Consciousness

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Beyond Positive thinking, 2

The future can only be changed by our thoughts and actions in the present.

Seize the day and put as little trust as you can in the morrow.

Unfinished business is a drain on your mental resources and a major source of time wasting worry.

For yesterday is a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision; But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day!

Your thoughts and actions inevitably create your future as well as your past.

Many people find that they are able to write about life events and feelings which they are much less happy to talk about. Write all of them down, which makes you feel less happy, regularly.

The only place where past still has any reality is in your mind.

If we could develop our abilities to remember all these sensations - the visual, the auditory, the kinesthetic - equally well, and choose which memories to recall at our will, how much richer will our lives be?

When you are immersed in it, depression does not seem to be like a choice. It feels much more like being "taken over" by something over which you have little or no control.

What activities of feelings have given you the greatest feelings of self-worth? Where are the good feelings, associated with them, located in the body?

The events of our lives are just things that happen. They only have a meaning, if we decide to give them one and we can choose what they mean. Each event only has the meaning you have decided to attach to it.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Empowering set of questions

How could I use possibility questions to increase my creativity
What must I do to make sure I remember this?
How could I find new ways to enjoy being my true self?
What must I do to feel good about myself.
What new beliefs could be most useful to me?
Which beliefs do I most need to change?
How could I put more attention on my highest values?
What do I need to do about this right now?
How could I most enjoy developing new habits?
What must I do to have more empowering thoughts?
How can I easily let go of the past?
What must I do to create a happy and inspiring future?
When could writing my thoughts down be most useful?
What must I do to remember to let go of less-than-useful feelings?
How could I most easily release old feelings?
What must I do to feel fulfilled?
What new meanings can I find for things that I used to feel bad about?
Which beliefs are most helpful to me right now?

I want

to be a normal person
to be always happy
to feel always good
to be with people as much as possible
to be courageous
to be fully confident of me
to be free from "it".
to focus on things other than me
to be strong and muscled
to be a clean, nice faced perclson
to be able to concentrate on a thing for a long time
to feel superior about myself
to be free of my egotistic feelings
to be active and vibrant
to care for my near and dears
to care for myself
to be completely responsible for myself
to see order and discipline in my life
to be able to see and show what I am
to be determined about my course of actions
to believe in things only after careful judgement
to be a very critical thinker
to be a creative thinker
to be able to socialize freely
to be frank about my thoughts and actions w.r.t others
to make decisions for myself aptly and quickly
to have a good, empowering world view
to respect all people and their opinions irrespective of who they are
to get emotional with people at needy times
to be open minded and willing to learn anything from anybody
to mingle with people very easily
to have some solid goals and a specific direction in my life
to be a mature person giving right importance to things at right times
to have reasonable expections about myself by consciously recognizing my capabilities at any given point of time.

I am

an autist
a melancholic
am depressed
feel lonely
fearful
not confident
an addict
too self conscious
fat
ugly faced
always wandering
feel inferior
feel too much high about myself always
am lazy
have a wavering mind
dont care for near and dears
dont care for myself
irresponsible about my future
a mess
an ostentatious person
travel with the direction of wind
believe in everything
not a critical thinker
not a creative thinker
lacking in social intelligence
a hesitant person
indecisive most of the times
not having a good world view
am rude towards some people whom I dont like
not emotional
not open minded
cannot mingle with people easily
a person with no goals or direction
immature
have too much expectations about myself w.r.t output and performance

A book, that I have started to read just today. So far, so good, but I have to do the exercises in the first chapter. I will thoroughly capture the salient points in the first chapter Who are You?:

The first chapter by asking that question, kind of makes you reveal the following things:

Your thoughts and feelings about yourself
Your beliefs
Your values
Your habits

Real security not lies in possessions or with people, but in the knowledge that whatever happens, you can deal with it.

Beliefs are a matter of choice. They can be held quite independently of facts. Choosing which beliefs to have is largely a matter of selecting suitable evidences from your experience of life.

The mind and body are part of the same system. If you change your mind, you change your body. If you change your body, you change your mind.

What you focus on, will increase in your life.

There is no such thing as a failure. There is only feedback.

Long term success requires commitment.

Self-empowerment means feeling in control of your key elements of life, being able to make sound and effective decisions, being clear about your core values, being able to create and maintain worthwhile relationships, having most of your attention on the present, dealing confidently with challenges.

Repitition with belief is one of the master keys to personal development.

The empowering questions are of two types: possibility questions and necessity questions which open up the thinking process and direct them respectively.

Your mind-body cannot tell the difference between a real event and a vividly-imagined one, so one can take that to advantage.

The way you think directly affects the way you act.

Everything we do because we put a greater value in doing it than in not doing it.

Habits happen out of our consciousness and that's why they are potentially dangerous. To first take control of a habit, one has to get fully conscious of what one is doing. Having got conscious about the habit, the important questions to ask about it are: What do I gain by doing this habit?, What would I lose by doing this habit?, What could I lost by not doing this habit?, What could I gain by not doing this habit?, Which of the important values does this habit violate or contradict? And at its place what would you choose to support your important values?

There is no need make any effort to break the old habit as long as you remember to keep bringing the new image (of doing the new habit or not doing the old habit and seeing/feeling all the advantages that come out of it) in mind.

Attempting to change the habits by will power alone is inviting failure.

Be patient with yourself, change one habit at a time and put your attention on how you want to be?

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Review #2

This is review #2.

I completely forgot that I have listed some very low-level fundamental goals to achieve and just started spending the days in depression again. Thanks to my consciousness, I get to write this review reminding myself about the goals that I set for myself. Obviously I have to pick a couple or three to get started. I pick the following:

GTD thing.
To develop emotional competence.
Setting SMART long term goals.

As for the GTD thing, I have already bought the necessary things, all I need to do is proceed further with the GTD chapters. I am going to continue jotting down the notes from the GTD book into the Kaizen book and review regularly.

And I am going to start reading the Emotional competence book by Goleman and see whether I find any nuggets in it.

The Intelligent Investor

I was reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. He contends that one who keeps his temperament and invests is more intelligent than the one who knows a lot more but gets swayed by the market fluctuations.

That kind of struck a chord in me (I say this everytime, don't I?). He who keeps his temperament is not only an intelligent investor but also an intelligent survivor. That is probably the real intelligence needed in today's world.