Happy 2011!!!!

I wish you all the best for 2011!

I just moved so I will be busy unpacking and getting ready my new home for some weeks.  I will write you back by the end of January 2011.

See you further on up the road!
Jorge

I have the right to... a challenge!

I have a challenge for you:  Are you able to read the following lines for 11 days just before going to bed?  If you accept the challenge, let me know how you feel every morning when you wake up.

I have the right to...   

I have the right to a better life.  I demand the best for me, and I achieve it.

I have the right to create the future I want.  I create it at every moment, with every step I take, with every book I read, with every person I meet.

I have the right to enjoy my family.  I allow myself to love, to enjoy every moment I spend with my loved ones, to create complicity, joy, shared emotions, games, laughts, and empathy.

I have the right to feel free.  I allow myself to choose, speak and act with all freedom, and I assume the responsibility it takes. Furthermore, I allow myself to choose, speak and act with full responsibility, and I enjoy the freedom this brings to me.

I have the right to grow.  I learn with and in everything I do, and I become more.  Stronger, healthier, wiser, more cheerful, kinder, more respectful and tolerant, humbler, greater, I become simply more.

I have the right to believe.  I believe in myself and in others.  I believe in my abilities, in my skills, even in those that I have not shown consciously yet.  I believe in my inner wisdom, that helps me to find my way, to define it, and follow it, step after step.  I live with a purpose, and I am committed to fulfill it.

My life is a continuous of responsibility and decisions. I enjoy, learn, act, and achieve my goals.

Meeting expectations or making your dreams real?

Do you know somebody who wastes a lot of time trying to meet expectations of others?  Maybe somebody close to you?  
Family, friends, colleagues, partner, sons,... they all seem to demand my time and attention. Sometimes it becomes easy to lose track going from one place to another, trying to meet all their expectations, doing whatever it takes to be on good terms with everybody.

15-minute appointments, runing from one place to another, always looking at the watch... at other people's watch.

And... what happened with my dreams?  where did they go?  The answer is simple, "I postponed them".

This death penalty that we adjudge, conscious or unconciously, leads us to a state of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. To others, we are always the "good boys"..."such a nice guy!"..."always smiling"... and in reality we are hiding our feelings of anger, fear, desperation... to get their approval.

How can we get out of this vicious circle?
Today I will go to bed thinking that tomorrow is a very especial day.  I will wake up and sit at my desk, first thing in the morning, with a watch, a couple of blank sheets, and a pen.  I will write for 5 minutes all these dreams that I keep in my heart, waiting to catch my attention and love.  Five minutes.  Neither one nor ten, only 5 minues.  What it is not written, it does not exist.  Today is Christmas time.  I will write my wish letter.

Next, I will order my dreams in three stages: to be fulfilled in one, five or ten years time.  I will hang the ordered dream list on my bedroom door, or wherever I can see it every day.  And every single day, when I wake up, the first thing I will do is to dedicate TEN minutes of my precious time to pay attention to my dreams, and live them in my mind as if they were already real... feeling that wonderful trip I always wanted to do, feeling living in the house of my dreams with my loved ones

Do you dare to do it? I guarantee that your life will change completely... in only 10 minutes.  Life is about taking decisions.  What have you decided?

How well do you know yourself?

"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power."
—Lao Tzu

The quest for growth and contribution always starts by looking into our values, strengths and skills to be further developed.

I invite you to book 15 minutes of your time to know yourself better and discover what drives you and what shuts you down, by filling the following Personal Strengths Profile at Anthony Robbins' website, free of charge.

Did you find out something new about yourself?  How would you use this information to enjoy more life?  I look forward to reading your comments!

What do you want? What is it what you really want now?

Stop for a moment what you are doing, forget about the past and future and...

Imagine you have all the means you need to get whatever you want...

what is it what you want?

Imagine you are living wherever you want...

where would you live?

Imagine you share this moment with whoever you want...

with whom would you share this moment?

Imagine you can do whatever you want... 

what would you do right now?

Finally, imagine you are in control of a sofisticated machine able to manifest all of this in your life...

This machine exists.  It is your brain.  It has been design and created to fullfill this purpose, without judgements, whatever you focus on.
The truth is... whatever you imagine, if you focus on it and you experience it emotionally, it becomes real.  Your brain cannot distinguish something you dream that way with what we call reality.  If you consistently focus on these thoughts, they will expand and come alive, they will modify your beliefs first, then your actions, and finally the results you get... until the thoughts become real or you kill them by dispersing your attention.

Remember when you were a child or even better, look at the children around you.  How do they get what they want?
First they dream about something or find out what they want.  Then they focus their attention on it until they get it, consistently,... sometimes up to the exasperation of their parents!  Once they get it, the set a new goal and do the same, again and again, just changing the course depending on the feedback they get, their attention always fixed on their goal.

Let yourself be a child again:  Imagine... focus your attention... and act, consistently, until you reach your goal!

Time… what a lie!

How many times we have thought: 
it is taking too long… it is lasting so little… I am late… it shouldn’t take too much… when I finish this I will be able to do that… I don’t have enough time to do all the things I want…?

I wonder whether the person who invented the word time thought about the perverse consequences of focusing our attention obsessively on it.

Sometimes we waste our lives running from one place to another, from a meeting to another, from a task to another, following a plan that we defined or, even worse, let somebody else define for us.

Time is the result of perception.

When we feel happy, time flies. It is as if it never existed, and we live so intensively the present that there is no place for worries and stress. We passionately enjoy the moment, and nothing else matters.

When we feel bored, annoyed or stressed, we wish time passed away fast. We want to escape from this moment, as if this would bring us more peace or happiness.

Whenever I feel so, I force myself to stop, focus on the present moment, observe what I feel and question my attitude:

• What am I thinking right now that makes me feel like this? What is this feeling telling me about how I look to reality?
• What can I choose to think to feel happier? What can I learn from this moment? How can I use this moment to achieve my goals even faster?

At the moment I asked myself these questions, the inner clock stops. I become in control again, balanced, and centered in the present. Time does not exist any longer.

As the poem says: I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul

Finding the healing power of your mind

Last Saturday I had the pleasure to participate in a seminar on Noesiology and Noesitherapy by Dr. Angel Escudero, medical doctor and surgeon with nearly 40 years of experience in surgery of any kind empowering the pacient mind for anesthesia with total consciousness.

Noesiology is a term coined by Dr. Escudero to define the science that studies the effect of THOUGHTS in human life.  In previous posts I have stressed the importance of beliefs, perception and focus in our life experience.  In this great seminar, Dr. Escudero shared with us his experience on the effects on health of holding a positive attitude towards life.

Positive thoughts engage a positive biological response (PBR) in the body that induces, among others, muscle relaxation, normal blood pressure, lower heart rates and more effective inmune response.  The simplest indicator of PBR is a mouth full of fluid saliva.   A steady PBR is the best method to maintain a great health state, full of vitality.  In this state, our brain is able to contribute to our goals and wellbeing even beyond current expectations, and what we call miracles can occur in a natural manner.

According to Dr. Escudero, the recipe for stimulating a positive biological response and program our brain to achieve a goal is:

1. Create the habit to keep our mouth with fluid saliva
2. Use always positive words when we speak, and positive thoughts
3. When something "bad" happens, search for the opposite good and state:  I need... and add words without limits describing the good you need, and keep thinking and saying "... and every time is more easily for me to get it".   For example:  If I have fear :  I need certainty, courage, resolution, confidence, faith, help, strength and will and every time is more easily for me to get it.
4. Keep doing these steps until you achieve your goal.

In the video below, you will enjoy a demonstration of Dr. Angel Escudero's thinking based anesthesia applied to pregnant women to program them to give birth with no pains whatsoever.
Thanks a lot, Angel, for sharing us your knowledge and experience, and for contributing to make this a better world!

Are you being your best friend?

Whenever we know a good friend has a problem, we tend to caress him, to encourage him to overcome it.
We tell him that it is not so important, that he will manage to find a way.
We tell him that we believe in his ability to succeed and we help him to relax and get ready to find a solution.

However, sometimes we are not able to do the same for ourselves, and we treat ourselves harshly instead of supporting ourselves as our best friend would do.   
Don't we deserve what we do for our best friends? Would we treat that way a good friend who has a problem? Are we worth less than him? Do we find certain pleasure or comfort in punishing ourselves? What makes us apply different scales to us and to other people?

These are important questions.  They tell us the truth about what we believe we are worth as compared to others. If any of the answers is discomforting, you may be willing to change your beliefs and start treating you as your best friend.  After all, you are the only one who shares 100% of the time with yourself.  Better be on good terms with yourself!

Which glasses are you wearing now?

Recently I posted on the benefits not to take anything personally.
I can't stress enough how different your life will be if you follow this suggestion!

In fact, we make grow many of the situations we find everyday by just focusing on them and making them become "problems".  It is the pair of glasses we wear at that precise moment what makes us decide to consider the situation a problem, or a little inconvenience, or an unexpected result, or even an adventure!
We have the choice to decide which pair of glasses we wear:  it just requires to be aware of this: your thoughts are not you. We empower them by giving them our attention and supporting them with our feelings. We make them strong and eternal or let them pass away, depending on how we respond to them.
Whenever you face what it first seems to you as a problem, just take a deep breath, and choose to wear a different pair of glasses, choose something that motivates you, and focus your attention with questions and emotions:

How curious!! I didn't expect something like this!  What can I learn from it?  How can I use this result to achieve my goal, to achieve what I planned?  How can I make of this a way to achieve my goal even faster?

I have empowering beliefs that support me in these situations.
I believe that whatever happens around me, it is for my greatest good. I always believed that what matters is the long term result.  As long as I am focused on something, it does not matter the time it takes, but I will get my goal.  In fact, this makes me feel free of the time demands.  I ask myself, what else can I do to achieve my goal?  And whatever happens is a lesson for me, a lesson about flow, change, and acceptance, in my way to become a better person.  With this pair of glasses, I am unstoppable.  Sometimes I run, sometimes I crawl, but I am certain to move towards my goals.  This is my pair of glasses.

Which pair of glasses are you wearing right now?
Maybe you feel excited.  Maybe you feel skeptic.  It is your choice. Your feelings tell you which glasses you wear.  Never blame, but thank them.  They give you feedback.  It is up to you to choose another pair if this one doesn't suit you.

The Elders... a foolish dream or the dawn of global awareness?

A couple of years ago, I read about The Elders, a group of global leaders gathered together by Nelson Mandela in 2007 and founded by Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel,  who "offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity".

I was first shocked I hadn't heard of them earlier.  I quickly browsed their home page and immediately fell in love with the idea: we are in a global village and, as it is/was the custom in African villages, the global elders guide and inspire us to create a better world.

Btw, the previus post Invictus displays an inspiring poem by William Ernest Henley, leitmotiv of the movie with the same name directed by Clint Eastwood and with the participation of Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon.  If you haven't watched it yet, I encourage you to do it as a source for inspiration.

Do you feel it as a foolish dream? or is it rather a manifestation of  global awareness?

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 
 

by  William Ernest Henley

Challenge your fears!

What are you afraid of now?  
What are your deepest fears right now?
If I look into my past, I grew a lot whenever I asked myself these questions and challenged the answers my mind gave me.  These questions made me aware of unconscious beliefs that were limiting my behavior.
Once I was aware of them, I was free to choose another view, challenge the fear, and make my personal power grow. 
I want to share with you this wonderful poem by William Arthur Ward,  

To Risk 

which arrived to me in a Spanish translation in the blog of my dear friend Eva Sandoval.

Response vs. Reaction

Do you know the difference between response and reaction?

Many times we feel hurt by acts and words that somebody else did or said. We take them personally, and we react. Often this reaction worsens the situation and leads to an scalating spiral of verbal and even physical violence. And later, when the storm is over, we regret many things of what we said...

How do we change this pattern?  How shall we deal with these situations?
We need to respond instead of reacting.  To respond means first to follow one of the four agreements of Don Miguel Ruiz, an agreement with ourselves, that says:

Don't take anything personally

whatever other people do or say stems from THEIR way of interpreting life and reality, based solely on their beliefs, which limit their perception and thereby their ability to act otherwise.
As Don Miguel Ruiz says "they are on their dream of reality".

Once we accept this agreement, our focus changes completely.  We become more present and able to deal with the situation in a constructive way.  The best effect of this agreement is that we will save ourselves a lot of needless suffering. We are then empowered to connect with our heart, and from that place find a solution... the right words... the right act... according to our greater values.  We will then be able to support that person, feel more empathy, and help him/her if that is what we choose to do.

About From my heart

Life is a magnificent experience of love, growth and contribution. Life is excellence in every single aspect we focus on, it is eternal presence, energy and flow. This blog is intended to reflect this view, to be an anchor for other seekers in our pursuit for happyness.

Purpose of my life

• To be light & love, and shed it around to make my life and the life of others physically, emotionally and spiritually more healthy.
• To grow and contribute expanding my limits continuously, by being an example of unconditional love and gratitude and by learning from those who have already achieved higher levels of growth, gratitude, contribution and compassion.
• To enhance and catalyze extraordinary human relations and achievements, by transfering the experience, skills, values, and attitudes to others the best I can at every moment.
• To enjoy life in its manifold dimensions, as a man, as a father, as a husband, as a son, as a brother, as a student, as a teacher, as a friend, and as many other roles I play, with gratitude, respect, love and passion.