Forgiveness Archives - Page 16 of 16 - Rex Sikes' Daily Inspiration and Gratitude

What People Think That Makes Them Fail – How To Turn It Around For Success

…”You must believe that what you started you will finish no matter how difficult because when you do you will ultimately get there. You will succeed but not if you quit.

This is perhaps the most difficult aspect about all of this that we must understand.

We must keep the faith and maintain the positive attitude in the face of all of our difficulties. We must not give in to doubt or fear or anger or sadness but we must keep the faith and focus on feeling the best…

(Continued from 2 Big Reasons People Fail)

This is why steering back to center is so critical! You need to return to your positive focus if and whenever you get off track. Go back and re-read my blog posts if you don’t know what I mean.

I’m going to continue to address critical things people do and don’t do that result in failure. When people want success but don’t know how to become successful they do things that keep them from getting what they want. You need to know what to do and what to change in order to make your dreams come true.

As I have mentioned people get derailed by having unrealistic expectations. They think, ‘Okay I gave it a try it so bring it’ and they expect immediate results. They want everything to change instantly.

We learned to think this way mostly from our conditioning in various media. We are promised incredible results if we take a pill, spend our money, get a new haircut or whatever it is advertisers are trying to promote and sell. We have been led down a path that just does not exist. We are told we can have just about anything without any effort and we can have it right now for a certain amount of money.

So some people think, ‘okay I’ve sowed the seeds’ and now voila’ magically everything is instantaneously changed. They are disappointed when they don’t see immediate results so they discount it, state positive thinking doesn’t work and give up.

Someone said ‘there are no unrealistic goals only unrealistic time frames’. We CAN have anything we want in life in the time it takes to get it. We may get it sooner or later when we work for it but we will get it. It is important to understand everything has a season.

The other big mistake people make is that they are wiling try it (somewhat) but they don’t commit to making it work. They dabble. They dip their toe in the water but never actually dive in. They don’t commit, they don’t take the plunge. They stand on the sidelines, so to speak, but never really play the game. You never get 100% results from less than 100% effort. 50% effort just won’t cut it.

Imagine wanting a fabulously fit muscular body and going into the gym and doing a curl with a dumb bell once. Pretty stupid, right?

You know that you are only going to get muscles by repeatedly lifting on different days over a period of time. You understand that getting fit requires conditioning and that you have to stick with it in order to get AND keep the results.

Muscles grow by repetition and so does our mental muscle.

Every New Year people go into the gym and within a few days or weeks or months later they have given up. They got distracted, it was too difficult, or for whatever reason they give up. Gym membership is one of the biggest areas people waste money. It is not because the membership isn’t valuable but because they don’t use it.

Yes, it hurts to exercise, there is muscle burn so people abandon it. Those who get the body they want work out in spite of this. (It is best to be wise and do things properly when exercising).

Some people try positive thinking and quit because it was difficult at first. You must not quit if you want to succeed. Those who prevail reap the benefits and rewards.

To have success and to get the results you want you must daily do what you need to do to get ahead. You must keep going in the face of all outer OR inner opposition. When life is challenging or when you encounter self doubt or fears YOU must keep at it. Once you give up it is over. Failure is the result of stopping more than anything else.

Everyone of us knows we have to eat three times a day (more or less) each day of the week. We don’t try eating a few times and then claim, ‘well I tried it!’ We never say ‘I will eat for a year and then if I don’t have what I want I will do something else’.

In order to have the benefit we must commit to paying the price we have to pay to get what it is we want. To try something a few times and give up because we didn’t see the immediate benefit is silly.

Another big mistake people make is to set a time frame in which to give it a try. If they don’t get the results or success they want by a certain date or time frame then they quit and do something else.

In show business this occurs frequently. I hear from actors who move to Hollywood or New York say, ‘I’ll give it a year or two’. Or, they say, ‘I always have something to fall back on’ or ‘I need something to fall back on in case I don’t succeed’.

They partially commit but they do not actually commit. This is what so many people do and this is why so few actually succeed. People calculate. They think of what will they do instead in the event it does not work out for them.

WHAT on earth do you think you are creating when you think that?

This is putting your focus on ‘if it doesn’t work out’!!! Your focus is on the wrong part of the equation.

You must think, ‘I will do this and I WILL succeed no matter what’, ‘I can and will make this happen’, ‘It is inevitable that I will get my goals’, ‘I am the kind of person who makes things happen’.

‘If it doesn’t work out’, means that they have not taken control or put themselves in charge of achieving their goals and desires. ‘If it does not work out’, essentially is the same as saying, ‘if it rains we will do something else’. Instead of the locus of control being within them to succeed their success is determined from outside of them. Luck or circumstances dictate whether they will make it or not.

You succeed when you live as a victor not a victim. When you are the captain of your ship and not drifting aimlessly. You get where you need to get to by doing what it takes to get their regardless of the odds or the difficulty.

You must think about accomplishing it and not about what to do in case you don’t. The person who wins the race is the one who finishes the race no matter how long it takes.

Think how ridiculous it would be to state, ‘I will run the race for a few minutes but if I don’t win in that time frame I will do something else.’ If you ran half the race but not all of the race you never get to the destination.

This is not rocket science, people. If we want to get certain results then we must do whatever it takes (legally, honestly, ethically) to get those results. We can’t be half assed in any fashion.

You only get that fantastic body by doing what it takes for as long as it takes. Once you have arrived you must continue to do what it takes to maintain that body. You would never say, ‘I’ll work out for a year and if I don’t get results I will stop’.

First off, you know that IF you did work out for a year YOU WOULD get results. They are not immediate but they come with repeated effort through time. You might work out harder but you can’t rush the results you get. So you stick with it for the time it takes to get them.

Someone said, ‘you can’t get up hill thinking down hill thoughts’.

You are never 100% if half of your attention is focused on losing, or not having, or not finishing. You can’t win this way except, perhaps, by accident, and that is not likely. IF you have a fall back plan at least a portion of your mind and energy and being is expecting to have to bail. You have an out, an escape, an excuse.

We BECOME what we think about most often!

If you want to succeed you aim your thoughts and feelings like a laser beam toward what you want to accomplish and then you go about making it happen.

When you totally concentrate and focus your attention 100% on making your dreams a reality you consolidate all your energies and make them work for you.

This is precisely why you revisit your definite chief purpose, you repeat your affirmations powerfully and you choose to feel the very best every single day. You fill yourself up 100% with what you can and will do to make your dreams come true. You get what you focus on!

You make the inside of you a magnetic powerhouse for creating and attracting all great things! Everything begins with thought!

You become a dynamic attractor and creator because what is inside you that motivates you resonates through and through you. Others can and will see your determination and enthusiasm when you are totally focused.

When you know what you want and are determined to get it you are congruent. Your entire being is set in motion toward making what you want to happen, happen. You are dedicated. committed, determined and persistent. You keep going and never let anything take you from accomplishing your purpose.

Yes, benefits come in time just as that conditioned body shows up eventually.

There is a reason the saying exists ‘winners never quit and quitters never win’. You won’t be a success in your life if you can’t commit to making your life successful. hose who succeed frequently encounter hardship and sometimes terrible difficulty, but they know what they want and they don’t let temporary challenges get the better of them.

They persist. They know they will succeed, they will make their dreams come true when they continue to work at it. They plan to celebrate their success and ignore their defeats. They expect to win.

They don’t limit themselves with thinking they can always bail if they don’t make it. If you have a fall back position chances are you will fall back. People who make it make it for the simple reason that they are determined to make it and never let anything stand in the way of that. They know what they want and they do what it takes to secure having it.

The smart, wise ones do it with positive enthusiasm and goodwill towards all even when they can’t yet see the results.

Religious texts from all around the world seem to describe this process and the necessity of maintaining your faith when the evidence is not there.

One brief old testament example is the story of David and Goliath. Opposing forces meet, one side has a critical force that will crush the other side. A large imposing giant able to readily kill his enemy. No mortal stands a chance. BUT David secure in his faith challenged and defeated Goliath with a pebble and a sling.

Hey, I don’t care if it is a true story or a fairy tale, what I take away from it is great wisdom. David rushed Goliath he ran head long toward his problem and conquered it. It was his faith, his belief that gave him the strength and the attitude to tackle his problem head on and declare victory prior to engaging with the giant. According to David, God already declared him victorious.

WOW, ‘he rushed the giant’ is a thought I now keep in mind. So many of us run from our doubts and fears and problems. We try to avoid problems and negative feelings and hate them.

David met his problem, declared victory, stood his ground and prevailed. OUTSTANDING! I can at least do something similar in my life. I can begin to believe I can meet challenges and prevail no matter what.

OKAY one more example, JOB! ‘The lord gives and the lord takes away’. His faith is challenged in a test between God and the ungodly. Again, accurate historical description or fairy tale does not matter to me for what I gain from it. He kept his faith no matter what was going on around him. Job stayed true though he was severely challenged.

Alright, I provided two brief examples, there are countless examples in religious and inspirational texts, and I mean countless. Check it out if you want some good reading.

This is why some succeed while others don’t. The ones who make it keep trying until the actually make it. They make their breaks by not giving up. They keep the faith. They expect to win. They trust that if circumstances aren’t yet positive they will be.

If they are in the right in the right place in the right time it is because they hung in there when everyone else left. Those who get the prize finish the race. They maintain a positive powerful attitude. After all, attitude is everything. I will discuss more about this soon.

We cannot and we must not let the present circumstances, if they are less than glorious, get the better of us. There is hope when you focus on what you want and what you can do to change the present to the future.

You can transform the present through your attitude, by being thankful and practicing gratitude, by focusing on the positive thoughts, affirmations and positive questions. Choose the best feelings and steer back to center whenever necessary.

Maintain your faith in things coming that are as yet unseen. Trust that everything will work out even if you don’t presently know how.This is a huge point to understand and put into practice! TRUST THAT EVERYTHING WILL WORK OUT and that you will find a way eventually, even if you don’t know how at this moment.

Believe in yourself and maintain you attitude. Focus each day on what you can think and feel and do to make your dreams come true and avoid thinking about what you can’t do, don’t like or what is negative. Find the good and new each day to celebrate and your life, your present and your future will transform! It may happen slowly, as already mentioned, but it will transform so hang in their.

Hopefully, what you are beginning to understand is the notion, that patience isn’t merely waiting for things to come to pass, but rather it is how we wait. When we are in the optimum states mentally, physically and spiritually waiting is not the issue because we are enjoying the journey to our destination.

We become what we think about most often. What we focus on we get. We get back what we put out. We reap what we sow. Energy flows where our attention goes. So think and feel and expect the best and you will get more of the same.

Hang in there and make your life the most incredible it can be. It is in your hands. It is completely up to you. Make it marvelous.” Rex Sikes

‘This is the day the lord hath made rejoice and be glad in it!’

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The 2 Big Reasons People Fail – What You Must Do To Succeed

(continued from 12 Great Ways To Make Your Dreams Come True)

“…While I was learning (and believe me I still am) I read and I thought about what I was learning and attempted to put it into practice. As I have mentioned numerous times ‘we become what we think about,’ then I realized (and I still do over and over again) that I am what I have already thought about.

Whether this is true in actuality or not I decided to take responsibility for everything I have and for what I don’t have and all that happens to me. I realized that for me to be successful in life or my career I had to make some drastic changes.

I began to view myself as the creator of myself and my world. Again, I am not saying there may not be outside forces, obviously there are, but in order to gain control for myself, I decided the mental attitude I would adopt.

I began to realize that everything IS a result of my perceptions and my attitudes and that I make myself happy or miserable regardless of what the outside forces bring. The notion ‘if it is to be it is up to me’ began to make more and more sense…

We create our experience. If our experience is to change we must first change ourselves then our experience will change. We have to change what is within our control.

If ‘we become what we think about’ then right now we are experiencing the results of our previous thoughts. We create out future world from our present. This means what we experience now we created in our past. The choice becomes obvious. We either continue to perpetuate it by thinking similar thoughts or we change our thinking and consequently our future results.

Remember the saying ‘if you always do what you always did you will aways get what you always got’. The definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results’.

We either keep going on and on as we have been but hoping for it to be different, proving we are quite insane, or we change what we are doing so as to get different outcomes. This hit me in a big way.

I AM already what I HAVE BEEN thinking about all along. My present IS the result of all that I was thinking previously. The present results I have in the real world indicate what my thoughts are and what they were inside my head. The current situation reveals to me what and where my thinking has been as I traveled in life.

This became a powerful way for me to begin to think about what I had created around me and for me. No, I don’t mean I create the birds and the fish and all the physical reality as we commonly think about the creator. That is not part of this discussion at this time.

The world reflects what is going on in the inside. ‘So above So below’, ‘what is inside is on the outside’, ‘ying yang’ and all the many concepts which seem to state the same obvious thing. We are our results.

I will say that again differently. We are, our life is, the result of our thinking. All the results we experience in our lives we first create on the inside of our heads. It begins with thought.

For most of us this is haphazard as few of us are in charge of our own thinking. Yet, some of us do recognize that we are deliberate creators and that what we design on the inside IS what we get on the outside.

Some of us take time to create what we want on the inside and then go about making it happen on the outside. The important principle to remember is that EVERYTHING first begins with a thought. Success starts within!

Since there is no one inside your head but you the ultimate responsibility and accountability for what you create resides with you. No one else runs your brain (unless of course you let them).

Actually, we are very much influenced by the thoughts and opinions of others. We have adopted their values, beliefs, attitudes, and preferences without even realizing it much of the time. While we may give lip service regarding the influence of others we have no true idea of just how pervasive it is.We have been taught how to think, act and feel by others, who we well meaning, but may not have offered us the best notions to make as our own. We have co-opted what the majority tend to think.

It began at a very young age. We developed habitual lines of thought, our self esteem, what we think about the world, others, ourselves and our abilities as we grew. We grew up thinking mostly what others fed to us. We adopted these as our own and we keep thinking these.

Today, we tend to think the same thoughts we thought then. Researchers have stated that we think in excess of 60,000 thoughts a day (how they actually count those I have no clue) and that upwards of 60% of the thoughts we think today we thought yesterday. This means most of our thoughts are the SAME thoughts. WOW!

We have patterns of thought that keep us the same. We don’t evolve much because the mechanism is on auto-play. Since our thoughts our on auto-play it rarely occurs to us to that we can take control and change them. OR if we do consider it other thoughts come in stating it would be too difficult or not worth the effort and on and on.

So the first issue, the first big mistake, is that many of us have never taken charge of our thinking. If we aren’t in charge of our own thinking then we aren’t fully in charge of our lives. We live accidentally, we drift through life dealing with whatever the circumstances are. Sometime we are happy sometimes not. We don’t know where we are going and we don’t set a course. Just like a cork bobbing in the water or a ship adrift at sea we go wherever the current takes us. We don’t operate from our own power. We should be the captain of our ship but many of us are not. If you want success in life you mist predetermine where you want to go in life. You must choose!

The second issue, the second big mistake, is a big one too!

Here is a big problem for many of us. We create our world by what and how we repeatedly think. We create our world by our thinking AND if we don’t like the results we get then we focus on those less than glorious results and our bad feelings. We put our attention in precisely the wrong place. This is part of our previous conditioning growing up. It is as if we are trying to drive forward by looking backwards. You can’t be looking in the wrong place and expect to get ahead. Sadly, though that is what we do. We focus on the wrong things!

We blame others, we blame the world, we blame circumstances, we blame anything and everything OUT THERE as the source of our difficulty or disappointment. We even blame ourselves but mostly in the fashion that we are unable to do anything about it differently. We aren’t smart enough or good enough or strong enough or others or circumstances prevent us. ALL of the blame is misplaced. It keeps us from being who and what we can be because we keep missing what we need to actually change to have different results.

When we blame we are stating we have no control. Frankly, we ARE blaming people and things and situations WE can NOT control. Who and what we can control is ourselves and our thoughts feelings and actions. SO if we want to change things in our world we must first change ourselves. We have to recognize where the control actually exists and claim it. Sadly, most of us don’t and not because we are bad people or stupid but because we have been conditioned most of our lives to not ever actually consider it. We don’t know any better.

I have discussed this before but will mention it again here. There is a principle called a ‘premature cognitive commitment’. A PCC means we make a mental decision prior to all the facts being collected. In my workshops and talks I explain iall of this more fully but here is an example, a real life example.

IF you wanted to train fleas (some do apparently) get an aquarium and some fleas. Put the flees in the aquarium and put a glass cover over the top so the fleas can’t hop out. The fleas will hop and hop and hop into the glass cover again and again. Within a few days you can remove the cover and most of the fleas will remain in the aquarium and not hop out. Why?

The reason for this is they make (in their little flea minds) a premature cognitive commitment that the boundary of their world allows them to only hop so high. They keep hitting the glass repeatedly for numerous attempts then they alter how far they hop. Soon it becomes as far as they try to hop. The make a decision about their known world that influences what they do and what they try. They give up. They don’t leave the aquarium. Obviously, new born fleas don’t have these conditions so they would hop out but the rest remain inside.

Must I make the obvious comparison that we operate much like fleas. You can find other examples of this – a fly trapped inside a closed window, a bee in your car and others. The point is the fleas don’t know that the glass plate will, at some time in the future, be removed. When it is they don’t know it because they stopped jumping that far already. They assume those boundary conditions still exist when they do not. Even though the fleas are free to jump higher and escape the aquarium they do not. They gave up before the situation changed.

We are a lot like flees. We don’t have to be and we can change it but we have to realize it first.

Awareness is the key that opens the doorway to exploration. We need to recognize our mental boundaries and the be willing to go beyond them. We need to notice when we are paying attention to the wrong things and correct it. When our attention is in the wrong place we don’t get better results we only get more of the same.

Sadly, we focus on what is wrong when we should be focused on creating what we want instead. We focus on the problem, the issue, the disappointment, the bad feeling instead of what is right and what is working. We think if we focus on the problem (like a math problem) we will solve it. Einstein said ‘No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.’ He stated it another way as well, ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them’.

I like Einstein so I will provide another that I think is significant:, ‘Nothing happens until something moves’. This is such an accurate statement because we remain the same until we do something to alter it. We will stay the same unless we stop and do something different. We will keep hopping but we won’t hop as far as we could unless we recognize that the limitations, we thought we there, have been removed.

We will even keep hoping but we won’t hope as far as we could unless we recognize that the limitations only existed in our thinking.

If we want a better life then we must change our thinking. We must control our thinking. We must take charge and steer it in a positive direction. We must be as the captain at the helm of a ship and navigate it to where we want to go. We must know where we are headed and then do whatever is need to get there.

The reason we miss everything and don’t change much is because we focus in the wrong place. When we focus on the result we got our attention is on the outer world (our creation from the past) and not on what we need to presently focus on in order to produce a better future. Our attention is misplaced.

Yes, you may take results as an indication of whether you are moving in the right or wrong direction but more than that is pointless. You must focus on what you can actually control.

You CAN control your thoughts, your thinking process and the ability you have to create when you learn how to. You can gain control your thoughts when you apply yourself and make the effort to master this skill.

In the midst of any and all the crap and turmoil going around you it is important to recognize that YOU got yourself there. ‘What you focus on is what you get’. ‘We become what we think about’.

I got myself there. I looked at where I was and recognized that good, bad, right or wrong, successful or not I was responsible for exactly where I was in that moment. I am responsible for exactly where I am in this moment. I created all of this.

At this point it is critical not to blame yourself or suffer because ‘life sucks’, but to change yourself to make it all better. Blame only furthers the problems and solves nothing.See my previous posts about how to stop blaming and move ahead productively.

HEREIN LIES THE RUB! Here is where most people give it a try and then give up. Here is where they stop hopping.

‘For everything there is a season’. What is a season?

A season IS a period of time when certain things occur. There is a season to plant when it is conducive to putting the seeds in. Then there is the growing season where under the cover of darkness the seed sprouts and takes root before breaking through to the light of day. Growth continues until the harvest season begins and then that which is planted is gathered. The harvest CAN be bountiful because seeds multiple their output. One seed may produce one apple tree with hundreds or thousands of apples in its life time AND one apple produces many seeds. The return is greater than the investment.

BUT here is where people get derailed.They think, ‘Okay I gave it a try it so bring it’. They expect immediate results mostly as a part of our conditioning in various media. They think, ‘okay I’ve sowed the seeds’ and then voila’ magically everything is instantaneously changed.

NOPE!

At least not obviously.

Yes, everything is changing for the better the second, the instant, you make that decision to think positively and get positive results! In that second everything changes! The moment you take charge EVERYTHING begins to change. A new creation direction begins the moment you decide but this is the planting season.

The seed is planted and now it must grow and be nurtured. It grows in darkness and the results won’t be obvious for awhile. SO what is there, that you may notice, is what you already have. It is your current situation. Your present is the same and may appear to be the same for some time while the seeds grow in darkness. This is so important to understand!

Things ARE changing BUT YOU can’t see it YET.

Things are changing and growing! You made the decision, you planted the seed, now it must germinate, and be nurtured. When it finally sprouts may be way off in time. When it is ready to harvest may be further down the road. You can’t expect to have things now when there is a time they come to fruition.

If you focus on how things are crappy or how they remain the same, or are getting worse, or are not changing fast enough you are killing off the seeds you have planted. You are withholding the nutrition the seeds need. You are too preoccupied with what isn’t happening yet, with the crap that is still there, and you are missing the boat entirely. Your focus is in the wrong place!

YOU MUST focus on what you want to create and think about how you will create it EVEN WHEN there is no evidence of it coming about. THIS IS THE LAW! This is what is required of us. Have faith in the creation process and know, that since you planted it if you nurture it, you will get it. Our task is to nurture it along AND keep the faith.

Yet, this is where most people drop out and then claim it does not work. They decide to change but then focus on what isn’t changing and give up. They hop up against that glass plate and decide it is pointless to keep trying. They decide to quit and give up because they don’t know that if they just keep at it the limitations will be removed. The act on limited information. We all do all of the time. The important point to understand is you must not give up!!! Success is yours when you follow through NO MATTER WHAT. SO I will repeat:

You must not give up.” Rex Sikes

We will continue this in the next blog post. Meanwhile make some decisions that sever you well today. AND make the decision to have a remarkable day today too! Enjoy!

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What Are You Not Thinking About Right Now?

When you consider people and things in your life to be grateful for what are you not thinking about that would be good for you if you did? Sometimes we choose the obvious and only go as far as those thoughts readily available. We hit the surface but we don’t go deep. Now, it’s time to dig deeper too. Examine everything. It is time to begin to think thoughts you may have never considered thinking before. So what are you not considering that if you did might make an amazing difference for you?

You don’t know yet, do you? That is because you have to actually stop and think about it.

What are you not thinking about right now? Well, of course there are countless things because we have a limited focus or conscious capacity. Not only that be we think repetitive thoughts along repetitive lines. Researchers tell us we don’t do a lot in the way of generating much new thinking from day to day. We think today much of what we thought about yesterday.

So consider this.

We think of people as geniuses or artists and great creative minds when they are able to think outside the box. We value those who think and create and do those things it never occurred to us to do. We appreciate those who think along lines that we never bother to. We may even revere these individuals.

Using this as an example – what can we begin to do for ourselves that could make an amazing difference? How can we begin to think outside the box and free up our minds to entertain other thought that may be quite beneficial? What can we begin to think about that we might have never ever considered thinking about before?

Well?

You have lived for how many years? Have you ever thought to appreciate your feet for carrying you through life? Have you ever thought about how your feet and legs have made it possible for you to have traveled everywhere, all over, all along all this time? And you have always hated your toes or how your feet looked or your legs are too short or your calves to thick? Think about this: there may be something about you that you have never liked or thought to appreciate but that is the basis of much of everything you have ever done or accomplished.

What about your hands, your back, your ass your looks or your digestive system? There are so many things about you to appreciate that you may never have thought to.

You may be short or tall or thin or fat, you may be athletic or not, you may have a physical challenge have you ever thought to appreciate this about yourself. If not, why not?

If it never occurred to you – that too is an important point. It demonstrates what I said a moment ago. We think along routine lines and don’t venture out very far. Well, now you can.

Instead of looking at something as a limitation or that ‘thing about yourself you can’t quite accept’ what if you could? What if, instead on not liking it, you began to see it as an aspect of you that opened many alternate doors? What if that thing you didn’t like was actually responsible for many positive other things about you?

Some of us have found aspects of ourselves that are not to our liking. We may have focused on these during our lifetime, and we have let these bother us. We don’t like our nose or our eyes or our teeth? Well, even though we don’t like these what have these very things allowed us to do during our life? What if we didn’t have a nose or a mount or our eyes? How would life be different?

There are those thing about us that we don’t like but to others it does not matter. It is not an issue. Other people don’t think about us the way we do. That might not even notice if we didn’t speak about it. SO if it is not an issue for them why do we make it an issue for ourself?

Not only that but maybe that ‘thing we don’t like about ourself’ is something that they find charming or unique about us.

The point is that we have thought a certain way for so long that we think that is just the way it is. We accept it as gospel or the only way to think about it when, in reality, there may be many other ways to think about it that would be better ways to think. Maybe it could be anything else but we just have never thought about this way.

It may not actually be the way we think it is at all. Maybe it IS otherwise, but how would we know if you only considered it in one fashion.

It may not seem like anything you even want to be thankful about but when you open that possibility up many things can change. If you always do what you always did you will always get what you always got. It is not going to change when you keep it the same. BUT we can change it.

If you can change your perspective about what you thought was a limitation, or something you didn’t like about yourself, what else might change for the positive? If you spend less energy maintaining a problem where else might you put that energy. If you free yourself up from having one less problem what positive possibilities might become available.

Perhaps, you can stop it being a limitation and go beyond those thoughts and instead begin to develop a new more powerful and productive mindset. You may not have ever considered this as a possibility until now. Perhaps, you haven’t EVEN now but you could. What would it be like if you began to appreciate things about you that you never ever did before? What if you could take a new different positive perspective about yourself?

I am suggesting you begin to ‘grease the wheel’ to make things much easier for yourself.

Look at those things you appreciate about you and keep appreciating them. Then look for those things that you haven’t yet and begin to appreciate those too!

THEN look for those things you just might never appreciate about yourself and begin to open the door on new thinking that you might otherwise never do.

When you can develop flexibility in this way you will discover many new and exciting things waiting for you. When you can accept and embrace and validate in a positive way those things you considered negative, or less than glorious about you – you make room for many new positive thoughts and feelings and behaviors.

For example, some people have never tried eating certain foods because they didn’t like them as a child. So they have avoided eating them all along. They don’t even want to try eating them. It doesn’t even occur to them unless someone brings it up. BUT, if they would only taste these foods they may discover that they aren’t so bad. Perhaps, the food they have always avoided they may now discover is enjoyable, maybe even desirable. They would never, ever know this unless they are willing to try.

Here is an interesting little tidbit some parents already know. We can educate our taste buds to like things that we don’t presently, by repeated exposure.

Researchers claimed that it takes a dozen or more trials before we are willing to eat a food we don’t like. If we will try it multiple times we get more used to it and can actually begin to like it. In fact, it becomes more likely we will after numerous exposures.

Actually this is true for a number of things. I have mentioned before in other blog pages this process is the same when it comes to thinking in new and positive ways and developing new skills. Repetition opens the door and leads to a positive new habit.

Utilized in reverse it is an approach to de-sensitizing people from what they fear. When a person fears a particular insect or animal or object repeated exposure has been found to eliminate the fear. The feared item is brought into view at a safe distance, the person responds and the item removed. This is repeated until they know and feel that they are safe. Once safe the item is brought closer and the process repeats until eventually they are able to handle the item or do a task or behavior without the limiting feelings. Through repeated exposure they become accustomed to it, or familiar with it, and learn they no longer have to respond in the old unproductive limiting way.

When they no longer are afraid or limited by their feelings they are free to engage in new positive and productive behaviors. They think new thoughts, feel new feelings and do new things as a result. Their energy is released from the problem and it can now flow in new ways.

So you can learn to like new foods or get over fears using a similar targeted approach. You can begin to think new thoughts, feel new better positive feelings and learn new behaviors and skills using repetition in an applied fashion.

Of course, one has to be willing to try.

If one is not willing to try new ways then things remain the same.

If you want your life to change you have to change things in your life. Begin slowly if you must but begin. Look for more things to appreciate about yourself and you will find them. Keep finding ways to value who you are and you will find more and more. You will begin to feel better. The better you feel the more you can do. The more you can do the more you will want to do. It becomes something you look forward to and in time it becomes a natural way to think because you will have developed the habit.

It will never become a habit though if you don’t take the time and make the effort to make it one.

So it is up to you. Take it easy, make it gentle, but do it for yourself. Help yourself discover you true spirit and positive nature. It exists there inside you even if you never thought about it before. Great things exist inside you EVEN if you never thought so before. They do! You are amazing in so many ways and beyond all the ways you may already know. There are aspects about you that are incredible that you may never have noticed. There are all sorts of things about you that you may never have given yourself credit for. Now, it is time.

Make your list today. Add to it. Keep doing it a little bit more each day. There are so many wonderful discoveries you will make along the way. Do it now.” Rex Sikes

Have a fun filled fabulous day!

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Do You Want To Feel Better?

Do you want to feel better? Most everyone does. Some people hope to feel better others always seem to know what to do. When you are feeling ‘out of sorts’ or ‘less than glorious’ there are some simple things you can do that will make all the difference. At the very least they will initiate the process of changing so you can find relief and begin to move in a more productive direction and feel better. The better we begin to feel the more we can continue to feel well being.

Here is an easy way to change how you feel. I’m sure you have heard it before and it works! Take a walk. Go outside, get some fresh air and walk somewhere beautiful. Take it in. See it, listen, take a deep breath, smell it, feel it. Go outside and get refreshed. Look off into the distance, focus your eyes on way far off in the distance while you walk. Look to the horizon. Change your perspective.

Move! If you are able walk barefoot along the beach or the grass. Connect with the earth again. Let yourself be filled with the beauty and wonder of nature. It is easy to do. Even if you live in an urban area walk somewhere nice, somewhere different than where you normally travel. See new places and new things.

Exercise – take that walk, relaxed or make it brisk. Jog, engage in your favorite form of exercise. This helps shake off old tired negative feelings. Work out! Get the stress and frustrations out. Do some cardio, some yoga, go swimming. Move vigorously for awhile. Work in the garden, plant something. Harvest if possible, take out the brush and the weeds. Get into the earth, do some laboring.

Do something nice for another person. Take a moment to make a moment special for someone else. Pay it forward. Help someone out of a jam, carry their groceries, babysit, walk the dog, anything. Put your focus onto someone other than yourself. Find a way to put a smile on their face. Make them a card or a small gift, cook them a meal, take them somewhere special. Make it a point to put some kindness into your day.

Helping others and thinking positive thoughts about others is a fantastic way to feel good. We can feel helpful, useful, kind, generous, we can have pride in what we did, or simply be loving. It takes the attention off of us and puts it onto someone else for awhile. Think about what you can do to help another person improve their situation, overcome a difficulty, solve a problem or just feel better. Caring for someone else is a marvelous way to feel wanted, needed and valuable. Volunteer at a soup kitchen or a shelter. Find out what needs to be done in your community and pitch in or simple assist a family member or a friend.

Do something! Do anything! Just don’t sit there and wallow. Getting up and getting out makes an incredible difference. It is difficult to feel bad when you are moving energetically. It is difficult to feel bad when you are busy and engaged with other things. It is tough to feel bad when your focus is on helping others feel better. When your thoughts and your energy is directed in a positive way you benefit from it. When we are active and moving, when we use our bodies and minds productively it is difficult to feel down. When you are idle, when you don’t move, when you don’t change your body it is much easier to remain stuck. So get up, move, get out, do something, do anything!

Try walking, hiking, skipping, dancing, running, or rolling down a hill as a little kid would. If you are willing to try new things there is always a way out of the gloom. When you make it a habit to take charge and be active about not letting yourself whine, complain and feel down you will find yourself feeling better more of the time. As you do things to move yourself from ‘less than glorious’ to feeling better you are beginning to make it a habit, a practice, to make yourself feel better. The more you do this, the more you do it again and again the more you will find it getting easier, happening more swiftly, frequently and spontaneously. Each time you make a positive change for yourself you are learning something of great value. When you do it deliberately you are really benefiting yourself. No longer are you the victim but you become the victor.

On a separate note it is okay to feel sad sometimes. It is important to grieve when life takes a turn and you lose someone important to you. There are reasons we feel down at times. Sometimes we sleep sometimes we are awake. Everything has a season and a purpose. It is okay and you can accept it.

There is also the time to get up and get on. It is important to know and understand and make room for both. So be sensitive and be wise. Life, as far as I am concerned, is about enjoying and delighting as much as possible. It is about celebrating all good things and making moments special. It is about allowing and about creating. It is about making it what you want it to be and not about letting it happen to you or pass you by. So when it is appropriate, when the time is right make it what you want it to be.

Playfully discover all the ways you can be more fascinated, have more fun and feel fabulous. You will never know all the ways it is possible until you begin to try a few new ones. Do a little bit each day. Explore and adventure. Create some play time for yourself and treat yourself lovingly, with respect and appreciation. If you are used to conning yourself into feeling bad learn to con yourself into feeling better.

Celebrate every moment because once they are here, they leave and only a memory remains.

You can do this. You can make your life much more marvelous. So do something today.

What kind of memories do you want to have? You decide. Put a smile on your face or help put a smile on the face of someone near you! Enjoy!” Rex SIkes

Today is yours how will you make it a little more special? I wish you a wonderful one!

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What Is This About And Why. What! There Is More?

In my previous post I asked: Can we live a life worth having? Can we love and enjoy being loved? If we have only one go around then why not find the way to enjoy it and others as best we are able? Can we create a wonderful life and a wonderful world for everyone?

These are questions I find important that we ask ourselves and the purpose of this blog is to help us ask questions that bring us more wonderful results and answers.

I wanted to continue to explore some concepts.

Some people are concerned about problems and issues for themselves and the world.

With so much access to so many difficulties people face in the world, war, poverty, starvation, discrimination, hatred, territorial mentality, them against us, I felt it was time for me to put out there a vehicle, this blog, as a reminder for me, and those who might follow it, to help make the world a more glorious place for all. We can become the change we want to be in the world. We can one do that by one. If we each take responsibility we may change the world but only when we actually try. If we do nothing it will remain the same.

I don’t believe we won’t end war by declaring more war. We won’t end poverty, destitution, poor health, disease or starvation either, or any problem by declaring war on it. That is a tired out useless, political metaphor that has not served us well at all.

We can focus on positive solutions that include, rather than exclude, that clarify rather than obfuscate, and that create more well being and harmony for all when we seek harmony and well being for all.

We will never end problems of not having enough by focusing on not having enough.

We will end these problems when we seek to have all people having plenty.

So much of the world’s issues are political in nature. wWe have wars over resources for profit we always have had these. We have border issues who should be in and who should be kept out. We have some rich people who have it all and others who have nothing. The rich claim the poor want to take it from them. The poor claim the rich are holding them down. We have people who hate other people because of their skin color, their religion, their politics, their gender biases. We have people who hate people because of who they love.

There is lot’s going on. It has been going on forever.

I don’t think the world will ever change when we fight these things the way we have been fighting them.

We give energy to the problem and don’t give much to the solution. Television pundits and legislators spew hate and intolerance. The big and the little voices on the internet point out someone else who is to blame. It is always someone else doing something wrong that is a problem for everyone else. They should be stopped, locked up or shot. It seems the solutions proffered, for the most part, come from hostility, scarcity thinking, fear, and retribution. It is them against us.

The focus is always on the other person, the other nation, the other one who is causing all the bad, or evil and how they need to be severely dealt with. We have war on poverty, drugs, illiteracy, homelessness, the list is endless AND what have we ever solved.

Are we richer, better off, healthier, do more people have homes, use less drugs, read more books? It doesn’t seem to be the case. We still have right against left accusing each other of overspending, underspending, grift, self interest, fraud, cover-ups and more. Frankly, it is not bound to end anytime soon.

Some people think we need a unifying event. A world calamity, aliens revealed before we all come together as the single species we are and work together for the benefit of all. I am not sure even that would help as most likely we would declare war on the aliens too.

So what do I think might help? I am not sure what the answers are that would please anyone. I don’t think you can provide a single answer. I do think that we have tried big dramatic things with little or no results. I am not sure any of us are ultimately better off for any war the world’s people have engaged in, though I am certain you will find proponents for each of them.

I don’t think declaring war and doing what we have done, threatening, drawing lines in the sand, getting tough, you know we need tough love or tougher approaches, has worked very well either.

Certainly, in some cases we are better off in some ways for some attempts while in other cases, in other ways we are worse off because of some attempts. It is never clear cut, it is never absolutely one way or the other. This kind of thinking seems to be part of the problem.

‘There is a knat problem here hall out the bazookas and blast them.’ Not only do we use overkill, but the saying ‘if you only have a hammer you treat everything as a nail’ seems to apply to many of us and to many of those in power. We try the same approach on everyone and everything.

My approach is a bit different. I believe we are better served inching our way toward what we want and making positive incremental changes good for most everyone that to try caustic dramatic measures that leave damage in its wake.

Who the heck would come up with a term like ‘collateral damage’ EXCEPT to make it palatable and acceptable. It isn’t in any case.

So why am I a proponent for positive thinking. I thought you would never ask and I might never get around to it.

Here is why:

When you make your life incredible and fill it with joy and love and peace and harmony you are too busy having a good time to wish others ill will. When you live from fulness and abundance you don’t have to horde or fear that someone else may get your share.

When you manifest your dreams and discover the joys of this world and you wish the same for others the world becomes a better place because the people in it wish well for all.

If you can be positive others can be too.

Let me make a base argument here if I may. If I am having incredible sex with someone I am not trying to prevent anyone else in the building from doing the same at the same time. It is only when someone else has something we want that it becomes an problem.

If every atom of your being is radiating with light and love and fulfillment you won’t be causing anyone else any trouble.

It seems much of this world, the issues, can be boiled down to this simplistic way to think – I don’t have what they have and I want theirs so I will take it OR someone is after what I have and I won’t let them take it.

I mean really isn’t that the bottom line. We want their land, food, water, oil, money, resources or whatever because then we will be better off or we fear that someone is after what we have and will rob us of it. Whether we are robbed at gun point or through social welfare someone will take from us what we think is ours.

The neighbor has a better car, boat, house, husband or wife and we feel bad. Their kids are smarter or better looking and we feel bad. It we compare all the time in a one up one down fashion we are bound to not feel well much of the time. There will always be those who have more. SO WHAT?

No matter how many times it is pointed out you can not take it with you we still act as what we have is actually ours.

Maybe we would be far better off world wide if we realized we are on borrowed time and all these ‘things’ we only get to enjoy temporarily. They do not belong to us.

Maybe, instead of acting as if we are entitled to anything we should act as temporary stewards and protectors of all these things.

I am all for people having as much wealth as they can accumulate. I do think the world is abundant but I don’t find hording all the wealth a good thing. I think it is important to realize we are all in this together.

People claim they worked hard for their money. True, some have. Still, no one makes it alone. If you worked hard to manufacture and advertise widgits and you made a fortune you did not do it alone. Scores of people helped all along the way from idea to consumer. Everyone is partly responsible for your success. To think otherwise is RCV vision. RCV stands for rectal canal vision or it means you have your head up…

We are all in it together. Some play harder than others, some seem not to be in the game hardly at all, but we are all here together. Seems to me we ought to figure out BY THIS TIME how to get along and play nice.

To exclude anyone for any reason seems wrong to me. We hear the tales of old of pillaging and raping and killing villagers to get the spoils and we still do this today in other lands, in our own lands and neighborhoods and to our environment. We horde and scar and waste.

Why might this be? I think greed and fear. If you are afraid there won’t be enough to survive or thrive or WHATEVER you act differently than when you know there is plenty. When you are physically starving you may take drastic measures to insure your survival AND I UNDERSTAND THAT. That makes a lot of sense. Your survival mechanism kicks in and you may do anything you might otherwise not do.

Fight or Flight in the jungle, the real jungle or the urban jungle makes sense. Predatory beasts seeking food might eat you. So you either flee if you can or you fight to survive. You do whatever you think will maximize your chances.

The problem is we live in a world where there IS actually enough for everyone even though our populations have swelled, yet, political forces have prevented people from having access to food, clean water, energy, territory, resources, money you name it. The greedy have divided up the world. You wouldn’t do that unless you were just basically greedy or you feared their would not be enough for you. Yes, yes, some want world domination I am sure.

The bottom line is much of the accumulation comes from fear in some form. If you aren’t afraid and you know everything is plentiful you don’t have to act as you have been acting.

It may seem trivial to state the obvious, these people do these horrible things because they either think they have to or because they think it is enjoyable. Yes, I reduced it to a couple choices, I know,

When you think about it people are fighting for what they believe is scare. How would most of us know if anything is actually scares. You have direct experience with it. The poor person starving in some country because their government won’t let them eat or produce food has direct access. The rest of us only hear about it. BUT because we hear about it we may think that is true everywhere. We may over generalize and think food stocks are scare in many places. We may then start to horde because of the impending zombie apocalypse and create fall out shelters and arm ourselves so that if our neighbors needs some food we can shoot them too.

The problem as I see it is things, thinking get exaggerated and blow into fears. I suspect some people want us to be afraid for their own purposes, or divided and at odds about anything, doesn’t matter what we argue about, just that we argue.

It’s just that if we think the other person is the enemy, then we will never unite, never come together or collaborate, we will never be cohesive and accomplish anything. Maybe, it doesn’t require anyone orchestrating this at all, maybe it is just what we end up doing all on our own because of our thinking.

So I believe our thinking needs adjustment more than the real world out there needs adjustment. OR said differently, I believe that if we think better, smarter, wiser, more optimistically we will get better results because we may find better methods for improving our world than all those we have tried unsuccessfully so far.

I am a proponent for thinking that the more power you have the more responsibility you have. I think we should be accountable for our actions and want to create a better place for all. I think we should seek to find ways to make more pies instead of dividing up the ones we have. There is plenty for everyone but not in the minds of all. In some minds, and they may be very poor or very rich, they seem to think that there is not enough, or that they must fight to get everything they can. See you can be very rich and have a very poor mentality.

People who are carving up the world and the lives of others aren’t operating from the highest intentions, the most positive frames of mind. They aren’t thinking what is good for the goose IS ALSO good for the gander so lets spread it around. IT IS precisely the mindset that IS the issue. It is how we think and what we think that makes all the difference.

Do any of us think we would be facing many of the problems we do if everyone had embraced the ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you’ philosophy? Would we have any of these issues if we all adopted the love your brother, turn the cheek, forgive and take care of the least of these… ?

My guess is we would not. Hey, I am not spouting religion here I am making a point. If we all had a better positive mind set and philosophy might not we all be better off? Would we have violated the planet and each other if we loved and cared for the planet and each other? I think not.

Still, someone is bound to be saying right now, ‘wow yeah, fer sure, but not everyone thinks like that, there will always be self centered greedy asses, there will always be poor people, there will always be problems…’ and yes there will be. The fact that there is opposition to our thinking doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think it.

What it means to me is that I am responsible to me.

I want to have the best life and best of everything possible.

I want everything I can lay claim to but not at the point of depriving others what they too could have. If we ever got down to the ‘last cookie scenario’ I’d like to think I would be willing to share it with whomever is huddling in the bunker with me. If it were my kids they would absolutely get it. I would go without.

As many parents I love my kids I want the best for them. In a situation such as that they would get my share of the cookie. Yes, I also understand the notion of putting on you breathing mask first in the plane as it plummets before helping your child, so that you might actually BE ABLE TO help your child.

Nothing is cut and dried. I certainly don’t have an ultimate answer. I do not propose to solve any of the world’s problems. What I hope to do is inspire people to be kinder and gentler to themselves and more accepting of others and circumstances.

We haven’t yet actually embraced the notion that all the people on this planet ARE exactly the equivalent of a group of people in a life boat on the ocean. We haven’t have, have we? We are though, traveling through space on a vehicle too vast to realize we are all in it (on it) together. We are all, every single one of us, traveling in the exact same direction at the very same time.

We are all in the boat, whether at sea or in space.

Doesn’t it make sense that at some point in time we will have to figure out how to best get along and distribute our resources to maximize our time alive.

The key for me, AND BELIEVE ME, I know and understand the limitations of examples and analogies, they serve a useful purpose but they never address all the counter points that could be brought up, they are imperfect vehicles, as I am, the key for me is to be nicer to self and others while we have the opportunity.

Maybe, just maybe, one by one we will change the world. Maybe we won’t. We never will if we do nothing that is guaranteed. So I think things do go better with positivity. I do think we are better off when we think about what we may do to make our life and the lives of others better. I think we would all best be served by wanting to make sure the planet was better off. It is simple, instead of taking always, we gave something first.

If everyone decided to always leave another person better off than when we encountered the person we would be mutually benefiting each other in win/win ways. I am all for starting small, doing things we can do a little bit each day.

Some people on January 1 join a gym with the intention of working out and getting healthy. They have every intention, but then life, appointments, family or other things take precedence. Unused gym memberships is a multi-million dollar business. They get caught up or they over do at the start and they are sore and have to take off time to recover or it is just too much on their plate and so they stop.

It would be better if they found some small exercise they could do at home, work or the office, even the car that they could repeat through each day of the week, then to do nothing at all. They would make progress more slowly it is true, but much more quickly than no progress at all.

Yes, for me it is ALL ABOUT mind set. Everything begins with a thought. Every human invention or endeavor is the result of some one and others thinking about it, conceiving it and bringing it to be.

Napoleon Hill said, ‘If you can conceive it and believe it you can achieve it’

I don’t think our issue is as much being able to conceive it as one might think. I think plenty of us can conceive of a more loving, kind, peaceful world where all get along and have plenty.

Still, I am sure there a countless numbers who can not imagine it. If you can’t imagine it how could you ever bring it about. You couldn’t because you wouldn’t even know it as possible. So yes, some can conceive it, others can’t.

I think the bigger opportunity for us is believing it. You see, there are those who can’t conceive it and hence don’t even entertain believing it because it is outside their awareness. Never enters their minds.

THEN, there are those who can and DO conceive of it and dream of a better world but just can’t bring themselves to believe it is possible. It is beyond their ability to believe it.

Finally, there are those who can conceive of it and who are able to believe it. They believe there can be a better world. Fewer in number though, I am sure.

If we think getting everyone to conceive and believe it IS impossible it certainly will be.

If we focus on what we don’t have and where the trouble is that isn’t going to help.

So the question is: What do we do, what can we do to get more people on the same positive page each day?

What actions can we individually take, and together take, that will result in more of us able to conceive of a better world, and believe that we can create it no matter what opposition we face?

What can I do to make the world a better place today?

What can I do to make another’s life better?

What can I do today to make my life better?

I started with the world and brought it back to WHAT CAN I DO.

I think the questions we ask IS the starting place.

Good positive questions can help us find answers. We have to begin.

We have to ask wise and useful questions – a better class of questions to guide us toward what we ultimately want.

It is easy to say no, to claim never, and to do nothing. It is another thing to stay open to possibility. I don’t think we change the world all at once, people have tried through various means. They are still trying and we are still being inundated by their attempts.

While terrible things occur, there are wonderful things occurring too.

The world is smaller today because of media and we have immediate access to all the woes of the world 24/7. Now, more than ever. In the past are were influenced by bad news much more slowly as it traveled by word of mouth over great distances. Later newspapers informed groups of people eventually becoming a faster news source. Then radio, then television, now all of those plus the internet. impinge on us daily.

We can’t escape bad news. It is on TV, streaming, internet, Facebook, twitter, you name it is spreads virally like wild fire. Nothing travels as fast as bad news. Still, there is good news in the world. We should remember that. Actually, maybe we should focus on that more than the bad news. Have you considered that? Maybe the world ISN’T as bad as we are lead to believe.

As I have mentioned, it is not about ignoring that which needs changing, but it is about becoming more intelligent how we go about changing it.

One of the things we need to do is to determine what we want to pay attention to and what we want to be influenced by. I don’t isolate myself from news, some people do, but I aim my mind at finding the best I can in a bad situation. I spend most of my time seeking out the cool wonderful things to pay attention to and appreciate rather than the bad things. I want more good stuff and less bad stuff AND I want the bad stuff to get resolved in positive ways.

What to do? For me, I decided, the least I could do was get my own house in order. Get my positive mind set on. I think if I can discover that the world is an incredible place with enough for everyone maybe someone else can too.

It all begins with a thought and it all begins with me. It is up to each of us to recognize that. So while I asked those questions earlier from what can I do to improve the world to what can I do to improve me the actual effective order is from smaller to larger, from local to global. Take care of your own home first, then neighborhood, the community and so on.

What started out yesterday, as a short statement to say hope you enjoy the blog, it is not written expertly, morphed into this longer post about why the blog.

The purpose of this blog is to spread a little joy and possibility thinking each and everyday.

Hopefully, some will read something I share and then and recognize something good about themselves that they may have forgotten. Perhaps, someone will find more things to appreciate and be grateful for. Maybe someone will aim toward something higher, or set an important goal and take steps toward attaining it.

The blog hopefully, will help the reader recognize the good things that make the reader a valuable person. I hope it will provide for each of us a thought or inspiration that may wake us up to a new positive possibilities in us and around us.

I hope it becomes food for us to make ourselves, others and the world around us just a little bit more wonderful each day. We can do it bite by bite.” Rex Sikes

Have a wonderful day!

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Don’t Let The Past Or The Present Define You – You Are So Much More!

Consider this, regardless of how bad it may have been, how difficult you have had it, you have made it through those times. You have! You have come this far in spite of everything attempting to hold you back. Whatever mistakes you may have made, poor decisions, ‘failures’ and disappointments you have had, any tragedies you encountered you still have made it to this moment, to right now. That is incredible because no matter what the odds have been you are here right now, and that is a testament to your ability to persist. Through everything you have stayed in there and made it through.

You may never have thought to do this, but you should pat yourself on the back, congratulate yourself and give yourself a big hug. It is time to celebrate all of this as an accomplishment. It is time to begin to see it differently in your mind’s eye and recognize the seeds of success all along the way. The journey may have been arduous but you have continued on AND you are still taking steps forward.

There is only one thing you need to understand. First, you are strong and you are tenacious. Though you may not have yet realized it, you are stubborn enough to succeed at anything you put your mind to. Tough times build character. You have proven yourself tough too. Congratulations!

Second, do not let the past define you. Do not give power to the mistakes of the past. That is behind you. Since you have overcome significant challenges in the past build on that. Recognize this about yourself and BUILD on it.

Don’t let the present moment disappointments define you either. Do not let whatever is going on right now concern you. Think about the life you want to have instead. If you could make your greatest dream come true what would that be? What is it that would excite you and make you ecstatic? Picture this in your mind and focus on it.

No matter what is happening now that may be less than glorious, shift your focus to the time ahead. Be open to the possibility that things can get better for you. Be willing to explore a new way of being, and doing, and having.

It takes a mind that is willing to explore possibilities and expand options. Ask yourself what you might think and do differently. If you want things in your life to change you have to change things in your life. What can you begin to think and do differently that can move you in a positive direction? Build on this and realize you can accomplish so much more when you concentrate on the positive resources inside of you.

Our problems are not the problem! It is our thinking about our problems that is the problem. It is what we entertain and what we keep in our mind and how we are focused. Whatever we focus on expands, whatever we focus on is what we get. What we think about is what we become. Do not focus on past or present day limitations instead focus on what you want and how you can and will attain it. Have faith, keep believing and expecting it to get better. It will. Believe it!

Create wonderful thoughts and feelings about the future and imagine having all of it right now. Focus on these thoughts and these feelings. Find things to be grateful about and find the most wonderful good feelings you are able to. Nurture these, promote these. Keep doing this again and again.

Even a small change in the right direction is better than no change at all. If you are really sad it does not mean you have to feel overwhelming joy right now. Right now that may be too big a step. Find out what you can feel that would make you feel a bit better. Maybe that would be feeling anger or frustration or bored. Whatever is a baby step or two away from really sad IS a baby step toward finding that joy. inch yourself there if you must, but you must begin to inch away from the less than glorious feelings. Move yourself ever so slightly in the positive direction.

People talk about the Law of Attraction but the LOA is second to the Law of Vibration. How you are vibrating is what you are attracting. If you are filled with doubt, anxiety, fear and depression you tend to attract more or create more of these in your life. It is a downward spiral. When instead, you are filled with positive, powerful, joyful energy you are more in the right place to go after and get what you want to have.

It isn’t important to me whether it is about ‘vibrations’ at all. Some people find that concept too cosmic. I could care less. It is just words used to describe processes, so why get hung up over the choice of words.

I just understand that when I am feeling optimal I bring my best game to life and when I am not optimal things seem less than glorious. It is a simple concept to understand. Feel good and you get more good feelings, feel bad and you get more bad feelings. You are better off and more productive when feeling good and worse off and less productive when feeling bad. Get it.

Feeling good works better for us than feeling bad. SO find the ways and means to feel better. It is up to you, no one else can do it for you. It is not out of your hands, no cosmic zapper is going to fill you with great things magically. If you want to feel better you have to chose to take control. You have to decide to begin to act in your own best interests even if it is difficult. Start small, the pay off is huge. BUT YOU HAVE TO START. If you don’t you will keep on getting what you have been getting. It is that simple. It is that straightforward.

You want your life to change? You have to change some things in your life!

Exercise, play, sing, dance, think better, walk, garden, meditate, repeat affirmations (the correct way would be useful) whatever you have to do to begin to feel better and think better more of the time – begin now to do it.

Thoughts and feelings go hand in hand. Your thoughts affect your feelings, you CAN think yourself happier it is true! AND your feelings affect your thoughts – you CAN change your body and activities and discover that you think more positively by how you stand, sit, walk or move. It is true! Let’s forget the chicken egg exploration about thoughts and feelings and just make it a point to do those healthy beneficial things that put us at optimum more of the time. You do want to feel better more of the time, don’t you?

When we feel optimum more of the time we do better more of the time.

Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew. Just make it a point to feel better a little bit more each day. When you do you will discover amazing things await you. You will think and feel and do better. If you fall off the positivity wagon don’t get all dramatic about it just get back on and proceed from there. Keep it simple, easy, manageable and keep doing it. Take baby steps in the direction of your dreams and keep taking them on a daily basis. Repetition is the mother of skill. Give birth to new habits by doing things that are good for you over and over and over again.

The change will take place inside you before you notice it on the outside. For most of us the changes are gradual. Be patient, allow it, accept everything in a spirit of gratitude, and keep at it. Have fun, relax about it. It is much more FUN and easy when you let it be that way. So approach it in a light and gentle way.

Look at how you are thinking and feeling and behaving differently and more positively and nurture and encourage and celebrate this. Recognize and validate your positive baby steps!

Think Law of Attraction now. When you do these positive things you ARE vibrating more positively, more powerfully and energetically and so you attract, create or get back more of the same. It increases. Notice it and own your observations. Play with it and stay with it!

Allow yourself to move forward without judging or criticizing. Accept wherever you are along the way and have faith that as you continue to move forward in a positive way you will become more positive and more able. Your abilities will grow. Don’t be impatient. Stick with it and trust. Move forward with your eyes on what you are creating and attracting, not on whatever isn’t working right now. Celebrate all. Celebrate everything and you will get through the now and move into your dreams and make them come true.

Decree your destiny and make it happen. Build the image of what you want. See who you are, the positive, powerful you. See what you are doing, behaving, how you are living and feeling wonderful. See what things you have included in your new life. Run these movies in your head. Infuse these images with positive wonderful feelings. It is the combination of the positive movies and positive feelings that work to make your future image come true.

A major point here: We already do this all the time. We think things good or bad and feel good or bad about them. For example, we fear something happening, we feel anxious about it or dread that something bad is going to happen. It does and we feel worse. We try to think positive and we do. As a result we feel a little bit better but then we think about something bad or how something is less than glorious and then we feel bad again. By doing this we create what we don’t want and we perpetuate it because we vacillate back and forth. We get hopeful and then doubt that things will change then feel bad and when things don’t change we think, ‘yup I knew it’. It is a form of self fulfilling prophecy. Our expectations were that it wouldn’t work out anyway. This limited thinking and lack of commitment keeps us where we don’t want to be.

This cycle keeps us in limbo: We think about what we want and feel good for a short while. Then at some point we begin to doubt that we can get it and we start feeling bad about how we are not getting what we want. We then again think about what we want and feel worse because we feel far away. On another day we feel hopeful and positive and work towards what we want again, but then something happens and we feel bad and hopeless. This goes on and on. We are like a ship tossed about on the sea, or a cork bobbing in the water. Instead of being in control and moving toward our destination we get closer and then move further away constantly. We never make any real motion towards accomplishing our goals.

We need to commit to what we want and concentrate on it to the exclusion of all else.

We need to stay focused on it no matter what else may currently be going on. We need to think again and again what we want and not let other thoughts intrude. To be able to do this means we have to take charge of our own thinking and feeling processes. For many people THIS CONCEPT will seem most foreign because most of us do not grow up being told we are in charge. Instead we think ‘things happen’ and we have to feel certain ways because of these things happening. We don’t, we just think we do. That is why our problems are not the problem, but how we THINK about our problems IS the problem.

What we think about most often during the day is what we become and what we get. What we think about most of the time is what we become and what we get. Are we mostly positive or mostly negative, 51/49, 60/40, 80/20, 90/10? What we are mostly determines what we get. So decide to tip the balance in your favor. 50/50 keeps us exactly where we are. Move to 80/20 positivity.

You create your life by what you think and feel most of the time. It is a growth process. Just like growing a plant it takes time for it to get strong so be patient with yourself. It is most likely not going to happen over night, but then, who knows? Just remember, this is not a contest, you are simply out to improve your life and your conditions in a positive way so have fun and be positive about it.

Just keep advancing constantly in the direction of your dreams. Thoreau stated, ‘If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours’.

You can make your life anything you want it to be. Go ahead dream big. That is fine. Just move forward toward your big dreams steadily. If you chose a big dream and you can’t yet believe you can make it happen, pick something smaller and more likely and go for that first. Better to trick yourself into it than out of it. If you pick something you don’t believe fully and you 50/50 vacillate on it you end up staying stuck. So pick something you can work on and get! Once you have that move on to something else. Create a track record of successes for yourself until you are ready to believe you can make the big one happen. Once you can conceive it AND BELIVE IT you can achieve it!

You can choose to do this. It is your life. You are the co-creator in your life. Ask yourself, “Where do I want to go from here?”

What do you want to be? What do you want to become? What do you want to do? What do you want to have? What is truly important to you? If you could have the perfect life, where you had everything you want and all those around you had what they wanted, (no one is harmed or deprived by you getting your goals) what would it be like? Imagine it, live it in your mind’s eye, improve on the images, tailor the movie, and feel how good it feels to have all this?

THE FEELINGS ARE CRITICAL they drive the entire mechanisms. If you don’t feel like you deserve it, or that you can have it yet, or believe that will get it, you have other work to do first. If when you think about it you feel a huge YES inside and eagerly anticipate it coming to be, and you believe it and know that it will definitely happen, THEN that is for you. As long as everyone else experiences well being too you are on the right track.

Feelings are a signal for us. Our feelings let us know where we need work or what we need to change. Less than glorious feelings are only an indication that something needs to change. It is a way to get our attention so we can get back on track, to feel better and feel more harmonious inside. We want to feel inner harmony with ourselves AND it is important to feel harmony with others as well. So don’t create waves for yourself or others. Use your feelings to guide you back to the positive. Take baby steps back towards feeling good.

Again, this is where you must, and ONLY YOU can, make changes to change things for the better. Take a walk, read inspirational material, talk it out and let it go, work in a garden, dance, if you hurt someone or are feeling guilty do whatever you can to repair the situation or make restitution, own up, sing, celebrate, shift into gratitude and focus on what can be done that is positive. Whatever baby step is necessary to free oneself from the less than glorious feelings and move incrementally toward more positive feelings you must take. You may only inch forward BUT that is valuable, inching forward IS what you want to be able to do.

Better to inch forward than remain stuck. So don’t worry about whether it is enough, just move forward.

So when you feel down, do something to feel better. If you feel angry or frustrated or guilty or confused there is something you can do to feel better. Remember, take feelings as an SIGNAL that you can shift something you are thinking about, or focusing on, or doing.

At any moment you can decide to revolutionize your life.

You can ask yourself, ‘What can I do, what could I do, what should I do or what must I do, or what will I do that will move me closer to my dream?’ ‘What is the first step I can take to move me in a powerful positive direction?’ Ask yourself. Consider what small steps you can consistently take that move you closer to achieving your goal.

If it is going to happen it will be up to you and no one else. So you must engage these processes and do the work. I remind you to be gentle, have fun, notice what you notice, play and keep at it.

You have come this far. Perhaps, you went through some hell to get to today. No matter what you have gone through you have succeeded in getting this far. The journey continues and you can decide now where you want to go. Set a positive destination and go towards it. That is what explorers do. Sailors, pilots, vacationers, all decide where they want to go and then they go to it.

You will get there as long as you do not stop short. As long as you continue all along the way you will arrive at your destination. Whether the way there is delightful or not is also up to you. It is your decision. So decide now where you want to go and how you want to get there. Then do it and keep on doing it. Enjoy the adventure and make all your dreams come true.” Rex Sikes

Have an incredible day! Enjoy and make it wonderful for you and others.

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Train Your Mind – It Works!!! Part 1

For some of us it is difficult to believe there is good in everything. Sometimes it seems there is just no good to go around, life is difficult and bad things happen.

I think of it this way. Before humans walked the planet events came and went. Some days were gorgeous some filled with calamity. Whatever happened happened. There was no one to label it, to judge it, to call it good or bad. Things occurred.

Some day I will take another form whatever that may be. I will no longer walk the planet so I won’t be around to comment on whether events are good or bad, right or wrong. They will go on without my commentary or criticism.

Since that is the case why should I waste my time while I am here. Isn’t there a better, a wiser use of my time? Wouldn’t I be better off not digging in despair whether the events are personal or global? Life is short. Life is way, way too short, as far as I am concerned, so I want to find a way to maximize the little time on the globe as best I can.

I decided at one time that if I was going to live on the planet I deserved to live in paradise. Whatever the situation is I wanted it to be paradise. What I found when I told others that many said it was not possible given the world and current state of affairs. They would say things like, ‘well there will always be suffering’. They said many things and I heard from many people through the years and the attitude seemed to be’ life was short, you struggle, try to be happy live a good life, hurt no one and die and hope there is an afterlife and that you may be rewarded’.

I thought this is not the way I want to go through my days. It took me some time, a lot of time actually, but one day I decided to decide how I wanted to think about things. I decided, whether it is accurate or not, that I create my experience. Yes, there is much scientific evidence to prove this to be true. Regardless, of whether it is true or not I decided that I create my experience.

I determined I had created a lot of crap in my life and some good things. I looked at me, my life and it occurred to me that I always got what I wanted and what I thought about.

My worst fears seemed to come true. If I was anxious or depressed about something it was harder to move through the world. If I worried about money I never seemed to have enough. Perhaps, it was a chicken and egg thing, and I wasn’t sure what came first. Did I not have money so I worried about it or because I worried about money I never had any. I wasn’t certain, but I decided not to care.

I decided that I would control my thinking. I would endeavor to think the best about myself, my circumstances, my future, the people around me, my family, friends, and even strangers. I would strive to maintain a positive focus. I would concentrate on finding the good in everything as much as I am able. I would find the best in everything and everyone.

It was not always easy, it still isn’t always easy. Sometimes there are challenges and it seems like I may lose my way. I get sidetracked or off course, caught up and I forget what is important and I get hooked. At some point I realize it is my decision. You know it is kind of like a guilty pleasure, but without the pleasure part. You know, , when you know you shouldn’t be doing something but you do it anyway.

Whatever it is, maybe you shouldn’t have that extra helping but you just have too, or you sneak an extra piece of chocolate. You feel guilty. Maybe, guilty isn’t exactly the right word. It isn’t guilt sometimes it is just that you just know there is a better way of being or thinking or behaving. It is like that, at some point, I become aware that I am off base and I need to get back on. I know it is up to me. Sometimes I don’t feel like correcting myself, but I do it anyway (because I have since learned how to). I course correct.

I have learned that just because things are going on around me that are not to my liking, even if everything is crumbling, I do not have to think negative thoughts, or feel bad or respond as I would have in the past. Oh, that was something else i did a lot of. I used to live in the past aggrandizing the good old days or lamenting what was or what never came to be. I gave that up to.

I decided I need to change what I paid attention to. I realized FINALLY, that the past was over and whether it was good or bad there was nothing I could do about it now. I could enjoy my present or not and I could plan my future or not but I could not do one thing about the past. It was over. SO I set my focus on what I wanted my future to be.

I began to think that where I am today is a result of everything I thought and felt and did or didn’t do in the past. My today is a product of my previous thinking. I am where I am because I created it. It didn’t matter to me, and it still doesn’t whether any of this is true or not. It doesn’t have to be true it really doesn’t. What it is – is useful. It is a frame of mind that I adopted as a choice so as to be able to have more control over what the results are in my life. True or not I don’t care.

So I decided to focus on where I want to be and create that instead. I focus on what I want and stay focused on that regardless of what is going on now. I imagine my future how I want it to be, I imagine I have it all in place, and this is what I concentrate on throughout each day.

In my mind I create the future I want to manifest. This was an incredible leap forward for me. Instead of living life looking back I started looking ahead. Instead of letting things happen to me I began to decide what I wanted to have happen. Instead of driving down the road looking in the rearview mirror I began to focus on my destination and how pleasantly I could get there.

I decided, I shouldn’t ignore the present that would be silly, I just don’t have to react to it as if I were a Pavlovian dog salivating to the ringing bell. I decided I would celebrate and appreciate the present. In order to that I had to think that it was worth it even when it may not seem that way. So I made it a point to look for whatever good I could find in whatever was going on and I would accentuate it.

If I experienced calamity and problems I would find whatever was good in the situation and accentuate that. Certainly, accentuating the problem or bad feelings didn’t make me think, feel or do any better but focusing on what was good did. I learned I could chose what I paid attention to. Even if my first thought was to find the bad my second thought became, ‘ok what is good about this?’ I learned I could direct my thinking.

I found as I did this things changed for me. No, not over night but gradually. What I actually discovered was nothing changed in reality other than me and my relationship to reality and THAT actually did change everything. That may be a difficult sentence or concept to grasp right now but my life transformed.

I learned that whatever was going on I could decide how to feel and think about it. I was the one in charge. Just be cause bad things happened I didn’t have to chose to be unhappy. I lived that way for years, without choice, now I began to exercise my choices. When I became the person who chose what to think and feel yes everything changed for me.

I was clearer in my thinking, I enjoyed each moment more, I found more delight in simple things, I discovered opportunities I might not have otherwise, I felt better, I was open to more things, I met new people and engaged in new activities. It was as if a whole new world opened up.

And guess what, every moment I had to decide to chose. Things came up that would have caused me to feel bad and I chose not to. Some things came up and I found myself feeling bad and thinking less than glorious thoughts but when I realized what I was doing I steered my thinking and feeling back to finding the good, celebrating and appreciating and being positive.

It is a daily duty. Heck, maybe every second I am doing it.

I found it got easier and there were longer periods of time when I felt wonderful. The down times got shorter. I got better at recognizing when I was wallowing or not serving myself well. AND that is incredible!

I had decided to treat myself as God would have me be treated. Okay, I know some will bristol here because of whatever beliefs you may have, but I decided that if there is a God and God wants the best for me why shouldn’t I want the same for myself. I deserve to have all the wonderful things.

I discovered that the wonderful things don’t come from having more things. It comes from being more wonderful. It comes from having less stress, depression, anxiety, anger, frustration. It comes from taking the bull by the horns and deciding to do something for myself and to keep on doing it no matter what. I decided I would never ever quit or give up. If I had to boot strap it I would, if the going got tough if I had to be tough I would get going. I decided that the end result was worth the price, whatever that price was I had to pay. AND it is!

I am getting so much more back than I pay for it is incredible!” Rex Sikes

More on this next time. Meanwhile have a fabulous day!

“How To Make Affirmations Work For You – video

“Short Video Snippet from talk on “How To Make Affirmations Work For You” Use link below:

We can be the designer and architect of our lives faster, when we learn how and how simple it can be. Why struggle for a long time when you can learn to apply some small daily practices that make all the difference for your success?

Learn to steer your mind, take control in the driver’s seat and get to where you want to be in life. Now you can. How surprised and delighted would you be to discover your fine ability to make changes easily and more quickly? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to fully enjoy more of all the incredible moments and blessings offer?

Even if you don’t yet think it is possible for you, you can as you learn how. Here is some food for thought. Enjoy!

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx3GBNAJLPQ

Further information, articles available at http://www.idea-seminars.com/

I hope you enjoyed this short. It is just a snippet and more will be made available on the topic in this blog so stay tuned. Be sure to follow this blog site. Please share, if you would.” Rex Sikes

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