The Positive Persuasion

Contrary to popular belief, happiness is not a destination. Happiness is not someplace in which to arrive, rather, it’s the story of your journey to anything that makes you smile, inspires you, or motivates you to keep moving. In fact, you may not even be aware of the incredible trip you’ve been on for so long! Consider the places you’ve been, your struggles, your defeats, your triumphs – consider everything that brought you to where you are now.  It’s a pretty good story isn’t it?

So let’s take a look at some powerful questions.  Instead of looking at the goals you haven’t hit, or the achievements you haven’t managed to attain just yet, start looking back at what you did, what you learned along the way, and how it brought you to where you are now.  Instead of feeling a sense of disappointment or discouragement from unfulfilled desires, and asking yourself, “What’s wrong with me?” Instead, ask yourself “What’s right with me?  What are my greatest qualities?  Who has had the greatest impact on my life so far?  How have I impacted someone else’s life in a great way?”

One great way to get into the groove of appreciating you own power is to take stock of yourself.  You’ve heard me say this before, but it’s too important to only share just once!  Make an inventory list of all the strengths you feel you possess.  BETTER YET, head over to viastrengths.org and take the Values in Action – Inventory of Strengths assessment, and see a ranked inventory of your strengths right away!  It’s completely free, and pretty enlightening!

Now that you’ve taken stock of your strengths, you’ve become aware of your power.  Step Two is to make note of their impact in your life.  What triumphs have you experienced using your strengths? Recall an instance in which your greatest strength made an impact on your life or the lives of others.

See, the secret to happiness isn’t about working hard to cross the threshold into ‘the good life’ – rather, it’s becoming aware of the events, people, places, and feelings you’re grateful for in your life, and how they’ve made an impact.   Check out my post on The Gratitude Journal Review to learn more about getting into the attitude of gratitude, and getting more aware!

Peace, Love, and a million successes to you all!

Blake

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The world around us is often run at breakneck speed, and some of us consider ourselves lucky to have a moment to breathe!  There is a huge benefit in how you spend those ‘breath-catching’ moments, however.  Frequently those moments are filled with thoughts of what you still have to do, when they should be spent reflecting on what you’ve already done.  You can easily build strength, stamina, motivation, and drive simply by recalling your accomplishments, and how that success felt.

Savoring is all about enjoying, even relishing, the past moments with great appreciation, present moments of enjoyment, and even future golden moments by anticipating them.  Many people see that word and imagine having a meal and eating is slowly to savor the flavor, so to speak.  Truth is, savoring every moment, including a good meal, is an incredible psychological tool to boost positivity and motivation.

It strengthens in three ways: it prolongs enjoyable moments; it can act as a vaccination that protects you psychologically over long periods of time; and it intensifies positive experiences. So turn up the volume of your good-mood by basking in the enjoyment of your success!  Enhance it further by creating set-points for savoring later.

‘Savory-Set-Points’ are images, feelings, sensations – anything you can use to store your enjoyment for recall later.  Essentially, you can create positive memories for later by noticing details of things you enjoy now.  When something makes you feel great or accomplished, make a mental note of your surroundings – the sights, sounds, tastes, feelings, smells, and the people are great at pinning down memories for later. In fact, people can be quite instrumental in your quest! Share your story with them, and let them enjoy with you!

Narratives are often easier to recall, and the act of sharing often leads others to initiate the savoring in the future! Tell a great story, and people will bring it up, and re-savor that moment with you for quite some time after.  So without further delay, here is your assignment:

Write out one of your great stories – one that takes you, and the reader, on a journey of success. Take a stroll down memory lane and describe, in detail, the way you felt, how your peers felt and made you feel, whether you felt motivated or inspired, and end the story by describing how you feel right now – telling the story again.

If this is a story of a time that inspired or motivated you, you may find that simply retelling it can re-motivate you all over again!   This is one of my favorite exercises with clients.  Everyone loves to tell a great story – especially one that details an exciting, inspiring, or motivating experience!

Try it out!

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You may notice things appearing out of place, and links that lead nowhere. Don’t fret, my friends! I’m knee-deep in updates as I type this!

Soon there will be free assessments to take, media to enjoy, and brand new opportunities to take on!

Sorry for the current mess!

Stay tuned!

Blake

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As projects get tackled left and right, I continue to find new opportunities to STRETCH myself and connect to new experiences. It got me thinking about college and what I learned while achieving my finance degree. Fund managers, investors, and financial planners all talk about diversifying your assets to achieve a better, and less risky return. While this is sound advice in the financial sector, it’s also brilliant advice in your everyday endeavors.

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! Take a look at the world around you. Everything is changing, and people are being asked to know more, do more, and learn more. What a perfect way to take advantage of the Jack of All Trades persona you already possess! Don’t kid yourself, you know a lot more than you’re letting on. No matter what you do, or what your area of expertise, you’ve most likely got a hobby or a passion for something completely unrelated. It’s time to throw that into your everyday mix!

One of the biggest secrets to success, in business or personal relationships, is a diversified skill set. A perfect example is Peter. Peter is a sound engineer, but fresh out of college, he wasn’t equipped with the experience to jump into the greatest studio and make his name known. Along comes this open opportunity to work for one of the biggest studios in all of California. He headed down there, resume and mixes in tow, in an effort to land his dream job. There was an incredibly competitive crowd trying to make themselves stand out for the job when he arrived. Peter got his chance, and when asked what else he could bring to the studio, he wasn’t sure what to say. The giant aquarium behind the control room chairs suddenly caught his eye.

“I know how to care for the aquarium. I’ve had exotic fish in all different types and sizes of tanks since I was 8, and I could make sure your set up is well cared for.”

He was hired that afternoon. Peter put what may have otherwise been an overlooked skill on the table, and it paid off. The world is a competitive place, and anything you can do to differentiate yourself can prove advantageous. Just the other day I was working on a server for one of my IT clients (another business I own), and I took a moment to reflect on how I got there. I landed this doctor’s account because I was there for an adjustment one day, and his computers were giving him trouble. I stepped up and fixed his issue without a second thought. The following week we wrote a contract, and I’ve been managing his servers and machines since 2007.

It’s all about diversifying your skills. Learn as much as you can about as much as you can! Doors are opening every day to opportunities of a lifetime, but if you’re too focused on only one facet of your skills, you may miss it! So here’s today’s lesson:

Make a short list of your skills. These will include your specialty, and what you know a fair amount about or enjoy. Now add the topics or activities you’re interested in, even if you know nothing about them right now. Your task now, should you choose to accept it, Mr. Phelps, is to begin learning and delving into the things that interest you! Join online groups or clubs that share your passion and enthusiasm! Not only is it free to get involved online, but the friends you make in these circles may need your help with a project, just as you may need theirs!

Life is all about experience! Go out and experience more of it! Share it! Learn about the experiences of others! Grow, connect, and see what doors miraculously open before you!

Peace, Love, and a Million Successes to you!

Blake

P.S. The Mr. Phelps, in case anyone was confused, is in reference to Mission: Impossible. Sometimes I like to throw movie quotes in for fun.

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2010 has been officially declared “The Year of Action” in my circle. We are taking everything we’ve all planned to do over the last couple of years (sometimes even longer), and we’re creating checklists and plans to achieve everything we can. There really is no better time than now! It’s a brand new year, and a brand new decade!

A personal credo I’ve adopted this year is to try everything once – if it’s available, I’ll go for it. I’m not a fan of Calamari, clams, oysters – basically anything that has the consistency of snot or tentacles. Against my inner resistance, I was able to knock one of those off my ‘to-do’ list! While I won’t ever order it for myself, I feel good about telling my inner voice of fear to “cork it.” This was a tiny goal; an infinitesimal achievement in the grand scheme of things, but it made me think about how we all perceive obstacle, dreams, goals, and moreover, what we define as “insurmountable odds.”

Recently I went to the studio (Planet 10 Studios, Chicago) to hear a lecture on touring. Martin Atkins who has been in more bands than years I’ve been alive, has written a pretty phenomenal book on touring as a band. Tour: Smart is a thorough look at what it truly takes to succeed on a tour, and as a band in the industry. While it doesn’t apply to me because I’m not a touring band – I just play the local scene or fun – one of his points struck a bigger chord.

Don’t be intimidated by grand endeavors. We’ve been conditioned since birth that we can be anything we want to be, if we put our mind to it, but we’ve also been conditioned to fear taking on more than we can handle. This is the ‘more than you can chew’ analogy we’ve all heard. Atkins made a grand point by telling the story of his travel to the Great Wall of China.

“The Great Wall is definitely one of the Wonders of The World, but up close it’s just a fucking pile of bricks. Yes, it’s a LOT of bricks, but there’s no miracle here; it’s just a LOT of work done with the bigger picture guiding the job. Every huge thing is made up of very small pieces. A good life isn’t about the big things, rather, it’s the small things that make a difference.”

Brilliant words, no? It helps to remind us all to stay focused on the big goals, even if they seem too big or too far to reach. Ask yourself, “what is an insurmountable goal?” What do you define as impossible? What goal do you dream of achieving, but you toss it to the side because, “it’s just a pipe-dream?” If you took that virtually unreachable goal and broke it into its elements (parts), would it still be as scary?

It’s time to break it down and STRETCH. Stretching is reaching past what you know and understand to learn new things, and expand yourself as a person. This year, it’s all about stretching and developing yourself and your own personal power. When you set a goal for yourself, what kind of system do you put in place to measure your progress? Do you have a partner or supportive person to keep you encouraged and moving forward? I highly recommend partnering with someone to achieve great things together this year. Hold each other accountable, and push each other to STETCH.

Benjamin Disraeli said, “Nothing can resist a human will that will stake its existence on its purpose.” When you set your intention on achieving a goal and you take action to make it happen, purposefully and consistently, you will achieve it. It’s about being strong in your convictions and commitments. Stretch and expand yourself in everything you can, my friends. Remember, while the ladder may represent an incredibly difficult climb, it’s still just one rung at a time to the top. Take a few steps every day!

Peace, Love, and a Million Successes to you all!

Blake

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After months of having the site down, I am finally back up and running! I’m going to be posting a lot of updates as I work my way into a new year, so stay tuned!

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'Be Yourself' by Jane Laurie

“There comes a time in every man’s education where he realizes that envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide, and society is in conspiracy against each one of its members.”   -  Ralph Waldo Emerson

This quote means so much to me because it speaks volumes about people, and how they mistakenly chase someone else’s dream – always hoping to achieve the status of a stranger.  Envy and imitation are blind choices of self sabotage.  The bottom line I get from this quote is to be yourself, and chase the dream you want, and remember that the world can be your oyster, but it can also be your hell.  When you find someone or something that makes you happy naturally, embrace it with open arms and genuine eyes.

From time to time, people come into your life to teach you lessons, give you love, give you challenges, make you feel safe, or make you experience and/or understand loss – the reasons are never quite clear in the beginning.  Once in a great while, however, a person will come into your life and make you feel invincible.  Bathing in his or her energy, you will be completely yourself – sometimes for the first time in years.  I was gifted with the addition of one such person a few wees ago.

I have always been pretty versatile in my talents, accomplishments, and social abilities – I know how to wear a lot of hats to get ahead in as much as I can.  When I walked in a met her for the first time, I felt her energy move around me, and I took the opportunity to play around in it.  Over the following days we spent few hours apart, and I would pause and reflect – realizing that I had not attempted to chase any other passions than my own.  I have been able to be completely myself in her wake, and I’m learning to embrace that freedom.

It’s a funny thing when you meet someone that communicates in a language you don’t hear – when vibrations massage the greatest parts of you, encouraging you to just remain naturally… you. Too many people chase after the perfect guy, or the perfect girl, only to find they’re chasing after a person that they aren’t truly themselves with.  We all know someone we tried as hard as we could to please and love, but it just didn’t work out, and it left us wandering around in a false identity.  While it’s a good lesson to learn, too few actually learn it.

Here are the cliff notes of that lesson:  Don’t ever chase a dream that’s not your own.  Don’t ever settle for a person that believes you’re only good IF (fill in erroneous variable) – you’re worth more than that.  Believe you’re wonderful and worthy of love – both to give and receive.  When you find someone that makes you feel invincible when you’re just being yourself, follow that feeling forever.  Life is too short to hate what you do, or who you’ve become after years of striving to be someone you’re not to please someone you love.

You are naturally, effortlessly beautiful, and perfect exactly the way you are – yes, I’m talking to you.

Peace, Love, and a Million successes to you.

Blake

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The last few months have been an absolutely incredible journey through the collective consciousness of the world around me.  I’ve watched plans start, grow, flourish, and live on.  I’ve also watched plans spark, burst into flame, and get left smoldering in the back yard – literally.  The best thing that has happened in these months is the addition of some amazing people, and the sharing of some pretty powerful vibrations.

My long-time best friend, David, came out to Chicago from Connecticut – this, in itself, is a wonderful change of pace.  It’s been two years since I last saw him, and it was rejuvenating to spend time with him.  David bring with him an unyielding stream of accepting, positive energy.  Through all his struggles, pitfalls, or battles with his circumstances, he’s always had the ability to wash it off and move forward, appreciating the people and sparks of greatness around him.  His ability to walk on the water above shipwrecks makes his energy miraculous.  David is a genuinely stellar human being, and is destined for greatness.

I have met artists and performers from all walks of life, and spoken to them about their struggle, and their aspirations, inspiration, and moments of greatness.  I have been gifted with the privilege of befriending and bonding with some amazing talent in this incredible city including two young ladies that pour their souls into the music they write – radiating such emotion through vocal harmonies and guitar strums that even stone walls move to the melody.

To top it all off, I happened to meet a particular someone that floats my boat (if you know what I mean).  Through a connection with David, I met someone whose energy is so powerful, it can be felt and isolated in a crowded room.  Almost immediately, I was turned on to the vibrations of her being.  Since that day, we’ve played off each others’ radiance, and it feels like home.

I guess the lesson here is to connect to people that appreciate life and the people in it, and recognize the brilliance around you – in the people, the places, the circumstance – the everything.  One day you could go golfing and walk into a room filled to the brim with energy…radiating from only one pair of eyes.  It happened to me, and it can happen to you.

Peace, Love, and a Million of successes to you all.

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The Ascending Reticular Activating System

The Ascending Reticular Activating System [ARAS – herein to be referred to as RAS] is a section of the brain closest to the midbrain. It is a gateway in the superhighway of neural pathways in our consciousness. This group of ascending pathways originates in the fourth ventricle in the rostal pons (near midbrain), and has the ability to control whether sensory gates are either open or closed based on chemicals released, and electrical traffic.

The neurons that travel this road are mostly acetylcholinergic (elemental chemical in the CNS, PNS, ANS, and the only chemical in the somatic nervous system, or sensory system). These neurons work up into the thalamus, and all signals are then translated into information the brain and body can interpret and use. Acetylcholine, by itself, cannot influence the neurons of the thalamus by turning them on or shutting them off. However, ACh sensitizes them and thereby manipulates other channels and signals to pass or stay put. By closing a hyperpolarizing potassium channel, it can slightly depolarize thalamic neurons.

What the hell does this all mean?

It means that when Acetylcholine travels through the RAS, it makes the thalamus more sensitive to sensory input. Welcome to one of the goals / attributes of methylenedioxy-N-methamphetamine, (MDMA) or Ecstacy / E / X / XTC. What this means is that a natural chemical in your body – one you do not need drugs to acquire, can change the channel in your brain, so you experience the same world with a new set of sensory sensitivity. This is because it is the transportation system of the Reticular Formation in your brain.

The reticular formation is the part of the brain that is directly involved in actions such as waking/sleeping cycles, and filtering incoming stimuli to discriminate irrelevant background stimuli. It is essential for governing some of the basic functions of higher organisms. Reitan, (1959) suggests that sensory input alone is not sufficient for perception, and that the reticular formation and ARAS is the key to decoding sensory information. The reticular formation and ARAS can influence sensory input at several points, such as the receptor, inside the sensory nucleus of the thalamus, and in the cortex of the brain.

Again, what on Earth does this mean?

The ARAS and reticular formation (RF) are key pieces in changing the world around you, but influencing your senses, and changing what kind of stimuli arouses you. You can change the way your brain interprets the stimuli around you, by activating the RAS/RF. “A number of workers in a UCLA group, as well as others, demonstrated that stimulation of certain cortical sites produced cortical arousal (Segundo et al. 1955a,b; Adey et al., 1957; Kaada and Johannessen, 1960). This effect was shown to be mediated by a corticoreticular influence that activated the ARAS; that is, the cortex does not possess the ability to arouse it-self without the mediation of the ARAS. An everyday understanding of this corticoreticular influence would be the increased arousal produced by the daydreaming of stimulating thoughts” (Siegel, 2002).

Essentially, you can activate this system, and change what gets in and stays out of your consciousness, by thinking about something you want or do not want. If you focus on something, daydream about it, worry heavily about it, its presence will be recognized in the world around you – thus, bringing you what you think about. If the world around you is made up of billions of bytes of information, and the brain can only compute 150, the RAS/RF is in charge of what 150 you get to interpret. If you continue to influence that decision, your brain will notice that stimuli in the energy around you, and let you experience it. This becomes habitual (another basic function controlled by the RF – thalamus connection), because when you actually experience it, you release chemicals that naturally induce more sensory requests.

In other words, you dream about what you want, and your brain allows you to see and experience what you want- which causes you to feel joy and appreciation, and those chemicals influence the RAS/RF to continue on its course of delivering the stimuli you like. A habit is formed – a habit of joy and appreciation, and faith, and confidence because experience has “taught you that you can do/be/have anything if you really focus on it.” And therein lies the entire mission of our lives.

“We can be and do and have anything we desire if we focus on it, and experience the joy of having it even if it’s not in our lives yet.”

Our bodies are physically equipped with the necessary hardware to manipulate our reality. It’s not a hoax, and it’s not a self-help cliché. It’s science, and it can be tested, measured, and chemically proven. All you need to do is think about what you desire, and soon you too can take to the skies, and reach whatever dreams lay before you.

Reitan, R.M. Effects of brain damage on a psychomotor problem-solving task. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1959, 9, 211-215.

Siegel, J. The Neural Control of Sleep and Waking. Biomedical and Life Sciences, 2002, 2, 55-60.

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It’s a funny thing to close a major chapter in life.  I say ‘funny’ because reminiscing about the journey you’ve taken to get to where you are can sometimes make it better, or make it worse.  I spent the last week of my life moving out of my apartment – an apartment I acquired with a previous girlfriend.  I spent all day yesterday and today painting it back to ‘apartment white’ to satisfy those devilish office heathens.

As I sorted through the pieces of my previous life buried away in the cabinets, and under random piles of things, I rediscovered all the things that she and I collected – all the things that made that place our home.  There were a lot of items that I simply had no use for any longer, so I donated a lot of them, and the rest were sent to the heap.  It was an interesting day to say the least.

The most peculiar tid-bit in all of this is that I recognized what we had together, and I acknowledged its importance as I sifted through the treasures before me…but then I let them go.  But that’s not where the story ends.  I spent the greater part of my day painting, remembering all the experiences I had in the apartment after she left.  I remembered all the dinners I cooked for myself, my friends, my lover, my neighbors – the smells instantly coming back to me (faintly, I might add, over the fumes of the freshly painted walls).  One woman has always, and will always stand out.

I found it more troubling that I would never have those experiences with her in that apartment again.  I can still see myself washing a bell pepper in the sink, and looking over to the couch to see her laughing at my ridiculous little dog.  I remember the very first night she came over and I kissed her.  Those are the moments I wish I could keep living in that place.  Que sera, sera, no?  Our chemistry is dangerously combustible – which is wonderful for passion, but deadly without communication.  We’re not fit to be together now, but the future is an open canvas, and against all odds, I would love the chance to try again.

So with that, I welcome the new and uncertain chapter I’ve just started.  I have big plans, and an open mind.  I think many of us see life as one long stretch of happenings – unfortunately, the majority see life as ‘out of their hands’ as well.  This is a terrible misuse of credit.  Don’t give away all your credit to the cosmos, my friends.

Today’s Assignment:  Take a little time out this week and list off all the directions, twists, turns, leaps, and/or crashes your life has taken, and how you reacted to it.  Make an effort to put some things into chapters.  When you graduated college, and started ‘real life’, how did you feel about it?  Did you accomplish a lot, and felt good to put those days to rest?  Did you face adversity, and somehow find a way through it?

Truly identify the amazing things you did in your life so far.  You may not have thought they were that great at the time, but what would your life be like if it all went the other way?  You’ve got a lot more power than you think, and maybe taking a little stock of it, from time to time, could do you some good.  Always remember that closing a chapter doesn’t mean you’re losing or forgetting anything – it’s you letting that experience be written, and starting a new one.

Have a wonderful week!

P.S. Happy Birthday to you, SDM.  I wish you all the greatest moments life has to offer.

Blake

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