It’s perfectly normal, isn’t it, to want a better life, achieve ambitions and fulfill desires, solve problems, let go some baggage, drop a few unnecessary habits – especially the more expensive ones! Lose a few fears or phobias. Funnily enough, once we’ve started on something it seems to spread into other areas, a kind of vicious cycle of well-being, satisfaction, and achievement, from the magnificent to the mundane.

What greater achievement than to change someone’s life for the better. To change our own! Understand our self, inspire your Self, start an avalanche in the mind. To under-stand the universe Einstein wanted to know ‘how God thinks.’ To understand a human being we must find out how we think – what motivates us; the feelings of your heart, the songs in your head, the thoughts in your mind. And to make the change?
Stanley, a musician, wanted to change an out-of-date way of thinking. He could lose himself in playing, but really found himself in conducting. ‘Ah, then, I am God!’ By visualizing, imagining himself as one of his orchestra, watching and following the instructions of the conductor, he succeeded in making his change, ‘by frequent rehearsal.’ Just a tweak, shifting from normal to another. In his world, his language, the language of the senses was the sense of hearing. Not surprising for a musician. It just needed adding the Visual, watching – and following – the conductor.

Are we not sensual beings, we humans? We love to watch movies, our favorite movie star, our football team, even our favorite soap, to see our favorite picture – would that be the one on the bathroom wall? To be seen in our favorite dress, our new heels or sneakers. Appearance is all – ask any hairdresser!
What were the pictures populating your mind as you read those words describing what we like to see? That’s your VIP: Visual Imagination Power, a Power-Tool for Transformation.
And do we not love to hear music, Mozart to Gaga, certain voices, sounds of na-ture, songs of the city? We love to taste, good food – good drink.
We love fragrances, scents, flowers, and perfumes. Britney and Madonna like to be associated with their own fragrance, and then bring out their own fashion lines, adding the power of appearance. And don’t singers love to act, crossing the edge from auditory to visual. Using new technology Abba made the first pop videos, motivated by the desire not to travel – Agnethe hated leaving her kids!
The power of the senses is easily understood when we look at the money invested in their gratification: selling and buying movies, TV, sports, music, perfumes, food … and the language of the senses is how we each express our own world. Understanding this helps us change – change what we want to change and keep what we want to keep. We need to know why, our motivation for change. Knowing this, we can learn the right technique.

And we love to learn! We learn to speak each other’s language, the language of the visu-al, if you see what I mean, or the language of the auditory if you hear what I’m saying, the language of the kinesthetic if you catch my drift, yes, smell the freedom – how does it taste? The sweet smell of success, the taste of achievement, the sound of letting go, the feeling of a weight off your chest, a load off your mind, seeing yourself, as you really want to be, the past in place – a place to learn from and move on.

Motivation is the key to changing lives, habits, our way of being. A friend, a woman, a vegetarian pacifist who would never harm a soul, but wanting to learn a martial art as a form of self-development – getting out of her box – baulked at the idea of violence. It took a single thought to redden her face and bare her strong white teeth as her blue eyes flashed fire, her hair stood on end and her hands seemed to grow claws of a tigress. And what was that thought? Well, you’ve maybe guessed it was about her children being threatened. Violence had a place in her brain she didn’t even know was there, but the limbic memory sprang into action. Now, for a mother, isn’t this perfectly normal?

Some of us had difficult childhood experiences. Now it’s obviously not possible to change the past, but what about changing our perception of the past? If past experiences color your perception of the world today, your world in the here and now, that’s Perfectly Normal. Are we not the sum of all that has ever happened? The good we have done, the bad we have done, the good done to us, and the bad done to us?
How might you have reacted to a situation in that childhood, with the resources of now: the knowledge, experience, the mental strength – even the physical strength? It is but a small step to imagine yourself in that same situation, but with your clear and present grown-up resources.
In this way we change our world, for what is our world but our perception of it? Make life a rich rewarding lesson. Someone told me I was lucky to have had the experi-ences I had, been to the places, met the people, done the things. Was I really lucky? Lucky I lost my father when I was a toddler? Lucky in the stepfather who raised me and my brother as his own – and abandoned us? My view of the world was perfectly normal for someone with those early experiences. When I took the conscious decision to change it, my new world became perfectly normal. It’s never too late and no dog learns new tricks so well as an old dog that simply adapts the old tricks.
And it’s not just scars from childhood, is it? That more recent past, not so far behind: wounds of betrayal or cruelty, deception and disappointment, heartbreak or humiliation, can we let these too distort our view of the world or can they too be placed in perspective, processed and dealt with. Some might call this a life of suffering but those same also say we cause that suffering for ourselves. Calling out from the depths of a vale of tears holds us in those depths, and we can leave them, and we can learn how. We have a choice, to dwell in the past, to long for the future: but meanwhile the present slips by.

It is a simple process, to find motive, and then to associate it with a desire. Imagine now, or remember, a moment of total pleasure, or a peak of achievement. Think of a time when you felt wonderful, from a moment ago to years ago, a moment when everything was right, perfect, in that moment, for however long or short a time. In your mind’s eye, see what you saw in that moment, the picture, and see where it is, in front of you or all around, colorful or black-and-white, moving or still, framed or panoramic –yes, that’s right, see what you see – are you in the picture or looking at it? Hear what you heard in that moment, feel what you felt, and where did you feel it? Where in your being? Was there fragrance, a smell or a taste?
Re-live that moment with all your senses and now, double the size of the picture and turn up the volume, double the feeling, the smell or the taste, and double again and again and again until your whole being is filled with that moment; all your senses, be there, in it all around, capture that look, that feeling, all those sensations, savor them, let them linger in your being, your mind, your body … and now, just be aware of how far you went, how deep, how you lived that moment as if it were now! That moment was your moment, special to you: where you were, what you saw, how you felt, what you heard, smelt or tasted.
We take that peak moment and anchor it, so that it can be revived and relived, at will. Then, we associate that moment with something you want to do, to achieve, to change, and instill the motivation deep inside you. Imagine now, how effective this can be in making change, achieving what you want, or desperately need, freedom from nega-tive programs drummed in from childhood, freedom from unnecessary habits or out-of-date ways of thinking, freedom even from the past – the past is where it belongs, behind you, and, if you let it go, completely over and done with! Freedom to move on, to let go, to cut the chains of the free.

Stress itself is Perfectly Normal. It’s how we react to Stress that gives us a headache. We all have our problems, difficulties, hopes and dreams but at some deep level within us dwell the resources to make the change you need to make and it’s just a matter of learning how to help yourself make those changes. And who knows, by changing your mindset you may come to find that more success, fulfillment and happiness can be … perfectly normal.

But now a new and insidious normal is seeping in, a normal that thrives on Stress and threatens Vitality.

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Look Inside: From Stress to Vitality NOW! Secrets of Love and Life Mastery for Men and Women

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