Firstly, thank you all for your response to this short clip. There were really three reasons why I put this up here:
1. to stimulate healthy debate on the subject, images and words that are presented;
2. to find out what can be done to improve on future video clips - technical know-how, content material, etc.
3. to gauge reaction to the content material - this material will be included in a future course on human development that I will be making available in the next few months, and with your help, I can create wider and more far-reaching information that is pertinent to anyone.
Now down to the nitty-gritty....
Well it's a lovely positive message and if you were feeling even the tiniest bit positive I'm sure it would stimulate you into greater positivity and maybe success.
Thank you Ari. That is the idea of it. However, in isolation, the full meaning of the word or concept of
success is somewhat meaningless as it is an inherent part of human nature to pay more attention to our so-called failures than it is to acknowledge, celebrate and learn from our successes. All too often people gravitate towards the failures in their lives, giving little or no thought as to the meaning and long-term benefits these failures can provide for us.
At the moment, however, I am feeling very very down for several reasons and watching that made me feel more depressed than ever.
I can fully understand this Ari. As I mentioned above, in isolation, this message is somewhat meaningless. However, putting it into context this aspect of human development requires a considerable amount of elaboration and a desire to transmute negativity into positivity - not simply a want, a wish, or a dream to do so, but a
desire. There is an enormous difference here.
there is something about "success" and looking at Richard Branson that makes me feel that I am not like that and I am a failure.
I think it is that we can associate a
successful person with someone like Mr Branson. We look at the man and think how his financial wealth has got him to where he is now. And that is fine if you are only concerned with what you see on the surface and do not take the time to look deeper at the how and why of where he is today. But the important part of your statement here is the word
feel. Looking at the context of the sentence, you have used the word
feel to define a particular type of
thought or
thinking. This is something we do all the time; we associate our thinking processes (thoughts) with the feelings we generate within as a result of the experiences and conditioning we have been exposed to throughout our lives culminating in any one particular point in time - NOW. The emotional responses we create (and we do create these responses internally) in any particular direction will reinforce what we are thinking at the time. When we combine these thought and emotional processes over a period of time, we begin to associate these with the world around us and, in particular, with
OUR individual view of the world around us.
I have had terrible problems within my family therefore I am not a success there.
I am assuming by this you mean your children and your husband? Perhaps this should include your extended family? [These two questions do not require an answer here Ari.] I would have to ask, though, what you define these
terrible problems to be. Obviously you have determined that whatever it was you did or didn't do with your family now leaves you with a form of helplessness and failure, particularly as you reflect back on these things.
Now, what I will ask here is that you do a little exercise for yourself. I can well imagine the discomfort this may bring to you whilst doing it, but I can assure you it will begin to open your mind to alternatives and a different perspective. What I would like you to do is the following:
1. Take a sheet of paper (you may find you will need more than one sheet).
2. Rule up two columns - one headed
Negatives, the other headed
Positives.
3. Write down all the negative things you can possibly think of that you believe apply to your failures with your family members. Be specific and honest with yourself here.
4. In your Positive column, write down a positive that will contradict the negative you have written in the Negative column. This may take a little thought on your part, but persist until you have found a positive comment to make.
For example:
Negative:
'I didn't spend enough time with my daughter.'Positive:
'My daughter is a very strong and independent woman.'Negative:
'I hate my ex-husband because he abandoned me.'Positive:
'I have been given the opportunity to put all my love into my children.'Please note here Ari, these are merely examples. I do not know if they apply to you or not, but they are designed to give you an idea of what it is we are trying to achieve here.
Now, this little exercise could take quite some time (days or even weeks to do), but don't worry about that. The length of time taken to do this exercise is not important. What is important is that you realise that for every so-called negative you perceive, something positive has come out of it. You may not see the positive straight away, and that is quite natural because you have conditioned yourself to see only the negative (we're all very, very good at doing that one!), but persist until you do find the positive, for it will surely be there.
You can apply this technique to your marriage, your job, your relationship with friends, your relationship with the obnoxious staff member down at your local supermarket or department store. In fact, you can apply this exercise to anything.
This little exercise also applies to the reverse (and this can be a little difficult at first). What you do is you take a Positive and find a Negative to counter your positive. However, you take one further step here and you find a Solution. For example:
Positive:
'I ran out of perfume today so bought the last bottle of Channel No. 5 perfume from the perfume shop today.'Negative:
'I felt sorry for the lady behind me who wanted to buy the same perfume, but now she can't because there is no more to be sold in the shop.'Resolution:
'I know the store will re-order its supply of Channel No. 5 perfume and will probably have it back in the shop in the next few days, so people can once again buy it and the lady that missed out today will soon have her perfume too.'As you complete the exercises (particularly the first one) you will begin to realise that if we put our minds to work, we will always find a positive to counter our negative feelings/thoughts. What I must stipulate here is this exercise is solely for YOU (the individual doing the exercise) and cannot be transferred to anyone else. Why not? Because you are not someone else, you are not that other person, you are simply YOU. You cannot say that this does not apply to, for example, the starving child in Africa, simply because you are not that starving child and you have no real idea what that child may be thinking and feeling. You may think you do, but you are not in that position of the starving child!
One thing that must be remembered here is that
you cannot change the past. There is absolutely nothing that can be done about something that has already happened or taken place. Therefore, spending time on regrets is of little value other than those regrets providing you with the impetus and opportunities to make sure these mistakes do not happen again thereby enabling you to provide for a more positive future outcome to similar situations you may find yourself in or involved with.
Now, what has all this to do with
success?
You may begin to see here that success, like most other concepts, is a state of mind. We perceive success in others through our own conditioning and the experiences we have gained through that conditioning. Whether that experience has been positive or negative is dependent solely upon your reactions to your past experiences and the conditioning that is associated with those experiences.
In order to understand success, you need a fairly good understanding of the following:
- Thought - what is thought and how does it operate internally and externally.
- Emotions - what are emotions and how do they affect us.
- Desire - what is desire and how do we use it to achieve our goals.
- Confidence - do we have the confidence in ourselves and our abilities to achieve our goals.
- Goal setting - what are we aiming to achieve and what is our ultimate destination in any one or more endeavour.
- Cause and Effect - every action has its reaction, whether they be positive or negative reactions.
- The Law of Affinity - like attracts like; As you sew, so you reap. The much touted Law of Attraction is a lesser aspect of this.
- Consciousness - how does the conscious mind operate in all this.
- Subconscious - how does the subconscious mind determine our responses and the actions we take.
- Achievement - how does achievement/s affect our self-concept of success.
- Polarity - everything has its equal opposite.
- Gender - more like gestation - there is a natural process in evolution, from inception to death and a path that must be followed in order to reach one's goal.
For success to work in your favour, you do not need a comprehensive understanding of the above - although working towards that understanding will only enhance your levels of success. What is needed is an innate understanding that there are certain principles involved that allow us to achieve success in whatever forms we believe success to take.
Like everyone I have my ups and downs and I try to remain positive and also draw positive energy to me when things go wrong. However, it simply doesn't always work!
I quite agree. It doesn't always work. But we have to understand why it doesn't always work. The short answer is, we tend to give up before we have a chance to succeed!
Now, before we go into fits of indignation, contemplate this: When we find ourselves enveloped in misfortune and this misfortune is being piled high upon us, what happens? We eventually bring ourselves to a state of hopelessness and decide to give up fighting whatever issue is before us. In other words, we quit. We
believe that things are not going right (and they probably aren't) for us. We
think of the things surrounding these woes we are facing and our
thoughts magnify the situation. We begin to see the negative in everything around us and observe (if we can) that no matter what we try to do, things just
seem to get worse. We note that every system of justice we try to bring in to play just doesn't work for us, thereby compounding the frustration and helplessness of the situation. So eventually we give up in absolute disgust, despondency, disillusionment, etc. We become embittered, irresolute, and so-forth, and we somehow obtain the absolute knowledge that this sort of thing is going to happen time and time again; and it usually does! There are principles involved here that are far too lengthy to go into in this post, but will be dealt with at a later time and elsewhere on the CC site.
Perhaps it fails because I am doing something wrong,
[There is not the space to go into details here with the answers I am giving Gilly, I am merely letting readers know that there is more.]
You are right here with this one. But in all probability you may not even be aware you are not doing something or doing something wrong.
perhaps because it is meant to be the way it is,
If you believe this to be the case, then it surely will be for you. One has to remember Cause and Effect here - you may have started an action of some kind and have finally reached a point in time where your choices are limited to the extend any possible choices may be non-existent for you.
perhaps because ultimately, I am the Captain of my Ship and the Master of my Soul, and made the wrong decisions or took the wrong turnings in life???
Exactly! But remember, the same applies for every single success you have achieved throughout your life!
I wish it were all this simple. That certain facets of my life could be changed for the better with positivity, but some of these facets are ruled by hard facts and outside influences which I cannot change. What I do is try to find a way around them, sometimes with success, sometimes not.
One of the things with the human psyche is that it has been trained from birth (basically) to believe that things are complicated. For the uninitiated in anything, this is so. However, as we begin to understand more and more via the acquisition of information, experience and application, we realise that things are
not that complicated after all.
You can think and write and state positive things until the cows come home, but that will not make you a positive person or give you a positive outlook
until you add emotion, goals, and so forth.
For those influences we cannot change, we need to find ways around them. By this, I mean we need to find a way (or ways) in which we can effectively deal with these influences and the consequences they can present us with.
The object here is not so much circumvention, but mitigation. We need to turn these seeming negative things to our advantage. Think about how this can be done...
I do believe that having a positive attitude to life helps in almost every way, health, wealth, family etc.,
It all certainly helps.
but I also know stuff happens which throws us off balance and we cannot seem to just think it right again.
I would agree only in part with this Gilly. Stuff certainly does happen to throw us off balance. Take, for instance, a force 9 earthquake. There is absolutely nothing you can do to stop the earthquake from happening. There may also be absolutely nothing you can do to prevent your home from being destroyed by this earthquake. So if there are situations where you find yourself in that you have absolutely no control over, what would you do? By all means, try and fight this tectonic plate movement if you want to - you will definitely lose - but by all means, give it a go if you feel you must; just be prepared for the consequences. And you are right Gilly, we cannot simply "think it right again". Thinking has neither power, effect nor strength
unless we act upon it. We can't prevent the earthquake, but we can minimise the damage to varying degrees. We can certainly determine what the impact on ourselves would be should such an event happen and take the necessary steps to help prepare ourselves. [This is a much more indepth subject Gilly that I cannot justify going into detail in this thread. It's a series of topics all of its own...]
Maybe it is time to throw more light on this here on these forums Lane? To explain more fully what this is really all about, and if one can change the direction of one's life, then HOW do we do this and win?
This is a start Gilly, but only that. As for explanations; there simply isn't enough space here to give justice to explanations, ideas and concepts. There are numerous things I have already mentioned in this post that are not done justice to here, and are only mentioned without adequate explanation, in an attempt to give you an idea about success. How that has panned out, I'll no doubt find out soon enough.
One can definitely change one's direction in life. All it takes is a single thought to do so; take action on that/those thought/s, then live the change.
then HOW do we do this and win?I must admit, I did chuckle with this one... You're right. We are at war, but not with foe from across the waters, the Illuminati, the Government, Muslims, Christians, etc., etc. No, we are at war with ourselves. That war is not such a hard one either. If you choose to win, and are determined to do so, then you will. Once, and only once, you have won the majority of internal battles, can you start turning your gaze to the greater outside world. Pointless trying to do otherwise I'm afraid.
One thing though; it is never too late or too early to make a start.
