70 Days...

Wow, I'm nearing the home stretch now, and feeling really good. Let's jump right into it the breakdown of the past 10 days...

1. PhilosophersNotes: I feel like I should be getting paid for talking about these awesome tools. PhilosophersNotes are perfect for me. I love to gather wisdom as I am continually learning, and trying to improve my life in every aspect I can. But, with two young boys and 3 businesses it is so hard to find the time to do so. That's were these wisdom packed 20min. audio summaries of some of the most valuable books ever written come in. Seriously check these things out if you'd like to feel better, and do more with your life than you previously have. Who wouldnt want to do that?

Here are the books I covered this week:

The Places That Scare You - Pema Chodron
Positive Addiction - William Glasser
The Power of Decision - Raymond Charles Barker
The Power of Full Engagement - Jim Loehr/Tony Schwartz
The Power of Intention - Wayne Dyer
The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell
The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Your Supermind - Vernon Howard
Psycho-Cybernetics - Maxwell Maltz
The Psychology of Winning - Denis Waitley

Here are my 6 favorite quotes from the past 10 days:

“Human beings live the way they CHOOSE, not the way they WANT. A vast difference lies between the two.” - Vernon Howard

“Few doctors will say, ‘Look, your headaches are caused by inadequacy; take some aspirin and then go and find some more love and do something more worthwhile.’” – William Glasser

“A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it is going forward towards something. You have a good bicycle. Your trouble is you are trying to maintain your balance sitting still, with no place to go. It is no wonder you feel shaky.” – Maxwell Maltz

“It is a mistake for anyone to think he has lived too long in his old, unsatisfactory ways to make the great change. If you switch on the light in a dark room, it makes no difference how long it was dark because the light will still shine. Be teachable. That is the whole secret.” – Vernon Howard

“Do not be impatient with your seemingly slow progress. Do not try to run faster than you presently can. If you are studying, reflecting and trying, you are making progress whether you are aware of it or not. A traveler walking the road in the darkness of night is still going forward. Someday, some way, everything will break open, like the natural unfolding of a rosebud.” – Vernon Howard

“As within, so without: If humans clear inner pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution.” - Eckhart Tolle

***More Super-Awesome Quotes follow at the end of this posting, see below.


2. Jump Attack: I just finished up with the 2nd Phase of the program and now get another week off, which is well needed rest. I'm feeling stronger with every workout and foresee this last phase being really intense and elevating...literally. :-)


3. Nutrition, Eating Well and my Commitments: I have been going strong with the plant based (Vegan) diet and feeling great. I am toning up, although I have lost zero pounds. I'm certain I've converted old fat to new muscle, but won't know how much until I test my body fat at programs end. Like I had mentioned in a previous post, I thought eating only plants that grow from the earth would have me dropping a lot of weight, but I'm glad that I have thrived and been able to convert fat to muscle and stay the same weight. I've still stayed clear of any and all Sweets, Sodas, Alcohol, Toxins, etc. I'm still really looking forward to that big piece of Cossetta's Cheese Pizza in St. Paul, however, in about 30 more days. :-)


Thanks for being you and doing all you do. Losta love, and I'll see you in 10 more days...

:-)


***Here are the rest of the Super-Awesome Quotes:

“Do not be impatient with your seemingly slow progress. Do not try to run faster than you presently can. If you are studying, reflecting and trying, you are making progress whether you are aware of it or not. A traveler walking the road in the darkness of night is still going forward. Someday, some way, everything will break open, like the natural unfolding of a rosebud.” – Vernon Howard

“It is a mistake for anyone to think he has lived too long in his old, unsatisfactory ways to make the great change. If you switch on the light in a dark room, it makes no difference how long it was dark because the light will still shine. Be teachable. That is the whole secret.” – Vernon Howard

“How on earth can another’s thought harm you? It is your thought about his thought that harms. Change *your* thought.” - Vernon Howard

“Rebel against everything within yourself that you feel is artificial. Become what you are!” - Vernon Howard

“Encourage yourself by remembering that any detection of negativity within you is a positive act, not a negative one. Awareness of your weakness and confusion makes you strong because conscious awareness is the bright light that destroys the darkness of negativity. Honest self-observation dissolves pains and pressures that formerly did their dreadful work in the darkness of unawareness. This is so important that I urge you to memorize and reflect upon the following summary: Detection of inner negativity is not a negative act, but a courageously positive act that makes you a new person.” – Vernon Howard

“Use this secret for developing receptivity: Learn to love situations which make you uncomfortable. That is the only way you can learn to be comfortable everywhere.” - Vernon Howard

“Human beings live the way they CHOOSE, not the way they WANT. A vast difference lies between the two.” - Vernon Howard

“No one can tell you what is right for you except for yourself. So start telling yourself what to do. If you blunder for ten years while thinking for yourself, that is rich treasure when compared with living these ten years under the mental domination of another. The only true, honest and enriching authority is the internal authority of your own Supermind.” – Vernon Howard

“If it takes apparent misfortune to turn us into true philosophers and doers of good to receive good, then apparent misfortune is our greatest fortune.” – Vernon Howard

“To be real is to be spiritual. A cat is normal because no one has fixed him with a neurotic notion that he should be a tiger. A man loses neurosis when he is what he is.” – Vernon Howard

“At the start of your quest, wisdom is a flash, not a glow.” - Vernon Howard

“No one can enjoy a truth for which he is unprepared, any more than an ape can appreciate a harp.” - Vernon Howard

“Please don’t go around trying to save the world. You have all you can do to save yourself.” - Vernon Howard

“Creative striving for a goal that is important to you as a result of your own deep-felt needs, aspirations and talents (and not the symbols which the ‘Joneses’ expect you to display) brings happiness as well as success because you will be functioning as you were meant to function. Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is ‘built that way’ he is not happy unless he is functioning the way he was made to function—as a goal-striver. Thus true success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other.” - Maxwell Maltz

“Every human being has been literally ‘engineered for success’ by his Creator. Every human being has access to a power greater than himself.” - Maxwell Maltz

“A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment.” – Maxwell Maltz

“Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience.” – Maxwell Maltz

“Imagine how you would feel if you were already the sort of personality you want to be. If you have been shy and timid, see yourself moving among people with ease and poise—and feeling good because of it. If you have been fearful and anxious in certain situations—see yourself acting calmly and deliberately, acting with confidence and courage—and feling expansive and confident because you are.” “This exercise builds new ‘memories’ or stored data into your mid-brain and central nervous system. It builds a new image of self. After practicing it for a time, you will be surprised to find yourself ‘acting differently,’ more or less automatically and spontaneously—‘without trying.’” – Maxwell Maltz

“Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other. The word ‘habit’ originally meant a garment or clothing… Our habits are literally garments worn by our personalities. They are not accidental, or happenstance. We have them because they fit us. They are consistent with our self-image and our entire personality pattern. When we consciously and deliberately develop new and better habits, our self-image tends to outgrow the old habits and grow into the new pattern.” – Maxwell Maltz

“We are engineered as goal-seeking mechanisms. We are built that way. When we have no personal goal which we are interested in and which ‘means something’ to us, we are apt to ‘go around in circles,’ feel ‘lost’ and find life itself ‘aimless,’ and ‘purposeless.’ We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve. People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile. Prescription: Get yourself a goal worth working for.” – Maxwell Maltz

“A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it is going forward towards something. You have a good bicycle. Your trouble is you are trying to maintain your balance sitting still, with no place to go. It is no wonder you feel shaky.” – Maxwell Maltz

“The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Simply define your goal or end result. Picture it to yourself clearly and vividly. Then simply capture the feeling you would experience if the desirable goal were already an accomplished fact. Then you are acting spontaneously and creatively. Then you are using the powers of your subconscious mind. Then your internal machinery is geared for success: To guide you in making the correct muscular motions and adjustments; To supply you with creative ideas, and to do whatever else is necessary in order to make the goal an accomplished fact.” – Maxwell Maltz

“Take inventory of your good reasons for self-esteem today. Write down what your ‘BAG’ is. Blessings—who and what you are thankful for. Accomplishments—what you have done that you’re proud of so far. Goals—what your dreams and ambitions are.” – Denis Waitley

“Every winner I have ever met knows where he or she is going day by day … every day. Winners are goal oriented. They set and get what they want—consistently. They are self-directed on the road to fulfillment. Fulfillment or success has been defined as the progressive realization of goals that are worthy of the individual. The ‘human’ system is goal-seeking by design and, using a very basic analogy, may be compared to a homing torpedo system or an automatic pilot. Set your target and this self-activated system, constantly monitoring feedback signals from the target area and adjusting course setting in its own navigational guidance computer, makes every correction necessary to stay on target and score a hit. Programmed incompletely, non-specifically or aimed at a target too far out of range, the ‘homing torpedo’ will wander erratically around until its propulsion system fails or self-destructs. And so it is with each individual human system in life.” – Denis Waitley

“One of the best ways to develop adaptability to the stresses of life is to view them as normal. Earl Nightingale tells of his visit with his son recently to the Great Barrier Reef which stretches nearly 1800 miles from New Guinea to Australia. Noticing that the coral polyps on the inside of the reef, where the sea was tranquil and quiet in the lagoon, appeared pale and lifeless… while the coral on the outside of the reef, subject to the surge of the tide and power of the waves, were bright and vibrant with splendid colors and flowing growth… Earl Nightingale asked why this was so. ‘It’s very simple,’ came the reply, ‘the coral on the lagoon-side dies rapidly with no challenge for growth and survival… while the coral facing the surge and power of the open sea, thrives and multiplies because it is challenged and tested every day. And so it is with every living organism on earth.’” – Denis Waitley

“Since they fail to plan, they are planning to fail by default.” - Denis Waitley

“The most readily identifiable quality of a total winner is an attitude of personal optimism and enthusiasm.” – Denis Waitley

“Concentrate all your energy and intensity, without distraction, on the successful completion of your current project. Finish what you start.” – Denis Waitley

“Most people spend more time planning a party, studying the newspaper, or making a Christmas list, than they do in planning their lives.” – Denis Waitley

“The fear habit, the anger habit, the self-pity habit—all are strengthened and empowered when we continue to buy into them. The most compassionate thing we can do is to interrupt these habits.” – Pema Chodron

“Acknowledging that we are all churned up is the first and most difficult step in any practice. Without compassionate recognition that we are stuck, it’s impossible to liberate ourselves from confusion. ‘Doing something different’ is anything that interrupts our ancient habit of indulging in our emotions. We do anything to cut the strong tendency to spin out… Anything that’s non-habitual will do—even sing and dance or run around the block. We do anything that doesn’t reinforce our crippling habits. The third most difficult practice is to then remember that this is not something we do just once or twice. Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.” – Pema Chodron

“A traditional analogy for the pain caused by the lord of form is of a mouse being caught in a trap because it can’t resist eating the cheese. The Dalai Lama offers an interesting twist to this analogy. He says that when he was a boy in Tibet he used to try to catch the mice, not because he wished to kill them, but because he wanted to outsmart them. He says that the mice in Tibet must be more clever than ordinary mice because he never succeeded in catching one. Instead they became his models of enlightened conduct. He felt that, unlike most of us, they had figured out that the best thing they could do for themselves was to refrain from the short-term pleasure of cheese in order to have the long-term pleasure of living. He encouraged us to follow their example.” – Pema Chodron

“This is the path we take in cultivating joy: learning not to armor our basic goodness, learning to appreciate what we have. Most of the time we don’t do this. Rather than appreciate where we are, we continually struggle to nurture our dissatisfaction. It’s like trying to get flowers to grow by pouring cement on the garden.” – Pema Chodron

“A warrior begins to take responsibility for the direction of her life. It’s as if we are lugging around unnecessary baggage. Our training encourages us to open the bags and look closely at what we are carrying. In doing this we begin to understand that much of it isn’t needed anymore.” – Pema Chodron

“Without loving-kindness for ourselves, it is difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely feel it for others.” - Pema Chödrön

“Each moment is an opportunity to make a fresh start.” - Pema Chödrön

“One begins identifying those factors which lead to happiness and those factors which lead to suffering. Having done this, one then sets about gradually eliminating those factors which lead to suffering and cultivating those which lead to happiness. That is the way.” – Dalai Lama

“Very few of us realize how much we choose the misery in our lives. Even when we do, we still go ahead with the disastrous choice because we are convinced that we don’t have the strength to choose better…I will first describe in detail how weakness is the cause of almost all the unfortunate choices we make. Then I will argue that anyone who wishes to become stronger seriously consider trying to become an addict.” – William Glasser

“…Positive addicts because, due to their addictions, they are almost always stronger than nonpositively addicted people who lead similar lives. With this added strength they live with more confidence, more creativity, and more happiness and usually in much better health.” – William Glasser

“Throughout almost the whole history of psychiatry it has been difficult for most psychiatrists to accept that depression is a choice.” – William Glasser

“Depression is a choice.” – William Glasser (Dr. Glasser’s approach is non-traditional. He does not believe in the concept of mental illness unless there is something organically wrong with the brain that can be confirmed by a pathologist.)

“Few doctors will say, ‘Look, your headaches are caused by inadequacy; take some aspirin and then go and find some more love and do something more worthwhile.’” – William Glasser

“Depression, no more than acting out, does not come from the outside. We don’t catch it like chicken pox. It is out of our weakness that we choose to be depressed because we have discovered that not making this choice is even more painful.” – William Glasser

“With the first choice, giving up, he relinquished responsibility, but with the second choice, depression, he is now shielded from his own inadequacy and able to turn to others.” - William Glasser

“No one is so inadequate that he cannot help himself to some degree. Not only can he, but he must; nothing else will work.” – William Glasser

“What they always seem to have that makes them strong is that no matter how many problems they face they rarely run out of options. Unlike the weak, who tend to give up and then choose symptoms to reduce their pain and perhaps later become addicted to get some pleasure in their lives, strong people never seem to be at the end of their rope. They almost never lock themselves into one pattern of thinking and behavior.” – William Glasser

“Unlike the weak, the strong neither give up nor are driven by pain into rash or stupid behavior. They don’t like pain any more than anyone else, but they are not willing to settle for short-term relief if it means reducing their options later. They don’t rob Peter to pay Paul, they face reality now.” – William Glasser

“You can not go beyond your own self-accepted image. As long as you underestimate yourself, you cannot succeed in life.” – Raymond Charles Barker

“Success and failure are results of the use of mind. Every success-motivated mind has been a decisive mind. Every failure-motivated mind has been an indecisive mind. Only the dreamer who acted with decision on his dream brought forth something new and valuable.” - Raymond Charles Barker

“Man is not born perfect. He is born incomplete, he is born as a process. He is born on the way, as a pilgrim. That is his agony and his ecstasy, too; agony because he cannot rest, he has to go ahead, he has always to go ahead. He has to seek and search and explore. He has to become, because his being arises only through becoming. Becoming is his being. He can only be if he is on the move. Evolution is intrinsic to man’s nature, evolution is his very soul. And those who take themselves for granted remain unfulfilled. Those who think they are born complete remain unevolved. Then the seed remains the seed. It never becomes a tree and never knows the joys of spring and the sunshine and the rain, and the ecstasy of bursting into millions of flowers. That explosion is the fulfilment, that explosion is what existence is all about—exploding.” – Osho

“You cannot think and feel negatively over a period of time and have positive situations maintained in your experience. The Law of the Subconscious can only bear the kind of fruit based on the seed ideas you have given them. Jesus said you could not gather figs from thistles. Paul called this sowing and reaping. The Hermetic Teachings stated that what goes in must come out. All are saying the same thing.” – Raymond Charles Barker

“You are the result of your past decisions. You will become and experience the result of your present decisions. Join me in deciding on the side of greatness.” - Raymond Charles Barker

“All of this is already in you. The great use it. The non-great do not, so they remain the non-great. Decide upon some thing, situation, or condition that you want right now in your present life. Be definite in this decision. Do not limit your decision by investigating the probable reasons why it will never happen. That is the detour to nothing. All false speculations of defeat have to be ruled out of your consciousness. If they enter into the decision for even a fleeting moment, the decision is robbed of authority and the subconscious mind cannot act upon it. You do not need to know how the final result will come to pass. That is the function of the subconscious. It has ways and means that, if they were known, would stagger the intellect.” – Raymond Chalres Barker

“The more you watch your moods, attitudes, habits, and central ideas and stop all basic negatives from lingering in your area of attention, the richer and fuller your prosperity will be.” – Raymond Charles Barker

“We would be living in a grand Utopia today if every great idea that arose in men’s minds had been followed by decision and right action. Too many great ideas have been meditated upon and then discarded. Usually the thinker discards them for what seem to him to be plausible reasons. No great discovery in history has been based on plausible reasons. Automobiles were implausible in 1900. Radios were implausible in 1910. Transatlantic planes were implausible in 1920. Yet thinkers let such ideas arise in their consciousness out of the wellspring of the Infinite Intelligence. We should all be grateful that these thinkers decided to try the ideas they had. Every scientific mind has made the implausible plausible.” – Raymond Charles Barler

“Periods of recovery are likewise intrinsic to creativity and to intimate connection. Sounds become music in the spaces between notes, just as words are created by the spaces between letters. It is in the spaces between work that love, friendship, depth and dimension are nurtured. Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing unbalanced by much opportunity for being.” - Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

“Drinking water, we have found, is perhaps the most undervalued source of physical energy renewal. Unlike hunger, thirst is an inadequate barometer of need. By the time we feel thirsty, we may be long since dehydrated. A growing body of research suggests that drinking at least sixty-four ounces of water at intervals throughout the day serves performance in a range of important ways. Dehydrate a muscle by as little as 3 percent, for example, and it will lose 10 percent of its strength and 8 percent of its speed. Inadequate hydration also compromises concentration and coordination.” - Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

“Television, for example, is one of the primary means by which most people relax and recover. For the most part, however, watching television is the mental and emotional equivalent of eating junk food. It may provide a temporary form of recovery, but it is rarely nutritious and it is easy to consume too much. Researchers such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have found that prolonged television watching is actually correlated with increased anxiety and low-level depression.” - Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

“To be fully engaged emotionally requires celebrating what the Stoic philosophers called anacoluthia—the mutual entailment of the virtues. By this notion, no virtue is a virtue by itself. Rather, all virtues are entailed. Honesty without compassion, for example, becomes cruelty.” - Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

“In short, money may not buy happiness, but happiness may help you get rich.” - Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

“Creating positive rituals is the most powerful means we have found to effectively manage energy in the service of full engagement.” - Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

“The more scheduled and systematic these rituals became, the more renewal they provided.” - Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

“Across cultures, religions and time itself, people have admired and aspired to the same universal values—among them integrity, generosity, courage, humility, compassion, loyalty, perseverance—while rejecting their opposites—deceit, greed, cowardice, arrogance, callousness, disloyalty and sloth. To begin to explore more deeply the values that are most compelling to you, we suggest that you set aside uninterrupted time to respond to the following questions: Jump ahead to the end of your life. What are the three most important lessons you have learned and why are they so critical? Think of someone that you deeply respect. Describe three qualities in this person that you most admire. Who are you at your best? What one-sentence inscription would you like to see on your tombstone that would capture who you really were in your life?” - Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” - Wayne Dyer

“Act as if everything you desire is already here… treat yourself as if you already are what you’d like to become.” – Wayne Dyer

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold service was joy.” - Rabindranath Tagore

“The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning one’s self and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s self.” - Aldous Huxley

“It grows my fingernails, it beats my heart, it digest my food, it writes my books, and it does this for everyone and everything in the universe.” – Wayne Dyer

“Choose to be in close proximity to people who are empowering, who appeal to your sense of connection to intention, who see the greatness in you, who feel connected to God, who live a life that gives evidence that Spirit has found celebration through them.” – Wayne Dyer

“The Wright brothers didn’t contemplate the staying on the ground of things. Alexander Graham Bell didn’t contemplate the noncommunication of things. Thomas Edison didn’t contemplate the darkness of things. In order to float an idea into your reality, you must be willing to do a somersault into the unconceivable and land on your feet, contemplating what you want instead of what you don’t have.” – Wayne Dyer

“God is an intelligible sphere—a sphere known to mind, not to the senses—whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.” - Joseph Campbell

“Ramakrishna once said that if all you think of are your sins, then you are a sinner. And when I read that, I thought of my boyhood, going to confession on Saturdays, meditating on all the little sins that I had committed during the week. Now I think one should go and say, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have been great, these are the good things I have done this week.’ Identify your notion of yourself with the positive, rather than with the negative.” – Joseph Campbell

“Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck to its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.” - Joseph Campbell

“Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life, Marx tells us to blame the upper class of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself.” - Joseph Campbell

“You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!” - Eckhart Tolle

“There is clearly an intelligence at work that is far greater than the mind. How can a single human cell measuring 1/1,000 of an inch across contain instructions within its DNA that would fill 1,000 books 600 pages each? The more we learn about the workings of the body, the more we realize just how vast is the intelligence at work within it and how little we know. When the mind reconnects with that, it becomes a most wonderful tool. It then serves something greater than itself.” – Eckhart Tolle

“Accept—then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.” – Eckhart Tolle

“I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes serious leakage of vital energy.” - Eckhart Tolle

“Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in yourself, in whatever form—it may be the awakening of the pain-body. This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, depression, a need to have some drama in your relationship, and so on. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant state.” – Eckhart Tolle

“It is certainly true that, when you accept your resentment, moodiness, anger, and so on, you are no longer forced to act them out blindly, and you are less likely to project them onto others. But I wonder if you are not deceiving yourself. When you have been practicing acceptance for a while, as you have, there comes a point when you need to go on to the next stage, where those negative emotions are not created anymore. If you don’t, your ‘acceptance’ just becomes a mental label that allows your ego to continue to indulge in unhappiness and so strengthen your separation from other people, your surroundings, your here and now.” – Eckhart Tolle

“The present moment is all you ever have. There is never a time when your life is not ‘this moment.’ Is this not a fact?” - Eckhart Tolle

“As within, so without: If humans clear inner pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution.” - Eckhart Tolle

“Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear.” – Eckhart Tolle