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Improving Ourselves With Personal Development

Does Meditation Improve Ability To Focus

I’m now 8 days into my meditation experiment. I’m still finding it very difficult to focus on any one thing for a decent amount of time. However I am starting to see an improvement in my ability to focus on my everyday activities.

Generally for me the only way I have been able to focus really well on something for an extended period of time is to become completely obsessed with it. So I would go through periods of developing one part of my life quite successfully while everything else is put to the side. One of the problems with this is that I had relatively little control over what it was that I became obsessed with.

The most I have ever enjoyed my work was when I wasn’t really into anything else for a period of time so I just got really into programming. Usually there will be something else that pops into my head constantly throughout the day like cycling, fishing, web development or whatever it may be that I’m into at the time.

It looks like meditation could allow me to control my focus better and change it consciously throughout the day. So I’m really looking forward to see if this improves as I gain experience with meditation.

Is It OK To Kill Someone To Cure Cancer?

Just a hypothetical question (at least at this stage) but imagine a scenario where scientists have discovered that a paritcular person has something in their brain that can cure cancer, they will need to cut out their brain to extract the cure. Cutting out their brain will of course kill them.

The question is whether it’s right to kill them.

Remember cancer is the leading cause of death in the world, in 2007 it accounted for 7.9 millions deaths (13% of all deaths)

Sorry to those of you have previously voted on this, the service I was using for the polls lost all of the votes. I’ve now changed to a more reliable method so this shouldn’t happen again.

Now that you’ve answered that, imagine that you’re the person that has to die to cure cancer.

Please leave a comment to let me know the reasons for your choices, I’m really interested to know what people think about this.

 

 

30 Day Meditation Experiment

For the last few days I’ve been experimenting with meditation on compassion for others. I’ve decided to extend this into a 30 day trial where I will meditate on compassion for at least 15 minutes per day.

The aim during the time of mediation is to concentrate on wishing good for all other people; this includes friends, strangers and enemies. The term enemy may seem a little strong, but I’m just talking about those who you often feel opposed to.

The goal here is to feel more a part of an interconnected whole, where the happiness of others is as important as my own. This is as opposed to feeling as if I am competition with others. All to often we guage our own success my comparing ourselves to others and this has an unfortunate effect where the success of others can make us feel unhappy.

I am not an experienced meditator so I expect it will be difficult to maintain focus for 15 minutes, but I’m very interested in seeing whether this can change the way I think throughout the day.

I will give regular updates on this experiment and how it changes me, it would be cool if others join in with the experiment - just leave a comment below to let me know if you’re going to be taking part.

If you’re interested in following this experiment you can use the rss or e-mail subscription options at the top right of this page.

Reducing Negative Emotions

I’ve recently been reading the book Happiness by Matthieu Ricard, it’s a very interesting read. The parts about reducing negative emotions seem particularly helpful. Ricard mentions several techniques to use for this but the one that seems to have the most potential is that of observing the emotions.

It seems that you can reduce the effects of these emotions simply by observing them. Take anger for example, when people feel angry they focus on the object of their anger and amplify all of the negative characteristics, the more bad characteristics that are found the more there is to be angry about.

If we change our focus from looking at the object of anger to looking at the anger itself, we see that the emotion is only constructed by our mind and the emotion will tend to become less intense. Just concentrate on the feeling itself, ask yourself “what is this emotion?” as you do so the feeling will dissipate.

I’ve only been experimenting with this technique for a few weeks but it seems to work quite well for me.

Have you tried this technique yourself?  Let us know how it works for you by leaving a comment below.

Make Better Decisions

You have no doubt come across difficult decisions in our life and there are bound to be more on the way. Making good decisions is very important and keeping your purpose in mind can help you to make better decisions.

Know Your Purpose

Purpose can be thought of at many different levels from a small goal like what you’re trying to achieve in the next 30 minutes to the grand scale of “life purpose”. Your small goals should generally support your life purpose in some way.

Every decision should be made using a higher purpose. It won’t work if you’re trying to use a low level purpose to make a high level decision, for example thinking about the goal of keeping your fingernails clean will not help you choose a good career path.

Knowing your purpose is very important, but if you don’t yet know your purpose don’t use it as an excuse to put off your decision. Have a guess at what your purpose is and use that to guide your decision making. You can always refine or completely change your purpose later.

This is a little bit strange here; you have to decide what your purpose is to help you make better decisions. Some would say we already have a purpose it’s just a matter of finding out what it is or that deep down we know our purpose.

Let Your Purpose Guide You

Look at the criteria you use to make a decision. How often do you do choose something just because it’s comfortable or easy? If your purpose is to live a comfortable and easy life then these are good criteria. On the other hand if your purpose is to help others then using comfort and ease as criteria isn’t always going to help you make the right decision.

We are always subconsciously assessing what activities are worthwhile. This is fine when the decisions aren’t very important but when it come to the big stuff it might be good if there is more thought going into it.

Remember to keep the importance of your decisions in perspective. Some choices are worthy of cureful deliberation while others can and should be made in a matter of seconds.

Purpose Over Wants

Often we make decisions to serve our wants and to provide short term pleasure, when we would do better to consider our higher purpose. Sometimes our wants will align well with our purpose, while at othertimes they can be in complete contradiction

For an example familiar to many let’s say you’re trying to save money for something worthwhile, perhaps to give to charity or to buy a house. You’re at work and you are deciding what to have for lunch. If you’re just thinking about short term pleasure you will probably buy the most tasty thing you can think of, like a steak sandwich from the cafe down the road. The trouble here is that it doesn’t align well with your goal of saving money. Instead you might be able go to a dairy or supermarket and buy bread and a sandwich topping. This is a fairly simple example but the concept can be applied to all sorts of decisions.

Give It A Try

Next time you’re making a decision of some importance make sure your keep your higher goals and purpose in mind.

Upgrading Your Procrastination

Have you tried everything and just can’t stop yourself from procrastinating? Maybe you should try changing your procrastination activity so you get something more out of it. You still won’t be making progress on your major goals but maybe you’ll achieve something worthwhile.

Identify Your Default Procrastination Activity

What do you do when you’re lacking motivation? Think of a couple of your most common procrastination activities.

What Do You Get Out Of It

Are you procrastinating in a way that provides real benefit for you or other people? Just because you’re putting off working on your important goals doesn’t mean you can’t be productive.

Often people procrastinate because they “need” a break. Often a break can be really useful and provide renewed motivation. If this is your reason you’ll want to make sure that you actually feel refreshed after the procrastination otherwise you’re just kidding yourself.

Other times people put things off because they “don’t feel like it”. If this happens too often it’s a problem you’ll need to work on sometimes though it really can be best to leave it until you’re feeling more motivated. Just make sure you get something out of your procrastination time. You can gain knowledge, learn skills, write a book, start a blog, enhance a relationship with a friend and more, all while “procrastinating”.

Choose A New Activity

To “upgrade your procrastination” you need to make that time more productive.

Often the new skills and knowledge gained during procrastination time can support your main goals to an extent. Choose something that will provide some real benefits, something you can easily do instead of your current procrastination activity.

Making The Change

The transition into procrastination is generally quite an automated process, so we need to make some changes to your environment to guide you towards the chosen activity. With these changes in place your autopilot should take you to a new destination.

Here are some ideas for changes that you can make, it all depends where you go to procrastinate.

• Web Browser - Change your bookmarks, subscribe to different sites
• TV - Buy or rent some DVD’s about a topic that you really wish to learn about.
• Lounge - Buy or borrow some books and leave them out wherever you normally go to read.
• Deck/Porch - Put some running shoes on your favourite chair.

Try one of these or come up with an idea of your own and give it a go.

Don’t Take It Too Far

While it’s great to get more benefit from the time you spend procrastinating, you need to remember what your main goals really are.

What Positive Psychology Can Help You Become

In his talk “What Positive Psychology Can Help You Become” Martin Seligman talks about a shift in psychology from the disease model to what I will call the happiness model.

In the disease model psychologists try to make miserable people less miserable which is of course a great thing.

In the happiness model psychologists look at what can make people happier. Martin identifies three areas of happiness: pleasure, flow and meaning. He mentions a couple of specific things which can make people happier: designing a beautiful day, the gratitude visit, a strengths date, fun vs philanthropy.

His talk is very inspiring and I’m definitely going to try the gratitude visit. I’m very interested to hear your thoughts so please leave a comment after watching the speech.

Life Lessons From Dave Matthews

Dave Matthews is a great musician with some really good messages in his lyrics. Here’s some of my favorite lines that have helped to change my life for the better.

If you hold on tight to what you think is your thing, you may find you’re missing all the rest.

- from “The Best Of Whats Around”

Often we will decide that something is not worthwhile for us without trying it or giving it proper consideration. It could be something trivial like a type of food or something important like donating to charity. For me this has been true many times and this song has really helped me to try things out, often with surprisingly good results.

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Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we’ll die.

- from “Tripping Billies”

Life is short, we never really know how much longer we’ll live for. Celebrate life and enjoy it today.

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If I were giant-sized, on top of it all
Then tell me what in the world would I go on for
If I had it all

- from “If I Had It All”

If we had everything we ever wanted we would never be happy. Progressing towards our goals gives our lives purpose and meaning.

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Mother, father please explain to me
How a man who rocks his child to sleep
Pulls the trigger on his brother’s heart
He digs a hole right to the middle of this storm of hatred

- from “Mother Father”

It really is crazy how a person can be incredibly caring in one situation and then do something that shows a complete lack of respect for human life in another. Don’t get into hatred, be full of care and consideration for your fellow humans.

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I’ve been praying
For some way to show them
I’m not what they see
Yes I have done wrong
But what I did I thought needed be done

- from “The Stone”

Sometimes when we look at the actions of another, it can appear as if they are intentionally trying to cause harm. Often its not the case, people are usually trying to do what they think is right.

Hands and feet are all alike
But gold between divide us
Hands and feet are all alike
But fear between divide us

- from “The Space Between”

All humans should care for and respect each other, but greed and fear stop us from working together.

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Take these chances
Place them in a box until a quieter time
Lights down, you up and die

- from “Ants Marching”

Often we save all of our important opportunities for a later date with thoughts like “I’ll do it when I have the time” or “I don’t feel like doing it now”. If we continue to put these things off one day we’ll day and these things will not be done.

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What is your favorite quote from Dave Matthews? What other musicians inspire you? Leave a comment below.

 

Kaizen - Make Massive Changes With Small Steps

Sometimes we find ourself unwilling to develop new habits because the changes are frightening. If you think you can do it all in one go by all means go for it, but if you’ve tried that and failed there is another way.

Mary Jaksch of Goodlife Zen writes in her Zen Habit guest post How To Establish New Habits The No Sweat Way

“How do we create pathways of change so gently that we don’t take fright?

There is a very interesting Japanese philosophy called Kaizen which can help us do just that. Kaizen focuses on continuous but small change.”

The key with applying the principles of Kaizen is the continuous part, you have to keep at it. Most people will need a way to remind themselves of the changes they are trying to make. I use a combination of computer based reminders and a white board to achieve this, just make sure it’s somewhere you will see it - preferably every day. Often having a calendar or something similar to check off your progress can be useful, there’s something satisfying about ticking a box every day to show you’re still on track.

Beware of taking the concept of Kaizen too far though. You may find yourself losing interest in your new habit if the changes are too small … you need to make enough progress to motivate yourself.

Kaizen In Practice

Kaizen can be applied in many areas of your life. Relationships, fitness, emotional control, breaking addictions … significant progress can be made in all of these areas by make small improvements often.

Exercise is an easy place to apply these principles. Every week you could add an extra 5 minutes , an extra kg of weights or a few extra reps. This will give your body a mind plenty of time to get used to each new challenge.

Breaking an addiction such as smoking or internet usage. You can set a time each day and make the decision not to engage in the activity before that time. Then just move the time by a manageable amount each day. Try somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes. You should be able to stick with it fairly easily each day, after all it wont be very different from what you did the day before.

Writing a book is a great goal. To achieve it you’ll need to get into the habit of writing on a regular basis. Let’s say you want to work on your book 5 days a week. You can start by just setting aside 5 minutes a day, then add five minutes a week - within 6 months you’ll be spending an hour a day writing. This should be plenty of time to make some great progress.

Try It Yourself

So choose a goal to achieve or a habit you’d like to have then find a way to achieve it small steps. How are you going to apply the principles of Kaizen? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Online Business Ideas

The idea of setting up an online business is appealing to many people. The common perception is that with an online business it will be easier to make money without having to do much work, sometimes this may be true but it takes a great idea - usually it will require a decent amount of effort. This article will look at some of the common ways of making money online.

Advertising Revenue

Advertising has become a very popular way to make money online. Both large companies and individuals are taking advantage at the ease of setting up advertising online. Companies such as Google do all the hard work of finding advertisers all you have to do is paste some code into your website and you can start making money, or at least that’s the theory. You’ll need plenty of traffic.

You can either get pay per click ads or pay per impression.

Click through rates vary between 0.5-20 percent. It makes a big difference where the ads are placed on your site and how relevant they are. Also some markets are more susceptible to this kind of advertising.

Online Shop

Selling products online can be very lucrative. Amazon.com is probably the most successful online store.  You can sell pretty much anything music, clothes, ebooks, software etc.

Online Service

Provide a service that people can use web design, online gaming, writing are just some of the possibilities.

Marketing An Existing Business

If you already have an existing business you can often find extra customers through the internet. These days your customers will pretty much expect you to have a website where they can find information about what you business does and what products you offer.

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