A Blog About Financial Freedom

Welcome back!

Life isnt the sweetest candy. Sometimes, when I feel like the world is just too heavy, I look around and find people who continued to live fascinating and wonderful lives. And then thoughts come popping into my mind like bubbles from nowhere How did their life become so adorably sweet? How come they still can manage to laugh and play around despite a busy stressful life? Then I pause and observed for awhile I figured out that maybe, they start to work on a place called self.

So, how does one become genuinely happy? Step 1 is to love yourself.

Genuine Happiness Comes from Within
My theology professor once said that loving means accepting. To love oneself means to accept that you are not a perfect being, but behind the imperfections must lie a great ounce of courage to be able to discover ways on how to improve your repertoire to recover from our mistakes.

Genuine happiness also pertains to contentment. When you are contented with the job you have, the way you look, with your family, your friends, the place you live in, your car, and all the things you now have truly, you know the answer to the question how to be genuinely happy.

When we discover a small start somewhere from within, that small start will eventually lead to something else, and to something else. But if you keep questioning life lit it has never done you any good, you will never be able to find genuine happiness.

Self Improvement
I believe that life is about finding out about right and wrong, trying and failing, wining and losing. These are things that happen as often as you inhale and exhale. Failure, in a persons life has become as abundant and necessary as air. But this should not hinder us from becoming happy.

How to be genuinely happy in spite all these? I tell you every time you exert effort to improve the quality of life and your being, whether it is cleaning up your room, helping a friend, taking care of your sick dog, fail on board exams and trying again, life gives you equivalent points for that.

Imagine life as a big score board like those which are used in the NFLs. Every time you take a step forward, you make scoring points. Wouldnt it be nice to look at that board at the end of each game and think to yourself Whew! I got a point today. Im glad I gave it a shot., instead of looking at it all blank and murmur Geez, I didnt even hit a score today. I wish I had the guts to try out. We could have won! and then walk away.

Self Improvement Info
Genuine happiness isnt about driving the hottest Formula 1 car, nor getting the employee of the year award, earning the highest 13th month pay, or beating the sales quota. Sometimes, the most sought after prizes in life doesnt always go to the fastest, the strongest, the bravest or not even the best. So, how do you become genuinely happy? Every one has his own definition of happiness. Happiness for a writer may mean launching as much best selling books as possible. Happiness for a basketball rookie may mean getting the rookie of the year award. Happiness for a beggar may mean a lot of money. Happiness for a business man may mean success. So, really now, how do we become genuinely happy? Simple. You dont have to have the best things in this world. Its about doing and making the best out of every single thing. When you find yourself smiling at your own mistake and telling your self Oh, Ill do better next time, you carry with you a flame of strong will power to persevere that may spread out like a brush fire. You possess a willingness to stand up again and try that will make you a genuinely happy person.

A great way to save money is to be aware of the fact that one has the power to define the state of his finances specifically through a conscious effort of disciplining the way one spends and controlling one’s expenditures.

Self-Discipline And Saving Money
Self-discipline will most definitely be the key to reducing one’s debts therefore increasing the possibility of growing one’s savings. And in the long run, improve one’s standard of living.

According to money management book author Robert Hastings, “Undisciplined money, usually spells undisciplined person”. Therefore, if one notices how his hard-earned money seems to slip away so darned easy, then it is about time that he rethinks his ways and try to discipline his unpleasant spending habits.

One of the essential keys to successful money management, specifically saving money is to possess proper attitude. Self-discipline is at the topmost of this proper attitudes list, of course.

Saving Money
Only with self-discipline that people recognize that they do have the freedom and power to do the right thing over doing as their impulses dictate.

Sounds complicated? Well, not really. Knowing fully the fantastic rewards of disciplined money in a disciplined person’s hands should be motivation enough for one to do all that is humanly possible to achieve that elusive financial stability everyone hopes for.

Here are some helpful money saving tips.

1. Realize that the most convenient method of building one’s wealth is through saving money. Money is the only sensible material to save.

2. Focus expenditures on the things one needs. Live day-by-day knowing that you have enough.

3. Avoid buying on impulse. Take your time when buying, especially the expensive items. If you really need it, it would most definitely not slip your mind. Otherwise, if you go along forgetting all about it, then it isn’t really worth the money you have to spend on it at all.

4. Credit card debts hold the number one slot as the cause for financial drains these days. Control your spending by using your credit cards less. Or for unavoidable circumstances when you really have to use the credit card, consider using the ones that charge less interest. Then dump the high interest ones for good.

No matter how you look at it, saving money is so easy to do. A little bit of imagination, some creativity and a lot of self-discipline will take you a long way in keeping hold of your hard-earned money. More on Saving Money Tips.

The concept of retirement planning brings up the image of you working with your investment counselor or setting up your 401K so you have adequate financial resources when you retire. And it is true that a big part of being ready to retire involves being ready financially to be able to step out of the work world and start to take life easier.

But just as life is not just about making money, retirement is about so much more than having the money not to work. Preparation for retirement also means preparing to live a simpler life, preparing to become a “senior citizen” and a grandparent and preparing to look at life differently.

Your health care is going to be an important issue in your retirement years. As you enter retirement, you may be strong as an ox and active and full of health and life. But any of us can fall prey to poor health or accidents. And if your employer from whom you retired does not extend your health care insurance for you to continue your coverage past your employment, you should make other plans. You can continue the same coverage that you had under the Cobra system but that can get pretty costly and dip into your finite retirement savings pretty significantly. Medicare can be helpful too. But to be perfectly comfortable that you have coverage, look to Medicare supplement insurance so you maintain the same quality of care in retirement that you have now in the working world.

Don’t just limit your retirement planning to your money. Your retirement will be a time of a big change of lifestyle and a change to your values and how you spend your time as well. You will have more time on your hands and studies show that those who enter retirement without “an agenda” can become adrift in all that time and that isn’t healthy. Human beings are doers so even though you may no longer be working for a living, find ways to be productive and make a difference in your community. You can start finding those opportunities long before retirement so when you finally step out of the work world, expanding those hobbies and volunteer efforts is as natural as can be.

In addition to the change of where you spend your time each day, you may have even a bigger change in where you live ahead for you in retirement. Many times people who step into their retirement years find that maintaining the house where you raised the kids is just not necessary and more work than it worth. Selling the home and using the equity to finance a leisurely retirement life is a great way to go. But you should start early both preparing the home for sale and preparing the family that “grandma and grandpa’s house” is going away.

In addition, where you go to live is something that can be great fun to dream about and doing some research on just the right place. You may choose to rent a small place in an older part of town and enjoy a whole new lifestyle in that setting. Or you might go for a high-rise condo with a view of the river or a nice quiet apartment in a retirement oriented apartment complex where you and other retirees can explore this new world together.

Above all it’s important to embrace the retired lifestyle with the enthusiasm and excitement that you might greet any new opportunity. Don’t let being retired mean just not working. In fact, go through the mental and emotional exercises of putting the working world behind you and redefining yourself in this new role. You are retired now and you are a senior citizen and maybe even a grandparent.

These are not negative things. There is a strong role for grandma and grandpa in society and in your family. And the world takes great joy in a senior citizen who embraces that time of their life and sets out to be the best senior citizen they can be. If you predetermine that this is the kind of retired person you are going to be, that attitude will propel you past that sudden change of life shock and get your retired life off in running in an exciting way that will lead to many happy and fun times in your life of leisure as a retired person.

Perhaps you are like me and you are fed up of hearing everyone give you advice about time. They just go on and on. Like, hope you can find some time. On the other hand, do not forget to make yourself some time. How about, do not lose any time. Alternatively, do not waste time. And, my all time favorite is, be sure to use time wisely. If I hear just one more I am sure, I will lose it!

Now, they may all be sound advice but what I really want to hear just once is, how about some playtime. That kind of time I do deserve.

You and I can actually accomplish a lot more if we just learn to devote time for ourselves. Doing this, however, is not always so easy.

We should all work very hard and when we do, we are bound to struggle through the pressures of life. It just makes sense. You are likely among those who are often found trying to get ahead and meet the demands of your job or family, right? Yet, if we do not stop and give ourselves the attention we need, we will all end up suffering to one degree or another.

Keep in mind that there is no one right way to manage this. Everyone has variable circumstances. We all have some unique problems in doing or achieving this aim. Perhaps the first thing to realize is that you are not managing time to do this. You are managing yourself.

A well-managed individual is well organized.

In order to manage yourself, establish your priorities. I am not talking about those “most important” things to do. It is prioritizing those things that are most important to you at a personal level. In focusing less on the tangible and more on the fulfillment of things you value, you will then achieve a sense of balance. You just have to determine what those activities are.

Take a look at what your leisure desires are. Travel? Reading? Bowling? Dancing? Dining out more? Visiting with family and friends? Deciding what you want to do is the first step to finding the time to do it.

Your priorities can therefore encompass: Friends and family relations, personal enrichment, health and wellness, pursuing personal passions, and working toward long-range goals. Life is more fulfilling when you are doing those things because they bring you joy. You do not have to sacrifice career, family, and well being to achieve balance in your life. You do not even have to change jobs either. Just change yourself. That should be priority number one.

You can create your own brand in lifestyle. It is not something created for you, I know you might think that others control your life, and that you are not in control, but that just is not true. You have many different choices.

Part of the choices that you will make has to do with doing those things that align with your purpose or spirit. You can opt to take any task and turn it into a purposeful one, giving it importance and meaning. If you do it any other way, it is just a chore. The way you view your activities has a great deal of impact on how you approach them.

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Have you heard someone saying this…

“If it’s so darn easy like what the self improvement help books and seminars taught, how come I’m not a millionaire?”

I don’t have the answer.

But I do know how I became wealthy.

I was struggling at first until I realized the potential of what I’m about to share with you…

Belief in yourself.

Believe it or not, the limitations we experience in life are often the result of our own mental limitations.

Consider for a moment the hoopla surrounding Roger Bannister when he broke the four-minute mile. Previous to him setting this record, most people considered it impossible to run a mile in less than four minutes.

In fact, I dare to bet that there were people in Bannister’s time who were physically capable of running a four minute mile, but were held back by their mental limitation that said it was impossible to do so simply because no one have done yet.

Once Bannister did it, however, many people followed. And thus, the record has been broken since by almost 17 seconds.

All it took was for people to change their mindset and believe they could do it. Once they believed it, they did it (provided of course they had the physical skills to match).

The same is true if you want to be a millionaire today, my friend.

Do you believe you can make one hundred dollars for a start?

Do you believe you can make one thousand dollars then?

Do you believe you can make six figures?

How about seven figures?

Chances are, you already hold some sort of limitation in your mind– an amount that you believe you can make.

I know because I always have.

We can be motivated thinkers but the problem is, we’re somehow programmed not to think big in our society of living.

But you don’t have to bow down to your mind’s limits. Instead, be open and be free. Choose to make more. Believe that you can. Make it so. All you need to do is free your mind.

I mean, who’s going to sue you if you think big? No one.

So it’s to your own advantage to think big than small, isn’t it? You have nothing to lose.

A few years ago I experienced first-hand the limitations I allowed my mind to put on my activities. Let me explain…

Previously, I organized and marketed self improvement help workshops as a business.

The crowd was never more than 30 people per intake.

I don’t know why but I could not figure out why I can’t get 100 in my room.

Then one day, I realized what was going on.

I was ‘blocking’ myself to the possibility of having more participants because I’ve been programmed that if I can get 50 for such type of workshop, I’m already doing a great job.

So my brain wasn’t trained to get more.

But one day, the speaker told me that I could get more. That’s all it takes. One voice changed my view and thinking pattern. The rest is history now.

It’s very interesting how our brain is receptive towards advice from an authority figure.

This leads me to another lesson learned from my life’s experience–

If you want to soar with the eagles, don’t hang around with ducks or chickens.

Let’s suppose you are making $100 a month from a business of yours, but you want to get to the $10,000 a month level.

The truth is if you can make $100, then you can make $10,000… after all, it’s just a matter of replicating what works, leveraging your previous success to snowball it into more success, and so on.

But of course many people don’t shoot from $100 to $10,000 overnight. Their mind needs to adjust to the idea. If they could free their mind, they could meet their income goals– quicker.

Hence the big question: how can you ever get to a higher level if your mind isn’t ready?

The answer is to start taking smaller steps.

You see, many people do it the other way. When they decide they want something, they take big steps to get what they want. For example, if they want to make $10,000 a month, they roll out big plans for big businesses.

But if their mind isn’t ready for this type of success, they won’t get there. Maybe they’ll sabotage themselves by doing something like choosing bad business partners or making other poor decisions.

Forget about those big steps. If your mind isn’t ready, it won’t work.

Instead, take small steps to begin building bridges between what you know you can do and what you want to do.

In a nutshell, you likely already know HOW to be wealthy. Now you just need to free your mind to believe that you can do it. Once you truly and fully accept that you can do it, you WILL do it.

Successful people know that training their mind to accept success is a very important task. Actually, it’s probably more important than knowing everything else in the world about becoming wealthy but doesn’t believe in himself.

Patric Chan

P.S: You can get hundreds of free self improvement articles, tips and videos at www.successandlife.com. If you have your own self improvement course, share them there to get free publicity and exposure!

Sahasrara Chakra

The seventh of the primary chakras, also known as the Crown Chakra - located at the top of the cranium: suppresses appetite, provides a peaceful environment, relieves tension, and is good for migraines. Also known as ‘thousand petaled lotus’, promotes: inner strength, wisdom, kindness, artistic talent and creativity. Governs brain, nerves, soul energy. Forms spiritual awareness, divine energy. Only the Root, Solar Plexus and Crown Chakra are able to access and receive energies from the Higher Self. Other chakras receive these energies after having been filtered through one of these three chakras.

Visualize the Crown Chakra and ask the Universe for energy to flow down through your Crown Chakra. As the energy flows into your Crown Chakra, visualize it entering your bloodstream through the arteries and permeating the cells of your entire body. If you have a specific problem you wish to work on, you can ask for the energy to infuse that particular area of the body.

The body listens to every thought you think, so just by stating what you want, it will happen. This is the time to get plugged to the Cosmic Ordering knowledge.

Shoulder Chakra

The shoulders (strength) - considered as one chakra not two, and shoulders hold the consciousness of responsibility. You know this as a kinaesthetic experience. When you are feeling overburdened your shoulders get tense. The responsibilities are creating major stress. Key words to express this: feelings of restriction, desire for freedom, resentment of life situations.

Which consciousness matches what you feel in your body when you think of the word ‘responsibility’? The natural one which is just the natural flow of energy, or the pathological one which presents as tension? There is a channel of energy which is often closed in most modern humans that connects this chakra to another chakra on the left shoulder. The Shoulder Chakra, though rarely if ever mentioned, is critical as it is a favourite point of entity attachment. Addictions often have their roots in, and can be effectively cleared up by working with, the Shoulder Chakra. When the channel connecting the alta major and Shoulder Chakra opens up, a burning sensation is usually felt in the channel connecting them for a minute or so. Do not be alarmed by this.

Sole (left) Chakra

The normal spin direction of the Feet Chakras depend on what is naturally your dominant hand. If you are born with a RIGHT hand dominance, then the natural spin direction of your Right Sole Chakras will be clockwise, the natural spin direction of your Left Sole Chakras will be ANTI-clockwise. This is in accordance with the natural function of your Palm and Foot chakras. If you are born with a LEFT hand dominance, all of that will be reversed.

Right foot main chakra = “Coming and going, we keep you on your path.” Left foot main chakra = “I keep you on the spiral path so that you can re-learn the failed lessons.”

In a physical sense, the Foot Chakra is actually a split energy centre, with each half sitting in the ball of each foot. If you were to place your feet together, these centres would seem to combine and make a complete energy centre. However, regardless of whether the feet are physically next to each other, these split-centres, on each foot, are always linked and are always complete.

With the Sole Chakra blocked, all the areas of humanness get affected negatively. The individual poorly integrates with peers and loved ones and cannot understand other people’s point of view. Some types of destructive behaviours stem from an extensively blocked-up Foot Chakra.

Sole (right) Chakra

People tend to get a blocked up Foot Chakra when life gets a bit too much for them. The increase in mundane activity backs-up energy in the Foot Chakra because the individual is not used to clearing this increased amount of energy flow. Quickly, a sense of fear or anticipation can pervade, as the other higher centres begin to leak energy out into the aura. People experiencing the onslaught of this condition will report an increase in sensitivity all over the body. They may become very emotional or even extremely intellectual, depending on their core makeup. Exercise can help here to alleviate this condition, temporarily, but eventually this energy centre will have to be unblocked to permanently alter the condition. The other fix is to return to previous levels of mundane activity, which is undesirable because, if the individual is experiencing a growth in activity, it is likely that the person is ready to handle things on a more increased level.

A good healthy Foot Chakra will help you to more easily manifest things physically, as it is the transformer of your thought energy into the earth system. A good Foot Chakra will also help you to stay physically focused and on task throughout your day.Foot massages can help greatly here, as well as walking barefoot in the dirt or sand.

You can also pay special attention to kundalini yoga poses - this practise has helped many over ages.

In addition to learning about the law of attraction and the subconscious mind, everyone is now talking about mind movies. These are a tool for anyone to use to design an outstanding life. An amazing and abundant life in fact. Mind movies are a quick and fun solution — and they work! Mind movies are a great part of personal development in general and working towards actualizing the desires that are within your mind, but your heart must match the vibration of that you wish to achieve. So everyone is challenge to watch mind movies in order to open up to a greater feeling within them and then go on to create the life of their desires.

Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual’s level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.

A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.

Coaching produces valuable leaders.

Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization’s vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

Self Help & Self Improvement

Some words of caution though: coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.