Keys to a Tranformational New Year

Keys to a Tranformational New Year

As 2011 gets underway, Russell Bishop, Senior Editor at Large of The Huffington Post and author of "Workarounds That Work: How to Conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work" draws on his own times of adversity as sources of strength, optimism and creativity.

By Laurie Nadel, Ph.D

From the persepctive of numerology, 2+0+1+1=4. The number four represents foundation and stability, as in the four corners of the earth, the four elements, or simply four legs of a table.

Whatever turbulence might be swirling around in the environment, let the foundation of number four serve as a key to a transformational new year.

In this no-holds barred interview with radio host Dr. Laurie Nadel, author Russell Baker talks about how bankruptcy and other personal tragedies became springboards to triumph.

Russell Bishop: The key I like best is gratitude. What's already in my life for which I am grateful? It is so much easier for me to build on what I am grateful for than what I wish was different. Energetically, I think that works a whole lot better.

Dr. Laurie: What about people who say, "I lost my job. My house is in foreclosure. My spouse just left me. What do I have to be grateful for anyway?"

Russell Bishop: If I go back 40 years in my life, my family went bankrupt twice when I was in high school. As I entered college, my dad got leukemia and died and we went through a third bankruptcy. I ended up living in my car. So I understand what it means to have lost virtually everything. At the time, I was down to $6.

To be sure, that was a difficult time. But what I was able to find were friends who didn't change because of external circumstance. That was the first thing that I found to be grateful for -- those whom I cared for and those who cared for me. That gave me a base internally from which I could begin to build.

You can also think of Dr. Viktor Frankl who was a psychiatrist who wound up imprisoned by the Nazis for 6 years. He watched his whole family be killed. As he writes about the experience later on, he writes that he discovered freedom while incarcerated by the Nazis.

Dr. Laurie: Sometimes we can be free, as in not incarcerated. Or we can feel that we are imprisoned by our circumstances.

Russell Bishop: Our colleague, Huffington Post Alex Pattakos writes in his book Prisoners of Our Thoughts, that's a very compelling premise. It is very easy during today's economic crisis to start entertaining thoughts that can imprison us and block our awareness of choices we could make in improving our circumstances.

That's where gratitude can begin to help. No matter how small a seed or how you measure it, is there something I can be grateful for right now?

Dr. Laurie: Where can we find, say, a thoughtful person, a gesture, a book, a color, a piece of music, a pet? Anything that we might normally overlook can free us up to be thankful for those things that we do have, even when we are experiencing major loss.

Russell Bishop: Recently I was in conversation with a couple that had been a single wage-earner family. And the wage-earner had lost his job. They were talking about that but voluntarily, they came up with the idea that there was a silver lining in that cloud. They had found the ability to connect with each other as a couple and with their children on a deeper level than they had before. That was part of their insight. The wisdom from the babes if you will.

Dr. Laurie: Your adversity can give other people a chance to be generous. Sometimes when you are sharing with people and you are used to being the giver or the caregiver or the person who people come to for strength and support, sometimes letting another person see that you're vulnerable can give people who love you a chance to be generous and find their strengths.

Russell Bishop: Generosity and gratitude tie into that old cliché that what goes around comes around. In a time of loss it's not usually the time that people think to share. I am currently on the big island of Hawaii where 35percent of the population require some kind of food assistance. And I see amazing examples of generosity.

Dr. Laurie: Why is it that now 35% of the population requires food assistance?

Russell Bishop: Whenever there is a hiccup on the mainland, there is indigestion here. It also hits the housing market for second homes.

Dr. Laurie: looking ahead at the new year, we are always balancing in the midst of uncertainty. Sometimes we have structures in our lives that provide illusions of predictability that help us to feel safe but we really don't know what is going to happen on any given day or even the next day. Because so many people are feeling unsettled and uncertainty now, what are the keys that can help people break free?

Russell Bishop: This is one that came to me during a very big downturn 20 years ago. Get out a pad of paper with two columns. Walk through your home and make a list of all the things that are in the house. More interestingly, take an inventory of everything you've got. Then in the right column, put down what you paid for all that stuff. Then add it up. Most people will be absolutely stunned to find out that they probably have more money in things than they probably have in other areas of their life.

Then put a star next to stuff you just don't use. Add up what you spent on stuff you just don't use and give that away. Find people who are in even greater need for whom this stuff would be a blessing. This does three things. First: It produces a sense of inner well-being. I have enough that I can give. Second: If I let go of what I am holding onto so tightly it opens up a new space to receive. Third, it puts me in a state of natural flow within the universe where I am open to receive.

Dr. Laurie: It takes away that feeling that because you've gone through a loss you have to hold onto everything you have because that will make you safe. In fact, that's not going to make you safe. It makes you more anxious.

I like that idea of taking an inventory. Every New Year's Eve I make the same resolution: Throw out half of what I own and spend more time with my friends. I've been doing this for ten years and each year I manage to clear out about 1/3 of my stuff… books and clothes, certainly. Just taking the time to hang out and have fun can seem to get lost when you're working hard. If you have lost your job or you're going through some other type of upheaval, divorce or bankruptcy, you can reinforce your friendships because you're being given a gift of time. Very often, when you're working, you make money but you don't have time to spend with the people you love. So you can use time as a source of wealth.

Russell Bishop: That reminds me of that joke about the person on their deathbed. Very rarely does that person say, "I wish I'd spent more time at work." Here is another key to a transformational new year. Let's go back to a pad of paper and two columns. In the left hand column make a list of the physical level things that you are trying to accumulate more of in their life.

Money is the first thing on everyone's list but then there are house and cars, job. Physical level things. Label the right hand column "Positive Experiences." What are the positive experiences you are hoping will be true when you get enough of what they want in the left-hand column? When I do this with groups, I ask, 'How many people want more money?' Everyone's hands go up. When I ask them what that will bring them, most people say, "I'll be secure, I'll be powerful, I'll be successful. I'll be at peace." That kind of thing. Then I'll ask, "Do you know anyone who has a lot of money who doesn't have peace or security?"

Dr. Laurie: Anybody read the tabloids?

Russell Bishop: Really! What's really nice about that is that if you get clear about what's in your right-hand column, it doesn't matter about the level of physical materiality you have. If the real goal is friendship, compassion, caring, and being close, how can I do that today? If I do a little bit today and a little bit tomorrow, and I look back at the end of the week, I'll probably notice that there's more of it.

Dr. Laurie: Time can kind of bend when you are not stuck to a strict schedule. You can use that flexibility of time to reach out, take a walk, hang out in the park and read a book for an hour or two, visit a friend on the phone if they live far away, or even visit someone. "Tuesdays with Morrie" was about the psychological and spiritual wealth that came from spending time with someone every Tuesday.

When I was in my 20s, I was between jobs and had to borrow money to take the subway to go to job interviews. I had a friend who had an old sailboat. He worked in the garment district and got home at 2:30 in the afternoon. One Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon in October, he said, "Let's go sailing." We went sailing up to the Statue of Liberty and looked up at all the skyscrapers. He said, "I bet all those people in their offices are looking out their windows and they see us here in our little boat and they must be thinking, 'Those people must be millionaires. They're sailing in the middle of the week and I'm stuck in my office.'" That moment was one of the richest of my life and one of the most freeing. I remember saying to myself, "I hope you remember this because soon you'll be working in an office and yes, you'll be earning money but you won't be able to come out and sail on a Tuesday afternoon.

There's always a trade-off. When we talk about giving people the keys to a transformational new year, in order to have change, there's often loss involved. You can use loss to create positive change and well-being.

Russell Bishop: it's just another opportunity to refocus on what's most important and recognize that I'm the one who creates that.

Dr. Laurie: As Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote, you can discover freedom in a concentration camp.

The county is going through a values crisis. I think that one of the things that people voted for in 2008 was a shift in values towards a more humanistic set of values. That is something we can look at within ourselves as we prepare for the new year. Do I want more kindness, more freedom in my life? Do I need to show respect for myself and others in my life? Do I want to spend more time on my spiritual practice? What do those things mean?

Russell Bishop: Yes. This is critical work. I hope everyone is able to focus on the new year with a new thought and a new choice.

Edited by: Lawyer Asad

The 7 Ancient Secrets for Perfect Health

The 7 Ancient Secrets for Perfect Health

By Kacper Postawski
Creator of The 7 Ancient Health Secrets

As I write this, there are hundreds of thousands of people very ill around the world. Thousands are dying from diseases which experts tell them are "irreversible." Statistically, one out of three Americans now get Cancer. That's staggering. Every year there are more and more drugs available to "treat" these problems yet people keep on dying and no-one is getting healed.

And yet... as I write this... There is another group of people, one which you won't read about in the papers, won't see trumpeted on the media or backed by pharmaceutical corporations. This group of people is thriving with health and energy. Their bodies are vibrating with life, and they never get sick or worry about illness ever again. In fact, most of these people age at a drastically slower rate.

This group of people is also growing by the thousands every day; it is a wave of awareness that is spreading across the globe. The good news is you can join this group of people very easily, by following the powerful principles and clarity you'll get from this information, like I once did.

What's the main difference between those two groups?

The first group follows the SAD system. Appropriately named, the acronym stands for the Standard American Diet.

The second group knows about, either conscious or unconsciously, and follows the Living Vibration system.

The Living Vibration System

What is the Living Vibration system? It's not some new fad diet, or the latest scientific discovery, it is an understanding, a secret philosophy of health that is hundreds of years old, that has been lost and forgotten by the bulk of today's society.

The simple fact is that today we live in a world where 95% of the information trumpeted through the media, or by "experts" whom we give authority over to, is simply not true, especially in the area of Health.

When you understand this core philosophy, and allow it to penetrate deeply into your life, you will unlock the secret to unlimited health and energy, and you'll never have to worry about your body breaking down again.

Click here to watch a free video which explains the 3 Core Principles of the Living Vibration Method

Freedom From Fear

I'm not sure where you are in your life. Personally I've spent many years in this area, trying to figure out how my body really works. When I finally began to put the pieces of the puzzle together, all of this started to make sense; I remember the first time when I really began to feel the energetic differences in my body. I
was bouncing off the walls.

I've never really been seriously ill, as I am still young, however many members of my family have been, and I have lost a couple to Cancer.

Maybe you know some of these things already; perhaps they are new to you.
What I want to communicate most of all to you in this chapter is this:

You are free. Your health is in your hands. The only requirement is that you have a human body. If you are human and are reading or watching this right now, then this qualifies you for unlimited health and abundance. Your body is truly a miracle and will do all the healing for you, once it is properly understood.

Today we live in a world that is flooded with misinformation about health. A world where we are taught to FEAR our bodies and mistrust them.

We are taught that our bodies are fragile; that we have to be "careful" or we might get some virus or bug that will attack us. We're taught we need drugs and pills to get better, and that the only people that understand our bodies are
doctors and experts. We're taught to hand over our power to other people.
We're taught that the older you get, the more shriveled your body become, your hair turns gray and you must accept pain and the breaking down of the body as
a "natural" process.

This couldn't be further from the truth!

A friend of mine once told me a story that once opened my mind up. It was a wake up call as to how deeply all this non-sense had been programmed into my mind.

My friend was at a health seminar in which the presenter asked everyone to close his or her eyes. He then instructed everyone to "imagine an 75 year old man, and describe him". Everyone began describing a gray haired man, hunched over, with a cane, etc. Everyone was then told to open their eyes.

In front of them was a lean, muscular man with a full head of brown hair. A guy you could easily stick on the front cover of Men's Health Magazine.

"This is Steven, he's 75 years old, he can bench-press 200 lb." Everyone was speech-less.

I hardly believed it at the time, however, since then I've met numerous people in that age category who have been following these things a good part of their life,
and they don't look like at all like what I've been made to believe old age is suppose to look like.

The main example being my own mother, who is now getting close to 50, yet she looks not over 30 - when we are out together sometimes people mistake her for my sister.

This isn't because these people are superhuman, they just know, understand, and use these 3 principles we've talked about in their life.

Now... I know this might be a lot to take in at once.

Perhaps like me, you're just anxious to dive into this full throttle.

Perhaps you are a bit concerned whether this is for you, whether you can do it.

Perhaps you might be feeling some resistance to this because it seems like it requires "changing" too many things in your life or like this is just another "fad diet for something.

If so, I've got good news for you.

This stuff is addictive. :-)

You don't have to turn your whole life upside down to get amazing results; it's EASY to start using this...

When you just apply the first step you will begin to FEEL better right away, in fact, as you do it more, you may begin to feel better than you've EVER felt before. Its almost impossible not to.

This one little step takes only 5 minutes to do every-day, and will begin to infuse your body with living enzymes, living vibration and a flood of nutrients, minerals, and living vitamins.

When this happens, you simply begin to get "addicted" to feeling great, and slowly are more and more motivated to live this way.

What I've come to realize is that it's IMPOSSIBLE to get to health by trying to resist your present addictions. If you're in love with eating meat, pizza, and beer, giving that life-style up cold turkey will only work for a few days, or weeks before the habit slingshots back into your life.

Human beings are creatures of habit. In other words, we're all junkies.

Addicted to living life and patterns a certain way every day. That's just our nature.

So instead of fighting an inner battle with yourself, why not just effortlessly develop a new addiction to incredible health?

This is done by introducing these steps, one step at a time, little by little, into your daily routine. It's easy, fun, and the effects are very powerful.

It's hard to describe this process, what happens as you apply this into your life is a deep mental, physical, and spiritual transformation. Little by little you feel better and better, your life begins to change for the better in all areas, because
everything is connected. And as that begins to change, it's easier and easier to bring these elements into your life on a bigger scale.

So you don't have to worry about giving up foods you love, or old habits, you'll find that slowly over time, as you apply these things, those negative habits will
develop into positive, health affirming ones. You and your body will lose interest in old habits as they wither away and fall off like old leaves do off a tree, and you'll be drawn to a higher frequency of life. A life of power, health, and love.

Edited by: Lawyer Asad

Body Posture Improves Your Self Confidence

Body Posture Improves Your Self Confidence

Source: Science Daily

Sitting up straight in your chair isn't just good for your posture – it also gives you more confidence in your own thoughts, according to a new study.

Researchers found that people who were told to sit up straight were more likely to believe thoughts they wrote down while in that posture concerning whether they were qualified for a job.

On the other hand, those who were slumped over their desks were less likely to accept these written-down feelings about their own qualifications.

The results show how our body posture can affect not only what others think about us, but also how we think about ourselves, said Richard Petty, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

"Most of us were taught that sitting up straight gives a good impression to other people," Petty said. "But it turns out that our posture can also affect how we think about ourselves. If you sit up straight, you end up convincing yourself by the posture you're in."

Petty conducted the study with Pablo Briñol, a former postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State now at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain, and Benjamin Wagner, a current graduate student at Ohio State. The research appears in the October 2009 issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology.

The study included 71 students at Ohio State. When they entered the lab for the experiment, the participants were told they would be taking part in two separate studies at the same time, one organized by the business school and one by the arts school.

They were told the arts study was examining factors contributing to people's acting abilities, in this case, the ability to maintain a specific posture while engaging in other activities. They were seated at a computer terminal and instructed to either "sit up straight" and "push out [their] chest]" or "sit slouched forward" with their "face looking at [their] knees."

While in one of these positions, students participated in the business study, which supposedly investigated factors contributing to job satisfaction and professional performance.

While holding their posture, students listed either three positive or three negative personal traits relating to future professional performance on the job.

After completing this task, the students took a survey in which they rated themselves on how well they would do as a future professional employee.

The results were striking.

How the students rated themselves as future professionals depended on which posture they held as they wrote the positive or negative traits.

Students who held the upright, confident posture were much more likely to rate themselves in line with the positive or negative traits they wrote down.

In other words, if they wrote positive traits about themselves, they rated themselves more highly, and if they wrote negative traits about themselves, they rated themselves lower.

"Their confident, upright posture gave them more confidence in their own thoughts, whether they were positive or negative," Petty said.

However, students who assumed the slumped over, less confident posture, didn't seem convinced by their own thoughts – their ratings didn't differ much regardless of whether they wrote positive or negative things about themselves.

The end result of this was that when students wrote positive thoughts about themselves, they rated themselves more highly when in the upright than the slouched posture because the upright posture led to confidence in the positive thoughts.

However, when students wrote negative thoughts about themselves, they rated themselves more negatively in the upright than the slouched posture because the upright posture led to more confidence in their negative thoughts.

Petty emphasized that while students were told to sit up straight or to slump down, the researchers did not use the words "confident" or "doubt" in the instructions or gave any indication about how the posture was supposed to make them feel.

In a separate experiment, the researchers repeated the same scenario with a different group of students, but asked them a series of questions afterwards about how they felt during the course of the study.

"These participants didn't report feeling more confident in the upright position than they did in the slouched position, even though those in the upright position did report more confidence in the thoughts they generated," Petty said.

That suggests people's thoughts are influenced by their posture, even though they don't realize that is what's happening.

"People assume their confidence is coming from their own thoughts. They don't realize their posture is affecting how much they believe in what they're thinking," he said.

"If they did realize that, posture wouldn't have such an effect."

This research extends a 2003 study by Petty and Briñol which found similar results for head nodding. In that case, people had more confidence in thoughts they generated when they nodded their head up and down compared to when they shook their head from side to side.

However, Petty noted that body posture is a static pose compared to head nodding, and probably more natural and easy to use in day-to-day life.

"Sitting up straight is something you can train yourself to do, and it has psychological benefits – as long as you generally have positive thoughts," he said.

For example, students are often told when taking a multiple-choice test that if they're not absolutely sure of the answer, their first best guess is more often correct.

"If a student is sitting up straight, he may be more likely to believe his first answer. But if he is slumped down, he may change it and end up not performing as well on the test," he said.

Edited by: Lawyer Asad

The Ant Philosophy .......!!!

The Ant Philosophy .......!!!

I think everybody should study ants. They have an amazing four-part
philosophy.

Here is the first part: Ants never quit. That's a good philosophy. If
they're headed somewhere and you try to stop them; they'll look for another way. They'll climb over, they'll climb under, they'll climb around. They keep looking for another way. What a neat philosophy, to never quit looking
for a way to get where you're supposed to go.

Second,ants think winter all summer. That's an important perspective. You can't be so naive as to think summer will last forever. So ants are gathering in their winter food in the middle of summer.

An ancient story says, "Don't build your house on the sand in the summer."
Why do we need that advice? Because it is important to be realistic. In the summer, you've got to think storm. You've got to think rocks as you enjoy the sand and sun. Think ahead.

The third part of the ant philosophy is that ants think summer all winter.
That is so important. During the winter, ants remind themselves, "This won't last long; we'll soon be out of here." And the first warm day, the ants are out. If it turns cold again, they'll dive back down, but then they come out
the first warm day. They can't wait to get out.

And here's the last part of the ant philosophy. How much will an ant gather during the summer to prepare for the winter? All that he possibly can. What an incredible philosophy, the "all-that-you-possibly-can" philosophy.

So that's what the ant philosophy covers -

Never give up, look ahead, stay positive and do all you can.

Edited by: Lawyer Asad