The Myth Of Finding The Perfectly Balanced Life

There is no such thing as a balanced life. You can’t just dump your life in a pie chart and always have perfectly balanced segments. What you can do is pay full attention to the aspects that are important to you. Little Jimmy having a soccer practice? Make sure you are there for him with unconditional love and support. Love to go sailing? Don’t think about those investment deals while enjoying the perfect sunset.

Let’s face it, the higher you climb the corporate ladder, the bigger the paycheck, and the more office time it requires. If you play it right perhaps you can telecommute from home and cut down on traffic jams. Quality of life means making certain sacrifices or trade offs. Quality of life means finding out what means most to you, not living according to a pie chart. The very best thing you can do is make sure that each area of your work and home lives are given their full love and attention. That includes family meals, outings, reading a book or just lazing in the sun.

Your loved ones and you will appreciate life 100% more if you show them an hour of quality time instead of two hours of Blackberry time.

So look at the different roles you play in life and decide how much time you want to live in these roles. It won’t ever be balanced, but each role can have its own joy. Now as your roles blend together your life as a whole becomes more joyful.

It’s a constant adjustment, but well worthwhile.

What roles and areas of your life are you fully appreciating and finding joy in now?

If you enjoyed this post today, please do me a big favor and use the “Twitter” button down below (click on the + sign) to share it with your Twitter friends and followers (You can also share it on Facebook, Digg, or any of the other sites you see below as well).

Choose To Be Happy

I’ve shut off most news sources in my life. The television and Internet news were just blood sucking happiness leeches, filling my mind with unnecessary doom and gloom.

Everyone wants to be happy. Sure it’s sounds incredibly corny, but if you think you have a better theory please let me know. Happiness isn’t overrated, it is the primary goal of our lives. There is no better feeling than waking up in the morning and looking forward to the day.

Of course life isn’t always going to be full of rainbows and lollipops. Problems arise when you start to believe your constant negative thoughts and feelings are facts, but in reality they are not you. They are not facts. They are only struggles in your mind. You CAN let them go. So just let them go.

I avoid people that complain and insist that the world is against them. They have become totally blind to any type of appreciation and would rather wallow in self pity.  Perhaps they will die like this one day, wallowing in self pity. And don’t get me started about excuses.

I choose to listen to inspiring audio books when I drive into work.  I choose to think about how lucky I am to have shelter, food, safety and love in my life. I am hopeful for the future and realize my potential is almost unlimited.  I meditate to cease the struggle of my mind, coming back to the present moment over and over again. I notice the deep blue sky during a sunset.  I stand outside in the quiet of the morning, gazing at the cool shades of the morning sky and listen to the birds.

I choose to be aware of what’s around me.  I choose to be happy.

If you enjoyed this post today, please do me a big favor and use the “Twitter” button down below (click on the + sign) to share it with your Twitter friends and followers (You can also share it on Facebook, Digg, or any of the other sites you see below as well).

5 Crucial Steps Towards A Dream Life – The Cutting Edge Series

The cutting edge series is a series of articles aimed at waking individuals up. Life is too short to let it pass by and phenomenal success is just around the corner if you apply these principals.

See your dream in your mind.

See yourself living the dream. Feel yourself already successful. Taste it. Don’t ever doubt yourself until you take the next step. I used to buy the magazine Robb Report and pick out which luxury items I wanted.  Now you take action.

Actions speak louder than words.

No talking about life’s unfairness. No complaining. No excuses. Either you take action now or get off the pot. Whatever goal you have, start it right now. Take that first step. When I stared this website I wrote out a business plan. It brought my thoughts out on paper. The rest is history. If you don’t take action I or this website can’t do a freaking thing to help you.

Watch your actions turn into progress.

Now you see that first seed blossom and you are amazed, you know now that your dream is born. That first chapter of a book is drafted, the website template is chosen or you bought that building, and things are taking shape. What was fuzzy is now coming into sharp focus. Small successes are attained, each one sending a glimmer of possibilities into your mind.

See the possibilities

With your dream finding the finishing touches, you begin to see the big and small picture. You find your friends buying your product. Your first sales deposit cold hard cash into your brand new business account. You are on cloud nine. You realize that people care. They want your product or service. They actually take out their wallet out and pay you for it! All that hard work paid off and you have total faith in yourself now.

Keep refining

Learn from your mistakes and make the best damn product or service the world has seen. You have total faith in yourself now, remember? Nothing can stop you now. There is no mountain big enough that you can’t move. The future holds a bright future for you and your dream life has arrived. You are living it. Does it get any better?

If you enjoyed this post today, please do me a big favor and use the “Twitter” button down below (click on the + sign) to share it with your Twitter friends and followers (You can also share it on Facebook, Digg, or any of the other sites you see below as well).

Goal Setting And Sensational Success - The Cutting Edge Series

The cutting edge series is a series of articles aimed at waking individuals up. Life is too short to let it pass by and phenomenal success is just around the corner if you apply these principals. This article deals with two essential characteristics of phenomenally successful people.

Get the hell out of your comfort zone.

Read more

Five Huge Ways You Can Make Yourself Happy

Enjoy each and every moment life has to offer.

The most important rule in life is to live in the present moment. Letting of the past, future, and all your trivial worries will by far be the best change you can make. Stop whinnying. Please stop complaining. Appreciate each and every moment from now on. Love life. Never take anything for granted. Every moment you lose to your worries is a moment lost forever. This is how people with terminal illnesses think. Life is too short. Every moment is precious. Find your Zen, right now.

Don’t leave this life without following your dreams.

Don’t be afraid to take chances. Write that book, comic strip or screen play. Go to the job interview. Take action right now! Don’t delay your dreams any further. There is absolutely no reason why you can’t take the first step towards your dream life today. There is no excuse. And as you take action and stay in the moment, you will be shocked how staying in the now helps.

Shut your shallow ego up.

Shut your ego up right now. Your ego brings up all your past conditions and failures to the surface. You are a human being who can make a conscious choice today to drop your ego and find the love within yourself that is always there. You are a magnificent human being, never forget that. Shut your ego up right now and send it packing.Your ego only makes you feel afraid. Say goodbye to it today.  

Buy yourself a treat once in a while.

Buy yourself a present. There are a million articles out there blabbering about the evils of being materialistic. Most of this is pure bullshit. There is nothing wrong with treating yourself with a nice purchase for all your hard work. So buy that car, plasma TV, or night out. But don’t think you are a better person because of that new car. You aren’t. It’s a piece of metal on wheels. Just because you are driving it doesn’t make you better than Bob next door. So buy yourself a treat, but don’t identify yourself with it. Once you identify yourself with your stuff you become a shallow, ego filled and empty person. Enjoy your treat for what it is. No more no less. Oh yes and please make sure you can afford it. That always helps. Or else you start worrying again.

Have dinner with your close friends.

It has been proven that life’s happiest moments occur when you are with your good friends. Have a dinner party and drinks at least once a week. Laugh. Cry. Joke. Have deep and meaningful conversations. Love life with your best friends. Watch the stars together. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

So what makes you happy?

If you enjoyed this post today, please do me a big favor and use the “Twitter” button down below (click on the + sign) to share it with your Twitter friends and followers (You can also share it on Facebook, Digg, or any of the other sites you see below as well).

How To Start An Internet Business

I will be sending out an E-mail to my nearing 5000 subscribers this week. Some have subscribed to the free version of www.mylifechanges.com and some to the deluxe paid version. I have had many people ask me how or why I started this business and I will now answer you.

Passion

I have had an intense passion to start my own business since as long as I can remember. I also have a deep passion for physiology, sociology, self development and also business. I am constantly reading (hundreds of books) and refining my own thoughts about what is the best life to live. I have also lived an interesting life, being adopted, and half Asian to European parents in North America. I have lived through a couple of very tough health issues that affected me both mentally and physically. Without the passion to try to make a difference in this world my web site would have never succeeded. I believe without a doubt in my mind that this is something I love to do. I love to provide great information. I love to write my own articles. I want you to learn and help me learn. Occasionally I just want to kick people’s asses really hard, because making life changes isn’t that hard. Just start. Today.

Money

Yes, I would love to make enough money to live off this site or at least nicely supplement my day income. I worked hard to design the website, I believe I am providing a valuable service (Do you want to change your life?) and I don’t want to give it away for free. I invested thousands of dollars in the initial start up when the technology was weaker and I required outside consultation. There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money, unless that is your only objective. Then the passion is gone. I am competing on a global scale here. It is a huge market. For 5 dollars a month you can begin to understand and make life changes. Five dollars! Less than a Happy Meal… I think.

Drive

I work on the site after my day job (I have consulted and and worked at some of the most successful pharmaceutical and aerospace companies in the world). It isn’t always easy to do. But I can’t just quit my day job. I would be a fool to do that. So I find myself tapping away on the laptop at Midnight, researching and reading E-mails late at night. Now you can understand how passion comes into play. Without the passion in my blood this would have stopped many years ago. Yes, it takes work and drive, but this work is connecting me to thousands of people and I cannot ask for anything more.

Overcoming failure

I once lost all my feeds to my blog. I was severely disappointed and never understood what happened. So I had to start over and build back a reader base with lots more completion facing me. Just the thought of that can be discouraging. But I will not give up. I will keep learning from setbacks and I will grow stronger from them. The thing about having a business on the internet is that your completion is global and almost every idea has been tried. So there were plenty of times when I thought my idea was fantastic yet nobody cared. I thought people would swarm the site. This happens rarely. When it does, it is most likely because you have learnt from failures and found a winning formula.

Good Luck to you if you decide to follow this path. And send me an E-mail at terry@mylifechanges.com

I will be happy to answer you.

If you enjoyed this post today, please do me a big favor and use the “Twitter” button down below (click on the + sign) to share it with your Twitter friends and followers (You can also share it on Facebook, Digg, or any of the other sites you see below as well).

Finding Peace And Harmony With Meditation

Plenty of people ask me how to meditate.

I think a better question would be why I meditate.

Meditation is about letting go of the normal world and associated thoughts that constantly invade the senses and mind. Meditation is about just being instead of doing. Meditation is about becoming friends with yourself and realizing that separation from the ego brings freedom and happiness.

We bombard ourselves with thoughts beginning with I. I need to pay the bills. I need to lose weight. I need to buy a new something. I should be eating better.  Probably 80% of these thoughts are constantly and annoyingly repeating themselves from one day to the next.  It seems to be a constant struggle. Meditation trains you to quiet the mind and look at life from new perspective. By calming the mind, you begin to distance yourself from all that mindless chatter and begin to think with more clarity. Meditation reduces snap decisions and trains you to look at yourself and your thoughts with a friendly curiosity. Instead of being overwhelmed with sudden angry thoughts, you become more inquisitive about your thoughts. Most importantly meditation slows down and relaxes the mind. Don’t we all want that? Don’t we want to exercise the body and the mind?

By practicing meditation, you will find that it affects your whole day. Decisions are made with more clarity. Peacefulness resides in the background of you at all times. You realize that struggling with thoughts all the time was a waste of time.  Life will throw you curve balls all the time. It isn’t easy sometimes. But the more you are able to quiet your thoughts and stop labeling and twisting them, the easier it becomes.

So step out of all those thoughts of desire, dislike, fear, and ego. Don’t let them control you. You can learn to control them.  Soon you will see yourself changing and become friends with yourself and your thoughts. You will chase your thought less often, become less judgmental and see the world with more clarity.

And finally, if you use the meditation technique of following your breath throughout the day, you will be living in the present moment more often. This is the ultimate goal of course, because the more you live in the moment, the more you give your life your fullest attention. Don’t you want to be aware of life and all it has to offer? I certainly hope so.

If you enjoyed this post today, please do me a big favor and use the “Twitter” button down below (click on the + sign) to share it with your Twitter friends and followers (You can also share it on Facebook, Digg, or any of the other sites you see below as well).

Back In The Saddle

Just got back from vacation in Ogunquit, Maine. Had a great time. Lots of beach time, wonderful meals and a couple bottles of wine.

I’ll be back writing some blog posts this week. All the posts here are written by me. I’m really into living in the present moment these days. I’ve focused on awareness of “now” and trying to let go of thinking about the past or present. I find living in the moment probably the best thing I’ve discovered in a long time. I find myself almost in a state of quiet meditation more often which is a much more accepting and peaceful way to live.

I also would like to touch on my own life changes, specifically around getting in shape and becoming financially independent. I might even let you see how I’m doing in my own life changes and post my tracker statistics for you to follow. That would be fun. I think.

I hope you subscribe to my RSS feed, and follow me. The more people I’m accountable to the better.

I think.