The Power of Hidden Emotions

“Unfelt feelings are the cause of virtually all negative life patterns. Including patterns in relationships, career, and health. Learning precisely how to feel unfelt emotions whether new or long-buried, is the key to finally breaking through.”  – Raphael Cushnir.

Cushnir has shared his unique approach to personal growth and fulfillment with millions of readers in O magazine, Beliefnet, and Spirituality and Health. He lectures worldwide, and is a faculty member of the Esalen Institute, the Kripalu Centre for Yoga and Health, and the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies. In addition, he coaches individuals and teams at Fortune 100 companies, governmental offices, religious organisations, and leading nonprofits.

He is the author of multiple books including:

The One Thing Holding You Back

Setting Your Heart on Fire: Seven Invitations to Liberate Your Life

(This title “is currently used as a major teaching text at spiritual centres around the U.S.”)

You’ve been ready to take the next step in healing and transformation – impatient, even – yet somehow it hasn’t quite happened. Instead, you’ve read more books, searched out more websites, and kept forgetting that “understanding is the booby prize.”

As a result, your wounds haven’t healed, your harmful patterns haven’t resolved, and healthy, loving relationships have eluded you.

The Hidden Power of Emotions is a unique program designed to overcome those very obstacles, to meet you where you are, and to help you find freedom and fulfilment when you’re not even sure it’s possible.

All of this is possible when you learn how to access your difficult emotions directly, without reactivity. In the process your emotions are soon able to dissipate much more quickly, leaving you peaceful, energised, and at your best. Often this happens without any need to even express how you feel.

Learn more about the online program and see other free videos :

The Hidden Power of Emotions

http://personalgrowthinformation.com/921/power-hidden-emotions/

Jump Start Your Brain! – by Doug Hall

Do you find yourself aching to break away from the mundane routine of the status quo? Do you often come up with innovative ideas, but soon find yourself dismissing them?

Perhaps it’s time to awaken the dormant creative spirit that lies within you! In his powerhouse program Jump Start Your Brain! 50,000 Volts of Ideas for Cranking Your Cranium and Turning Your Dreams Into Reality, Doug Hall takes you on a fascinating adventure.

A journey in which your brainpower is not only awakened, but is enhanced. His counterculture approach to creativity urges you to break through existing stagnating rules with childlike abandonment – and have fun doing it.

Considered by many corporate leaders to be the “evangelist to the dormant creative spirit,” Doug has spent his lifetime honing his skills as an innovator, an inventor, and a triumphant risk-taker.

He has mentored many, encouraging them to courageously step outside the conventional box and experience creative and financial growth far beyond what they ever thought possible. He and his exceptional team have been responsible for bringing overwhelming results to hundreds of businesses that were at a virtual standstill.

Doug shares with you many of the success principles and applications that he developed and tested at the unique Eureka! Ranch®, extraordinary techniques that can virtually transform your business.

Included in this program are several of the fundamental strategies he has developed: The Three Laws of Capitalist Creativity®, the Eureka! Brain Programs, the Ten Commandments of How to Turn Your Dreams into Reality, and the Three Laws of Marketing Physics®.

He provides you with the foundation for how to create new and inventive ideas, then countless real-world strategies for how you can best market and sell them.

Listen to audio samples on the site:

Keeping Up Today

Learning From Failure

Who this Program is for

The Eureka Ranch

Realizing Your Potential

http://personalgrowthinformation.com/187/jump-start-your-brain/

Why Do We Need To Create Meaning?

Why do we usually make up a meaning for events that have no inherent meaning? And how does that automatic, unconscious meaning-making process create problems for us?

Why we need to create meaning

As a human being, your survival is conditional—it is not guaranteed. In other words, there are some things that help insure your survival and some things that threaten your survival.

As a very young child, having loving, caring parents makes us feel our survival is insured; having parents who do not love or care about us (or who we feel do not love or care about us) makes us feel our survival is threatened.

As an adult having someone on a dark street stick a gun in your face and demand your money makes you feel as if your survival is threatened.

Human beings seem to have a hard-wired “meaning making” mechanism that judges almost everything: conducive to my survival or inimical to my survival—for me or against me.

One of the first words that children learn, and then repeat incessantly, is “why.”

We need to understand what is happening and why so we can better judge the effect it might have on our lives.

The need to discover an event’s probable impact on us leads us to look for the meaning in events that have no inherent meaning.

As I’ve explained in earlier posts and as is clear to anyone who has eliminated at least one belief using the Lefkoe Belief Process, no event has an inherent meaning because any event could have a multitude of meanings and you can’t ever draw any conclusions, for sure, from any event.

Meaning exists only in the mind, not in the world.

For example, if parents get angry when their children didn’t meet their expectations, most children will assign such behavior the meaning that they aren’t good enough. In fact, however, the fact that parents are angry at their child tells you nothing for certain about their child.

As a result, you can’t know anything for certain about a child from the fact that his parents frequently got angry at him. In other words, the events involving the parents and children have no inherent meaning.

We create two different types of meaning

There are two fundamental types of meaning we give to events:

The first type is the meaning we give to a pattern of events, such as mom and dad being busy a lot of the time (leading to: I’m not important) or mom and dad arguing a lot and getting divorced (leading to: Relationships don’t work).

These meanings become beliefs, which are generalized statements about ourselves, people and life that stay with us forever unless we find some way to eliminate the belief. Such beliefs are often variations of “I am …, or “People are …, or “Life is ….” Beliefs are statements about reality that we feel are “the truth,” thereby determining our behavior.

The second type is the meaning we give to specific events, both external (events in the world) or internal (such as thoughts, feelings, memories, physical sensations, etc.).

These meanings last only as long as our focus on an event lasts. Like beliefs, such meanings are created unconsciously and automatically. The meaning we give this type of event determines how it “occurs” for us.

Most of us most of the time never distinguish between actual events and how the events occur to us.

We think the latter is real and therefore we deal with the “occurring” as if it is the actual reality.

In other words, if a friend walks into a room and doesn’t speak to us, and this event occurs to us as: my friend doesn’t like me, it seems to us as if the reality is my friend doesn’t like me.

At which point we deal with this person as if he really doesn’t like me, when all we know for sure is that when he walked into the room he did not talk to us. In other words, because we usually don’t distinguish between an event and the meaning we give the event, we deal with the meaning as if it is what actually happened.

Ultimately, both types of meanings (beliefs and our occurrings) get substituted for reality in our mind and we don’t deal with what really is. In other words, we think our beliefs and occurrings are “the truth.”

Getting rid of these meanings

When you eliminate beliefs, you create new possibilities in your life because “your reality” has changed. The filters through which you view reality are gone. Barriers to action, such as procrastination and anxiety, have been permanently eliminated.

When you dissolve the meaning/occurring you give events moment by moment, you are better able to deal with the situation (if it needs dealing with) because you are clear on the difference between the event to be dealt with and the meaning that exists only in your mind.

So you are able to see more possibilities for solving a problem. Moreover, because meaningless events cannot cause feelings, most of our negative emotions, such as anxiety and anger, come from the meaning you give events. By dissolving the meaning, you simultaneously dissolve the negative feelings.

Dissolve beliefs and occurrings by making a distinction

As I pointed out in an earlier blog post, we think our beliefs and the meaning we give events moment by moment are true because of a distinction we failed to make earlier, namely between the event(s) and the meaning we assign the event(s).

Therefore, the way to eliminate or dissolve beliefs and current meanings is to make the distinction we did not make earlier. When we are able to make that distinction, the belief and the current meaning/occurring disappear.

When people are told they can eliminate beliefs, some respond: But won’t that force me to do things that might be dangerous, for example, if I eliminate the belief life is dangerous, won’t that make me oblivious to some real dangers.

The answer is no. Eliminating beliefs does not make you do anything. It only offers new possibilities, from which you can freely choose.

A similar thing happens when I tell people that they can learn to stop giving meaning to events.

One person asked: Won’t that lead to people becoming sociopaths? What he meant was: if you have no feelings, won’t you stop caring about other people? Won’t you lose all sense of morality? Again, the answer is no.

Not giving an arbitrary meaning to moment-to-moment events does not affect your values at all. You can still value human life and have a desire to alleviate the suffering of others.

In addition, you do not need meaning to get you to take action. If you lose your job, you don’t need to assume it means that you will not be able to pay your bills, that you will lose your home, that you will never get another job, etc. in order to start looking for a new job.

In fact, you will be better able to create strategies for finding a new job if you are not overwhelmed with the fear that would result from such occurrings.

How can I decide what to do without any meaning?

But if nature built a meaning-making mechanism into us because we need to know if what we encounter in reality is conducive to or threatens our survival, how will we be able to survive if we stop making meaning?

There is a significant difference between making reasonable assumptions that we know are assumptions and that we continually check for accuracy, and unknowingly giving meaning to an event and then thinking that the way the event occurred to us is what actually happened.

We can never be better off by being blind to what actually is.

Automatic meaning-making might be useful in a world where real danger lurks beneath every bush, where a saber-tooth tiger might jump out at you at any moment.

In such a world, we need to automatically give meaning to events and respond without conscious thought.

We are better being safe than sorry and assuming the worst will probably save our lives at some point.

But we no longer live in a world where we need automatic, unconscious meaning.

In virtually every situation we have the time to carefully think about events and consciously determine their most likely meaning—all the while realizing that our consciously-created meanings are provisional and need to be checked for usefulness from time to time. We know they are our best guesses at that time and do not mistake them for the truth.

In today’s modern world, thinking your beliefs and occurrings are “the truth” can never be useful. So eliminate your limiting beliefs and learn how to stop automatically giving meaning to current events. You’ll be surprised at how much happier and more successful you will become.

What do you think about our biological need to create meaning and how not giving meaning to events enables us to have a better life? I’d love to read your comments and questions.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one negative belief free.

For information about eliminating 23 of the most common limiting beliefs and conditionings, which cause eight of the most common problems in our lives, and get a separate video of the WAIR? Process, please check out: http://recreateyourlife.com/naturalconfidence.

http://personalgrowthinformation.com/why-do-we-need-to-create-meaning/

The Happiness Hypothesis

“We have to stop thinking about the world as being composed of these separate little atoms, and then each atom has to somehow work on itself. And rather see happiness or wellbeing flourishing as something that emerges when a system is properly configured, and all the parts are deeply engaged and enmeshed.

“That’s the happiness hypothesis.”

Jonathan Haidt (from Shrink Rap Radio interview).

..

“An intellectual tour de force that weaves into one fabric wisdom that is ancient and modern, religious and scientific, Eastern and Western, liberal and conservative—all with the aim of pointing us to a more meaningful, moral, and satisfying life.” — David G. Myers, Professor of Psychology, Hope College, author of Intuition: Its Powers and Perils

“For the reader who seeks to understand happiness, my advice is: Begin with Haidt.”

— Martin E. P. Seligman, Professor of psychology, University of Pennsylvania, author of Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realise Your Potential for Lasting Fulfilment.

From Booklist: Using the wisdom culled from the world’s greatest civilisations as a foundation, social psychologist Haidt comes to terms with 10 Great Ideas, viewing them through a contemporary filter to learn which of their lessons may still apply to modern lives. He first discusses how the mind works and then examines the Golden Rule (“Reciprocity is the most important tool for getting along with people”). Next, he addresses the issue of happiness itself — where does it come from? — before exploring the conditions that allow growth and development.

 http://personalgrowthinformation.com/137/the-happiness-hypothesis-finding-modern-truth-in-ancient-wisdom/

People don’t resist change

Do you think people resist change? …  Most people answer with an emphatic: “Yes.”

I don’t think people resist change at all.

To which you might respond: “Well if people don’t resist change, why do most people not change when given reason to change?”

Good question.

Here’s my answer: Imagine that you had been doing something a certain way for a long time and you believed that you were doing it the right way.

Now imagine that I come along and tell you not to do that way any more.  I give you a lot of reasons and I promise a lot of benefits if you stop doing it your way and start doing it my way.

No matter how persuasive I might be, you and most other people probably wouldn’t change their behaviour.  “Okay,” you reply, “that just proves that people resist change.”

Not necessarily.  Think about what I just said.

If you think what you are doing is right and I am telling you to do something else, what does it sound like I am asking you to do? … It would seem to you that I was telling you to do something wrong.

Think about that.

We don’t resist doing something new or different—in other words, we don’t resist change.

We resist doing what we think is wrong. When you really get this distinction, you will understand something about human behaviour that most professionals in the training business still don’t understand.

This is a different way of looking at something I’ve written about before.

Information and motivation do not change behaviour because behaviour is driven by beliefs.

If you want to change behaviour, change the beliefs that drive any given behaviour—such as procrastination, yelling, etc.—and the behaviour will change.

Here’s a real life example.

Many managers are reluctant to give their hourly employees the freedom to make decisions on their own, despite overwhelming evidence that some of the best ideas in many companies come from the hourly employees.

If such managers believe they know what needs to be done and the people they manage do not, then how they manage is right.

Asking their employees to think for themselves is wrong.  Change the belief and you change how a manager manages.

If people were generally resistant to change, then there would be little if anything we could do about it.

But if people don’t change because they believe what they are doing is right and what you (or others) want is wrong, then we are now in a position to produce change in individuals and in the world by helping people realize that their beliefs are not “the truth.”

(Can you see that all political arguments are nothing more than conflicting beliefs? Consider: Global warming. How to deal with the economy. The failure in the educational system. Health care.)

How do you know someone’s belief isn’t “the truth”?

Because all beliefs are only “a truths,” the meaning we give to meaningless events.

(This becomes experientially real for people when they use the Lefkoe Belief Process to eliminate a belief.)

What appears to be widespread resistance to change is nothing more than people acting consistently with their beliefs.

When people change their beliefs, change occurs naturally and effortlessly.

 http://personalgrowthinformation.com/people-don%E2%80%99t-resist-change/

How do beliefs produce “driven,” compulsive behaviour

Why are so many of us “driven” compulsively to seek or do things that frequently aren’t in our own best self-interest?

You probably aren’t surprised that my answer is: beliefs.

But there is a specific type of belief that results in “driven” behavior.

And it is formed in a very specific way. Let me explain.

Imagine you are a young child who has created a host of negative beliefs about yourself or about life.

(Very few of us escape childhood without forming a bunch of negative self-esteem beliefs. I’ll explain why in a future blog.)

At this point you are in school, interacting with lots of other kids and adults. It dawns on you that you are going to grow up and will have to make your own way in life.

You are confronted with a real dilemma, albeit an unconscious one: “How will I make it in life if there’s something fundamentally wrong with me or the world?”

Imagine the fear and anxiety you must feel when you experience these two conflicting “facts”: On one hand, you sense that you must make it on your own in life. On the other hand, you have concluded that “There’s something fundamentally wrong with me or life that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to make it on my own.”

Fear and anxiety are unpleasant and painful feelings, so children who have them try to find ways of not feeling them.

In tens of thousands of sessions with clients, I’ve discovered that people have two basic ways of dealing with the unpleasant feelings that are caused by negative self-esteem beliefs:

First, they use alcohol, drugs, sex, food, or other substances to cover up the feelings and numb themselves or to make themselves feel good.

Second, they develop strategies that help them deal with the anxiety that stems from their negative beliefs. I call them “survival strategies” because the fear one experiences when one has negative self-esteem beliefs often makes one feel as if his survival is being threatened.

When a survival strategy is formed, the child also forms a belief about that strategy: “What makes me good enough (or important, or worthwhile, etc.) is ….” A variation of that is: “The way to survive is ….”

Survival strategies are based on a child’s observation of what it takes to feel good about herself, to be important, to be worthwhile, or to be able to deal with life in spite of negative self-esteem beliefs.

For example:

Susan’s parents placed a heavy emphasis on friendships, on what others thought of them, and on impressing people, so Susan concluded that the way to survive was to get everyone to like and approve of her.

Fred formed a similar belief in a different way: When he got praise and acknowledgement from his parents he really felt good about himself, in a way he normally didn’t. So he concluded what made him good enough and important was having people think well of him.

Here’s Lauren’s story: She noticed that people treated her dad with respect and admiration because he had been so successful in business and had so much money, so Lauren concluded that what made her important and good enough was being financially successful.

Art lived in a community where the people who were considered important and given respect were in gangs and carried guns, so he chose that as his survival strategy.

(By the way, one way to know if you have negative self-esteem beliefs is to ask yourself: What makes you good enough [or important, or worthwhile, etc.]? When you answer anything other than: “Nothing,” it becomes clear that you need whatever you answered in order to be okay.)

Once you decide that a positive sense of yourself is “because of” anything, you’ve created a lifelong problem.

For example, if you believe the only way to be good enough is to be wealthy and have a big house, your sense of worth is linked to those conditions. If you aren’t wealthy and don’t have a big house, you are forced to face your belief that you’re not good enough, which produces anxiety.

Moreover, even if your survival strategy is achieved, there’s the danger of losing it. Total disaster is always just around the corner for you. Life becomes a sea of anxiety, in which you are constantly struggling to meet the conditions you have made for being good enough.

Your self-esteem is always in question.

Tom, an executive in a Wall Street firm, earns over $200,000 a year. His core belief is I don’t matter, and his survival strategy belief is: “What makes me worthwhile is being seen as important by others.”

As a result, Tom becomes anxious whenever a new person gets hired, or a colleague wins praise, or he isn’t included in a meeting, or his boss doesn’t acknowledge him after he’s completed a project.

Miriam has the survival strategy belief: “What makes me acceptable is being beautiful.” For most of her life, she has lived comfortably with that belief. Her beauty earned her quite a bit of attention, admiration, and even love.

But now Miriam is approaching fifty, and she’s frightened. The march of time is threatening to rob her of the one thing that she believes makes her acceptable. She has become increasingly depressed; every time a man fails to look at her admiringly, she has a deep feeling of not being okay.

One consequence of being run by survival strategy beliefs is that instead of living out of choices and pleasure—doing things because you want to do them—you do them primarily to survive (to feel okay about yourself).

You experience your survival as dependent on the success of your survival strategy. The need to fulfill the terms of your survival strategy dominates your life.

Someone once said, “You can never get enough of what you never really wanted in the first place.”

That’s an excellent description of trying to live using survival strategies to compensate for negative self-esteem beliefs. Once you say you’re not worthwhile just the way you are, no amount of accomplishment or praise will provide the unconditional sense of self-esteem you want and need.

People who have beliefs that are indicative of low self-esteem are not just criminals or drug addicts or unsuccessful people or those who suffer from deep depression.

Many people with low self-esteem are visibly successful, living in nice homes with stable families.

What distinguishes people is not their self-esteem beliefs, but their survival strategies—the ways they cope with a negative sense of themselves.

Although the dysfunctional behavior that people exhibit is usually a direct result of their survival strategy beliefs, the energy that drives the survival strategies is the underlying negative self-esteem.

We don’t want to have to acknowledge the negative self-esteem belief (it’s too scary), so we do whatever it takes to manifest the survival strategy belief.

That’s why the underlying self-esteem should be eliminated before the survival strategy belief.

The role of survival strategy beliefs explains why therapies designed only to improve self-esteem rarely produce fundamental and lasting changes in people’s behavior and feelings.

http://personalgrowthinformation.com/how-do-beliefs-produce-driven-compulsive-behavior/

Motivation, Self Improvement and Reaching Goals Leads to Success in Life

People define success in so many various ways. Some feel that success comes with money, and others believe that it appears with love. No matter what your thoughts are on the true definition of success, how can motivation, self improvement and reaching your goals lead to success?

Getting Motivated

One of the biggest problems people have with a project is getting started.

After they have taken the first couple of steps, the rest just becomes a part of their daily routine. Whether you have been wanting to write a novel or to lose a few pounds, just get yourself started on that journey.

You should set small goals for yourself, and you can even reward yourself when those goals are completed. These tools of motivation will help to keep you going.

Improving Your Self

In order to reach your goals and achieve success, you need to figure out what exactly it is that you’re currently doing wrong. Indeed, it is hard to look at the self and criticise, but it’s a necessary part of growth. Try to focus on the specific field in which you want to improve.

For example, let’s say that you want to save a certain amount of money by the end of the year. Make a list of all of your expenses for the week, and see where you can cut costs. You may very well learn that you don’t need that special cup of coffee each day.

Reaching Goals

Even if the goal is small, you will feel a great deal of success. Maybe you will lose half of your target weight in a shorter time than you expected, or you will find a way to save an extra $100 per week.

Whatever the success is, you will have reached a goal. You need to learn to take pride in your goals as well. Do not think of yourself as still having a long way to go.

Think of it as having accomplished part of the goal and having gained the motivation to complete the entire path.

How to Start

Now, as mentioned earlier, getting started is really the most crucial step in this entire process, but it’s often the most difficult.

Aside from setting up prizes and rewards, how can you really motivate yourself?

Well, try to accomplish goals with a friend. For example, going for a three mile run every day is a lot more fun when you have a friend along, and you can encourage one another too.

You might also need help at a more professional level. If negative situations have occurred in your life that constantly tend to bring you down, consider having a conversation with a therapist in order to talk through your feelings and find out how you can feel good again.

All of these steps will absolutely help you to achieve goals and get success. As you are going along the path, you might start to reinvent your definition of success and discover that it can be found in even the smallest of triumphs.

 http://personalgrowthinformation.com/motivation-self-improvement-and-reaching-goals-leads-to-success-in-life/

Solve Problems Like a Genius

Genius level thinking is not reserved only for highly mentally gifted. Geniuses have a system for how to work through problems, which they may or may not be conscious of.

Once you learn the system, you can use it to solve problems the way geniuses do.

The difference between them and you is that they’ve simply used their system longer than you have. Once you gain some practice with it, internalize it, and begin to use it automatically, the people in your life will see you as a genius to.

Here are the 7 steps to genius level problem solving.

1. Identification

In most cases, we tend to think that the symptoms of a problem are the problem itself. We then set off to address the symptom. After our time and effort has been spent, the symptom has been temporarily eliminated. Since we did not solve the root cause of the problem, the symptoms will return again and again.

Geniuses spend a large portion of their problem solving time in identifying the true problem.

They understand that a problem can be resolved once and for all if they can identify its causes. When the root causes of a problem are found, all of the symptoms of that problem also vanish.

Plan on spending a lot of time and thought on finding the real problem. If you begin with a symptom, ask yourself what causes it to be a problem for you. When you find an answer, ask yourself again what cause it to be a problem for you.

Somewhere between 5 and 10 “why’s” deep, you’ll find the root cause of the problem.

2. Mindset

When we have a “big” problem in our lives, we sometimes become overwhelmed by it. We see it as insurmountable. We don’t believe we can get passed it and it becomes a major source of stress and worry.

Since we can’t see life without this problem, it seems unsolvable. Our thoughts repeat on the phrase, “its impossible”.

Our mindset is that this problem has us in its grasps.

Geniuses believe that all problems are temporary and solvable.

Think about a major problem in your life 3 years ago. Remember your mindset at that time? You didn’t know how you would ever get passed that situation.

Yet, here you are 3 years later. As you look back to 3 years ago, you realize that the problem that was gigantic then is either greatly reduced or not a problem at all today.

Geniuses start with that perspective in mind. They know that it’s usually not as bad as it seems today. Also, they don’t waste their time thinking about aspects of the problem that they cannot change.

They know that a major part of any problem is their thoughts about it. So, if they can’t change a circumstance contributing to a problem, they focus on the aspects of the problem they can change.

Understand that new problems create new perspectives. Therefore, welcome the challenges because they stretch your minds.

It is that mental stretch and growth that allows you to see major problems from 3 years ago as minor today.

Fast forward the process. View problems as challenges, know that they are temporary, and that a solution can be found.

3. Vision

We typically direct our minds toward what we should do as the first step towards solving a problem. Then, we focus on the next step, and then the next. Eventually, we may hit an obstacle that makes the solution path we were following ineffective.

So, we try again with a new first step, and another, and another to see where that leads. This can often result in frustration, lack of faith in how things are going, and the creation of brand new problems while trying to solve the current one.

Geniuses make their first step visualizing the end state. They focus on a vision of the true problem and all of its components and symptoms solved. By doing this, they begin to understand how it will feel once the problems are solved, and they receive clues from that vision as to the correct solution path.

In “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen Covey lists one habit as “begin with the end in mind”.

This is what geniuses do, and you can do it too. Know where you are going before you try to get there. Knowing the end state, and keeping it in mind until the problem(s) is/are solved is a major contributor towards resolution.

4. Brainstorm

When someone begins to think of solutions to a problem, they tend to think about problems in their past and how they solved them. Sometimes there are great clues there. Other times, the current problem is unique enough to require a fresh perspective.

Also, fixing the real problem may require a multi-layered solution verses a standard one-action reaction.

Geniuses brainstorm. They will sit down and think through dozens of solutions. Even the solutions that at first glance they may think won’t work are viable solutions for them at this stage.

Even when they think they’ve found solutions that are perfect, they keep going. They come up with as many solutions as they think they can, and then squeak out a few more until they have 20 – 30 possibilities.

Then the magic happens. Combinations of those possibilities jump out to sometimes form brand new solutions to completely solve the problem. When they are done, they know that the problem will be solved, and they know exactly how it will be done.

Take out a pad and a pen. Write down 20 – 30 possible solutions for the real problem you’ve identified. You’ll find that it’s easy to get the first 10 down on paper.

Typically, you’ll find that the next 5 are a bit off the wall and unrealistic. However, those last 5 to 15 possibilities are where your creative juices start to kick in.

You switch from pulling solutions from your memory and begin creating new possibilities. This is the stuff of genius level thinking!

5. Plan

Most of us never plan our solutions out. We keep throwing stuff at our problems until something sticks, we go with it, and we hope for the best.

Geniuses plan. Armed with the vision of the end state, and a solution or a group of solutions, they create a plan to implement those solutions. They determine what they need, help they need to request from others, the timeline it needs to be done within, and they move forward.

Many of us have no problem planning out a vacation, a birthday party or a night out on the town. Those are the same skills you’ll use here. The difference is that instead of a fun evening, you’ll successfully eliminate a major problem from your life permanently. Isn’t that worth taking some time to plan for?

6. Act

Procrastination, perfectionism, and denial are the enemies of action.

When we know there is something major we must do, many of us all of a sudden find 10 other things that we think we need to do right now.

We spend the time on things that can wait and ignore the major problem we could resolve right now.

Also, we often stop our own progress because we don’t think we have everything perfect.

We’d rather not act and wait until we have everything perfectly laid out than to begin making strides towards resolution.

Geniuses act.

They act now, they act swiftly, and they act with confidence.

It’s not that they know all of the answers. They are confident in knowing that they will make mistakes and learn from them along the way.

They don’t allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good, as Barack Obama often says. When the time comes to act, they do so.

Don’t wait. Now that you have a solution to a problem you once thought was big and overwhelming, don’t sit on it. Know that mistakes are a part of the process, and that you will make far less mistakes moving through these steps than just trying anything.

Trust the process, trust your solutions and trust yourself.

7. Adjust

There are some folks that are going to do what they want to do, even when they know their plan has a flaw. Rather than change course along the way when necessary, they move forward as if their plan was written in concrete and they have no other options.

Geniuses monitor their progress against the end state vision they have in their mind and adjust course along the way to ensure they fulfill that vision. They understand that as they proceed along their plan, they learn more, get smarter and need to make adjustments here or there if they are going to succeed.

They are committed to their end state vision. They understand that their plan is a means towards that end.

Observe the results you are getting, project your thoughts forward to see if you are on track towards your end state vision, and adjust your plan as needed. No plan is perfect, and all plans need fine tuning as you move further down the solution path.

Adjusting the plan here are there doesn’t mean the plan was bad. It’s a natural part of the process that should be embraced if there is a need to succeed.

http://personalgrowthinformation.com/solve-problems-like-a-genius/

When Personal Development Equates to Progress

One of the buzzwords we hear being bandied about regularly today is personal development.

We’re all being told that we must do more to develop ourselves and become better people in the process, both professionally and personally.

And in the quest for success and perfection, we try to exhaust all the oft-repeated clichés – we manage our time, accept and grow with change, making plans and sticking to it, living life to the fullest, achieving the perfect balance between work and personal life, getting out of your comfort zone, confronting your fears head on, and so on and so forth.

But the question is, are we really developing personally because of all the activities we undertake?

For example, some people force themselves to learn a new language or play a musical instrument in the quest for personal development. But truthfully, how does that help you progress, unless you’re going to be using the new language in the course of everyday life or playing the instrument on a regular basis?

You may think you have to continue to improve yourself with a new degree or by pushing yourself at work; but if your degree does nothing for you in your professional life and if all your hard work does not equate to a rise in the overall quality of your life (you may get paid more, but are you really happy?), then all your efforts are in vain.

In my book, personal development happens when we go through life and learn from the lessons it teaches us.

You don’t have to go out and look for challenges and test yourself or push yourself to the limit in order to develop personally.

Instead, it’s enough to try and do the best you can at your job and take pleasure in the simple things that life has to offer.

Personal development is all about striving to be a good human being with moral values and ethics, someone who respects and nurtures people and relationships and who is responsible to oneself and society at large.

What’s important is that you stay focused on priorities without allowing yourself to be distracted, and that you learn to accept and deal with life as it happens.

One of the best ways to grow personally is to learn from your experiences and let them mould you into a better and more mature person, one who is capable of handling triumph and disaster with equal élan (to borrow a line from Rudyard Kipling) and someone who is satisfied and content with life instead of striving to achieve more and more without really having a goal in mind.

In short, personal development has to come from within, and when it concerns your soul more than you actions, that’s when it equates to personal progress.

http://personalgrowthinformation.com/when-personal-development-equates-to-progress/