Prosperity Attraction – you create your own reality

Ordinary things, consistently done, produce extraordinary results.

– Keith Cunningham.

I love that quote. I’ve posted it on my computer monitor to remind me that I don’t have to do anything outrageous or spectacular to get spectacular results. I just have to do the little things, the ordinary things, consistently. When I do that, anything is possible.

So this month, I’ve started a new practice. I’m calling it 30-days of self care. The idea, in part, came from my experience with Mark Joyner’s Kaizen club. Kaizen is a Japanese concept meaning “Continuous Improvement.” And while, I love the concept of Mark’s Kaizen Club, in practice it didn’t work for me. I believe that I need more control over which specific aspect of my life I am improving. It’s an awesome program, and it may work for you. If you want to check it out for free, you can sign up for the free Kaizen Club trial here.

But I needed something slightly different, something that gives me more control. So this month I’m starting my new 30-Days of Self Care program. I’m basing this on research that shows we need about 21-days to install a new habit into our life. Have you ever noticed that you can begin doing something for a couple of days or even weeks  - exercise, diet, meditation, stop smoking, etc. - but after a week or two the old habits start creeping back in?

That’s because those old, existing habits are hard wired into your brain. You’re literally hard wired for overeating or channel surfing or smoking. And, in order to disconnect that brain wiring you need to create new wiring, new neural pathways that will make the new habit the default.

Think about a river for a minute. The water flowing downstream is going to take the path of least resistance. It’s not going to jump over the river bank and chart a new course without some serious reason.

Your habitual actions are the same: They are going to continue to flow through the existing channels because those channels are the path of least resistance.

Fortunately, researchers have shown that it takes a lot less time to hard wire a new neural pathway than it does to cut a new river channel: About 21 days. 21 days is all you need to “hardwire” and create a new pathways. Until then, you’re using your will power to take the actions.

But think about it: If you can focus your intention and bring your will power into play for just 21 days, after that, habit kicks in, and the path of least resistance shifts to the new habit you are installing. Worth it?

I think so.

And that’s why I’ve taken the concept of the Kaizen Club and continuous improvement and created my own personal program. Each month I’m going to pick one specific self-care habit I want to change. And for that month, I will engage the new action I want to hard wire every single day.

By the end of the month, that new action should be a habit. It should be hard wired into my brain making that habit the default, the path of least resistance, and allowing me to move onto the next self care habit I want to install.

Here’s an example: This month I’m going to install the habit of going to bed with my room completely clutter free.

I know it doesn’t sound like much. And that’s the thing: Remember I’m looking to install habits where I do ordinary things consistently! I have a tendency to just throw my clothes onto the foot of my bed when I change into my pajamas. And after a couple of days there can be a pretty significant pile. My daughter sometimes brings toys into my room which can get forgotten and stepped on in the middle of the night. Other, miscellaneous stuff seems to mysterious accumulate in there for no apparent reason.

So my February self care habit is taking just five or ten minutes each night before I go to bed to put my clothes away, and clear out any other clutter that may have gathered in my room during the day.

Simple!

And by the end of February, these daily actions will become hard wired into my brain and I will have installed a new, supportive habit.

That means that by the end of the year I’ll have installed 12 new, supportive, self care habits. And I guarantee you that those 12 habits will make a huge positive impact on my life - in all areas!

So how about you? Are you willing to commit to making one change in your life for the next 30-days? Are you ready to hard wire a new, supportive habit into your brain?

Leave a comment below and let us know what self care habit you are going to install during the next 30-days!

Well I’ve been on the cleanse for a full week now and I feel great! My energy level is consistently high, although I am sleeping more than usual. I have been going to bed by 10:30 and getting up between 6:00 and 7:00. I tried to stay with my normal 5:00am wakeup time but it just seems like my body needs more sleep as it goes through the detox process. That may change as I move through the program.

It’s interesting to notice how different the detox reaction is this time. The first time I went through this program, back in the late winter, I had about 3-days of a low-grade headache and extremely low energy. This time, my energy level is great and there has been no headache but my muscles have been aching. So it seems as if the toxins are coming out of my muscles this time.

I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. Feels OK.

And one of the things I’m loving about doing this cleanse at this time of year is that I can just walk out to the garden and get fresh greens. Ideally, you’re supposed to have greens with every meal while on this diet. I’ll just walk out back and clip some chard, kale or mustard greens and add them to whatever I’m having - even my morning smoothies! It’s great.

You may still be able to join the cleanse. You’d be a week behind the rest of us, but most of us will keep going on the diet for at least a week after the 21 days. And it’s awesome to be going through this program with a whole bunch of other folks.

Today is day one of the 21-day clinical detoxification program. This is the second time I’m doing this detox. Last February I did it and felt totally awesome. I’m ready to get that clean, clear, light feeling back again.

I’ve done a lot of detox diets in the past and the great thing about this program is that you don’t fast. You’re actually eating quite a bit, but it’s all high-quality, unprocessed, vegetables, fruit and brown rice.

On the last round I had about 2-days of a detox reaction – headache, fatigue, etc. – and I’m prepared for a couple of days of that this time as well. But once I got through that initial detox, my energy level was amazing for the rest of the cleanse.

And the best part was that I continued to eat a very healthy diet for a couple of months after the program ended. Now, my body is ready for another break!

If you’re interested in joining me on this cleanse, there may still be some space available. It’s being facilitated by my Personal Trainer, Shelly Fitzsimmons, and she has set up some amazing support systems via private consultations, teleclasses and an online forum.

Check out the 21-day clinical purification program here.

For most of my life I considered myself a fairly thick-skinned, typical guy. Sensitive male role models were hard to find growing up in the seventies in a middle-class Boston suburb. Back then “sensitivity” was not a trait encouraged in men. So I followed in the footsteps of the male role models I had; mostly stoic, emotionally unavailable, intellectually focused men.

That worked for a while. But at some point during the past 18 or so years that I have been actively and sometimes intensively engaged in personal growth, I have discovered that behind the walls and under the layers of distance and detachment lives a highly sensitive person.

This awakening sensitivity has, at times, felt more like a burden than a blessing. But ultimately, and only quite recently, I have come to accept my sensitivity as a gift and a powerful ally on my journey of personal evolution.

When I began this journey, the term Highly Sensitive Person was not widely known (if at all). But as more has been written about Highly Sensitive People and the concept has gained wider (though certainly not universal) acceptance I have come to recognize and accept myself as a Highly Sensitive Person.

It is estimated that 20% of the human population would test positive for what Carl Jung called Innate Sensitiveness. This innate sensitivity has been well researched and the term Highly Sensitive Person was coined in 1996 by Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D. and explored in her book, The Highly Sensitive Person: How To Thrive When The World Overwhelms You

Wikipedia has this definition of Highly Sensitive Person:

A highly sensitive person (HSP) is a person having the innate trait of high sensitivity (or innate sensitiveness as Carl Gustav Jung originally coined it). According to Elaine N. Aron and colleagues as well as other researchers, highly sensitive people, which would represent about a fifth of the population, process sensory data much more deeply and thoroughly due to a biological difference in their nervous systems. This is a specific trait with key consequences that in the past has often been confused with innate shyness, inhibitedness, innate fearfulness, introversion, and so on. The existence of the trait of innate sensitivity was demonstrated using a test that was shown to have both internal and external validity.

While the idea of highly sensitive people is still shrugged off by the mainstream press and health-care community, I have no doubt that, just as people have different levels of visual acuity, hearing, intelligence and physical grace, there are also varying levels of what I call vibrational sensitivity.

No matter what any scientist tells you, there is no diagnostic device presently available that is as sensitive as the human body. When properly tuned, our physical bodies have the ability to perceive and respond to our environment with an accuracy that far exceeds the capacity of our present technology. And some of us have bodies that are naturally tuned to be more sensitive to our vibrational environment.

So, for better or worse, that puts highly sensitive people in the unenviable position of being the canaries in the coalmine. Our sensitivity to the aural, environmental, and vibrational pollution that is prevalent in our world means that we often display physical, emotional and vibrational symptoms long before others less sensitive than us.

That’s the bad news.

But fear not, there is good news! If you are a highly sensitive person, your sensitivity indicates that your body is more highly tuned than most people’s. And, with a bit of effort, training and regular practice, you can learn to leverage your sensitivity to create success and take your life to the next level. I have! More on that later.

For now, let’s look at some of the “symptoms” of highly sensitive people because, if you’re like I was, you might not even know that you’re highly sensitive. And when you don’t know that you’re highly sensitive it can be very difficult and uncomfortable to live in this world filled with less sensitive people who don’t understand why you have to cover your ears when an ambulance goes by, or leave a restaurant that smells like bleach, or sit under a full-spectrum light during the winter.

So if you have ever wondered if you are highly sensitive, here is a list of signs that could indicate that you are a Highly Sensitive Person. (I’ve added some personal notes to a few of the items on the list).

1. Can you hear things others cannot, especially high-pitched sounds?
Do you hear sirens long before anyone else? Does the high-pitched hum of a partially dimmed light fixture get under your skin when no one else seems to notice? Does the whirring fan in your computer distract you? Is it difficult for you to sleep in the same room as a refrigerator? Do you need to cover your ears when a loud siren passes by? Do you use earplugs at concerts or on planes?

2. Do you notice smells that others miss?
I have a weird olfactory sense: When it comes to nice, natural smells such as roses and lilacs, I have to put my nose right into the flower in order to smell it. But when it comes to not-so-nice smells I am highly attuned. I can smell cigarette smoke from 50-feet away when I’m outside and the wind is blowing in the opposite direction. When I walk into a restaurant that has just cleaned up with chlorine bleach, I often have to turn around a leave because the smell is overpowering. And don’t get me started on some of the unnatural perfumes that have nearly made me… well I think you get the idea!

3. Do you know what other people need before they ask?
This post, Intuition or Observation & Analysis, provides a great example of this.

4. Do you notice the flicker on older computer screens or older fluorescent fixtures?
I’m still amazed at how often I used to sit down at someone else’s computer and wonder how they were able to work on it with the refresh rate set so low. If they were not looking over my shoulder I would usually go in and quickly increase the refresh rate which took away the flicker and provided me with some relief.

5. Do you get “overwhelmed” by joy when you experience great beauty: A beautiful sunset, an incredible musical performance, the smile of your child?
High vibrational sensitivity is not always triggered by “negative” experiences. Positive, beautiful, sublime experiences can also awaken that sensitivity. But again, the difference and occasionally the difficulty for sensitive people is the intensity of the experience. Highly sensitive people can be truly overwhelmed by a beautiful experience, which is fine if you are alone on the beach watching a spectacular sunset, but may not be so great if you happen to look out the window at work just at the peak moment of that beautiful sunset.

6. Do you feel threatened or uneasy in large crowds or big cities?
Sometimes I enjoy going into San Francisco, and other times I just can’t wait to get out. But no matter how I’m feeling while I’m there, I always notice a distinct sense of calmness descending upon me as I leave the City. It’s as if I’m passing through an invisible energy boundary as I cross the Golden Gate Bridge.

7. Do you have “emotional radar” that picks up on what others are feeling?
Do you know what people are feeling before they tell you? Do you ever walk into a room and sense that there has been an argument?

8. Do you pick up physical symptoms from other people?
Have you ever been feeling great and then run into a friend who had a headache and suddenly noticed a headache coming on? I once massaged a friend’s knee after she tweaked it during a yoga class. When I was done, she felt great, but I could hardly walk!

9. Does reading or hearing about bad news have a dramatic impact on your mood?
Once upon a time I was a news and information junkie. Knowing what was happening in the world was important. As my sensitivity awakened, however, I began to recognize that the news is almost exclusively low-vibration information and had a dramatic and usually negative impact on me. A few years ago I did a week long news fast to see if it would make a difference. It did! Soon after that, I stopped watching, listening to or reading the news on a regular basis. And while I still don’t watch or listen to the news, I am now able to read the paper or gather snippets of news from the Internet without noticing a dramatic effect on my mood.

10. If you see a bad car accident does it affect you for the entire day?
Most people have a reaction when seeing an accident but for some highly sensitive people the effect can be dramatic and long lasting.

11. Have you been diagnosed with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and/or do you experience a noticeable drop in your energy and mood during the winter?

12. Have you ever had a transcendent or mystical experience?
Highly sensitive people are naturally more open to experiences of bliss, ecstasy and spiritual awakening.

13. Do you have a strong reaction when you drink caffeine or when you attempt to stop?
Everything we put into our bodies has both a physical and energetic effect. For most people the physical effects of caffeine are not that dramatic. But sensitive people also feel the energetic effects of that caffeine and the combination can be quite powerful.

14. Do you have food sensitivities or allergies?
Most of us are putting stuff into our bodies that was never meant to go there. This is fine for people who are not highly sensitive (not really!) but if you are highly sensitive your body may tell you, in no uncertain terms, what you can and cannot put into it.

15. Do you have allergies or asthma?
As with food allergies, environmental allergies can indicate that you are reacting to allergens on both a physical and energetic level.

16. Are you a “lightweight?”
A friend of mine used to say that I could “get drunk from sniffing the bottlecap!” And she wasn’t that far off. My karate buddies nicknamed me Ed “No Mas” Mills because of my tendency to get a little rambunctious after a couple of beers. If one glass of wine puts you under the table you might be highly sensitive.

17. Are you sensitive to over-the-counter, prescribed or illegal drugs?
Can you take half the recommended dosage of a drug and experience a noticeable effect? Have you had an overwhelming experience when experimenting with other drugs?

18. If you have ever had surgery, did it take longer to recover from the effects of the anesthesia than from the surgery itself?
For many sensitive people anesthesia can have a long-lasting and powerful effect. Anesthesia impacts not only the physical body but also the energy body by putting you into a completely unnatural state. It’s a neither here nor there state that can wreak havoc on a sensitive person’s system.

19. Is being in a calm, peaceful environment very important for you?
Does clutter, stress you out? Do harsh, disharmonious colors fluster you? Do you feel at peace in a beautiful garden? Is it important for you to create a “sanctuary” within your home?

20. Do you get claustrophobic when you spend too much time indoors?
For many sensitive people, being inside for too long leads to a feeling of claustrophobia, lethargy and/or irritation.

21. Is it important for you to spend time alone?
Highly sensitive people often feel better when alone. In extreme cases, this need to be alone can be debilitating to the point where being around others is almost impossible.

22. Do you experience dramatic mood swings, sometimes for no apparent reason?
Have you ever been sitting at work, or on the bus, or in a café, feeling pretty good, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, started to feel sad, or angry? Highly sensitive people are more sensitive to both their own emotional content as well as the emotions of those around them. So if this happens to you, you may be connecting with something happening inside of you, but you might also be unintentionally “tuning in” to the emotional content of someone else.

23. Do you know when people are lying to you?
Have you ever just known that someone is telling you a lie, even when you have no “logical” reason to believe that to be so?

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. These are examples of possible “symptoms” of high sensitivity. If ten or more of these experiences rang true for you, it’s highly likely that you’re a highly sensitive person. But even if you said “Yes” to just a handful of these you could be highly sensitive. In fact, even just one or two of these, if they are very strong for you, could indicate high sensitivity.

Ultimately I believe that being a highly sensitive person is a gift. It certainly has become a gift to me! And, yes, I know, it does not always feel that way. It can feel like a burden and a curse. But when you learn how to put boundaries and systems into place you can begin to access and harness that sensitivity and use it to create the life you desire.

I’ll be writing about some of those systems in the next few weeks. So be sure to come back or, better yet, subscribe to Evolving Times to get notified when there is a new post here.

And you may want to sign up to receive my new report; The Five Levels of Human Perception: How to Leverage Your Full Potential and Get the Law of Attraction Work WITH You!

It has excellent information for Highly Sensitive People! Sign up for it here.

Photo Credits:

Coffee by Refracted Moments
Rose by Randy Son of Robert
Candles by Ldcross

Did you ever see the 1970’s super-cheesey movie, Gumball Rally? Alright, I admit I probably watched it about 20 times back then. It was fun, when I was ten.

Well, for some strange reason, a scene from that movie popped into my head the other day. (This might give you some insight into my state of mind!)

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of seeing this cinematic tour de force, The Gumball Rally is an illegal New York to LA car race with absolutely no rules. The winner, in addition to all the glory, gets to take home the coveted Gumball Machine! And I’m sure you can imagine the creative sorts of mischief that the drivers get up to as they attempt to arrive before everyone else at that finish line.

The scene that popped into my head takes place at the beginning of the movie and the starting line of the race. It’s our first introduction to the driver of team Ferrari, Raul Julia, who is sitting in his Ferrari convertible with his co-pilot, a much less experienced, and if my memory serves me, non-Italian, driver. Raul turns to him and says:

“And now my friend, the first-a rule of Italian driving…” Here he reaches up, rips off the rear-view mirror and tosses it, with much Italian flare, out of the car. “…What’s-a behind me is of no importance. ”

Now certainly don’t recommend that you rip the rear view mirrors off of your car and start driving around with that attitude. However, when it comes to personal growth, I think this rule has some validity.

There is an approach to personal growth that goes something like this: “Until I uncover all of my past wounds and heal each and every one of them, I will never be happy, fulfilled and abundant in my present life.”

This attitude is rarely that explicit, and it’s almost never conscious. But there are many people (and I speak from my own personal experience as well as my observations of others) who, on some level, believe they can not have a great life until they have “handled” all of their past wounds. They seek answers to the questions: “Why am I the way I am now?” “Why do I always act this why?” “What happened to me?” “Who did this to me?”

That approach to personal growth has the potential to suck us down the rabbit hole into a never-ending search for the “cause” of what is “wrong” with us. We can end up traveling back in time to heal our past more often than we spend rooted in the present, focused on creating a better life now! At that point, our journeys into the past are not longer about finding answers that can help us improve the present. Those journeys become a way of avoiding the work that will create the positive changes in our lives.

And that’s never a good thing!

Here’s something I’ve discovered, something those voices don’t tell you when they’re suggesting that you take another journey into your past to find another wound to heal. You ready?

Balancing a bit of Raul Julia’s attitude can often create a more healthy relationship with the past and lead to a better life now and into the future.

I’m not suggesting that you completely throw away the rear view mirror when it comes to looking at your past. I don’t think that’s even possible. But maybe spending a bit less time looking in that rear view mirror would be helpful.

Certainly there is a lot that we can learn from exploring our past, including (and perhaps especially) the painful parts. But if we are to truly grow, the information we discover must be used to empower positive change in the present. In other words, we must act in the present on what we learn from the past.

So the next time you find yourself heading down memory lane, before you go there, remember the young, suave Raul Julia, sitting in his Ferrari and repeat these words: “What’s-a behind me is of no importance!”

How do you start your day? Is your first act intentional? Is it a reaction to something? Or is your first act of each completely random?

As a Deliberate Creator, every conscious act matters. And one way to get every day off to a great start is to make your first act of the day intentional. So here are a few suggestions that you might want to consider for your first conscious action of the day.

Smile: You’ll be amazed at how powerful that one act can be at setting the tone for your day. Do it no matter how tired you are, no matter how little sleep you got, no matter how much you’re dreading some aspect of your day. Smile. I love this quote from Thich Nhat Hanh: “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” When you think of something that brings you joy, a smile is likely to come naturally. Remember that a smile can brighten a person’s day. And if you wake up with a smile, it just might be your day that gets brighter.

Think of something joyful: Maybe you feel strange putting a smile on your face for no reason. (If you do, stop it!) But one alternative is to think of something that brings you joy and let that thought bring a smile to your face.

Think of your primary intention: What is the single most important intention that you have right now? How would your day change if your first thought upon arising was a positive thought about that intention?

Look at your primary intention: Remember Jack Canfield’s story in The Secret? He taped a “$100,000 bill” to the ceiling above his bed so the first thing he would see every morning would remind him of his primary intention. You can do something similar. Come up with an image, object or phrase that reminds you of your intention and tape it to the ceiling or place it beside your bed. And each morning, make sure your first act is looking at it and feeling it.

Send a positive thought to someone else: Sending a prayer or other positive thought to someone is a wonderful way to start your day. In order to send positive vibes to someone else, your vibration must be positive. So starting your day this way ensures that your vibration will start out positive.

Give thanks for what you have: One of the best ways to empower your day is to begin with gratitude. Instead of allowing your mind to jump to all the stuff you have to get done that day, intentionally guide your mind to focus on and express gratitude for all the wonderful things that you already have.

Say I love you: If you share a bed with a partner (and even if you don’t) one great way to set a positive tone for your day is to say “I love you” to them (or someone else) before you even get out of bed.

These are just a few suggestions. Any one of them will help you set a positive tone for the entire day… If you do it!