and/or inner emptiness.

It is our child within – our feeling self – that has the blueprint for what has meaning for us, for our passion and purpose. Each of us comes to this planet with a deep purpose to express, and when we don’t express this purpose, we end up feeling empty and depressed. Yet we cannot discover this purpose when we keep a lid on our feelings.

Learning to manage the pain of loneliness is essential to discovering your passion and purpose. There is no way of managing loneliness without a deep and personal connection to a spiritual source of love and wisdom. We cannot manage loneliness from our mind alone.

You will find deep meaning in your life when you decide to open to and learn from your feelings of loneliness rather than continue to shut them down. And you will open to these feelings only when you do not feel alone inside due to experiencing the love and wisdom of your spiritual Guidance. Opening to Divine Love and opening to your feelings will bring you the fullness, joy, passion and purpose that are the yearnings of your soul.

About the Author:
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Click here for Your FREE Inner Bonding Course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome/step1core.html and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com

Keyword tags: self help, self improvement, personal growth, spiritual growth, passion and purpose, meaning of life