But women continue to face an age-old struggle between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. An educated young woman who handles her job with great success finds that the most difficult part of her life might be her mother-in-law. Ask a mother-in-law what irks her most, and she’s likely to talk about the shortcomings in her daughter-in-law.

A disagreement between a mother and daughter is seen as a simple squabble. But, if the same scenario is played out between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, it might be viewed as harassment on both sides. You have a potentially combustible situation that can negatively impact everyone in the family. Rich or poor, well-educated or not, these tensions are seen in every household throughout the country.

Light of intelligence

The good news is that there are solutions. Let’s take a deeper look at the situation to understand the under lying dynamics. Women hold the light for families and are the builders of civilization. Love is the greatest asset in women, but they are more than just that. Women are also an embodiment of creativity, active intelligence and dynamic power. These qualities are attributes of The Trinity of Power in action—the relationship between will-power, love-wisdom and creativity-intelligence. Understanding this paradigm is important because your strengths can be the source of your seeds of failure and your weaknesses can be the source of your seeds of success.

Creative intelligence is a crucial element within the Trinity of Power. In addition to analysing and fostering concrete and abstract thinking, you can also identify sources of failure from blind spots, negative influence of others, decisions made out of anger, frustration, fear, jealousy, and lower passion.

All members in a family can reduce suffering by looking inward and becoming aware of their own negative attitudes and vices. Then, it is easier to execute steps to reduce:

• Excessiveness including over attachment to ideas as well as individuals
• Harmful thoughts, words and actions including being judgmental of others
• Stealing at all levels, including ideas of others
• Falsehood or misleading others. This includes the tendency towards inhibition to avoid conflict
• Laziness and lack of discipline
• Greed or selfishness
• Self-centeredness and self-importance
• Lack of creative adaptability
• Wrong goals leading to misuse of intelligence, creativity, love or power
• Lack of creativity or right application of intelligence.

Love to wisdom

Another point in the Trinity is love-wisdom. What is a woman’s purpose in life? Yes, it is to love of her children, husband and family. But love is beyond that. There are many gradations of love:

• Instinctive love is a lower type of love, what people sometimes call ‘animal attraction’
• Passionate love is sentimental to a point where it can be imprisoning
• Intelligent love guided by the intellect is like a mother who is able to discipline her most beloved child when s/he misbehaves
• Love based on need is familiar to many
• Divine love is the realisation of divinity within each person in a family
• Spiritual group love is when people find fulfilment in relationships beyond the family that are rooted in spiritual activities.

One of the hallmarks of love transforming into wisdom is the ability to respect that people are at different levels of development. I like to say that people are like unripe fruit. They are just in the process of maturing. This is what happens—love and kindness displace anger and hatred. In the same way, anger and hatred can displace love and kindness. In fact, the inner condition attracts outer condition, thus people attract the needed lessons in relationships, within themselves or in groups. Love binds people together, unfortunately the same is true with hatred. Therefore, whatever the situation, the best prescription is to keep on forgiving from the heart. This does not mean becoming a victim of life.

Forgiveness ritual

Forgiveness often involves healing the past:

• An easy way to do this is to take a few minutes to sit quietly and breathe out your tension, fears, anger, guilt and grief, into an imaginary ocean
• Once you feel clearer, touch the centre of your chest and breathe deeply and slowly, recall a happy event for about two minutes
• Repeat the following affirmation several times, ‘I am a being of love and kindness. As I ask for forgiveness from people whom I’ve hurt, I give forgiveness to anyone who has hurt me. Let all be completely forgiven. Let all be free. So it is.’

Willpower workouts

Antidote to fear

At the apex of Trinity of Power is willpower. There is so much power in women but it is not fully developed because most women identify themselves primarily as loving beings. When women’s willpower is integrated with love, they demonstrate the greatest leadership on Earth during modern times. Willpower brings determination, persistence, endurance, courage, strength, will to improve life and the vitality to make it happen.

Willpower development is made simple by practicing expanding squats and push-ups:

• Expanding squats: Start with your hands in front of your heart, pointing upwards and inhaling deeply. Exhale as you bend your knees and extend your arms at the sides. Inhale as you bring your hands back in front of your heart. Repeat 20–50 times, 3 times a week or daily.
• Push-ups: They are great for willpower development too. If it is difficult to do push-ups from the floor, try doing them leaning against the wall. Repeat 10–20 times, 2–3 times a week.

Courage

Hard times also build willpower. Accepting and implementing greater responsibility at work, at home or both builds willpower. Facing hardships with an attitude, of going through life courageously helps women to avoid traps of feeling like a victim. Courage is essential to overcoming fear, which increases in the face of low willpower. What we fear most tends to materialise, so one way to overcome fear is to spend 2–5 minutes when doing the breathing out to the Ocean technique. Just visualise your specific fears being dispelled into the ocean. Make a strong intention that they be gone completely and forever.

Right relations

With less fear, a greater understanding of a situation and more wisdom, it is easier to develop new eyes to see life’s circumstances from a different perspective. Even if you can’t change a situation, you can change the way you perceive it. Then, instead of dwelling on negative emotions, identify new channels for your energies and new activities that will enhance the virtues of forgiveness, vitality, good health, and group consciousness. Maintain a sense of serenity and bless people in your life with the positive qualities they are developing. This can include blessing women whose lives are more difficult, even if you don’t know them, you can also bless from a distance.

Achieving success and establishing balance and harmony within a family or organisation is optimised by practicing these virtues:

• Harmlessness and non-injury
• Goodwill and will to-do-good
• Altruism and generosity
• Humility
• Industrious and disciplined
• Creative adaptability
• Fairness.

As women develop these virtues, for they often feel a call to serve, service is an expression of inner growth and development. It is muscle building for virtues and the barometer of spirituality. With these virtues exemplified through service of family, community and humanity, women can light the way.

The post Dynamic power appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Let’s start by examining what your ‘self’ encompasses. Most often people look at the ‘self’ as the personality, which includes the body, vitality, emotions and the concrete mind. Next, there is the self as a soul—the higher mind, the soul’s love plus wisdom is called buddhi, and the will of the soul or atma. Beyond this is the third aspect, the divine spirit or the God within called monad in Sanskrit.

When people think of being true to themselves, they often concentrate on the body, which is the grossest aspect of spirit. The spirit is the highest consciousness of the body. Since we are alive in the physical realm, the physical part of our self is important. Being physically healthy and vibrant is essential to being yourself. This is why I declare good health to be a virtue.

Not victims

There are things in life that you can’t change, like the incurability of some physical ailments. But you do not have to become a victim. People can be coached on how not to convert pain into suffering. They can be equipped with simple tools to increase their willpower and vitality to fight back. It helps deal with stress; tolerate pain, fatigue, fear, frustrations, guilt and grief and the ability to improve quality of life. Diabetes, for instance, can be cured with ESEM.

When describing ESEM’s [ESOCEN’s School of Energy Medicine]  unique approach to diabetes, Sunita Kripalani, a former executive with an international university programme says, “Despite being a healer and trainer [in another system] for nine years, I was unable to shed feeling like a victim and guilt in many areas of my life. This manifested in a number of ailments—type-2 diabetes for seven years, hypertension for over 20 years, cholesterol issues for seven years, osteopoenia and breast cancer.”

She began receiving ESEM healing and coaching two years ago and goes on to say, “The exercises and breathing techniques are simple, yet powerful ways to de-stress, oxygenate and feel centred in less than 15 minutes. Whenever I am stressed out, upset or feeling low, I turn on The Inner RenewalTM, a guided meditation method that begins with the breathing out to the ocean technique. This is a favourite. It helps me release old thought patterns and emotional blocks and regenerate quickly.”

“There is no looking back for me now. My tests are normal. I live a life of gratitude and look forward to serving others and helping them transform the quality of their lives,” she concludes.

Multi-dimensional health

When it comes to health, people often associate it with the body and do not consider other dimensions of good health. For example, boosting vitality is essential to stress tolerance and maintaining psychological health. Stress is rampant in modern lifestyle. It weakens the immune system, drains physical, emotional and mental energy, lowering productivity and performance. The ability to earn a living is essential for many people and diseases like diabetes and hypertension can compromise a lifelong successful career. This can happen if one does not have the energy to handle the physical demands of the job, to stay mentally sharp and to maintain psychological health.

To maximise good health, identify a specific exercise regime that makes you comfortable, and check if more effective strategies are available.

People types

As people evolve, the question of ‘who am I’ and ‘who I am not’ becomes increasingly important. The profiling system I laid out in my book 8 Types of Leaders Every Leader Should Know, provides guideposts when it comes to health as well as leadership topics like Corporate Diagnostic Profiling. For example, type 2 people—the Mother Teresa types—tend to be sensitive and prefer gentle exercises like yoga stretches. The type 1 people like Genghis Khan on the other hand enjoy martial arts and dynamic movement. The business minded type 3 people enjoy opportunities to mix exercising, socialising and business so they gravitate towards activities like golf. The engineer type 5, such as Einstein, are often so engrossed in their thought processes, that they forget their bodies.

Spiritual health

Being true to yourself includes spiritual health as well. Especially as professionals, executives and leaders advance in their career; spiritual health encompasses and integrates all other aspects of health. In fact, at higher levels of inner training, people discover physical vitality, emotional and mental health that is subordinated to spiritual goals and purposes.

This aspect of life brings people in touch with their higher potential, and at certain levels, their divinity. It can be enhanced by practicing your religion or spiritual techniques properly—purifying your mind and emotions, improving your character and enhancing your 8 key virtues, one of which is good health. Doing service for a good cause helps human development and contributes to world evolution, which is a must if you want to accelerate your spiritual development. There are several steps to maintain your spiritual health as a way of life, including:

• Continuous study of universal principles and spiritual subjects
• Applied services corresponding to your spiritual development
• Meditation and spiritual practices as a source of inner connection and practicing and applying your religion properly
• Participation in group work for human and world development.

Navel breathing

A technique for enjoying your true nature is through navel breathing with the universal word Om. Recitation of the sacred words Om, Aum or Amen can increase the rate of vibration and align your consciousness to the soul or spirit. It should not be practiced more than three times a week for 15 minutes.

• Do synchronised breathing. Inhale rapidly through your nose as you tilt your head up towards the ceiling. Then, exhale rapidly through your mouth as you bring your head down towards your chest. Do this 10 times. Exhale fully as you bring your head down. Now bring your head vertical and concentrate on the centre of your chest, mid-brow and top of the head. Do three sets.
• Use the dhayan mudra: Form a circle whose centre is in front of the navel with your left hand on top of your right hand and the tips of the thumbs touching.
• Verbally or mentally say Om prolonging the O like Ooooooooo for 80 per cent of the duration and mmm for 20 per cent of the duration.
• Hold your breath for a few seconds between inhalations and exhalations.
• For the first two minutes of reciting Om, simultaneously focus on the crown, ajna and heart chakras as you inhale slowly.
• For the last three minutes of reciting the Om, be aware that you are the soul, or for more advanced practitioners, the Divine Self.
• Store energy in the navel centres. This step develops your internal power and stamina rapidly.

The virtue of good health will increasingly become a priority as it becomes a revelation of inner development and balance. The good news for people struggling with diabetes and other life threatening diseases is that simple but powerful strategies can help you be true to yourself, to fight back and to improve the quality of your life right now.

The post How to be a total being appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Give to receive

During difficult times, we can do even more to build our prosperity and entitlement to future wealth by serving others. In fact, good times give us fewer opportunities to serve. Bad times provide the occasion to help more. This helps you earn some spiritual good karma and equity. Even individuals who are not ordinarily leaders amaze themselves and others by rising up to become leaders and servers in the face of calamities.

The Great Buddha had to sacrifice his comfort as a prince to become an ascetic in order to unfold the virtue of wisdom. Martin Luther King Jr’s life was relinquished for the sake of civil rights. All great leaders, heroes and saints are masters of the virtue of sacrifice. You need to have this virtue if you wish to leave a legacy. It is the bottom line of greatness.

Look to help

Instead of focusing on negative gossip, media reports of scandals, or worries about the future, this is an excellent time to look around us and identify the greatest needs among people and the environment. Take this inventory instead of joining others who are in a negative scheme. This is the time to think about what you can do to be of benefit to society.

Look for volunteer options—talent banks, organised efforts to improve communities, or quiet ways to help your neighbours and friends. The goal now is to dedicate your efforts to assist others. Often we get caught up in the circle of complaining and worrying. Difficult situations are here, they are already a given, so there is nothing to talk about now. Take positive action to become an agent of positive change, instead.

If you know your business is slowing down, add more spiritual work to your day. If you cannot push more material activity, why keep pushing something that saturates or declines? We have a chance to upgrade our spiritual life. This is the best time to help other people. When times are good, people are more likely to go to the beach or play golf—spend their time merrymaking. Lean times are when people search for spiritual solutions and spiritual awakenings to prepare for the next round of material awakenings.

Be wise to be strong

We always want to be comfortable. That is our problem. Wisdom can never been written in the comfort of life. It has always been written in difficult times. So, if people cannot gain materially, at least they can become wiser and stronger. Advancing souls really prosper during difficult times in terms of wisdom and knowledge. This is also the time when their virtues are tested. The virtues of objectivity and practicality are crucial to discern and behave in a way that brings the highest good to all.

What do you do now that you have lots of time on your hands because your business declined or you lost your job? If you don’t have work, you should be exercising and meditating to prepare yourself so that you can compete. Often individuals who were sharp while they worked become weak physically, emotionally or mentally when they don’t. When they find new work, they cannot compete. That is bad. Things get worse if they become sick in the new job. Don’t let yourself go weak in body and mind. Exercise to stay energetic [see box] and on top of your game.

Del Pe’s stamina superchargers

Maintaining stamina on all levels is essential. These easy exercises will help you do that.

Synchronized breathing

It helps develop both emotional conscience and integrated concrete and abstract mental faculty. Do it thrice a week, or daily to flush and energise your system. Do not do it if you are pregnant, have migraines or serious heart conditions.

Step 1: Inhale fully and rapidly through the nose as you tilt your head back while inflating your abdomen.

Step 2: Then exhale fully through the mouth as you bring your head down. Repeat 10-15 times.

Step 3: Concentrate on your heart, mid-brow and top of the head simultaneously while breathing slowly for 30 seconds.

Shoulder-spine stress release

It helps release tension from the abdominal area, upper body and spine.

Step 1: Place your hands together in front of your navel.

Step 2: Inhale fully and rapidly as you pull your bent arms towards the back with your head tilted backwards [as though you are looking at the ceiling] and arch your back.

Step 3: Exhale fully and rapidly as you curl yourself forward, chin in, and simultaneously bring your hands back to the front at navel level.

10-5 Abdominal Breathing

This will help you breathe your way to success by increasing your vitality rapidly and calming you down. [Not recommended for pregnant women, or people with heart conditions and hypertension]. Do it thrice a week or daily, as needed.

Step 1: Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor to remain grounded.

Step 2: Inhale slowly and deeply into the abdomen while mentally counting to 10.

Step 3: Hold your breath until you count to 5.

Step 4: Exhale slowly, deflating the abdomen completely, while mentally counting to 10.

Step 5: Hold your breath until you count to 5.

Repeat the whole breathing pattern for a maximum of 5 minutes.

Expanding squats

This is a good anti-ageing exercise. It will strengthen your willpower and enhance blood circulation throughout your body. Do not do it if you have knee problems.

Step 1: Place your feet at shoulder width and put your palms together at the centre of your chest with your fingers pointing upwards. Inhale fully.

Step 2: Exhale as you squat down, bending your knees and extending your arms so that they stretch out fully at your sides.

Step 3: Inhale as you go come up, bring your palms back to the centre of your chest. Do a set of 20-30 repetitions.

Variation: Concentrate on the top of your head and soles of your feet simultaneously. Breathe slowly and relax for 30 seconds to facilitate the flow of vitality and power in your body.

Tip: Do these stamina-boosting exercises and breathing techniques in your extra time to energise and calm you, and remain focused. If a wave of emotion or worry washes over you at some point during the day, these techniques will help you focus back on what is important—serve others and build karmic equity.

The post Bad times = opportunity to build the real wealth appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Keys to sustained abundance

Have you ever wondered why some people have the gift of right timing, reallocating their investments to sustain or even grow their capital regardless of stock market trends? Or why some families maintain their financial good fortune while other families face a sudden decline when family enterprises pass from one generation to the next?

The invisible forces that lubricate wealth are linked to the virtue of generosity and altruism—the keys to financial freedom and sustained abundance.

Success v/s fulfilment

Perhaps one of the greatest lessons of the last few years is the realisation that success involves more than climbing the corporate ladder or reaching the pinnacle of educational accolades. How you live your life, what you do with your time as well as your money spells the difference between fleeting success and a life of fulfilment. Fulfilment comes by balancing five areas of life and results in:

• Financial security and career success
• Good relationships
• Status in ones community through volunteerism
• Good health
• Peace of mind that comes through spirituality.

Altruism is the answer

Who wouldn’t want this heaven on earth lifestyle? Being altruistic is essential to moving oneself, family and your organisation towards lasting fulfilment. This involves more than being generous with money or material assets—in many ways that is easy. True altruism occurs at the spiritual, mental, emotional and energy levels.

The habit of altruism builds invisible prosperity. It can be called good luck or good karma of entitlement. Good luck and the ability to be entitled to good things go to people who work for them. There are different levels of expressing generosity and altruism, starting from physical and material levels. When people are financially generous, they tend to become wealthy.

Financial and material prosperity are usually the result of not only hard work, but also generosity and abstention from stealing and unfairness. However, hard work is not enough.

There is a need for intelligent disciplined work. Intelligent disciplined work equals hard work in a well-organised manner with right timing, plus the good karma of entitlement.

The speed of achieving goals and removal of obstacles is directly related to the amount of karmic entitlement of both, the business leader and the spiritual practitioner.

Inherited prosperity of many wealthy families serves as a good example. Their wealth was earned by ancestors, who practiced some of these principles of entitlement. When their descendents cease to be generous, the flow of prosperity stops. Therefore, it is wise to pass to the next generation the virtue of altruism as the key to sustained abundance.

How to practice altruism

Give what you need most. If you want to increase your income, then give monetary donations [even if in small amounts] to a good cause that benefits many people:

• Form the habit of giving financially to a good cause. Choose the most evolutionary projects that uplift the greatest number of recipients.
• Evaluate your rewards of giving. Observe the difference in your life. Be scientific and patient.
• Teach the virtue to others. Start with your family, and also to those in the organisations you lead.

Self-interest in the return on your good karmic investments is not against altruism. It is an intelligent way of using resources to receive more in order to give more. As long as the intentions are good and your self-interest is not hurting anyone, it is not selfishness.

Other levels of altruism

Altruism is not confined to material or financial giving. Let’s look at other levels of altruism and generosity:

Emotional altruism

Nurture people with good and pleasant feelings and expressions of emotional kindness. Utilise love, compassion and understanding as tools. Project emotional altruism daily to as many people as possible. Emotional altruism involves a more detached expression of love that is not tied to the outcome of another’s behaviour.

Mental altruism

Sharing good ideas with others is the key to mental enlightenment and the good karma of receiving better ideas. If you want to receive new higher ideas, release the positive ideas you have and let others benefit from them.

Teach others the topic you want to master to become an expert on the subject matter. Mentally nurture and motivate others to become better. You can even mentally create or express good intentions and wishes to others.

Spiritual altruism

The key to rapid spiritual growth is to be spiritually generous—support people to grow spiritually and facilitate them to fulfil their life’s purpose. Give advice on spiritual values to others, especially to those who need help.

Forgive people or organisations that truly cannot fulfil their financial obligations to you—bad debts. You may even help the people or organisations to recover. It might be too much for some people to imagine, but practising such altruism brings a deep fulfilment to the those who are able to forgive and forget the shortcomings of others.

The roadblocks to avoid

• Don’t delay cash flow or withhold what is due to others.
• Don’t look down on those with less money or education.
• Avoid pride. Be humbled, including in financial status.
• Avoid excessiveness and fanaticism. Rich people or even countries go bankrupt when they violate this principle. Always save; for the present and also for rainy days.

The virtue of altruism is first formed by small doses of generosity until it can automatically express as greater emotional, mental and spiritual altruism. Like any other attitude, it takes a good reason to develop it—like the fact that altruism is essential in the acquisition of power—and a lifetime to master. It’s never too late to start practising the concepts. Make the positive intention today and the action to do it will follow.

As the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, has said: “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

The post Give more to get more appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Just as children progress from one grade to another – from primary school to high school and on to university – humanity is evolving through different stages. As people evolve, their sense of mission and purpose, and a yearning to serve grows too. Identifying where you stand on the ladder of human development can guide your next steps.

The degree of evolution

Primitive human beings depended on instinct, stamina, vitality, strength and toughness. They focused on day-to-day survival for themselves and their families.

Average human beings employ the power of emotions most. They are focused primarily on material success, their families and friends.

Most business-people and entrepreneurs employ not only emotional intelligence and passion, but also the power of the concrete and logical mind. People at this level often feel compelled to improve the quality of life in their communities and social affiliations.

Advanced human beings use their philosophical and concrete mental faculties in addition to their emotional intelligence and vitality. Spiritual faculties are beginning to be employed as a guiding tool. These persons are in the process of integrating success and fulfillment, and are guided to serve through national or international projects.

Saints and sages are very advanced human beings who embody willpower, love and creative intelligence. They feel a responsibility to serve humanity and/or the environment, and to make contributions at a global level, whatever their career path. Throughout history, people who used their lives to make lasting contributions to others have been remembered as saints. Today, these practical philanthropic businesspeople and entrepreneurs, teachers, scientists and others are legendary world servers. Many are modern saints in the making.

Where to invest

What is the most effective way to use your time and energy for service? Just as farmers plant good seeds in the most fertile ground, invest your power to serve in the same way. Feeding the poor is a good thing, but many can do that. Feeding the minds and spirits of people who are poor in spirit is an even greater thing to do. Being the best in your profession is also an excellent service if done with the purpose of setting an example.

As you search for your greatest contributions, think about this: your maximum service and the good karma generated should go to an activity that has the greatest influence on world evolution and human development for the longest period of time affecting the largest number of beneficiaries, human or otherwise.

Meditation, be it bhakti, karma or jnana yoga, are good tools for graded development and service. Using these practices to benefit others, with a win-win consciousness is key for altruistic service, which is an expression of inner growth and development. It is the muscle-building of virtues. It is the barometer of inner development and spirituality.

Steps to apply the virtue of sacrifice and service

• List your most important goals in life and include the time, resources and effort needed to accomplish them.
• List the less important activities that can be passed on to others or that can be terminated.
• Determine the attitudes, aptitudes, and habits that block your effectives. Implement changes immediately.
• Identify attachments to the past, temporary possessions and relationships that do not support your new priorities and implement changes.
• Identify how life will be better when your project or mission is accomplished. Concentrate on this regularly.
• Practice sacrificing small things for larger benefits to develop the habit of service.
• Know that whether or not the reward for serving a great cause is fame or fortune, many of the most revered people who have practised altruistic service leave a legacy or spiritual monument.

Devoting oneself to service and mastery of the virtue of sacrifice is mastery of true leadership. It is the power behind greatness.

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One of the most important aspects of any journey is to know where you have come from; in order to assess what skills you bring with you and also determine what skills or attributes need to be developed. Then, it is easy to create a map to the future with a strong potential for success. It is a concept I like to refer to as “knowing who you are as well as knowing who you are not.” This can be illustrated by the student who learns easy, but does not enjoy the pressure of competing against the top of his class, and comes to the realisation that he would be happier at a less competitive university.

Step 1: Audit yourself

This process involves coming to know yourself at depths greater than many people know how to plumb. It’s more than listing your degrees and certifications, your business promotions, or contributions you have made to the strength of your company’s bottom line.

Whether you are the CEO, an hourly worker, or head of the family, ask yourself which styles of leadership you have already developed. Now ask which Types [Read my column, Know Who You Are, CW, July 2007], you have not been developed yet. Then, determine what leadership attributes you would like work on and hone during the next year.

The goal during this process is to assess yourself using the metric provided by the universal virtue of objectivity and practicality. This offers the power of discrimination to achieve balanced results. If you find you have fallen short on your objectives, treat yourself lightly and move on. Recognise what you want to change, but don’t get caught in a quagmire of self-recrimination, or self-doubt. This only results in lost time and lost energy.

Step 2: Forgiveness through lessons learned

The second stage is, perhaps, the hardest for many people because it involves forgiving yourself and/or others; them making plans for new actions to overcome shortcomings, or problems. After all, before you can fling at someone else, you have to get your own hands dirty. Penetrate the cause of the transgression, or violation, and seek the lesson to be learned, not just for the person, or event that hurt you, but also for yourself. Ask: “If there is something for me to learn from what happened, what would that be?” When the problem is understood, detachment follows, and forgetting the negative experience and traumas of the past is experienced naturally.

Step 3: Action

Once you have cleared the past through forgiveness and determined what attributes in yourself there are to capitalise on and what needs to be further developed, the next step is devising a plan for the future. A birthday, or anniversary, can be a time of great inspiration and new ideas.

How do you put your new insights into the action? For this, you may use the following outline from my book From Success to Fulfillment:

Concretise your ideas

• First, come to know the new idea
• Study and categorise the idea into principles
• Organise the principles into general processes and procedures
• Divide the processes and procedures into more finite methods and techniques
• Devise specific steps
• Create criteria for measuring those steps
• Now, look at pricing, packaging, and sales
• Marketing, continued research, evaluation and refinements follow.

The post 3 steps to a better you appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

The mind is actually comprised of more than one aspect: the concrete and the abstract. Like a radio station, the mind can tune into different frequency bands — from the lower vibrational signal at the level of the concrete mind to a very high signal at the abstract level, or beyond.

A big step for many business people calls for concrete, integrated and abstract thinking with more conscience – to discern options and use intuitive faculties. This will inspire them to be visionary thinkers. This will also make them real powerhouses.

Mental habits

Mental habits affect life on many levels because people can receive, transmit, store, assimilate, process, and transmit information or data as thoughts.

Try this experiment. Close your eyes and think of an enemy or critic. If you do not have one, think of a person who hurt you deeply and focus on the event, or how negative the person is. Do this for two minutes.

Now consider what is the effect on your emotions and vitality? Did you become “de-vitalised”, tired, depressed, or agitated? What is the effect on your emotions and heart? Did the feelings in your gut and your instincts change? How about your breathing – did it become shallow and erratic? Did sensations around your heart or your heartbeat change?

Repeated negative thoughts drain your vitality and affect your emotions and health. The mind has the capacity to heal or harm. You can’t throw mud on others without dirtying your own hands first. So gossip, criticising others, or ruminating on painful events or people you don’t like, will only hurt you. When people create goals and intentions coloured by negative emotions – anger, fear, guilt, grief, etc., – they can boomerang, especially in the long run.

As people become more mentally sharp and smarter, many things can be justified and manipulated to seem right. This can result in short-term success followed by years, or a lifetime of regret or suffering. According to the Law of Cause and Effect, we attract to ourselves the very things we are criticising in others.

When making decisions, if potential negative outcomes come to mind – especially accompanied by fears or worries – determine if they are real, or whether your mind is reminding you that there can be a downside to your potential decision.

How do you create win-win outcomes? In my book From Success to Fulfillment, I recommend people come to decision-making from the prospective of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others what you want others to do unto you. Do not do unto others what you do not what others to do unto you.”

Beyond common sense

Even what seems like common sense, which is an aspect of the concrete mind, can be analysed. First, be open-minded and not fanatical. Always ask questions to understand the bigger picture. Be careful with gossip and news emanating from the media, or friends. Extract what is true and forget the rest. Instead, use scientifically-based data as much as possible. Know your own weaknesses as well as strengths. Do not rush to conclusions. When in doubt, seek help from experts in the field. Also, apply universal values, and be realistic.

The power of common sense depends on the state of emotions and mind as well as the degree to which spiritual values are developed. Therefore, a lifetime of character building, that includes culturing the mind, improves the quality of decision-making. The next step for many is developing the abstract mind.

Abstracting the whys and hows

Philosophical, abstract, and principle-based thinking belongs to the abstract mind. The new generation of children is equipped with more abstract mental faculties than their parents, or grandparents. They want to understand the whys and hows of things rather than relying upon tradition.

Creative imagination is the hallmark of abstract thinking, which taps into the Power of the Soul. Advanced abstract thinkers are usually more forward thinking and dynamically positive because their mind allows their imagination to see ahead to greater possibilities that have never been explored before.

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I have outlined a wisdom leadership profiling psychology they don’t teach at Harvard – to quickly identify a person’s strengths, weaknesses, or lessons to be learned and more. A number of corporations around the world are now using this profiling system to better match a given candidate’s skills and knowledge to specific requirements of each important role within the company.

Know thyself

This system is not only helping HR departments better fit staff to jobs, it is also providing people in leadership positions the opportunity to profile their own strengths, weaknesses and blind spots, so they come away knowing more about who they are and who they are not — after just an hour of profiling themselves with the 8 Types of Leaders’ methodologies. The foray also gives executives an edge over the competition in their organisation and the career arena.

One of the most vulnerable situations for any leader is not knowing their own weakness[es]. Even if they are not comfortable reflecting on this part in themselves, it is likely their family, boss, subordinates, co-workers and competitors are well aware of their blind spots.

Identifying who they are and who they are not enables more enlightened leaders to stay centred in the face of pressures from their superiors and those whom they manage – no matter the personality types involved.

Some examples of my leadership types are as follows: Type 1s tend to be driven by power; Type 2s tend to respond to love and inclusiveness; Type 3s are businesspeople and philosophers; Type 4s are born entertainers and are great at promotion; Type 5s the law, science and technical types; Type 6s are the most loyal employees, or leaders who will die for a cause, boss or ideal; Type 7s love order and structure and create systems. People who have mastered the qualities of three or more leadership types are classified as Type 8.

This understanding helps leaders maintain neutrality in the centre of the Trinity of Creativity [Read this column: CW, March 2007], which balances will power, love and creative intelligence, and provides them the greatest opportunity to influence positive outcomes in any situation, whether at home or work.

Awareness meditation

How do you quiet your mind enough to profile yourself, your boss, co-workers, competitors, or family members, accurately without your perceptions being coloured by biases resulting from past resentments or fears? My idea of Awareness Meditation Technique is a good tool. It guides people bypass the clutter and noise of their minds in 10 minutes. It’s good to practice this twice a week to stay mentally sharp and emotionally clear.

• Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor, or practice a yoga asana [pose]
• Use the Dhyani Mudra by placing your right hand over the left hand at the navel
• Practice Synchronised Breathing [Read this column: CW, November 2006], by inhaling deeply and rapidly as you pull your head up towards the ceiling and quickly nod your head down as you exhale rapidly. Do this 10 times. Avoid this step if you have neck problems.
• Now concentrate on
  • The heart [Anahata] for emotionally sensitivity and inner peace
  • The forehead [Bindu] for inner impressionability
  • The top of the head [Sahasrara] for higher consciousness and greater detachment

Repeat 2-5 times to become reflexively aware.

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The Failure of Success seems like a contradiction, but it happens all too often when leaders and workers channel all of their energies into one or two areas of life and starve other key areas.

Failure at the end of life comes in many forms: debilitating health conditions, losing one’s business, or facing financial ruin. Life lessons often result from consistently making decisions that harm others. Then, there is the pain of being emotionally abandoned by loved ones or experiencing emptiness from a lack of meaning in life.

You can turn success into fulfilment instead. One key is attending to the 5 Most Important Areas of Life. Also, remember – over- or under-investment in any area of life creates predictable blind spots, challenges and obstacles – manifesting either today, or in the future, as a cause of failure.

The 5 Most Important Areas of Life

When thinking about the amount of time you devote to each area, include your roles, goals, activities, and tasks in that area.

Family and home includes all the roles you take on for your family and to maintain your home including supervising your children’s homework, cooking and spending time with your spouse and in-laws.

Career and work refers to your job, plus the time needed to commute, organise and plan your work activities, and for professional education. Reading business journals at home is added necessity. For students, the time spent in school and studying falls under Career.

Health and recreation includes exercise, sleep, hobbies, sports, going to a movie for pleasure, and attending health-related seminars.

Social life and environment contribution. This area includes time with friends, parties and community activities. As people evolve, they naturally seek out opportunities to make bigger social and environmental contributions.

Spiritual life may mean attending religious services as well as practicing yoga or meditation. Again, as people develop inner powers, they begin to see how their talents and work experience can be used to support greater causes.

Synchronised Time Management

You have 24 hours in a day and 168 hours in a week. The best way to balance the 5 Most Important Areas of Life is through Synchronised Time Management. Mothers do this naturally – feeding the baby, helping with their child’s homework, cooking and talking on the phone to relatives while the clothes are in the washing machine. One of the easiest ways to accommodate all areas of life is by analysing where and how tasks can naturally be combined. For example, a family can come along on a business trip, and visit a sacred shrine. This is an easy way to combine Career and Work with Family and Home as well as Spiritual Life.

Charting Your Life

Analyse your 5 Most Important Areas of Life based on how many hours and what percentage of your week you spend in each area by filling in the chart [There are 168 hours per week].

Analyse Your Results

Determine how to strike the right balance between all of these vital activities – and, plan your balanced life and destiny.

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