Little Deep Thoughts

Sunlight and laughter. That's what cures most fears and worries. Terrifying problems are better solved in the light than in the dark. And there are many ways to bring them into the light. Pick a frightening problem. Then do the following: talk about it with someone, draw an illustrated map of it on a huge piece of paper, make "Top 10" lists about the problem, tell yourself some jokes about the problem, sing about the problem, and, finally, dance a dance that expresses the problem. If you do all these things, I promise you that your problem will seem a lot funnier, and less frightening, than it once did. It is impossible to laugh deeply and be frightened at the same time. Humor is the highest form of creativity. It's the hardest to produce and the most enjoyable to receive. Humor, like all other creativity, is a matter of making unusual combinations. The more surprising the combination, the funnier the humor. Your own motivational level will always be lifted by ...

I have certain messages, quotations, sayings that I read in the morning. There is one that I always read no matter what, and I will never move this one out of the line-up: "He who is not every day conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life." - Ralph Waldo Emerson Our usual system is to not only avoid what we fear, but also to avoid knowing that we are avoiding things. We don't know why we have this vague feeling of danger and insecurity. We just know it's there. Every day I practice this avoidance, I become weaker and more cowardly. I get scared more easily, sometimes by the smallest things-the phone ringing, an e-mail from a creditor. Courage and strength do not remain in place. The same is true with my soul and spirit. Each day I skip Emerson's advice to face a small or large fear, it's like my arm not lifting a small or large weight. Weakness creeps in. Therefore I use the quote as a message across time from Emerson to me. I see it in the ...

This fear is almost as universal as the fear of poverty, and its effects are just as fatal to personal achievement, mainly because this fear destroys initiative, and discourages the use of imagination. The major symptoms of the fear are: Self-consciousness - Generally expressed through nervousness, timidity in conversation and in meeting strangers, awkward movement of the hands and limbs, shifting of the eyes. Lack of poise - Expressed through lack of voice control, nervousness in the presence of others, poor posture of body, poor memory. Personality - Lacking in firmness of decision, personal charm, and ability to express opinions definitely. The habit of side-stepping issues instead of meeting them squarely. Agreeing with others without careful examination of other opinions. Inferiority complex - The habit of expressing self approval by word of mouth and by actions, as means of covering up a feeling of inferiority. Using "big words" to impress others, (often wi...

Fortunately, for all of us, a new frontier is upon us. Because our nation, and world, has entered the Information Age, the old patterns for living are gone. An article by business writer John Huey appeared in the June 27, 1994 edition of Fortune . In it, Huey observed, "Let's say you're going to a party, so you pull out some pocket change and buy a little greeting card that plays 'Happy Birthday' when it's opened. After the party, some-one casually tosses the card into the trash, throwing away more computer power than existed in the entire world before 1950." In the old paradigm, forged in the Industrial Age, human beings became less and less useful and adventurous. We found lifelong employment in guaranteed jobs and did our jobs the same way until retirement. Then, once we reached retirement age, we became thoroughly useless to society and lived lives dependent on the government, our relatives, or our own savings that we accumulated in our "useful...

Negative thinking is something we all do. The difference between the person who is primarily optimistic and the person who is primarily pessimistic is that the optimist learns to become a good debater. Once you become thoroughly aware of the effectiveness of optimism in your life, you can learn to debate your own pessimistic thoughts.   The most thorough and useful study I’ve ever seen on how to do this is contained in Dr.Martin Seligman’s classic work, Learned Optimism . The studies done by Seligman demonstrate two very profound revelations: 1) optimism is more effective than pessimism, and 2) optimism can be learned. If you are now skeptical about your power to debate your own pessimistic thoughts, keep in mind that most of us are already great debaters. If somebody comes in and takes one side of an argument, we can usually take the other side and make a case, no matter which side the first person took. Debate teams have to learn to do this. Team members never know ...

I often start the day by drawing four circles on a blank piece of paper. The circles represent my day (today), my month, my year, and my life. Inside each circle I write down what I want. It can be a dollar figure, it can be anything, and the goals can change from day to day-it doesn’t matter. There is no way to get this process wrong.   But by writing the goals down, I am like an airline pilot who is consulting a map prior to takeoff. I am orienting my mind to what I am up to in life. I am reminding myself of what I really want. We wouldn’t think, before an airline flight, of poking our heads into the cabin and saying to pilot, “Just take me anywhere!” Yet, that’s how we live our days when we don’t check the map.   Without advertising our goals to ourselves, we can lose sight of them altogether. It is possible to go an entire week, or two or three, without thinking about our main goals in life. We get caught up in reacting and responding to people and circum...

Abraham Lincoln is remembered as one of the greatest American presidents of all time. A number of Abraham Lincoln's quotes are hung in locker rooms and classroom halls around the world as an inspiration and reminder for all who want to strive to live a purpose filled life. Here are our favourite 20 Inspirational Abraham Lincoln Quotes for you to remember . Inspirational Abraham Lincoln Quotes  1. "I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice." -  Abraham Lincoln 2. "Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle." -  Abraham Lincoln 3. "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion." -  Abraham Lincoln 4. "Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be." -  Abraham Lincoln 5. "I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have." - ...

Every solution has a problem. You can’t have one without the other. So why do we say that we hate problems? Why do we claim to want a hassle-free existence? When someone is emotionally sick, why do we say, “He’s got problems”? Deep down, when our wisdom lives, we know that problems are good for us. We are so superstitious about our own problems that we tend to run from them rather than solve them. We have demonised problems to such a degree that they are like monsters that live under the bed. And by not solving them during the day, we tremble over them at night. Problems are not curses. Problems are simple tough games for the athletes of the mind, and true athletes always long to get a game going.   “Every problem in your life,” said Richard Bach, author of Illusions , “carries a gift inside it.” He is right. But we have to be thinking that way first, or the gift will never appear.   In his groundbreaking studies of natural healing, Dr. Andrew Weil s...

Most of us think our lives accumulate. We think they are adding up to something. We think of our lives as being strung together like a long smoky train, so that we can add new freight cards when we're feeling right, and dump the others when we're not. But when basketball legend John Wooden's father said to him, "Make each day your masterpiece," Wooden knew something profound: Life is now. Life is not later on. And the more we hypnotise ourselves into thinking we have all the time in the world to do what we want to do, the more we sleepwalk past life's finest opportunities. Self-motivation flows from the importance we attach to today. Most of us, however, don't want it to be this way. If someone asks us if today can be used as a model to judge our entire life by, we would shriek, "Oh no! It isn't one of my better days. Give me a year or two and I'll live a day, I'm certain of it, that you can use to represent my life." The key t...

There is a huge difference between active relaxation and passive relaxation. When we play video or computer games, play cards, work in the garden, walk the dog, or play chess, we are interacting with the unexpected, and our minds are responding. All of these activities increase personal creativity and intellectual motivation. They are all active pursuits. Active relaxation refreshes and restores the mind. It keeps it flexible and toned for thinking. Great thinkers have known this secret for a long time. Winston Churchill used to paint to relax. Albert Einstein played the violin. They could relax one part of the brain while stimulating another. When they returned to workday pursuits they were fresher and sharper than ever. Most of us try to deaden the mind in order to relax. We rent mindless videos, read pulp fiction, drink, smoke, and eat until we're foggy and bloated. The problem with this form of relaxation is that it dulls our spirit and makes it hard to come back to consciou...