Don't forget to play those tunes.

Hi y'all

I have been using a deluxe version of this site for over a year so far. It has easily facilitated the tracking of my personal core values and goals. Sure there is a goal that is always red, but just having it in the database is extremely important to me, and I continue to update the colours each week. I love the automatic E-mail reminder function.

My core values evolve over time and it is time to update them. As my core values evolve, my goals evolve. Let's just say that I have become significantly more determined, and private. When I update this blog, or my goals, I crank out some thunderously loud music. Current tunes are "Feelin' Satisfied" by Boston and "So Much To Say" by Dave Matthews Band.

I built this site with the idea of connecting core values and goals with a colourful tracker, along with a bundle of other terrific tools. So far it has been a colossal accomplishment and success.

Best Always
Terry
Founder
www.mylifechanges.com

With the many of hundreds of people joining just over the last month I'm thrilled about the future of this goal setting site.

I would love for you to tell your friends, family, classmates, co-workers and anyone else about this goal setting and value tracking website. Please find it in you heart to do so. Word of mouth is the very best marketing tool.

Here is the tell a friend link http://www.mylifechanges.com/invite.php

I truly hope you are using the databases, tracking your goals and seeing the powerful visuals that come with the reporting.

Life rewards action.

Best Always
Founder
Terry
http://www.mylifechanges.com/

Goal Setting, Happiness and Imagination.

So I was chit chatting with a friend of my moms today. She was talking about when she was petting cheetahs in Africa and sand surfing in New Zealand. This was a few years ago when she was in her 70's. Whaa? Have I petted any cheetahs? In Africa? Noooo. It's just astounding what some people have done and at what stage of life. And it was a supremely satisfying travel conversation

I'm reading the book, "Struggling On Happiness" by a renowned Harvard teacher and I like the way he thinks.

Basically he states that the biggest tool we have as a species is the ability to mentally transport ourselves into the future (use imagination) and ask ourselves how we feel there. That is what is called – searching for happiness. It is not an exact science. For example many people imagine that children will bring great happiness, but in the end they inflict much work on us with snippets of happiness here and there. And we become happier when they leave the nest.

Or that happiness is working hard in our economy, yet all the time spent accumulating great wealth actually takes us away from happiness.

Interesting.

Our imagination is deeply intertwined with our happiness and so much more powerful than we realize.

So when we perfom our goal setting it's important to imagine how each goal will really make us feel in the future. It may just be spending morning time walking in the fresh air or taking a fabulous cruise. It's how we imagine these expriences will make us feel. And we should make sure we have all the facts straight when we do imagine.

How do your goals make you feel?

Best

Terry
Founder
www.mylifechanges.com

Goals

I love the smell of exposed earth as the winter snow retreats. These earthy scents are a perennial treat for me as the weather warms up and I finally feel the soft warmth of the spring sun on my face. The dogs especially love sniffing the forest floor excitingly looking for other doggy scents. This is their way of socializing with other canine friends.

I have set myself a goal of performing cardio at least twice a week. I found that immediately trying for three times a week was discouraging from the onset. I have also incorporated hip stretches into my morning routine to counteract all the muscle tightness from the gruelling back exercises. I am pushing the two herniated discs into retreat.

Morning meditation is going extremely well. I had a chat with my buddy at Starbucks and we both agree that morning meditation (or mindfulness) is the ultimate way to start the day. It clears the mind and is a fantastic mind workout, leading to increased inner peace, focus, appreciation and harmony throughout the entire day. I find myself much more effective and calmer. I'm sold. This is a life long commitment.

I try to ask myself during stressful times, "If I were going to die tonight, is this the way I would spend my last day?"

What goals are you setting? What habits are you breaking? What choices are you making?

Hope life is good.

Best
Terry

Founder

Let things be just the way they are.

I passed by a large dead dog on the highway yesterday. As my mind quickly built up a scenario of the last moments of that dog's life, I felt a lump in my throat. No animal should die on a cement highway.

But life is like that. There are no sure things, the curtain may fall anytime. Impermanence is a constant. Fall brings us the fluttering of dead leaves and spring brings us new green buds. The world is constantly shifting

We too shall die one day. Our lives are but a blip on the radar of mankind's existence.

Depressing? No. It just means that life is too short to bitch and moan and wish bad things on others.

I am digging deep these days trying to discover if I am leading a life that I truly believe in. It's like I am stepping outside of myself and connecting with myself once again.

I look forward to the silent room and mediation in the mornings. It may just become my favourite time of day. Just my breath and I, free of thought.

Free.

It was high on the shoulder of the mountain, within a beautiful mixed stand of conifers that delineated the entire scene, for they stood at the farthest edge of sight in every direction. They stood like sentries surrounded by a vast openness, an emptiness that acted upon all that it enclosed. Overhead, the openness was omnipresent and fell and purified the mind, cleansed it of the world far below.

The lake reflected it all clearly like a mirror. There was no wind to ruffle the tranquil glasslike surface. When the surface becomes ruffled, it cannot affect the hidden depths but still there is distortion, and the images of pure, cool mountains are broken into shattered fragments.

The mind seems to become murky and ceases to reflect faithfully when it holds onto even one of the myriad things that are forever passing peacefully through. Even the difficulties and the pains come and go peacefully if you let them. Don’t dwell in the distorting ripples of memory and imagination, but always return to the still point of the present. Let things be just the way they are.

- from Journeys on Mind Mountain

I wish I had started this sooner

We just don't slow down and give enough sincere thanks to the world. We don’t allow gratitude and appreciation to become a constant in our lives. How many people have sacrificed moments of their lives to bring you that bowl of cereal in morning? Guessing from all the bowls of cereal, over the years, probably thousands. I never thought of that. Sometimes I look down at my bowl in the morning and think.

I am finally seriously practising meditation in the morning. After years of searching, I have found a meditation method that appeals and teaches me. I can now empty my mind of thoughts and find inner peace to begin the day. Starting the day this way allows me to dislodge the fear, conditioning, judgements and bias that try to latch on to me in the morning. I see, smell, hear, taste and feel the world through fresh eyes, ears, nose and mind each morning. I am giving birth to endless possibilities each morning.

I wish I had started this sooner.

Thanks alot GM!

A Led Zeppelin song started the other day on my Itunes and all I could think of at first was Cadillac. I don’t want to think of Cadillac. Cadillac uses that particular song on many of its advertisements. That song used to remind me of days gone by, rebellious teenager angst and pure rock and roll.

Songs create incredibly strong imprints in our minds, back to times of joy, love, tears, childhood friends and many more deep emotional experiences. Now corporations are paying the likes of Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and hundreds of other musicians for the rights to use their songs in advertisements. Up to 15 million dollars a pop. When the Rolling Stones played, Start Me Up, during the Super bowl, a small imprint in of me thought about Microsoft, which annoyingly used the song over and over in commercials.

When these musicians wrote these songs, is that what they had in mind? Money talks. It's a shame that some great rock and roll bands are selling themselves out and ruining the soul of their tunes and lyrics to big business.