10 Steps to Overcome Adversity

1. Intentionally decide to seek for deeper, clearer understanding. Seeking means the unbridled devotion of our whole attention to discerning the details and depths of any issue we need clarification. In your search for clarity you will be faced with the biggest obstacle, which is fear. This emotion is useful in keeping us from taking unnecessary risks that might endanger us. The world is filled with fear because it serves the purpose and agenda of those in control.

2. Open your mind and heart to see the unexpected, a new level of insight or understanding about what you seek. Assume that your current understanding is distorted, incomplete or that you can know more — that there is always more to know about what you seek to understand. Understand that you are a product of all the influences of your past environment going back to the womb. Your beliefs are now acting as filters that keep you from seeing through your own eyes. You are looking at yourself, others and life in general through the beliefs of very judgmental and intolerant people who think they are the only ones who are right. In order to gain greater freedom and clarity you will need to once again look through the eyes of a child. A child does not have all the years of flawed beliefs that keep one from feeling and following one’s instincts.

3. Become still in mind and body. Watch, wait, become prayerful, contemplative, and receptive, humbly ready to shiver in the draft of an open mind.
This is a skill that must be cultivated, by doing so, you will learn to be a silent witness without judgment of yourself others and life in general. This will give you objectivity and allow you to see other choices for your life you may need to consider. You are neither your thoughts nor your feelings these are just aspects of your being and they do not have to define nor determine who you are or what you become.

4. Assume that there is always a higher wisdom, which you can access and grasp. To presume otherwise is to be presumptuous in a small way. If you are to be presumptuous, do it liberally and open yourself to larger anticipations and discoveries.
Mankind has thousands of years of recorded history of pain and suffering. Feed your mind and spirit by studying others who have been down a similar path and learn from them. Search for a good self-help book. Develop the mindset of a seeker of wisdom by seeking out wise persons. Pray and have faith that God has not abandoned you, he may be leading you towards your destiny if you let him guide you. Take inventory and see just how far you have come.

5. Ask a specific question or request specific light to be shed on exactly what you need. The more specific and intense the focus, the greater will be your opening to receive.
One of the most powerful forces known to man lies within you, your unconscious mind; it is your loyal servant. If you ask it specific questions it can search for specific answers. You do get what you ask for so be very careful what you ask for. If you ask it why am I in this condition it may say because you got yourself into it, but if you ask it what would it take for me to overcome this adversity it will now have something to work on. Have faith that the mind will work even when you are asleep or doing other conscious tasks.

6. Believe that it is possible to receive wisdom, guidance and even truth in relation to the issue you are wrestling with. Seek and ask, believing with an undivided mind that it is possible for you to have breakthrough thoughts, no matter what you happen to be feeling at the time.
This may require you to have faith in God or a power that is greater than you. The simple fact that you are alive is a miracle since the odds of you being born are astronomical. You were born with innate talents and resources so start to appreciate and to love yourself. Once you do this you can accept the love from others and from that higher source of power that wants you to find the truths you are seeking to be a whole human being.

7. Wait for as long as it takes. Wisdom, clarity and resolution come more and more as we dedicate ourselves in an ongoing way to the process of discovery.
As one famous minister says, “God’s delays are not necessarily God’s denials”. Before you can find clarity, you must overcome your fear. Once you do this, things will look different to you, you will be able to see hidden agendas, but don’t let this clarity blind you. With greater clarity comes power but don’t become intoxicated with power but develop power over power so you can use your inner power in a benevolent way.

8. Burn with desire to know more truth, more deeply. Allow your deepest desire to know to be kindled into a blazing laser search, scanning everywhere for anything that reveals itself as coming into focus to complete the puzzle of your understanding.
Truth will reveal itself in some places you would least expect. So, use your awareness to dig and to mine nuggets of life guiding truths. Create your own inner test for what constitutes truth for you. Listen to your whole being find that inner alignment and resonance to something that feels right to you. Seek out people and situations that create those feelings that nourish your spirit.

9. Find more truth and do not assume that you have “arrived” at perfectly complete understanding. Continue the exciting discovery of getting to know each answer’s deeper and more lovely meanings and applications.
Ten years from now you will think and feel different about your own present truth. This is due to many factors. Understand that truth is relative to time, your own stage of your journey, and to circumstances in your life. Avoid anyone that tells you they have the only truth. There are many paths and many truths being a free willed human being you have the delight of discovery. As Albert Einstein said, ” Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal (flawed) hopes and wishes where we face it as free beings, admiring asking and observing. There we enter the realm of art and science.

10. Be grateful and don’t give up! Thank “Heavens” you get to be here at all, to ask, to seek, to find, and to be nearer to the Spirit of Truth that can prove itself more and more to be oh so true! Don’t give up on your search process, and never stay stuck at one of the above levels. Enjoy the freedom and the journey to be all of you without the constant judgmental criticisms of people that can only see in others their own flaws and weaknesses and who have no hope of being happy and well-adjusted free human beings. To err is human, to forgive is divine, seek your own divines.

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Clear Your Emotions Change Your Relationships

“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.” Carl Jung

To be human is to form emotional attachments to people, jobs, pets, situations, and material things. We are hardwired to do this and yet equally important is the “know how” to detach and let go of some past connections. Why is that? People and pets die, some relationships become toxic, some jobs we quit or we are fired, some situations we had our heart set on don’t pan out and we become enslaved to things.

What follows is one approach to intentionally disconnect and let go of any or all attachments that no longer serve you or you need to put closure due to death or a breakup. You are going to have a funeral for this so choose the location you wish to do it in. Some go to the beach at twilight, others go to a body of water such as a river or bayou, still others go to a cemetery or a park. If you are not sure, close your eyes and say in your mind each location and see which one your inner spirit chooses for you.

Next write out in handwriting a letter to that which you are detaching from. Start out by saying how you are feeling. Start out with the heaviest emotions such as anger or hurt and be specific about why you feel these. Next write out the feelings of regrets and fears you have, if you have any, moving forward. Conclude with thankfulness, forgiveness and love. That is the sum total of all the time, energy, and resources you spent into this relationship or job. You are left with memories and experiences and lessons for life. Some of these lessons may be yet to be discovered. Burn the letter in a metal pot. Put the ashes in a container to take to the location you selected in advance. On the way listen to music that you have associated to the person,  job, or situation. When you arrive visualize a peak experience you had with them. Thank them, release the ashes and visualize a departure that is natural for  you. Be aware of your feelings and be aware of how your inner spirit guides you in a gentle and natural way and process that is in alignment to your essence. You are free and open to new energy, relationships, opportunities, and choices. The positive memories always stay and these can be relived and savored at will.

Go home live the mystery of life!

 

Eight Steps to Create the Lion Mindset in 2017

January is a time that mentally you are all systems go.  You are dissatisfied with the major domains of your life such as relationships, career path, health, physique, lac of recreation, desire for personal development, improved finances, greater spirituality, and more autonomy of your time. This major inertia at the start of a new year makes people change jobs, get a gym membership, create a budget, buy a self-help book, attend seminars, drop a stagnant relationship, etc.

To stay focused on your end game requires a “Lion’s Drive.” This vision is the absolute commitment to do whatever it takes to reach your objective, be what it be.  Recent research suggests that less than 10% ever reach their new year’s resolutions. Let me help you stack the odds in your favor.

The following model will take you from thinking > planning> doing > re-doing > having or reaching your outcome > enjoying.

Step 1. Decide what you want. State this bottom line result as a positive of what you “lust for or desire” as opposed to what you don’t want. The mind only responds and processes the images you give it. Create your plan and work your plan as action is eloquence. Walk your talk so you create gravity to bend divine gravity in your favor.
Step 2. What will having this do for you? Answering this question takes you to another level that will give you other options to getting what you are after. For example having more money gives you greater choices. Think of money as frozen pleasure you can always use. The key is to make it.
Step 3. How will you know when you have achieved your outcome? What time frame is involved? Describe your sweet spot (target) using all the five senses. How will you know you have achieved your outcome? What will you see, hear, taste, smell, and feel? This step activates your conscious processes that prime the unconscious mind.
Step 4. What stops you from already having this outcome?
Step 5. What resources, specialized training, coaching, mentoring, etc., will you need?
Step 6. Imagine already having what you are after. What was the first step you took? What were the subsequent steps you took until you got your Lion’s share of the prize?
Step 7. Use Cartesian logic to develop clarity for what you are pursuing. What happens if you get what you want? What happens if you don’t get what you want? What does not happen if you get what you want? This next one is a mind bender. However, it will flush out any deeply seated traps. What does not happen if you don’t get what you want?
Step 8. Do you still want it? At this point, you should have a realistic idea of what it will take to get your outcome. Some re-decide that it’s not worth the time, effort, or investment. At least you can discard something that is just a pipe dream, and you have no intention of grinding for it daily.
Finally here are some best practices to keep in mind as you move forward with your plans.

• Break down what you want into small, doable steps. In this case less is more
• Keep your goals private,unless you have a trusted confidant that will encourage you as naysayers torpedo them. Find your Lion Pride that is of the same mindset to support you.
• Be realistic, you have finite time, energy, and resources. So prioritize what your bottom lines are that you will positively do what it takes to reach.
• Keep your stinking thinking under control. When things don’t go as planned, many develop negative thinking and talk themselves out of pursuing big dreams. If you have an inner critic whose voice is it? Many find that it’s the voice of a critical parent. If this is the case, that voice usually is trying to protect you from a perceived harm. Assure that inner voice you can handle and give it a new role, your personal coach to motivate you.
• Put yourself first. Stop doing everything for everyone else that you never have time for yourself. Get out of the sheep mentality. When you take great care of yourself, you become a better caretaker of your loved ones.
• Seek like-minded goal oriented persons that can inspire you and that you can learn from.
• Reward yourself with small gains. No one will ever treat you better than you. So learn to be your best cheerleader.

Happy opportunity hunting in 2017

 

Shoo or I’ll hit myself

Every morning I’m greeted by an anomaly, a Northern Cardinal bird that is hell bent on protecting his territory from himself. Day after day he is there to fight himself when he sees his reflection in a vehicle mirror. You might feel sorry for him and think, “Poor little bird he doesn’t know any better.”

Enter Harry a former co-worker that had a victim complex. Every day as he set out to do his job, he was a disagreement waiting to happen. He had all the traits of good employee save one, being cordial and treating his coworkers as clients. Eventually, it was too much, and he was fired.

Every day we brush with the Harrys of the world who live to pick a bone or a fight with others. Or maybe at times, we have acted like a Harry. They are the Cardinals fighting a futile cause that wastes energy and time. Since I knew some of Harry’s past, there may have been a direct link to his failed dream. Harry was a former educator who held an important position in a school in from Latin America. Like most immigrants, he took any job he could get, and he settled down. Ironically, he was always educating his coworkers on their infractions of not following protocol.
This job was his territory, so he thought. He would defend his actions in being rude to others as just getting others to adhere to company policy. In essence, he took it upon himself to be the policy police. His position was one that he interacted with all the operations people regularly. I never got on his bad side because I found it easier just to do what was expected.

The bird cannot change his actions. Every day he fights himself until he’s exhausted. That intrusive bird was always staring back at him always wins. If you are channeling your inner Harry, give yourself a break. Conceive a new reality of how your life could be. Believe it with all your heart that you can make it happen. Work hard to achieve it. The first takes boldness, the second faith, and the third grit.

Ana Maria Otamendi to perform with her students ‘Musica de Amor’ extravaganza

February 11, 2016–At age 21, Anna Maria Otamendi, had to choose one of two paths in life, being a Concert Pianist or practicing her degree as a Geophysical Engineer. Her love of music was first planted in her heart and soul at the tender age of five. Her father wanted to live his unfulfilled dream of being a musician through his children. Anna Maria’s father was a self taught guitar player who never realized his passion of being a professional musician. Unbeknownst to Anna Maria’s father, his desire to have his daughter play the piano had unintended consequences, leading her to choose the path of a musical virtuoso.

This Venezuelan born native and East End resident went on to accept an assistantship position and a master’s degree at The University of Wisconsin. Although, her family was disappointed and cut her off, thousands of music aficionados around the world have enjoyed the Anna Maria’s unique performances. Her personal journey and her tenacity to be the best has given her a depth and wisdom to coach and mentor her students at the University of Houston Performing Arts.

Anna Maria has performed as a soloist and collaborative pianist at important venues and with renowned orchestras in Austria, Panama, Brazil, the United States, Spain, Italy, and Venezuela. After finishing her two-year tenure as Studio Artist at the prestigious Houston Grand Opera Studio, she is a Visiting Professor at the University of Houston, as well as Music Director, pianist and conductor for different programs at HGOCo. She has won First Prize at all the major Venezuelan piano competitions, as well as the University of South Carolina Concerto Competition and the Ouro Branco Festival Competition (Brazil).

On Valentine’s weekend February 12, from 6 to 10 p.m., Anna Maria along with her Moors Opera Center students will be performing a first and one of a kind, “Musica de Amor” (Music of Love) themed world class performance at The Esplanade. This free open air performance features award winning students, Sydney Anderson, Royce Strider, Caroline Geenen, Danielle Wojeik, Andrew Gilstrap, and Kaylie Kahlich.
Anna Maria and her troupe of singers want to bring their talents, love, and passion for music to East End families. This rare performance is another dream come true for Anna Maria to inspire Hispanic children and in her own way pay it forward. Anna Maria’s story has a happy ending with her father eventually coming around and becoming her number one fan. When she performs in Venezuela he is there every time as a front row enthusiast cheering her on. Do not miss this opportunity to experience opera singing in the open air.

Unconscious Mind: the force that goes with you

If you have ever observed someone that is extra-ordinary at doing something, you are witnessing a high performance trance state. Some examples of this are, outstanding musicians, athletes, chefs, speakers, writers, litigators, and others. If you look closely at their eyes, their vision is out of focus because their primary attention is inside their mind and body. They enter into “The Zone” where they operate at their peak. In this high performance state, they fire on all cylinders and they can do no wrong. They are completely congruent; all their inner systems are in alignment working in the right sequence or simultaneously. Years of practice have created a wiring of their neurology and muscular body that what they do is done unconsciously, or without thinking about it. This is a relaxed alert state where time is distorted to slow down or speed up.

When you engage the conscious mind at a task you are very clumsy and it seems difficult. The conscious mind can only process 7 bits of information plus or minus 2. That means that at the most 9 and at the least 5 but your unconscous mind up to 30 billion bits per second. Think of when you first tried to learn to drive a standard shift vehicle. You were only managing, 1.) focus on the road, 2.) the steering wheel, 3.) the clutch, and the 4.) gear shift. Recall how difficult it was at first to know the sequence for taking off, turning, or stopping and all you were doing was managing 4 primary steps. After extensive practice, you could get behind the wheel without thinking about it. That was an operational trance state where you processed hundreds of bits of information automatically without thinking about it.

The unconscious mind is your loyal servant and it will act on any command you give it unless it determines that it’s not good for you. If that’s the case it will run self sabotaging patterns. The unconscious mind does not know the difference between that which is imagined and that which is real. It will react with all the body sensations in the same way. Your greatest strengths and vast amount of resources all lie in the unconscious mind. I became highly interested in this field three decades ago and went on to be certified in clinical hypnosis by Dr. Jeffery Zeig one of world’s most renowned psychologists and clinical hypnotists.

I’ve used my knowledge in designing highly successful advertising campaigns, producing radio talk shows, writing, coaching athletes, and executives, removing PTSD and other remedial applications, as well as peak performance conditioning.

Join us on Wednesday at 2p.m. CST for a Blab session to listen how I helped a dentist overcome his fear of going broke and how I did it. If you have any question you want to ask me I will gladly share with you my knowledge. May The Force Be With You!

Sub-Modalities the Key to Motivation

The power of imagination has been known for centuries. Every great philosopher has opined about the capacity of man to imagine and create a better world. In fact scientists credit the area of the brain called the pre-frontal cortex (the location that drives imagination) with being one of the most important advantages of human evolution.

Every great athlete and top achiever knows the power of visualization to juice up their neurology and motivation. The unconscious mind closely associated with the right brain does not know the difference between something you imagine and something that is real. That’s right, your brain and all your body mechanisms are easily fooled into thinking of a visual image as being real. To illustrate try the following experiment; visualize cutting a juicy yellow lemon and imagine biting into the meaty part.

If you are like most people, your mouth waters and your lips pucker up in response to the mental exercise. Your body begins a biochemical chain reaction to prepare for and adjust to the spike in citric acid. Every single material invention had its start as an idea in the inventor’s mind. This is why the power to visualize your goals and heart’s desire is so important. This is easy to say but not so easy to do if you never learned how to visualize.

Our mind responds to the input from our five senses. People fall into one of 3 general categories of a preferred or dominant modality, visual, kinesthetic (or feeling), and auditory. In America 60% of the population are visually oriented with 20% auditory and 20% kinesthetic. Visual people have a movie screen in their mind constantly running to process and execute tasks. Research has demonstrated that at times these mechanisms malfunction, especially from major emotional hits in life.

Over the years, I’ve worked with individuals to help them re-calibrate their minds. If you want a quick boost to your motivation let me give you some tips. Imagine you are sitting in your favorite theater and visualize yourself inside the movie screen accomplishing one of your goals. See it from start to finish. Now re-run the exact same movie but now visualize it in I-Max size with surround sound hearing the Rocky theme song. Make the colors very vibrant and sharply in focus. See yourself bigger than life, being congratulated or reaching a milestone that lets you know you succeeded.

These are the sub-modalities or subset of elements of the visual channel of your mind. Learning to run your brain is essential to have sustained and progressive success. If you don’t, by March your new year’s resolution of a new fit physique will be represented in your mind in black and white, out of focus, and about the size of a small TV. Not very motivating and your brain represents that as not being real. The take away is learning to run your brain can have a huge pay off in 2016.